u/Loginaut — reddlx

Trapped at the gate during a nightmare layover

Hi All,

I just wanted to share about a layover nightmate that happened this week. I learned a lot about United's inflexible systems, and I have the perfect recipie in case you want to get trapped at the gate for 14 hours.

My wife took an Istanbul -> Athens -> DC flight a couple days ago. The partner carrier noticed a mismatch between her passport and reservation, but printed her tickets anyway and let her on the first flight. They didn't change anything, even after she asked.

Because the layover is >12 hours she only got the first leg boarding pass (per the United phone rep this is policy). She is not a US or EU passport holder, so security wouldn't let her out of the gate area without the second boarding pass.

I spent 4 hours on the phone with United support, and their neither the support staff nor their supervisor could do anything because she had completed the first flight. Her only option was to talk to a boarding agent at 7 am the next day, which meant remaining in the gate area for ~9 hours overnight.

My solution was to cancel and re-purchase the second leg so that she could get a boarding pass, go get some food, and visit the lounge. I spent another hour on the phone explaining this to a United rep yesterday, and United ultimately refused to refund the price difference.

So all you need is a >12 hour overnight layover, a fat-fingered data entry, and a non-US/EU passport. Then you too can be trapped at the gate overnight!

Let me know if you have any suggestions on who to reach out to about this, we've already called united and filled out the refund form with both confirmation numbers. I think all we can do now is complain about it online :-)

reddit.com

u/Loginaut — 5 days ago

▲ 47 r/StrategyGames

A Tiny Grand Strategy Game set in the Bronze Age

Hi all! I've been working through the idea for a tiny grand strategy, at the level of cities and early empire building during the Bronze Age. Right now it's a tiny test map with four cities and two production chains:

Nothing --> Goods (things like baskets, mud brick)
Grain --> Beer
Copper+ Tin --> Bronze
More to come (e.g., wool --> fabric --> textiles, bronze --> weapons)

I've split each city into 3 estates: the Crown (player), the Temple, and the Market. This leads to some interesting behavior, where you need to balance everyone's share of gold and resources. It also leads to some non-intuitive strategies, like the player hoarding grain and jacking the price up to drain wealth out of the Market and Temple.

So far I've built a ledger system (img 1) to track the flow of goods, autonomous traders (img 2) that autonomously buy low and sell high between cities, which can significantly impact prices. Since money is a fixed resource, cities that export expensive goods (Gasur produces Bronze from Tin and Copper imports) can drain all the silver out of neighboring cities (img 3).

I think the next thing I'll implement is similar to the Victoria 3 construction loop, where you use labor + commodities to produce buildings, which drives up the prices and sinks goods. On top of that, allocating workers between construction, security, and producing commodities in urban buildings.

I'm also interested in how one could economically dominate a neighbor; for example, paying them an annual stipend to keep trade flowing. Or calling in a foreign debt as a justification for war. I think there are a lot of options for a "materialist diplomacy" if everything can be computed in terms of a silver cost/benefit.

Right now I'm stuck trying to build a UI that pulls out the game state in a readable way. If you have any ideas or suggestions for the UI (or game in general), I'd be happy to discuss. This the most complex project I've worked on so far, and I'm hoping it will be as fun to play as it is to build. Right now I'm concerned about the pacing being off and overwhelming the player with information.

u/Loginaut — 12 days ago

▲ 7 r/gamedesign+1 crossposts

Designing Gameplay Through Economics

I'm working on a prototype where gameplay is driven by economic forces. Right now I've been looking at a simple price model,

p = base × demand / supply.

I was experimenting with grain, which is harvested once and decays over time. I found some interesting behavior:

If there is just enough grain for the year, the price is constant
A surplus means the price starts low and drops significantly
A shortage means the price starts high and rises quickly until it hits the maximum

This seems like a natural way to interface with trade and other mechanics, and it leads to some possibly interesting gameplay like engineered grain shortages.

I'm curious if anyone else has designed/run into interesting gameplay coming out of pure economics. I think Victoria's markets-as-a-game design is really interesting, and I recently picked up (and enjoyed) Offworld Trading Company.

I recently wrote a blog post with a lot more math, if you're into that kind of thing: https://karum.dev/2026/06/11/grain-prices.html

u/Loginaut — 2 months ago