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[Pushover]

This has been something that has bugged me about the economy for a while. There's a nice supply chain system built into the game, but players barely see or care about it. I would love to see the supply chain become more visible somehow.

What do I mean by supply chains? As an example, to produce Heavy Machinery, Ore and Rare Ore is mined using some Crew and some Heavy Machinery at an Ore Mining Complex. The Ore is then refined into Metal by an Ore Refining Complex, using some Crew and a little Heavy Machinery. Organics from an Organics Mining Complex and Volatiles from a Volatiles Mining Complex (again, using Crew and Heavy Machinery) combine at an Autofactory to produce the next batch of Heavy Machinery.

All this already happens as a natural outcome of trade fleets flying around. It's just not easy for a player to notice this, or take advantage of this.

Obviously, it doesn't affect gameplay at all to ignore supply chains like we do now, but I would love to have some way for the system to be more visible. The only time a player currently cares about the economy system is when trade gets disrupted. This isn't really a gameplay problem any more than the Hammerhead being bad is a gameplay problem, but it is something that I'd like to see improved.

What can be done to make the economic systems a little more visible/impactful to the player? Are there any plans that I'm unaware of to help visibility (short of the fuzzy plans regarding asteroid mining, salvaging, etc)?

[xenoargh]

Mainly, we need transparency about what planets need.

That, and frankly, if they need it badly enough that it's causing problems with Stability, they should lower their tariffs so that players can make a profit (or have an Event). 

It's all kind of black-box right now, and there are issues, like the economy only "wanting" X amount of stuff, but burning through Y amount, to the point where it can't be reasonably expected to stay stable.  I think that dumping extra Stuff into economies shouldn't ever hurt Stability, if it's stuff the economy will eventually use up anyhow.

[Alex]

Yeah, right, all that stuff is fairly invisible right now. The idea is that when we've got actual outposts, a lot of the effects of market conditions will migrate into the effects of "buildings" or "compounds", which'll then have dedicated UI elements with more clarity about what they need and produce. (Standard "subject to change" disclaimer applies.) Theoretically, if a player can create an outpost that plugs into this system, then they'll have a reason to care about/figure out the supply chains, but that's really getting into more detail than I feel comfortable talking about. Still, that's how I'm looking at it right now.

and there are issues, like the economy only "wanting" X amount of stuff, but burning through Y amount, to the point where it can't be reasonably expected to stay stable.  I think that dumping extra Stuff into economies shouldn't ever hurt Stability, if it's stuff the economy will eventually use up anyhow.

Kind of sounds like you're saying that having too much of something is causing a stability drop, but unless I'm missing something, that shouldn't happen.

[Pushover]

Does a food glut decrease stability? TBH the food glut doesn't make a lot of sense, a planet should just offer less money for food past ending the shortage. If there was a food shortage, they would probably want more than enough food, such that another food shortage doesn't occur within 2 months. The food is supposed to last 5 years, according to the tooltip, so why is having the extra supplies that big of a deal?

Otherwise the obvious Black Market selling decreasing stability exists.

[Alex]

Does a food glut decrease stability? TBH the food glut doesn't make a lot of sense, a planet should just offer less money for food past ending the shortage. If there was a food shortage, they would probably want more than enough food, such that another food shortage doesn't occur within 2 months. The food is supposed to last 5 years, according to the tooltip, so why is having the extra supplies that big of a deal?

Off the top of my head, I don't think it does, though the food shortage itself does have a lasting stability impact even after it ends.

Even if a food glut *did* decrease stability, though, that'd be something specific to an event rather than a property of the economy - but I do realize that from a player-centric pooint of view, that's a bit of a distinction without a difference I guess I'm just saying here is that if this was the case, it'd be more of a critique of the food shortage event rather than the underlying economy sim.

Otherwise the obvious Black Market selling decreasing stability exists.

Right, but stability isn't dropping due to there being too much of something, it's just a property of all black market trading. What xenoargh is saying more brings to mind a case where the economy won't produce stable markets due to over-supply, which, as far as I know, can't/shouldn't happen.

[xenoargh]

It sure feels that way, but again, the main issue is transparency; it's so hard to see what a given economy actually needs to get Stability to rise right now.  Anyhow, these sound like great changes!

[Alex]

Yeah, I can definitely see that.

As far as figuring out what might be causing low stability: it's pretty much going to be not enough production of any given commodity. If adding more production conditions for that commodity doesn't help, then it's likely not enough production of another commodity down the supply chain - e.g. need more metals, but adding more refineries doesn't help? Then it means it needs more ore.

Generally, in vanilla, I try to aim for "slightly not enough supply to match demand", and then add a few stability-boosting conditions to important centers - those raise prices and make them more able to meet their demand, so naturally creating places where demand is met and places where it isn't. E.G. if you've got two markets and only enough food supply to meet half of the demand, if one of the markets has a military base and the other one doesn't, then the one with the base will get a bigger share of the food.

[a.c.macauley]

It sure feels that way, but again, the main issue is transparency; it's so hard to see what a given economy actually needs to get Stability to rise right now.  Anyhow, these sound like great changes!

I think the market info screen is doing a pretty good job right now. We can see the overall percentage of demand met and specifically which commodities are lacking, what more do you really need? For example, look at Asharu, it needs: food, domestic goods, drugs. Dump some on the market, keep an eye on percentage of demand met, dump more, take huge hits on tariffs, and soon you'll see the stability rise. To what end though? Prices rise by a fraction and there's little to no benefit to the player. The successfull trader makes money when stability is down not up.

I'm really looking forward to when the player has more at stake in the stability\well-being of one the planets or factions but at the moment more transparency sounds to me like more numbers, and not particularly useful ones at that.

[Pushover]

If you dig deep enough, you can figure out how it works. However, the player, as you note, has no reason to dig deep into how the market works. Therefore, to most players, the market's system is invisible. I was trying to think up mechanics that would make the player care. Trade missions can help, especially if it translates into more ships or weapons on the market, in addition to making money, which is something the player can appreciate. Something like 'X planet needs N amount of metals, rare metals, volatiles, and organics to upgrade its defense forces.' After the player completes the mission, the market has maybe a 50% increase in produced weapons that month, or maybe a few new ships on the open or military submarkets.