Is there too much money in this game?

[Gareth_Bryne]

Yea, he doth[:D].

[Beag]

ORIGINAL: onomastikon

ORIGINAL: Beag

so far there have been 5 pages on no ideas on how to fix this.

Surely you jest.

Considering most posts were useless just like that you made, I´d say few comments so far were actually useful for the discussion. Most were whining.

What´s your idea then to fix it then? As in, "to improve the game I would do this:" ?

[onomastikon]

ORIGINAL: Beag

Considering most posts were useless just like that you made

I see.
Considering the fact that you missed all of the ideas the first time you "read", and considering the fact that your tone does not lend itself to an overabundance of sympathy, I think I won't be expending too much more energy on you. Good day.

[Bebop Cola]

I wouldn't overlook the option of making trade more meaningful and robust. This would tie in somewhat with any resource modifications, but it seems reasonable that if trade actually meant buying and selling something that's actually needed, then money might be depleted as a factor of acquiring needed resources.

I'm not sure if this would be best facilitated by a global decrease in the mining rate(perhaps as a dynamic factor of resource price reflecting decreased private sector production due to lack of profit in that resource), an increase in general consumption rate on planets, expanding trade to include manufactured trade goods, or some balance of all of the above. It does make a certain sense that most planetary bodes of any size have resources to mine, as a barren galaxy would be fairly boring, but either the consumption rate is too low or the production rates of mines is too high. The long and short, however, is that the economic system needs to be balanced such that there are more supply and demand factors. Right now it is too trivial for everyone to acquire the resources they need without trade, with the exception of the ultra-rare resources of course.

That said, I think it is somewhat reasonable for a galactic empire to have a wealth of raw resources at their fingertips, so my suggestion would be to increase the basic consumption rate on planets of both strategic and luxury resources to reflect constant private sector use, then expand the trade system to include trade goods manufactured from raw resources in a future update. Once you have trade goods it would make sense to decrease the colony development bonus from raw luxury resources and give that over to the trade goods. Just having Bifurian Silk shouldn't do much for my colony, but having silk clothing or something might. Having Mortalen Bifurian Silk clothing, however, would be extra special. Who knew those lizards could make a decent shirt, but I guess silk shirts would be cool and comfortable on a desert world.

With trade goods, your empire has something to buy that they can't just mine. Trade goods that one empire or another makes extremely well means they have something valuable to sell, but also a priority demand for a certain raw resource. In either case, trade goods have a price markup several times what the raw resource costs so they can drain private sector coffers, reducing the available revenue that can be taxed by the State sector or used to purchase additional private sector ships.

[Beag]

ORIGINAL: onomastikon

I see.
Considering the fact that you missed all of the ideas the first time you "read", and considering the fact that your tone does not lend itself to an overabundance of sympathy, I think I won't be expending too much more energy on you. Good day.

You realize that was yet another useless post about the topic, right? Post suggestions then like I did. I think any idea is welcome. Just not spam posts. I don´t waste time.

Bebop you suggest factories for producing goods then? It´s an option, but the problem is, IMO the focus of the game from the start was a big map with automatization on several functions after a certain point. So, if adding the complexity means more taks for the AI instead of the player, I don´t think it´s fun. If the game was balanced and made for 250 stars maybe, but for 1000... dunno. It was one of the things I hated in Victoria 2, yes there are raw materials, yes there are factories, but even them most of the time you´re planning military conquest to add goods to your portfolio, which the AI will then allocate automatically. While Victoria 1 had simpler economy, but you actually interacted with it.

IMO the best options would be to increase base price on goods, increase resource demand for more advanced components and improve AI building and research priorities. Probably adding some kind of switch so that after most of the galaxy is colonized (for example, aove 50-75%) it ceases to build anything smaller than destroyers and focus on large ships and bases. Also, some other stuff (like making foreign populations a burden specially if you´re at war if the parent empire; as I once suggested, more rebellions, less taxes, extra chance for sabotage etc etc). Really dunno how to improve the current trade model apart from only making trade possible if the empires have trade agreements and are friendly, or decrease overall trade revenue.

[Bebop Cola]

ORIGINAL: Beag
Bebop you suggest factories for producing goods then? It´s an option, but the problem is, IMO the focus of the game from the start was a big map with automatization on several functions after a certain point. So, if adding the complexity means more taks for the AI instead of the player, I don´t think it´s fun. If the game was balanced and made for 250 stars maybe, but for 1000... dunno. It was one of the things I hated in Victoria 2, yes there are raw materials, yes there are factories, but even them most of the time you´re planning military conquest to add goods to your portfolio, which the AI will then allocate automatically. While Victoria 1 had simpler economy, but you actually interacted with it.

Not factories as something the player has to build, no. Trade goods are produced automatically in response to having a stockpile of one or more resource(luxury or strategic) available. If the stockpile isn't present, the good doesn't get produced. If the stockpile is present, a chunk gets reserved for a particular time segment, after which it is removed and a volume of the trade good is created. The trade good itself is then either reserved for domestic use or flagged for shipping/trade. Rinse and repeat.

It seems to me that all state sector wealth flows from the private sector, and the private sector has no real controls on how fast money grows within that system. Within a theoretical closed system of a single empire's economy, one might propose that money grows as a factor of population and intra-empire trade. Population certainly grows within the DW worlds system, but trade often feels artificial and illusory.

Do planetary populations actually consume resources at a sufficient rate and in sufficient volumes to promote the kind of trade that appears to be happening? Does anyone know exactly which resources are consumed by a planetary population(just luxuries or some strategic too?) and at what rate? I've seen the stockpile of an ultra-rare drain over time after losing access to a resource node, and I don't think it was because it was traded away. Seems like it might be relatively easy to test, so I might do so this weekend unless someone already knows.

Update: OK, so my preliminary testing shows that a planetary population appears to consume resources at a rate of 43 units per month. For the most part these will be luxury resources, but strategic resources will be consumed as well if they are a race's special social resource such as humans and gold/emeros crystal. My testing conditions were Human empire, single planet. No ships, bases, or resources to replenish the planetary stockpile. Planet size was 32.1k and planet quality was 100%. Human population was 22 billion or so.

In my opinion, this is both too slow of a consumption rate and a much too restricted list of resources to consume.

[Fishman]

Honestly, the reasons "trade" occurs in the gameworld at all is somewhat of a mystery. Since every resource in the universe appears to have a single galactic price everywhere, it's not clear why, exactly, goods move, or where the money actually comes from when this occurs. But it seems a bit late to radically redesign the entire economy.

As for making "everything cost more", I'm not entirely sure that's a good idea, either: The private sector's autobuild already has this maddening tendency to devour practically all the resources in the galaxy spamming thousands of freighters to do GODKNOWSWHAT, and often this can result in a game-ending scenario in which the game will seize up and DIE just for you LOOKING at the giant mess it has caused: The moment you LOOK at the giant clusterfuck it has created by queuing hundreds of ships at a single spaceport, the game will hang and die.

[Registered55]

the ships only having one singular fuel doesn't really help, like i said on page 4 (had no feed back on anything i said....wasn't that bad of read was it?) ships should have CREW, and they need to be paid, bigger size ship class needs larger crews which cost more finance, logistics also need to be paid (ancillary staff that administrate the military) you can't just keep adding ships to ones military, there is such a system refereed to as "Command and Control"

these things alone would REALLY help this game a lot (mid-late stages for sure)

an arbitrary logistic system i hate, despise even...but logistics done in a realistic manner is not only fine but a welcome piece of realism (authenticity) most don't like logistics in RTS games because it's to arbitrary, but if based on realistic factors, than logistics can be a system that an RTS game shines upon.

[Fishman]

I really doubt military administration costs would become that big an issue...I mean, how many ships do you HAVE?

[jpwrunyan]

The superior solutions will ultimately be the ones simplest to implement which depends upon the developer. We can only speculate. But I wager improvements to AI behavior are orders of magnitude more difficult to implement than simply adjusting the current costs and scale of expenses. Adding new mechanics to the game to address issues are, frankly speaking, just as likely to make it worse as much as make it better. These basic truths are so self-evident that if you still fail to grasp them then no further discussion will be of any use. Your parents and/or public school system have failed you. It is too much to ask me to repair the damage. I will instead spend my time rejoicing for those who do get it (of which happily there are many).

So now what we need is a dictator, so long as I am the dictator.

[Beag]

For a small developer indeed large changes are impossible IMO, too much tweaking needed. But what increase should be done then? Increase overall costs of resources, decrease resource avilability, increase resource amounts for more advanced components...?

[Registered55]

six pages now, be nice to know how "Erik" feels on this, or any official thoughts on this discussion from matrix..... is this entire thread in vain or not?

personally i think we can do this ourselves... a few extra mod options is all we need, or make the ones available already, have the ability to go in the negative range!!!

just give us that and we're set to go, and of course if we break the economy because we're modding crazy numbers then we're to blame of course.

now that would be very easy todo.... VERY EASY, to easy in fact, making me pause and think perhaps there's a reason why we don't already have these options..... i still think that the AI will not function to well if resources and money wasn't very abundant in availability, which if this is the case...... not good. (I really do hope that i am WRONG)

[jpwrunyan]

I agree. I am not mod-crazy but just externalizing component configs would allow me to test some of my assertions. And from the devs perspective they could crowdsource a lot of improvements and testing.

Offloading internal configurations into external files loaded at runtime is tedious work, but it also doesnt require any advanced knowledge like ai decision logic does. Of course, on our end it will increase the load time of the game. And there might be weird bugs if you load a game after modding certain elements (like if you made life support values less and loaded a game with ships that are now oversized). But still.

And as long as this thread continues it will only emphasize the desire for these changes. Thats a good thing. Its not like we have devolved into discussing our favorite star trek episodes which is usually what 6 page threads on other forums are. And Id like to think we are par for the course on forum flames.

[unclean]

ORIGINAL: Registered55
personally i think we can do this ourselves... a few extra mod options is all we need, or make the ones available already, have the ability to go in the negative range!!!

That would be really cool, I suspect that since the too much money/resources thing has been an issue since ROTS that the devs have a good reason for not messing with it too much, like it would break the AI on some galaxy settings or something. But no harm done of it's just modding right?

And oddly this seems like one of the few games where less money would actually help the AI more than hinder it.

[Beag]

Well that the AI can get huge sums of cash as well, is a fact. It does depend on wars and such, but any AI that manages to get 8 colonies or more, can usually buy tech for hefty prices (which means large reserves); got 300k from a tech from ackdarians who had 10 colonies. It does bother me a bit, with such reserves they should do some crash research.

Let´s hope the devs open up more files for modding.