If Consumer Goods were crippling but.....

[Trithemius]

"Trade" could be modelled as bonus production rather than involving elaborately defined commodities. Stellaris has a lot of (IMO good!) abstraction.

 

[Cannes]

What if each trade deal you have going lowers your consumer goods penalty by a relative amount? Dependant on how big the trade deal is compared to your overall economy and how many trade partners you have, it would be possible for an empire with lots of friends to almost completely negate the penalty, while an aggresive empire with almost no friends won't be able to do so. Would give a much needed advantage for passive play.

 

[Adamsrealm]

What if each trade deal you have going lowers your consumer goods penalty by a relative amount? Dependant on how big the trade deal is compared to your overall economy and how many trade partners you have, it would be possible for an empire with lots of friends to almost completely negate the penalty, while an aggresive empire with almost no friends won't be able to do so. Would give a much needed advantage for passive play.

If you trade for a monthly transfer of minerals or energy then you reduce the requirements anyway.

 

[Kvinfojoj]

What if Consumer Goods grew to be crippling ........but you could trade with another nation for a reduction in Consumer Good cost.

This might make really large empires rely on smaller ones for trade purposes?

I really like this concept. As it stands, the most successful strategy is to get 1, max 2 defensive alliances (and no more due to it limiting your options too much expansion-wise) and then start expanding like crazy. Most empires will start hating you, but it doesn't matter because you want to have as many enemies as possible so you can keep expanding between ceasefires. Your suggested system would make it so that there's more things to take into consideration, which is good.

 

[CuddlyKitten]

The easiest way to handle it would be to have different kind of trade deals and have those either generate a quantity of goods/resources for both partners or make it a % reduction in demand.

For example the most basic trade deal is civilian trade which should reduce consumer goods demand (in reality it doesn't reduce demand it just makes it cheaper for the pops to buy their things.

You can have a research agreement which does what it has always done.

You can have a military trade agreement which reduces ship purchase and retrofit cost slightly

And finally you can have an advanced military trade agreement which makes you able to use another empires tech to build your ships (if it's canceled upkeep for ships above your tech level is increased for those ships)

Now these aren't real trade so you could make it so that the game calculates the positive or negative trade balance of the empires for at least consumer goods and that it's weigthed towards smaller empires.

So for example a small 5 system empire trades with a larger 25 system empire.
Both get's a flat 5 % reduction of consumer goods requirement. But the game calculates that the small empire has a positive trade balance of +3 minerals a month which means that in order to continue the trade deal the larger empire has to pay this every month.

Also make it so that the reduction scales with the number of empires you have trade deals with. 5 % for the first, 4 % for the second etc. After a certain number of trade partners you will actually loose money on the deal, but you might still want to do it because of the diplomatic gains.

Can also add in policies like tariffs (keeps pops happy because they keep their job, means your trade efficiency suffers) and free trade (trade pop happiness for increased efficency).

 

[Dalinski]

"Trade" could be modelled as bonus production rather than involving elaborately defined commodities. Stellaris has a lot of (IMO good!) abstraction.

If everything was abstractly modeled into bonus mineral production......oh what a boring game it would be.

 

[scaper12123]

Quite a nice thought.

 

[tradetem]

Hmm, but why make large empires dependent on smaller empires for Consumer Goods at all? Especially considering the current state of strategic resources in the game: you only need 1 unit to gain full benefits for your empire, which makes sprawling empires don't need resource trade from other empires.. According to the "Species Right" DD, Consumer goods are meant to reduce the mineral inflation in mid-late game, especially in sprawling empires. I think that's a good idea, but it's hard to do anything else to promote trade in particular and tall gameplay in general, without some form of:

• concentrated industry (few planets but heavily invested and developed),
• more resources in general
• processing of resources into more advanced forms (like Minerals into Duranium [tier 2 resources] and then Duranium into Samar Alloy [tier 3] where each tier is needed to build advanced stuff) which would encourage more tall gameplay (at least with some racial traits/ethos combinations)

Aside from that I really like that Delicacy Factory idea: being able to produce Mudokon Pops or Blorg Butter would satisfy my inner Corrupt Corporate Executive