unlimited money in every game?

[boltar]

there seems to be unlimited money. it seems to be impossible to lose money.

is this by design? or are their plans to add some type of difficulty where you have a chance to lose become you are going bankrupt.

i am really enjoying the design and the core tycoon system but you could setup a few beginning trade routes, leave the game on, go to IRL work and then when you come back home you have more money then you could ever spend.

[Thryden]

I mean, yeah, you could do that, but, like, that's possible with probably every game in which you earn money. It doesn't mean the game is intended to be played like that.

I'm not sure what you mean by impossible to lose money. It's very easy to, especially early game when trying to research techs or trying to lay your first tracks.

[Mozzarella]

You are making money off of finite resources, unless you are playing with passengers only.

[boltar]

this game reminds me of Rise of Industry. the way that game gives you a challenge (not unlimited money) is it puts AI in the game that is competing against you. they can buy territory just like in voxel and you are locked out of that area.

i am not saying this game needs that, but it does need some type of way where you can lose.

[jhughes]

I think you need to rethink winning and losing. You could, for example, make not allowing any business in a region you own go out of business.

In the scenario you talked about, where you set up a couple routes and run the game for 2 days .. numerous businesses will fail unless you have a route setup to each one. Even then, new businesses will form that need a route set up and you will need to research advancements to meet the needs of those new businesses.

There is a MOD that can give you money (a couple actually) .. so you don't need to allow failed businesses to get unlimited cash. There are also mods that unlock all research. So everyone can play how they want. (That is .. if you just want to build cities and routes, you can get extras cash .. if you want all the research unlocked .. you can do that, etc)

If you want a real challenge .. try to save every business.

[Thryden]

I"m pretty sure you can lose. One of the options when creating a map is "bankruptcy period". It's automatically set to three months. Seems to me then that if you're in negative money for three months straight that you would then lose. Never tried it though, so that may not be what the bankruptcy period means.

[boltar]

Originally posted by jhughes:

I think you need to rethink winning and losing. You could, for example, make not allowing any business in a region you own go out of business.

In the scenario you talked about, where you set up a couple routes and run the game for 2 days .. numerous businesses will fail unless you have a route setup to each one. Even then, new businesses will form that need a route set up and you will need to research advancements to meet the needs of those new businesses.

There is a MOD that can give you money (a couple actually) .. so you don't need to allow failed businesses to get unlimited cash. There are also mods that unlock all research. So everyone can play how they want. (That is .. if you just want to build cities and routes, you can get extras cash .. if you want all the research unlocked .. you can do that, etc)

If you want a real challenge .. try to save every business.

part of your suggestion is actually a good idea for the dev. you talk about business going out bankrupt. right now there is no penalty for any business to go bankrupt. the dev could make the town shrink or they stop buying stuff, or needs finance help where you have to give money to them for the town to reopen or something.

this will cause the player to try and make efficient trading so they can make money fast enough to open a new area to get resources to try and save the town, or rush research and so on.

[xNaquada]

Originally posted by boltar:

part of your suggestion is actually a good idea for the dev. you talk about business going out bankrupt. right now there is no penalty for any business to go bankrupt. the dev could make the town shrink or they stop buying stuff,

This is actually a really great suggestion and mimics how towns go into depression > shrink > die out.

Even tough I don't own this game yet (just stumbled upon it) this sound on paper like a brilliant idea.

[Subak]

No mod needed for unlocking all tech (unless you want it on an existing save maybe?)

Noticed starting games recently that it was an option in the settings.

[PinStratsDan]

In its current state you will always reach a point where your passive income from businesses fully supplied will be steady and accumulate. If you play with limited resources, you will eventually need to buy more regions etc., but except for that, money will keep on rolling in passively.

On the roadmap is planned vehicle obsolescence and replacement, fuel consumption, and abandoning due to negative factors. These are all factors that will add further costs to the player, and which should be able to lead to the player running at a deficit if not managed correctly. Further on the roadmap are company rating and subsidized contracts, and quests and random events which should bring variation into the gameplay and present challenges to overcome where you can't just let the game run indefinitely to make unlimited income.

https://trello.com/b/wHz5JHqH/voxel-tycoon-roadmap

For now, I enjoy the challenge of reaching the final research goal. Even though you can always just let the game run at speed three to make enough money to buy/research what you need, it just takes so much longer than if you have an optimized and well developed and laid out road/rail network and supply system. You need a heck of a lot of money to upgrade your trains to the best/fastest electric trains and similarly so with trucks. I'm now busy with my fourth playthrough and it is going to take me close to 20 hours to reach my final research goal, have all my trains upgraded to electrics, and all my trucks upgraded to the best, and then to have my whole network optimized i.e. not oversupply because of the much faster trains/trucks. There is a lot of challenge in all of that ;-)