The First Dynasty of Bucky
June 6, 2007 - July 30, 2007
Contents
Ascension Address
In the wake of Goldberg Technology's bankruptcy filing and subsequent liquidation, some employee or other dug up an old design for a generic manufacturing device. The intellectual property rights involved had ended up in the public domain after a New York-based company acquired a block of 100 patents in bulk in order to use 7 of them, the rest being dismissed as useless. Since this was publicized yesterday, eight companies have expressed interest in developing the technology further, and we expect intense competition in this emerging niche.
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Repeal all Dynastic Rules but 2.2 (the subrules of 2.2 are also repealed). Worker becomes Corporation. CEO becomes Government. Net Worth becomes Cash, which is now measured in Megabucks (M$).
Players
The following players were active during this dynasty:
Alethiophile, BobTHJ, Brendan, Bucky, Chivalrybean, Chronos Phaenon, Clucky, Denis Brandao, Diomedes, Gazagna, Hix, Icarus, Josh, Kevan, Lars Atomica, Night, Rodney, spikebrennan, The Doctor, Zephyr
Final Ruleset
The final ruleset can be found here.
Proposals of Interest
Call in the Robots Introduced Robots, the all-purpose production machine. Also introduced Square Production (calculated from the square of a Corporation's Robots) and a wiki page for keeping track of it.
Call Out The Robots Replaced Robots (which had already been done) with Factories and Offices. Offices did nothing, for the time being...
Patent Nonsense Allowed Corporations to Patent a short phrase for each Office they owned. Any other Corporation using the phrase had to pay $1M to the holder of the patent. This led to some extreme nonsense until the rule was repealed.
- When adminning this, I apparently missed the clause at the end and thus the phrase 'A Corporation may only have a single phrase patented at any one time' remained in the ruleset until it was later removed. Clucky
How to produce stuff Gave Production a use, namely, producing things. The amount of a product you produced was equal to the square root of the Production you used to produce it, making allocation a nightmare. Not that there was anything to produce. Yet...
Go forth and construct Created Products to produce, although some cost more than others. The initial Products were Cash, Factories and Offices. Also limited the number of Factories capable of production to three times the number of Offices a Corporation had.
Soulless again Introduced Souls, which worked in the Factories and Offices. Corporations needed at least one Soul for each Factory and Office, or their Production was nil.
Reworking bankruptcy Created a Credit Limit for each Corporation, calculated from their assets. If you had less Cash than your Credit Limit, you became Bankrupt. Any Corporation with enough Cash could then 'buy you out', putting your cash at $0M, and you became their Subsidiary. Subsidiaries later became the main factor in winning the dynasty.
Bankruptcy tweaks Prevented Corporations from becoming Bankrupt intentionally. Also increased the amount of Cash needed for Buyout to $5M.
Write It Off Allowed Corporations to destroy any of their Products except Cash, or Escrow them (this time including Cash) to someone else. However, certain conditions had to met before the goods could be received.
Payments Created a new way of giving Cash, this time involuntarily.
Daemons Created Daemons, infernal helpers with a hunger for souls. By summoning a certain Daemon you got advantages, such as greater Production. If a Corporation couldn't satisfy the needs of all their Daemons, they went Bankrupt.
A Beginner's Guide to Daemonology Added some Daemons called IT Daemon, Daemon Resources and Courtroom Daemon.
Curriculum Diabolus Renamed the Daemons to more appropriate names. IT became Dimurgos, Resources became Mephistopheles and Courtroom became Astaroth.
Research & Daevelopment Allowed Corporations to propose new Daemons. Also introduced Naming Rights for Daemons, which you had to have in order to summon them. Merging the two concepts, the Naming Rights of a new Daemon had to be bid for if you wished to have them.
A winning condition Allowed a Corporation to win by having all other Corporations as Subsidiaries.
The problem with debt Slowly increased the debt of Corporations with negative Cash by multiplying by 1.1.
The Economy of Ideas Mk. II An improvement on a previous proposal, this allowed Corporations to share any Production or Naming rights they held with other Corporations.
The Daily Grind Replaced the rather ambiguous 'often' and 'occasionally' with 'daily' and 'weekly', making it easier to understand the rules without looking at the Glossary.
Slush Funding Added some more benefits for Parent Corporations, including 10% of their Subsidiaries' Production.
How to kill each other Allowed Corporations to file Lawsuits against each other whenever they felt like it, ultimately ending in one of the parties involved being sued.
Make victory possible Fixed a loophole that had previously made it impossible to win (namely, the inability to Buy Out the Government), as well as making winning a lot easier.
Moving with the Times Repealed the rule on Patented Phrases and updated Astaroth accordingly.
Antitrustworthy Limited a Corporation's factories to 50; any excess ones did nothing.
Anti-Monopoly: New Improved Formula Put a tax on Subsidiaries. Strangely, this was proposed by the only Parent Corporation at the time.
Trust me... I won't cancel! Prevented Corporations from cancelling an Escrow unless its Expiration criteria were met.
Consumers Improved Formula Created Outlets and Goods to stock them with. A well-stocked Outlet produced $1M whenever Time was Advanced.
Keeping everything in order Increased the Subsidiary tax for Bankrupt Subsidiaries. This made sure that Parent Corporations didn't neglect their children.
Highly leveraged buyouts Allowed any Corporation to be Bought Out, but at a high price. This became another factor in victory.
Ascension
Dredging up an old Escrow, Clucky noted that although it had been cancelled they had never got their goods back. These happened to be two Factories, with which they lowered their Credit Limit enough to Buy Out Zephyr. Their Subsidiaries reached Quorum, and thus they won.
To achieve a large portion of steps needed towards victory, Clucky used a Daemon which allowed him to spent one soul to raise the credit limit of another corporation by three. Sacrificing as many as one hundred souls at a time, Clucky used this daemon mercilessly to bring his competitors within his price range.
Commentary
Another interesting event in this dynasty was what I'll call for simplicity the 'Chronos Affair'. This occurred when Chronos Phaenon, a subsidiary of Brendan, destroyed one of their Factories, causing their Production to drop. This left Brendan's Production over allocated, and by Advancing Time Chronos was able to reallocate it so that Brendan produced 52 factories. This, quite obviously, left them rather financially damaged.
But that wasn't all. Despite posting a proposal (which I can't find), a CfJ and a Lawsuit, they were never refunded. Whether you agree with it or not, this was one neat scam.
