ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
Clearly there is a balance to be struck and that's our job to get the balance right, where between the abundance of resources and the effectiveness of the private sector, you feel that you can create a nicely working economy in peace-time, but when your lines of supply are being raided and your mining stations destroyed or captured, some resource may start to become scarce.
First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.
There's a lot to consider in all these cases and a lot to balance, but done properly it should create a lot of interesting situations and challenges when your empire is pushed out of equilibrium, without making things frustrating to plan and optimize.
As in DW1, there are also a few resources that are ultra-rare, perhaps only one or two sources in the entire galaxy. These are most likely, if trade is denied, to cause a conflict. The others are more likely to have the effects described above during a conflict.
Good to hear the general idea is to have DW2 push empires out of "equilibrium," so to speak, as I felt it didn't happen nearly as much as it should've in DW1.
If this not the case, it would be rather redundant to track so many different types of resources. Abundance defeats the purpose of a detailed economic simulation, whereas scarcity amplifies it: shortages encourage empires to either maintain positive relations with neighboring powers for their supply, or to outright invade in pursuit of acquiring their fair share through brute force. Control over the acquisition and flow of precious resources is historically one of the most fundamental causes of strife, and if done right in Distant Worlds 2, would most certainly put its complex economic simulation to use.
Here's to a carefully balanced DW2.
