Energy Credits...Either too many or not enough

[Spectral]

Hey Guys,
I've sank 113 hours into stellaris so far and have played a good few games into the late stage.

I feel like energy credits storage is too limited. I feel like I am either overflowing with energy or am struggling to keep up with requirements.
This is mainly in the mid/late period. Early game the balance is pretty decent.

What I find happens is during peace when my mega-fleets are docked, im running a pretty hefty surplus. Soon as I'm at war and everyone's off fighting, I start running a small/mediumish negative. Because our current 'store' for energy is quite small my effective ability to wage war gets a smaller and smaller window as the game gets into the later stages because my energy store remains the same, while my fleet and incomes grow.

If you compare energy credits directly to mineral credits, you can store a LOT more mineral credits. Despite the fact the gameplay and flow of the game will encourage you to stockpile a lot more energy and NEED a lot more energy when it is required in surplus.

Long story short, I feel like the amount of energy we can store needs to be doubled and we need an ability to store it (like mineral silos) to even further increase it.
I actually find it quite funny that you can build silos to boost mineral storage. I dont think my minerals ever go over about 2k, im constantly spending them as they come in.

Thoughts?

 

[Iamscotty]

Personally i think the money limit is a little silly. At the moment if you say have a 4000 credit limit, and you do a trade that takes you over that. The extra amount goes POOF

 

[Spectral]

I'm fine with a limit, it just needs to be higher

 

[Incompetent]

It's fine having a low baseline storage, but we should be able to build energy storage buildings like we can with minerals.

 

[beckermt]

I'm fine with a limit, it just needs to be higher

If it were higher, you wouldn't actually need to contend with it, would you? Thereby making it superfluous.

 

[Aatxe360]

Battery Bank. Energy credits are already superfluous in peacetime.

 

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

Limited credits helps a lot to actually make sure that you can't just maintain an oversize fleet during a longtime war. War is supposed to be hard on the economy if you could have a huge energy storage that problem wouldn't exist making war economy something you would not need to worry about.

 

[midget_roxx]

I just hate how it can bounce between making steady profit to huge deficits.

 

[ststmitch]

The best way to get around this is to take a couple planets from a fallen empire. in two separate games, I've done this and after kept at least one of the new planets as a core world and then I could do whatever I want. In the most recent playthrough, I took a four section ring world and repopulated it with my primary species and later was able to maintain a positive credit flow while my entire 126k fleet was fighting in a later war with 0 tax on all of my sectors. Unfortunately the save game broke, possibly because one of my sectors had a energy credit reserve of over 20k.

 

[Promethian]

If you are rocking a giant fleet that is tanking your energy maybe you could dedicate some planet space somewhere to energy. No. No. Thats just crazy talk.

 

[vodkaholic]

I actually like that fleet maintenance is expensive as it is, but a better balance can be found in terms of how much energy you can store. It's currently just too low, you should be rewarded for building up a decent bank as much as a good stream of income.

 

[Dracko81]

Fleet maintenance also uses minerals, are you running negative minerals?

If you are then you need to consider you planet layouts.

If not then you probably have too much mineral production and not enough energy production.

The only reason I would need more storage is so I can terraform planets faster. 1500 creds to terraform is slow work.

Don't blame your ships for poor planning.

 

[FlyingDutchman]

You can switch buildings on your planet to produce energy instead of what ever they are producing during war time to balance your energy loss and focus your sector(s) on producing energy. After the war just switch them back to what you want. I don't find the energy limit really an issue if you do this.

 

[Spectral]

If you are rocking a giant fleet that is tanking your energy maybe you could dedicate some planet space somewhere to energy. No. No. Thats just crazy talk.

You are missing my point a little bit. When I'm at peace, I'm already running a huge positive. A positive so huge that I quickly hit the cap.
When I goto war, it goes negative.

So i either increase the positive peacetime incoming to what already feels wasteful to a level that will never be useful unless fighting. Or the capacity can be increased.

 

[Blinckx]

Limited credits helps a lot to actually make sure that you can't just maintain an oversize fleet during a longtime war. War is supposed to be hard on the economy if you could have a huge energy storage that problem wouldn't exist making war economy something you would not need to worry about.

But that's not true
In my last game I can afford to have more than 40K fleet during war and peace time, a massive army fleet and my energy credit it's always at the cap limit. During one battle i've lost around 15K of my fleet power, i was able to built it back in no time with no energy issue

 

[xcorpsinmo]

Why are you worried about the credit limit? I've never had an issue with it even when when I was at -195 for the 8 months it took me to figure out how to administrate all the shiny new planets I just won. And that's after a 3 year war when my capacity fleets made parking lots out of my rivals planets.

 

[pablocampy]

As some other folks have alluded to, I feel like the limits on energy storage capacity are meant to make large scale warfare more interesting. Nudging the player towards a defensive fleet docked to keep costs down and an attacking fleet elsewhere. The actual combat and ship construction mechanics at the moment work against this though. Fleets are to slow to be built, making keeping a stable economy during wartime almost pointless and the power of doomstacking only exacerbates this issue.

 

[Dnote]

I'm not sure how I feel about Energy.

Minerals have a dual purpose, but the primary function is to store up sufficient amounts to allow you to build things, taken a bulk amount of minerals at time of purchase. The secondary function is a monthly maintenance cost towards certain things, an upkeep.

Energy, has the same dual purpose, but reversed, where the primary function is the monthly maintenance cost. This means your focus is usually on the +per month amount of Energy you are gaining, rather than building of a stockpile. A healthy economy remains positive on the monthly gain, but the need to stockpile is irrelevant at that point, because it's positive.

Energy management is definitely the harder of the two, or rather the more irritating of the two, but I'm not sure what is best to improve it. I almost feel like they should remove the stockpile and the upfront Energy cost on things, purely focus it on a monthly income/upkeep system. Then when you hit a deficit it automatically starts shutting down buildings until it is back in the positive, starting with research, then non-productive buildings, then mines.

 

[Dracko81]

But that's not true
In my last game I can afford to have more than 40K fleet during war and peace time, a massive army fleet and my energy credit it's always at the cap limit. During one battle i've lost around 15K of my fleet power, i was able to built it back in no time with no energy issue

I don't see how replenishing a fleet would affect energy issues. If you were positive before, you will be positive after. Building ships cost only minerals and time.

 

[fofferfoffer]

I don't mind it

It is not really often I am at the energy ceiling but it does happen. And long wars can drain that strategic reserve, but I think that adds layers to the game. If you can't trade for energy with somebody I am sure there is a very good diplomatic reason. I find it more strange that I can trade a couple of alien pets and some terraforming gas for thousands of energy

Also: what does running out of energy do? It slows down reseach and production. It doesn't stop it nor does it ground your fleet as you might otherwise think.

Sectors appear to be ignoring my explicite instructions to obtain a positive credit balance which they then sit on for years and years. It does annoy me that this stockpile is inaccessible to me regardless of what kind of national emergency I am dealing with.