Games for May

Thought it would be useful to discuss current gameplay meta here for economy testing and progression. (Mit if this is the wrong place just let me know!)

Couple current observations...

We have had some success getting supply chains up:
farm -> mill -> bakery -> restaurant/cafe (needs chef)
cattle -> butcher -> restaurant/diner
Oil field -> refinery -> fuel station (for sale 80s)

We have been unable to keep them going however for a few reasons - Lack of funding, job vacancies, lack of demand, and needing properties

Around the town:

• ZyrVox's properties are gone (he blew 'em up), so we need a new farm and burrito stand.

• PinPin recently learned to build farms so he could build a new one. (If he has resources)

• Swartington (sp?) recently acquired chef skill - Trynez is looking for a chef at the Cafe

• The gov owned Diner says it needs a chef, but Swarthington reported he was not able to apply for a job there
  UPDATE: Looks like ZyrVox bought it and made the position available to Swarth

• Cam recently bought Bourgeois Logging (nice acquisition) but sell price of timber is higher than buy price at lumber yard (unowned - currently for sale for 50s

Greater issue right now seems with limited playerbase we are producing a decent amount of goods, but demand is very low, stagnating economy growth. Let's try to get a discussion going to grow the econ and test this place out!

So I've fixed the prices of lumber so there's now a 2d profit to be made shifting lumber to the lumber Mill

Just a thought, the current production line for steak (our main food so far), is
Cow farm -> Butcher

Everyone then purchases the steak directly from the butcher. The Bistro (that sells both wine and steak; none are built yet) effectively can't make margin on the steak, because people can always buy the steak cheaper from the butcher. Perhaps the steak, once produced by the butcher, is 'Raw Steak'?

The difference would be that the bistro can now make margin from buying raw steak and selling it cooked. Other restaurants that use the steak as part of their production process don't need to change unless they're selling steak as the end product.

We're probably too far for it to make a difference now, but early game the effect would be that a third party then gets to profit from the steak production line (1st: farmer, 2nd: butcher, 3rd: cook). This also makes steak production similar to bread, which also has a 3 step production line.

Thoughts?

Bistro (and other restaurants) make multiple meals out of a single ingredient and the amount of hunger & thirst removed by the meal is completely different (i.e. significantly more) from eating the items separately - Eating from a restaurant should make sense economically (unless its a dodgy restaurant that replaces too much of the good ingredients with the cheap stuff), with food items generally being used only when the player needs to stock up their house for periods offline..

This probably isn't made very clear in the UI atm, and it all might need some balancing/tweaking, but thats the intention at least.