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I would like for this to be rethought of how it works. I currently are doing allot of modding of resources and other things and the supply and demand system does not really work. For example I have increased the cost of most industry and construction module cost of steel quite dramatically so this underused and plenty metal in the universe can get used.

The issue is that the demand is not based on the actual demand... frankly I don't know what it is based on. But the game need to be able to queue up mining stations and other things so the game can see the actual demand for all construction resources.

In the current game I'm testing there is practically NO demand for steel despite the empire hardly able to build mining stations and when they do they build anything but mining stations for steel as it is completely oblivious to the demand on this resource.

The reason for this is that constructors can't be queued up for mining stations thus providing the proper demand for those resources.

The game need to be look at the usage of resource over time in order to see the actual demand of a reasource in comparison to the mining rate... if a resources are continually depleted at all places and colonies have high demand I don't get how the game can not see they need more mined of that resource.
In my case the levels of steel bounces between 0-1000 at the capital (no other colonies) and NEVER every gets to full capacity. A mine require about 1000 steel to build... the AI build mines but never steel mines. The capital do produce a small amount of steel at 8%. The rest of the steel income comes from mining ships that work hard on it.

The game need to evaluate resource usage over time and set the demand accordingly, otherwise it is impossible to crate shortages of resources that the AI and civilian part corrects over time and we have to live with total resource abundance all the time with moving the resources from planet to planet as the only constraint. I wonder if this is the intent if so why is there a supply demand feature at all implemented if it does not really mean much?!?

In my test game the supply demand in steel was locked at about +0.21 steel for a few decades before it suddenly dropped to about -1.85 for a reason I don't see why as there was no real change. So the supply and demand really did not change much in that period for some reason and not much changed in the game either as they only built a handful of new mining stations but no steel ones.

It seems the game at least does not consider the demand of building new mining stations as important but might consider things like warships as that is the only thing I cans see changed as the game wanted to start building more of those.

Playing a bit further in one other start using the Humans there was also a recalculation of steel demand when the Ghost Fleet stations was added... I presume this new base added a draw to the system... question is why the human capital did not have a high demand despite never being even close to the desired level like ever.

I also wanted to add that the demand does not always end up like this, sometimes the steel show as being in much higher demand. Not sure if it was because the capital itself produces a small bit of steel or not.

I don't know...

When I manually adjust stock demands, they are appropriately filled up.

For example, if I build an observation station with storage at a star, then set it to maximum Caslon, it will be filled up.

Likewise, if I zero out stock demand, and there is a location that needs the resources, they will be pulled presuming that the resource isn't exceedingly abundantly available elsewhere.

I don't see how that could be if demand is disregarded.

Were you meaning in the economic sense, the price of resources?

No... that is not really it... I presume that if I do it manually the demand of the resource might be recalculated but that will not help the AI... as I do this in a mod to try to create some resource shortages I need the supply and demand figures to show this so the AI correct it and try to build more mines of that resource if there is any.

In this particular case the demand for steel was fixed at +0.21 steel for a very long time even though the actual demand was way below zero in real terms.

I just went into my save and if I manually set it the calculation changes... but that does not help the AI when it is automatically set. In this particular game it did not raise the demand above 2000 on steel for some reason. It normally is set at about 8-9000 in my mod for most starts and most factions.

I believe it is because the colony itself is producing steel. Only at 8% so not that much.

So my question is how the demand is set by the AI... it the human player can fix it is not really that relevant to be honest.

This is a save of this particular game and issue...
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d2d83rr5 ... ij6yb&dl=0

When testing I play with all hands off so I can not interfere with the AI at all... otherwise it is invalidated more or less. In one instance from this save it was locked like this for a few decades. If the Ghost Fleet joins the calculation changes though.

I'm fairly sure I know now why the AI does this... it is mines the particular resource the maintain level will drop about five times. I just checked this. I started a Human run where they had no metal on the planet and it the demand jumped to about 8-9000. It then discovered steel on the planet and it dropped to about 1500-2000 maintain level so it "thinks" that it produces enough for some reason. Now the planet had a 7% steel production so again it was not enough and was again starved on steel as the demand was artificially so low.

I guess there perhaps should be some exemption on the home planet in a pre-warp of lowering the demand for natively produced resources for at least a few decades to avoid the AI ending up in this situation.

Might not happen in the vanilla very often but it can happen there as well I'm sure of it.

I'm learning something new every day... the demand seem to be entirely driven by the demand of each station/colony... which is not bad in and of itself. In this particular case it ends up in a catch 22 logic situation. There are nothing "updating" the demand so it never really understand that one resource are used much much faster than it can be produced because the demand is so extremely low.

Another odd thing is that the stockpile on the mineral page always seem to show double of what I actually have in stock, even if I compile everything from the colonies, mining stations and what is located on freighters in transit.

I just wonder why that is... would it not be better to give the player the actual true numbers?

While I'm at the resources and numbers... it is really not very interesting to know how many total resources I'm short of at a colony. The overview should show this divided between construction/luxuries... so it could show for example 1/8 which means I'm low on one construction and eight luxuries. In general I really don't care about the luxuries but I do care about the construction more often than not. At least I will always be interested in one or the other, very rarely both at the same time.

Just a quick note that there are basic construction resources constantly being consumed at colonies based on population. For sure Steel is one of them. So even if your empire is not building or retrofitting anything there will be consumption.