Switch the market commodity to trade value.

[MatthewP]

I think you believe I'm suggesting that we get rid of the trade policies. I still think its perfectly reasonably to convert all your trade value production to energy at 1:1, I'd just suggest that accruing it, or a fraction of it to a pool for trades, and getting more of it in trades.

Under this system, the utility of the market gets moved from energy credits to trade value. Trade value is worth more, energy credits worth less.

Ok, I think I see what you're saying. Relative to energy credits, trade value is worth more in some circumstances, since energy's value is lower. However, relative to directly producing non-energy resources, trade is still worth less, or at best the same. Since you still trade it for other resources in the same way, but now you have less flexibility.

Is that the gameplay goal then, to create a minigame where the player needs to use policies or something to budget how much trade to save for the market and how much to convert to energy or other trade policy options? I'm not sure I think it's needed, and it seems like it could be an annoying level of micro to avoid the tax of converting the wrong amount.

Edit: reread your last post, and you've basically said this is purely an idea based on the naming making more sense. Let me explain then why I think there should be a gameplay justification.

1) I agree with you it makes perfect sense to have a new money resource which comes from trade or from exchanging other resources. It makes perfect sense to think of energy as literal energy used to power things.

2) It also makes perfect sense to think of energy credits as currency backed by energy production, in the same way that most historical currencies were backed by gold. This can then be spent as money, since it is money, or converted to its backing commodity (since that's what having a currency backed by a commodity means) and then used. In this formulation, getting money from trade makes pretty obvious sense.

Both of these are completely coherent. We currently have a system that seems to imply the second one. The change proposed here to switch to the first one would take work and make things marginally more complex. What is the motivation to change from one coherent system to another? It seems like it should be gameplay. If there's no gameplay reason then it's hard to get behind.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Your mileage may vary on this one, but the problem its solving is the "uuh..energy is currency?" question. Like, why aren't minerals or food currency?

They... are.

They are currencies, both in the sense of something you spend (to buy buildings, colony ships, pay for upkeep) and as a medium of exchange in trade goods for barter and trade deals. So are alloys and consumer goods.


Stellaris is a multi-currency economy, in which you need multiple different types of income for multiple different closed markets. Energy's only special value is that it's a superior conversion efficiency between various currencies, but it's totally normal to have a primarily mineral-based economy.

Optimal, even, given how strong CG trading is via diplomacy.

 

[Unseelie]

They <minerals and food> are currencies, both in the sense of something you spend (to buy buildings, colony ships, pay for upkeep) and as a medium of exchange in trade goods for barter and trade deals. So are alloys and consumer goods.

I think its a multi-commodity system, not a multi-currency system.. But maybe an analogy will make my point: minerals are like lumber. Lumber isn't considered a currency, but a commodity. You definitely do need it to build things, and so a house has a certain lumber cost. Just because I can say that it cost me X many boards to build my house has not made the lumber a currency...I still used dollars to buy the house, and the lumber inside it. Now, energy credits go into the market, where they are used to trade (well, barter, if my argument that energy credits are a commodity holds up) for other resources, therefore becoming the means of exchange.

Mechanically, the only thing in the game that is a currency is energy credits. The other resources are commodities that can be bartered, with Trade Value in a sort of between state. Yes, you can trade minerals with a nation for alloys. This doesn't make minerals a currency...just like if I traded my sister a sandwich for a pillow, neither of those are currencies just because an exchange was made.

Both of these are completely coherent. We currently have a system that seems to imply the second one. The change proposed here to switch to the first one would take work and make things marginally more complex. What is the motivation to change from one coherent system to another? It seems like it should be gameplay. If there's no gameplay reason then it's hard to get behind.

Oh, you have got me here. The gameplay value I think it gives is...artistic. Its immersion-y. It does, in my opinion, feel more important than another portrait pack, which takes...well, I imagine doing art for a bunch of ships and portraits takes a lot of work.

There plenty else that can enhance the game-play experience of the trade system, I do agree. But this bit of the experience is my itch.

 

[Dementor4]

Your mileage may vary on this one, but the problem its solving is the "uuh..energy is currency?" question. Like, why aren't minerals or food currency?
We've got one mechanic that lets you trade resources around, and another mechanic that seems to be "economic activity" that isn't mining or farming or researching, partying or praying. What does a clerk...do? they engage in commerce, trading one thing for another. That's how I see it, anyway. They're workers in malls and distribution centers, ports and markets.
So then I stumble hard over the idea that we've got this resource, both made by pops and collectable in the galaxy map called trade value..and we don't use it in the market to trade for resources.

I don't think I've sold this as much more than a "I think this would make better sense"

But uh..arguing that energy credits are a currency and should remain a currency when trade value exists doesn't hold water for me either. Trade value ought be the basis of trade...and the market is trade?

Our own culture has seen currency move from food (early grain-based economic systems) to minerals (gold/silver) to energy (ie today's "petrodollar"). Food and Minerals have mass and so there are logistical problems with using them as currency even in a sci-fi setting. But energy can be beamed from one location to another through hyperspace without the need for ships to carry it.

Fiat currency is already met with skepticism on our own world due to things like hyperinflation when a currency is mismanaged, and is the cause of international tension with things like certain nations manipulating currency value for their own trade benefit. Can you imagine a world where we would be able to trust literal aliens with a fiat currency?

No, a currency backed by a tangible, useful asset makes sense, and energy makes more sense than the other options available.

 

[Unseelie]

Our own culture has seen currency move from food (early grain-based economic systems) to minerals (gold/silver) to energy (ie today's "petrodollar"). Food and Minerals have mass and so there are logistical problems with using them as currency even in a sci-fi setting. But energy can be beamed from one location to another through hyperspace without the need for ships to carry it.

Fiat currency is already met with skepticism on our own world due to things like hyperinflation when a currency is mismanaged, and is the cause of international tension with things like certain nations manipulating currency value for their own trade benefit. Can you imagine a world where we would be able to trust literal aliens with a fiat currency?

No, a currency backed by a tangible, useful asset makes sense, and energy makes more sense than the other options available.

This is going to horrify any goldbug like you, but I would take this as a suggestion to let a nation pin its currency to any resource, and then give them the option to float a fiat currency or adopt the currency of another nation they know...

And yeah, wildcatting. Let those alien empires debase their currencies for fun and profit. Add an inter-galactic loans market to the market, and let alien nations do strange things with them. We're well beyond what stellaris is at this point, but a market layer where the Xidmorians are constantly taking loans from anyone who knows they won't pay it back, and the Urn buy all their food, where the Galiaduns have pegged their currency to energy and are suffering a complete inability to buy anything on the market because Urn and Golax have just built a pair of dyson spheres?

Oh, yes. tasty, tasty international market instability.

 

[MatthewP]

This is going to horrify any goldbug like you, but I would take this as a suggestion to let a nation pin its currency to any resource, and then give them the option to float a fiat currency or adopt the currency of another nation they know...

And yeah, wildcatting. Let those alien empires debase their currencies for fun and profit. Add an inter-galactic loans market to the market, and let alien nations do strange things with them. We're well beyond what stellaris is at this point, but a market layer where the Xidmorians are constantly taking loans from anyone who knows they won't pay it back, and the Urn buy all their food, where the Galiaduns have pegged their currency to energy and are suffering a complete inability to buy anything on the market because Urn and Golax have just built a pair of dyson spheres?

Oh, yes. tasty, tasty international market instability.

Now this I could get behind. But sadly stellaris is not that game.

 

[DeanTheDull]

I think its a multi-commodity system, not a multi-currency system.. But maybe an analogy will make my point: minerals are like lumber. Lumber isn't considered a currency, but a commodity. You definitely do need it to build things, and so a house has a certain lumber cost. Just because I can say that it cost me X many boards to build my house has not made the lumber a currency...I still used dollars to buy the house, and the lumber inside it. Now, energy credits go into the market, where they are used to trade (well, barter, if my argument that energy credits are a commodity holds up) for other resources, therefore becoming the means of exchange.

Mechanically, the only thing in the game that is a currency is energy credits. The other resources are commodities that can be bartered, with Trade Value in a sort of between state. Yes, you can trade minerals with a nation for alloys. This doesn't make minerals a currency...just like if I traded my sister a sandwich for a pillow, neither of those are currencies just because an exchange was made.

This is an incorrect characterization of the system, because you don't buy your resources with energy, whereas you do buy assets with other resources.

During the internal market- when the economy is purely internal and no foreign trade is possible- energy can not be converted into other resources at scale as procured by a currency. Internal market stability caps at 50 unit purchases or sales of minerals or food, half that of CG, and half that of alloys. Outside an update-dependent consideration of technicians being more efficient than miners for 50 mineral purchases, you do not spend energy to buy other resources, or buildings, and now (with the beta) even leaders.

In the early game, energy is a conversion medium- a way to convert excess resoruces into other resources- but it isn't actually used for anything but upkeep, and the rate of conversion is limited. The only two things energy directly buys are tile blocker clearance- a reflection of energy-intensive ecological management- and mega-corp specific options.



In the international trade deal economy, energy is not a unique currency or primary medium either. Energy, Minerals, and Food are all interchangeable as base value 1 resources whose relative differences come from the opinion and resource economy dynamics of the target countries.


Energy only becomes more than a conversion mechanism in the Galactic Market... which is the least relevant market for Trade Value, because the Galactic Market is composed of nations that have no interest or use for Trade Value as a function of service industries or the financial sector, whereas energy serves as a relevant and appropriate sci-fi transportable medium.

 

[Unseelie]

This is an incorrect characterization of the system, because you don't buy your resources with energy, whereas you do buy assets with other resources.

In the market...you expressly buy the resources with energy.

During the internal market- when the economy is purely internal and no foreign trade is possible- energy can not be converted into other resources at scale as procured by a currency. Internal market stability caps at 50 unit purchases or sales of minerals or food, half that of CG, and half that of alloys. Outside an update-dependent consideration of technicians being more efficient than miners for 50 mineral purchases, you do not spend energy to buy other resources, or buildings, and now (with the beta) even leaders.

A: getting to 50 consumer goods from trade value before you meet a neighbor is...an edge case.
B: No matter how much currency, you can't buy more stuff than a market can produce. In this way, the early restrictions make perfect sense...and don't make the thing buying those things not a currency.
C: I agree that we don't use energy to buy most things. That's part of why I want to STOP USING IT TO BUY THINGS IN THE MARKET. Because its a bad currency.

In the early game, energy is a conversion medium- a way to convert excess resoruces into other resources- but it isn't actually used for anything but upkeep, and the rate of conversion is limited. The only two things energy directly buys are tile blocker clearance- a reflection of energy-intensive ecological management- and mega-corp specific options.

Either of those things could be bought with other stuff, or better by Trade Value. Ultimately, this point just argues that energy is a poor currency.

In the international trade deal economy, energy is not a unique currency or primary medium either. Energy, Minerals, and Food are all interchangeable as base value 1 resources whose relative differences come from the opinion and resource economy dynamics of the target countries.

That's what commodities are.

Energy only becomes more than a conversion mechanism in the Galactic Market... which is the least relevant market for Trade Value, because the Galactic Market is composed of nations that have no interest or use for Trade Value as a function of service industries or the financial sector, whereas energy serves as a relevant and appropriate sci-fi transportable medium.

The galactic market is composed of nations who have no interest or use in Trade Value? I disagree. The market is composed of the nations in the galaxy, most of whom generate trade value of their own, and I've already made the point that gestalts who don't have...economies...on the inside of their borders would still reasonably have an interest in Trade Value as currency, because anyone would have interest in currency if they have interest in any of the things it can buy.


Ultimately, I guess we don't agree on what the words currency or commodity mean.

 

[Ludaire]

Okay, well, I do understand why you're saying that. Because...the game is using them like that. And uh...that's wild. because a exchange of goods and services, economic activity, and value of said activity is denoted in currency. That's...what currency is. If energy is currency and trade value is...economic value...then both are currency.

Uh... No. An activity and a thing or system used within that activity are not the same. You can have trade without currency (bartering for example), and you can have currency without anything we'd consider "trade" in the traditional sense like game currency that's used to buy stuff but can never be traded to another player. Such a currency serves more as a progression system for the player than anything resembling an economy (devs will sometimes use "economy" to describe this, but it's still quite different from what we're talking about).

Currency is a way of standardizing value with something numeric and easy to transfer, and its value is backed by either some sort of commodity or fiat. Energy credits are a currency backed by energy.

Trade Value represents activity. A process. An ongoing aspect of your empire that's represented numerically and from that activity, you can get currency and other resources. You can't store it any more than you can store the speed of the wind. You can convert the speed of wind into energy and create a currency based on that energy, but wind speed is not a currency.

Using trade value in the way you propose is completely changing what these two concepts represent, and it seems like the only reason for the change is that you'd prefer the galactic market have the trade icon on the prices instead of the energy icon.

I do entirely agree with you that the trade system needs much more attention than this, but I think this is a step in the right direction, for flavor and for direction.

For gestalts, I'm not suggesting they be able to do anything other than buy trade value on the market and then sell it again, like a gestalt with no organics could (and would) buy consumer goods if they were a decent store of value. I'm thinking, actually, that they'd be even further distanced from singletons because they're not running an economy, but rather some sort autonomous single-producer, single-buyer scheme.

I don't actually think trade is in need of that much attention (it could be improved, sure, but that is always true of every mechanic in every game.) I was just saying that your proposal represents an enormous amount of work to create a system that's not drastically different and only really shifts around some terminology to describe slightly different mechanics. If I thought trade needed work, I'd be more open to making a bunch of changes and seeing that kind of churn in the mechanics. However, I don't, so I'd rather they focus their efforts elsewhere rather than swap around some resource concepts to be more in line with some peoples' feelings on the words and icons used when there's plenty of players that like the fantasy the energy credit and trade value present as they exist today.

Yeah, gestalts can technically buy consumer goods on the market, but anything that forces non rogue-servitors to do so would be silly. I'm imagining having to sell energy, minerals, etc. to get consumer goods (a thing generated and used by other empires but not me) purely for the purpose of immediately spending it to buy what I actually want. It feels silly, and trade value is no different. Energy credits already solves how a gestalt can interact with a market. It's not a problem that needs to be re-solved by completely redefining the terms and then shuffling the system around a bunch.

And I do understand your feelings to some extent. There's things in Stellaris that fly in the face of how I generally see certain things in the world. For example, I think spiritualism being better at unity feels totally absurd given the way real world religions have interacted historically, but I'll avoid going into further detail because that discussion would get much more acrimonious fast. Point is, I understand the feeling even if I disagree with your reasoning. However, they can't create these things in a way that would please everyone, so there's always going to be some mechanics that don't fit precisely how you'd match up mechanics with terminology.

Fiat currency is already met with skepticism on our own world due to things like hyperinflation when a currency is mismanaged, and is the cause of international tension with things like certain nations manipulating currency value for their own trade benefit. Can you imagine a world where we would be able to trust literal aliens with a fiat currency?

No, a currency backed by a tangible, useful asset makes sense, and energy makes more sense than the other options available.

Exactly. The energy credit is such a cool concept specifically because it answers this question. "How can we create any kind of currency that's respected and understood by totally different organisms?" Fiat has issues, and most things used in the past to back currency don't work either. An alien species may not be able to eat earth-grown food or they may see things like gold and silver as little more than slightly shinier but still worthless rocks.

Energy is energy, though. It's a fundamental force of the universe that has real value to any society, so I love the idea that as societies become more technologically sophisticated, they end up using it as the backing for a currency.

 

[Bezborg]

Exactly. The energy credit is such a cool concept specifically because it answers this question. "How can we create any kind of currency that's respected and understood by totally different organisms?"

Every time the discussion about trade value goes into this direction... I mean look what you;'re saying, "energy is such a cool currency bcs it's a universal concept and universal need".

Ok, so we're making currency by turning on generators and filling up batteries, is it? This is your genius economical theory?

 

[Mastikator]

Ok, so we're making currency by turning on generators and filling up batteries, is it? This is your genius economical theory?

You say that like it's not genius, but it is.

 

[Bezborg]

You say that like it's not genius, but it is.

Of course it's genius, pump out money by burning fuel and turning it into electricity, store it in batteries and use as currency. The more generators the more money. The more money, the more you can be rich and buy stuff. Economics 1.01.

 

[Dementor4]

Of course it's genius, pump out money by burning fuel and turning it into electricity, store it in batteries and use as currency. The more generators the more money. The more money, the more you can be rich and buy stuff. Economics 1.01.

I have no idea if you're being sincere or not right now.

 

[Mastikator]

Of course it's genius, pump out money by burning fuel and turning it into electricity, store it in batteries and use as currency. The more generators the more money. The more money, the more you can be rich and buy stuff. Economics 1.01.

Yes, but unironically.

 

[Dinkelman]

Yeah I don't think trade value is currency at all. In my mind it represents private economic activity that your empire taxes to get something out of. This is why commercial pacts seemingly give free resources from nowhere. The pact allows mutually beneficial trade between private parties of both empires that the governments get value from thanks to tariffs and such. It's abstract for a reason. Since we're representing futuristic space empires it needs to be vague yet explainable.

Energy credits represents a currency backed by energy. I like this because energy is universally valued. Even the work performed by an employee can in some way have its value traced back to his time and energy. For me it's enough to grant suspension of disbelief.

 

[Franton]

The basis for a currency is a limited resource as a basis. Tangible currencies on Earth are based on gold, and digital currencies on the blockchain. Both are hard to obtain more off, and that guarantees the stability. As for the latter, the point of stability hasn't been attained yet (all digital currencies still suffer from strong volatility), but it's only a matter of time until they all stabilize as much as classic gold-based currencies...

... until, of course, someone realizes that the basis of digital currency is energy: the more energy you pump into 'mining', the more digital 'coins' you can 'mine'! And since this principle is the same for all digital currencies, at some point we'll end up with energy as the ultimate currency. It's inevitable.

 

[DeanTheDull]

In the market...you expressly buy the resources with energy.

Only in the galactic market.

In the internal market, the use of energy is an abstraction for non-permanent infrastructure industrial activities that don't rise to the level of a district. There's no external, or sometimes even internal, alternative source of resources, and the ability to convert energy is limited by the 50-or-less unit limit regardless of how large (or small) your economy in.


This is the in-game/game mechanic separation that you're not addressing. In the game setting, the only market that actually exists for all empires is the galactic market, which may not even be established until nearly a third of the game is complete, for which energy is indeed the only currency. In the game mecahnical sense, the galactic market is one of several economic systems, each with there own currency.

You have approached this as a game mechanic currency issue, but are arguing it on grounds of an in-game currency issue, without addressing the other mechanical currencies.

A: getting to 50 consumer goods from trade value before you meet a neighbor is...an edge case.

Edge cases are what game mechanic has to consider. You are proposing a game mechanic, are you not?

B: No matter how much currency, you can't buy more stuff than a market can produce. In this way, the early restrictions make perfect sense...and don't make the thing buying those things not a currency.

I didn't say it wasn't a currency- my position is that mechanically the game has several currencies- I said that your empire isn't actually buying things with with energy in the internal market phase, on grounds that the internal market is an abstraction, not a literal market.

If you want to argue internal market energy is a transaction with a party rather than a mechanical abstraction, you have to address who, exactly, is selling alloys to the Gestalts or the state in non-private-economy empires, and why they can supply both unlimited commodities if you have the energy, and yet only provide 50 units at steady pricing no matter how large your empire is.

Until you can do that, you have not established that there is an in-game internal market (as in, an organized marketplace in the setting) in the first place.

C: I agree that we don't use energy to buy most things. That's part of why I want to STOP USING IT TO BUY THINGS IN THE MARKET. Because its a bad currency.

In-game or as a game mechanic? I'd disagree with both, and find your case for a trade value currency even less compelling on in-game grounds.

In in-game terms, trade value doesn't even make sense as a medium of exchange because it's not even a medium. It's an abstraction of private or organized economic activities, not even a currency on its own terms, and activities can't be stored or traded or transmitted. Storing tons of energy onto sci-fi batteries and shipping them around the galaxy in exchange for return shipments of other things at least makes energy a sensible form of stored value at relevant scale.


As a game mechanic, energy already works well as an inefficient-but-available conversion system for non-abstract resources, which exists to- among other things- help protect the player and the AI from the consequences of economic imbalancing by letting them convert one resource into another. Any system in which you can sell minerals/food/even energy for TV and then using TV to buy the other things is doing the exact same mechanical function. TV is just a relabeling of energy, while energy and all energy-related mechanical systems would have to be redeveloped and re-balanced around the TV conversion baseline.

That's what commodities are.

And commodities can be used as currency, yes.

The galactic market is composed of nations who have no interest or use in Trade Value? I disagree. The market is composed of the nations in the galaxy, most of whom generate trade value of their own, and I've already made the point that gestalts who don't have...economies...on the inside of their borders would still reasonably have an interest in Trade Value as currency, because anyone would have interest in currency if they have interest in any of the things it can buy.

This is post-hoc rationalization to justify changing the mechanics to fit a personal model, not basing your model around the mechanics that already exist. The fact that you have to qualify with 'most' is where the proposed system stops being a generalizable system as a versimilitude game mechanic, because the game needs a system that makes a minimum level of sense even without non-gestalts.

As it stands, the system you're advocating for one in which five gestalt empires meet and form a galactic community and improve economic integration, they... all decide to create clerk jobs to create a currency none of them actually have the ability to use except to trade to others who likewise have no ability to use.

Ultimately, I guess we don't agree on what the words currency or commodity mean.

Feel free to try and establish a workable definition, then, and distinguish whether you are talking in gameplay mechanics or just rebranding energy as a name for the same systems.

 

[Nevars]

what is trade value? its currency. Let that be the currency in the market, not energy.

This is where you are wrong.

The game treated energy credit as a currency and if the name doesn't give it away already that it is in fact a currency then the way it is use to buy various thing in the market should tell you that.

Trade value are trade goods which is why it need to be convert to energy credit.

 

[Ludaire]

Ok, so we're making currency by turning on generators and filling up batteries, is it? This is your genius economical theory?

Yes. Just like how mining up a bunch of gold is how people make currency under a gold standard. Just like how bit coin mining creates currency and agricultural farming creates currency in a grain-based economy. Fiat currency makes more by printing money and promising that it's valuable.

Currency is an artificial construct we use to make an expression of value more useable. Making it backed by something that can be created in limited quantities but that quantity can be increased by improved technology or larger infrastructure is nothing new.

 

[HFY]

Yes. Just like how mining up a bunch of gold is how people make currency under a gold standard. Just like how bit coin mining creates currency and agricultural farming creates currency in a grain-based economy. Fiat currency makes more by printing money and promising that it's valuable.

Currency is an artificial construct we use to make an expression of value more useable. Making it backed by something that can be created in limited quantities but that quantity can be increased by improved technology or larger infrastructure is nothing new.

Bitcoin is more properly a collectable, like beanie babies, not a currency. There's a fixed quantity of them and that scarcity is what (allegedly) drives its value -- or it's just a bubble, time will tell.

Currency is not a scarce resource, rather it's a very liquid resource which you spend in quantity to get scarce things.

IIRC, gold (and silver) coinage was initially created by conquering people and melting down their gold (and silver) -- e.g. their temple statues -- to print coinage. The value came from the fact that you needed to pay your colonial taxes in those coins, and the local Legionnaires would cut off your head if you didn't pay that tax every year. (And the Legionnaires were paid in those coins, so your economy quickly prostituted itself to better serve the Legion and get its pocket money.) AFAICT that's the origin of the "market economy".

Fiat money, including the debt tokens which coinage replaced, was (and is) mostly a matter of faith in stability. That's why coinage was able to replace it -- the Legions removed the stability (and sometimes the institutions) which had previously facilitated economic relationships.

At least insofar as I've read.