Posted by: ZimRathbone
« on: March 13, 2009, 08:19:58 AM »Quote from: "Tregonsee"
Werein now becomes the heart of the question (and another one as well)- Can one do things that have an economic cost, such as pulling ships out of the government pool, or conducting ship repairs, as long as you have money in the bank? Or can one even have deficit spending, as long as it is made up the very next turn (and maybe have other restrictions)?
I realize this is a game with rules, but if this were real, actions as a result of battles would happen all of the time mid-month.
The Starfire rules have allways been written with the concept that ALL major financial decisions are made at the Strategic turn level - ie if its not done in the economic phase, it waits till next turn. Deficit spending is not permitted. While not always exactly realistic it has been done this way to cut down on having complex pro-rata calculations being done for (say) colonies that are set up part way thru a turn, or running into deficit spending situations. Its just so musch easier that way when you're running the game by P&P or Excel (granted SA made things like that possible, but Marvin preferred that SA matched the P&P rules - in part thats why we have Aurora )
I have (once) run a campaign which had deficit spending rules, but frankly it was WAY more trouble than it was worth. One player got so far into the hole that each turn half of his income went on repaying the previous month's debt, the remainder went on maintenance, and then he would deficit spend to repair the damage to ships that either wern't maintained or suffered battle damage (he was conducting an offensive at the time).