Private economy no longer works effectively

[TrooperCooper]

Speaking of the economy... anyone else having problems with resort bases not making a real profit? The income from them in legends was absurd, but now mine are operating at a net loss. Might just be me totally stressing my economy with war preparations at the highest difficulty settings at the moment, but my space hotels shouldnt be affected by that...

[MartialDoctor]

Fellas, I understand how to run an economy just fine and this method worked very well prior to Age of Shadows. The reason is the AI would buy new freighters when they had the money. So, for someone who was making good money, like I do, through trading, it worked well. For someone who did not, I can see how the AI may run the person's economy into the ground.

Here is another screenshot showing the private sector now has increased even more. Up to 473K cash on hand they are just sitting on.

[MartialDoctor]

The problem lies in the fact that according to this new formula, the AI is not taking into account trading in their decisions. So, if you have an economy based on trading, which is a necessity at a harsh starting world, the AI won't buy up freighters now even though you are making money (as shown).

[Bingeling]

It could be measure to protect the AI from going bankrupt. In beta I have seen AI empires that are so deep in the red they would never be able to buy anything ever again.

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

This game is on the hardest possible difficulty setting. I would say: adapt. If you don't want to adapt, play easier difficulties. A good start on this difficulty is to think very carefully about every design and expenditure. You have too many mines compared to what the civilians can maintain. And you can't exactly afford to drop taxes to help the civilians either. Welcome to extreme, very harsh [:D]

As you now see with my latest screenshot, I do not have too many mines for the civilians to maintain. I selected the best ones for trade purposes and am making good money through it. It's just not considered in the stats. [:)]

[Raap]

You do have too many mines, if you just consider the private sector's stable income.

You're asking for the private sector to take into account variable income, but how exactly do you want that to happen? Variable income will be wildly different from year to year even in the best of times. And just how will you prevent the private economy from going bankrupt? Sure, you have lots of trade income now, but if some time in the future that trade gets cut off, you'll find yourself with a private economy that is unable to build anything at all.

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Raap
You're asking for the private sector to take into account variable income, but how exactly do you want that to happen? Variable income will be wildly different from year to year even in the best of times. And just how will you prevent the private economy from going bankrupt? Sure, you have lots of trade income now, but if some time in the future that trade gets cut off, you'll find yourself with a private economy that is unable to build anything at all.

Well, I'd expect the AI to do what any company would do. As companies also have to rely on variable income on a regular basis when deciding on future action. To put it simply, you'd just find an average of what this variable income was over a past time period, it seems the time period is a year on the statistics. If demand remains the same and as long as no mining posts are lost, this amount will actually not change as much as you imply.

[Bingeling]

I believe what the AI do not know how to do well is to downsize. It won't start scrapping mines to save maintenance. It will scrap troops, the privates may scrap ships to save money, but in general, it does not seem to be able to downsize. I suspect that ship retirement is due to less population, though...

I had beta games that went very wrong for the galaxy, and the results were massive negative cash on hand for both civilian and state economy. I think the only thing that stops that from happening in release, is that things don't go that very wrong anymore.

Private companies can both gamble on future income, fire employees, and file for bankruptcy.

[Raap]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor

ORIGINAL: Raap
You're asking for the private sector to take into account variable income, but how exactly do you want that to happen? Variable income will be wildly different from year to year even in the best of times. And just how will you prevent the private economy from going bankrupt? Sure, you have lots of trade income now, but if some time in the future that trade gets cut off, you'll find yourself with a private economy that is unable to build anything at all.

Well, I'd expect the AI to do what any company would do. As companies also have to rely on variable income on a regular basis when deciding on future action. To put it simply, you'd just find an average of what this variable income was over a past time period, it seems the time period is a year on the statistics. If demand remains the same and as long as no mining posts are lost, this amount will actually not change as much as you imply.

I'd trust a human player with that method certainly, but I'm not so sure about the AI. As Binge says, the AI has limited capability of downsizing, and generally can't be expected to make very complex decisions.

As for the variable stuff...It's kinda hard to determine in normal empire mode, since there's no listing of the private sector's 'bonus income'. But in pirate mode you can, amongst other things, see your income from Mining. Basically, if you build a lot of ships one year it will be close to 0. If you don't build any ships, it can be up at 40-50K.

There are so many factors that can affect that stuff. In particular, as mentioned, the player building bases and ships. First because the resources used can't be sold elsewhere, and secondly because freighters will be needed to transport it to the various destinations and thus can't be tasked with trading.

So again, the way the current system is made you can't really count on bonus income. Too many variables, and the system isn't 'realistic' enough. Nor can one ever expect the AI to be good enough to handle potential tough spots in such a varying economy. Better to just keep the current system and instead find some way of preventing base maintenance costs from becoming so high they hinder private sector expansion.

[BigWolfChris]

Personally I would have a couple less mines and rely abit more on mining ships for resources until your private sector is in a better position

Think of it this way, you have 1 freighter servicing 14 resource bases, 6 of which are gas mining stations, which isn't needed for the few ships being used
I would guess most of the trade income you are getting are from foreign freighters, meaning once the AI's own economy picks up and they start using their own bases you'll lose that also (unless you have independents nearby)
One gas station on a caslon planet would suffice for you atm while you have gas mining ships picking up any slack in other gases not on that planet

Also around 2.5k maintenance each for those bases seems really high for such a young game, especially for the difficulty settings you are using
Could you post your fits please?

[Raap]

Yeah, it is high. I'm still at <1K per mine.

[Erik Rutins]

Thanks for uploading the save file, sorry if I was a bit curt with you. This is a unique combination of settings and we'll take a look to see what the AI can do better here.

FYI the AI does know how to downsize both the state and private sectors but there is always room for it to make a bad or wrong decision. We improved many areas of the private sector in Shadows though. The Legends private sector, I can tell you for a fact, would not work at all in Shadows. It was not nearly smart enough to handle the new resource demands, the new pirates and smuggling, sub-light commerce, etc. One of the major steps in Shadows development after we implemented Pirates and Pre-warp gameplay was to make the AI work again as we broke it in multiple different ways by going outside the previous Distant Worlds "box". Optimization of the AI once it was working reasonably well continued right up to release, with help from many of the testers. I'm sure there are corner cases like this one where it needs more work, but overall I also know that it is much improved.

By the way, Extreme difficulty? Let me know how that goes. That new comprehensive difficulty slider exists in no small part thanks to your feedback. [;)]

Regards,

- Erik

[MartialDoctor]

Yes, I agree with all of your posts that the way the AI works, these settings are probably much more effective. It just frustrates me because it prevents me from growing my economy like I was able to previously.

And, yes, BigWolf, my trade income is all generated from foreign freighters. However, I have found that, if you have large neighbors, they also have large resource demands; ones that they tend to not be able to supply on their own. This is especially true with fuel, steel (and similar high demand goods) and rarer luxury goods; they are always needed / wanted. In all of my previous games, I always had a prosperous economy due to trade.

I will mess with the mining designs as you guys suggest. Those are one of the aspects that I tend to let the AI handle but maybe I should edit them myself.

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Thanks for uploading the save file, sorry if I was a bit curt with you. This is a unique combination of settings and we'll take a look to see what the AI can do better here.

No need to apologize; my title was unnecessarily blunt. It's obvious you guys put a lot of time into AI improvements and, honestly, the improvements are obvious. The AI is much more effective now than it was before. Everyone involved did a great job there!

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
By the way, Extreme difficulty? Let me know how that goes. That new comprehensive difficulty slider exists in no small part thanks to your feedback. [;)]

Yeah, I think you guys have done a great job so far. I haven't seen the combat AI in action yet but the way the AI handles overall expansion, growth, and the big picture is very good now.