Irreversible cataclysmic economy collapse

[Snoipah]

You could have just bought the rare gases from the market with energy, since you said you weren't going into the negative with energy. A building only takes 1 extra of the special resources when it upgrades, so like, if you buy 100 gases, that's 100 months of not being in the red. which is about 8 years. I'm wondering why you didn't just do that to put some in storage to remove the penalty. I go into the negative production of special resources several times a game and never had a crash from that. It's usually from a lot of consumer goods+food.

 

[Snoipah]

1) I'm talking about the situation the OP described. Falling into the red in one rare resource should not cause you to immediately suffer a -25% output to all specialists. This situation reminds me of how starvation used to penalize food production, causing an endless spiral of death. It is not "stupid" to upgrade a starbase and then become confused why your entire economy immediately collapsed right afterwards.

Just buy food from the market.

Seriously OP, this is literally what you do:

• Downgrade the building you upgraded
• Sell living metal for energy
• Use energy to buy enough minerals, consumer goods, food, ect, to last you two months

This immediately removes the penalty and sets your economy back to where it was, just not much in storage.

If you are having trouble with consumer goods, but doing well on energy, change policy to turn trade from 1x energy to .5 energy .25 consumer goods, or change food policy from whatever you have it to to rationing then sell excess food for energy for consumer goods.

Also as I said, if you just bought 100 gases when you first started seeing the penalty, you could go 8 months while making red gases.

 

[Rippars]

I tried the tips from GAGA Extrem (and Snoipah) on one of the saves in solo mode. I seems to work to some degree, thanks! Now all I have to do is get 10 of my planets back from unrest/near rebellion.

Yes, I think it was the consumer goods tanking that led to the spiral. And sure, my economy was perhaps not the most stable before, I like living on the edge and had an integration going on. Saving up a good stockpile of rare resources sounds like a good idea, but on the other hand, just not upgrading any buildings seems a lot easier and is probably the strategy I will use for the next couple of plays at least.

 

[wingren013]

I don't get it. Building upgrades require rare resources to even do. So if youbdidn't have a way of getting it, how did you even upgrade it? Couldn't you have use dthe market to fix your shortage?

 

[Rippars]

Yes but that doesn't mean you can't buy the rare resources to do the upgrade and then neglect to buy the rares for the upkeep out of ignorance of the game mechanics. I was just trying to understand how everything works, nothing more.

 

[Snoipah]

I tried the tips from GAGA Extrem (and Snoipah) on one of the saves in solo mode. I seems to work to some degree, thanks! Now all I have to do is get 10 of my planets back from unrest/near rebellion.

Yes, I think it was the consumer goods tanking that led to the spiral. And sure, my economy was perhaps not the most stable before, I like living on the edge and had an integration going on. Saving up a good stockpile of rare resources sounds like a good idea, but on the other hand, just not upgrading any buildings seems a lot easier and is probably the strategy I will use for the next couple of plays at least.

People think I'm a villain on these forums, but I'm really just an anti-hero. I'm not going to give people false information and I'm more than happy to help people git gud because the more people who are as AWESOME as myself means the higher likelihood Paradox makes the AI harder so that it can offer me a challenge.

Anyways, upgrading buildings can be risky but you can avoid the risk altogether by mouseovers and math.

Example is lets say you're upgrading a alloy producer, if you mouse over the current one you have, and the next upgrade, it'll show you what the upkeep difference is. Check your current mineral/special resource surplus, and if it's higher than the differences of required upkeep for the building, then it's relatively safe to upgrade it. The thing you need to worry about is is that it'll take worker jobs to fill the new alloy production jobs, so if you are, say, making 11 minerals a turn, and the difference is 10 minerals, you'll probably be losing minerals when you finish it due to miners potentially moving to the alloy job and leaving their previous job without a worker, so you lose the 10 minerals a turn plus whatever they would be making.

Now this is not an issue when you are above 100 minerals, or even 50 a turn, but it's something to keep in mind. It can also take people from food/energy jobs, but really the main thing to look out for is seeing how much special resource you are making and how much the building requires.

In regards to having negative consumer goods production, it's better than having negative alloy production, since consumer goods are just to keep your pops happy(for the most part), where as alloys are important for the war effort.

If you have 20+ alloys a turn and negative consumer goods, replace a alloy building with a consumer goods building, unless you're saving for a megastructure(rush matter decompressor if you can, if you don't have a black hole, rush dyson sphere).

My ascension perk system is technological ascendancy>voidborne>master builders>galatic wonders>Arcology Project>colossus>genetic ascendancy 1>genetic ascendancy 2. If you don't like genes(which I don't see why you won't unless you're spiritual, fertile+clone vats are amazing), and you don't care for colossus(which I don't see why, total war is amazing for your influence) you can take technological>one vision>voidborne>master builders>galatic wonders>Arcology Project>whatever>whatever>whatever

Side note:
Clone Vats say it's required to make clone troopers but you don't need them or the ascension perk to make clone troopers. Is this a bug or a typo?

 

[Bearjuden]

This is surely a design oversight? There is no way that a lack of resources for a specific job on a single planet should suddenly tank productivity for all jobs across all planets.

Feels like it should be a scaled modifier based on how much of that resource you need. Being 1 per month short when you need 2 total is a lot more harmful than losing 1 per month when you need 100 after all. It's just less individually impactful by virtue of being a smaller share of the total.

And I think that way it would tend to be a less abrupt "sorry, your economy dies" and more of a "you're hurting a bit now but you have the resources to fix it if you do so now, the more you delay the worse it'll get though".

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

The fact that the OP experienced swift and total economic collapse because they had -1 to a single are resource

No, they had a -1 to a single key resource that didn't get solved for years. It's like a country forgetting to buy Uranium for his nuclear plant that powers it main production hub, that already barely managed to keep the whole economy afloat. His economy was a Jenga tower and he removed a piece at the base.

Are the malus a bit punishing? Yeah, they could work better. Could they effectively ruin a game? No, if you have a baseline decent economy.

If the game doesn't punish this kind of errors, a punishment that could be undone with a few clicks on the Market or asking for a "gift" from an ally, then what is the purpose of a malus anyway?

 

[WJLIII3]

No, they had a -1 to a single key resource that didn't get solved for years. It's like a country forgetting to buy Uranium for his nuclear plant that powers it main production hub, that already barely managed to keep the whole economy afloat. His economy was a Jenga tower and he removed a piece at the base.

Are the malus a bit punishing? Yeah, they could work better. Could they effectively ruin a game? No, if you have a baseline decent economy.

If the game doesn't punish this kind of errors, a punishment that could be undone with a few clicks on the Market or asking for a "gift" from an ally, then what is the purpose of a malus anyway?

Well, if you wanna get analogy-y, I'd have to note that what he actually did was neglect a shortage of rare explosives used for the experimental weaponry in a single defensive fortification, the only such weapons and fortification in his empire, and the only consumer of said explosives. He didn't run out of power for any power plants. Nothing is dependent, game or RP-wise, on Fortresses except defensive armies. He didn't run out of food or gasoline, he ran out of one very particular type of bullet for a gun installation that only exists in one place. Let's not confuse the analogy.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

This is absolutely false. He needed a key resource (a Rare Resource) needed to produce something (Consumer Goods) his whole empire needed. It's literally like trying to make a car work without fuel. It just can't. That upgraded building NEEDS that rare resources to work, otherwise it just won't, and if it was absolutely necessary to the whole economy (because the whole economy was BAD), your economy is in trouble.

This has absolutely nothing to do with "experimental weaponry in a single fortification".

 

[Aed]

This is absolutely false. He needed a key resource (a Rare Resource) needed to produce something (Consumer Goods) his whole empire needed. It's literally like trying to make a car work without fuel. It just can't. That upgraded building NEEDS that rare resources to work, otherwise it just won't, and if it was absolutely necessary to the whole economy (because the whole economy was BAD), your economy is in trouble.

This has absolutely nothing to do with "experimental weaponry in a single fortification".

Read the OP, they had a shortage in Exotic Gases to supply a Fortress. Fortresses produces Soldier jobs which are in no way connected to the production of Consumer Goods. The shortage immediately caused a blanket -25% malus on every Specialist job in their empire, causing their economy to go into a death spiral.

No, they had a -1 to a single key resource that didn't get solved for years. It's like a country forgetting to buy Uranium for his nuclear plant that powers it main production hub, that already barely managed to keep the whole economy afloat. His economy was a Jenga tower and he removed a piece at the base.

No, It's like a country has 10 coal power plants which power all the power it needs. It then builds a nuclear missile base but runs out of uranium for its nukes. All of a sudden that causes those 10 coal power plants to produce 25% less power, but then shutting down the nuclear missile base suddenly fixes everything. In what way is that remotely sensible?

To provide an actual real world example, Tritium is currently almost entirely used as a booster for nuclear fission bombs, and in self powered lighting for things like emergency exit signs and gun sights. If we had a Tritium shortage, the effectiveness of nuclear fission bombs would be reduced and self powered lighting would have to switch back to using other radioisotopes like Radium, what wouldn't happen is us losing a quarter of our industrial output overnight.

In a sensible world the OP's initial situation would have resulted in the upgraded fortress becoming inactive when they ran out of Exotic Gases, not every single specialist job losing 25% of its production irrespective of the actual resources required.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I misread OP, then, you are right.

 

[Masoz]

I feel like at least 90% of these cataclysmic failures would be prevented for both players and the AI if they just forced buildings requiring them to become ruined instead of suddenly adding a massive penalty that causes a domino effect of doom to your economy. A negative balance of consumer goods for instance should start ruining research labs.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I feel like at least 90% of these cataclysmic failures would be prevented for both players and the AI if they just forced buildings requiring them to become ruined instead of suddenly adding a massive penalty that causes a domino effect of doom to your economy. A negative balance of consumer goods for instance should start ruining research labs.

Now there's an idea. That would certainly go a long way to helping the AI, although code would have to be put in place that told the AI not to repair buildings it couldn't maintain.

 

[Snoipah]

By the way, this is why a dyson sphere and matter decompresser is so good, you keep that production even if your economy crashes.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

By the way, this is why a dyson sphere and matter decompresser is so good, you keep that production even if your economy crashes.

At least until a machine uprising steals them from you.

 

[AlanC9]

I feel like at least 90% of these cataclysmic failures would be prevented for both players and the AI if they just forced buildings requiring them to become ruined instead of suddenly adding a massive penalty that causes a domino effect of doom to your economy. A negative balance of consumer goods for instance should start ruining research labs.

Wouldn't deactivation be conceptually cleaner than ruining them?

 

[Masoz]

Wouldn't deactivation be conceptually cleaner than ruining them?

This sounds good until you realize there's nothing stopping you from just reactivating them every month, and I can easily see the AI getting caught in such a loop.

 

[SpectralShade]

If stellaris was based in reality, shared burden would start you in an economic death spiral regardless, multiethnic empires would spike crime, mars would not be a good terraforming candidate, and after 100 years the first wave of colonists who reached your starting expansion worlds would finally have their first messages announcing their arrival reaching your homeworld.

Alas.

someone just managed to show rather plainly their personal political subjective opinions there...

 

[AlanC9]

This sounds good until you realize there's nothing stopping you from just reactivating them every month, and I can easily see the AI getting caught in such a loop.

But isn't the code needed to prevent the AI from repairing any ruined buildings it can't support exactly the same as the code to prevent it from re-activating them?