Plutocracy News

[h2]List of changes:[/h2]
Greetings, Plutocrats!
We have analyzed your feedback, and found it useful to implement the next several changes at once.

[h3]Main Features:[/h3]

• [h3]A new mechanic and visual of the company expansion process.[/h3]
  A new element of building process has been added - construction contractors, whose reputation and fame will now affect the completion of construction on time. By contacting unreliable contractors, you can save a lot of money on building new jobs, but you will get the risk of delays in deadlines, and sometimes even inability to fulfill what the contractor promised.
  
  
  
  Contractor offers will be constantly updated - and you will be able to regularly find the best opportunities to expand your companies. Or, as before, transfer everything to the CEO, and deal with other issues.
  
  
• [h3]The banking system has received an update.[/h3]
  The banks' rates have been reduced to more realistic ones, and now you can offer the bank to reduce the rate up to the level of the Federal Bank's rate, however, be prepared to reduce the chance of the bank's consent. But, if successful, you will receive profitable bets that even competitors will envy!
  
  
  
  Having your own bank, as before, will open up opportunities for you to finance your own companies at meager rates without seeking the approval of third-party banks. But, importantly, now you can finance your companies even outside of your bank's state.

[h3]Additional improvements:[/h3]

• [h3]Changing the frequency of voting and the mechanics of interaction.[/h3]
  Now it is not necessary to react to every vote on any trifles in each of your companies - you can ignore them without viewing notifications.
  
  
• [h3]Improved the selection of the starting state.[/h3]
  It has become possible to select a state directly on the widget map.
  
  

[h3]Balance:[/h3]

• The voting frequency was balanced according to the wishes of the community and became lower.
  
• The interest rate for banks has been reduced to a more realistic one.
  
• The balance of companies' costs for workers has been corrected - now workers' costs will be a significant item, and wages will have a stronger impact on the company's net profit.
  
• The number of characters in the game has been optimized - there are more political shareholders in companies.
  

[h3]Fixed:[/h3]

• Character naming failure in German Localization
  
• A Bug with 0% Ownership of a Company in a Merger
  
• The loss of Shares owned by the Company during the Merger
  
• Successful debt collection from a reluctant debtor repeated every quarter
  
• Fixed blocking of the vote change on the bill
  
• Gain Experience and Skills when all achievements are unlocked
  
• A bug when returning a loan in the bank's statistics
  
• Incorrect processing of application dates and unavailability of agents in the future
  
• Incorrect output in hints in Company Statistics for cooldown after voting
  

[h3]What are we preparing in the next updates?[/h3]
We continue to work on Vertical Holdings feature - the next potentially major update. We are also developing a storyline campaign, which will tell the story of a shadow tycoon at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In addition, we will add many fixes and improvements, considering the wishes and concerns of the community. For example, filter notifications and news from companies for convenience and filtering out unnecessary information.
______
Once again, we express our gratitude to the active and caring members of our community on Steam and Discord, who report bugs and exploits found, as well as express their ideas and thoughts on development - we read and track everything, and always take constructive thoughts into account!

Of course, not all of your ideas will be implemented, because we are still working as a small team, but your feedback helps us better understand how to develop the Plutocracy further.

Special thanks to all those who seek to participate in translations into different languages, and also recommends Plutocracy in the reviews on the Steam page. This gives us the strength to develop the project further, until its full release!

[h2]List of changes:[/h2]

[h3]Minor features:[/h3]

• Credits | The loan amount for a company in a bank or for a bank in the Central Bank can no longer be greater than the net assets of the borrower (now the amount of all existing loans is also taken into account).
  
• Credits | The loan amount for a company in a bank cannot exceed the current reserves of the lender bank.
  
• Credits | The automatic receipt of a loan from the Central Bank to a bank has been removed when other companies take out a loan from this bank.
  In return, the loan is now issued from the bank's reserves and all loan repayment payments also belong to the bank.
  
• Credits | If the bank refuses the loan to the company, this bank is excluded from the list of available banks for 100 days for this company. After the expiration of the moratorium, the bank returns back to the list of possible creditors of the company.
  
• Bankruptcy | Bankruptcy of characters and companies can now occur only after a quarter change, when payments on bills occur. Bankruptcies in the middle or end of the quarter should no longer happen.
  

[h3]Critical fixes:[/h3]

• Pianist | Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when using the agent.
  

[h3]Other fixes:[/h3]

• Influence | Fixed an error in the influence dynamics graph, which caused incorrect influence dynamics to be shown for a period of more than 3 previous quarters.
  
• Minor cosmetic changes.
  

[h2]List of changes:[/h2]

[h3]Main feature:[/h3]

• Plutocratopedia is an in-game encyclopedia on the world and mechanics of Plutocracy.
  

[h3]Minor features:[/h3]

• Added a clink of coins when confirming a share buyback.
  
• Minor English localization update.
  

[h3]Critical fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed a crash that occurred periodically when viewing the company's finances after the takeover.
  
• Fixed a crash that periodically occurred when saving game after the bankruptcy of completely loyal characters.
  
• Fixed a crash that periodically occurred when registering candidates for elections.
  

[h3]Other fixes:[/h3]

• General | Fixed looping playback of only the first music track in the game.
  
• General | Fixed a bug that caused the icon of temporary blocking of negotiations to not be displayed on the investor's portrait after fulfilling the ambition to “Buy shares” of the character
  
• Achievements | "Plutocrat" | Fixed a bug tracking the status of a character in the progress of an achievement.
  
• Ambitions | "Get a loan" | Fixed an error checking for the feasibility of an ambition when changing quarters.
  
• Elections | Fixed a bug that caused background wind noise to be heard during the election campaign.
  
• Issue and repurchase of shares | Fixed a bug that caused the order to remain available after the failure of the shareholder vote.
  
• Laws | Fixed a bug where the rule of precedence of federal laws over local laws from the "Constitutional" section did not work for new states that joined after the adoption of these laws.
  
• Other minor cosmetic changes.
  

List of changes:

• Merger | Removed the mistaken "empty" vote sometimes blocking mergers or acquisitions of companies.
  
• Stock exchange | Fixed errors in sorting the stock exchange portfolio when holding shares of companies from 3+ states at the same time.
  
• Elections | Fixed a bug where opponents of current politicians in elections receive negative renown during generation.
  
• Auction | Removed the mistaken hint that appears when switching to an auction from the stock exchange.
  

Greetings, Plutocrats!
We are in a hurry to please everyone with the long-awaited update!
Not all of what we wanted will be included in it. Some features require more time for testing and debugging. Therefore, we will try in November and December to please you with a few more updates with features that we are testing right now.

So, what has already been included in this update?

[h3]
1. Starting settings have been redesigned.[/h3]
   
   The information is structured and easier to read. We had to redesign because of point #2.
   
   [h3]
2. Added a game difficulty indicator.[/h3]
   
   We decided to add more of a competitive moment to any playthrough, and created a system for assessing the difficulty of the game session. Now all parameters affect the displayed difficulty level, allowing you to estimate how difficult it will be to complete the final goal in the allotted time. Higher difficulty - more respect!
   Write to us if some parameters seem unbalanced to you - and we will fix it in the next patch.
   
   [h3]
3. Director's orders.[/h3]
   
   Another window that has undergone a redesign. Now all orders are “packed” in the right part, and are not as chaotic as before. Do not worry - the changes are only visual without changing the very essence of the orders.
   
   [h3]
4. Other innovations introduced after feedback from our community of Plutocrats:[/h3]
   
   • Companies | Added dependence of the number of new workplaces and the cost of construction during expansion on the current number of workplaces in the company. The more places there are in the company now, the more places a new building will add, but the more expensive it will cost to build it.
     
   • Mail | Added notifications about the threat of bankruptcy of the player, controlled companies and loyal characters.
     
   • Achievements | Added a new achievement "Speculator"
     
   • Journal | Added notifications about completing tasks of the current game session
     
   • Credits | The formula for the maximum loan amount from the character has been reworked. Now the amount depends not only on the lender's cash, but also on the borrower's solvency, as well as the reputation of the borrower or the CEO of the company taking the loan.
   
   [h3]
5. Polishing:[/h3]
   
   • The "Get a loan" ambition | Added the income of the borrower character to the ambition and a hint on the ambition icon.
     
   • Gameplay | Event "Approve the initiative" | Hover hints have been added for the current developed and new proposed technologies.
     
   • Personal office | When you click on the card in the account, companies of the current location will now be opened
     
   • Stock exchange | Cosmetic portfolio changes.
     - The columns “Cost” and “Difference" have been swapped for greater convenience.
     - The name of the “Balance” block has been changed to “Purchased”
     
   • Parliamentary chambers | Schemes of chambers | The algorithm of the arrangement of colored dots of the composition of chambers has been improved.
     
   • Updated some of the loading screens, added a few new ones.
   
   [h3]
6. Balance:[/h3]
   
   • Companies | By popular demand, the number of shareholders in companies has been reduced by an average of 40%. Overall game performance slightly improved.
   
   [h3]
7. Fixed:[/h3]
   
   • Context menu | The unused "Compromise" button in the player's and opponent's character menu has been removed.
     
   • Map | The opponent's companies are not displayed when selected in the filter.
     
   • Statistics | Basic parameters are sometimes not recalculated when the technology being developed changes during the quarter.
     
   • Gameplay | Event "Threats from the ultra-right" | Fixed the difference between the result and the description in the negative outcome of the 4 variants of the event.
     
   • General | Fixed missing music when playing on Mac.
     
   • The "Buy shares" ambition | Fixed a bug that could generate an ambition to buy shares of a non-existent company after the election.
     
   • Company votings | Disabled CEO's offer to increase dividends.
     
   • Companies | Player ceases to be considered a shareholder when trying to receive subsidies or conclude a state contract after loading the savegame.
     
   • Elections | Fixed a vulnerability that made it possible for the player to become governor.
     
   • Loyalty | Fixed a bug that caused characters with full loyalty to periodically lose loyalty for no reason.
     
   • Laws | Fixed incorrect change in the popularity of laws after consideration of any bill.
     
   • Navigation | Fixed a bug that caused the "Select a new Director" window to be ignored when returning to the previous window.
     
   • Loans | Fixed an error due to which, when trying to repay a loan in a company with negative reserves, it was possible to set a negative payment amount.
     
   • Starting conditions | Fixed error, when a player got 4 free skill points when starting with own company.
     
   • Merger | Fixed a bug where the merger of companies was unavailable if the total reserves of both companies were < 0.

Many bugs have been fixed and continue to be fixed by us thanks to the help of our community - thank you for the feedback, and if you are not in our community yet - join to our Discord server (https://discord.gg/DjdxyrMZ)

[h2]A brief roadmap for upcoming updates.[/h2]
Friends, by your numerous requests, we are covering what we are working on right now, and what you will see in the next 2 updates.

Announced features:

[h3]
1. Upgrade of the building module.[/h3]
   
   It will be possible to build several buildings at once, and not 1, as it is now. They will differ as before - the construction period and price. And also, a new indicator is added - the deadline for the offer from the contractor. Each offer will be available only for a limited number of days. After that, it will change to a new one.
   This innovation makes you literally “catch the moment” when expansion is especially beneficial for your company, which brings more variety to the “gaming routine”!
   For those who do not like microcontrol, we will save the option of “automatic expansion".
   
   [h3]
2. Plutocratopedia[/h3]
   
   Another of the upcoming updates will include a guidebook in the game - Plutocratopedia. Now we regularly add all the information about the game world to it, and very soon we will release it, to facilitate the understanding of all the available game features.
   
   [h3]
3. Vertical holding[/h3]
   Also, we are work-in-progress on this long-awaited game module. The topic of the holding is quite extensive, and it would be more correct if we release a separate diary and tell about it in more detail in order to better understand the meaning of its introduction into the economy of our simulator, as well as what difficulties we, as developers, faced when implementing this idea.

Well, friends, that's all for now!

Thank you for staying with us,
Redwood Team