Version .52 really does turn racial growth rates into an abstraction?

[BlueTemplar]

Read carefully.
You can get money for the state whenever you want from the private sector by making it build ships or mining bases (or upgrade mining bases).
The money your empire makes (state+private) does not depend on the tax rate whatsoever.
(of course a tax higher than 0 slows down your population growth rate, which makes you less money in the long term on planets with quality higher than 50%)

[Tcby]

Templar, I think you are missing the part where mechanics are weighed against game priorities. You cannot easily milk the private sector for large amounts of money -enough to quickly begin exterminating pirates or capturing homeworlds- in the early game, because the amount of money you get from the private sector via ships/retrofits is tied to the consumption of resources.

It is almost always a poor move to expand to a lot of unpopulated planets early game in order to get money from private sector ship purchases. There also aren't many independents unless you jack their frequency up beforehand. In a prewarp start you are also impaired by tech. You also don't want them ordering retrofits worth 100,000 credits, because of the volume of resources that will use up. You need those resources.

Of course if you don't intend on playing aggressively, this will never be an issue because your military costs will be low.

Note: this all assumes you are playing on very hard / extreme.

[ldog]

Human growth rate of 18% is achievable Spidey; 0 taxes and 30 mil pop So yeah, basicly on a new colony.
Net effect is I have an even more diverse population of immigrants instead of being able to fill up my planets with my own species easily (except the homeworld) although one could always use policies to prevent others moving in. It kinda sucks when Securan sluts take over my troop centers, but I've had a few Ikuro overrun pop on some planets and they make nice troops.
Homeworld took under 14 years to fill (I wasn't watching closely but noticed it was maxed by then).
Homeworld and a Securan indy I picked up have maxed and are paying 50% taxes, rest at 0 still. Currently 25 years in.
Still rake in plenty of money and I don't exploit the private sector (I only refit them for normal tech-ups).

TLDR: After playing with it a bit it doesn't seem as bad as I thought it was going to be, although I doubt it is helping the AI any since I presume they still overtax into unhappiness regularly.

[Tcby]

Whilst I'm concerned that it makes conquering alien home worlds even better than before (which I didn't think was possible), I do prefer the increased impact of migration and the removal of a player exploit, in the sense that heavy 0% taxing was something only we could do.

That having been said, I'd really like for the races to be able to achieve their default growth rate.

With medical wonders at your capital I think you can get some pretty fast pop growth through migration - a few percent growth at a maxed out planet seems to amount to more migrants than the couple percent we lose in growth on the tiny new colony.

5% of 20 billion > 10% of 500 million

[ldog]

I don't know that migration occurs off the homeworld fast enough once it is full that it makes a difference raising the growth rate there. (but I don't know that it doesn't...interesting point you make Tcby)
Current game I haven't gotten that wonder yet, but I was planing on using it elsewhere to max another planets pop.

[Tcby]

I also don't know what the migration rate is. I'm just basing this off an experiment I did prior to the 0% patch. I was testing whether the colonization tech growth rate bonus operated in the same fashion as the medical wonders. I had a maxed home world and a new planet that I built the Medicomplex on. I was amazed by the constant stream of passenger ships transporting migrants from my home world. But I didn't record those numbers.

Given that the patch increased the migration rate further, I think it's very promising.

[FingNewGuy]

That having been said, I'd really like for the races to be able to achieve their default growth rate.

I only play at Extreme difficulty anymore and don't have an issue with the default growth rate, TBH. I don't expect the stated default to register at that difficulty. Playing at 999K Research speed, I have time to sit and watch pop growth rate quite a lot. It grows nicely with added sources of various resources (of course). Why? I don't care- it is how the game is played. It changes with the pop growth modifiers of Leader and Colony Governor as well, among other factors. Not sure but it might slow as pop increases?

[BlueTemplar]

What is this colonization tech growth rate bonus exactly?

[Tcby]

From the third colonization tier onwards (so ocean / desert), researching a given colonization tech doubles your base growth rate for the planet type that preceded that tech in the tree.

For example, researching Ocean colonization doubles your base reproduction rate at marshy swamp planets. The upward pointing arrows in the tech tree image below signify that bonus.

upfiles/9/EA9374C01A814E2E8227CE61D40AF3B6.jpg

[BlueTemplar]

Thanks! Should have checked the tech tree myself...

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar
Read carefully.
You can get money for the state whenever you want from the private sector by making it build ships or mining bases (or upgrade mining bases).
The money your empire makes (state+private) does not depend on the tax rate whatsoever.
(of course a tax higher than 0 slows down your population growth rate, which makes you less money in the long term on planets with quality higher than 50%)

Tcby has already answered very well. Please avoid "read carefully", it doesn't read well, and I could have easily said this myself in response ... but this has no place here.

[BlueTemplar]

Sorry, but I got the impression that you didn't read completely my (admittedly quite long) message.

And you can make the private sector give you money without consuming resources :
- Give a construction ship the order to build a mining station on the closest emplacement you can find from the planet (or another location the construction ship AI is programmed to go pick resources from).
- When the construction ship arrives at destination and starts to build the station, the private sector is going to transfer you the money that mining station costs.
- As soon as that happens, scrap the mining station. No components have been built, therefore no resources were consumed.
- Order the construction ship to build the station on the same spot again. Since the construction ship AI is not very smart, it will try to go pick up the resources again even though it has enough to build the station (actually, a construction ship will start building a station even if it doesn't have enough resources to complete the construction, and will be stuck there until a freighter brings it the missing resources - so for this purpose of transferring money, you can just design a construction ship with a single cheapest cargo bay).
- Repeat for as long as you want to extract money from the private sector.
- You can about double the speed of the whole endeavor by having a second construction ship at your planet and ordering it to re-build the mining station as soon as you cancel the first mining station : during that time the first construction ship will be going back to your planet.

- The only things this operation costs :
-- Maintenance money for the construction ship(s).
-- Fuel for the construction ship(s).
-- Resources spent on the construction ship(s). The resources that the construction ship(s) has picked up to build the station will be "stuck" in the cargo of the construction ship(s).
-- Cannot use that spot for a real mining station.
-- Obviously, this does take a small amount of time, so the rate of the money transfer is not infinite (but should be quite high considering the costs).

P.S.: In theory, retrofitting mining stations to a bigger design, then back - shouldn't consume resources either.

[Icemania]

Yes I know all of this. It's an exploit in my humble opinion but of course if you think otherwise, all power to you. Plus what Tcby has already said.

[Tcby]

...If we're talking those methods, might as well just open up the editor and give yourself some money .

Imo it's not worth the time discussing that type of exploit when there are more productive things to talk about. It exists so far outside the rest of the economic system that I don't think it supports your argument that you should always 0 tax. At least, in my mind these discussions are made with the implicit agreement that you are actually playing the game and not levering this type of exploit. If we didn't use that assumption nobody would discuss the economy at all, because tech selling is the bees knees.

But that's just my opinion. I know that everyone has a different idea of what an exploit is, and arguing such points is pretty redundant.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, disregard the overcomplicated method with construction ships :
Retrofitting a mining station to a more expensive design then back achieves the same effect without consuming resources either.

There's a difference with just giving yourself some money, since with this money transfer that money does come from the private sector, which can go bankrupt if I'm not mistaken.

Tech selling is a different issue as it's about the AI not being able to carefully judge the worth of techs.

I'm not sure you can call this an exploit because it uses the core concepts of the game. This is how the economic system is set up. I'd say it's more DW design that is inconsistent.

I can see two ways to solve this inconsistency:
- Merge state and private money. Of course the current tax mechanic will need to be either scrapped or completely redesigned.
- Make mining stations state-owned. This still doesn't solve the issue that you can extract money from the private sector by forcing it to build ships by scrapping those it currently has. Maybe, like for retrofitting, you shouldn't be allowed to scrap private ships either. Of course then you have less power to correct a situation where the private sector screwed up. (Can you force your ships to fire on private sector ships? That could be another loophole.)

[Tehlongone]

The reason it's an exploit is because you shouldn't logically be able to repeatedly force the private sector to upgrade it's stuff, realistically that would never fly without complaint about outrageous waste and corruption.

The private sectors money can only be non-cheatingly claimed through taxes IMO. The economic system may be set up to allow this, but making use of it for the specific purpose of earning cash is abusing the system or exploiting a weak point in the game design.

As for solutions I think those are a bit drastic, it'd be better if all state-sanctioned upgrades were paid for by the state.

[BlueTemplar]

Not including when the private sector ships upgrades to player-designed private ship designs I suppose? Because you could see that as being state-sanctioned too.

Also, this doesn't solve the issue of the player over-engineering mining stations and then spamming them everywhere.
IMHO if you go by this design philosophy, then since the player has the control over the building of the mining stations, he should pay for them.

[Tehlongone]

Well ideally they'd pay up to a certain amount and the rest would be billed to the state for excessively engineered stations.

I don't think the private sector should pay the state for it's upgrades at all, it ought not retrofit them at all without state orders. Rather each ship should get increasingly likely to be sent to a station to be scrapped as it ages, then a new ship will be bought. A compromise might be gradual refits over the span of a decade or more a few ships at a time or maybe just have the costs handled internally in the private sector so governments don't benefit.

Probably won't happen but in the meantime taking advantage of the design is still an exploit, and the game has a lot of possible exploits so it's just up to the player how much he wants to abuse the system for extra advantages. Personally I enjoy the game more if I strictly avoid certain things but you can of course do as you please.

Oh and I think I used the wrong word, I meant state-mandated rather than sanctioned.

[BlueTemplar]

How would the game decide what is an "excessively engineered station"? Note that you can make more, cheaper stations instead for the same effect. It's not like there's a lack of bodies to put mining stations onto...

I don't get it, what is the difference between:
- the ship is retired (not scrapped since then you wouldn't get the resources back) then a new one bought
and :
- the ship is retrofit
except that a retrofit costs less money and takes less time?

As a consequence the private sector would transfer MORE money to the state, and won't solve the player scrapping private sector ships to get money transfered.

Having the money destroyed instead of paid to the state when the private sector buys or retrofits a ship or a station (I'm assuming that's what you mean, since if the costs were handled internally in the private sector, then, by definition, the private sector wouldn't lose any money when building ships or stations) is even more drastic than what I'm proposing (doing it only for mining stations). It is certainly a solution, but then you would lose a big part of the interaction between the state and the private sector, which is supposed to be one of Distant Worlds' defining features.

Now, a third solution that, instead of reducing this interaction, would increase it, would be if the construction ships that build mining stations were controlled by the private sector (as well as mining station upgrades). That would probably make the most sense considering what the game seems aiming for : you can see on the chart here that the private sector is supposed to be totally in charge of resource extraction :
http://www.distant-worlds.wikispot.org/ ... actopedia)
But then, of course, you have the risk of the AI messing things up! You probably should then have a way to ask the AI to focus its efforts on extracting (both by ships and mines) and delivering a specific resource or resources.

[Tehlongone]

The game would not make any judgement at all on the stations, just only pay up to a predetermined amount. Probably just what the AI stations normally cost.

The difference between scraps/refits is that it would take up construction time which I'd find realistic. As long as it doesn't benefit governments I don't care much if it's just refits instead. Of course governments should also receive no money from scrapped ships.
The money earned from ship constructions would be a constant trickle rather than something you can suddenly activate by making a refit, and it would benefit players and AI equally.

Yeah, having the money destroyed would NOT be more drastic than merging private/state money. It also wasn't what I primarily suggested, I want them to slowly have to reconstruct their merchant fleets over decades.
What's wrong with having the money destroyed anyway? Private sector money represents the money held by various space-based businesses if it's destroyed it just simulates money disappearing into the population. It's already generated from nothing (population), there'd be no difference if it also drained back.

I'd be all for making construction ships private, with the option of ordering a construction of a station here and there and asking it to be prioritized (at cost to the government).