Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: 2-Zons on January 16, 2020, 08:57:47 AM
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Just starting to learn about colony management. I'm trying to figure out the nuances of how paying for goods stored in your colonies works. I was surprised to learn that you had to pay for the items that are stored there. I would think that the colony has paid for them to be there and that it comes off the profit / cost of running the colony. If somehow the goods stored in the colony are not owned by the colony (say by the goods exporter) then I guess that would make sense that I need to pay for them. What about goods that I produce at the colony. I have a mine on my colony and it's producing organics and ore. I tried to pick up the ore and it shows a charge at month end. This doesn't make sense to me. Can someone explain?
If indeed imported goods are owned by the exporter, shouldn't I be getting the 5K fee for each exporter to open a warehouse in my colony?
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Well you're taking those items directly from your own production/stockpiles so their costs damages your monthly paycheck
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That doesn't make sense. These items are building up in the warehouse. My profits are made by those that leave the warehouse (sold). By taking some of them I could hinder potential profits, but that's not what happens. I have to pay a price for each one that is charged at the end of the month, just like taking anything from public storage.
One of the reasons I thought you would make colonies is to provide your own resources (supplies and fuel) and save a lot of money. But if you have to pay for your own resources then I don't understand. Do you have to pay for the ships you build too? I would have hoped you only pay for the cost of any imported goods required to build the ships. If I have to pay market price for those ships then again, what's the point? I'm hoping there is something I'm missing, I'm sure there is a lot I am missing.
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You effectively pay below market price for ships you produce because the ships get weapons mounted at no additional cost. In addition, building ships also produces a modest amount supplies, fuel, and crew free of charge.
As for commodities, you pay no tariff from colony resources, so they serve as the baseline. Often a good enough deal. However, there are exceptions. For example, crew and marines can often be bought from black markets of randomly spawned pirate bases for less, such as about 133 cr for marines, instead of 200 cr for marines from your colony resources.
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You could say it's the opportunity cost. Your end-of-the-month balance is predicted on assumption that trade is not disrupted, goods are sold on schedule. When you come and grab some of it, your colony has to cancel contracts or buy more commodities to have enough resources to do its job. Or maybe it just wasn't sold. In any case, it was assumed that all of these resources will be used or sold for money. If you take them, instead of earning less money, you earn the same amount, but are charged for those resources. It makes it clearer something happened at all.
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If you have to pay for ships, who are you paying? If you pay for all colony imports and profit from all exports that means you are paying for all the goods to build the ship. Who gets the money for it when you pay for it? It can't be the colony itself, you have to pay for all the buildings that build the ships. If it's the employees (owners) of the factories, that doesn't make sense if you are paying for the factories and they make all the profit. If that is the case then they should be paying you back for the costs of the factories.
I'm sure the designers have reasoning behind how it actually works. I would just like to understand the mechanics.
P.S. I love this game.
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If you have to pay for ships, who are you paying?
Materials and the actual job. It's one thing to manufacture ships for a profit, but even if you employ someone, you can't force them do to charity. You can say you are already paying them and this is correct, just now you are paying them for work that won't have any return, but is done for your own benefit. Altruism can't feed children.
I'm sure the designers have reasoning behind how it actually works. I would just like to understand the mechanics.
Oh, it's very simple: having free and infinite supply of ships would be broken as all hell. Losses would mean nothing, if you could just grab the next ship from the assembly line.
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I understand that people need to be paid. I guess I thought that was built into the profit/loss of the colony. Kind of abstract to pay for the workers to build the ship, only if you take one. I understand that there needs to be abstraction for gameplay reasons. I am just trying to understand how the game works so I can play it better. This game is incredible, and the mechanics seem to be structured after real life concepts, so that is why I am trying to relate it to real life. This game gives you a tremendous amount of information, but the more you get the more you want.
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Well when you make your colony build a ship for you, you're disrupting their production line to produce one specific battleship for you, all of the expenses made by taking resources from storage or custom builds are deducted from your income, not the credits you currently have on yourself. In other words you're not paying but rather disrupting the colony's trade, as a result your income also suffers.
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That doesn't make sense. These items are building up in the warehouse. My profits are made by those that leave the warehouse (sold). By taking some of them I could hinder potential profits, but that's not what happens. I have to pay a price for each one that is charged at the end of the month, just like taking anything from public storage.
They're building up in a warehouse to a certain amount, after which they stop building up, such that in the even of a disruption the planet does not have a shortage. If you deplete the stores in the warehouse they need to be replaced at the end of the month and you must pay for this, but not selling that many resources
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They're building up in a warehouse to a certain amount, after which they stop building up, such that in the even of a disruption the planet does not have a shortage. If you deplete the stores in the warehouse they need to be replaced at the end of the month and you must pay for this, but not selling that many resources
They do not use resources during a shortage unless you enable that setting (disabled by default), and if they do consume resources, (I think, not sure about this) it costs the player money, but only a fraction (10% I think) instead of 100% of the cost, unless the resources consumed were deposited by player in the first place.
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Either way the resources must be replaced and that costs money
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I'm rusty on the game mechanics about colony. Is it basically u paid a fixed cost on the colony then it gives u a passive income based on how the colony was doing? It doesn't constantly drain an upkeep from you right?
In that case, paying for good is actually a completely realistic like a real corporate that is a seperate legal entity to u as an owner.
Imagine running a stall that sells apple. You paid 50 dollar to set up a stall. Then you put 10 dollar cash into the stall. Each day a farmer come to deliver 1 box of apples for 10 dollar. The all of that is sold for 15. The full 5 dollar is paid out to you as profit every daym
One day, you want a box of apple for your own, you took the apple. Then there is no apple sold that day, so your stall cannot pay you the 5 dollar and also doesn't have any cash. The next day the farmer comes but the stall has no money to pay the farmer. The farmer cannot take money from you because you have o obligation to pay into the stall. So no apple and the business will basically cease to exist.
The game is not going to simulate the entire balance sheet with dividend payout rate(the 5 dollar profit of the stall) and working capital management (the 10 dollar cash used to buy apple) of the colony. So the most simple way to make sense how you cannot get infinite money from a colony by taking all the commodities at no cost is that you basically pay the full cost of it to the colony (ie. The 10 dollar that the apples were bought for) . If the game somehow also reduce your profit of the.month because taking goods away reduce the prosperity and what not then it is also assuming you lost sales. If it doesn't really affect it then it just assume it produced more to cover the goods you took and the demand from customers.
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The biggest issue with this is that taking supplies from your own colony is usually more expensive than just buying stuff from other factions, armaments are a great example of that in my current game
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What I'm hearing is we need a slavery industry to force colonists to work for free rather than for credits.
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In defense of OP, I think it's ridiculous that you need to pay tariffs on your own colony products, it's literally direct from your own factory. While paying something to keep the workers feed, paying full price for goods just requires a huge suspension of disbelief, like many things in SS tbh. All of those products produced at your own colony should be available at something like 2/3rds cost.
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Honestly by the time you have a decent enough colony the cost of pulling from the stockpile is negligible. It's just a matter of convenience, sure you could go to another planet in the hope that you could find something cheaper, but so long as your colony imports, produces and requires specific goods you will find them in your stockpile without having to go searching for them.
The costs aren't that bad either.
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A lot of good points brought up here. As I said I love this game. I do think that the colony economy system could be a little more refined. When you purchase an industry building that produces goods there is a maintenance cost. That should represent paying of employees. There could also be a maintenance cost in supplies which represents the material used in maintaining all the machinery. On top of maintenance any material used by the factory will have to be purchased, this would be a separate cost. The resulting product would be owned by you. It could be automatically exported which if fully exported should generate enough income to produce an overall profit. If you chose (a check box) to not export the products, they would be stockpiled at your warehouse. This could be used if you wanted to keep the products for vertical integration, so your factory that uses those products in it's production doesn't have to buy them on the open market. This would make the factory run at a loss but the up line factory should generate enough profit to make up for it, if it's products are sold. If you choose to stockpile them for your own use, it should be a way of getting cheaper products, the costs being the source material, plus maintenance. This is a realistic design, and wouldn't be that hard to implement, and a lot less abstract than the current system.
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It is also effectively a loan with no interest, as you do not pay until the end of the month. For example, if you have heavy industry you can take your own stockpiles of heavy weapons even if you don't have enough cash, smuggle them somewhere, and sell them before the end of the month.
So your own colony stockpile gives goods at their default price, with no tariff, and you don't need to pay for them until the month ends. Thats a decent set of benefits, though for some goods you can find them for cheaper at an overproduction world's black market.
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Just fyi, there is already vertical integration built into the colony design, though in an abstract manner: if you can supply the pre-requisite goods for your industries from your own colonies, all of the maintenance costs are reduced in proportion. This goes from a 0% reduction (no in faction foods) to 50% (you can supply everything yourself). I believe if you mouse over your upkeep and hit F1 you can get a breakdown that includes this factor.
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I'm rusty on the game mechanics about colony. Is it basically u paid a fixed cost on the colony then it gives u a passive income based on how the colony was doing? It doesn't constantly drain an upkeep from you right?
It has a constant upkeep and income that depends on market conditions/how much it produces
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Taking from your own colony will never cost more than the regular market value (this also lets you know what the baseline market value IS if you were ever uncertain,) never cost tariffs AND you get until the end of the month to pay for it; time your withdrawal at the very beginning of the month for maximum repayment time. That's an advantage in itself. Building ships will ALWAYS be cheaper than buying them AND you'll probably get less D-mods. Compare any ship you can build with your blueprints to the same hull at literally any market and you'll always be building for less, PLUS you get a few resources to boot. Ever wanted a fleet of just your favorite ship? Heavy industry is there for you! That's hard to argue with.
The only disadvantage is that you're not earning any reputation or trade XP from using your own colony but that seems like a completely fair trade for how much more cost-efficient a colony can be, especially since (once it's setup well) it's just sitting around earning you cash. Once you're friends with your chosen factions and sitting pretty at 50 this part is a moot point anyway.
It might not fully explain the entire Persean sector's economic picture from a real-world standpoint but utilizing your colony's resources is always to your advantage unless you stumble onto a major market surplus somewhere instead.
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I get the need to not have cheap masses of colony produced goods essentially make using other markets obselete/inferior for balance reasons. But I do admit that having always having the full base per-unit market value deducted from your income is a bit of a head-scratcher conceptually.
The production costs are presumably already covered by the colony's monthly upkeep costs, so the end of month deduction is purely loss of potential profits you would have gained from exporting them instead. So it's a little mad to me that no matter how much the sector is flooded with more supply than demand I'll still get told my traders are selling them for no less than a 50% per-unit profit margin when I try to skim off some excess.
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Hmm - I don't see why production costs would be covered by monthly upkeep. Monthly upkeep to me is, well, the cost per month to maintain the industry. Replace broken machinery, pay base wages, do market research and advertising etc etc. After all, no industry is going to operate at constant production volume - thats a simplification that so many games use that people consider it 'realistic', when its anything but. There might be some stockpile built up, but if the buy orders stop, then so will production.
It would produce whatever it could sell as determined by accessibility, market share and market volume, with the profit you get from the industry equaling (quantity sold) * (sell price - production cost) - shipping costs (accessibility).
I agree with you that, from a "realism" perspective, the player should get some discount - as the owner, they should be able to get things at production cost rather than sell cost (those two could be quite close in a competitive market) . But that violates a fundamental tenant of Starsector game design by encouraging boring, safe trade, and gameplay must trump "realism"
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Monthly upkeep accounting for the materials as well as maintenance to me essentially follows on from the way meeting supply needs in-faction provides a discount on monthly upkeep.
Like I say, I understand the need from a balance perspective, but I can also understand the current implementation leaving players feel a little cheated by their own colonies if they personally take supplies from them.
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Player colony economy doesn't make sense - you can satisfy every resource need within faction yet somehow this doesn't generate any surplus money, you can only profit from exports to other factions.
Would be better if you we couldn't spam infinite AI admin worlds (make them count as admin or half-admin, harvesting them is too tedious anyway), but player colonies demand was properly calculated.
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Who said that player owns a colony, industry and its products as a whole? You did invest some spacemoneys in this and you have your share in profits and administrative decisions but thats all. Remember that standart crew salary is 10 spacetokens. After that crew colonizes the planet, you are no longer paying them. But it doesnt mean that they dont make a living. And popular planet attracts more people who even willing to make a trip on their own. And with 100M population it means that there is a 1B/month economy running on the planet. Or so. Mind that.
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The economy is a simulated economy. For instance one time I decided to resolve a Volatiles shortage to a Fuel production Industry by transfering Volatiles from another colony to the stockpile and from what I worked out, this lost me more money than if I had left it with the shortage.
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Player colony economy doesn't make sense - you can satisfy every resource need within faction yet somehow this doesn't generate any surplus money, you can only profit from exports to other factions.
Would be better if you we couldn't spam infinite AI admin worlds (make them count as admin or half-admin, harvesting them is too tedious anyway), but player colonies demand was properly calculated.
I mean it does make you money by decreasing your upkeep costs down to 50% by supplying the needed resources, making you net money by reducing your expenses. Which in the end make it easier to live off of basic population and infrastructure taxes, which make up half the profits from my own colonies.
I've always seen the stockpiles as the stockpiles of resources that are going to be exported by the end of the month, the cost is covering the loss in profit by the player taking them for their own personal use. It may or may not be the cheapest but it is far more convenient to have around for those time you really do need 10,000 supplies. Products made in surplus for the player to have for free just goes to your storage site, right?
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But why can't player economy run itself? There is no logical reason.
You can colonize more worlds than there are in core by default, yet you will never get anywhere above most basic sustenance. Replace half that with independent worlds, and you can suddenly afford to spam doom fleets.
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But why can't player economy run itself? There is no logical reason.
You can colonize more worlds than there are in core by default, yet you will never get anywhere above most basic sustenance. Replace half that with independent worlds, and you can suddenly afford to spam doom fleets.
It can from what I can see. You won't make very much more until your colonies grow large enough, and if they are hazardous worlds it can be very difficult to justify building them up with expensive stuff. But it can work, from what I can see.
You just make hilarious amounts of money from exports and frankly, this isn't stellaris. Starsector isn't a place for building an empire. This is the collapse of civilisation unfolding and everything we do either delays the inevitable or speeds its arrival.
Which I am fine with, but I can see a lot of people having issue with. "Why even have colonies if I can't build a viable colonial empire?" and so on.
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It sounds like Talar is talking about that the player colony's own demand does not contribute to the market, which doesn't make much sense. I can understand why though, since it stops players from building a neverending increasingly large economy for whatever reason.