Jagged Alliance: Flashback - Update #15, World Economy

It's time for yet again another update for Jagged Alliance: Flashback. This time it's all about the Economy of the game. Sounds interesting.

World Economy

At the core of the economy we will go with a single currency similar to JA2 - moneh!
Discussion in the team about different options with multiple currencies all turned out to make the game way too complicated and not that much fun at all. Why? Easy one: That’d add a lot of unneeded micromanagement and players would spend way too much time with doing math on how to change this amount of that currency to another one to gain maximum profit. And to be honest: We’re making a game, not a geo-financial simulator.
So we will stay close to what Jagged Alliance 2 did, where you gain perpetual income from controlling sectors, solving missions, selling items and so on. And you will need that cash because your mercenaries need to be paid, militia needs to be trained and your base needs to be fortified. And with that system we are also going to balance the cashflow: Costs of fighting a war versus income gained from your sectors. But we’re also thinking about having some sectors which will cost the player money.
On this tropical island of San Christobal income sources are

• Taxes from controlled villages and towns
• Controlling sectors with production facilities like factories, banana plantations, opium poppy fields, brothels, ice cream trucks etc. These replace the “mines” from JA2
• One-time revenue from missions, intercepting drug traffickers, selling weapons, used condoms and so on

We have the idea of letting faction loyalty have an influence on incomes. If you are in bad standing with the drug lords, then running a drug producing facility will give you lower income as workers will be nervous all the time for retribution. Being good friends with local population will give you a little higher tax from towns as people will like you and work a little harder, therefore generating more money.
Control over a sector is exerted by you starting to train militia and/or fortifying it. The heavier controlled, the more control and the higher upkeep. Although training militia and fortifying the sector won’t be cheap.
Money is also spent on your mercenaries. Similar to JA2 you will hire mercenaries for a given period of time and you have to renew their contracts. Bringing in mercenaries loyal to other factions is possible, but might cost you a little extra. And some mercenaries simply will refuse to join you as long as you a rooting for the opposing faction.
An idea up for discussion:

• We are thinking about making some sectors a money-sink. For example a military base or a hospital. Because these things can become quite expensive in terms of maintenance.
• You can lose control of some sectors if your faction loyalty shifts.
• Roads and otherwise “empty” sectors cannot be controlled by anyone and thus cost no upkeep.

So nothing revolutionary here besides the faction loyalty being an influence. Your decisions about who to support will also be a decision about the money in your wallet.

More information.

No comment. I'm having trust issues due to being unable to get my head around the devs of a Jagged Alliance "flashback" saying they had no interest in trying to make a combat simulator and were more concerned with "fun", where fun when said by a developer translates in my mind into "braindead button masher".

They got my kickstarter pledge more from the JA name than anything they have posted so far. I'm actually concerned about this one succeeding especially if they only reach the minimum funding amount. But thanks to how ks are structured and that they are still quite away from full funding, I'm not that worried and will leave my funds there.

So they are leaving aside the possibility hinted by JA2: running out of resources to exploit going with the consequence of imposing a dead line on the long term completion of the campaign.

Their economy is based on infinite streams of revenues which bring money as long as you wish.

They dilute a bit more the island character that makes the Jagged Alliance series so promising.

The island settings has no meaning, it is just decorum.

Going back to the "UGOIGO" turn sequence was already a step backward. Now removing a strong characteristic of a tiny island economy is another one.