GearCity 1.20 Progress Thread!

[Eric.B]

One thing that has always annoyed me about 'Grand Strategy' games was when you build up your tiny country into a HUGE empire, you could never change your empire's name. In GearCity that's all changed.

I've added a Restructuring system which allows you to Rename the company, Change the logo, and Move your HQ to an HQ city of a Marque you own. Renaming and relogo'ing a company costs a flat fee. Moving your HQ costs a bit of money depending on the difference in tax rates.

Next I started working on merging systems. Originally I planned on implementing a Merger, a Consolidation, a Tender, and an LBO system. However most 'mergers' that happen are actually Acquisitions. This is where a company buys out another company. This already exists in the game. The other type of 'merger' , where a company is absorbed into another company at no costs rarely happens. I figured this would be a bit exploitable, so it was no implemented.

Tender mergers are where companies bypass the board of directors and buy 50%+1 shares of the company directly from the public. This already happens in the Acquisition system as well. So Tender mergers were nixed.

LBO mergers happen when a company goes into massive debt through bonds system to buy a company. Since the bonds system already exists, if you want to do an LBO, simply raise a lot of money with bonds, then Acquire the company. So LBO was not implemented as well.

That leaves Consolidation as the only type of merger left. A Consolidation is where two companies agree to merge into a brand new company. This actually happens quite frequently in the Auto industry. Off the top of my head, Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz to create DaimlerChrysler AG, and Hudson Consolidation with Nash-Kelvinator to create AMC...

So what happens in the game? Companies that are not doing too well with agree to be consolidated with your company, and every once in a while, offer to be consolidated into your company. You will receive all the other company's assets, as well as their marque. However your company name will change to a new name. Everyone retains an equal number of shares in the new company. Which means your ownership of the company will be diluted. There is also a time limit for how often you can consolidate companies.

I've also did some micro-optimizations to the GUI loading speed, fixed a bug displaying in-development vehicles in the showroom.

Finally I have started rereading every forum post/email in 2016. The goal is to make sure I have everything ticketed into my track system so I can fix/implement your feedback. I've also started going through my notes and putting them into the ticketing system... Paperwork...

In any event, I'm about half way through this. Afterwards I'll do a play through for the 1.20 release, work on a few little bugs, launch the testing build. Fix a few more little bugs, then 1.20 will be ready for release!


-Rename Company
-Change Company Logo
-Move company HQ
-Consolidate company
-Some GUI loading optimizations
-Fixed showroom showing in-development vehicles bug.