Creation of a flexible but on variables depending hierarchical structure in Netlogo - structure

Question

i am trying to model the following hierarchical structur in Netlogo:
Imagine a typical company or a a brach of public administration. There is one boss (turtle) on top and a number of employees (turtles) below him/her. There are two variables: span-of-control soc (how many employees can one Boss overwatch) and depth-of-control doc (how many hierarchical levels do exist in the structure). The total number of employees equals soc^doc. The total number of turtles equals 1+soc^doc (1 is the boss).
There are two Choosers in the Netlogo-Interface: soc and doc (ranging from 1 to 4).
What I imagine to code: Depending on the Variables chosen, the structure should arrange itself automatically by the following rule: Create as many links to employees as there have been employees on the higher hierarchical level until the doc is reached.
Example: doc:3 soc:3 1 Boss (always 1 so it can be used like an anchor)
1. Level: 3 links (1*3)
2. Level: 9 Links (3*3)
3. Level: 27 Links (9*3)
4. Level: Over as doc is reached
To realise this, I need to make the turtles kind of read the doc and soc variables and make them create links accordingly but I dont know how.
Here is my code so far:
globals [
information
]
undirected-link-breed [ Informationflows Informationflow ]
breed [ Employees Employee ]
breed [ tasks task ]
breed [ Bosses Boss ]
;#########SETUP########
to setup
clear-all
create-Bosses 1 [ set color red
set size 2 ]
set-default-shape Bosses "person"
ask Bosses [ setxy 0 15 ]
ask patches [ set pcolor white ]
set-default-shape Employees "person"
create-Employees ( span-of-control ^ depth-of-control) [set color blue
set size 2 ] ; absolute Number of Employees
;ask Boss 0 [ create-Informationflow-with random Employee 8] ; IDEA
;ask Employees [ create-Informationflow-with one-of other Employees] ; IDEA
;ask Employees [ create-Informationflow-with Boss 0 ] ; IDEA
repeat 100 [ layout ]
ask Employees [
setxy 0.95 * xcor 0.95 * ycor ]
end
to-report value-of-span-of-control? ; Just an idea
report span-of-control
end
;##########LAYOUT##########
to layout
; layout-radial Employees Informationflows (Boss 0) ;Problem: Boss is fixed in the Center
layout-spring Employees Informationflows 0 10 2
end
If anybody could hint me in the right direction, I would be very thankful.
Kind regards,
Jon

Answer 1

Okay, general coding advice first - do ONE thing, test it and fix it before moving on to the next thing.
Your question about how to 'read' the doc and soc variables makes me think you are very new to NetLogo. If so, please go and do the tutorials that are at the NetLogo site. Creating a chooser with the name 'XYZ' creates a global variable named 'XYZ', there is no additional step to read it. Since you are choosing numbers, you might want to use a slider instead of a chooser.
Try replacing your commented out ask Boss line with this:
ask one-of Boss [ create-Informationflow-with n-of soc Employees ]
It's generally bad practice to use who numbers because turtles can die or be generated in a different order because you change some code and then the who numbers are different. So I used one-of to randomly select any boss (of which there is only one anyway). I similarly used n-of to select Employees to create links with and specified the number n in the n-of to be the value from the soc variable.