Legal Fees - Random event/overall cost

[Arakash]

Today, while watching the news, i saw a couple of companies that were neck deep in all kinds of legal disputes.
There were a few different types of them, but what struck me was hearing a CEO talk about how disputes with contractors/workers etc got quite common when a company started to get very large. (In that case he was talking about construction)

I started to wonder if this, specially the legal fees, could be incorporated into the game somehow.
Edit:
Im thinking, rather than worker disputes and union strikes that are covered, other sorts of legal disputes, especially those between companies and high level employees/engineers etc.
e.g.
Legal challenges or just being sued through the courts.
Disputes with other companies or contractors working for your company over various issues like contracts. (e.g. a company claims you owe them 100k more for building that factory due to other expenses/contracts).
On some level i suppose it could cover patent infringement disputes, but as i said, i want it abstracted, not calculated in detail.


1.
My first thought was a few types of random events that could happen
First you get a warning a dispute is about to happen a month or two before it occurs, then:

On the month it happens:
Minor Legal Dispute or
Major Legal Dispute or
Serious Legal Disupte
These would happen every month until the situation is resolved, which could take months or possibly years for serious ones.
There could also be a chance for a dispute to move up or down from one level to another. (e.g. Serious dispute is managed into a minor one)
These would have an impact on your image and cost you money. They could also effect other parts of your company, but that might be making it too complex, i dont know.

As the events are out of your control, i think their cost should scale based on the size of your company and not be enough to totally ruin you, but they should have the potential to put serious strain on your money.
Having them too severe would be unfair as you really wouldn't have any way to impact them as a player.

2.
Another option or something else that could be introduced alongside the other suggestion, is to have ongoing and increasing legal fees depending on the size of your business, but ones that increase if you do a lot of construction work.

Edit: Frankschtaldt though up some more detail for this other option(no2), so ill copy it into this post as i think its a nice suggestion.

I would think that option 2 would be the way to go. Or something like it. You could have a "Legal team" that's size would depend on how big you are and who's wage would be based off your HQ's base wage (making starting location even more important) and could be auto filled by the auto hiring option. This would reduce the workload on the player whilst introducing a new expense, something Eric has said he want as the game is too easy.
You could then introduce random events who's cost and frequency would depend on how full and how well paid your legal team is.

Thoughts?

[Sarchez]

I think we already have that, in terms of workers (strikes/unions).

Ofcourse that doesn't cover any other legalities, such as patent infringements etc.
If you want to introduce something like that, you'd also need to create some kind of patent system, which I think would be difficult while keeping the balance of the game.

[Arakash]

I think we already have that, in terms of workers (strikes/unions).

Ofcourse that doesn't cover any other legalities, such as patent infringements etc.
If you want to introduce something like that, you'd also need to create some kind of patent system, which I think would be difficult while keeping the balance of the game.

Personally i really want to avoid having to make the entire system in detail. I think it should just simulate and abstract various disputes with other companies, individuals and contractors through a few levels of seriousness.

I wasnt really thinking of worker disputes when i was thinking of this, as you point out they are already an optional feature of the game.
I was imagining :
Legal challenges or just being sued through the courts.
Disputes with other companies or contractors working for your company over various issues like contracts. (e.g. a company claims you owe them 100k more for building that factory due to other expenses/contracts)
On some level i suppose it could cover patent infringement disputes, but as i said, i want it abstracted, not calculated in detail.

I edited my first post to include these examples for clarity's sake.

[Frankschtaldt]

I think this is a good idea and should be separate from the striking system. Legal costs and industrial action are very different things.

I would think that option 2 would be the way to go. Or something like it. You could have a "Legal team" that's size would depend on how big you are and who's wage would be based off your HQ's base wage (making starting location even more important) and could be auto filled by the auto hiring option. This would reduce the workload on the player whilst introducing a new expense, something Eric has said he want as the game is too easy.
You could then introduce random events who's cost and frequency would depend on how full and how well paid your legal team is.

I know it sounds a lot like the striking system but you know what, the system works.....

[Arakash]

I think this is a good idea and should be separate from the striking system. Legal costs and industrial action are very different things.

I would think that option 2 would be the way to go. Or something like it. You could have a "Legal team" that's size would depend on how big you are and who's wage would be based off your HQ's base wage (making starting location even more important) and could be auto filled by the auto hiring option. This would reduce the workload on the player whilst introducing a new expense, something Eric has said he want as the game is too easy.
You could then introduce random events who's cost and frequency would depend on how full and how well paid your legal team is.

I know it sounds a lot like the striking system but you know what, the system works.....

That sounds pretty good, i think there is even a spot for it in the current Admin section of HR where a team could be added.
I also really like the random events which could effect it, that would add some nice flavour/variation/challenge to the whole system

I definitely agree on adding new expenses to allow another angle for balancing. On hard or even very hard game modes, it could be dialed up to really be a large drain on a large company.

[Sarchez]

I'm all for more random events. (Adds to replayability).
It's perfectly fine, that you have to choose between 2 evils, but you should always have a choice, or a way of reducing the risks of bad things happening.

As you suggest about a legal team. that's a great idea, because it should reduce the chance of any legal actions against your company.

I think that's the main thing.
The result of the game, should reflect your actions in the game, not which random events happened when you least wanted them to.

So, for any random event (that has a substantial % of your money involved), there should be a way to reduce the risk of the event. Whether it required you to be proactive (as the legal team idea), or reaction to the event - there should be choices you can make.