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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