dostillevi wrote: Wed Apr 20, 2022 1:12 am
Fundamentally, the issue is that if resource scarcity isn't a meaningful aspect of the game, then the entire civilian economy of individual freighters and mining stations is basically meaningless. The civilian economy is a key differentiator between this game and it's peers, so from my perspective, having meaningful resource scarcity is key to what makes this game enjoyable and more complex than others I could play.
So resource dumping, in that context, signifies an economy where resource scarcity isn't a problem. It's so little of a problem that the following is routine:
1. A station dips below the desired amount of a resource by a few ticks, and requests to be restocked immediately. E.g. a mining station has 2389 of 2400 caslon and orders a restock.
2. A freighter of any size picks up the order, jettisons whatever cargo it might have been holding (including any Caslon), and generally picks up the resource at a Caslon mining station. Note that there's no meaningful use of planets or starbases as economic hubs and stores of resources - most of the time resources are delivered directly from mining station to destination.
3. The amount picked up by the freighter varies, but is always somewhat more than was initially requested, presumably to account for anticipated continued demand. In the case of Caslon, the amount picked up is often an order of magnitude more than the amount requested. In our example our freighter might easily pick up 800 Caslon.
4. The frighter burns caslon as it flies to the destination station. It burns roughly 11 Caslon doing so in our example (hint, this isn't the first time the station has been short 11 caslon).
5. The freighter drops off 11 caslon, delivering exactly too the amount the station wants on hand. Instead of having two separate values, the station has one that represents both the amount it desires, and the amount below which a shortage is triggered.
6. The freighter tops off it's tanks from the station before leaving - the station is now short 11 Caslon.
7. The freighter sitting outside the station might even pick up the station's new order, dump it's 789 remaining Caslon, and fly off to fulfill the new shortage.
This is most egregious with Caslon but should be a concern in general - if it isn't, there's no meaningful gameplay impact from having a civilian economy at all. There are several impacts of this behavior:
A. Freighters are constantly occupied with delivering very small amounts of resources to stations, since a station will trigger a shortage as soon as it uses any of it's stockpile. This means fewer freighters in circulation to deliver to shipyards and planets that consume lots of resources.
B. Consumption appears to be much higher than it actually is. Turning off Caslon reserves at mining stations will drastically cut down on the Caslon demand, even though those stations aren't consuming Caslon themselves unless they're under attack. This incentivizes the player to build more mining stations than needed.
C. Shipyards are frequently without Caslon, and new ships need to immediately travel to a Caslon mining station (often full) and refuel there.
D. The overall quantity of resources in the game has been balanced around dumping. Most empires are swimming in resources, but have trouble getting them to where they're needed.
The solution is quite simple:
1. All stations have two thresholds for each resource used - the quantity that triggers a shortage and a delivery request, and the quantity that the station wants to receive. The station should receive much more than the shortage amount, so that freighters need to make fewer runs, with more resources, and there are fewer shortages for small amounts of goods.
2. Stations should be allowed to go over-capacity. If a freighter shows up with more than the station's desired amount, it should take it all. If this pushes the station over it's cargo limit, build consequences around that instead of spacing the excess. Generally though, stations should keep a reserve of empty space to accommodate freighter overages without going over capacity, and station storage amounts should be balanced around this concept.
3. Freighters should prioritize balancing resource availability at planets and stations, and then deliver resources from those hubs to other locations when demand is triggered. This hub and spoke model is significantly more efficient than freighters traveling directly from mining stations to mining stations. This also turns planets into true trade hubs, rather than simply destinations for retrofitting and construction. I think this might go part of the way to fixing trade income.
4. Interstellar relations should respect the hub and spoke model. Basic trade agreements should only allow freighters to trade goods at hubs, while an advanced level of trade might allow another empire to pick up resources directly from mining stations.
With all this in place, the amount of freighters produced by the civilian economy should drop significantly, the amount of resources "consumed" should drop significantly, and the amount of resources generally available to be mined could be reduced significantly. All of this increases game performance, improves realism, and adds to the strategic layer of the game.
. Switching off the trip requests before cap would be a good enough solution.