Stale Economy? Are players actually trading?

I think there is one more effect to players growing. Not only are we making more, but with the lack of higher tier demand, we are making more basic items. With the exception of players going for multiple bases making the same thing, not only are we each making more, we are making more items that we no longer need from the market. Thus not only is the world going deflationary, most players are becoming more and more self sufficient (with only hastens the drop in demand for T1 materials).

Everyone keeps saying that the economy is deflationary, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the constant stream of new players joining, buying some things with their 40k starting cash, and then leaving the game, or COLIQing and staying, is actually leading to a steady increase in the money supply.

I suspect the main reason that prices are falling everywhere is the other factor mentioned above - that we’re all producing more tier 1 goods than we consume. For example, a single full base on Promitor can supply 7 or 8 other full bases with DW/RAT. And Promitor itself is full. So unless there are the equivalent of 7/8 full planets elsewhere in the universe, all depending on Promitor for DW/RAT, there will be more produced than consumed. This seems to be true for all common resources and tier 1 products.

In theory, this wouldn’t be a problem if all players expanded as efficiently as possible, since all the excess production would end up in the form of construction materials for new buildings and bases. But players aren’t 100% efficient. A large proportion of the universe’s wealth is sitting on the markets at unrealistic bid/ask prices. New players coming into the game can’t necessarily see the current optimal profit path, so just end up making more DW/RAT/C/LST/FE, even though there’s oversupply of all those.

This all stems from the fundamental issue that there isn’t much incentive to move up to tier 2 production. If it were in the interest of advanced players to switch production away from the usual tier 1 suspects, then the flow of goods might even out.

I’m not sure how this could be achieved, but I suspect part of the answer may be in more efficient alternatives to tier 1 production, using tier 2+ ingredients. To take an existing example:

10 H2O → 7 DW
10 H2O + 1 PG → 10 DW

You want to arrange things such that someone at tier 2 is better off just producing PG and selling it to new players, rather than continuing to make the DW themselves. This could be done by having more of these types of recipes, also at higher tiers. Some ideas:

10 H2O → 5 DW (existing recipe but reduced efficiency)
10 H2O + 1 PG → 7 DW (existing recipe but reduced efficiency)
10 H2O + 1 BAC → 9 DW
10 H2O + 1 (Water filter made in AML) → 10 DW

1 MUS + 1 PIB + 1 GRN → 15 RAT
1 ALG + 1 GRA + 1 MAI → 15 RAT

10 OVE + 1 AL → 10 EXO (existing recipe, but now takes twice as long)
10 OVE + 1 AL + 1 TRN → 10 EXO (regular time)

1 STL → 5 PT (existing recipe)
1 STL + 2 SFK → 7 PT
1 STL + 1 TRN → 8 PT
1 STL + 1 W → 10 PT

4 LST + 2 SIO → 50 MCG (existing recipe)
4 LST + 2 SIO + 5 EPO → 60 MCG
4 LST + 2 TIO + 10 EPO → 70 MCG
4 LST + 2 TIO + 5 NR → 80 MCG
4 LST + 2 BOS → 100 MCG

6 FEO + 1 C + 1 O → 3 FE (existing recipe)
6 FEO + 1 C + 1 O + 1 FLX → 4 FE (existing recipe)
6 FEO + 1 C + 1 O + 1 FLX + 1 SEN → 5 FE

4 HCP + 2 MAI → 4 C (existing recipe)
4 HCP + 2 MAI + 1 SEN → 5 C
4 HCP + 2 MAI + 2 GRN → 4 C (existing recipe)
4 HCP + 2 MAI + 2 GRN + 1 SEN → 6 C

In conjunction with the above, it should probably be more difficult to get extra bases. Currently, advanced players are more likely to keep their existing tier 1 buildings, and add new bases and tier 2+ buildings. It should be more profitable for an advanced player to convert their existing buildings to the tier 2+ ones, rather than keep expanding indefinitely. This can be done with ideas discussed elsewhere, such as an efficiency penalty that grows with company size (which can be mitigated by running expert-specific programs in the HQ to encourage specialization) as well as making HQ upgrades more expensive (i.e. requiring higher tier materials) for each upgrade.

Hopefully, advanced players would then push to get to the SCA, so they can sell SEN to all the new players, who would gladly buy SEN for improved efficiency, etc. While the advanced players themselves don’t benefit from hanging on to their own SME and INC - efficiency penalties mean that they are now better off buying those outputs cheaper on the market.

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There are multiple ways how low demand for T2/T3 can be approach. Making more complex but efficient recipes as mentioned above, adding T1 buildings upgrades increasing efficiency but could be done only with T2/T3 materials, creating random events on planets sinking products (especially not used or with low usage currently or overproduced). Those projects when fulfilled could end up with some temporary efficiency buffs (or debuffs to eff if not fulfilled) or could simply generate money. Option to give power to governors to trigger specific events that would generate money, which could help move away from MM, adding quality for products, so you have higher tier RAT lasting maybe longer or provide larger eff buff, but to produce it would require standard RAT to sink oversupply, yet would be produced with T2 buildings. Making improved materials changing some of the characteristics of material - like lowering weights of the final products, adding consumables like fuel buffs or cargo minimizers, production eff boosts for higher damage, more durable fabs requiring slower repairs, production lines parts that needs to be replaced (FS owners would be happy) and I can go all day with ideas, of course I am not sure how reasonable and feasible those are (and would have to be balanced), but there is a lot of potential to address the current state with a different design. But in the end that would require dev time involved and I do have a felling devs are more focused on PR/other, rather than focusing dev time on things that matters and would keep players happy/entertained (revamping map does not seems impactful at all for gameplay and its being done for months now). Since I’m playing (almost half year now) there was no changes that mattered and those that happened (new fuel recipe, some formulas for planetary safety, questionable decision not communicated about RAT/DW MM, bonus for bases permit, LM for shipping on CX ) didn’t look like requiring massive hundreds of production hours ← and that would be more of a problem to me, rather than current stale economy, so unless there is something community does not know, any improvements wont happen anytime soon or even this calendar year with the development speed/focus we are a witness of now. I wish more energy would be put (or more information about the actual development with screenshots, idea drafts, brainstorms done etc) on improving gameplay features with the currently established model.

EDIT: and by “this” idea - i’m referring to the more advanced formulas that produce higher amounts of goods with higher tier product inputs.

This is a fantastic idea that would allow further specialization than just the 5 experts max. This would partially solve the issue where companies can’t research to get ahead → they can go up in tier to get ahead. And that would create higher tier demands/products and allow others to expand on that.

Right now, too many players are ENCOURAGED to do vertical integration because of the game setup. And to do so all on the T1 planets and T1 products. That’s really sad and requires several players to self sacrifice their profits and companies to move the universe forward. There needs to be natural incentives to move up and this is an easy idea to try.

the real world has companies doing 1 primary market and trying to improve their margins in that market - not do 50 markets. There needs to be more ways for a player to say “how can I make more, for cheaper, of my product than my competitor?” And then there needs to be more people saying “that guy has way better margins than me, I should do another product where I have edge he doesn’t”

-Uber

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I made this point after my third week of playing.

While the Expert System rewards you for specializing, it does not actually disincentivize vertical integration strongly enough to really encourage a player to do one, two, or at max three, industries. For an example, look at the industries around running FPs:

  1. Resource Extraction (For getting H2O)
  2. Agriculture (For farming to produce RATs)
  3. Food Processing (To create RAT/DW)

Your company (in theory) has no business then going out to try and produce IRON. The natural progression is to move up the food chain by building HYFs, ORCs, VINs, FERs etc. Even at this point, there isn’t enough directionality to the food business to encourage a more efficient process to produce T1/2 materials.

Consider what happens if you go full hog and set up a three way base with two other players:

  1. The first guy does nothing but extract H2O. You’ll get a very high level of RE experts quickly with 40 COLs
  2. The first guy sells water to the FRM/HYF runner and to the Food Specialist. The farmer produces everything to make RATs. This player will eventually expand out to ORC/VIN as the third player grows
  3. The third player buys water from the first player, and crops from the second player, and produces RAT and DW. Eventually, they will produce more advanced foods (COF/KOM etc) but this is only when the chain is running efficiently.

All three players running one expert line will be able to absolutely smoke the competition… but instead what you really get is three players who are all diversified across three industries (or two and importing water), and also making a BMP because they don’t want to buy OVE/PWO.

Bases need to specialize and there needs to be a penalty (not just a lack of incentive) to spreading yourself thin on one plot.

This is somewhat dangerous territory though, as it opens up the possibility for veterans to heavily use those tier 1 recipes themselves and push new players out of the market completely. The other way around (tier 1 players delivering materials for higher-tier recipes) are usually more favorable.

Can you maybe elaborate on why you think that “having more of these types of recipes, also at higher tiers” would work against this problem? On first thought it seems like this would just replicate it for the higher tiers as well.

Thanks a lot for the input! :slight_smile:

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The other way around (tier 1 players delivering materials for higher-tier recipes) are usually more favorable.

Isn’t this what we currently have? Tier 1 products are used by everyone, while tier 2+ products are mainly used by tier 2+ players. Hence nobody has any incentive to move up the tiers. If tier 2+ products were in demand by tier 1 players, then there would be far more of a market for them, and they would be more attractive to produce.

This is somewhat dangerous territory though, as it opens up the possibility for veterans to heavily use those tier 1 recipes themselves and push new players out of the market completely.

I agree that this is a concern, although I think it is no worse than the situation we are currently in. Bear in mind that it only takes one veteran player to “break ranks” and start selling the tier 2+ goods on the CX and then all the tier 1 players can benefit from the new recipes. Plus if the recipes are well designed, the veteran player should be able to make more profit from making more of the tier 2+ ingredients and selling those, rather than hanging on to their tier 1 buildings which take up space in their base.

I think the new recipes would stimulate trading by themselves, and are worth adding for that reason alone. But I see them having particular benefit in conjuction with other changes. In a separate post I have argued for changes that make it less easy to expand indefinitely. So veteran players couldn’t so easily have 5 bases churning out tier 1 recipes - they would have to “give up” their tier 1 buildings in order to make room for the tier 2+. Not in a strict 1 for 1 exchange sense, but they should at least be financially incentivised not to have lots of different buildings at different tiers in different specialties.

Ideas for this include:

Make it less easy to get new base permits. The upgrade from 2 to 3 permits only uses B-fabs. Why? It should be at least L-fabs. Then 3 to 4 is the exact same B-fabs again. At least you should require more of them, but ideally it would be L-fabs plus some A-fabs. Then to go from 4 to 5 would require all A-fabs, and so on.

Add an efficiency penalty that increases with each added production building. Players can then reduce the penalty in specific areas by running programs in their HQ, which use consumables. So for example, someone with two full bases has a 20% efficiency penalty overall, but they can run a “settlers” program and a “chemistry” program so that they get no penalty at all for making PG in their POL. Instead of making DW themselves (at a 20% penalty), they sell the PG to tier 1 players who only have a couple of FPs and get no penalty (yet) for making DW with pioneers.

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I think we all agree that in general the whole T3/T4 level requires rebuilding as there is clearly no need to chase for it and that would require a lot of redesigns.

I will add some random ideas still - add things that could improve yields efficiency/ timing from higher tiers. Add additional consumables for different tier or even do a specific consumables for a specific technology or even building. Make more things required for lower tiers to be better and make them from combination of new (higher tier) resources and lower tier resources. Make plots matter - different plots offer a range of resources or even more crazy idea - the raw materials are not infinite and in order to extend ability to extract more, do higher tier projects/research that would grant some more yield, but eventually this would run out also and those bases would have to be moved somewhere else or swapped to reprocessing and new planets needs to be searched/used to get those resources, so for that reason making materials to settle other planets would make a lot of more sense as there would not be any other option. Add R&D in general to suck higher/lower numbers of resources from different tiers to improve a specific area - not only experts. Maybe divide the workforce structure more, so instead of PIO you have PIO manufacturer requiring DW/RAT/COF/PWO + a tool/something else specific etc, PIO farmer etc, add option you need to buy workforce not only use upkeep. Add Bases specialization when constructed giving clear +/- for specific fields so that it would encourage only specific type of industries, like metallurgy +30-40%EXT +30-40 %SME -20%MANUFACTURE -50% food production etc, which can be worked with R&D to swap those numbers further. You can do similarly with workforce - give them stats on areas that could be adjusted/managed by different factors.

Note to myself: I guess I need to gather all of those idea and put them in to the section they belong to - new ideas/feature instead of spamming threads.

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There is a lack of utility. Everyone needs consumables, they have great utility, therefore everyone makes them. The problem isn’t “How do we convince people to hire techs to make more DW?” This game already has very complicated recipes in the electronics categories. The content that we need is already in the game. It’s the lack of utility that is stopping us.

We have BMF (mainframe), BWS (workstation). If the HQ is an office building then it obviously needs IT equipment. Of course the ship has sailed with the upgrade system but there is still the possibility to split the efficiency upgrades and the permit system into three upgrade categories. B-Fabs for permits (backwards compatibility), BWS+software (local database, window manager) for queue slots, BMF+software (machine learning, networking, search algorithm) for efficiency upgrades. Permits can be permanent but the last two should get worse over time like a degrading building or ship. You know like software updates in the real world.

I like the idea of materials running out → an easier way to do this might be to decrease the output of the whole planet over time/use. This would encourage new players AND old players to settle new worlds, rather than milking the very nice starter T1 planets.

It also rewards people that branch out → being on a planet on your own means less competition for (i.e. slower decay of) the resources.

Why do the (now full) starter planets still have the best concentration of some resources? Given how long they’ve been full, we should NOT see the original starting planets in the list of top 10 for ANY resource they have.

-Uber

Trade is created through inequality, the problem is someone can easily branch out and outclass someone who’s just sololy focused on say AL or FE production(which is why Metallurgist is a hard profession).

For instance a construction will seek to produce FE or AL themselves rather then buy it. They’ll also do that for Carbon, RAT, DW and so on.

It get worse as you go up the tiers as raw resource extraction rates don’t matter anymore, and everyone is basically on a level playing field-There is no “PG” resource deposit to make the recipe produce more or go faster, or INS deposit that would differentiate between producers.

The problem with this (tier-1 players supplying tier-2 players) is that the verticality of the tier-2 player is not impacted. It is simple to continue to produce your tier-1 materials in supplying the tier-2 portion of your base. By flipping this order (tier-2 makes tier-1 more efficient), the vertical integration ceases to make sense.

Yes, you could conceivably have a player straddling the first and second tier pushing their tier-2 production down into tier 1… but that should only happen while the other recipes that use the tier-2 production consumable are coming online.

Let’s take Fick’s carbon recipe stack for a good example:

As long as 1 SEN costs less than 2C, it makes sense to buy SEN (assuming that the time is equivalent or better than the 4/2/2 reaction); however, the reaction for SEN is way overloaded and a tier-2/3 player producing SEN is guaranteed to produce more SEN than they can use alone if that player is only making Carbon.

Hell, even if our player is running an SCA, INC, and SME, they would still be unable to use every SEN that they produce in a 6 hour period meaning that SEN should bleed off the player and into the market. Having an efficiency factor for SEN to C via the Carbon market-maker means that one SEN should always sell for a minimum of 450. Suddenly, the SCA is producing 9000 currency worth of gross goods every 6-ish hours. This massively outpaces tier 1 production gross values and should make it immediately beneficial for tier-2/3 players who would then be incentivized to give up their tier 1 production on SEN consumers to develop or use their electronics experts and more efficiently deliver SEN.

I understand your concern with vets outpacing newbies on production… but the economic incentive just isn’t there for them to actually do it… this is doubly true if you make it harder to expand to multiple bases which is why that proviso is an essential part of Fick’s suggestion.

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A fantastic example of tier 2 supplying tier 1 that works is flux. It isn’t really viable or necessary for every metallurgist to make their own flux and a chemist arguably does better selling flux than producing it for out-competing metallurgists. So there’s clearly a demand from the start for chemistry plants and good reason to build one. Once you have chemistry plants, now it suddenly makes sense to make buildings that are dependent on it, like hydroponics farms. This naturally opens up more of the tech tree without requiring that one player take on the ownes of building the whole production chain from the ground up.

What we’re looking for is more of that.

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For me, having a highly vertically integrated company, two more factor are important on why i chose as i did:

  1. Reliabilty
  2. Management effort

For 1, i started at Prox as a “small vertically integrated” guy. Mainly making MCG+PE and some B-Fabs (at start mostly BDE), and had my own FRM/FP/INC for my own demand of C and some RAT/DW… bought some FE for BSE/BBH…
Later i got PP2 as well as POL+PPF as there was little supply for PSL and i needed only MG besides C+H i needed anyway for PE…

But

  • first there was FEO, but very few FE available → got my own SMEs (and even sold FE in the early days…)
  • then there was a huge shortage of H2O (and resulting DW), we could hardly get any H2O at all, even at crazy high prices, base was stalling due to lack of DW/RAT → had my second base to get me H2O!
  • as prices for SF were very high at some point (and i love to fly fast), i decided to get into SF-business (had everything ready for my third base → Katoa it was…)
  • hard to get H, i needed it anyway for PE/PG → fourth base at Umbra
  • the FE-supply was still low, as was FEO rising in prices → fifth base at Kiruna

Most times, the choice of my next base was influenced by lacking supply or crazy prices.
Sure, i could try to get suppliers somewhere in the universe, but still i have to contact, set up contracts, ship,… every few days!

→ what would stop me from going vertical even further would be recurring contracts! Those should even have the ability to adjust prices while still being active! Maybe even with a “bid” function?

Next renew due in 3 d 4h
Delivering 100 FEO each week to xyz 
Current price 75 CIS/unit
Suggested price by contract partner for next cycle: 78 CIS/unit [accept] [conter offer: ___ CIS] [end contract]

I think this all boils down to specialization.

It’s too easy to vertically integrate. There is less incentive to actually participate in galactic trade vs. just consuming the items yourself.

The benefits of vertically integrating and insulating from galactic material shortages vastly outweigh the slight production penalty.

The difficult part is, because there are 4 different cx’s & not that many people playing this game, it’s difficult to solve this chicken-egg problem. How do you incentivize players to specialize into one industry? How do you make sure there are always materials available for people to run their production? How do you boostrap that economy and stimulate player trade and dis-incentivize vertical integration?

12% for a 3/3 expert base versus 28% for 5 experts. 16% is hardly a slight difference…

16% increase is 3.84h saved per day of production; or 341 extra production-hours per 89 day repair-cycle

Faction Contracts are going to be interesting. They may be a good start.

Vertical integration is generally stopped by things like MM’s and guaranteed market forces, when your profits are consistent, you can start going up tiers and specializing more, simply because the market is inflating due to the increase of money in the system.

With deflation and things in higher tiers costing more and more money to produce with no-one willing to buy, there is never going to be any benefit to a market for higher tier products.

The Dev’s are really anti-MM as a concept, but the fact is we need some inflation based force to be able to do anything to actually expand and grow into higher tiers.

I’d wager they won’t do enough, unless they go really overboard with them, since the thing we need is basically hyper inflation in every currency, and for that to happen, we as players either need to agree to exploit them (bidding for the contract only makes the contract worse for everyone) or they have to be basically allowing every player to sell their products at whatever price they want

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Contracts will be between you and the NPCs only. You won’t be competing for faction contracts with other players.

If that’s the case, that probably makes them like 50x worse, no competition probably means the system decides the price, and the price will be awful, especially if you take into account what the devs have done to MM’s in the past.