Non-combat resource sinks

[Falcrack]

So with every ship and weapons being constructed from resources, there needs to be a place for all these resources to go without clogging up the game and saturating the economy. Combat is a great way, since ships blow up, resources that went into them are gone, new ships and weapons are made to replace them. But it sounds like Egosoft are hesitant to have their game be 100% combat between races, and I think that is a good thing.

But, without the circle of explosions driving the economy, where will the goods and resources flow to? Will there be civilian goods which can be bought and consumed by NPCs? Not consumed and turned into another wares, but just simply consumed? I know food will be like that, but there should probably be more than just that?

Maybe there could be a tradeoff between generating civilian wares for consumption, and wares for ships and weapons. The ships and weapons would be immediately useful in blowing things up, but civilian wares would be the ultimate source of credits in game. Civilians buying stuff injects credits into the economy, which is then used to purchase weapons and ships.

Which also leads to the question, if we have resource sinks, there also naturally has to be credit sinks as well. Where does the money come from?
Where does it go, not just for the player, but NPCs and factions as well?

In X3, credit sinks were easy. NPCs simply did not deal with credits. They had no account to manage, credits only existed for the player. With X4, I do not know how they will handle the issue of credits, will it once again be a thing that only exists for the player, or will NPCs/factions also have to manage their credit supply in buying resources, ships, etc?

X4 promises a truly dynamic economy, but if they only handle the resource side of the equation and leave out the factor of credits, both for players and NPC, it will only be halfway towards a truly dynamic economy.

[RAVEN.myst]

The trade stations in previous Xs spontaneously create and consume wares, which has sometimes been criticized as being "spawn-based", but I think they make good faucets and sinks while also simulating economic interaction with the civilian population (presumably of the planets below.)

Will there be civilian goods which can be bought and consumed by NPCs? Not consumed and turned into another wares, but just simply consumed? I know food will be like that, but there should probably be more than just that?

Maybe there could be a tradeoff between generating civilian wares for consumption, and wares for ships and weapons. The ships and weapons would be immediately useful in blowing things up, but civilian wares would be the ultimate source of credits in game. Civilians buying stuff injects credits into the economy, which is then used to purchase weapons and ships.

I think this is a good and important point. Ultimately, it is civilian populations that define economies, not military industry and spending (yes, not even in the US ) This is simply because the vast majority of the population is civilian, and thus the vast majority of resources moving around are servicing them.

Which also leads to the question, if we have resource sinks, there also naturally has to be credit sinks as well. Where does the money come from?
Where does it go, not just for the player, but NPCs and factions as well?

In X3, credit sinks were easy. NPCs simply did not deal with credits. They had no account to manage, credits only existed for the player. With X4, I do not know how they will handle the issue of credits, will it once again be a thing that only exists for the player, or will NPCs/factions also have to manage their credit supply in buying resources, ships, etc?

X4 promises a truly dynamic economy, but if they only handle the resource side of the equation and leave out the factor of credits, both for players and NPC, it will only be halfway towards a truly dynamic economy.

Actually, if NPCs also start using credits and all transactions involve a reciprocal credits-for-wares exchange, that already is a step toward self-regulation and less need for artificial sinks and faucets. All that then needs happen (well, "all" is more than a bit simplistic, but in principle this is true) is that faucets and sinks need to be in balance - and goods created "out of nothing" balance against those being "sunk into the void". However, a problem arises from a player perspective: the economy then ends up having a ceiling based on the total amount of credits circulating, which would form a barrier to the player's development at some point, unless the total amount of currency in-game is vast (as it really ought to be, if it is to simulate true faction-wide economies and wealth totals), lest the player end up owning or controlling too large a portion of it. (Some players may think "well, what's the problem with owning the WHOLE economy, even?", but that just leads to a stagnant situation where the player has no entity to interact with but him/herself - and that's rather less than satisfying, rather like something else that is best done with other people...)

In real-world economies (yes, I understand the perils of "realistic" comparisons, just bear with me for a moment ) currency is meant to be printed (ideally) to replace lost/destroyed currency, in order to maintain a balanced level in circulation. In practice, however, the complexities of various abstract transactions and speculations and many more factors than I can even imagine (or even begin to comprehend, for that matter!) end up resulting in most economies over-minting to some extent, which leads to inflation. In economies where the government tries (shallowly) to compensate for an economic imbalance by stepping up currency minting, this ends up leading to rampant inflation - I in fact lived for some 10 years in a country where the inflation rate fluctuated almost daily, and the annual rate varied from 100s to 1000s of percent! (It *literally* happened, and quite often, that prices for goods such as bread would rise, sometimes even twice, between the time a person got into a grocer's queue and the time he/she got to the front of it!)

The point of the above? To be honest, I'm no longer sure (I think I had one when I started, heheheh), but it does indicate that creating and then balancing a complex system such as a functioning and stable economy can be extremely difficult. Oh yes, that original point: the economy needs the capacity to grow over time, at a rate that is conducive to a player's growing ambitions, yet without causing internal inflationary pressures.

[wolvern]

They really need to start making expanding territories and procedural generated universe so we can have planets to terraform, new stations to build, territory to claim and the wars going on which causes sectors to flip, xenon and pirates to try taking them and such.

So yes, there's a few options where it could help, expanding is always a thing but at some point you'd dead end with resources because you can only have so much before a resource becomes too much.

The planet supply option for terraform / building for population would be the best as that'd be a HUGE sink in resource.

[RAVEN.myst]

Terraforming projects as resource sinks are a great idea - and besides the "flavour" aspect of it, they could also result in eventual boosts to (though likely initial drains upon) available labour pools, in light of the fact that labour will somehow play a part. [The way I see it, commencement of a TF project would create "immigration", meaning that surrounding territories experience a reduction in their own populations - it need not even be inversely proportional to distance: immigrants might include adventure-seekers from advanced/prosperous but stagnant/decadent societies, people from poor worlds wishing for a better way of life, specialists interested in specific historic/scientific studies of the new world, people escaping their pasts, refugees from worlds plagued by war or oppression - in short, they would flock from just about everywhere. Once the new colony is established, though, labour supply in that system would gradually increase as planet-side opportunities are claimed and the locals look upward for more work.]

[Morkonan]

Expendable resources will be the component-resources needed for manufacturing other products.

Further, products that are also consumed, like missiles, armor, other foods, ammo, etc, will be consumed easily.

Energy is consumed and requires resources to manufacture.

In X3TC, there are quite a few bits of things that are used up, even without resorting to "magic."

One other thing that could be possible - NPC Merchants "buy" things, converting stuff to credits and ultimately "consuming" the stuff, taking it out of the game.

I don't see any reason why just a slightly more complex economy couldn't give players what they've been wanting. IMO, despite protestations to the contrary by some players, X4 only needs a "simulated" economy that isn't as transparently fake as X3TC. It certainly doesn't need a truly simulated economic model that might require a bit too much of system resources. A "good fake" will be just fine.

[Kitty]

Not all economy is simulated in X games.

Like in flow mechanic simulation, the conditions are borders are important to be set/simulated.

Planets, for example, and/or all the space economy that stays behind the curtain.

I doubt Egosoft did not think already about it... years that they work on these subjects.

[Sandalpocalypse]

The point of the above? To be honest, I'm no longer sure (I think I had one when I started, heheheh), but it does indicate that creating and then balancing a complex system such as a functioning and stable economy can be extremely difficult. Oh yes, that original point: the economy needs the capacity to grow over time, at a rate that is conducive to a player's growing ambitions, yet without causing internal inflationary pressures.

Only basic supply and demand affect X-universe prices, and they've always had hard caps at the upper and lower boundaries...

Mission rewards have always been disproportionate to the task involved, and there's no reason to think that will change. Those credits are generated from nowhere because otherwise the player becomes a scourge, bankrupting NPCs wherever they go. It's a source of infinite credits balanced by the various infinite credit drains also presented to the player.

At the absolute worst, a faction bank will be glutted by the player funneling their infinite credits into them, so they'll be buying ships at their full rate, creating more demand for goods, leading the player to have more profitssss. I dont really see a problem with that.


Edit: Fixed the quote's author name (was Falcrack) - Sparky

[JSDD]

So with every ship and weapons being constructed from resources, there needs to be a place for all these resources to go without clogging up the game and saturating the economy. Combat is a great way, since ships blow up, resources that went into them are gone, ...

or even better: spawn some ship debris, let them be collectible with a transporter class ship + special equipment (robotic grabbing arm or such), and the resources can be recycled up to 75% in a special station module (called "recycle center")

But, without the circle of explosions driving the economy, where will the goods and resources flow to? Will there be civilian goods which can be bought and consumed by NPCs? Not consumed and turned into another wares, but just simply consumed? I know food will be like that, but there should probably be more than just that?

maybe:
-- cash + food for working stuff on stations
-- much material (energy, ore, metal, semiconductors, etc) for station building
-- material + working hours for "products" such as weapons and other components
-- hydrogen to generate energy [cells] (via fusion in a fusion station module)
-- other, non-material-using way to generate enegy is to use solar cells (only next to a star)
-- materials can only be gathered in asteroids [and/or planets surfaces?]

Which also leads to the question, if we have resource sinks, there also naturally has to be credit sinks as well. Where does the money come from?

-- doing missions (player only)
-- working hours of working stuff (depending on the complexity of their work)
(money is only "virtual", there wont be bills / coins)
-- a "federal reserbe bank" kind of thing ?

Where does it go, not just for the player, but NPCs and factions as well?

only to personal / working force (if npc used them too, .. i dont know)

In X3, credit sinks were easy. NPCs simply did not deal with credits. They had no account to manage, credits only existed for the player. With X4, I do not know how they will handle the issue of credits, will it once again be a thing that only exists for the player, or will NPCs/factions also have to manage their credit supply in buying resources, ships, etc?

let npc deal with credits, once the go broke, they go home (shipyard) and will be replaced with another ship / pilot for another task (where traders are needed currently).

argon:
credit account = 123456789 Cr
posesses resources: [all the ware stocks]
stations: this and that, + 1 laser fab
stations without traders: 1 laser fab

... argon decides (a script): dedicate 1 trader to laser fab

it will cost salary + maintenance, it will by resources and sell goods (lasers), that way they make either profitsss (for argon, not "personally") of go broke (and will be "taken care of" then somehow ..)

[Killjaeden]

One other thing that could be possible - NPC Merchants "buy" things, converting stuff to credits and ultimately "consuming" the stuff, taking it out of the game.

I don't see any reason why just a slightly more complex economy couldn't give players what they've been wanting. IMO, despite protestations to the contrary by some players, X4 only needs a "simulated" economy that isn't as transparently fake as X3TC. It certainly doesn't need a truly simulated economic model that might require a bit too much of system resources. A "good fake" will be just fine.

I agree in principal with your last statement. Still, the consumption rate of consumer wares (food, tech for personal use) should be proportional to what's in space. Otherwise you can just swamp the market with stuff with one ware and still get rich.

In X3 you could really hurt the economy by dumping microchips and space weed on the market for low prices - the NPC traders where so crazy about going after them that the job they should have originally done (trade other tech wares) was not done.

Egosoft implemented workforce on stations, so this to me seems like a good base to define consumptionrate of consumer wares. Workforce is capped per station but infinite in supply (i would assume), so when you create infinite stations you have infinite ressource consumption. The more workforce there is (across multiple stations) in an area defines how quickly stuff is consumed.

It would be beneficial for ware sinks to not exclusively have producing stations, but also civilian stations that just serve recreational/luxury purposes or administration/planning (you know - basically an office complex) or personal housing.

They require ressources to build and maintain, they require workforce and wares to offer to consumer. They don't need to generate a lot of money, they can just act as 1) focus for consumption and 2) increase of amount of workforce -> therefore increase of consumption.

This would also solve the "nonsense civilian traffic" problem where they just circle around a station pointlessly. With "non-producer" station the traffic could be logically implemented between recreation<->house<->workplace.

[Morkonan]

...I agree in principal with your last statement. Still, the consumption rate of consumer wares (food, tech for personal use) should be proportional to what's in space. Otherwise you can just swamp the market with stuff with one ware and still get rich.

In X3 you could really hurt the economy by dumping microchips and space weed on the market for low prices - the NPC traders where so crazy about going after them that the job they should have originally done (trade other tech wares) was not done.

So, perhaps one solution is separate supply&demand "chains?" Some, internally, wouldn't touch upon the aspects of another. In-game, they may be presented as if they do, in some ways, but they stay separate, as far as the merchants are concerned. That way, its a bit more difficult for merchants to get "obsessed" with chasing after wares in one supply chain. They could, for instance, get a "weighted randomization" for what chain they will be acting on at any one time.

I remember opening up a microchip factor, once my Hub committment was done, to AI merchants. IIRC, it was something on the order of 200+ merchant ships crowding those docks, all trying to get dockspace to load up on microchip-gold... I had to periodically flush them by closing the docks, just to keep the rest of the economy going in that sector of space.

There were separate supply/demand chains in X3TC that didn't really impact each other. But, I don't know how merchants were assigned and how they chose their cargo.

Egosoft implemented workforce on stations, so this to me seems like a good base to define consumptionrate of consumer wares. Workforce is capped per station but infinite in supply (i would assume), so when you create infinite stations you have infinite ressource consumption. The more workforce there is (across multiple stations) in an area defines how quickly stuff is consumed.

It would be beneficial for ware sinks to not exclusively have producing stations, but also civilian stations that just serve recreational/luxury purposes or administration/planning (you know - basically an office complex) or personal housing.

Agreed. A separate supply/demand chain here would likely help mitigate player-glut of resources with a "sink" that could always be available. Individual supply stocks at these stations would still dictate profit margins, but they'd always be "end-consumption" points.

Tying in base resources to multiple chains could be good, too. Much broader than "e-cell" multiple demands, one could tie in other resources, like "ore" being used not only in technical components and armor, but for the equivalent of "consumer wares" like Ipods, Personal Computers, Space Boots and even Marine Rifles. Cross demand at the very basic level, but not with as great a margin as wares with mutiple production stages, might be helpful.

They require ressources to build and maintain, they require workforce and wares to offer to consumer. They don't need to generate a lot of money, they can just act as 1) focus for consumption and 2) increase of amount of workforce -> therefore increase of consumption.

This would also solve the "nonsense civilian traffic" problem where they just circle around a station pointlessly. With "non-producer" station the traffic could be logically implemented between recreation<->house<->workplace.

Agreed. However, some "nonsense" traffic is good for the gameplay experience. Seeing a TP transporting Engineers, Tourists, or Prisoners is a nice bit of spice in a sector. These sorts of nonsense traffic bits should not be removed, simply because of the flavor they bring to one's experience of the "living sandbox" that the X games bring.

Casino ships were always an interesting, unique, bit of spice.

But, they absolutely should not be "on rails." They should originate from somewhere and should be going somewhere. They don't actually effect anything other than any ship naturally would, but they're there for the player's enjoyment as "window dressing."

[RAVEN.myst]

Mission rewards...

-- doing missions (player only)...

Ah yes, missions - I keep forgetting/overlooking those when I think about in-game economies in X, because of my personal bias - I don't do missions (at least, not for money - those few that I do, they're for other purposes.) And until now, if asked why not, I always struggled to put into words exactly why not, but now I can, with ease: missions are blatant, undisguised, in-your-face credit (and villain) faucets, which I find distasteful. Speaking of taste... coffee-time!

[Falcrack]

Workforce is capped per station but infinite in supply (i would assume), so when you create infinite stations you have infinite ressource consumption.

We don't know if there is infinite supply. A finite amount of workers might be good for gameplay, as there could be competition to attract workers to you factory vs others. It would also put a cap on your ability to massively expand with no limits, which could be a good thing.

Speaking of limits, I wonder if there will also be a limit placed on the number of stations allowed per sector. So if you want to expand your operations, you will need to expand into new territory at some point.

[RainerPrem]

Mission rewards...

-- doing missions (player only)...

Ah yes, missions - I keep forgetting/overlooking those when I think about in-game economies in X, because of my personal bias - I don't do missions (at least, not for money - those few that I do, they're for other purposes.) And until now, if asked why not, I always struggled to put into words exactly why not, but now I can, with ease: missions are blatant, undisguised, in-your-face credit (and villain) faucets, which I find distasteful. Speaking of taste... coffee-time!

Hi,

IMHO, the generic missions in X:R are much more balanced than in X3. E.g. I use them to find hidden zones. The "container full of wares" is not always worth its price, but sometimes you can find just the missing part for your rare engine and other craftings. Person transport missions are more tricky than in X3, and kill mission often cost more in terms of missiles than the reward.

cu
Rainer

[Killjaeden]

Agreed. However, some "nonsense" traffic is good for the gameplay experience.

I don't disagree, but when they are just flying around in nonsensical patterns (in circles around a station like in XR or fly aimlessly in a sector like in X3) then it looks off in many cases. Giving these ships a travel destination (passenger transport from housing complex to factory or luxury yacht from housing complex to some or to recreational station) makes them a lot more believable and feel less superfluous.

We don't know if there is infinite supply. A finite amount of workers might be good for gameplay, as there could be competition to attract workers to you factory vs others. It would also put a cap on your ability to massively expand with no limits, which could be a good thing.

We don't know but that would be somewhat weird seeing a planet with population of billions of people in one star system alone, yet you have to make do with (lets say) 100 stations at max. It would feel extremely arbitrary and i think it's unlikely egosoft would set such abitrary limit.
What they said would likely be implemented is a growth limit. So in some backwater system it could take much longer to get your factories to full workforce capacity. Building 20 Stations at once will not speed up the process either ... so you already have a limit there, but it's growth related, not maximum total number.