Re: spoon-discuss: Re: spoon-business: How to resolve the record-keeping problem

[Rob Speer <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 10:15:14PM +0200, Jorg Rathlev wrote:
> > There's another real big problem that comes up indirectly from this...
> > 
> > Assuming this is legit (and that seems entirely plausible), the game goes
> > into an infinite loop of sorts. You will continue to own 20 Rules and to
> > have a big stack of cards, and you can thus continue to win infinitely.
> 
> Well, *can*, but it doesn't happen unless he *does*. PurpleBob could probably declare another showdown right away, but what for? It doesn't make sense to continue winning the game over and over again.

I can't continue winning repeatedly, because of a new complication. I actually
didn't notice this until now.

The Bank is now flat broke. Like every other score, its score is now 0.

However, we should probably overlook that, seeing as David should be a player
tomorrow and the Bank would get 500 more points because of him. Otherwise, the
resulting Bankruptcy-related issues screw up the game.

This leaves an issue to be resolved: Are debts part of a player's Score, or do
debt objects still exist after the win?

The distinction is whether Debt Objects are also Point Objects, or whether they
are separate Objects which are not reset in the event of a win.

If debts still exist, Joel only has to keep track of a few of them.
Not many rules invoke the debt system by saying that one Agent "owes" points to
another - most simply state that the points shall be transferred. The payments
that are paid through the debt system are:

* the Adopted Proposal Award
* the Opposed Minority Award
* the Failed Proposal Fine
* Official Salaries
* Penalties for falsely reporting debts (which has never happened)
* Taxes
* The Voting Bonus

So, finding people's new scores simply involves looking at the voting results
for each nweek since the Banker's Report was last given, adding Official
Salaries, and adding the Voting Bonus and subtracting Taxes in the nweeks in
which those existed. Games that involved the transfer of money will have no
effect on people's new scores.

The Bank would probably have less than 500 points left after this, so I
couldn't claim a second win.

And now for the other scenario:

If Debt Objects _are_ Point Objects and _are_ part of the Score, we get a nice,
fresh start. Almost. As soon as David is in the game, there are 500 points in
the Bank which I could claim to win again. THEN there are no points in
existence anywhere, and we do get a fresh start, which would be a perfect time
to get rid of the debt system entirely and have points appear from nowhere like
they used to.

-- 
Rob Speer