[Spoon-business] Technologies

["Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

{{ _Let's Get the Ball Rolling..._

{{ _Technologies_

Products are types of objects.  Each Product is uniquely identified, and all objects that correspond to a given Product are known by that identifier, e.g. if "fizzbin" is a Product, then there can exist individual fizzbins.

There exist objects of type Technology.  A Technology is an ability to construct objects of a particular Product.  An entity that possesses a Technology for a given Product can produce that Product's objects, e.g. if an entity possesses the fizzbin Technology, that entity can produce fizzbins.

A Technology has associated with it a construction cost in game resources equal to some combination of points, BNS, units and/or other game objects.  An entity with a Technology must have the Technology's construction cost's game resources in order to construct that Technology's Product, losing the corresponding resources in the process.  Individual Technologies may have other restrictions associated with them, over and above the construction cost.

If an entity constructs one or more of a Product, that entity can, in addition to giving them to other entities freely or as part of Offers, place them on the Open Market by declaring the quantity available and a per-object purchase price for them on the public forum; those Products can then be purchased by other entities on a first-come, first-served basis.  The selling entity can change the purchase price at any time.

Technologies can be voluntarily transferred from entity to entity through replication: the receiving entity obtains an object identical to the Technology in the giving entity's possession; the giving entity retains possession of its Technology.

An entity can obtain (a.k.a. "steal") a Technology from another entity by paying five times the Technology's Product's construction cost in game resources, or ten times the price at which the Product is initially made available for purchase. [[ Theft, reverse engineering, industrial espionage, parallel research efforts, etc. ]] The entity that the Technology was obtained from retains possession of its Technology.

Products and Technologies are created and modified via proposals.  A list of existing Products and a list of existing Technologies shall be maintained by the Administrator.

}}

}}

This is a tad different from the original: it associates the construction cost with the Technology, rather than the Product; this allows for multiple Technologies with different construction costs to create the same Product.  It also doesn't limit construction costs to the Baron's "capital resources", nor does it necessarily limit production restrictions to the construction cost.  Note that ndays might be considered either a restriction or a construction cost, if worded properly.

Specifically, this is a starting point for Technologies.  Around this can be built research and development, among other things.  I'm not yet tying it to Wonko's Corporations, because neither one exists yet.

Note that, if WBE products were made Technologies today, they'd have to be built before they could be sold.  While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, does anyone have suggested wording for the process of "ordering" something?

						Glotmorf


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