Water sales by SHQ = easy profits

[Jdane]

I noticed when my regime has access to a body of water, the SHQ often sells the excess to the traders. Roughly 5 000 units of Water bring back 1 000 or so credits.

Granted, it only happens on planets where water is available, but I wonder if in that case it can fetch such a price when it's basically everywhere. If only I was the sole regime having access to a body water, it would make strategic sense, but in my current game, all major regimes do, therefore the competition should be fierce and drive the price even lower.

I'm just wondering here if toning down this revenue would not be desirable. If Shadow Empire is going to emphasize the naval aspect, this phenomenon will become quite common. It's always pleasant to get free money, but in some sense one can feel it trivializes financial management.

[Falke]

ORIGINAL: Jdane
If Shadow Empire is going to emphasize the naval aspect, this phenomenon will become quite common.

Not necessarily, if Fresh / Salt water is implemented. Then the salt water can only be used if you build a desalination plant.

[Jdane]

Yes, that would be a good thing.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

I haven't seen it in the latest patchs

or better to say after a few turns water become too abundant and then worthless, market price wise. And no more profits from selling it

same goes for most other commodities, if you dump, say rare metals, it will end up selling at cents

[demiare]

I saw this situation in 1.04 betas only on planet with very limited water sources - like one big ocean and that's all, no rivers and only few lakes. In that case it's reasonable that water would be expensive (most majors were overbuilding ice mines and wind traps). On planets with abundant water it cost around zero since turn 1.

[Jdane]

I have been noticing in version #45 by the way (1.04-b5).

I wholly agree that water could fetch a good price if it's an uncommon commodity, but I can't help but think it is maybe a little overpowered.



This is my current planet. Granted, the center is arid, but it seems to me there are plenty of water sources.

At any rate, it's admittedly debatable and probably not of the highest priority.

[demiare]

On you map I see 7 regimes (Gault, Celtris, Rostock, Bondsbruck, Reichenau, Eberborn, Diekenkau) without access to water, while only 3 have it (Osnabruck, Chartmont, Prismcon, unsure about Neutronmountain). As for me it is sound like shortage

[Jdane]

I should also have joined the regime map. Celtris and Rostock are one, and Gault, Eberbon and Reichenau are a part of Prismcon.
But admittedly the map is incomplete, and there are a few minors regimes, some of which have access to water, and some don't.

Basically, there are as much sellers as there are buyers. You might have a point though, since there are regimes deprived of access to surface water, the demand might be balanced with the offer.

[Alcatar]

ORIGINAL: Falke

ORIGINAL: Jdane
If Shadow Empire is going to emphasize the naval aspect, this phenomenon will become quite common.

Not necessarily, if Fresh / Salt water is implemented. Then the salt water can only be used if you build a desalination plant.

Drawing water would be interesting, as would desalination, but I just want to point out that I believe 100% of the water obtained at the moment is due to rainfall - and rainfall is heaviest in hexes closest to water bodies.
I may be wrong, but that's been entirely my impression.


In the multiplayer game I've been playing since 1.03-b2, my SHQ is also selling water every 3 or so turns which nets a huge profit of 1-2k credits - this happens despite not being able to sell water manually on any turn I've tried to since the first few rounds. There are only a few hexes on the map that don't have rainfall, and no regimes are confined only to those areas.

But honestly, in my limited SE experience so far, credits are very hard to generate (enough of) and manual trades on the market are a necessity for many turns. If it wasn't for the SHQ force-selling commodities that are in surplus and have a very low value, if the SHQ wasn't able to force-sell, I would need to make the choice of selling other materials every few turns.


I would however like to see an option to turn forced-sales off. If say, you wanted to starve the market (or a rival) of a resource that you had an abundance of. The balance would need checking though, as I imagine it could well lead to some bitter power plays in multiplayer games...

[PyrrhicDefeat]

I would however like to see an option to turn forced-sales off.

I think that would generate unintended consequences. It looks to me like a behind the scenes but 'visible if you look' fix for handling bankruptcy. I haven't seen it happen much so maybe there are other levels to it I haven't seen, but it feels like I can run zero credits and the private market will always bail me out. So far it's always been water sales for me, which has been like free money as I always have max.

It's not unreasonable to me to imagine that a limos planet has a water market even with large lakes and seas due to uneven distribution, an that as a major nation I can exert leverage to profit on it.

As a game mechanic I think turning off forced sales would require an alternative bankruptcy mechanism. The traditional (Civ I+) punishment is selling off or losing an asset. Personally I hate that mechanic as the permanence of the loss makes it disproportionate, and it isn't something that really happens to major powers. Alternatives I can think of could be escalating the value of materials sold off, e.g. the second forced sale is your food or fuel if you have enough, the third is metal etc.; or forced austerity like wage and salary cuts made by the AI - the negative happiness caused would discourage trying to reset them to unsupportable levels. The problem is all of these can potentially cause a negative spiral for a player as problems trigger new problems and the situation is unrecoverable.

The crucial difference from a lot of 4X is that SE doesn't let you do a whole lot with money. You need it to pay for salaries but that's about it, you can't use it to buy assets or units or covert it into other major benefits. On a post-apocalyptic planet with a million or two people spread around the planet, global trade and finance is probably limited. As a mechanic forced material sales seems to me to be balanced with the limited potential for abuse and plausible for the world of the game. Way down my list of things to mess with.

[Alcatar]

ORIGINAL: PyrrhicDefeat

I would however like to see an option to turn forced-sales off.

As a game mechanic I think turning off forced sales would require an alternative bankruptcy mechanism. The traditional (Civ I+) punishment is selling off or losing an asset. Personally I hate that mechanic as the permanence of the loss makes it disproportionate, and it isn't something that really happens to major powers. Alternatives I can think of could be escalating the value of materials sold off, e.g. the second forced sale is your food or fuel if you have enough, the third is metal etc.; or forced austerity like wage and salary cuts made by the AI - the negative happiness caused would discourage trying to reset them to unsupportable levels. The problem is all of these can potentially cause a negative spiral for a player as problems trigger new problems and the situation is unrecoverable.

The crucial difference from a lot of 4X is that SE doesn't let you do a whole lot with money. You need it to pay for salaries but that's about it, you can't use it to buy assets or units or covert it into other major benefits. On a post-apocalyptic planet with a million or two people spread around the planet, global trade and finance is probably limited. As a mechanic forced material sales seems to me to be balanced with the limited potential for abuse and plausible for the world of the game. Way down my list of things to mess with.

Well put PyrrhicDefeat, I agree with your sentiment.

As to running below zero credits, I'll have to try that again and see what happens.