My economic death spiral

[Hyomoto]

I don't have a grand take away or a broad insight to offer, but I just experienced a 'death by a thousand cuts' via my economy. First off, I would like to say I'm definitely engaged: the new systems and the fact I could even have this happen makes things quite a bit more interesting than they were before so this isn't an angry rant. Some of this was bug-related, some of this was information related, and some of this was balance related. Because of that it's kind of hard to understand how much of a role I played in my demise. When I say economic death I mean most of my resources are either too low to sell, or in the red and actively causing unhappiness, thus compounding the issue. But I want to be clear: I'm not commenting on how to fix my economy, I'm want to describe some of how it got that way.

The marketplace. It seems to omit some critical information. If I choose a monthly transaction on the market, and let's just say I sell motes and specify no minimum price: how much are my resources selling for? How many of them are being sold? If I'm buying and I set a maximum price: how much am I paying? How many am I buying? Compounded with the UI resource bug that's been acknowledged, I see wild swings in my economy and am unsure what state it's actually in sometimes: does something need fixing? Or do I just wait? I can have +17 energy credits one moment and -57 the next, and I have no idea why. Part of that is because I don't know if my resources are selling, and if they are, for how much. It's hard to get even a general view of it, as far as I can tell, because I think it just shows up under 'trade' in your income.

The new commercial trade and research pact layouts. If you are the requestor you see the benefits of the pact, technologies and trade changes. If you are being offered, you get no information whatsoever. I'm sure this isn't the only place this happens, but it's the two places I noticed it the most. This is definitely a glaring omission, as previously when you were offered a research pact, the trade screen came up, you could mouse over it and see what they offered versus what you were getting. I get a lot of requests but I have no idea if I even want to accept them, what are they offering?

Branch offices. The commercial pacts are also pretty vague and need more information about what the other side intends to build. I did originate the trade offer, an I was supposedly going to receive a boost in trade. I'll be honest: I didn't see it at all, but I did see a downswing in my resources. A chunk of my workforce went to go work in the branch office jobs they created immediately, and thus abandoned their posts producing goods I needed. Worse, they were priest jobs to create spiritualist attraction: so basically dead pops in a materialist society.

Robots. How do we choose which one to build? Seriously. Even after robomodding all of them, I continued to produce the original models. This didn't wreck my economy, I don't think, but I'm including it because it's part of a theme of 'the interface doesn't give me information I need sometimes' theme 2.2 has.

Anyways, this was my first game of 2.2 Stellaris and I quite enjoyed it, but there's some glaring omissions I look forward to, and very much hope for, being addressed.

 

[jfoytek]

Excellent post sums up a lot of the same feelings I have...

 

[#Tukuro]

About those robots: You have to click on the bot (being assembled) in the population tab, then click the type you want to build.
I'm not even sure how I figured that out. Perhaps the tutorial covers it; I haven't checked.

EDIT: Also you can get eco-death spirals if you're running a purge/TW build and capture a few sprawling planets packed with districts. Everyone will be unemployed while being turned into soylent, but the districts will continue to accrue upkeep...
I found out after wondering why my purifier empire was suddenly running a -70 energy deficit...
Also turn off land appropriations unless you've got plenty of pops to spare. Otherwise your income will fluctuate wildly as all your specialists are yanked from their desks to work at some farm at the other end of the galaxy...

 

[khearn]

I played a day and a half before I figured out how to set the "priority" for jobs (which really means limiting the number of openings for each job). It wasn't at all obvious that I could click on the job categories to open them up to show each job, and the tutorial doesn't even come close to showing details like that. It just sets some goals and sometimes explains where the buttons for achieving them were in 2.1 (it keeps telling me to go to the top bar instead of the new side bar that is in 2.2).

I still haven't figured out how to move robots to my new mining colony. Do I have to build a robot factory and just build them there? I've got an excess or them on my homeworld and would love to move a few of them. It seems like it ought to be possible, but I can't see how to do it. Lots of stuff like this is difficult to discover and not covered in the tutorial.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Few answers and notes:
You can choose the robot model bu clicking "assembling" screen, similarly how you can choose what pops you want to grow.
You could set the priority for branch office jobs lower manually.
The price of an individual resource can be found by clicking that on the market. Above "buy" and "sell" options there's the prices. It could be more transparent, tho. I've encountered a lot of those similar changes in my trading. Often it was because the price of something I bought a lot - in my case, I bought monthly 200 minerals from the market - hiked up. The price of minerals apparently rose a lot after the Khan spawned and whole galaxy geared up for war, sending my mineral exports into incredibly expensive price tags. The wildest swings in resource prices were happening constantly on minerals and alloys, probably because AI empires needed those quickly for some wars. Strategic resources seemed to be fairly stable with their price, probably because there don't really happen huge spikes in their consumption.

 

[Kinkness]

I don't have a grand take away or a broad insight to offer, but I just experienced a 'death by a thousand cuts' via my economy. First off, I would like to say I'm definitely engaged: the new systems and the fact I could even have this happen makes things quite a bit more interesting than they were before so this isn't an angry rant. Some of this was bug-related, some of this was information related, and some of this was balance related. Because of that it's kind of hard to understand how much of a role I played in my demise. When I say economic death I mean most of my resources are either too low to sell, or in the red and actively causing unhappiness, thus compounding the issue. But I want to be clear: I'm not commenting on how to fix my economy, I'm want to describe some of how it got that way.

The marketplace. It seems to omit some critical information. If I choose a monthly transaction on the market, and let's just say I sell motes and specify no minimum price: how much are my resources selling for? How many of them are being sold? If I'm buying and I set a maximum price: how much am I paying? How many am I buying? Compounded with the UI resource bug that's been acknowledged, I see wild swings in my economy and am unsure what state it's actually in sometimes: does something need fixing? Or do I just wait? I can have +17 energy credits one moment and -57 the next, and I have no idea why. Part of that is because I don't know if my resources are selling, and if they are, for how much. It's hard to get even a general view of it, as far as I can tell, because I think it just shows up under 'trade' in your income.

The new commercial trade and research pact layouts. If you are the requestor you see the benefits of the pact, technologies and trade changes. If you are being offered, you get no information whatsoever. I'm sure this isn't the only place this happens, but it's the two places I noticed it the most. This is definitely a glaring omission, as previously when you were offered a research pact, the trade screen came up, you could mouse over it and see what they offered versus what you were getting. I get a lot of requests but I have no idea if I even want to accept them, what are they offering?

Branch offices. The commercial pacts are also pretty vague and need more information about what the other side intends to build. I did originate the trade offer, an I was supposedly going to receive a boost in trade. I'll be honest: I didn't see it at all, but I did see a downswing in my resources. A chunk of my workforce went to go work in the branch office jobs they created immediately, and thus abandoned their posts producing goods I needed. Worse, they were priest jobs to create spiritualist attraction: so basically dead pops in a materialist society.

Robots. How do we choose which one to build? Seriously. Even after robomodding all of them, I continued to produce the original models. This didn't wreck my economy, I don't think, but I'm including it because it's part of a theme of 'the interface doesn't give me information I need sometimes' theme 2.2 has.

Anyways, this was my first game of 2.2 Stellaris and I quite enjoyed it, but there's some glaring omissions I look forward to, and very much hope for, being addressed.

There is glaring information being missed... Just played this game for 2 days and I didn't know you could click the jobs to see them specifically. Like you just mentioned... Midn boggling how such an important thing is missed.

The trade offers, and diplomacy also is not giving you information as you said, and the galactic trade of how much you're making, how much you're selling for, buying for, etc. is lacking some much needed critical info.

 

[#Tukuro]

I still haven't figured out how to move robots to my new mining colony. Do I have to build a robot factory and just build them there? I've got an excess or them on my homeworld and would love to move a few of them. It seems like it ought to be possible, but I can't see how to do it. Lots of stuff like this is difficult to discover and not covered in the tutorial.

In the planet summary tab (when clicking a planet) there's a resettle button in the top-right. Note that in 2.2 resettlement is immediate. 'Saves time during MP, but can lead to mistakes in SP.

 

[Hyomoto]

Few answers and notes:
You can choose the robot model bu clicking "assembling" screen, similarly how you can choose what pops you want to grow.
You could set the priority for branch office jobs lower manually.
The price of an individual resource can be found by clicking that on the market. Above "buy" and "sell" options there's the prices. It could be more transparent, tho. I've encountered a lot of those similar changes in my trading. Often it was because the price of something I bought a lot - in my case, I bought monthly 200 minerals from the market - hiked up. The price of minerals apparently rose a lot after the Khan spawned and whole galaxy geared up for war, sending my mineral exports into incredibly expensive price tags. The wildest swings in resource prices were happening constantly on minerals and alloys, probably because AI empires needed those quickly for some wars. Strategic resources seemed to be fairly stable with their price, probably because there don't really happen huge spikes in their consumption.

All very helpful, but a follow question: where is the "assembling" screen, and where is the jobs screen? I found the resettlement tab earlier, so it's probably "right there" but I wouldn't mind the nudge!

 

[Matoro_TBS]

All very helpful, but a follow question: where is the "assembling" screen, and where is the jobs screen? I found the resettlement tab earlier, so it's probably "right there" but I wouldn't mind the nudge!

Umm I mean when youäre in "Population" tab of planet view, there's "Growing", "Assembling" and "Declining" pop boxes above the population diagram. Try clicking those little portraits there.
Job priority can be found from here:

 

[resand]

Umm I mean when youäre in "Population" tab of planet view, there's "Growing", "Assembling" and "Declining" pop boxes above the population diagram. Try clicking those little portraits there.
Job priority can be found from here:

Still unsure why this is called Decrease Job Priority. It does nothing of the kind.
It disable jobs. Still useful, but having an actual way to prioritize jobs would be good.

 

[ffsffs1]

I kind of like how much the economy fluctuates tbh. My first playthrough I had by far the strongest economy according to score, but it still was a constant challenge to balance my resource production. You can really get fucked over when market prices crash or spike (though you can also greatly benefit). I do agree that the market would benefit from more information given to the player though. One trick I've been using is to alternate between wealth creation and consumer benefits every 10 years. I end up importing a lot of consumer goods while running wealth creation which raises the market prices (often to around 4.00), so after 10 years I switch to consumer benefits and start selling consumer goods for a high price. This in turn lowers the price (buy price under 2.00) so when I switch back to wealth creation I end up importing consumer goods cheaply. With this, my economy gets a very big boost right after switching and gradually deteriorates until the 10 year cool down period ends. I've been thinking of pairing this strategy with Militarized/Civilian economy cycling as well but have not done so yet.

I really got burned on my first playthrough not focusing enough on raw resource production. +100 minerals may be okay right now, but if you upgrade two alloy foundries you'll take a 36 mineral hit once completed. Food and consumer goods demands are actually really difficult to keep up to (though I was using social welfare and then utopian abundance) in a fast growing empire so I found it really important to make an effort on constantly building more raw resource districts. Agricultural districts for the food; mining districts for the constant need for consumer goods and more districts; generator districts to cover upkeep costs. I suspect it may be feasible to import a ton of raw resources late in the game, but at one point I was hamstrung by having to import over 300 minerals a month at a price close to 2.00 just to be able to outpace unemployment. Changing the subject, I found selling strategic resources on the market very lucrative. Given the choice between upgrading an alloy foundry or building a new one, I see little reason to upgrade (admittedly sometimes you don't have this choice). The price you can sell that extra volatile mote is almost always worth more than the extra 4 EC upkeep. The +1 job slot difference is only a concern if unemployment is a concern. Same thing applies for civilian industries, and research labs.

I 100% agree that the commercial pacts and corporate stuff needs to be more clear. When making commercial pacts the numbers seem so arbitrary. Why do I get only 6 EC while the other party gets 40? Is there anything else that comes with a commercial pact between two non-megacorp empires? I don't know the answer to either. Normal megacorps establishing branch offices on your planets are supposed to be mutually beneficial. While I'm not doubting this, I found it very difficult to figure out what exactly I was getting out of them. I'm not sure if I retain some part of the "branch office value", nor am I certain which benefits on a lot of the buildings apply to me or the megacorp. It would be really nice if you could see a breakdown of job slots and where you are getting them from.

 

[khearn]

In the planet summary tab (when clicking a planet) there's a resettle button in the top-right. Note that in 2.2 resettlement is immediate. 'Saves time during MP, but can lead to mistakes in SP.

Woohoo! Thanks! My mining colony worker shortage is resolved!

 

[Astax]

I hate when you are -1 some rare resource, and you don't notice since the UI hides this fact from you. Then out of nowhere all your recources go negative because you went negative in that one resource... LOL the worst design I ever seen

 

[Hyomoto]

Umm I mean when youäre in "Population" tab of planet view, there's "Growing", "Assembling" and "Declining" pop boxes above the population diagram. Try clicking those little portraits there.
Job priority can be found from here:

I found the jobs, so thank you for that. But clicking on the populations does absolutely nothing. Can I get a screen grab of that as well? Maybe I just misunderstand your description.

Edit: apparently Empire population controls might be affecting it for egalitarian empires. So your answer is probably right and it's a bug/oversight.

Edit 2: yup, that was it.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Also you can get eco-death spirals if you're running a purge/TW build and capture a few sprawling planets packed with districts. Everyone will be unemployed while being turned into soylent, but the districts will continue to accrue upkeep...
I found out after wondering why my purifier empire was suddenly running a -70 energy deficit...
.

I random rolled purifiers and needing but not having the market was hard. Is inactivating buildings gone so destroying the building is necessary to stop the cost?
Eventually they would be repopulated.
after a brief war the economy tanked as new owner of several fairly empty worlds. I was looking for the old deactivate button. Do you need to destroy buildings to stop the upkeep? Which are best to get rid of in a credit crisis? Cities cost 2 upkeep but might generate income. and rade TValue.

Thanks