Plutocracy News

Hello everyone!

Two weeks went by fast and now it's time to tell you about the new things we’ve worked on for you during this time.

You will soon be able to upgrade technologies. All technologies now have their own level. Every time a company develops or introduces a higher level of technology than the other companies in that state has the penalty for having a lower level of technology increases. To counter this you can spend company funds on developing better technology.



We’re also introducing a new technology “Innovation” which will replace the “Social Program” tech from the past versions. Better innovation will allow you to develop technologies cheaper.

After future updates with the formation of a trust or a merger the companies will share technologies with each other. Whichever company has the highest level technology will give that to the other companies.

The new option of “Research level” will boost the speed of research while costing more, it might even have some other associated costs such as having to improve “Accident Security” because of experiments going wrong or similar stuff.

There is a new “Staff turnover” statistic. The lower the turnover the more workers keep their jobs, it makes the production process more stable and increases the production over time. You can change the turnover with the new options “Wage level” and “Work-plan”. Happy workers, happy customers.



The “Financial Shark'' difficulty has also gotten some changes. Good deals are not as easy to come by as before and the usual ways of doing business that you are accompanied to will not work as well as before.

As always we would like your feedback on how to further improve balancing and difficulty, we really value your feedback a lot.

Of course we’ve also worked on the stability of the game and we were able to get rid of several crashes and fix some bugs that could cause you inconvenience.

The release of the update is already very close, and in the coming days we will work on testing it to save you from possible surprises like a bugs and crashes.

After 2 weeks we will come back to you with a new diary. Bye and see you soon!

Hello fellow Plutocrats!

Recently we’ve been thinking about how we could improve our own interaction with you guys. We think dev diaries would be a good start.

So, what have we done lately and what will we do in the future?

Mainly we will work on introducing the political system into the game.
One of the key aspects of Plutocracy is influence, what’s more influential than having a powerful grip on politics? We want to add an entirely new dimension to the game with politics.

In any case, that’s a topic for another day, we will tell you more about the political system later.

We’ve also got some good news for Linux users! The game will support both SteamOS and Ubuntu in the next update. And of course Mac support is also coming, however, that will be later this year.

There’s also a lot of small, but important stuff. We’ve looked at your suggestions and taken it into account. Mostly we’ve worked on the balancing. Transport companies are less overpowered, we’ve made changes to the expenses and income as it was very unrealistic.

You can also give loans now. A character who wants to get a loan may ask you for money and if you accept you will receive a quarterly income based on the amount of debt. If they don’t pay, you can use the new agent, the Collector. Doesn't he look friendly?



Another important thing is the unemployment rate and its relation to the average salary. When hiring workers, you now lower the unemployment and the average salary increases. Unemployment also grows with time as the population grows which makes the average salary lower.

This should also fix the issue of unlimited workers because your expenses will grow too much after a more ridiculous amount of workers.

And of course we continue to fix the seemingly endless amount of bugs, both big and small.

Very soon we’ll release an update with most of what we’ve talked about here, we also plan to release dev diaries every two weeks or so to keep you updated on our work. See you all then!

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

Game Breaking bugs:

- Crash when starting a new game / fixed
- Crash at the end of a loading screen / fixed
- Rare crash when opening a window / fixed

Exploits and balancing:

- You can blackmail over and over until you succeed / fixed

Serious bugs:

- An opponent does not appear after the start of a new game, if the old one was played without opponents / fixed

Minor bugs / complaints:

- Many missing variables and UI elements / fixed
- Achievement bugs / fixed
- Characters have ambition to buy companies that no longer exist / fixed
- Population ratio goes to minus after expanding the company / fixed
- Incorrect description of the achievement “Techno-Boom” / fixed
- Bugs with the company window / fixed
- Chief of police’s dirt replaces detective’s dirt / fixed
- Some bugs with subsidies and contracts / fixed
- AI returns to their starting location after loading / fixed
- Some UI issues with ambitions / fixed
- Bug with assistant / fixed

[h2]New:[/h2]

- New companies are now be generated when another one goes bankrupt
- New agent, the Hitman
- Events now have the relevant company’s name in them
- Dirt now gets deleted after use
- State flags that change during the game

[h2]Being worked on:[/h2]

- Political system
- Map bug after loading a save
- Misspellings and grammar
- Improving the german translation
- French translation
And much more…

Thank you all for the continued support of Plutocracy, whether through buying the game, leaving reviews or helping us find bugs we appreciate it all!

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]
Game Breaking bugs:
-Players not arriving to another state on time
-Crash when going back to the main menu and loading a save

Exploits and balancing:
-The company's reserves are not reduced at a loss

Serious bugs:
-Timer after selling shares is extremely long, sometimes several years
-The player’s money gets taken instead of the company when the company gets fined

Minor bugs / complaints:
-Variables missing in text
-Same company names generated

[h2]New:[/h2]
-Spanish translation
-Product price trends
-Voting is now delayable
-Added links to the relevant company and the initiating shareholder when voting
-New events with unhappy citizens
-Crash reports can now be sent in-game
-Interact with your opponent more
-No more unnecessary messages
-Only get news from relevant companies
-Go to a characters page by clicking on their name
-Ctrl+shift to add 1000
-Skill confirmation button
-New art for the loading screen

Being worked on:
-Map bug after loading a save
-Misspellings and grammar
-Improving the german translation
-French translation
And much more…

As you know the most voted feature was "Politics" and we will therefore focus on that from now on. In the "Politics" update we’ll introduce a system of lobbying laws through politicians.

Economic features will also continue to be worked on. We will certainly develop all that we planned to do in the end, this is only the beginning.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the vote, your ideas and suggestions help us understand what is more important to you all going forward.

We also sincerely apologize for the continued delays on this update, we hope it was worth it!

Thank you all for the continued support of Plutocracy, whether through buying the game, leaving reviews or helping us find bugs we appreciate it all!

__**Fixed:**__
**Game Breaking bugs:**
-Deals sometimes softlock the game / fixed
-Crash often when finishing a deal / fixed

**Exploits and balancing**
-Player being able to buy back shares directly after selling / fixed
-Transport, Oil and Refining company balance issues / fixed

**Serious bugs:**
-Company voting for negative dividends / fixed
-Wrong logistics costs / fixed
-Bug with company CEO’s salary / fixed
-"Fabricate evidence" being blocked with a friendly police chief / fixed

**Minor bugs / complaints:**
-Several bugs with different ambitions / fixed
-The game doesn’t pause during a deal among others / fixed
-Saves always say “Medium difficulty” / fixed
-The agent “Bishop” should be named “Bandit” / fixed
-Bug with character who wants to sell but has no luxury / fixed
-Agent result window disappearing / fixed
-The exit button in deals sometimes doesn’t work / fixed
-Several text bugs in letters / fixed

__**New:**__
-Auto-save now only occurs once a year to speed up the loading times
-Look at selling price of an item during an auction
-Auction AI now bids faster

__**Being worked on:**__
-Map bug after loading a save
-Crash sometimes when loading an autosave
-No unnecessary messages
-Misspellings and grammar
-Improving the german localization
-Spanish localization
-French localization
And much more…




**You can now vote on what you want us to focus on for the bigger content update coming later this year here:**

https://forms.gle/ysQx6emvD5Tw2KxC6

**Please follow the instructions closely and explain your suggestions as much as you can so we can use it in future development.**

**The vote will last for a week from now, get your voice heard, vote!**

Thank you all for the continued support of Plutocracy, whether through buying the game, leaving reviews or helping us find bugs we appreciate it all!