[Request] Ressource sinks

[Uncle Benis]

Right now the games economy stagnates after a while due to no combat taking place as it is it solely reliant on building ships, an entire economy focused around a single task is not a very robust system as we found out.
What there should be instead are parallel supply lines and end users, like stations requiring maintenance that use up ressources, ressource half life, inefficiency penalties on ressource usage etc.

However since that requires a lot of coding, a better idea might be to implement a script that would check how long a station has been at 90%+ ressource capacity from time to time and shave off 10 to 20% off the top in order to keep the economy rolling. Since as of now the economy works towards ship parts, it would be smart to either only check factories producing end user ship parts, or just go straight to the end of the production chain and nuke warfs and shipyards ressource stocks from time to time to alleviate the lack of shipbuilding.

/ideaguying

[Baldamundo]

Yeah, I'd second this. It seems like there's a wide consensus that currently the economy and war are both broken due to ships not being built and resources being stockpiled, so it seems like there's a relatively cheap and dirty fix. Just have a script periodically wipe the inventories of trading stations, shipyards and equipment docks, and periodically spawn more ships for NPC factions. It's already the case that one of the few ways you can get a local economy going again somewhat is just stockpile hacking tools, and then make the local shipyards jettison all their cargo.

Doesn't need to be at all balanced or well thought out to significantly improve the current state of the game.

[aerojet029]

the game seems to have 3 sinks

1)Combat (which is still stalling out)
2)workforce (ie, the idea that people on the station need food rations and medical supplies and stations get a boost)
3)player inv items and infinite trading (ie crystals and some combat ship drops) and play no role in the economy.

I think the most promising area would be to expand the workforce system

the issue you are describing also fits with this post too, I would suggest you can add your thoughts and maybe get some insperation for some ideas here:

viewtopic.php?p=4774545#p4774545

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

The game really need to apply two things.

1: More end-user consumption of things like luxury wares in order to keep the economy flowing as pointed out.

2: Change how player money is sunk running an empire.

1 is covered by suggestions. 2 could be expanded.



To start, registering a station shouldn't cost huge amounts of money. That's not how economics works. Registering a station should be moderately cheap compared to station value, but then the station should be TAXED for its lifetime based on its size and value. Governments make more money that way. Thus, the registration fee for a property area should be maybe a few thousand to a few hundred thousand credits up front, tops, for the biggest station in prime location in front of a gate. And then the station should be leveled an operational tax once an hour.

The hourly tax should add up so that 24 hours of tax equals what was once the up-front fee of the station. Which means running a prime location station costs millions a day.

That means your station can't just exist in a vacuum if it's in a prime spot. You must ensure that stations in prime locations can be supported by your profit generation. If you can't pay, well, figure out how to penalize the station. Maybe you start getting warnings and rep hits if you fail to pay. After a certain number of hours, the faction sends a strike fleet out to destroy the offending property. Kind of like Outland Revenue coming to smash your thumbs, or the IRS sending some very unhappy suits your way.



Likewise, a similar money sink should exist for running crews. Instead of paying an up front fee to hire someone to fly your destroyer, you pay them an hourly rate that adds up to their hiring cost by the end of a 24 hour period. This makes it so that crewing a ship is more than just a glorified equipping procedure with masks on. It means that having a large crew on a large ship COSTS MONEY CONTINUOUSLY.

To further the crew point. I would introduce vehicle decay to hull values. For every hour the ship is active without any service crew on board, the vessel deteriorates by five percent of its hull value down to a minimum of five percent hull. Which means that if 19 hours go by without hull maintenance, the ship is becoming dangerous to fly. Having even ONE service crew member on board would prevent this because they automatically repair the ship. With no crew, you do maintenance yourself at equipment docks or by space suit repair laser.

And if, at any point, your can't pay your crew, they fire themselves (They Quit). How this penalty is managed can be left up for discussion. I would do a ranked hierarchy from least important to most important tasks. So pilots and managers always quit last because your space accountant prioritizes paying them first.


Thus, you have a simple, but not umanageable upkeep system as the player's spare money sink.

[A.Persyn]

What you want already exists as the MD file: Drain_Stations. In X games the Trading Stations function as a resource sink where items the station has in inventory get removed slowly to simulate consumption. That script only covers Trading Stations, but it could easily be expanded to cover other stations.