Hey Heptarch, always the best questions. And right to the core of the game.

This question deserves some general answers first.

All businesses that require land 'plots' (so excluding the finite businesses you can find in a port, such as an Tavern, Hospital or Shipyard) work essentially the same. But there are differences too. And it gets a bit complicated in some cases, because plot businesses and port businesses sometimes overlap in a single business line, so you can have both. For instance: Sea Products both encompasses the Whaling and Fishing business, a port business, as plot businesses such as an Oyster or Lobster farm.

So each gamer has one 'slot' for a business. But nobility gamers (pay to play) can have more slots, depending on their noble rank, and that makes for a Joint Stock Company. So the business line limitation only matters if you have more than one slots, as you can't get your second business in a different business line, and so forth.

How are all businesses the same? You essentially require input, output, labour, knowledge, resources (sometimes rare), facilities, transport, warehousing and market. Those aspects are the same for every business, and the management of a business is, in that sense, the same. So a farm, a orchard or a timberyard, they essentially are managed in the same way.

Agriculture is divided over three business lines: Fruit, Vegetable and Beverage Products, Grain, Beans, Leaves and Fibre Products and Animal Products. (I exclude Sea Products...) Animal Products is not just husbandry, also hunting. (it is possible we alter the categories later on if we decide on optimizations, but you get the idea)

So there is not all the detail in these things you mention, because we wanted to keep it reasonably generic. Otherwise we need to devise a custom build (mini-game) for each business type, and that is simply too much to make. But there are still some details to specific businesses that set them apart.

There is for instance a crop cycle, where you plant and harvest, and if you acquire more fields, you can alternate between them to keep a constant production. But we did not connect that to specific seasons and different growth cycles for different crops, it is a generic model that works the same for all crops at all seasons. Also, because the game is in real-time, we can't make that realistic anyway, that would require months of gaming to produce something.

The produce of the fields, however, is different. There is a spoilage factor. So if you produce Apples or Beef, they last only a few game days, so you need to get them to market fast and you can't warehouse them for very long to wait for the right price. While Coffee Beans or Tobacco keeps a lot longer. So your choice of business does have an effect on the speed you and your competition have to trade at.

There is also a difference in what you can do with your produce. There is a refinement process, and it is up to you to invest in facilities to do this refining, or not. Beef can be salted or smoked to make it last longer. Vegetables can be pickled to keep longer. Etc. But you need more staff, more resources, so you'll have to weigh those investments. But there is more. You can make Apple Cider from those Apples. That's relatively simple, but still requires a Press House and a Barreling House next to your Orchard. And you need products such as Yeast, which you can't make yourself on your Orchard.

If you want to make Beer, it gets a bit more complicated. A Brewery is in the Fruit, Vegetable and Beverage Products business line. But your most important ingredient, Barley Grain, is produced in the Grain, Beans, Leaves and Fibre Products business line. You can't produce the Grain in your own business, you'll have to purchase it. Next you need a Malthouse, a 'Copper', a Hops Yard and a Fermenter Vat to produce beer in steps, which requires things like Sugar, Yeast and Barrels, and only the Beer Wort and Hops you produce yourself. So you can't produce Beer without buying produce externally.

The principle is always the same. You can extend a business with additional facilities to make more of your product, or you can sell raw produce to other gamers, and have them make the final product that can be sold more profitably. Extending a business is a calculation, as it increases cost and management attention. For instance, you can grow Cotton Balls and sell them, simple. Or, if you have a Joint Stock Company, you can also extend with a textile mill. and make Cotton Yarn, Cotton Cloth, and you can even extend with a Ropewalk and create Cotton Rope. So you can create lots of Cotton products. Or extend to Linen and Hemp too, and create a diversified textile or cordage empire, if you have the business slots in your Family Joint Stock Company. Of course you can also leave the growing of crops to others and just buy their produce and make textile.

The animal products are mainly intended for food, hide, fur and byproducts right now (such as Pig or Cow skin for Glue or Eggs, Butter, Feathers, etc.). There is horse production too as there is a market for them, not just the general market, but also for gamers such as the Army and certain businesses, but there is not a better and poorer horse. The details there are the same as a cow, pig or chicken. We might change that when we add playable Cavalry to the Army, but that will certainly not happen until well after launch, if ever.

Climate plays a role, as ports are in different climate zones and not all animals can be kept or crops can be grown in all climates. You can't keep cows in the Arctic or grow White Grapes in the desert.

Additional complexity is that you have to transport your produce to markets and sell it, or store it at an expense and sell it later. You can agree to contracts with other gamers and sell it outside the market, or you can offer it on the (local) market(s). If it requires shipping there is a cost attached. If it requires storage in a warehouse you do not own, there are costs attached too. Of course you can ship yourself, if you can, but there are also shipping companies, and gamers can run those too.

Competition is all about price. The game has more than 600 types of goods, divided in different categories and markets. All these goods are constantly available (if they are indigenous to the climate) and offered by npc businesses. So there is no shortage of goods (as gamers also need them to run things, and running out of resources would be incredibly frustrating). The npc businesses can meet the demand of both the huge citizen market and the gamer needs. But they sell their goods at a stable and pretty high price. If gamers run their business well enough they can easily compete. They then undersell the npc market, up to the point where their goods run out or where the local market is saturated (depending on the population size and daily use). Gamers buy from the same market. So it is easy to compete with npc companies and be very profitable. But if other gamers enter the market with the same category of goods, that will change. If they undercut your price, they sell first. If they sell at exactly the same price, the market is divided. If they offer an alternative product in the same category, the market is divided further, as citizens love diversity.

So production at the lowest cost is important. If you can make your workers efficient by recruiting, managing and training them well, that helps. If you get the right facilities, that helps. For instance: if you have several businesses that can all share one single mill, that saves cost in staff and facilities. If you have the right managers, that helps. If you buy your resources cheap, that helps. If you keep transport and warehouse cost low, that helps. And if you look for good markets to sell, figure out the best price and their saturation point, that helps too. And knowing your competition, that helps tremendously. If you can pick products that are rare and won't quickly be competed with, or you can easily out-compete competitors on price, you might have a good prospect for getting very rich.

Okay then, your turn again, I'm sure I haven't answered all your questions!

I don’t know about whether I have the best questions.  There are a handful of wonderful folks in the community who ask pointed, intelligent questions. I’m glad to be numbered in their ranks, though.  I’m sure I speak for all of them when I express my appreciation for your wonderfully detailed answers. 

So, if you don’t mind, I first want to synopsize your answers to my questions to make sure I’m understanding them correctly:

Farming:

    A gamer who wants to own a farming business can choose from three variants: Fruit, Vegetable and Beverage (hereafter abbreviated FVB), Grain, Beans, Leaves and Fiber (GBLF) and Animal Products (AP). Each business consumes a land plot within a port and each unlocked character has access to one plot. 

Since a noble gamer has access to multiple player characters, hence multiple plots, they can own multiple businesses within a given business line with their unlocked characters, but cannot own businesses in different lines (i.e. can own a FVB business, but not an AP). These businesses can span multiple ports, nations and shipping regions.

The farming mechanic is generic, not based on in-game or real life seasons and is not governed by seasonal crop restrictions. Agricultural products do not vary from farm to farm or region to region.  An apple from Japan is the same as an apple from New England.

Spoilage is an issue for agricultural products, but can be mitigated by timely sales on the market or refining the products into another product with a longer shelf life.  All these products can be stored in warehouses, sold in the local market or shipped to other ports for sale.

Husbandry (Animal Products business line):

    Animals produced and harvested in this line are generic animals and their products are also generic.  There are no “prize pigs” or “prime steers”. Products in this line are generally limited to food, hide, fur and some byproducts.

    It is possible after the game is launched (particularly when playable Cavalry is introduced) that selective breeding for livestock and animals may be introduced, but there are no current plans to do so.

Fair?

Now for a few other questions that occurred to me when I was reading your answers.

1. Will Greenhouses be in the game?  If so, will they allow for small amounts of exotic crops to be produced in a port not native to their climate?
2. You mentioned Cider and Beer.  Presumably there is also wine making (and other spirits) in the game as well. Are all these beverages functionally the same thing? Are there gradations of quality that can be produced? Are the recipes for producing them all the same from gamer to gamer? Can a producer name their product (i.e. if my hypothetical family makes wine, is the finished product “Stirling Reserve Chardonnay” or just generic “Wine”.
3. You kind of missed the thrust of my question about rare produce. I’ll use nutmeg as an example. Why would nutmeg be expensive outside of southeast Asia? I get that it would be rare, but why would anyone in New England care about that from a game perspective? Does it make food more appealing, thereby increasing happiness? Does happiness in a port increase with diversity of spices? Obviously trade in spices was tremendously important during the time period covered in the game. I’m just curious how that will be translated into a game mechanic (if it is at all).
4. I completely understand your reluctance to drill too deep into the simulation aspect of every business. The development for something like that would be insane. But on a purely personal level, is that something you would WANT to do in an ideal world for this game?  Or is there a “sweet spot” for you when it comes to the simulation veracity:simplicity ratio that you want this game to hit and stay at?
5. You mentioned “…if you acquire more fields, you can alternate [crops]”. When you say “acquire more fields”, is that something that is done within a single plot (like building the Cider Press in your example)? Or are you talking about another unlockable character’s plot?

Thanks again for all your attention!

Posted by: @heptarch

Farming:

    A gamer who wants to own a farming business can choose from three variants: Fruit, Vegetable and Beverage (hereafter abbreviated FVB), Grain, Beans, Leaves and Fiber (GBLF) and Animal Products (AP). Each business consumes a land plot within a port and each unlocked character has access to one plot. 

Since a noble gamer has access to multiple player characters, hence multiple plots, they can own multiple businesses within a given business line with their unlocked characters, but cannot own businesses in different lines (i.e. can own a FVB business, but not an AP). These businesses can span multiple ports, nations and shipping regions.

 

I retract the bolded area in the quote above.  Re-reading what Peter said, then reading the nobility packs again, it became clear to me that it isn't based on a "one plot per unlockable character" system, but rather that nobles have a certain number of business plots they can use based on their rank.

@heptarch

Yes, correct on all counts.

A family business can be managed by all family members, it is not bound to one specific character. However, in the case of a Joint Stock Company, which a business becomes at the time it acquires a second business, it needs to appoint a family member a Director General. This character then IS bound to the company as a career, and his/her rank determines how many businesses the family can posses, all the way up to a possible 18 (which would be an extreme number to manage).

At the start of the game a family doesn't posses any business, a plot needs to be purchased from a Governor at a specific port. Depending on the type of business one wants, sometimes it needs to be a specific plot type, which might not be available at all times at all ports. There is the general purpose plot, the agricultural plot, and plots with specific resources, such a an Oak forest or an Iron Deposit. Apart form specific resources, climate also plays a part, not everything is possible in all climates.

Having a plot is just owning a piece of land. The necessary facilities need to be built next. So 'Agricultural land does not a farm make'. More investment is needed to create the business and hire the staff. However, once this is done, upon selling it, you'd sell it with the resources on it (unless you demolish them, you can always re-purpose). Within the business line you choose there will be choices of what kind of specific business the start. But you do need qualifications to do so. For this, prior to creating it, you need to go to University and get a degree in, for instance, Coffee Plantations, Game Hunting, Beer Brewery or Wine Making. In this course all the specific mechanics are explained to you, as well as a piece of history regarding how it really was in the 18th century, and it is finished with an exam.

Starting a business is obviously an expensive thing, and gamers might not have such money in the family, certainly not at the beginning, so they can secure a bank loan to make all the purchases. Nevertheless, you still need to make a profit to pay off the loan, so you do need to make sound business decisions.

There will not be greenhouses in the game, as they only became really (and barely) economically viable in the Victorian age. There would be no way to undersell products on the market with it. Additionally, the climate system is kind of fun, as it encourages trading across world regions. We don't want to shortcircuit that.

Cider, Beer, Red Wine, White Wine, Port, Sherry, there are different beverages to make, which also helps in finding a market. If the local market is saturated with Wines from other gamers, but no-one is selling Port yet, that offers a good way to still sell your black grape product there. But there will not be quality difference in these products. Apples are Apples, Wine is Wine. The reason for that is that we already have over 600 products. If you add gamer customization to that, the amount of products on the market would explosively increase, creating a really complicated and even more difficult to understand market. Variation is nice, but that variation is already present in the choice of products, so we will not (yet) increase that with variations in the individual product values. Maybe in the further future for certain products. Of course this quality variation already exists, in ships and armaments. One flintlock pistol is not like another. And then there are the outfits, which all vary in the way they are composed. So some products do have a lot of variation in themselves, and the name of the maker is attached. It's basically the port businesses that work different to plot businesses.

There is one plot per business. But a plot has slots. So a agricultural plot has slots for things like a threshing mill, a grinding mill, a press, a fermentation house, etc., etc., depending on what type of activity the plot has, you can imagine a mine is entirely different. Each agricultural plot has slots for fields, and those can be four fields right now. If you have a Vineyard, you could grow black grapes or white grapes on different fields, diversifying your output. If you would have a Grain farm, you'd be able to grow a different grain on each field, Wheat, Oat, Barley, Maize, etc. Same applies to fruits, etc. You could also have just one field, or grow the same crop on all fields. It entirely depends on with what you can make the most money. Markets can change, making you decide to try a different crop. The advantage of several fields in operations is more produce, and the use of one singe mill for all of it, lowering the cost of investment. But each facility requires staff to work, the workers are not free, so you need to be sure that you can cover the costs.

So the field produces at certain times, then you need to plan the line, the produce needs to be processed, packed, transported, stored, so running a business is all about planning. You can set all that up, and then keep an eye on the results and keep tweaking. Additionally problems will occur that need management. There are also additions to your plot that are about the welfare of your workers (or slaves.....), increasing their health or safety. Or about increasing productivity, or production. All investments that might yield some effect, but come at a price too. You can also get rid of facilities if they don't pay off.

So why would a certain product be expensive in another region? It not necessarily is. The reason why spices were expensive in the 18th century was because of the enforced monopolies. If those monopolies had not existed, and the market was free for any trader to get spices, the price would have been considerably lower. The 18th century was champion in price manipulation.

The market rules in Rulers of the Sea are quite simple, as far as the selling to the population is concerned. We have pre-set the consumption of each citizen, divided in both lower-, middle- and upper class. Upper class purchases more luxury products for instance, Middle class more materials (as they tend to be the craftspeople), and lower class mostly food (as do the other classes too), etc. So each individual of these classes needs a certain amount of types of goods a day. And they can always get them, but only those made available by the npc companies, at the highest prices. Their happiness is influenced by different things (which influences their migration), and one of those things is budget. If they pay less for their daily consumption they are happier. If gamers offer products cheaper they keep a surplus of their daily budget their wealth grows.

So one thing is that you offer more of one single product cheaper. Say that each citizen group has an alcohol budget. If you undersell the market you can keep selling your cheaper Red Wine until the market is saturated for the day. Some local port markets are small because they have populations of maybe only thousands. Others are huge, especially capitals, as they can have populations numbering in the millions, so you'll never saturate the market if you sell lowest. So there the limit is the amount of your produce until you are all sold out. The problem there is that these huge markets will probably have the most gamers selling, so prices might be lower than elsewhere.

The second factor is variety. There is a calculation factor in how citizens want to spend their money on variety in a certain budget group. So if they just have availability of Red Wine, they will spend the alcohol budget all on red one. But if someone then sells White Wine, or Port, or Sherry, they will start buying that too, diluting the alcohol budget. This depends on both availability and price. If the White Wine is more expensive than Red Wine, that will decrease their sales, but they will still buy it. But if you sell a new product on a market, there will always be sales, and it will always dilute the market. If the new product is cheaper than the existing products in its class, you will even sell a lot more.

As gamers come and go, and populations and class groups migrate and change, and wars happen, this will not be a stable system and require constant attention to check or what worked well yesterday, still works well today. Of course there is also the option to enter into contracts with other gamers, sell directly to them, or have some market intermediary.

Finally you asked what the 'sweet spot' was in as how far we'd want to take the business part of the game. There are two things I think would be really coll to add.

1. Develop plot businesses into locations you can actually visit and manage locally, just as a port business, would be cool. Oversee your plantation, see the staff at work. And then of course you could expand the game play around it to add some more detail and complexity, customizing it a bit further.

2. Pull some more businesses into the ports, so that they are entities you can visit there, all gamers can see. Like the Tailor, Shipyard, Fishing Station, Shipping Company, Hospital, Tavern, etc. That would require making their products more customized and personalized too. Personalizes Wine or Beer, Bread, Pottery, Glassware, Paints and Chemicals, Sailmakers, Textile Mills, etc., etc. We will make the port maps with plenty of facades that could accommodate this in future, so that we can slip those businesses in without having to rebuild anything.

I think I've got all questions answered now.

@petersj

You certainly did, Peter. Thank you. 

I'm in an odd position... I want to ask all the questions. Get all the answers. But the more I learn about this game the more I want to play it and it's sooooo faaaaar awaaaaaaay.  Lol

Seriously, though, absolutely fantastic information and design. Really looking forward to playing. 

/insert "Take My Money" gif

@heptarch

Well, you can imagine how we feel.....we really want to build this, but the first hurdle is getting the financing done, for which we need a lot of people like you expressing they really want to play it! And for that we need to keep improving the presentation and elements of the design as far as we can with a limited budget.

Next step: YouTube campaign soon....improving website, bringing gamer shares online, so help us spread the word when the time comes, and we'll see what happens when we turn 13K followers into 50K, and grow this forum to a 1000!  

@petersj

Yeah, I think all my friends are getting tired of hearing me talk about the game. LOL

I just started my Patronage for you guys and I will be encouraging everyone who shows even a mild interest in history, MMOs, management simulator games or the Age of Sail to check this out. It may result in only a small handful of people that stick... but I will be doing my part over the next three years or so. 

Shout out to you, though. You've done a wonderful, patient job of representing what this game will be. It's easy to support you guys knowing how passionate you are to make the game we all want to play. Kudos!

There is the general purpose plot, the agricultural plot, and plots with specific resources, such a an Oak forest or an Iron Deposit.

1. Will specific resource plots be finite?  Will 50 players dilute the market by all having oak plantations within the same port?
2. Are players able to see every possible resource a port provides?  For example, if I'm looking for Oak trees, will I know that Oak trees are available at that port before buying a plot to grow them?  I'm imagining a player could look at the AI market and see whatever is for sale there and determine that anything listed can be extracted from that port by player's business.  
3. What does the ratio look like between businesses through each stage of development?  For example, can a business that's focused on extracting ore be sufficient to supply everything a refining business needs to process the materials needed for a Shipbuilder?  Or, do you see multiple mining businesses supplying a single refining business that produces parts for a single Shipbuilder? 

1

Specific resource plots are not finite, but they occur in a limited ratio.

How that works is that a specific port has 10 plots available for lease. A port has 3 specific resources (example). An Oak Forest, a Pine Forest and Iron Ore. Of the 10 plots available, 3 have these resources. The rest of the 7 plots are agricultural (which is limited in use by climate) or general purpose. The exact numbers and percentages might change, I use 10 as an example.

So a port gets new plots when the region the port is part of has a percentage of all the plots, let's say 70%, sold. So let's say the region is France, then if 70% of all combined plots of the 5 ports of France are sold, then each port gets another 10 plots to sell (these new plots need clearing before they can be sold, that's up to the Governor).

So if 35 of the 50 plots are sold (of the 5 ports), then 50 more are 'unlocked'. And then again 70% needs to be sold for the next batch of plots are released, and so forth. 

Of those 50 plots, every time only 15 are resource plots. It doesn't matter whether they are sold or not for this mechanism. But let's assume everyone wants a resource plot, and the other plots are less popular, this means that the resource plots will be sold out quite quickly every time new plots appear, and yet it will take a long time before enough plots are sold to get another batch of plots freed up again, which then still need to be cleared and put on the market by the Governors. So with this mechanism resources will keep appearing at one time or another, but they will likely be tricky to acquire, especially as long as they are very popular and the market is growing, so no-one offers existing properties for sale.

The idea of this mechanism is to spread gamers out over a region, or several regions. You either have to wait for opportunities in a specific port or even region, or you just visit many ports regularly, and you are bound to find what you are looking for soon enough. That way gamers spread out across the map and resources are experiences as rare, but still achievable to get for anyone with some persistence.

2

You can go the a Governors mansion and see what's for sale, you can also glean the register and see what has been sold, so it won't be difficult to figure out what kind of resources a port has. But there will not be an overall map showing it, we like the idea of gamers having to do some investigations. (I imagine those maps will quickly be made, but wouldn't it be fun if it's in the form of in-game books that gamers can sell, like an Almanac of port resources?)

3  

That is not an easy general question to answer, because that will be different per type of business, and also be dependent on the type of choices you make within that business. One single lumberyard will unlikely be able to provide enough wood for one shipbuilder, providing the shipbuilder is an active business. But it also depends on the size of the shipbuilder, the type of projects they churn out, and the types of woods needed, any ship needs different types of wood. If we have a drydock that is producing massive first rate ships of the line continually for navies, that is going to require a massive amount of wood. For such ships literally whole forests had to be harvested. A first rate required about 6000 trees. So it's going to be a big challenge finding enough suppliers for such a project. That's where Joint Stock Companies might become handy, they might have multiple lumberyards of the right wood (let's say White Oak) to supply such a project completely. But all of it depends on many factors.

A business can specialize in different items. Just making muskets or melee weapons doesn't require a lot of metals, but casting cannons is an entirely different game. There is a limit to how many cannon a foundry can produce, but there is also a (very local) limit to how many cannon an arms manufacturer can sell at any time. Of course the trick of the game is to not overproduce and not underproduce, both cost you money. But that kind of just in time delivery is going to be difficult to achieve. For musket production it might be plenty reliable to buy metal on the open market, but for large cannon production you might want to have a reliable supply chain of a series of mines to ensure you're not having to continually scour the markets for metal. Difficulty here: cannons and their parts come in different types of metal, so you need different types of mines to get your supplies. You really need to know what the market wants. Oh, and you need gun carriages too, those are not produced by a foundry. So it's complex.

@petersj

So a JSC can really determine what the T2 refining businesses are going to be.  If two Grand Dukes decide to manage farms producing Cotton (all in one capital port, or spread among ports of the same nation), the refining businesses don't have much else to do but be in Textiles.  Sure there are other port businesses and the specific resource plots like iron we just mentioned, but it would seem Cotton will be the major commodity pouring out of that nation if those Grand Dukes continue snatching up the plots and inserting their 36 businesses.

@rodion

Cotton is not a limited resource. You can buy an agricultural plot and produce cotton, if the climate is right for it. But if everyone produces cotton, it's not going to do much for the value of cotton. There are a lot of crops you can grow, and a lot of things you can make from them, from the cereals, fibers, grains. From Whisky to Rope to Flour to Textiles like Cotton, Linen, Jute, etc. Those are also not all 'tier 2' business lines. A Sugarcane plantation can also extend their facilities to produce Rum. A Fruit Orchard can expand to create Cider. So it depends a bit on the type of business what products can be produced. In these cases we look more to the reality of 1750, where were things made? Nowadays we have a lot more very specialized factories than then.

My advice to any JSC would be: diversify.

The markets offer all the goods that are needed for gamers or the basic needs of a society. Those will be offered by npc companies at steep prices gamers should easily be able to compete with. If you offer an alternative product that is not on the market, that will always sell better than when it has to compete with an existing product. So if the market already has apples, sell pears. But if the market has both, then sell apples or pears at a lower price than the market.

So just flooding the market with cotton, maybe that's fine if there are a lot of buyers, of you push your products to a multitude of markets, where you out-price everyone. But if these things are not the case, I'd say it is wise to have a broader portfolio of different products in your JSC. Each business line offers quite a wide variety of products.