I would like to keep at least some ability of selling IU – to help out on the odd turn here and there when needing to run deficiet turns (i.e. when starting a lot of tech item R&D, or when responding to a dastedly alien attack).
However, I agree that the idea of being able to sell of huge chunks of your economy silly. My preference would be to limit the amount sold to something like 20% of the amount of IU or something like a 10% increase in GDP from the sale of IU.
Matt, I have a strong philosophical disagreement on the topic of selling IU's. Cralis have had some (very civil) knockdown drag outs on the topic. I am strongly against the selling of IU's. I feel that IU's are like the "industrial EVM's" from ISF ... permanent. I see them as permanent heavy industrialization that can never be sold. Oh, ownership might change, but the factories still remain ... as IU's contributing to the economy.
To me, what you're describing is more like some sort of financial instrument, like a bond. In theory, I have no problem creating "bonds". But it would have be understood that it's adding a bit more income into the game, as well as a few more lines of rules. The simplest way to do bonds might be to let them function like SM#2 IU's (call them BU's for Bond Units for the moment). Buy a BU for something like 30 MC or so. Get 1 MC of income for every BU. Only allow them to be sold at face value on growth months (i.e. every 10th turn). But also allow them to be sold in non-growth months at a 50% penalty, or only 15 MC per BU sold. The last two sentences would simulate the requirement for a bond reaching maturity before redeeming it for full value, or taking a penalty for early redemption.
As for how many bonds could be purchased, I'm thinking that the number should be relatively low (to prevent creating too much new income in parallel with IU's). Perhaps no more than 20% of a planet's local GPV (not counting bond income). And only planets with sizable populations, probably Medium or above, would have financial markets which would allow the sale of bonds to local governments. It could probably be even the sum of all Imperial GPV's, not including BU-derived incomes, which complicates the calculation unfortunately. (But the gov't own bond derived income shouldn't be turned around and used to increase its own bond buying capacity.)
I like the idea of industrial technologies. Make them slightly worse then colonisation (to “encourage” exploration) but it gives a trapped empire some hope of being able to build their economy enough to be able to break of of the cul de sac…..
My general idea for "Economic Technologies" is that they actually don't give you any extra money, per se. Rather they increase your capacity to increase income. Let me explain. (I prefer Economic Tech rather than Industrial Tech, because I have one portion of Eco Tech relating to IU's, i.e. "Industrial Tech".)
If an EconTech increases a world's mineral value, you've basically gotten extra money for almost nothing, except for the possible cost of developing that tech. But if you increase the IU cap on a world, you don't get any income from that until you actually build the additional IU's! Or if an EconTech allows extreme moons to increase their population cap from Outpost to Colony, you'd still have to pay the cost to move in the additional colonists. This is what PaulM calls a "use fee" in a previous post, and I like it. No getting something for nothing.
Note in reply #175 from October 30, 2012, 10:11:48 PM, I've listed out some potential Economic Tech ideas. I like the idea that you have to pay to develop them, like other tech. And I like the idea of "use fees" rather than getting the benefit without paying for it when you want to "use" it. (And it's possible that some of my ideas in reply #175 haven't kept up with my preference for use fees.)
This idea has merit – although I would reduce the increase to ~3% per 2 EL (so that you are still getting benefits at TL10+).
With this idea of IU's limits as an Economic Tech (in the case of IU's, it's "Industrial Tech"), I wouldn't assume that the existing 50% cap on IU's would hold true. I could see the starting cap on IU's being relatively low, perhaps 10-20%. But then with regular increases every 1-2 TL's, allowing it to exceed 50%, perhaps even to as much as 100% of PU at its peak.
You want to hear an off the wall idea, here's one... Rather than have a TLF as SM#2 uses (or the EL Growth that Ultra uses), just increase the IU cap by 10% for every TL. (I.e. The IU cap for a TL 1 race would be 10% PU, for a TL5 race it'd be 50% of PU, and so on.) The idea here is that economically when your EL/TL increased, you wouldn't see an increase in income ... what you'd have is the OPPORTUNITY to increase your income by investing in more IU's. Yes, to get the economic benefit of an increased EL?TL you'd have to pay money, but don't companies have to pay money to buy more advanced equipment and factories when technology improves?
Wow... it would take a while to absorb the new allowed IU's into the economy. If you had a population of 1000 PU, it'd be allowed 10% more IU's when the EL/TL increased. That'd be 100 IU, at a cost of 3,000 MC, or 3 full turns of GPU (not counting any mineral wealth, or the income from existing IU's). Or at a more reasonable pace, you could do buy 10 IU's per month for 10 months at a cost of 300 MC per month or 30% of the planet's income, not counting other factors.
Now it does occur to me that higher tech worlds would have the ability to "re-industrialize" (i.e. buy the new allowed IU's) faster than lower tech worlds, simply because they'd have more income from all the IU's from earlier EL/TL's. OTOH, there'd be no difference between rich and poor races of the same TL, since the basic cost of adding 10% more IU's is going to be the same. That is, a race with only 1,000 PU's is going to add 100 new IU's at a cost of 3,000 MC, while a race with 10,000 PU's is going to add 1,000 IU's at a cost of 30,000 MC. Same percentage of income, same time requirements. That is, 30% of your income would buy you all the new IU's in 10 turns, if that's how you chose to do it.
And it occurs to me that given the considerable cost of "re-industrialization", it'd be best if the cost of the EL/TL research went way down, perhaps to something like a nominal 1% of imperial income. This idea could be rather challenging for an empire at war. The nominal research fee is not a big deal, but once the EL/TL increased, you;d have to choose between paying for more ships, etc. and re-industrialization to increase your income, which at the current cost of 30 MC per IU, doesn't really pay off for 30 turns (meaning that you might be better off not re-industrializing until the war was over).
Hmmm.... interesting idea, not sure it's worth the trouble. I suspect that the bulk of rules required to support this idea would actually be not that great. But actually using this idea in practice may seem like a lot of work compared to getting your new TL enhanced income the instant your TL increased. OTOH, it may seem somewhat realistic insofar as you;d probably see a more gradual increase of income due to technological advance. And as a player, you'd have a choice where you wanted to increase the industrialization of your empire, if you really didn't want to invest in certain locations.
Anyways, just a raw and wild idea...
EDIT: BTW, it's occurred to me that this idea has a couple of underlying advantages.
1. In the TLF model, if you multiply IU income by TLF, it causes IU incomes to increase as TL increases. (It doesn't do this in Ultra, of course.) In this wild idea, IU incomes remain steady at 1 MC per IU regardless of TL.
2. Also in the TLF model, the per-PU return on colonization increases as TL increases. In this wild idea, it remains constant at 1 MC per PU, regardless of TL.
Just more food for thought...