4/6/2017 Topic: City Leader? Hutton	Do tell!
4/7/2017 Topic: Production does not start after structure built Hutton	I don't think that's a server side issue. I logged in about a week ago and have been connected ever since.
4/7/2017 Topic: Military contract Hutton	You couldn't have a USE CONTRACT pull down menu in the DEFEND order for like in the TRANSFER CARGO order?
4/7/2017 Topic: City Leader? Hutton	If we want to be sciencey, Moon based planetary bombardment weapons wouldn't be as effective as orbital platforms because it's farther away and the ordinance would have to escape the moon's gravity well. On the other hand, a huge moon based rail gun could just hurl big chunks of the moon down on Earth. (Each round of bombardment consumes 100 units of Basic Mineral). Or you could use rail guns pointed away from the planet to drive the Moon into the Earth like in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novel. I think we would end up running out of habitable planets after a few players with more wealth than they knew what to do with decided to go out with a bang before quitting the game. I do think it makes sense that static Mililtary installations might contribute something to your voting power. My own interpretation of industry=votes was that either the corps had that much influence over their employees, or in this distopian future assigning proxy power to your employer was part of the standard contract like in Philip K. Dick's novel, Solar Lottery. So, if you asssume the staff that mans forts and missile batteries live in the city they would convey voting power. Mobile units in the city shouldn't count because you could move them in for the election. Although maybe you are sugggesting that a big army should intimidate the population into voting for them. Elections don't work like that, but coups do. If we are going to have military coups, that should be an event that trumps an election, not a mechanic baked into the election. edited by Hutton on 4/7/2017
4/7/2017 Topic: City Leader? Hutton	On the other hand, you could just assume that all your troops are registered to vote in the city your HQ is based in. I don't think I'd argue in favor of that option, but I guess it's something to consider.
4/7/2017 Topic: Military contract Hutton	So, you're saying that progamiing in a function to escort, where units follow their target around, wouldn't be anymore complicated than adding contracts to DEFEND. I would have guessed that was a whole other ball of wax. Is there already an order to pursue units you want to attack?
4/7/2017 Topic: Food and population growth Hutton	Another balancing factor could be to make food demand tethered more tightly to 100%. So even if your oversupplying food to a city to encourage growth, that low demand would normalize pretty quickly once you turned off the spigot. And even if there was a shortage for a long time, demand would normalize once supply was resumed. And maybe make VOLUME=DEMAND for food and water. Or food VOLUME=average demand for all food types. You should be able to sell a lot of food at once to a city that is starving, and lower volume with lower demand would make it hard to push demand down too far.
4/7/2017 Topic: Food and population growth Hutton	This would almost require all mayors to build a distribution center in their city. I haven't played with one yet, but I understand they let you sell ten things at a time. Which is perfect because 9 foods (when you exclude cotton) plus water is 10 products. A mayor would want to have a stockpile and find the sweet spot to drip food products into his city. Pump too much in and you'll use up your stockpile at a loss, only to see demand shoot back up when you run out. Pump too little in and you'll see demand spike and slow the growth of or even shrink your population. (Except for cities with Fields and Patures, which will probably have farms and ranches selling directly to the city once enough players are participating).
4/7/2017 Topic: Military contract Hutton	Okay, but if that's how it works you probably can't use that escort order to defend someone else's structures. So it might be handy, if possible, to have a contract menu on DEFEND if, say, I have a research station on the Moon, but no troops to defend it. And I want to hire Safehold Corp to order some of its forces to protect me. You could have an ongoing contract that pays out every turn the seller has X amount of power defending the buyer at the point of delivery. Or, at least it looks like that would be possible on this side of the GUI. Maybe it's a lot more complicated under the hood.
4/7/2017 Topic: Military contract Hutton	I think I meant GUARD when I said DEFEND. I haven't messed around with the military units that much yet. I don't personally have a strong opinion about implementation of this feature, but I found the thread interesting and get the sense that some players would like to run their Corporation like Blackwater instead of General Electric. So thanks for clarifying what can and can't be done under the hood. I think the mechanism you described would work fine. The players could talk over Comms if they had specific needs. And I think the selling corp has an intrinsic interest in providing effective units because they will default on the contract (and maybe even incur a penalty) if they end up retreating or getting wiped out. So the contract is just a convenient method of transacting the payment rather than an iron clad method of guaranteeing that that the buyer gets exactly the forces he wants.
4/8/2017 Topic: Clicking on piles of resources give error page. Hutton	I just noticed the storage fees a little while ago. I had thought I might take advantage of my founders wealth to turn the Mining Guild into a commodity exchange that offered new players that became members a reasonable fixed price to sell off excess resources if they were already flooding their local markets. The storage fees might make that impractical in the long run. I first thought about asking about a storage structure that exempts a certain number of products from regular storage in exchange for structure maintenance and logistics; but maybe it's an importnt part of the game's balance that we have a disincentive to horde vast quantities of resources.
4/8/2017 Topic: Distribution Centers Hutton	Unless you're competing with someone else to fill that volume.
4/9/2017 Topic: Social classes? Hutton	What do they do? I see demand for different products effects the growth of social classes differently. Do social classes in turn effect demand for the same products? Is the game keeping track of the absolute population of each social class, or does it track the classes only as a ratios to each other?
4/9/2017 Topic: List resource stacks in viewscreen Hutton	The RESOURCES tab actually seems intended to give you information specifically about what raw material harvesting can be harvested where. The INDUSTRY tab shows you what products are warehoused at a location. However, it only provides that information about other Corps. This hasn't bother me because you can go to ASSETS->PRODUCTS and click on the LOCATION header on the second list. This clumps all your products together by location.
4/9/2017 Topic: Assets screen does not remember your sorting Hutton	I have noticed this, but usually keep asset tabs open on my browser when I'm reviewing and issuing orders. What annoys me is that tabs will reset when you hit any button after a turn ends. But I think the main reason I find that onerous is that I'm playing on an Ipad with a 4G connection, which makes every click a little bit of a pain in the ass. Most players might not find this to be an issue, except when they think that they successfully put in an order but it didn't register because the tab they put it in wasn't already updated to the current turn.
4/10/2017 Topic: Production and Research delay Hutton	When deleting a Reasearch point there is a message that says I can only do that once every 100 turns. But, after I do that, it says 2 turns until I can delete another point. I also just noticed that when changing production it says it will take 10 turns to make the change, but the new production order starts the very next turn. Are the delay warnings left over from a version where they were true, or is it a bug that we are not getting delayed as much as we should?
4/10/2017 Topic: Terran forces spawn Hutton	I just noticed that Terran forces are guarding the area north of Radium instead of Radium itself.
4/10/2017 Topic: Minimum stockpile Hutton	You could tell the transport to just load 1000. Or, if this is for a looped order, you could tell it to load all and then drop 500 before departing.
4/10/2017 Topic: Social classes? Hutton	I got that separate products effect the growth of each social class differently, but what is the significance of those social classes? What makes a city with a high proportion of upper class citizens different from a city with a high proportion of lower class citizens?
4/11/2017 Topic: Social classes? Hutton	Got it. It seems like a metric that is ripe to have additional features hung on it later as the game matures. I would be great see mayors-or corps seeking to challenge them-incentivized to push class demographics one way or the other.

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