Revisiting the question of separating energy from currency

[wundte]

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

unless you are a communist regime you will always have banks and other private enterprises that are mostly independent alongside with your governing body. Gosh even USSR had banks to give loans to their populace and trade with foreign nations.
Edited.
Most of your trade will happen between private enterprises on different interstellar empires. Without your government beeing involved. It will just cash in through taxes and tolls.

 

[The Boz]

You're not understanding.
You suggest that something bigger than you and me exists to facilitate our transaction. Which is fine on a personal level. Not fine when the two parties are INTERSTELLAR EMPIRES VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY.
I mean, sure, you could ring up a nearby FE and ask them, I guess...

 

[wundte]

You're not understanding.
You suggest that something bigger than you and me exists to facilitate our transaction. Which is fine on a personal level. Not fine when the two parties are INTERSTELLAR EMPIRES VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY.
I mean, sure, you could ring up a nearby FE and ask them, I guess...

The bank must not be bigger (or reacher for that case) than your government. It should be trustworthy and its obligations should be guaranteed by your government. That's it. But the guarantees are not even nessecary because like 99% of trade would happen on the personal level. Between individual citizens of different empires (aka SpaceAliBaba) or between different corps or smaller companies who just want bank to handle transaction of their money to another bank and currency convertation so that their trading partner could recieve payment. This small companies which will never ganerate more than 0.0001 units of energy in revenue in their life time dont need some super duper gigantic bank or body to trade between themselfs.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

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).

And why is this a bad thing? Energy used to be unhelpfull as there were nothing to do with its stored quantities. This was a problem. Now we can effectively spend it to get any resource. What's the problem now? What are you trying to fix?

 

[The Boz]

You are so far from understanding my point that I'll stop now.

 

[LeonOfOddecca]

And why is this a bad thing? Energy used to be unhelpfull as there were nothing to do with its stored quantities. This was a problem. Now we can effectively spend it to get any resource. What's the problem now? What are you trying to fix?

You don't think it's a problem that the best economic strategy is to largely avoid investing in energy producing buildings / districts and energy buffing techs?

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

You don't think it's a problem that the best economic strategy is to largely avoid investing in energy producing buildings / districts and energy buffing techs?

Haven't heared that it bothered anyone yet. No "Energy is nerfed into irrelevance" threads and so on.

 

[Xentropy]

The fact energy can be converted to any other resource in one step instead of two should *increase* the value of investment in energy. That it's not doing so is a result of energy's current lower default value than any other resource due to issues separate from the fact energy is also the market currency: AI problems, the addition of huge trade profits without a commensurate increase in energy costs somewhere else (except the market itself), and so on. Energy inflation might be a problem, or it might not, but it would still exist even if credits were separate from energy; it'd just present as a tiny energy cost/value per credit instead of a huge everything else cost/value per energy.

 

[Ryika]

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).

But at the same time, to get something useful out of energy past paying for the maintenance of your stuff, you DO need to pay the market fee once, while all other resource production feeds into that resource pool directly, without a fee.

In a balanced system, that's simultaneously the strength of energy - that it's versatile and can be converted into other resources at a lower price - and the weakness of energy - that it has no direct use if you exceed your maintenance costs and needs a fee to be paid in order to be converted into something that's useful.

That's great design for a resource and gives it its very own niche. If it doesn't actually work out like that then it's either a balance issue, or just a playstyle preference, but certainly not a design issue with the way the resource works.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I always felt that "energy as currency" seems wrong and wonky in game, but i always failed to come up with a better system, unless it means just replacing "energy" with "currency" just in name. But that would make everything that produces energy like the Dyson Sphere not working, and so on...

Ultimately, i stopped thinking about it.

 

[Urza1234]

I honestly think energy as currency is a great concept, both for sci-fi and game design.

You've also got to realize, that people arent literally exchanging batteries or something when they go to the market or sign trade deals. Its just energy-backed currency. Its virtualized.

What the market actually does is adds a form of inflation to over-production of energy, which is also exactly what the game needed. Its beautiful really.

 

[Vanhal]

Energy is representing ALL POSSIBLE means of exchange for ALL POSSIBLE species, including those that do not have any concept or need for formal currency or even formal trade, because the trade in game is also abstract representation of flow of every possible thing that have any value. It's named energy because that's the lowest common denominator we can imagine.

Introducing actual currency would be redundant and unnecessary, let this notion die already.

 

[tinculin]

I think it’s an over complication that doesn’t have enough benefits to warrant yet another resource.

 

[Amorenkaire]

I'm still in favor for breaking energy into currency, planetary energy infrastructure, and fuel (which can be used to meet local energy demands and power your ships and tied in for a supply line). But that's just me loving the idea of constructing massive antimatter production farms tied into giant solar arrays.

 

[Typee]

You're not understanding.
You suggest that something bigger than you and me exists to facilitate our transaction. Which is fine on a personal level. Not fine when the two parties are INTERSTELLAR EMPIRES VYING FOR GALACTIC SUPREMACY.
I mean, sure, you could ring up a nearby FE and ask them, I guess...

Yeah it's not like bankers could bring down THE SPANISH EMPIRE by not trusting them anymore amirite guys? Woops.
Bank-mediated exchange has nothing to do with how big you are.

 

[The Boz]

Yeah it's not like bankers could bring down THE SPANISH EMPIRE by not trusting them anymore amirite guys? Woops.
Bank-mediated exchange has nothing to do with how big you are.

...huh? Spain was an inflation-driven accidental suicide.

 

[Typee]

...huh? Spain was an inflation-driven accidental suicide.

Right, let's ignore the Dutch displaced Spanish and Portugal colonial enterprises due to the banks of Europe slowly losing trust in the Spanish crown and placing their investments in the Netherlands.

 

[The Boz]

Alright, say I agree with that. How does this analogy contradict my point from earlier?

 

[AmpsterMan]

As much as I would love a more nuanced economic model (I'm an economist by trade), I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Without a more robust model like perhaps the one in Victoria, energy functions as a "maintenance" resource, and nothing more with a few notable exceptions.

To the question that spawned the original thoughts of the OP: I find it to be an uninteresting question for various reasons:
It's a purely algebraic question with multiple variables that vary on a monthly basis. Thus, the strictly correct answer to "should I specialize on energy production" is "it depends". On what?

On the relative price of minerals/food, the products that can be produced by minerals/food (i.e., a chemist turns 5 minerals, 1 food into 1 mote, which is worth twice of the total cost in energy) nevermind the fact that prices fluctuate, and so on and so on.

Separating energy from currency will not change any of this. OP's post isn't even wrong; it's a non sequitur. The original question is potentially useful to think about, but has so many solutions that I find it useless to think about without making some assumptions to narrow the set of solutions.

 

[WJLIII3]

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

Energy, obviously? Unless you can think of something else which is both universally transferable and universally desirable, seems pretty obvious.