Revisiting the question of separating energy from currency

[LeonOfOddecca]

Edit: for the purposes of this thread, by 'currency' I mean the resource in the game which is used to purchase goods on the market.

A couple of weeks back someone started a thread on the question of whether energy and currency should be two different resources.

In that thread I made the following argument in favour of separation:

The market mechanic favours specialising in energy over other resources because in order to trade energy for any other resource, you only have to pay the market fee once, whereas exchanging, say, food for alloys, you have to pay the the market fee twice.

A couple of people raised an important objection to this argument. They pointed out that as a matter of practice, energy becomes very cheap in the galactic market. You can frequently get more than 1 energy for minerals or even food (with market fee included), so as a matter of fact it's a bad idea to invest in energy production over other resources.

In hindsight, I agree with their objection to specialising in energy. However, having thought about it some more, I think their point actually strengthens the case for separating energy from currency.

Energy is incredibly easy to come by right now, so much so that many players forgo building any industrial districts. There are at least two reasons for this, but only two that I'll focus on here.

1. The first reason is that trade value has been added, which gets automatically converted to energy, and it's not clear whether the devs balanced this by lowering the amount of energy that's generated in the galaxy. In fact, as I'll shortly make clear, I don't think that lowering the amount of energy found in systems is a good way to balance the abundance of energy.
2. The second reason is the inverse of the argument I made for specialising in energy. The fact that in order to obtain energy by trading for it on the market you only need to pay the market fee once makes it cheaper compared to other resources. Once again, if I want to trade my surplus of food for alloys, I need to sell the food and buy the alloys in two separate transactions, and hence pay the market fee twice. On the other hand, if I want to trade my surplus of food for energy, I just sell the food, and hence pay the market fee only once.

It seems to me that with these two new mechanics in the game, namely trade value and the market, it makes little sense for energy to play the role of currency. Indeed, it seems that trade value is the far more natural resource to play the role of currency, at least thematically. (If trade value became currency, it would have to become a resource in its own right, rather than something that gets converted to energy, but this suggestion isn't the point of this thread).

I don't think that the issue of the overabundance of energy should be solved by lowering the amount of energy generated in systems. Sure that might force us to build more industrial districts. However, it wouldn't fix the problem that energy is in principle cheaper to exchange for than other resources. That problem arises from the second reason above, which is not really an issue of over abundance.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

I agree, personally I don't think you should be able to produce currency at all, you should only be able to produce goods and trade them for other goods. I.e. you earn currency by selling a surplus of goods.

 

[Sinister2202]

I kind of see trade value as a very vague and generalized concept of "money". Because it equals to something, whether they are energy/energy and consumer goods/energy and unity etc.

In this regard, I think the branch offices should give off more trade value, rather than directly energy. But that could get weird as the actual currency on the market is energy. lol. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Badesumofu]

The second reason is the inverse of the argument I made for specialising in energy. The fact that in order to obtain energy by trading for it on the market you only need to pay the market fee once makes it cheaper compared to other resources. Once again, if I want to trade my surplus of food for alloys, I need to sell the food and buy the alloys in two separate transactions, and hence pay the market fee twice. On the other hand, if I want to trade my surplus of food for energy, I just sell the food, and hence pay the market fee only once.

It's still more efficient in most cases to sell food and then use that energy to buy [whatever] than it would be to generate energy and then use that. Minerals - yeah you don't want to be selling those if you can help it because it would have been more efficient to just generate energy instead of mine in the first place. But minerals tend to be the thing you bottleneck on of the basic resources so in practice there's no issue here - most players mostly prioritise mines because minerals are really important and have limited sources.

So in actual practice I don't think that argument holds much weight. Energy districts are generally my lowest priority, even if energy is the thing I have a shortage of because it works out better to grow food and sell it. Up to a point, anyway. I still end up building energy districts so I don't tank the price of food too much.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

It's still more efficient in most cases to sell food and then use that energy to buy [whatever] than it would be to generate energy and then use that. Minerals - yeah you don't want to be selling those if you can help it because it would have been more efficient to just generate energy instead of mine in the first place. But minerals tend to be the thing you bottleneck on of the basic resources so in practice there's no issue here - most players mostly prioritise mines because minerals are really important and have limited sources.

So in actual practice I don't think that argument holds much weight. Energy districts are generally my lowest priority, even if energy is the thing I have a shortage of because it works out better to grow food and sell it. Up to a point, anyway. I still end up building energy districts so I don't tank the price of food too much.

My point is that given the way things are currently, namely that energy is treated as 'currency', you practically don't need to build energy districts because every other resource trades into energy so cheaply. I don't see how anything you said undermines that point.

 

[Badesumofu]

That would be more a fault of the way the market works, though. Making all your energy from selling other stuff should result in the prices of those other things dropping to a point where it would have been more economical to build some generators and sell a bit less stuff.

Personally I find that if I rely entirely on selling stuff for energy, the prices drop low enough that producing my own energy becomes more attractive. Perhaps this is because I like to build very large empires which need a lot of energy sustain. I can imagine if I was playing small that maybe selling stuff plus trade value would supply me with all I needed.

So perhaps it is the case that small empires are best making all their energy by selling things and this is a small efficiency of them. Larger empires need to generate energy to get by, though. I still don't see the problem here.

 

[Xentropy]

I don't think pegging currency to energy is the key issue. The main reason it isn't working very well right now is the poor AI gets lots of free energy, inflating the currency to near-worthlessness by buying everything else it needs on the market constantly since it's incapable of managing its own economy properly. I think we should revisit this idea when/if the AI gets fixed and the market tends towards normal prices (like during the internal market segment of the game) instead of being able to get 4x trade value for every other good. Some other small tweaks are also needed where there are issues even in the early game, like food productivity being 50% greater than energy or minerals, leading to most people running food-based economies. Nothing to me screams let's add a sixth major resource.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

In that thread I made the following argument in favour of separation:

The market mechanic favours specialising in energy over other resources because in order to trade energy for any other resource, you only have to pay the market fee once, whereas exchanging, say, food for alloys, you have to pay the the market fee twice.

A couple of people raised an important objection to this argument. They pointed out that as a matter of practice, energy becomes very cheap in the galactic market. You can frequently get more than 1 energy for minerals or even food (with market fee included), so as a matter of fact it's a bad idea to invest in energy production over other resources.

In hindsight, I agree with their objection to specialising in energy. However, having thought about it some more, I think their point actually strengthens the case for separating energy from currency.

Epistemology 101: if both A and not A seems to strengthen your claim, neither of them does.

Try figuring out what are the real reasons which makes you want the separation of energy and currency. Because currently it seems that you just want it regerdless of energy being usefull or not.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

I don't think pegging currency to energy is the key issue. The main reason it isn't working very well right now is the poor AI gets lots of free energy, inflating the currency to near-worthlessness by buying everything else it needs on the market constantly since it's incapable of managing its own economy properly. I think we should revisit this idea when/if the AI gets fixed and the market tends towards normal prices (like during the internal market segment of the game) instead of being able to get 4x trade value for every other good. Some other small tweaks are also needed where there are issues even in the early game, like food productivity being 50% greater than energy or minerals, leading to most people running food-based economies. Nothing to me screams let's add a sixth major resource.

You may be right that the AI getting free energy is an additional significant factor here - I don't know the details regarding how much artificial help the AI gets. But I don't think you should underestimate the effect of pegging currency to energy. Saving 30% every time you need to buy energy is quite significant.

The base of 6 for food is definitely another factor, but that doesn't explain why energy in particular is so cheap. You can't use food to supplement your minerals economy for instance, so there must be something about energy in particular that makes it so cheap and abundant.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

Epistemology 101: if both A and not A seems to strengthens your claim, neither of them does.

Try figuring out what are the real reasons which makes you want the separation of energy and trade value. Because currently it seems that you just want it regerdless of energy being usefull or not.

I had nothing against energy being currency prior to this patch. The only reason I want it now is because the market treats energy different from every other resource.

As for your claim about epistemology, you've mischaracterised the logical form of my argument. The A and not A you presumably had in mind is that I first claimed that the current system incentivises specialising in energy, and then later claimed that in fact the current system incentivises having very few industry districts. The second claim is not the negation of the first. The negation of current system incentivises specialising in energy is that current system doesn't incentivise specialising in energy, which is logically a much weaker claim than that the current system incentivises having very few energy districts. While it's true that A and not-A can't both strengthen some further claim B, it's possible for A to strengthen B, and for some further claim C, which entails not-A, to strengthen B. Probabilistic support is non-monotonic, which you may not get from epistemology 101.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

As for your claim about epistemology, you've mischaracterised the logical form of my argument. The A and not A you presumably had in mind is that I first claimed that the current system incentivises specialising in energy, and then later claimed that in fact the current system incentivises having very few industry districts. The second claim is not the negation of the first. The negation of current system incentivises specialising in energy is that current system doesn't incentivise specialising in energy, which is logically a much weaker claim than that the current system incentivises having very few energy districts. While it's true that A and not-A can't both strengthen some further claim B, it's possible for A to strengthen B, and for some further claim C, which entails not-A, to strengthen B. Probabilistic support is non-monotonic, which you may not get from epistemology 101.

But doesn't it at least feel suspicious to you? You got your first thesis proved wrong but it didn't change your mind about the main case. And now you are using the stronger version of the opposite of your first thesis to argue the same claim. Probabilistically speaking, if the first thesis increased your confidence then its disproval is to lower it. And then after recalculating all the evidences you indeed could have independently come to the same conclusion as before but with different reasoning and cheers if you've done exactly that. But that's a rare thing. Usually we get anchored to the original claim and try to find any other reasoning supporting it without lowering our confidence. So when something like it happens it's a worring sign. Maybe the real reason is hinding somewhere?

I had nothing against energy being currency prior to this patch. The only reason I want it now is because the market treats energy different from every other resource.

And why is it a bad thing? What bad consequences does it create?

 

[THIEFs]

I am totally against splitting resources any further. We already have too many things to look after and too many numbers on display. there is no need for additional complexity. It is better to freeze any features and fix the balance issues and the dis-functional AI.

 

[wundte]

We have enough resources as it is now. Even one additional will start ruining fun of the game.
However i like the idea so, i think energy should be replaced with credits for all normal empires. And all energy districts should be replaced with commercial zones giving the same jobs only producing credits and with some different name.
Gestalt empires should keep their energy districts. Having energy for them makes sence since they dont trade. Ths will also allow for seperate economy balancing between normal an gestalt empires and add a ton of flavour for gestalt.

 

[The Boz]

Interstellar, inter-species empires would not be interested in trading vague, socio-culturally defined mediums of exchange.
No.
Let this topic die.

 

[wundte]

Interstellar, inter-species empires would not be interested in trading vague, socio-culturally defined mediums of exchange.
No.

Why wouldn't they? They still need to trade. Whait should they barter instead?

 

[The Boz]

Why wouldn't they? They still need to trade. Whait should they barter instead?

Send me a new 2080 Ti, I promise I'll pay you. Here's my IOU, redeemable in a very small bank open only in my small town.

 

[evilcat]

I think that energy as base currency is ok for now. There are definetly more important issues to think about.
There is a situation that there are people with strong feeling about what is a best simulation of space empires, but we have no data what the best currency will be.
And there is a fact that Stellaris is just a game and it should be playable. So if energy as base currency works just go with it.
If PDX adds credits there needs to be a good reason for that, and it needs to serve the purpose.

There is a problem that we cant really trade food for minerals. And that is kinda sad. And something could be done about it. You may sometimes have a deal with fellow empire.
In past Traders offered best deal for food/energy/trade but it was removed. Unnecessery.

There is a problem that selling food for biofuels gives more energy than generators. One solution to that is to equal yields from base districts to 555. The other aproach is to set resting ration to the relation of costs of producing each resource. 1:1:0.66

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

But doesn't it at least feel suspicious to you? You got your first thesis proved wrong but it didn't change your mind about the main case. And now you are using the stronger version of the opposite of your first thesis to argue the same claim. Probabilistically speaking, if the first thesis increased your confidence then its disproval is to lower it. And then after recalculating all the evidences you indeed could have independently come to the same conclusion as before but with different reasoning and cheers if you've done exactly that. But that's a rare thing. Usually we get anchored to the original claim and try to find any other reasoning supporting it without lowering our confidence. So when something like it happens it's a worring sign. Maybe the real reason is hinding somewhere?

Dude, I'm doing a PhD in epistemology, and I really don't want to spend my leisure time discussing it. What I will say is this. You're speaking in generalities, whereas I made a fairly concrete case. Trace my reasoning and if you disagree with it, say why. I will consider where you think it goes wrong. But I really can't be bothered discussing this at some meta-epistemological level.

And why is it a bad thing? What bad consequences does it create?

It's a bad thing because in addition to the fact that energy is the most abundant basic resource (due to the addition of trade-value), its also cheaper to trade for energy on the market than any other resource (because you only pay the market fee once).

I am totally against splitting resources any further. We already have too many things to look after and too many numbers on display. there is no need for additional complexity. It is better to freeze any features and fix the balance issues and the dis-functional AI.

Trade-value already exists as a resource. It's just not collected globally, because it's converted into energy. All I'm suggesting is that trade-value stops getting converted into energy, that it is collected globally, and that it is used instead of energy to be the primary currency on the market.

 

[wundte]

Send me a new 2080 Ti, I promise I'll pay you. Here's my IOU, redeemable in a very small bank open only in my small town.

Your point is not valid since you can always go to a bigger more trustworthy bank that both side recognise and trust. And if there is no such a bank one can be created and be supported/garanteed by goverments of both parties.

 

[The Boz]

Your point is not valid since you can always go to a bigger more trustworthy bank that both side recognise and trust. And if there is no such a bank one can be created and be supported/garanteed by goverments of both parties.

...always go to a bigger more trustworthy bank than the INTERSTELLAR IMPERIUM THAT IS MYSELF!?