Assignment 3: Hubnet Trade Rockets
Download server Netlogo file: hub-trade-rockets.nlogo
Download client Netlogo file: hub-trade-rockets-client.nlogo
To be honest about
it, I really just wanted to write a
little "scorched earth" clone in NetLogo. After some
consideration, I
decided that I needed my model to be a bit more refined than
that. And
I needed more learning opportunities. And I needed more
strategies
than merely "blow everybody else up." Hubnet Trade Rockets is the
result. Hopefully you will find it interesting.
Description: (What is it?)
This model simulates nations trading or fighting with
each other. Since the model is highly simplistic, it is highly
dubious that any real conclusions about the behavior of nations should
be drawn. Rather, this model should be considered as an
investigation in psychology and/or game theory, regarding how players
will act under a given set of rules.
Depending on the purposes of the simulation (and the values of the
sliders), this may be played as a cut-throat game until only one player
remains. Or it may be run until some player's economy reaches
some arbitrary value (e.g. 100). Or it may simply be run for a
while until patterns in the players behavior have been discovered.
The general idea is:
Nations may either trade with each other, or fight with each
other.
* Trade deals profits both nations.
* Battles benefits one nation and and hurts another.
The amounts of gain and loss for trade and attack are set by the
sliders.
It is inherently more or less difficult to trade with some nations than
with others. The topographical features of the playing field
represent this difficulty, by making it harder to send rockets to some
locations than to others.
In this model's metaphor, each nation produces different types of
resources, so without international trade, economies may falter.
This is expressed through the COST-OF-LIVING slider, which takes some
number of economy points away from each player each turn.
Another important consideration is that nations with more economic
power have a greater capability to make trade deals with far-away
nations (in this model it is expressed graphically as geographical
distance, but in the metaphor it could stand for cultural or other
differences instead.) They way this is treated in the model is by
the following rule: each player's launching power is limited by
the value of their economy. (This feature can be turned off with
the "power-limited-by-economy?" switch.)
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