Howdy guys and gals

Ive been developing a WW2 game called Battle of the Atlantic for about 3 years (not that what I have to show is 3 years of work but ive had to spend most of that time learning how to program. )

Anyway the last few days ive been scratching my head about how to implement an economy system for the game, having neglected its finer details in my original deisign, I think ive come up with how I want to play it but I want some feedback on the concept first.

The game is set during WW2, you are the supreme commander of the naval forces of either the Axis powers or the allies during the Battle of the Atlantic. Historically of course it was the convoys, largely from the US which helped to keep Britain fighting. Because of this the game needs an economy of some sort or else its all pretty pointless.

I want the economy to be simple...I don’t particularly want this to be a game for financial advisers (plus my own inability with number and maths is problamatic ;-) ) , I want it to be more about the action. The Merchant men in the high seas and the men manning the Depth charge launchers and Ack-Ack guns on an Escorting Destroyer.

The resources I have in the game are as follows:-
Supplies – Food, Water, meat, Vegetables anything you need
to live.
Munitions – Ammunition, Explosives and Guns
General Stores – Anything not military related – manufactured goods – steel for
construction – concrete etc
Military Hardware – Tanks,Guns,Artillery, Trucks, Planes etc,
Fuel – Coal, Aviation Spirit, Diesel, anything that can be
used to power machinery, ships, planes etc
Troops – Soldiers to fight the battles (Surprisingly!).

My plan as its stands for the economy is to have a number of resources at each port. These resources are for your use only, to keep your navy mobile. If a port gets low on resources and you can’t refuel/rearm your ships currently stationed at the port, you need to arrange a convoy or some single ships to bring some resources from another port or by reassigning orders of a convoy or ship at sea to this port. This then forces the player to put to sea and thus put there ships into danger.

The port resources would be regenerated by incoming merchant ships and the player would gain say 5% of the convoy’s or ships loaded
resources. So if a convoy carrying 100,000 tons of Supplies docks and unloads, the player would receive 5000 tons to use himself at that port , the other method is resources being generated at the end of each week from within the regions...see below.

Ive divided the UK (only the Uk for the sake of prototyping for now) up into regions, based on current parliamentary maps, so South-east, North West, East Midlands etc. Each of these regions have a supply and demand, this would be scaled simply by Very high – to – Very Low and based on what is going on in that region for each resource.

The midlands, London and North east regions would need alot of supplies, General Stores and fuel. Due to the large number of factories, and output alot of Munitions, Military Hardware and General Stores for example....When Normandy landings take place the south west will have a massive demand for Fuel, Military Hardware, Munitions and troops it would generally be producing quite afew supplies itself due to large amounts of farmland in that region.

A simple red – yellow – green colour code system would inform the player if a region requires more of a particular resource. Also an ‘admiralty mission’ might be generated to give the player a mission to supply a particular region with one or more resources.

This system is very simple and pretty linear but I can take into account rail transport and of course blitz bombing to some degree....supplies and general stores demand might shoot up and output go down a notch if a city in a region gets flattened in a blitz raid.

Having not really thought the economy through toughly until recently I currently have the game set-up so the player dictates what each merchant is loaded with and its cargo. I think with this system id need to make it so the computer determines resource allocation to the merchants and the player simply dictates the mission and the escort and how he’s going to get his ships (and resources) from A to B.

Would this work do we think?...im open to further ideas.

Regards,

John

You might want to add the civilian populations as a resource to be kept track of. Not everyone is in the military, but the civilian population is a resource as well. To keep the factories running, perform administrative tasks, manage shipping and well everything not related directly to combat.

Eventually the world war took a bad turn and killing civilians became a lateral goal to aid in the war effort, it was called collateral damage but it weakened moral and the ability to recover and carry on the fight.

Then there are partisans, freedom fighters or rebels that are not soldiers, or not soldiers of the country they harass.

If you are focusing only on the merchant and naval fleet at sea these things may not matter as much in this game.

Just keep the goods type down, definitely below 10 types. If you want to focus on action and the overall strategy of economy.

Preferably, each goods type should have a distinct function, like:

fuel: fuels your ships

workers: makes ports operate well

food: needed by population, otherwise strikes/riots which lower production

small arms: needed by troops to fight well

etc

If you have many items that does the same thing ingame, they just end up annoying the player and not adding another strategy layer. If its a trading sim however you may have more, but its seems its not what you aim for.

Choices are fun for the player, administration is not