Suppressing reverse mitosis

The initial map shown in the previous post was drawn with yEd, a fine and remarkably useful graph editor. I’m still fiddling with that graph but think it is time to export it to SVG and resume via Inkscape. It is time for annotations, score tracks, actoin markers, stock pools etc – all things which aren’t really part of the graph and are thus better performed by a more general purpose tool. Thankfully yEd can export to SVG, making this easy.

Merges are going to be interesting. The basic concept is that when CompanyA connects to CompanyB’s home station, the two companies will merge. Further, the active company will pay out a (Wabash Cannonball) Chicago-like dividend immediately prior to the merge. The two companies will then merge: stock in the active company will trade-up into stock of the parent company 1:1, the incomes will be summed and the track markets for the companies collected. Then the active player will select one of the four minor companies to add to the game and auction a share of that company in the standard fashion (shades of both Wabash Cannonball and Pampas Railroads).

This gets a little more interesting if the new minor’s home base is already connected by track. Obviously the new company should start and merge immediately, but there are several ambiguities and choices in exactly how to do that. For instance, should the minor share be sold, and if so, what should it pay out before it merges? Or should a parent share be sold and the parent then auto-pay? What about if the minor company is already connected by the track of several different um-merged companies? How to resolve that? Should all the connected companies merge? What if there are more than two? Three? Four? Five? Should there be an order of the merging and paying, or should it all happen at once in a grand orgy of unification?

Those are not the only problems. As the graph is roughly circular, gaps between home stations are small which makes early merges easy(er). Additionally, if I copy the double build rule from Pampas Railroads, which I’d like to do, merges could be extremely rapid with the game ending in but a few turns and the first-to-merge having a near unassailable advantage from their early merge-dividend payouts. Thus merges will need to be delayed and possibly the double-build ability constrained.