Re: [Rails-devel] PublicCompany_1856

[John A. T. <ja...@ja...>]

Erik Vos wrote:
> - the next available train from the bank when the presidency was bought
> (which determines the company capitalization rules at floating time and
> later), and
>   
No, 1856 cares about the available train type at the point it first 
tries to operate.  It is a common error to only buy 2 shares at the 
beginning and find that by the time your company comes up in the 
operating order, a 3 is available so you do not operate.

18GL also cares about this, but slightly different -- if a company is 
started after a 10H has been bought, capitalization rules are totally 
different.  Many other games have similar dependencies on the phase or 
available train for starting companies, such as what initial stock 
prices are available, possible starting locations, train purchase 
restrictions, etc.
> - the amount of treasury money held in escrow by the bank in some cases.
>   
Many games have a similar aspect, typically tied to achieving 
connectivity to or actually running to a destination, or upon hitting a 
particular area of the stock market, or upon conversion.

There are enough 18xx games out there and enough interest in making 
something new and different, that you can find all sorts of rules which 
have been combined in novel ways in each new game you encounter.  If you 
create new infrastructure code for each one, you will never be able to 
extend the set of games supported by Rails separately from modifying 
Rails itself.  If instead all the base functionality is in Rails, and 
then the games simply specify how to combine them, then it becomes much 
more extensible.  I think that feeds directly into the decision to make 
general-purpose vs. custom infrastructure.

--
John A. Tamplin					ja...@ja...
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