Is there too much money in this game?

[Fishman]

Well, the AI does occasionally upgrade his designs, but I discovered another really hilarious thing: So, pirate bases...are often an imitation of your bases. I first encountered this behavior when I noticed that there was one pirate base in the middle of alien space that somehow sported over 3000 firepower. I had acquired sensor coverage of that particular spot from a sensor station I captured, and was watching this one 3000-firepower pirate base mowing down the combined assault force of 3 empires. I was like "Holy shit, that's one mean pirate base". With over 10000 shielding, and 3000 firepower, it was basically totally impervious to the AI's attacks, while the pirate ships that spawned from it all died instantly.

Later on, I captured this base by destroying another pirate base...and discovered that the design was a complete knockoff of my design, with "extra parts" grafted to it to make it More Piratey, so it had been fortified to be even meaner than the original. Keep in mind the original Gas Mining Station, designed by me, is a leviathan battle platform intended to repel a massed Shakturi assault, upgraded to be even meaner every time it doesn't. So it was just toasting these barbarian navies.

As for "is there too much money", I'm going to go with "no, but the AI does not use what money there is well, and therefore, you don't need to use very much to defeat them, giving the impression that there is too much money". Also, money is never the real crunch of this game, anyway: Resource supply management is. All the money in the world isn't going to get your battleship built.

[Beag]

Yeah, there is a reason why space ports are so difficult to destroy with espionage and why agents aren´t so plentiful. I think that if you destroy a space port in the first 2 years, that race has effectively been knocked out from the game. Spaceyards limit expansion more than money, most of the time.

[Fishman]

Nah, spaceports aren't that essential except at the mid-beginning, when they are your one source of civilian shipbuilding. You don't actually need them to collect cargo, and as long as you retain your initial civilian fleet, you still have a functioning empire. The starting designs for spaceports are also terrible, anyway: It has a bajillion cargo bays on it. Spaceports neither apparently need nor use cargo bays. They just therefore chew up resources and upkeep. They seem to really love unnecessary cargo bays. Why does the DEATH STAR need cargo bays? How do I even USE those cargo bays? It doesn't have a gas extractor, so I can't use it as a fuelling station. It doesn't have a mining engine, so it can't be used to mine anything. I can't manually load it with any cargo...so what the hell are those cargo bays FOR?

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Shark7
Most nations with a coast line that use PGs and PTMs would love to have CGs and DDGs. Its not a matter of want, its a matter of what they can afford. Most third world navies can barely afford their PGs (as in most of them are broken down more than they are at sea), much less a ship of corvette size or larger.

And that's because they can't build a ship that big. They don't have enough Construction research, and they can't afford to actually maintain what they do have, because they don't have the resources for it.

ORIGINAL: Shark7
So in DW, it all does come back to 1. the economy and 2. ships being totally open design. IN DW your frigate can cost as much as your battleship because both can be identical.

You can do that in real life, too. In fact, we *DO* do this in real life. The US Navy produces "destroyers" that are basically the modern equivalent of battleships in all but name. They're way bigger and more expensive than any destroyer of the past, and function in the same roles that one might have formerly found a cruiser or even a battleship: They're not the expendable, cheap destroyers of the World Wars. Similarly, I'm sure some nation would love to call their crappy little boat a frigate, except for the problem of being laughed at.

ORIGINAL: Shark7
Now if there were some mechanism to enforce both size restrictions (like a hardpoints system) and cost, then perhaps it would balance out as you'd have a large navy or smaller ships, a small navy of very large ships, or go the middle route and balance it.

But then it wouldn't be DW anymore. It'd be one of those OTHER games where hull types are rigidly set in stone by some cosmic universal force, and where you know that any "destroyer" you encounter will always be comparable in size and capability to yours, regardless of their tech level. In fact, the smaller hulls quickly become obsolete. You see this in games like the Master of Orion games, where you quickly stop producing the "lesser" classes and fleets are composed entirely of battleships serving as destroyer screens for Titans and more.

ORIGINAL: Shark7
But it has to be balanced. It should not be done so that the only thing the player can afford is the equivalent of row boat with an M2 mounted on the prow.

That exists in DW already. I routinely encounter "row boats with an M2 mounted on the prow" in DW. My 1500+ firepower battleships routinely find themselves under assault by some two-bit backwater empire's "rowboat" destroyers with obsolete Maxos blasters. I have 10x their speed, 20x their firepower, and a hundred times their shielding and armor. I have a battleship, one meant to do battle against the Shakturi...they have a rowboat. This already exists in DW. Of course, I'm pretty sure THEY thought their ship was pretty impressive. I mean, they call it a destroyer, and built them by the hundreds, which is probably why their economy sucks. I call it target practice. Also, for some reason, they're inexplicably hostile and keep trying to blockade my colonies, which is why these fights occur.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

Even then this may not be easy to do and leads back to why I think the price controls are primarily to keep ai economies from going insane.

The AI is very good at driving the economy insane, that's for sure, doing asinine things like queuing up hundreds of ships at once at a single 4-arm spaceport, crashing the entire game. It should REALLY STOP QUEUING MORE ORDERS THAN THERE EXISTS CONSTRUCTION SLOTS.

You fail to take into consideration one thing, and it is the main thing...crew requirements. That DDG only requires a crew of a few hundred versus a crew of 2500+ for a battleship. Paying those sailors costs a lot of money. And you have to train them, and continually train them. That is a large part of the maintenance costs. That is not even abstracted in DW.

And your example of the row boat just made my argument for me. You say the AI hit your BB with a rowboat...is that because the AI didn't build a good ship, or you OVER-BUILT your ships because you had nothing to stop you from doing so? You want a competitive AI, then you are going to have to accept some form of restrictions on ships...the players will continually over-engineer theirs and make the game too easy if there is not such a mechanism.

[jpwrunyan]

@fishman

No the problem is still there is too much money. So much so that players can easily build 3000 firepower battlestations that the ai would never dream of doing presumably because the ai creator never intended it to be done (at least not routinely possible). The fact that players routinely stack weapons on civilian bases without crashing their private sector economy is also a major wtf.

I am not saying you shouldnt ever be able to build ridiculous crap in the game, but that the ai shouldnt have to build ridiculous crap to compete with yours. And really you shouldnt be able to without needing to save a ridiculous crapload of money first. None of which is currently the case.

I can easily field 20+ capital ship size fleets in every game I play well before shakturi ever show up. Other empires crumble. The problem is not their lack of warships but the ease with which I field mine. 20+ capital ships per fleet every game is a wtf. It should not be so easy to do.

[onomastikon]

To re-iterate with other words: Because I have so much money, I don't have to think about choices (because it does not matter if I greedily, or accidentily, or randomly purchase massively over-weaponized platforms or ships -- because none of the "choices" I make can ever be unwise, because there is no reason to save up. I cannot spend as much as I make. There are no constraints.). Not having to think about choices is the single worst thing that can happen to a strategy game. It is tantamount to not having choices.

[Beag]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

@fishman

No the problem is still there is too much money. So much so that players can easily build 3000 firepower battlestations that the ai would never dream of doing presumably because the ai creator never intended it to be done (at least not routinely possible). The fact that players routinely stack weapons on civilian bases without crashing their private sector economy is also a major wtf.

I am not saying you shouldnt ever be able to build ridiculous crap in the game, but that the ai shouldnt have to build ridiculous crap to compete with yours. And really you shouldnt be able to without needing to save a ridiculous crapload of money first. None of which is currently the case.

I can easily field 20+ capital ship size fleets in every game I play well before shakturi ever show up. Other empires crumble. The problem is not their lack of warships but the ease with which I field mine. 20+ capital ships per fleet every game is a wtf. It should not be so easy to do.

In MoO2, the player was always competing with the AI to make better designs. Timing retrofits was always crucial because in the window of opportunity while you were placing Plasma on your ships they could have plasma ships or even Titans of their own and the player would be screwed. The problem is that, in DW the AI doesn´t build ridiculous crap like you do, for several AI deficiency reasons; in MOO2 the AI built TITANS just like the player did and did that agressively. Obviously talking about hard and very hard difficulties, but even on normal if you had a technologically backward race and you started in bad position, the game was much more challenging than DW.

Stop saying that the problem isn´t lack of AI pressure, because it is. If the AI built similar sized designs (like you said 20 WTF capital ships) with good weapons you wouldn´t be floating in cash. If it doesn´t, then either it doesn´t prioritize the right techs (lagging behind in construction) or keeps building small ships even if there is no need anymore for that, due to lack of places for pirates to hide. BOTH are AI issues. I hate having to compare a 15 year-old game with this, but unfortunatedly it´s necessary if the 15 year old game did things right.

[Cauldyth]

Even if the AI played as well as the player, that would still leave problems like Galactic Wonders only costing pocket change to build. Building one should be a decision the player should have to make. Right now it's a no-brainer, because the amount of money players have dwarfs the cost of them. There's no reason not to build one.

You can also extend that argument to Space Ports, the size of Diplomatic gifts, bribes to pirates, etc. The cost of all of those are tiny compared to how much money is floating around. Either they're too cheap, or there's too much money. A better AI won't fix that.

[rogerbacon51]

I haven't played enough to really ssay if there is too much money or not in the end game. For those who think there is too much money, where does most of your money come from? Is it taxes? Trade? What exactly?

[Bebop Cola]

Lately I've been decreasing my tax rates to 5% on every colony, including my homeworld. As such, I'm operating at a -200k or so deficit. However, my bonus income from spaceports and trade tends to make up for it and I still accrue a comfortable surplus. In my current game I'm running a 12 billion credit surplus.

Granted, I do try to monopolize gas mining in the colony systems of all my allies, effectively forcing them to buy fuel from my mines to stockpile on their colonies simply because they're the closest sources. I think that helps.

[Beag]

Yeah trade cash can be pretty absurd. IMO going merchantile guild is even easier than going technocracy, crash research, crash research everywhere... 12 billion OMG... with how many stars?

I rest my case, there is too much money indeed but how can that be fixed without screwing the AI?

[rogerbacon51]

ORIGINAL: Bebop Cola

Lately I've been decreasing my tax rates to 5% on every colony, including my homeworld. As such, I'm operating at a -200k or so deficit. However, my bonus income from spaceports and trade tends to make up for it and I still accrue a comfortable surplus. In my current game I'm running a 12 billion credit surplus.

Granted, I do try to monopolize gas mining in the colony systems of all my allies, effectively forcing them to buy fuel from my mines to stockpile on their colonies simply because they're the closest sources. I think that helps.

Wow. I don't think I've ever had more than 6 million. So, it's not taxes, it's commerce it seems.

[Bebop Cola]

I apologize. It is 12 million, not billion. When you look at it on the economics screen it's 12,353k, so at some point I got used to thinking of it in terms of 1k increments. When I saw 12,353,457 on the main game screen I started thinking, "Oh, 12 billion. That's a big number." In any case, I don't worry about money as it never dips down below 6 million.

Taxes are still huge, though. If I allowed the AI to tax as it desired, my tax revenue would be enormous on top of my commerce revenue. I intentionally throttle my tax revenue and operate "in the red" because I know my commerce revenue will make up for it. Also, low taxes help population growth which, in turn, yields more taxes. Low tax colonies are also happier colonies. If your commerce is robust there's really nothing to lose here. My current game is also fortunate to have some decent tourist spots in my territory that net me some fairly constant revenue, so that helps. Moreover, I capture the rare resources when I can and am fairly generous on trade rights for them. This appears to increase the demand while the supply remains low, driving the price up. I think my Korrabian spice is trading at 600 currently, while the Ketaros' Loros fruit and Zentabia fluid, which they appear to be stingy with, are still trading at 100.

Granted, this isn't something that works from game start, and I suppose it is a bit of a gamble if my trade alliances get unstable, but money seems fairly trivial to get at a certain point. I experience economic crisis events where I lose half my credits and it's honestly a "meh" event.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

I am not saying you shouldnt ever be able to build ridiculous crap in the game, but that the ai shouldnt have to build ridiculous crap to compete with yours.

Well, strictly speaking, the AI can cause a lot more damage for a lot less money than the insane crap I build, because the AI is impervious to pain. If one of MY ships gets shot down, I have to fight my way through the shipyard queues and horrendous lag for just looking at it to get a replacement built. If the AI's ship gets shot down, two more magick themselves out of the ether to replace it. I've had games where it gets REALLY crazy like that, where I'm literally shooting these things down by the hundreds and finally been driven back due to running out of fuel.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

And really you shouldnt be able to without needing to save a ridiculous crapload of money first. None of which is currently the case.

There are really several points involved here that cause this. First, the fact you're focussing on a red herring: The "money" thing is a red herring. How much "money" you have means nothing. I've had the game completely trainwreck the economy and render the game unplayable despite having millions in the bank, because I accidentally left the civilian designs non-obsoleted and the AI went spammed all the shipyards to death, rendering the game unplayable because it would freeze anytime I so much as looked at it.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

I can easily field 20+ capital ship size fleets in every game I play well before shakturi ever show up. Other empires crumble. The problem is not their lack of warships but the ease with which I field mine.

Wait, wait, you field that many fleets? I've never managed to even build *ONE* such fleet. I've never built a fleet of *20* such ships, or even built 20 such ships. The number of ships I produce is usually like, 3, maybe 4, with a fleet consisting of one ship, and occasionally an attached dropship or two. While the MONEY cost is no such issue, these things take AGES to produce and consume a shitton of resources. Like I said, if you're looking at the entire "money" thing, you're chasing a red herring.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

And your example of the row boat just made my argument for me. You say the AI hit your BB with a rowboat...is that because the AI didn't build a good ship, or you OVER-BUILT your ships because you had nothing to stop you from doing so?

Well, nothing stopped the AI from producing ships, either, far as I know. And I would severely overbuild no matter what. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing, and if it's not worth overdoing, it's just not worth doing. No point in building a ship that's just going to explode, you'll have to do all that shit all over again.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

You want a competitive AI, then you are going to have to accept some form of restrictions on ships...the players will continually over-engineer theirs and make the game too easy if there is not such a mechanism.

Players don't overengineer ships to make the game too easy, they overengineer ships so that they don't constantly explode, forcing you to go through the hassle of having to build another one. If you built it and it exploded 5 seconds later in the next fight, you'd get really annoyed really fast. The AI is impervious to this nuisance. Honestly, the AI probably designs more economical ships than I do. Certainly he seems to have at least as much money as I do, according to the editor, so money isn't stopping him, either. And he builds them by the hundreds, so...he's clearly got no problems with industry.

The problem is therefore that the AI lacks a coherent objective...and probably shouldn't be building that many ships.

ORIGINAL: Beag

In MoO2, the player was always competing with the AI to make better designs. Timing retrofits was always crucial because in the window of opportunity while you were placing Plasma on your ships they could have plasma ships or even Titans of their own and the player would be screwed.

Wait, what? Are we talking about the same MOO2 here? The AI most certainly didn't make Titans like I did. The AI *SPAMMED* ships like CRAZY, to the point where I was being assaulted by 500-ship armadas every other turn...but they were very poorly assembled with no design synergy, and my one ship would therefore explode them en-masse...but they just kept COMING. Also, always give the AI Quantum Detonators the moment you find them anywhere. Not only will he possibly give you something nice for it, but even if he doesn't and you just give it to him, he'll start installing them on every single ship he has to keep you from stealing his ships...and there's nothing quite as beautiful as a 300 ship chain explosion.

[Beag]

About resources, one nooby mistake I did in my first games was negleting some strategic resources. For example if you use a desert race like Dhayut and forget to build mining stations on planets with chromium, if the stockpile is depleted you´re royally screwed because mining stations (and colony ships to go for marshy and continental planets) require chromium, thus stopping the player if he doesn´t pay attention to that [:)] But money seldom stops expansion and building.

So what´s your point about AI building queues? In your opinion is it the fact that it doesn´t optimize designs like the player? Because there isn´t any rule that stops the AI from building size 800 ships. So if it doesn´t, either it doesn´t research the tech or AI design is a bit dumb.

As for MOO2 it did depend on the race and difficulty level but Psilons on very hard for example didn´t spam destroyers when they could build capital ships and Titans. Plus, star bases (or God forbid, fortresses) could be a real pain in the ass to assault. Much more than the current space ports in DW. IT´s been some years since I´ve last played MoO2 but I still have the impression it is harder than DW.

[jpwrunyan]

"money is a red herring" wow instant classic. Well I know when I have been defeated! Time to go home. Wait, no.

I understand the argument that if the ai just spams ships it means the ai can compete with the player who is effectively spamming ships. Yes, I am aware the ai stockpiles rediculous amounts of money compared to me. I have an income of like 50k in my current game and the the star count is the second lowest setting. I traded some tech away and got millions of credits (i believe the ai had stock piled 14 mil). Does it surprise you, gentle reader, that I can build massive armadas? Continuing... Yes the ai could be tweaked to simply build more ships instead of stockpiling cash. To me this is not adding anything to the ai but just changing its parameters, so apologies if we have been having a semantic argument. This solution is not at odds with my dictate that the ai logic be left alone--not because the ai is good but because the return on investment for ai programming is categorically bad. But my objection is that fighting spam with spam is not good. I dont want to be able to build 20 capital ships. I want to be forced to choose between a few capital ships vs a few dozen destroyers. Therefore constraints on the amount of money is superior to changing the ai so that it builds more ships.

On a meta level, my solution also has the benefit of costing less cpu cycles and ram.

[onomastikon]

If money were to be a red herring instead of a resource or constraint, it should be removed. I believe, however, that it is there for a purpose. Sadly, the mechanics surrounding its use are flawed so as to make it unable to serve this purpose.

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

I dont want to be able to build 20 capital ships. I want to be forced to choose between a few capital ships vs a few dozen destroyers. Therefore constraints on the amount of money is superior to changing the ai so that it builds more ships.

I would have thought that you would say: I want to be forced to choose between buying a destroyer or two now and saving my money for a capital ship when I get it. I don't want to have to choose where I spend my millions and millions, because that's not a choice -- I buy it all. I want to be forced to have to think about payoffs.

After midgame is established, I never have a shortage of any resource. There is never a need for me to go to war. First constraint missing.
After midgame is established, I never have a shortage of cash. There is never a need for me to choose to spend or save. Second constraint missing.
Additionally, there is nothing to spend anything on but ships (because there are no real planetary improvements (I can put those robotic troop factories on every planet, it's tuppence), only limited ability (there is a cooldown time) and use for research crashing, and wonders are tuppence), and spending on ships is actually constrained by build times and number of spaceyards. That's a third element missing: real polyvalent choices in money sinks.

[Beag]

Fair enough but so far there have been 5 pages on no ideas on how to fix this. We have a consensus that there is a problem, but no real solutions so far.

1- Increase the percentage paid on maintenance?
2- Make resources more expensive (for example make minimum price for steel be 1,5, instead of 0,8?)
3- Make resources more scarce or more concentrated?
4- Make research use cash as well?
5- Create command points (like MoO2?)
6- Put a hard cap on ships?
7- Increase resource (and therefore cash and maintenance) in ALL components?
8- Is part of the problem also the fact that the AI doesn´t put enough pressure (that is, it´s "easy")?

To be honest I´m arriving at the conclusion that some things aren´t well implemented. If after getting 2 sources you effectively cease to need to expand to get a strategic resource then it isn´t very strategic at all. Dunno if someone here played Victoria 1 or 2 from Paradox, but there the limitations resources put on your country were very real; to be number one you had to constantly expand. Here, they simply don´t exist at all way too soon. I´d rather have a simplistic model that works along all the game than one that´s complex but soon pointless.

BTW where is the file that sets resource costs for components? I´m willing to make some modding of my own.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Beag

Fair enough but so far there have been 5 pages on no ideas on how to fix this. We have a consensus that there is a problem, but no real solutions so far.

1- Increase the percentage paid on maintenance?
2- Make resources more expensive (for example make minimum price for steel be 1,5, instead of 0,8?)
3- Make resources more scarce or more concentrated?
4- Make research use cash as well?
5- Create command points (like MoO2?)
6- Put a hard cap on ships?
7- Increase resource (and therefore cash and maintenance) in ALL components?
8- Is part of the problem also the fact that the AI doesn´t put enough pressure (that is, it´s "easy")?

To be honest I´m arriving at the conclusion that some things aren´t well implemented. If after getting 2 sources you effectively cease to need to expand to get a strategic resource then it isn´t very strategic at all. Dunno if someone here played Victoria 1 or 2 from Paradox, but there the limitations resources put on your country were very real; to be number one you had to constantly expand. Here, they simply don´t exist at all way too soon. I´d rather have a simplistic model that works along all the game than one that´s complex but soon pointless.

BTW where is the file that sets resource costs for components? I´m willing to make some modding of my own.

Sounds more like its a combination of things that need to be tweaked to fix it, rather than over-hauling just one aspect of it.

Some combination of all 8 of the above is probably the route to go.

[onomastikon]

ORIGINAL: Beag

so far there have been 5 pages on no ideas on how to fix this.

Surely you jest.