So I've played this patch for a few hours now and it's clear that all ships cost pretty much the same in number of alloys as they cost in minerals in 2.1. While these prices were fine for 2.1 because it was easy to maximise mineral production, it is not as easy now with alloy production.
Lets consider this for a moment: if ship prices are unchanged from 2.1 then the time it takes you to build a navy of a certain strength also shouldn't have changed much, right? Well, base alloy production consumes 3 minerals per alloy produced. You can bring that down to 2 minerals per alloy on a mid to late game forge world with ministry of production, +5% specialist output tradition, some research and high stability. Based off of this you could say that ships are now defacto twice as expensive at best, including their upkeep since it is also paid in alloys.
Now the above argument holds as long as we can say we produce roughly the same amount of minerals as we did before. I would argue that this is the case, or even that we bring in less. In 2.1 and earlier by 2300 on a not particularly lucky start I could bring in anywhere between 500-750 minerals per month before upkeep costs by 2300, and this would be the beginning of a snowball as well as around this point I would be in the process of upgrading all of the mineral mines that were built. In my 2.2 game on same settings as my 2.1 games the mineral income is now plateauing for me at 500 per month, even after completing tier 5 +% miner output research and specialising some dedicated miner worlds, because I am running out of mining districts and have already ran out of planets to exploit that don't require 5000 energy spent on terraforming. In my 2.2 game at 2300 I owned 9 planets, and 4 of those were size 20 or above. I am also quite convinced that asteroids that spawn with trade value in 2.2 would've spawned with minerals in 2.1, further reducing amount of minerals accessible in space.
It is important also to note the impact of consumer goods. While they exchange on a 1:1 basis with minerals (and you can boost that further with specialisation and research), I'd say that the demand for consumer goods tends to be a lot higher now simply because of much larger pop amounts on your planets than in 2.1. This means that you are spending more minerals on consumer goods, and therefore less minerals on alloys which leads to less ships. While pops are now divided into strata, this really doesn't mean much in this case, because if you want your alloy production to be as high as it can then you will be running a LOT of specialists which will consume 0.5 consumer goods per pop on standard empire policy settings (in 2.1 it would be 0.75 minerals per pop in same conditions), but if you consider that you could produce up to 12 minerals (or more) with one pop in 2.1, but one metallurgist produces ~6 alloys on a specialised and upgraded forge world, you at the end still arrive at higher pop costs per unit of alloys produced than 2.1 asked per unit of minerals produced.
I sort of had a hunch that something like this was happening when I was watching the pre-release dev clash and it seemed like nobody in that match (aside from Johan abusing then broken machine empire to get double the pops of everyone else) could make it past a 10k fleet by mid game, and this was likely with a lot of effort put into alloy production in the first place (can't tell because there weren't any in depth analyses made of the dev's economies), but also quite expansive empires that should've brought in enough resources previously to start a serious military build up. Wiz even commented on how small the fleets in general were. The reason was that building ships got defacto 3 times more expensive in the early game (at best brought down to 2 times later with the proper specialisation), and to top it all off the supply of minerals that you could spend building ships was now also lower due to ballooning pop costs.
The other thing worth mentioning is that researches that reduced upgrade time and cost are now beyond relevant, but also don't scale well enough. Upgrading now carries a really hefty alloy price tag and time investment, even for minor upgrades like a single shield level upgrade, if you consider how scarce alloys are. And now there is only a single upgrade (Doctrine: Refit Standards) that's a tier 3 tech and only reduces this by 20%. A 7k strength fleet without the upgrade is looking at a spend of 3.5k alloys to simply upgrade its shields without this upgrade, but with the upgrade this same fleet will still cost 2.8k alloys. Again, this might've been less bad if it wasn't for the fact that we do not have enough purchasing power for fleets in 2.2.
I seriously think we need to consider at least halving all alloy costs in the next patch to account for this loss of purchasing power, because while the Khan didn't awake in my current game, I've no doubt he would've swept through the whole galaxy with ease since nobody can afford to build a decent fleet. Never mind the crises.
Lets consider this for a moment: if ship prices are unchanged from 2.1 then the time it takes you to build a navy of a certain strength also shouldn't have changed much, right? Well, base alloy production consumes 3 minerals per alloy produced. You can bring that down to 2 minerals per alloy on a mid to late game forge world with ministry of production, +5% specialist output tradition, some research and high stability. Based off of this you could say that ships are now defacto twice as expensive at best, including their upkeep since it is also paid in alloys.
Now the above argument holds as long as we can say we produce roughly the same amount of minerals as we did before. I would argue that this is the case, or even that we bring in less. In 2.1 and earlier by 2300 on a not particularly lucky start I could bring in anywhere between 500-750 minerals per month before upkeep costs by 2300, and this would be the beginning of a snowball as well as around this point I would be in the process of upgrading all of the mineral mines that were built. In my 2.2 game on same settings as my 2.1 games the mineral income is now plateauing for me at 500 per month, even after completing tier 5 +% miner output research and specialising some dedicated miner worlds, because I am running out of mining districts and have already ran out of planets to exploit that don't require 5000 energy spent on terraforming. In my 2.2 game at 2300 I owned 9 planets, and 4 of those were size 20 or above. I am also quite convinced that asteroids that spawn with trade value in 2.2 would've spawned with minerals in 2.1, further reducing amount of minerals accessible in space.
It is important also to note the impact of consumer goods. While they exchange on a 1:1 basis with minerals (and you can boost that further with specialisation and research), I'd say that the demand for consumer goods tends to be a lot higher now simply because of much larger pop amounts on your planets than in 2.1. This means that you are spending more minerals on consumer goods, and therefore less minerals on alloys which leads to less ships. While pops are now divided into strata, this really doesn't mean much in this case, because if you want your alloy production to be as high as it can then you will be running a LOT of specialists which will consume 0.5 consumer goods per pop on standard empire policy settings (in 2.1 it would be 0.75 minerals per pop in same conditions), but if you consider that you could produce up to 12 minerals (or more) with one pop in 2.1, but one metallurgist produces ~6 alloys on a specialised and upgraded forge world, you at the end still arrive at higher pop costs per unit of alloys produced than 2.1 asked per unit of minerals produced.
I sort of had a hunch that something like this was happening when I was watching the pre-release dev clash and it seemed like nobody in that match (aside from Johan abusing then broken machine empire to get double the pops of everyone else) could make it past a 10k fleet by mid game, and this was likely with a lot of effort put into alloy production in the first place (can't tell because there weren't any in depth analyses made of the dev's economies), but also quite expansive empires that should've brought in enough resources previously to start a serious military build up. Wiz even commented on how small the fleets in general were. The reason was that building ships got defacto 3 times more expensive in the early game (at best brought down to 2 times later with the proper specialisation), and to top it all off the supply of minerals that you could spend building ships was now also lower due to ballooning pop costs.
The other thing worth mentioning is that researches that reduced upgrade time and cost are now beyond relevant, but also don't scale well enough. Upgrading now carries a really hefty alloy price tag and time investment, even for minor upgrades like a single shield level upgrade, if you consider how scarce alloys are. And now there is only a single upgrade (Doctrine: Refit Standards) that's a tier 3 tech and only reduces this by 20%. A 7k strength fleet without the upgrade is looking at a spend of 3.5k alloys to simply upgrade its shields without this upgrade, but with the upgrade this same fleet will still cost 2.8k alloys. Again, this might've been less bad if it wasn't for the fact that we do not have enough purchasing power for fleets in 2.2.
I seriously think we need to consider at least halving all alloy costs in the next patch to account for this loss of purchasing power, because while the Khan didn't awake in my current game, I've no doubt he would've swept through the whole galaxy with ease since nobody can afford to build a decent fleet. Never mind the crises.
