Don't "fix" trade goods, fix leasing

Just wanted to say that this is merely a suggestion, I'm pleased by the Stardock support so far.

Like you, I have always either chosen Mitrosoft or outright purchase (rare). The middle two leasing companies must be broke by now considering that they hardly get any business from us Galcivers

Your suggested leasing scheme above would make me consider more carefully about which to choose.

Well, the way I see it is that if I am going to choose Mitrosoft and pay something like 10 BC per month for 801 months, then that is a bargain right now. Sure, overall cost wise it will be more expensive than to buy it outright, but I can constantyl grow my economy to offset the long term overpayment easily. Finishing a game in 66 or so years seems easy enough to do for me. And that dangling payment (that is effectively "in perpetuity") does not count against me in the end. So I would personally like a combination of the two ideas: a fixed long term mortgage window of like 120, 240, and 360 months for the other three companies that you do not outright buy the product from all at once up front, and a penalty at the end of the game for outstanding payments still due. Of course, with this in place, there would have to be a mechanism to pay the mortgage off early in order to avoid the penalty.

I agree, been thinking about leasing (especially Mitrosoft) being somewhat broken ever since I got the game. It's like you never actually have to play it all off. I never find myself leasing from anyone else but Mitrosoft - whatever I lease helps me in enough ways (usually straight through economy) that it's easy to grow more than the small monthly leasing cost takes in the long term.

I think the system should be something like...

Where x is the calculated price:

Direct payment - x now, 0 later
Lease I - 0.7x now, 0.39x later (divided evenly for 120 months)
Lease II - 0.4x now, 0.78x later (divided evenly for 240 months)
Lease III - 0.1x now, 1.17x later (divided evenly for 360 months)

The numbers might be a bit off, but the point is - for each leasing level cut the direct costs by 30%/60%/90%, add the whole amount cut to monthly lease, and multiply
the leasing amount by, say, 30%. Or make the extra % dependant on the level of the lease.

The numbers might be a bit off and confusing, but I think someone'll get the point. Anyways, all this is to make all of the leasing options worthwile to consider, and create some friction there based on your short- and long-term strategies. Also, 360 months should be the absolute extra for any lease, IMO.

This is a change I could get behind. The current leasing system does not seem particularly well thought out in terms of each one being both logical and balanced.

As has been said, the middle two choices simply do not make any sense in terms of the length of the game and their impact on your econ.

My biggest issue with the leasing is that when
purchasing large items, the terms for the lease
extend to multiple lengths of game play.

A game lasts 200 or so turns but you can see leases
that dont expire for 1200 turns.

I agree with all the above points, and I have another suggestion: have an option where you can pay off the rest of a lease in one turn if you find yourself rolling in cash.

The "let's permit corruption and gain shorter leases" event may need to be toned down a bit as well. In one game, I got that a few times, always chose the Evil path... and was soon able to choose Mitrosoft for a *lower* total cost than outright purchasing even without taking into account any decay factor with regards to long-term payments. The benefit should perhaps be non-linear so that it only asymptotically approaches the outright-buy price, if it can even get anywhere near that.

Is that what that event does? I always wondered what interest rate they were talking about, since I didn't seem to be making any money off the money I already had.

Bump, this is important

Never thought about this but Staffas point got me! Leases that last longer than an entire game are not senseful! I think everything more than 60 turns is too long!

Make it like in the 1st suggestion but with only 60 turns...

Esidebob and buzu both have some pretty good ideas. I'd certainly buy off on it.

*free bump*

Leasing should be more logical. I only use mitrosoft or outright buying.

Nah, 360 turns does make sense for the upper end because it's 30 years, the upper end for a lease or mortgage in the real world. Plus, while I don't think I've seen any game of mine go 30 years, I have had some go more than 20 so it's not like you're cheating the system by that much.

The big thing that needs altered is the interest rate in regards to the choices because that's what makes the Mitrosoft so unbalanced. Very often, you won't be repaying any of the leases off in their entirety, so it always makes sense to take the lower monthly payments. Conversely, with a more real word type set up, you would choose the 5 year lease if your econ was strong to get a lower total payment instead of the 30 year perpetual drain on your econ.

Another "cheesy" tactic the long leases allow is using Mitrosoft to buy everything during the end-game. This can make military conquests fast & cheap, since you don't have to worry about paying those leases off. Even if it kills your economy, it's no big deal because the game will end in a year or so anyway.

Perhaps the player should receive some kind of penalty for indebtedness (in addition to the obvious one of paying interest), such as a lowering of influence or moral.

The penalty could be scaled to your income, meaning that if you have higher income levels then you can go further into debt without incurring as much penalty. If you're in debt more than 100 times your annual income, however, perhaps no one should take you too seriously.

This kind of "in game" consequence would make the choice to finance and how much to finance more of a stratigic one.
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I wonder if there should even BE an instant-buy option, versus, say, a somewhat inefficient "rush build" option -- e.g. +40% production rate, +100% cost (make up whatever numbers seem reasonable to you). Essentially, it'd be an inefficient way of locally boosting spend rate. Just-settled frontier worlds couldn't instantly sprout defending warships or terraforming improvements, while core worlds would still be able to build things with unusual speed.

If 30 years is too long, perhaps 15 years (180 months) would work, and still have some basis in reality. Seems to me if the duration of the leases varied, we'd end up with the same thing; most people are going to take the longest one.

Oh, and do we need a "Deficit Hawk" political party?

I've noticed the Federalists tend to gain ground in the elections when I'm running a high deficit.

But maybe a Ross Perot Party could be interesting.

There's something strange going on. I have seen cases where the cash buy is actually less than the Mitrosoft downpayment.

And why is it that certain items of equivalent cost have different buy-out costs? (Can't think of example.)




~SDC~