Discussion on X4 economy & war system

[JookerYan]

I know that everyone plays this game differently, but play it as an economy and war simulator in space. That means I gather resources, produce ware, buy/produce ships, and fight.

My ideal gameplay would be, that the economy is there to support the war, and war should be a means to achieve greater economic gain. These two components should be supporting each other. I think the game currently has the first part, but not the second. There is really not much benefit to fighting a war against a major faction but some self-motivation. On the contrary, I often find myself reluctant to wage a war because my trade routes and stations could get harassed.

In my opinion, a game giving us so many wonderful warships (ai excluded) should give us more purposes and motivations for using them. I would wish that any territorial expansion would really mean something to the player's economy. The current X4 economy has the following components: raw resources gathering, transportation, production, and resource sink. I think the "resource gathering" and the "resource sink" components should have a deeper link to the territory. That means a war for territory is actually a fight for these two things.

Raw Resource Gathering:
Currently, there are not many restrictions on where the player can or cannot mine the resources. I can mine anything from anyone's sector and fuel it to my own factory as long as I am not at a -20 reputation with them. This is why war for raw resources is rather meaningless. It will only mean a less stable environment for your mining operation even if you win and have occupied this sector.

So I would suggest the following changes:
1. The player should pay taxes to the faction owning the sector when mining any materials in it.
2. The AI should pay taxes to the player when mining anything in it if the player owns the sector.
This actually makes a lot of sense, as most mining resources in the reality should be state-owned. With these changes, the player would have a strong motivation to fight for raw materials to cut their cost in production significantly. The player can also interfere with the economy of other factions by setting different tax rates for different factions.

Resource Sink:
Currently, the two major resource sinks that I have observed are shipyard/wharf and free trading station. The shipyard/wharf absorbs the resources and turns them into capital for the space economy to run and expand. The trading station is a pure sink of resources that consumes produced wares and generates credits (I am actually not very sure about this). For anyone that has reached the later part of the game, I think you would agree that factory expansion will soon meet the problem of insufficient demands. That is to say, demands should also be a "resource". Consumer goods demand should be tied with the territory as well, as they are generated by the population of the land.

Hence I have the following suggestions:
1. Each habitable sector should have a station that demands and consumes certain goods. This station represents the population of this sector and turns goods into credits.
2. This habitat station should belong to the owner of the sector. The AI will only allow the player or faction with a good relationship with it to trade with this station. The player can configure who can or cannot trade with a player-owned habitat.
3. Different sector has different sizes of population, meaning that the goods would be consumed at different rates.


Summary:
I think war should have a purpose. I want to see our fancy warships pew pew pew at the enemy, but I would also want a war to be worth fighting for the resources that it consumes. The game might create more incentives for the player to build its own economical and military empire deep from the game's economic mechanism. I understand that it could be difficult for the game to make such major changes at the current stage, but I would wish there is a good DLC, mod, or sequel to the game that could improve this.

[dtpsprt]

Actually it is a war fuelled economy. It is just that the existing wars are not dependent on the player.
If they were I believe that the computational increase would bring most CPU's down if not all, considering the current load....

Of course the player has the "initiative" to start a war against any faction and even bring this faction to almost total anihilation. Mainly when this happens the econmy turns unballanced and stalls at some point.

[af_2017]

Raw Resource Gathering:

1. "paying taxes" will make start for player even harder
2. "AI should pay taxes" this looks like an end of long road because beforehand player needs make his way through "paying taxes", get combat ship and capture at least one sector.

Resource Sink:

The suggestion looks like endgame money printer (why do you even need credits at the stage of the game?)

Summary:

I am not a fan of being at endgame. Because there's nothing interesting to do except common issues like "how do I dismantle my station and transfer all resources from one build storage to another?"
Someone might find that interesting but as for me this is boring when you sit alone in map full of green sectors. Great achievement but you must be very inventive in finding "what to do now?".
An only activity which remains is setting up excessive mining sector to spawn kha'aks and kill them. That's cool but somewhat monotonous.

The economy is a cancer of this game because npc factions are dumbs at maintaining own economy. Everything seems alive from the start, when every faction has ships and storages full of resources but after sometime things start falling apart and ends up in desert. (No, I have no will to help and save them).
Considering the economy npcs should care a lot about security of existing infrastructure (traders and miners) vessels and protect them at all cost because without them literally no economy will happen.
Losing capital ships costs nothing if it dies protecting trader because the trader can bring resources to build new capital ships.
At the same time alive capital ship does nothing for building traders and miners especially when no more traders/miners left.

From this point of view whole game looks wrong.
Most important ships must be traders and miners.
The ships should never enter unknown areas without protection.
Combat fleets must follow them to intercept any potential danger in unknown areas. "Follow" means doing it in a correct way; not how it is implemented now when fleet rubber bends through whole sector.
The ships should never enter sectors belong to enemy factions even with protection fleet.
The only allowed case is provoking attack and with vastly overwhelming protection fleet any potential enemy threats.
Combat fleets patrol area around factories to protect their production.
Simple as that.
Credits have no sense, mining is a matter of time and costs nothing.
Ship production is mandatory to stand against enemy factions.
The rest is pointless.

[jlehtone]

The player is neither a faction nor a member of any faction. That is awkward. Who did give the player a mandate to claim any sector? Nobody.

The purpose of (NPC) ships is to die. There are no "wars", just opportunities for ships to die. That way there is need for economy to produce replacements. Alas, as said, NPC are miserable at rolling their economy.

The only party that has/uses credits is player. NPC don't have nor need credits. The NPC are intentionally inefficient so that there are opportunities for the player to get credits. Eventually (and usually way too soon) the player has no need for credits. "Taxes" would be all about player's credits and have thus no effect on NPC economy.

[Caedes91]

The problem is, that the economy is too centered around ship building, with the only exception being the food wares. Without wars, say you were stupid enough to destroy all Xenon and chose to make peace through the quests, there is no other revenue left, except for trade stations.

It would be nice, if the game would add new economies, for example wares and goods for the planetary populations. Kinda like the Anno game series, where military is only part of your focus. Also, flesh the Xenon out or make players be able to support Xenon or add a new enemy to the game altogether.

[JookerYan]

The only party that has/uses credits is player. NPC don't have nor need credits. The NPC are intentionally inefficient so that there are opportunities for the player to get credits. Eventually (and usually way too soon) the player has no need for credits. "Taxes" would be all about player's credits and have thus no effect on NPC economy.

I think you really have the point. I feel that "credit" is the cancer of the X4 economy system. The X4 economy is almost always at huge inflation. All NPC prints credit whenever they buy anything from the player, and the NPC is never producing enough for the player to buy. Credit is soon useless because the economy is actually not producing enough, causing inflation.

On the other hand, if credit is useless, I wonder what I should pursue in the later stage of the game. Profit? Useless credit that can buy nothing. Produce ships to wage war? but why do something that only adds instability to my production line. Produce to help NPC to win a war? I have never seen any NPC faction can really win the war even with my help. Defeat Xenon? They are everywhere and the NPC factions don't even thank me for clearing out the entire xenon sector neighboring its capital.

I think the economy and war system of this game only works for the early game. I want POWER, but neither does credit or territory give me any power (but they should in real life). Do you guys have any suggestions if you are to design the system?

[af_2017]

So the question is still there: how to play the game.

Whoever wants to raise flowers and see them growing, i mean do economy thingies: welcome to creative start with all reps +30 and you will never see any enemy and treats; and that's eventually what you want.

Those who want see wars: there are mods which change faction reputations randomly and inject resources to revive production. But the latter is quite noticeable since it emphasizes the fact that economy part of the game is weak. There's economy in the game, and that's cool, but dumb factions can't rule it correctly.