Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic - planned economy city builder

[Space Satan]

it looks ugly and cheap as hell, not even on Tropico levels. music is the only bright side

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

it looks ugly and cheap as hell, not even on Tropico levels. music is the only bright side

so an accurate representation of the USSR then...

 

[vonAchdorf]

This has been out on Steam Early Access for a while now





and the feedback is favorable.

 

[Space Satan]

ALL REVIEWS: Very Positive (1,093)
nice

 

[vonAchdorf]

It's made by a single guy, but he seems to be very dedicated.

Would like to see a more political aspect in the game. Perestroika and the allure of the West could make for an interesting endgame.

The game is a bit different from standard city builders that (almost) everything is buildable without money just with resources and workers (it's in the title).

 

[Burning Bridges]

This is beginning to look kind of interesting now. Finally we can design those drab industrialized towns everyone hated and wanted to flee to the West.

I hope they also make it that you have to marry or enlist to the army to be even eligible for a new apartment, and that an appintment with a plumber takes years.

 

[vonAchdorf]

You can definitely build nice Plattenbau housing.

The game lets you build stuff either with currency, like many modern city builders, or with the actual resources, like in many "survival" or historical builder games. E.g. for gravel roads, you either pay money for insta building them or produce gravel in a pit, process it in and then use it to build the road (for which you also need workers, trucks and excavators).

 

[Burning Bridges]

Plattenbau is an East German term, and probably not the best comparison because they were like Switzerland compared to the rest of the communist bloc.

There was a huge building program under Honecker aimed at greatly improving the material siutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_East_Germany

In the last years there was even a plan to restore the center of Berlin that would have been "almost acceptable" to Western taste, and part of it was completed before the wall fell.

However they build mostly a lot of apartments of the shoebox style

and it was still not enough. Generally people initialy liked the new housing (the areas often looked much more decent than today, and there was a sense of optimism) in the long term there were problems that defects were never repaired but all in all they were better than you would believe. They had heating, warm water and elevators and were modern, at least when you moved in. East Germany had an occasional power breakdown every month but normally the heating and power would switch back on within a few hours.

 

[Storyfag]

Plattenbau is an East German term, and probably not the best comparison because they were like Switzerland compared to the rest of the communist bloc.

You know nothing, Jon Snow. Every People's Republic used wielka płyta, though I must give credit where it is due, the source of origin was in the DDR.

 

[vonAchdorf]

First content update:

 

[Nutria]

Wait, were there car dealerships in the Soviet bloc? What's the point if everyone is waiting 10+ years for whatever they can get?

 

[commie]

Plattenbau is an East German term, and probably not the best comparison because they were like Switzerland compared to the rest of the communist bloc.

You know nothing, Jon Snow. Every People's Republic used wielka płyta, though I must give credit where it is due, the source of origin was in the DDR.

Wielka plyta=best plyta

Blocks that were estimated to last 30 years, are now rated for 70-100. Communism= best ism.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Wait, were there car dealerships in the Soviet bloc? What's the point if everyone is waiting 10+ years for whatever they can get?

Well, you need a place to file your reservation and come back 10 years later to pick up the car.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Great game, one of greatest city [and not only city] builders around. Totally unique economy, besides normal taxes/export/import you can actually be self sufficent and build even railroads, all buildings by yourself by cranes, special construction units and deliver building materials by yourself too with 0 costs. In this game you can even produce fuel for your cars and trains . Plus mega accurate socialism/communism era feeling. 10/10.

 

[Makabb]

Great game, one of greatest city [and not only city] builders around. Totally unique economy, besides normal taxes/export/import you can actually be self sufficent and build even railroads, all buildings by yourself by cranes, special construction units and deliver building materials by yourself too with 0 costs. In this game you can even produce fuel for your cars and trains . Plus mega accurate socialism/communism era feeling. 10/10.

Is it more like Tropico or transport tycoon ?

 

[ZeniBot]

Both. You do the standard resource/people management from Tropico with the Vehicle aspects of Transport Tycoon.
Gotta say I like this game far more than Tropico 6. I initially pirated it to check it out and over time grew to really like its mechanics so I bought it. It is a very hard city builder with lots of playtime.
Nothing is just done in small goes. Everything is building up towards a huge effort there's a lot to do unlike Tropico I think its mostly to do with how limited you are with resources at first.
Once you get some supply chains going the game gets easier, the end goal is self sufficiency and modernising the entire map's towns.
The vehicle system update was well welcomed, now the cities feel like cities and your oil industry is even more important.
You also don't need to worry about shitty pathfinding as much now because the AI can at least hop into a car and drive instead of bitching about everything not being in walking distance.

The game will be at its best once they add the global events because there's nothing in the game so far to keep you on your toes. But considering Tropico 6 is like 4x the price (at least in my country anyway) this is well worth it compared to that game.
Put it in perspective, I've spent over 20 hours in this game, I spent 8 in Tropico 6 because I had mastered it and got bored. I've yet to Master this game.

 

[laclongquan]

I dont get the philosophy behind wall-like building.

It totally block air movement. The area behind/front will be without winds. While it's good in terrifying Siberia condition, East Europe, Germany, are not there, thus the point is mood.

 

[Hellraiser]

I dont get the philosophy behind wall-like building.

It totally block air movement. The area behind/front will be without winds. While it's good in terrifying Siberia condition, East Europe, Germany, are not there, thus the point is mood.

If I understand correctly what you mean by wall-like building the reason they built the 800-ish meter one in my city (and a few slightly shorter ones in the same area) was because they thought it was a good solution to the housing shortage crisis. Population boom after the war, internal migration due to the rebuilt/expanding shipbuilding industry, shortage economy in general and the fact that most of the city did not survive the war made the housing situation extremely bad for decades. My grandparents for example waited for at least 20 years for an apartment, living in

Whether building prefab molochs in the few hundred meter and few thousand inhabitants range helped is debatable. If it worked they wouldn't have stopped making them in the early 70s and built more of them instead of the more regularly sized shoebox buildings in the "newer" model commie districts from the 70s and 80s like Zaspa, Chełm or Morena.

 

[laclongquan]

That kind of solution is too cheap to be effective, and leave long term consequences for later generations.

When you build up a wall-like apartment complex like that, it create unnecessary pressure on everything infrastructure:
* Water: pipe is not enough. and you gotta have some tanks on the roof for both drinking water and fire distinguishing. In which case it's too big tanks setting too near each other. Ugly.
* Elevator: they probbabbly spread elevator blocks along the complex. BUT. as it serve the complex, there's also unnecessary overconcentration and overuse of one e-block compare to other, which reduce quality unevenly. This is an important point to consider, in order to avoid jams.
* Over concentration of people like that raise pressure on schools and hospitals in walking distance. Overall, it reduce quality, which goes against the commanding target of socialism which is to raise quality of people.
* Three decades later the blocks are an eyesore in city and not easy to displace. Even a single block is hard, let alone a massive long wall complex like that.

In conclusion:
Block-space-block-space-block is better than block-block-block

 

[Zarniwoop]

Can you build nuclear power plants and make them explode, hide the incident from your own citizens, then decades later make propaganda films claiming it was the CIA?

Because if so,

 

[Space Satan]

Water: pipe is not enough. and you gotta have some tanks on the roof for both drinking water and fire distinguishing. In which case it's too big tanks setting too near each other. Ugly.

Bullshit. I lived in and near panel houses and there were never any water tanks on the roofs. Pipe is more than enough to supply whole panel house with water and more. It's been like that for decades. Maybe in warmer climates things are different but in Russia water tank on the roof means it'll be frozen dead.

Elevator: they probbabbly spread elevator blocks along the complex. BUT. as it serve the complex, there's also unnecessary overconcentration and overuse of one e-block compare to other, which reduce quality unevenly. This is an important point to consider, in order to avoid jams.

Every panel home I've known had 2 elevators, sometimes with large one, never was a problem or jams even when one was repaired.

Over concentration of people like that raise pressure on schools and hospitals in walking distance. Overall, it reduce quality, which goes against the commanding target of socialism which is to raise quality of people.

There are regulations on how many schools must be there for N apartments. With demolition of old houses and replacing them with new ones, schools were expanded as well but that was rare as schools were built with some reserve for "growing" and only once I faced "crowded" classes for 32 pupils.

* Three decades later the blocks are an eyesore in city and not easy to displace. Even a single block is hard, let alone a massive long wall complex like that.

They are actually quite easy to renovate. With some effort from local administration and painters their sides could be turned into an art piece. The problem is the front, with batteries of air condition blocks.

 

[laclongquan]

Russian artic condition is specific, which is why you guys dont have water tank on top. In winter time it going to freeze solid and then you have an ice cube the size of 5 meter on top. Not safe.

Class of 32? Gahahahaha. I am talking about class size minimum of 30 at least, and normally 40 (the size I enrolled in from 1st to 12th). Regulations and laws is fine but if (local) congress or district edu board doesnt assign you more BUDGET they dont mean shit. And a wall-like complex fall inside ONE district, while several block complex can be assigned to different districts. And one district edu budget is never equal to the sum of different districts, be they ever more students.

As for renovation, boys, you are in for a surprise. With a wall-block like that, renovation works affect ALL the residents. Humans being what they are, they like the quality living renovations bring, but they dont like the troubles (noise, dirty, more strangers/workers...). For a wall-block like that, renovations are happening all year long, nonstop. So over all, renovations is not going to be effective for residents of a wall-block like that compared to a separate tower-block.

 

[Space Satan]

Class of 32? Gahahahaha. I am talking about class size minimum of 30 at least, and normally 40 (the size I enrolled in from 1st to 12th). Regulations and laws is fine but if (local) congress or district edu board doesnt assign you more BUDGET they dont mean shit. And a wall-like complex fall inside ONE district, while several block complex can be assigned to different districts. And one district edu budget is never equal to the sum of different districts, be they ever more students.

My district was "assigned" to one school but I enrolled in neighboring school without problem because it was closer and it was never a problem to change schools. If some pupil influx happened, then they mostly fillead that "reserve" but dissipated after several years.

As for renovation, boys, you are in for a surprise. With a wall-block like that, renovation works affect ALL the residents. Humans being what they are, they like the quality living renovations bring, but they dont like the troubles (noise, dirty, more strangers/workers...). For a wall-block like that, renovations are happening all year long, nonstop. So over all, renovations is not going to be effective for residents of a wall-block like that compared to a separate tower-block.

I am talking about blank sides of panel houses, which have no need for permissions as there are no windows there. Something like that.

Spoiler

 

[ZeniBot]

Can you build nuclear power plants and make them explode, hide the incident from your own citizens, then decades later make propaganda films claiming it was the CIA?

Because if so,

It's coming. https://trello.com/c/V2e4Ov0C/6-nuclear-industries

 

[Hellraiser]

Can you build nuclear power plants and make them explode, hide the incident from your own citizens, then decades later make propaganda films claiming it was the CIA?

Because if so,

It's coming. https://trello.com/c/V2e4Ov0C/6-nuclear-industries

I want to be a Dyatlov?