Join the new world

I've been in the V2 beta for several days now, and have finally gotten bored enough to write an article on the experience, before the floodgates open fully. I'll be offering my analysis as we go along; listen to me as I am awesome.

This article is going to focus mostly on the economic module changes; it'll mention the war module, but that's the next article. (spoiler; subscribe) The reason for this is too keep the articles from being overly tl;dr, and to selfishly gain me more !! in my never-ending quest to become a mogul of the media.

Economy
The new economic module introduces several different aspects to the game. The most vaunted of these are customisation points for the final items produced.

Customisation
Currently we have quality levels; Q1-5. In V2 there are still 5 different 'qualities' of product. Upgrade and start up costs remain as they are now; with the addition of 20 gold to the start-up costs for wages and things. A needed change, this will help reduce the number of unnecessary companies that every country is plagued with, stuck at Q1, and bad business practises.

But GF, what is a customisation point?
You're right, I got distracted there. I'll get right too it, with the aid of pictures.


This is the upgrade and customisation point page of a Q1 tank company. You can see the costs involved in upgrades, and the amount of points each upgrade will offer you. Like in the current version of eRepublik, the higher the company level, the more needed to produce one unit. Currently production formulas are subject to change, so I am unable to go into this in too much detail as things stand; people have been given superpowers in beta for the purpose of testing everything well. Different industries have different customisation points available to them; for instance housing has a 40/80/120/160/200 customisation point allocation for each customisation level.

Differentiation of work skills
Currently, we have 3 different types of work skill; the classic manufacturing, construction and land. With the implementation of V2, and the changeover of skills, you're going to notice a larger variety to choose from. It should be noted at this point that the harvester skill is the equivalent of the current land skill; land companies only require harvesters, whereas other company types require more than one type of worker to create a finished product.



As you can see in the above picture, there are 4 types of employee that produce 4 different components for a final tank. Other industries have a similar looking company page, just with names and worker types changed. There is some degree of interchangeability between industries; for instance all weapon companies require the 4 types in the above picture, but a carpenter can only work for a housing company.

Increasing your skill


The library. You choose how much you want your skill to go up, by choosing time taken, and if you so wish, the booster level you require. Fairly simple stuff. Note that you can only train for 12 hours per skill. There isn't anything stopping you from doing 12 hours of mechanic and 12 hours of fitter. Not a great idea though, as you'd miss military training, and working.

Working
A fairly interesting change in how a citizen works is related to the new time management system that is to be used in v2. When a GM posts an offer on the job market, they post it in wages per hour. For each hour you work, you gain your displayed wage. Much like everything else, boosters will be available; I imagine this will lead to higher wages for those who use them on a regular basis, or even GMs hiring trusted people, and paying the 2g for them to use the booster, as over a certain time spent working it would work out as a GM profit.

RM quality levels
Another fairly large change to how business is run in V2, is the removal of the noob unfriendly system of Q1, Q2, etc iron produce. No matter what RM company you have at the current moment in time, you will produce the same amount of final RM as any other company. Whereas in the current system you have to go through Q3, Q4, offers to find the best deal, all you're going to be doing in the future is looking at the iron offers, and simply buying the cheapest one. I think I speak for many of us when I say this is a nice change; it was always rather irritating to have to go through various quality levels and calculations to find what I wanted. A good change in my opinion.

Inability to donate RMs
I'm a derp. ;3

Conclusion
It looks pretty decent, shockingly enough. I'm not crazy about the boosters on the work page; I don't think that is a particularly good thing at all, but it isn't game breaking. The splitting of the work skills into more subdivisions will have a positive effect on workers, as they'll most likely make more in the long term as well. All in all, I'm perfectly fine with the new economic module. Tune in for the next article on the war module; is it really as bad as everyone thinks?

I am Dio. You are Dio. We are Dio.