Energy Credits...Either too many or not enough

[Wrymn]

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?

I think this is good design, not sure if it was intentional or not from devs, but if you think about it, this is like in reality. When nation is in war, it is actually losing money and needs to end war ASAP. All the maintenance, resupplying, soldier wages etc. of your army is draining on your income.

So I like that when you are in war and all your fleets are combat ready, it drains your credits.

 

[Stoßtrupp Gold]

You can spend EC on Terraforming, but terraforming is useless

Not sure if you can spend sector EC on terraforming.
I do find terraforming great.

 

[Spectral]

I think this is good design, not sure if it was intentional or not from devs, but if you think about it, this is like in reality. When nation is in war, it is actually losing money and needs to end war ASAP. All the maintenance, resupplying, soldier wages etc. of your army is draining on your income.

So I like that when you are in war and all your fleets are combat ready, it drains your credits.

I'm fine with that. In real life, you don't have an upper limit to storage of money. That's what I want here.

 

[EvilTom]

Simple then...

Increase the cost of fleet maintenance in peacetime. Stop mega stacks.

To counter this you should be able to mothball ships which takes them out of action for longer

 

[Dracko81]

I'm fine with that. In real life, you don't have an upper limit to storage of money. That's what I want here.

But then you would need to consider adding inflation. Upper limits aren't bad.

Learn to deal with the problem, invest in more EC. Anyone who thinks minerals isn't the same hasn't run 1500 strong fleet caps. You are too heavy invested in the wrong thing.

 

[Wyrm]

I like that you have to struggle with the energy in war-time. I had a war that was taking far longer than I wanted and I had to poke on all the other empires now and then and try to sell them minerals for energy-credits so I wouldn't have to "white peace" just to not go bankrupt.

 

[Kayden_II]

I have a Game (Tiny Map with the Year 26XX) and You can see in the Pictures, that the Difference between a Fleet in an Orbit (Green) and a Fleet in Moving (Red) is really big ...

Actually and to handle such temporary Situations (like the One in Red or the One of the Colonization of a new World in the Early-Game), I would still have rather an Option, that my Administrative-Sector-AI would simply deactivate Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) till I achieve at Least a +1 Energy-Credit-Flow, again ...

And It should has still its own Balance, because after the Deactivation of Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) - I would gain Energy-Credits (Advantage), but at the same Time - I would lose Research-Points or/and Minerals (Dis-Advantage) ...
It would be simply the Case of Having more Flexibility.

 

[Dracko81]

I have a Game (Tiny Map with the Year 26XX) and You can see in the Pictures, that the Difference between a Fleet in an Orbit (Green) and a Fleet in Moving (Red) is really big ...

View attachment 182023 View attachment 182024

Actually and to handle such temporary Situations (like the One in Red or the One of the Colonization of a new World in the Early-Game), I would still have rather an Option, that my Administrative-Sector-AI would simply deactivate Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) till I achieve at Least a +1 Energy-Credit-Flow, again ...

And It should has still its own Balance, because after the Deactivation of Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) - I would gain Energy-Credits (Advantage), but at the same Time - I would lose Research-Points or/and Minerals (Dis-Advantage) ...
It would be simply the Case of Having more Flexibility.

Yea it drops by 160 and guess what, so do your minerals.

Rebalance your buildings. Maybe use some of that 1000 influence to increase your credits from a planet or 2 with edicts.

 

[Wrymn]

I'm fine with that. In real life, you don't have an upper limit to storage of money. That's what I want here.

Ah yeah. Well, I think that they went with gameplay > realism.
So guess they had infinite energy storage at some point in development, but later needed to add it, because they went into some issues in testing like overflow of energy in late game.

 

[misterderp]

I have a Game (Tiny Map with the Year 26XX) and You can see in the Pictures, that the Difference between a Fleet in an Orbit (Green) and a Fleet in Moving (Red) is really big ...

View attachment 182023 View attachment 182024

Actually and to handle such temporary Situations (like the One in Red or the One of the Colonization of a new World in the Early-Game), I would still have rather an Option, that my Administrative-Sector-AI would simply deactivate Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) till I achieve at Least a +1 Energy-Credit-Flow, again ...

And It should has still its own Balance, because after the Deactivation of Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) - I would gain Energy-Credits (Advantage), but at the same Time - I would lose Research-Points or/and Minerals (Dis-Advantage) ...
It would be simply the Case of Having more Flexibility.

Situations like these are why I do not have a single stack of ships, so I can tailor more closely the amount ships needed to defeat the enemy and the upkeep I have to pay.
I for one like the fact that energy storage is limited since it can put real constrains on the amount of time you can bring your complete navel force to bear. War is, has always been and will most likely always be very expensive.

The only qualm I have with the current energy credit system is what in the seven hells happens to the credits that are not spend/transferred to my empires bank account? They just vanish into thin air. Perhaps some mechanic for setting "tax rates" aka the amount of energy you gain, can be put inplace. Perhaps it could confer some kind of trade off less credits more happiness vs. less happiness and more credits. Also perhaps the taxing levels of sectors could have a similar effect. The sector is more likely to rebel if 75% of here credits and minerals go to some central government half the galaxy away. Whereas with 0% taxes the sector does not mind being under a central government.

 

[yezhanquan]

The tax is only on surplus from the sector. If the sector is in deficit, you don't get anything.

 

[nuyu]

I have a Game (Tiny Map with the Year 26XX) and You can see in the Pictures, that the Difference between a Fleet in an Orbit (Green) and a Fleet in Moving (Red) is really big ...

View attachment 182023 View attachment 182024

Actually and to handle such temporary Situations (like the One in Red or the One of the Colonization of a new World in the Early-Game), I would still have rather an Option, that my Administrative-Sector-AI would simply deactivate Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) till I achieve at Least a +1 Energy-Credit-Flow, again ...

And It should has still its own Balance, because after the Deactivation of Buildings (for Research or/and Minerals for Example) - I would gain Energy-Credits (Advantage), but at the same Time - I would lose Research-Points or/and Minerals (Dis-Advantage) ...
It would be simply the Case of Having more Flexibility.

When I have negative income, normally I will activate the +% energy credit edict in some of main planet to cover it, that's why I use my core planet as my energy credit resource, easy for me to adjust when it needed.

 

[Kayden_II]

Yea it drops by 160 and guess what, so do your minerals.
Rebalance your buildings. Maybe use some of that 1000 influence to increase your credits from a planet or 2 with edicts.

Yeah, but to re-balance my Cores or my Administrative-Sectors for a permanently EC-Flow per Month of +163 to have a sufficant, but only temporary EC-Flow per Month of +0 (in the Case that my Fleet is moving or What-Ever) is mostly a really Waste of Ressources, because ...

As Long as You have to build Stuff, It is more important to have a bigger Mineral-Flow per Month and even in the Case, that You have reached your Mineral-Stock-Cap, It would makes much more Sense to pump your Ressources into your Research-Point-Production, because There is no Cap ...

That is Why It would makes more Sense to have an Option for the Administrative-Sector-AI to deactivate Buildings (Mineral-/and Research-Point-Production-Ones) to achieve the sufficant, but only temporary EC-Flow of +0, instead to change their entire Focus (with Scrapping of Mineral-/and Research-Point-Production-Buildings) into the Finacial One.

 

[-Marauder-]

Why exactly are people so adverse to capping out on energy that they try and avoid it? The way the system is set up you either simply accept you're going to massively overproduce with your fleets in dock or you're going to bleed energy once they start moving. There is no middleground.

 

[Dracko81]

Yeah, but to re-balance my Cores or my Administrative-Sectors for a permanently EC-Flow per Month of +163 to have a sufficant, but only temporary EC-Flow per Month of +0 (in the Case that my Fleet is moving or What-Ever) is mostly a really Waste of Ressources, because ...

As Long as You have to build Stuff, It is more important to have a bigger Mineral-Flow per Month and even in the Case, that You have reached your Mineral-Stock-Cap, It would makes much more Sense to pump your Ressources into your Research-Point-Production, because There is no Cap ...

That is Why It would makes more Sense to have an Option for the Administrative-Sector-AI to deactivate Buildings (Mineral-/and Research-Point-Production-Ones) to achieve the sufficant, but only temporary EC-Flow of +0, instead to change their entire Focus (with Scrapping of Mineral-/and Research-Point-Production-Buildings) into the Finacial One.

What are you spending minerals on? Looks like you have 20k stocked.

They are only used to replace ships lost after a point.

It doesn't change the fact, that if you set yourself up right, your are not going to run short on any resource.

And that is with a -10% for being over planet cap. Invest in your planets and sectors to strengthen your empire for the long term. I lose more minerals to being at cap then energy credits and I doubt I'm the only one. But you don't hear us complaining about it. There is no reason to over complicate things by add some strange mechanic that forces sectors to stop producing goods. If your getting more goods than you need and not enough energy, fix the real issue. Fix your planet set ups.

 

[Van-d-all]

I think the EC mechanism itself is OK, because it actually slaps your economy during wartime. It tends to go from +200 to - 50 for me, and that's what edicts are for. I always have a few energy oriented planets, so Capacity Overloading them brings the balance to ~0.

 

[Kayden_II]

It doesn't change the fact, that if you set yourself up right, your are not going to run short on any resource.

I know, that I should have a permanently EC-Flow per Month by +163 to handle the temporary Situation, that my Fleet is moving or What-Ever (EC-Flow per Month by at Least +0) ...
I'm only thinking, that There is a smarter Option.

 

[Dnote]

You can spend EC on Terraforming, but terraforming is useless

What? Terraforming is awesome, increasing the habitability of a planet to 80, the baseline of your species in combination with the adaptive trait lets you reach 90% happiness for the +20% boost to everything.

The alternative to terraforming is either using your two genetic engineering chances to modify your species to two other biomes or using other species who already set to those biomes. One requires tech which is weighted depending on your Ethos and the other requires the acquisition of other species and is only useful if they share your Ethos or can be turned into your Ethos (otherwise they won't get to that magic 90% happiness point).

This makes Terraforming pretty awesome, though admittedly expensive, lengthy and tedious.

 

[GloatingSwine]

What? Terraforming is awesome, increasing the habitability of a planet to 80, the baseline of your species in combination with the adaptive trait lets you reach 90% happiness for the +20% boost to everything.

The alternative to terraforming is either using your two genetic engineering chances to modify your species to two other biomes or using other species who already set to those biomes. One requires tech which is weighted depending on your Ethos and the other requires the acquisition of other species and is only useful if they share your Ethos or can be turned into your Ethos (otherwise they won't get to that magic 90% happiness point).

This makes Terraforming pretty awesome, though admittedly expensive, lengthy and tedious.

It's the expensive and lengthy part that's the problem. Terraforming isn't that much better than the quick and dirty solution of genemodding appropriately habitable pops (or using synths), who might get -5% happiness from having Alien Overlords but that's trivial to overwhelm with bigger happiness boni elsewhere, especially if you play Pacifist for the Paradise Dome (which also means +5% hab and means that with one of the two habitability techs, which will come up pretty early you can get to 90% without spending trait points on it).

 

[Erei]

What? Terraforming is awesome, increasing the habitability of a planet to 80, the baseline of your species in combination with the adaptive trait lets you reach 90% happiness for the +20% boost to everything.

The alternative to terraforming is either using your two genetic engineering chances to modify your species to two other biomes or using other species who already set to those biomes. One requires tech which is weighted depending on your Ethos and the other requires the acquisition of other species and is only useful if they share your Ethos or can be turned into your Ethos (otherwise they won't get to that magic 90% happiness point).

This makes Terraforming pretty awesome, though admittedly expensive, lengthy and tedious.

Terraforming is useless in most of my play. I either uplift/have friendly aliens in my empire that can colonize the planet as it is (80% hab), or if I don't want to do that, I can gene mod one of my gaia planet to the hab I want to. Since it's gaia it will not matter, and on the new planets, I'll have 80% hab. Xenophobes will hate them, but this is a bug I think.
The only issue would be non colonizable planets and tomb world, but you can't terraform them anyway.

I find terraforming rather useless. I only used it on uplifted world where I changed their habitability for some reason (happened once, I wanted a tundra habitability, but I had several artic pre-sentient instead).