citybound
Find a model for households (families/businesses)
- [x] Figure out how resources and needs of individual members interact
- [x] Which needs is the household "responsible for" and which the individual member
- [ ] Are there Activities which can be or have to be done by several members at once?
- [ ] What happens when a member leaves the household (quits job, divorces, moves out)
Hi, I watched the live stream after it was done, and in the end you take up the expenses for having a car etc. Instead of having to take it to a mechanic, I think it would be better to have an "overall expense" for the household. Like, a wealthy household cost more per day, than a unwealthy one because they have more expensive houses and cars. So, if you decide to educate a whole household, it would get more wealthy, and it would cost them more to get the ends to meet, because they have more needs, and use more money than a undereducated household.
Garddun raises a good point, that no city sim in the history of city sims has tried to associate a floating point bank balance to every household in a city. They just assign them blanket wealth titles and categories, and privilages that come with that. So I would fear that the potential for a full modelable economy might not scale well. But, if it does, a real good way to model household data would be to yes, assign a household pool of total wealth drawing from all household income sources. That pool pays for everything the household spends (especially in the day of apple pay and credit cards. You could have one bank account for everything including the kids). Outside of the individual wanting a rollercoaster or a skateboard or a meal, this pool could be compound effected by things that multiple household members want, be it a car or house. You can set limits in the game for what different budgets can afford, whether that's a good modeling technique or saving processing i don't know.
You could have individuals just pull out of the central fund instantly all the time. I guess you could give individuals their own accounts (sounds complicated). As for what the household wants, you could give parents two votes, kids one. If we roll with the idea that they are given a daily or monthly (or period-ly) budget of expenses they have to pay off (car, petrol, food, school), and then surplus might be spent on leisure or a new tv or a trip to scotland, then you could set limits in place for when those activities are acceptable. If the total surplus ticks over 10,000, it's a trip to scotland! if the total surplus ticks over 100,000, time to move house! (or at least, they are allowed to consider moving house if they want to or need to). That way too, if they WANT to move house for other push factors (not enough space, it sucks, it burnt down), they can take a loan to that limit, or they can deliberately save to achieve that.
I don't know code. I hope that sort of logic might help household decision making, and what a household is responsible for (in other words, everything).
To answer other pondries, Several activities could simply be declared "communal", be it the trip to the resturaunt, the yoga class in the park, a walk around the block, or the trip to scotland. Simply a tag or a class on the activity, that means all relevant parties contribute. For a household, that would mean if the household "leader" (we might have this title) chose to go the whole household goes with the exception of individuals who don't want to (that angsty teen who'd rather stay in his room, for example). Other examples of communal activities might be the boss taking a group of workers out to the bar for a drink, so they'd all go along. Friend circles might be a more egalitarian communal social network, as in no set leader figure, that any one can go and there is less pressure on each member to tag along. This would be a simple way to form social networks and social networking.
This all means that a household CAN do things together (as can anyone else), they usually WILL do things together, but they are not FORCED to (which is important).
What happens when a household member leaves? Well, that is all down to circumstance, but broadly there are a finite number of circumstances:
- Person is fired (from the work "Household") - that person simply leaves, perhaps takes severance pay - directly proportional to the "job security" value. This covers all circumstances, if they were fired, it's because that number got to 0 so they get nothing. If they quit, they probably don't get anything because they didn't want to be there. If they resign or are laid off, the longer they were working there, the higher that value should be.
- Person dies - the household keeps the rest of the wealth. If a single elderly person dies, well, Sheesh!! now we gotta write digital wills???! I'd say give it to charity (AKA thin air), or the previous connected household, or perhaps split equally between associated households. That might give people a boost in the social ranking!
- Divorce: to keep things even and fair, and simple, everything is split in half, including kids. Property is forced to be sold and both parties have to shop around. They take half the property's inventory each.
- Marriage and new household. They perhaps get a gift from the household as either a lump sum depending on a threshold value of household savings? Or a % of household savings. Or just an appropriate fraction depending on how many people are in the house? I dunno? How would you give someone a massive wedding gift. I wouldn't expect every guest to bring gifts, so it's gotta be enough to get a household started!
This is all written at 1am. I'm sorry. I hope it helps.
- Tropico simulates agent wealth. SimCity simulates household wealth. Sims can run out if money.
- Divorce should not be simulated. It's complicated and adds nothing to a city simulation.
