Idea of how deficits should works

[Archael90]

How to make dificits works smoothly, and at the same time does not makes death spiral.
There was few suggestions, and now im running dedicated topics so everyone can put their ideas here, so maybe devs will see it and take inspiration.


First i wanted to say that its not my orinal idea im just reproducing idea of someone else, said in other topic.

Deficit of any resourcess should automaticaly force empire to buy that resource from market with actual price to cover whole deficit.
(there should be negative amount of resourcess, to check if deficit is still existing or not)
In case of energy deficit (only energy), all ships should lost 50% of their power, fire rate, and speed, and all leader bonusses should be disabled together with 50% of ships and leaders upkeep (AI should be thaught how to sell other resourcess to cover energy deficit).
In case of energy deficit, with other resource dificit in pair, all buildings (and districts) that are using this resource should be shut down one by one untill resource deficit is covered (manual enebeling, and special icon showing which planet buildings/districs are disabled is required).

Other suggestion was to keep actual debuffs, but makes negative resource deposit so buing 5 units of resource would negate debuffs from human player, but i dont think this would do the trick.

Some other ideas?

 

[Objulen]

I don't think that's really necessary yet. To start with, deficits just need to be retooled so that they properly affect things outputs that require them. This mostly impacts Gestalt empires vs. SEs. Scaling penalties would also be a good addition, so running small deficits won't cripple your empire, while try to gain an exploit will crush you.

For example, running a CG deficit reduces Research by 50%. So a HM or ME that runs a mineral/energy deficit doesn't get a penalty to their Research, allowing for tech rushes as long as no one is threatning against you.

Once that's done, we can look at other things from there.

Examples:

• Alloys: Reduces robot assembly, ship assembly and military function. Can cause ships to lose hull/armies to lose health/robots to decline as parts/equipment becomes scarce.
• Alloy/CG Inputs: Usually minerals, but can be food. Reduces alloy/CG production by a scaling factor until it reaches 0%.
• Consumer Goods: Reduced happiness, increased crime.
• Energy: Reduced ship shields/speed. Increased crime/deviancy from lack of ability to pay or administer adequately. Reduced TV from lack of credit/liquidity (unable to pay debts, power goes off, communications goes down, synapses misfire,etc). Scales in severity.
• Minerals: Reduces district/building speed, can remove districts at higher levels or tun them into blockers (urban blight) due to lack of materials for upkeep.
• Nourishment: Reduces pop growth, reduces happiness/increases deviancy. Should escalate to pop delcining at higher values, as they starve or shut down. Applies to food/minerals for organics/lithoids and energy for synths/MEs Can also impact armies.
• Research Inputs: Reduces research output by a scaling value, eventually down to 0%. Usually CGs, but can me minerals/energy for Gestalts.
• Strategic Resources: This is a bit trickier, as what needs SRs can change, and there are 3+ that may be needed and/or have shortfalls. I'd say an Energy penalty would be the best way to reflect this, or a general production penalty, as more resources have to be spent to shore up shortfalls on the spot instead of a steady logistics chain. However, it could apply to districts/buildings/ships that require those resources, but it might cause technical issues.