Why is Money Energy?

[SacremPyrobolum]

Trade districts on ring world generate energy. Stock exchanges generate energy. Services from artisans and curators need to be bought with energy. Trade enclaves trade with energy.

I don't get why they didn't just call energy what it is, which is money. How would an energy based economy even work, would we all carry batteries around?

 

[GC13]

Empires in Stellaris operate on the energy standard, where each unit of currency is redeemable for a certain amount of energy.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

I think the idea is that, far enough into the future, the limiting factor of a lot of industrial activity would be the energy required to carry it out. Energy production capacity would be worth a lot. So instead of trading useless pieces of paper, people might trade energy futures or something like that, which is more or less directly trading something that results in industrial or communications or information activity, and therefore, all meaningful economic activity.

 

[Squizzy77]

I call bullshit.

Just the other day I went to my bank and tried to deposit a bag of AA batteries.

They were all like "I'm sorry, that's not legal tender" And I'm like "If it's good enough for the Carithen Alliance of space fungi then it's good enough for you!"

My court appearance is next Friday

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

But why would stock exchanges increase your energy stockpiles?

 

[henzington]

The same reason everyone's used ducats in Eu4 and CK2.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Ducats are money.

 

[henzington]

Ducats are money.

Except I doubt every nation was using them in 1444

 

[Secret Master]

Because if the game had fiat currencies, 90% of its computing code would relate to making those currencies interact with one another and having economically sane prices.

You could tie it to minerals, but I prefer having currency tied to energy. I can tolerate that abstraction, as everyone needs it in the game.

 

[Me_]

@OP Arbitrary choice, although common in sci-fi games.

 

[GC13]

But why would stock exchanges increase your energy stockpiles?

More economic activity means more to tax, which means you can buy energy with that money (or pay troops with it, whatever, energy and currency can be swapped for one another as needed).

The part that doesn't actually make sense is where this private, taxed economic activity comes if the government builds, owns, and directs Pops to operate all of the economic buildings. (Also, how am I expected to believe that a species that can travel the stars can only manage to make on its initial colonies a hydroponics farm so inefficient that it not only requires the farming efforts of everyone it feeds, it also requires additional upkeep from outside of the colony? One Pop eats one unit of food, and that's all a basic farm produces unless it's on an especially fertile tile.)

 

[henzington]

Farms are that way for balance reasons. If I remember correctly only 2% of USA population is farming right now.

 

[GC13]

Farms are that way for balance reasons. If I remember correctly only 2% of USA population is farming right now.

Food doesn't even have to be a resource. Planets could just as easily build factories for heavy and high-tech industry to determine how quickly the orbiting spaceport can build ships, with different components requiring different factory capacity.

 

[Arcvalons]

I agree it's odd and confusing, I'd rather have a separate Credits resource.

 

[Seomis]

Trade districts on ring world generate energy. Stock exchanges generate energy. Services from artisans and curators need to be bought with energy. Trade enclaves trade with energy.

I don't get why they didn't just call energy what it is, which is money. How would an energy based economy even work, would we all carry batteries around?

Money is not energy: Note that it's called an energy credit. It is a currency whose value is linked to the cost of energy production. Compare it to a gold-standard currency where people carried paper money in their pockets, but it was effectively a "gold certificate" redeemable at a central bank.

 

[garbud]

pretty much instead of their currency being based on the gold standard its based on a energy standard.

 

[Kayden_II]

It's Money, but covered by Energy.

 

[The Shacks]

More economic activity means more to tax, which means you can buy energy with that money (or pay troops with it, whatever, energy and currency can be swapped for one another as needed).

The part that doesn't actually make sense is where this private, taxed economic activity comes if the government builds, owns, and directs Pops to operate all of the economic buildings. (Also, how am I expected to believe that a species that can travel the stars can only manage to make on its initial colonies a hydroponics farm so inefficient that it not only requires the farming efforts of everyone it feeds, it also requires additional upkeep from outside of the colony? One Pop eats one unit of food, and that's all a basic farm produces unless it's on an especially fertile tile.)

I suppose bare in mind that the hydro farms are only the dominant feature of said tile, the food is also feeding the abstracted presumably dense population making up that full pop unit. Likewise the energy cost powers the homes, commercials etc tied into them

 

[Alblaka]

It's a genre convention.
Many other SciFi games do it like that, thus Paradox decided to roll with the flow.

 

[Kliwarrior]

Is known that, for a photon, E = h f , where f, the frequency, is the inverse of time. So you can say that Time= h/E .
But we all know that "Time IS Money", therefore you can write a simple function F, saying that Money = F( Energy ) , which is obviously what the Dev's used in Stellaris.