Unlimited stock of the Market harms the game.

[Matoro_TBS]

It would be a very basic way a capitalist economy works, if not for the fact that everybody can produce alloys just as effectively. We are talking about empire-empire trade and not a trade between a corporation and consumers. Basically there are empires in the Galaxy who mine Minerals and instead of just refining them into alloys sell them on Market and then buy alloys. They can skip the Market fee and avoid paying me, if they just redirected some of miners into foundries.

According to the dev diaries galactic market is not just trade between empires, it's also corporations and other non-state actors - a bit like internal trade is. This explains where the resources come. According this reasoning there are a lot more resources in the galaxy than you "see", they are just owned by private actors. This requires little suspension of disbelief and feels a bit lazy, but at least that technically explains where the infinite resources come from.

 

[anamiac]

BTW, this means the whole "You always get more than you lose by going over you cap" thing is a lie, because the penalty is not proportional to your empire size. If I went over the cap here, I would definitely lose far more than whatever piddling amount of resources that one district or claimed system provided.

If the amount of research/unity you're generating per point of admin cap remains the same, then early game it's definitely better to go above cap. However, as your cap rises, it becomes less advantageous. If your cap is 340+, then you're going to get tech faster if you stay under it. For unity, the breaking point is only 200. So, looking at Crow's screenshot where his cap is 825, getting sprawl over his cap would significantly slow down his discovery speeds.

 

[Beanstalker]

It would be a very basic way a capitalist economy works, if not for the fact that everybody can produce alloys just as effectively.

Umm, no they can't? For starters, there's the tech requirement for the advanced foundry building. Then there's the up-front investment to build up your manufacturing infrastructure, and setting aside entire planets for alloy manufacturing to get the most out of the 5% world bonus. All of which has an opportunity cost.

 

[Retry]

It can be -- sometimes, though, you have pops and building slots to spare. What's the mineral cost, if any, for a Gas Refiner -- anyone have Stellaris running that can let us know? I know the building upkeep is 3 energy, and that a happy pop is probably making at least 2.4 of them or so, so it'd have to be a lot of minerals in order for that to be not worth it.

The three synthetic resource refinery type thing costs -10 minerals per. So when unmodified, they take 5 minerals to produce 1 strat resource.

Umm, no they can't? For starters, there's the tech requirement for the advanced foundry building. Then there's the up-front investment to build up your manufacturing infrastructure, and setting aside entire planets for alloy manufacturing to get the most out of the 5% world bonus. All of which has an opportunity cost.

Advanced foundries are only more efficient on a per-building-slot basis, it actually becomes slightly worse on a per-pop basis and a per-mineral basis when factoring in strategic resource upkeep costs for T2 & T3 foundries. An Ecumenopolis, of course, blows them out of the water anyways.

 

[Secret Master]

if not for the fact that everybody can produce alloys just as effectively

An Ecumenopolis, of course, blows them out of the water anyways.

And that, folks, is why not everyone can produce alloys just as effectively.

 

[wingren013]

One thing that nobody is really talking about is that you only need enough resources to build things and to not have zero. You can just let your energy or volatile motes or whatever deplete then get more on the first of the month through the market. The whole mechanic is just borked. Resources also need to be able to go into the negatives.

 

[Beanstalker]

Advanced foundries are only more efficient on a per-building-slot basis, it actually becomes slightly worse on a per-pop basis and a per-mineral basis when factoring in strategic resource upkeep costs for T2 & T3 foundries. An Ecumenopolis, of course, blows them out of the water anyways.

Those extra building slots can house more pops, which more then make up for the additional upkeep and pop requirements.

 

[methegrate]

Removing (or drastically lowering) the trend toward base price would go a long way to fixing the system I think. It doesn't matter that the theoretical stock is infinite if resources become unaffordable unless someone else is selling them.

They actually got the price drift reversed. Prices should drift in away from each other when market activity slows down.

When buying slows down on a particular commodity, purchase prices should begin to fall until buying picks up again. If people aren't buying something, it is too expensive and vendors need to compete for customers.

When selling slows down on that commodity, sale prices should gradually rise until selling picks up again. If people aren't selling something, you aren't offering enough money for it and vendors need to compete for sources.

Drift should absolutely happen, it's just that anyone who'd even seen the preface to an economics textbook could have told the devs that a baseline wasn't the right idea.

 

[methegrate]

One thing that nobody is really talking about is that you only need enough resources to build things and to not have zero. You can just let your energy or volatile motes or whatever deplete then get more on the first of the month through the market. The whole mechanic is just borked. Resources also need to be able to go into the negatives.

Except alloys.

The whole mechanic is also just borked because the entire economy is built to min/max toward alloys. There's no other way to play the game, or at least no better one. You solve for how many resources you need to have zero of everything else for the maximum number of alloys.

 

[anamiac]

Except alloys.

The whole mechanic is also just borked because the entire economy is built to min/max toward alloys. There's no other way to play the game, or at least no better one. You solve for how many resources you need to have zero of everything else for the maximum number of alloys.

Don't forget Technology. That's an end-product of your economy too. I've had games where I went hard into science and only produced a small amount of alloy, and I've had games where I did the opposite.

 

[methegrate]

Don't forget Technology. That's an end-product of your economy too. I've had games where I went hard into science and only produced a small amount of alloy, and I've had games where I did the opposite.

I guess... I mean, you're obviously right. Technology is the other (the only other) thing you can build toward.

The thing is I've never found it competitive with shipbuilding. Obviously you need some technology. But pound for pound, you'll always be stronger if you put more resources into alloys. At least that's what I've found.

 

[StormyStrife]

Whether or not it's ridiculous, it's how the real world economy - and any node in any production chain in a market economy - works: you buy raw materials, refine them, and sell the results, using some of the income to pay for the raw materials and pocket the rest as profit. Your empire simply changed from a developing economy (producing primarily raw materials) into an industrial economy (primarily manufacturing stuff).

Now the important decisions for the game's direction is if this is good enough, or if there should be a second or even third tier of advanced buildings, using resources which can't be found but only manufactured from strategic resources, allowing for more detailed galactic economic division of labor, and if there should be some resources which are needed for very advanced buildings but cannot be manufactured, allowing for space Middle-East. In other words, do the devs want to take another step towards space Victoria?

It's also a pretty good example of how buying valuable metals go. Nowadays, if you want to actually BUY Gold or Silver, you more or less have to go to Rural areas, or buy it online. If you live in a large area, you still can buy Gold, but you'll more or less be getting a stand-in note indicating that you bought gold if the local civilian demand for it is high enough.

In the market, if it runs out of Minerals, and you buy more, you are essentially buying a note that the market owes you Minerals, where your merchants later redeem the note for the minerals later, while the Market itself helps with mineral income.

Spoiler

Though I like to think that the Market is it's own shadow empire with it's own income of all resources on such levels that it's ridiculous that, even if you buy 10K monthly of anything, it's like "this doesn't touch my economy at all" but meanwhile they're the galactic intermediaries of trade who mainly use genetic modification to appear as your own internal, and then external Market-people. Said empire is so high above them, they don't care about any empire, so long as they have resources to trade.
I think this because I think it's pretty fishy that you never get the option of starting the Galactic Market, the idea just "enters" everyone's minds simultaneously. Coincidence, or is it merely just thought translocation on a galactic scale?

Would be cool if an end-game crisis could happen if an empire never uses the market once throughout a game, and starts to get a ridiculous economy, this Market Shadow Empire, begins to see this empire as one that could one year soon usurp the Market itself, and thus eliminating most of the Shadow Empire's power in the Galaxy, and potentially, the Universe, since such a highly powerful empire would undoubtedly be a Multi-galaxy-spanning one. They could rely on the Market itself and those who are selling to it for their income.
Such a crisis would result in the Market closing to the galaxy permanently and with only a small, short-term warning, and all of a sudden, a huge, massive fleet of various ships just uncloaks in most capital systems and starts taking over the galaxy, forcing all to be reliant upon the Market one way, or the other.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

Except it doesn't work like that. The one thing strategic resources give is buildings with more employment slots, so what is the point of building a refinery, that provides just one job for a building slot, if the whole idea of getting the resource is to save building slots and give more employment? Why would I build a building for 1 worker to upgrade something from 5 to 8 jobs, if I can just build a second buildings that gives 5 employment?

They actually produce 2 strategic resources per job, so you can upgrade 2 buildings for a total of 6 jobs.
That doesn't sound like anything worth nitpicking over, but it's very important when one planet that is low on housing can be a good raw resource and refinery world, while the planet with high housing can be the one with all the jobs.

Not saying they shouldn't polish up the strategic resources and building upgrade mechanics, but your assessment on the current state of them is flawed.

 

[Xshu]

I believe that if you trade for Zro from the Fanatic Spiritualist Fallen Empire (the only ones who have it), it will unlock the research card necessary to mine it without necessitating that you be psychic. It will also unlock the ability to purchase it from the stock market if you want to do that, like if you're psychic and don't actually have access to Zro through mining.

Also works with Dark Matter and Living Metal, which you can trade for with any Fallen Empire. If they won't trade, the Machine Fallen Empire always will, though you can't get Zro from them.

 

[Sinister2202]

I think markets should have its own goods availability; price fluctuation to occur monthly so humans have time to react - also with formula to calculate all transaction that occurred during that month; events (not the game events) that could affect goods prices, like wars.

Now of course I don't think other empires will always stockpile the markets - it's not like it's their duty. Due to their current incompetence they buy more than sell. And so goods on market would occasionally run out and drive up the prices, if it was indeed based on stockpile and not infinite availability.

To back this up though, I suggest private sector. However, I reckon this will destroy the game engine and render the game unplayable, not to mention the unreliability of AI players. So this is just a wild idea, and I'm not entirely confident if a concept like this could work at all.

Megacorp's branch offices give jobs to locals, and produced resources go to the megacorp. And they can decide which building to build in their branch offices.
For empire's private sector which should be represented in the corporate tab, along with the megacorp branch offices, they would be just "corp" (not mega).

These "corp" will have minds of their own in building their infrastructure; one can decide to invest, or other empire can decide to invest (sort of like in vic2 factory investments). Their infrastructure will produce jobs and in filling those jobs, resources. They will always be local to the parent empire, however instead of their products going to the empire, it will go to the internal markets.

When internal markets of all empires combined have sufficient stockpile, galactic market would form and all those stockpiles would combine into one. To prevent a single rich empire to suck out the market dry, price of low available resource should be severe. Then the "corp" would jump at the opportunity to produce those low available resources.

An empire with most colonies that also has corp on all their colonies, while producing a certain type of resource like alloy, they'd be the lead on alloy production, but with heavy demand for minerals. In that case, that parent empire can take advantage of that and sell off their own stockpile to make energy credits to buy other resources they need. If they are at war and most of those corporate refineries are disrupted, supply of alloy on market would be limited and drive up the price.

Parent empire should be able to encourage a local corp to focus manufactories on certain resource in the future, but ultimately the corp AI should go where the demand/availability of the market goes. Then the parent empire can do the transaction to buy those resources on galactic market. And if the parent empire's encouragement was to flood the market with alloy, that's just as advantageous for them as it would be for others if they are running low on alloys.

At first, prospector, energy or agricultural raw resource corp would be prolific in early game I would suspect, due to constant demand for raw resources. All corp local to an empire wouldn't have as much details, like a name. They should however have a shared one background economy, regardless of which colony they are located. So if a corp on a colony in an empire have 3 mineral mines, it would be sufficient for a corp in another colony to build a consumer goods factory or alloy refinery, with rest of surplus minerals going to the market.

Judging by how much income they made (how much surplus they have sent off to markets) should have them to look for other venues of revenue, like producing finished goods like consumer goods and alloys. If an empire's corp does not manufacture enough minerals to support some of its own manufactories, it'd start buying minerals off the market and drive up the price on it. But as long as minerals keep flowing to the market from other empire's corp, it would be okay. So like I said, corp AI should ultimately go where the demand and goods availability takes them, but with minimal control from parent empire.


For balancing, there should be one corp per colony. Wouldn't matter if megacorp branch office is on that colony, that shouldn't prevent them from propping up. Capital planet should have a corp at game start.

One corp can have 1 raw resource production, 1 finished goods production and 1 synthetic strategic resource production. Raw resources are minerals and food vs finished goods are consumer goods and alloys. For strategic resources, they would be motes, crystals, and gases. At certain pop requirement, they would unlock the ability to produce finished goods. Then at higher pop requirement, they would unlock the ability to produce strategic resource.

Since the market in this scenario is stockpile based, this would give the feel of how rare dark matter and zro truly are, since none of the corp would be able to produce synthetic versions of them, and only empires would be able to sell off their own stockpiles of them to the galactic market. But then again, there's that dependence on AI reliability for these 2 resources to be available in the market sooner rather than later...

 

[Catastrophy]

I trade solely trade empire. Buying raw mats and only refine them for use and resale. It dint go well when mainerals exceeded consumer good prices, lol. Food became prohibitively expensive. And I was raking in la LOT of trade value.

 

[Flame13223]

Lategame resources are just weird...they really do need more buildings or components or whatever because right now they are kind of useless apart from selling it non-stop and there's little to no reason to buy it.


And yes an unlimited stock is just weird...If there was a base rate of growth for the stock it would be a hell of a lot better.