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[Cruxador]

Not sure if I like their design choices. Resources shouldn't appear magically (endless market supply) nor should there be a market fee that goes to nobody. Sure, if the fee was used to keep some stock, then that's ok, but just deleting things and creating them in and out of the game is lazy.

The resources are so unbalanced in stellaris that if it didn't generate free stuff from nothing, it would never get used. Because let's be honest - we all want it to get more minerals. Who would ever sell it minerals? Nobody, ever, in any situation. Even if your mineral storage is full it would be dumb to sell it minerals because that's more minerals for your enemy to buy.

Ah, but you're failing to consider that there'll be loads of new resources now.  So it could very much be worth selling minerals to free up some dosh for buying alloys or dark matter or what have you.

Anyway, I think you're missing the point. This is obviously primarily intended as a band-aid fix for the idiot AI that can't manage it's economy properly. Now it can "legitimately" create resources from nothing.

I reckon there'll be a fair few players who'll benefit from this as well, though. Even considering that you do in fact also pay resources for nothing, since there's that 30% "house's cut" boosting prices.

[BurnedToast]

Not sure if I like their design choices. Resources shouldn't appear magically (endless market supply) nor should there be a market fee that goes to nobody. Sure, if the fee was used to keep some stock, then that's ok, but just deleting things and creating them in and out of the game is lazy.

The resources are so unbalanced in stellaris that if it didn't generate free stuff from nothing, it would never get used. Because let's be honest - we all want it to get more minerals. Who would ever sell it minerals? Nobody, ever, in any situation. Even if your mineral storage is full it would be dumb to sell it minerals because that's more minerals for your enemy to buy.

Ah, but you're failing to consider that there'll be loads of new resources now.  So it could very much be worth selling minerals to free up some dosh for buying alloys or dark matter or what have you.

It depends on how the other resources work, I suppose, but considering stellaris has been about "quantity over quality" in every aspect since day 1, I'm skeptical that having a few extra ships that get +10 damage because of "dark matter missiles" (or however it ends up working) is going to be meaningful in any way.

But, aside from that, the point still remains. Let's say dark matter is "worth it", then who's going to sell the market dark matter? Nobody, ever, because it ends up in the same situation as minerals - even if your storage is full you don't want to sell it so your enemies can't have it. And even if the AI is dumb enough to sell it for some reason, you aren't going to use minerals to buy it. You're going to use useless excess food, or maybe excess energy or one of the "weaker" new resources. So the only time the market ever gets used is when the AI is dumb enough to sell it something good, and it ends up full of trash nobody wants.

If stellaris had more variations for all the resources it could work - for example imagine a race that was 100% biological and used minimal to no minerals. Then it could work because they'd be unloading all the excess minerals they got (from space mining or w/e), and people would buy them with food which the biological race would buy up to make more ships. But everyone is the same, and uses the same resources in basically the same ratios except robots who don't need food... which devalues the already lowest value resource even more. So there's no real purpose to a galactic market that does not magically create resources, because everyone needs the same thing.

I reckon there'll be a fair few players who'll benefit from this as well, though. Even considering that you do in fact also pay resources for nothing, since there's that 30% "house's cut" boosting prices.

Oh I'm sure players will use it, because generating free minerals from nothing in exchange for useless excess food or energy is valuable. That does not mean it's the main purpose, which is probably "AI crutch".

[forsaken1111]

Not sure if I like their design choices. Resources shouldn't appear magically (endless market supply) nor should there be a market fee that goes to nobody. Sure, if the fee was used to keep some stock, then that's ok, but just deleting things and creating them in and out of the game is lazy.

The resources are so unbalanced in stellaris that if it didn't generate free stuff from nothing, it would never get used. Because let's be honest - we all want it to get more minerals. Who would ever sell it minerals? Nobody, ever, in any situation. Even if your mineral storage is full it would be dumb to sell it minerals because that's more minerals for your enemy to buy.

Minerals don't do much on their own under the new economy, the real gold standard will be alloys. There's no real reason not to export extra minerals beyond your foundry capacity to turn them into alloys because basic minerals won't be used for much beyond making luxury goods, some planet buildings, and other basic things. Ships will need alloys, and ships are what you need to project any kind of force.

Now exporting alloys would be silly indeed unless you have a massive oversupply but I suppose you could specialize your economy to alloy production and just buy all of your food.

[Radsoc]

I like the idea of having multiple markets. It would allow for embargos too. The transaction fee (set by the owner) could then go to the owner in one way or another. You would have to build it and pay maintenance, one per empire. Some markets sell slaves, some don't. Would make much more sense than having one market that would magically jump between civilizations as empires are destroyed. The exploration type assignment is also too arbitrary. Programmers don't like magical constants, game mechanics should be the same to allow for greater complexity.

[BurnedToast]

Not sure if I like their design choices. Resources shouldn't appear magically (endless market supply) nor should there be a market fee that goes to nobody. Sure, if the fee was used to keep some stock, then that's ok, but just deleting things and creating them in and out of the game is lazy.

The resources are so unbalanced in stellaris that if it didn't generate free stuff from nothing, it would never get used. Because let's be honest - we all want it to get more minerals. Who would ever sell it minerals? Nobody, ever, in any situation. Even if your mineral storage is full it would be dumb to sell it minerals because that's more minerals for your enemy to buy.

Minerals don't do much on their own under the new economy, the real gold standard will be alloys. There's no real reason not to export extra minerals beyond your foundry capacity to turn them into alloys because basic minerals won't be used for much beyond making luxury goods, some planet buildings, and other basic things. Ships will need alloys, and ships are what you need to project any kind of force.

Now exporting alloys would be silly indeed unless you have a massive oversupply but I suppose you could specialize your economy to alloy production and just buy all of your food.

Hmmm... did I miss a dev diary or something that explained what alloys (or any of the other new resources) will actually do? Last I heard it was all very vague and it basically came down to "they will be used for... stuff".

But if minerals must be turned into alloys before using, then yeah it just moves it down a step and alloys become the important thing no-one sells.

[Loud Whispers]

It's a shame we don't have consumer goods like Vic II to actually make the galactic marketplace useful for profiteering through trade, instead of just extracting more minerals for more corvettes. tfw no cockroach traders with a tinned food & tobacco empire

[Broseph Stalin]

The resources are so unbalanced in stellaris that if it didn't generate free stuff from nothing, it would never get used. Because let's be honest - we all want it to get more minerals. Who would ever sell it minerals? Nobody, ever, in any situation. Even if your mineral storage is full it would be dumb to sell it minerals because that's more minerals for your enemy to buy.

Anyway, I think you're missing the point. This is obviously primarily intended as a band-aid fix for the idiot AI that can't manage it's economy properly. Now it can "legitimately" create resources from nothing.

I often sell minerals... Usually at a loss to arm my enemies and prolong their pointless wars so I can mop them up.

[Criptfeind]

There's a trade rework coming, which is separate from this galactic market. It's even mentioned in the dev diary as something that will be discussed later. So far we know that it represents primarily civilian trade and that economic activity on a planet increases the planet's trade value, and that's pretty much all we know.

This is true, and trade value could, if it interacts with the galactic market in an interesting enough way, could soothe many of my 'mehs' about it, but I think there's still a kinda fundamental lack of depth to what we've been shown that's not going to be fixed by whatever trade value is. Well, probably. You're pretty much right that I shouldn't get too critical until we actually see trade value, maybe it's way more then I'm expecting. But I'm just a critical person :P

Anyway, as for the discussion on the lack of value for certain base goods and the lack of goods in general, with the new support for modding that's being put in, I have high hopes for economic complexity mods. In my current game I'm playing a mod that, since I'm a hivemind, replaces half the mineral costs of buildings with food, and the energy upkeep for buildings with food. It's a cool mod that makes it feel very different and more interesting to balance farms vs other concerns. At least, early game. Since ships aren't touched I'm starting to get the point you get too in every game where your fleet is your biggest economic concern, which is starting to eclipse the hivemind economy with the needs of a normal one where it's mostly just mines and power plants. But I'm hoping we'll see even better mods in future where even more things are made of food, and maybe some sorts of energy races that make shit out of energy. Maybe psi ascended or certain techs can use energy instead of minerals and Bio ascended can use food. With such a mod (if it gets anywhere near to balancing the core resources) I'd also hope, maybe just maybe, it might be possible to make it so that there is the ability to specialize your nation to the point where it makes economic sense to make and export one resource as you import the others. I don't think the devs are going to ever really do that, too hard to balance and such, but it'd be interesting to see civics that are like, +40% to one basic resource in exchange for big minuses too the others.

I'm also hopping to see some space Vicky style mod with just tons and tons of resources. I've seen mods in stellaris that already try to do that, with lots of smaller relatively rare resources and then resources tied to ethics, but it was sorta meh in the end because they had to be implemented as rare resources, so you really only needed to to a tiny bit of trading to get 1 each. Although I'm not sure if there's any way to create geographically based scarcity, something I think would be great for encouraging trade. (No need to buy tea from space India if it also grows just fine in space Canada.) Although you can probably restrict it to certain planet types, which will help a little bit in the early to mid game as species are generally tied to their own planet trio.

[Cruxador]

Hmmm... did I miss a dev diary or something that explained what alloys (or any of the other new resources) will actually do? Last I heard it was all very vague and it basically came down to "they will be used for... stuff".

But if minerals must be turned into alloys before using, then yeah it just moves it down a step and alloys become the important thing no-one sells.

I suspect he's gotten that from a stream, actually, the one where Wiz went over the planetary rework and a few other things, and answered questions. He's not exactly correct though. Alloys are necessary for ships, but you still win need minerals to build planetside.

[forsaken1111]

He's not exactly correct though. Alloys are necessary for ships, but you still win need minerals to build planetside.

I did say that...

And yes I got most of that from the dev stream.

[Telgin]

Finally, finally had an empire declare war on me outside of special events like the War in Heaven.  Turns out all you have to do is not build up a fleet.  Oops.  It makes sense that AI empires won't try to fight you if they don't think they can win, but it's interesting that it sort of feels like a mechanic for punishing you for not doing well.  Don't have a big fleet?  Time to lose what you do have, and maybe a lot of systems too!

I guess I was asking for it by only having 20 corvettes in 2300, but at least the AI is as dumb as ever and my fleet was vastly technologically superior.  That corvette fleet was overpowering fleets with 10 cruisers and a smattering of destroyers and corvettes.  In the end I only temporarily lost one system, which was easily rectified, and lost maybe 5 ships through the whole war.  I think the funniest part was in the third war that empire declared on me, where they never even left their borders because my border stations were stronger than their fleets.  They sat there until their war exhaustion ramped up to 80% or so, at which point they sent two 6K fleets at one 10K station, except they didn't send them at the same time so the first fleet was pounded into dust, followed by the second fleet when it arrived two months later.

I'd have had a stronger fleet by then if I wasn't sinking all of my minerals into an early science nexus.  This is the tallest build I've done yet, and it's punishing trying to get 30K minerals saved up for each stage of the nexus when you're only pulling in ~250 per month.  In the end I don't think I beat my previous science nexus record by much.  I started building it in ~2305, but I don't think I finished it until about 2335, since I was always short on minerals.

Last time I was held up by unity, keeping me from getting the Galactic Wonders ascension perk until about 2315, so this time I avoided droid colonizing nearby planets.  That did work, and I got my perks (and tech) faster, but the minerals from those planets is sorely missed now.  I ended up building habitats as soon as I unlocked Voidborne, and I really probably should have put some astro mining bays in them instead of filling them with labs and solar plants...

This is a very interesting optimization problem.

[Karnewarrior]

I do hope the next update is an AI rework. Have we already had a "Card" update? I feel like OSC would be a great name for an AI strategic rework. Really, we have a trade system now, but the AI can't utilize it properly, because they're really quite simple. So an AI update would make good sense here, and would help when they finally get around to making Diplomacy actually interesting...

Like Telgin said, the AI currently doesn't attack unless the player is incredibly pathetic, and when they do attack they just don't get any kind of strategy beyond rushing you with the biggest ships they can build. There needs to be better AI both for overall strategy, and for fleet comp balance. It needs to react to the player, because right now it's like fighting a pillowcase stuffed with bricks; it moves when you hit it, but in really simple and predictable ways.

[GiglameshDespair]

AI rework

do ho ho ho

[Telgin]

Like Telgin said, the AI currently doesn't attack unless the player is incredibly pathetic, and when they do attack they just don't get any kind of strategy beyond rushing you with the biggest ships they can build.

Does the AI even refit ships to counter yours?  I'd be pretty surprised if it did, but I did see the enemy using more PD in my fourth defensive war against them, which reduced the effectiveness of my torpedo corvettes appreciably.

In any case, I think at least part of the problem here is that there's not a ton of strategizing that can be done in the current state of the game, at least once the war starts.  Oftentimes the best strategy does boil down to just sending the biggest fleet you can to wreck theirs and take whatever systems you can on the way.  There's also not a ton of differentiation between ship classes, it feels like, hence the common suggestion to go all corvettes or all battleships, and to not mix fleets because they travel at the speed of the slowest ship.

Then again, maybe it's much different against human players, who I could see actually doing interesting things like using corvette fleets to harass on a second front while you try to focus on their main attack fleet.  I think the AI tries to do something like this, but it tends to end up just splitting its (mixed) fleets down the middle and sending them into battles they can't win.

In other news, I finally learned how to apply claims and take systems in status quos in defensive wars.  I tried to play nice with the robots next door, but I figured after 4 wars, it's time to start giving out paddlings.  It never felt so good to see the little red skull icon on their pops on that planet I took.  They're not even genocidal robots.  They just hate me for being a mild xenophobe.  I even opened my borders to them to try to be nice!  This is one of the rare moments I can see Stellaris being great for RP potential.  I'm seriously tempted to try to reform my government away from internal perfectionists to something more hostile so I can pay them back for the trouble they've caused me, and stop building synths on the pretense that the population should probably be distrustful of sapient robots by this point...

[Egan_BW]

The devs heard that the players wanted better AI, so they did an expansion with Machine Empires~