NPCs and credits in the economy

[Falcrack]

After having looked through the long list of answered questions regarding this game, I have one that does not appear to have received a developer response, so I'll try asking it.

Will NPCs, like the player, have finite credit accounts, which they are required to use when purchasing ships, weapons, stations, etc, just like the player?

In previous X games (I am not 100% sure about Rebirth), the NPCs all had infinite accounts. The concept of credits was completely meaningless to them. They would buy as much as you sold them, and never had to worry about running out of cash, or conversely, you could buy from them as much as you want and they would never get any richer. Building stations required nothing in terms of either credits or resources. In X4 I know it will require resources, but will the AI NPCs also use finite credits in their bank accounts to also purchase these resources, or hire the construction vessel to create their stations?

While this certainly made developing the games easier, it also greatly reduced the depth of the game. It was like having the foundation of the whole economy missing, so that made the rest of the economy more or less window dressing as a result. Will this be similar in X4, or will they actually have to consider profitability in their calculations?

[euclid]

Simulating an economy which is able to stay stable over a rather long period of time
and taking into account the various changes of each individual game is and will always
be a big challenge.You are right that in the previous X games (X2 and X3) the NPC had
unlimited resources in particular for ship/station building and energy (ecells) production.
However, even then many players managed to destabilize the economy (for example ecell
shortage). The G.O.D. engine (better: script) was then implemented to avoid stagnation
and/or recession in long time game plays.

Although I have no inside into the X4 development I would expect that the NPC part of
the economy will be similar, maybe even with a G.O.D. like script.

Cheers Euclid

[sd_jasper]

Something that might be a bit of a compromise between "infinite money" and a "wallet" that could lead to broke factions (and a stagnate economy), is a growth allowance based on the faction's size.

What I mean by this, is that a factions size (number and size of stations) determines the faction's spending allowance. As they grow, they have greater ability to grow more. It's a snowball effect.

This should be capped at some level to prevent spinning out of control, but also should somewhat emulate the same growth that the player experiences starting out small, but later being able to grow fast.

It would also be nice to see that at a certain "size" factions become more aggressive, or more of a target, in order to force more conflict at and slow the growth or even shrink a faction down.

[Skeeter]

Never liked that god engine thing. Hopefully theres not one in x4.

It would seem nice to have ai factions have and use money as we do but i think it would run out too quick as the ai is probably not too smart with handling the money like when and what to buy and for how much min and max, if its spending too much does it know how to cut costs and recover. Plus the ai i think has a big advantage, i think they would know every single deal and price in the game so they didnt go looking for best prices they already know all the bestt prices im guessing here but i dont think the devs would make a ai do what we do as its too complicated i think they would give the ai alot of instant fixes so they would remain stable.

Now if each race had its own bank like i suggested ages ago i think in devnet then the player as well as factioned ai could bail themselves out of financial trouble by getting a loan so if a teladi say a food company wasnt doing well the ceo can get a loan. Can they pay it back who knows but the options there.

[Alan Phipps]

If an NPC race/faction/company that is doing badly (or is taking losses to AI or Player piracy or attrition) can just keep getting unsecured loans whenever needed, then isn't that practically the same as having infinite cash?

[Skeeter]

Least it's a realistic way it can have extra cash than just infinite money pockets.

[PowerPC603]

If the NPC's had finite amounts of money, you'll regret it.

You start out with barely nothing, so all the money is in the hands of the NPC's.
When you get rich, the money comes from somewhere: the NPC's.
The richer you get, the poorer the NPC's will get.
There is also the fact that there will be ship-losses along the way, which cost resources and money to buy/build.

The money supply will run dry someday and your game will be over.
Without any money in the NPC's hands, you won't get more money either.

Even in the real world, money isn't finite because they print some more whenever needed and introduce it in the economy.
People lose money sometimes and at some point, without printing extra money, it would all dry up and the economy would stall, leading to a crash.

[Falcrack]

All nice ideas. Here's to hoping for an actual definitive response from a dev on this topic! As I am sure that this late in development, the answer to it has surely already been decided on, and all our pontificating on the subject would not change whatever they have in mind.

If the NPCs do have a wallet, however, as noted, the money would ultimately have to come from somewhere. Maybe it could come in the form of generic civilians that have infinite wallets buying consumer goods at trade stations? They wouldn't necessarily be full fledged simulated NPCs, just basically consumer goods get consumed at a certain rate from trade stations, with the trade station receiving money in return. This would allow trade stations to buy resources from traders, giving the traders money, which would help to fuel the economy.

Maybe the factions could get money at a steady rate, based on the amount of population in their sectors? With this money they would use it to purchase warships and supplies from NPCs.

[Sandalpocalypse]

at the rate players butcher NPCs in games, its really not plausible for the NPCs to have a finite economy usually...

[A5PECT]

Faction AI having to manage money sounds like a lot of development difficulty and overhead. I think the underlying point is that there should be a more-or-less intuitive relationship between a faction's productivity and their condition. If a faction has lots of stations, controls a lot of space, and isn't engaged in any large-scale conflict, they should be able to produce lots of resources, ships and stations. If a faction has few assets, limited access to resources, and has been fighting a war for an extended period, their production ability should be decreased.

A more straightforward relationship between those factors would give the same end effect without having to program elaborate resource-managing AI that only adds more moving parts (i.e. points of failure) to an already complex game.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I feel the same way as A5PECT.

Ships and stations will take time to build, stations will take time to die, ships and their reinforcements will take time to travel. Resources will need to arrive via transporters (XR resource spawning is via ships rather than directly into stations).

Balancing the ebbs and flows of the above in a fun way will be a focus of Egosoft.

The idea we could bankrupt the economy of a space-fairing civilisation doesn't seem plausible. They have millions of people doing stuff planet-side and could launch some ships. Crippling their ability to hold space and build stations from space-based resources is a different thing and seems more plausible. They could still be rich despite being blocked from orbit.

[Alan Phipps]

Just a word of caution that we don't get into too much of a property/cash/influence positive or negative feedback loop for factions such that the powerful ones quickly escalate into monopolies and the minor ones just stagnate, wither away or get pushed into piracy. Nor do we want rapid and massive boom-bust cycling. (BTW, all of these should probably apply in some aspects to the player faction!)

It seems that whatever feedback method is used, it needs to be constrained by hard growth/decline maxima/minima (quantative or rate?) that will indeed be 'artificial' but are necessary for continuing gameplay reasons.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Economies are not closed systems with a finite amount of money.

I personally think this is a bad idea. I found it very interesting to ask google where does money come from?

So if you try this, and understand the information provided, one only has to imagine that factions can go to the galactic bank and ask for large loans.

As I'm honourary president of the galactic bank I am quite happy to make loans to factions in good standing.

[Clownmug]

I imagine it would be really annoying if you were about to make a really good trade deal but the npc faction couldn't pay you. It'd be worse than the times in X:R you'd try to buy a ship but the shipyard ran out of resources.

[builder680]

Just think of "infinite money" as this game's version of the federal reserve. Limiting npc money would be zero sum and at some point the player would own every credit in the universe.

Limited spawning of money based on faction size would be a similar problem except you would also eventually get in a position to hoover up all the incremental influxes as well.

Which is nigh enough the same thing, the player would become literally the only economic force in the galaxy, eventually. That'd be a good time to start a new game, I guess.

[Falcrack]

Some people seem to think that my idea of finite NPC wallets means finite money supply. It does not. What I think would work is to have the population from each sector consume goods, and they would have an infinite wallet. The size of the local population for each sectors would dictate the demand for each of the goods. Their purchasing power would be a continuous source of revenue for the player or NPC selling to them.

This same population would also provide a source of revenue for the sector owner in the form of taxes. So the faction (or player) that controls a sector would get credits which they could use towards purchasing ships or other resources.

So I am not advocating a finite money supply for the universe, just for individual NPCs and NPC owned organizations, just like the case is for the player. There would still be a pool of infinite money coming from the population. The population would not be individual NPCs for the game engine to keep track of, it would simply be a number assigned to each sector which dictated the rate of consumption for goods and amount paid in taxes.

[Honved]

The planetary populations need to be considered when you're talking about the supply of money and the demand for goods. Planets in a sector should buy up to some amount of products per day based on their populations, and have up to some amount of credits to spend for it. If there's too many credits in the economy, their daily demand could drop, reducing the amount of credits pumped into the economy; they'll pay less for the goods, and won't buy beyond some limit. If there's not enough credits in the region, they increase demand and raise the cap, spending more overall, assuming that the products can be bought in that region. Ideally, it should self-balance in the long term, with another factory production module being built at some random NPC station to fill the increased demand after some point.

Note that Trade Stations always bought and sold at "average" price in X3:TC. That could change in X4, where they buy at "around" average price, but the fluctuations in the economy could adjust that up or down by a credit or two from day to day. The economy can be made self-regulating without resorting to physically removing stations: use the equivalent of medication and preventive care, not amputation and radical surgery, to treat the problems.

[spankahontis]

The planetary populations need to be considered when you're talking about the supply of money and the demand for goods. Planets in a sector should buy up to some amount of products per day based on their populations, and have up to some amount of credits to spend for it. If there's too many credits in the economy, their daily demand could drop, reducing the amount of credits pumped into the economy; they'll pay less for the goods, and won't buy beyond some limit. If there's not enough credits in the region, they increase demand and raise the cap, spending more overall, assuming that the products can be bought in that region. Ideally, it should self-balance in the long term, with another factory production module being built at some random NPC station to fill the increased demand after some point.

Note that Trade Stations always bought and sold at "average" price in X3:TC. That could change in X4, where they buy at "around" average price, but the fluctuations in the economy could adjust that up or down by a credit or two from day to day. The economy can be made self-regulating without resorting to physically removing stations: use the equivalent of medication and preventive care, not amputation and radical surgery, to treat the problems.

Be interesting to see how the power of buying fluctuates from day to day, but the amount of NPCs with their own budgets would clog up the game with thousands of NPC's buying and selling.
Unless those NPC wallets only appeared in Zones/Sectors you're currently in and when you leave that Zone/Sector it calculates their wallets and gives you the current score and applies a Buffer/debuff on that Sector resetting all those Wallets for that score that goes up and down as time passes; you see a Sector, see it's High score and it encourages you to set up shop in that area while spending power is High.

[Falcrack]

My general wish is just a bit more explanation from the devs, as far as details regarding the inner workings of the economic simulation is concerned. We can speculate and come up with ideas all we want, but there are still many important (to me at least) details that have not been clarified.

[Alan Phipps]

There is of course a downside to knowing too much about the detail of the coded mechanics of the economy, trading and AI behaviour, etc. It soon becomes easily exploitable by the player in-game when such knowledge is (ab)used in a way not envisaged or intended by the devs.

Perhaps it is an area best left described using general principles and examples of good practices, but still with the possibility to 'surprise' the player now and again.

This would give no reason or excuse for weak or illogical design of the game mechanics; it just leaves a bit of flexibility in gameplay for learning by experience and immersion.