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Author Topic: Supply and demand oddities?  (Read 8019 times)

DaLagga

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Supply and demand oddities?
« on: November 25, 2018, 04:07:35 AM »

Is it just me, or is supply and demand in this game weird and make no sense?  I've been building up 4 colonies and tweaking them but have noticed some things that have completely contradicted the way that I would have thought these concepts should work.  For example, I have both a Tech-Mining and a Refining facility on one of my colonies.  The Tech-Miner produces 6 units of metals while the Refinery produces 10.  Now, logically this should mean that I am producing 16 units of metal but no!  For whatever reason it only counts the largest producer and says that my colony is making 10 units of metal.  This holds true for all industries. 

What makes even less sense is supply and demand.  For example, let's say I have 3 colonies producing different quantities of metals - 10 units, 8 units and 4 units.  Let's also assume I have 3 colonies that are consuming metals - 9 units, 8 units, and 7 units.  Now logically, that should be a total supply of 22 units and a demand of 24 units resulting in a deficit of 2 units.  But no!  The game only seems to care about the largest producer and consumer.  As a result, the colony that produces 10 units could easily supply all 3 of the others and, in fact, could hypothetically supply an infinite number of consumers so long as none of them demand more than 10 units. 

Essentially, it seems that all you want is one production facility of each type for the most part so long as the colony is rich and large enough to supply all the rest.  Some industries seem to justify redundancies because of the net value of the exports like Food but for everything else, all you need is one large producer.  Which means that all you really need are about two colonies with different resources to produce everything the galaxy could ever need and make a fortune (unless you found some godlike planet that has every resource).

Why does it work this way?  It just seems so confusing because it contradicts basic logic unless I'm missing something. 
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Deshara

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2018, 04:08:48 AM »

there is a hard limit to how much of a commodity you're capable of exporting. I don't remember off the top of my head what causes said limit, but it's there and the game tells you about it -- if inadequately

Edit: and if you mouse over a commodity in manage colony/colony info view it does say only the highest producer of a commodity is used. Not exactly sure of what exactly it means by that but it could make sense that if you have two industries that could produce scrap metal, only the one that produces the most would be run -- your colony is limited in how much scrap it can export at once so it won't bother having the tech mine compete with the refinery since the excess would get unused anyhow.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2018, 04:11:43 AM by Deshara »
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SCC

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2018, 04:11:17 AM »

Is it just me, or is supply and demand in this game weird and make no sense?  I've been building up 4 colonies and tweaking them but have noticed some things that have completely contradicted the way that I would have thought these concepts should work.  For example, I have both a Tech-Mining and a Refining facility on one of my colonies.  The Tech-Miner produces 6 units of metals while the Refinery produces 10.  Now, logically this should mean that I am producing 16 units of metal but no!  For whatever reason it only counts the largest producer and says that my colony is making 10 units of metal.  This holds true for all industries.  
Your tech-mine doesn't produce 6X of metal and refinery 10X, it's more like tech-mine produces 10^6 metal and refinery 10^10. Tech-mine is a drop to the refinery's ocean.
As a result, the colony that produces 10 units could easily supply all 3 of the others and, in fact, could hypothetically supply an infinite number of consumers so long as none of them demand more than 10 units.
I think Alex even talked about this in his dev blog at some point.

there is a hard limit to how much of a commodity you're capable of exporting. I don't remember off the top of my head what causes said limit, but it's there and the game tells you about it -- if inadequately
It's accessibility tooltip.

TJJ

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2018, 04:22:32 AM »

Though the power-scale of production doesn't explain why one planet with 10(^10) supply can fulfill unlimited 10(^10)  demands.

Perhaps a more realistic (but equally simple) model would be; planets with X supply will support all planets demanding X-1 or less.

So to satisfy demand, the largest producer would always need to be one larger than the largest consumer.

The power scale also fails to explain the profitability of exports and acquisition of market share, as these 2 mechanics clearly doesn't operate on the same powers scale.

Also the game needs to explain that production uses a power-scale!!! It's fundamental to making sense of the economy!
« Last Edit: November 25, 2018, 04:27:23 AM by TJJ »
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DaLagga

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2018, 04:27:51 AM »

there is a hard limit to how much of a commodity you're capable of exporting. I don't remember off the top of my head what causes said limit, but it's there and the game tells you about it -- if inadequately

Edit: and if you mouse over a commodity in manage colony/colony info view it does say only the highest producer of a commodity is used. Not exactly sure of what exactly it means by that but it could make sense that if you have two industries that could produce scrap metal, only the one that produces the most would be run -- your colony is limited in how much scrap it can export at once so it won't bother having the tech mine compete with the refinery since the excess would get unused anyhow.

So you mean that I can only export a cumulative total of that amount to other colonies or that this is simply the maximum for a specific good but effectively infinite for all demands less than that amount?  For example, if I had an export limit of 10 and produced 10 of a particular good, could I still supply every other colony with a demand of 10 or less?  Or could I only supply a grand total of 10?  This really isn't very well explained. 
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DaLagga

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2018, 12:27:56 PM »

Here's the dev blog post I was talking about.

Thanks for the link.  It was very helpful.  I really have to disagree with his logic though.  I'm no programmer so I can't really comment on the performance side of things, but in trying to simplify the economy I feel like they just made it overly obtuse and counter-intuitive.  More production should mean more exports but it doesn't.  Demand doesn't even cost your colonies any money or anything and there doesn't appear to be any real downsides to relying on the rest of the galaxy to supply all your needs.  It flies in the face of the way things should work and do work in any game with a simulated economy.  Beyond that, it just makes things far too simple and easy for the player to manipulate.     
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Alex

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2018, 01:05:56 PM »

More production should mean more exports but it doesn't. 

It does - it increases your market share which in turn increases the income from exports.

Demand doesn't even cost your colonies any money or anything and there doesn't appear to be any real downsides to relying on the rest of the galaxy to supply all your needs.

That's true; I've been thinking about having demand be met in-faction reduce some fraction of an industry's upkeep. Just making out-of-faction imports cost money isn't viable for ... various reasons. (The numbers don't really work out, and it goes against trying to make colonies a source of income from the start.)

Well, the one downside is needing more accessibility to get the same amount of stuff from other factions, but that can be stacked high enough that it's not an issue.
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DaLagga

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #8 on: November 26, 2018, 02:03:34 PM »

It does - it increases your market share which in turn increases the income from exports.

Sorry, I should have been more clear on this point.  I meant that more production from multiple sources on the same planet doesn't increase exports.  In the first post I mentioned how metal production from a Tech-Miner and Refinery don't stack which is what I'm talking about.  Thanks for taking the time to respond, I do really like most of the changes in the new update!

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Alex

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #9 on: November 26, 2018, 02:19:37 PM »

Ah, gotcha, yes, that makes sense! To be honest I wasn't thinking of this too much, since Tech-Mining is the only major (any?) case of overlap. It'd be weird if those added up while demand didn't, but if demand added up that'd complicate things *a lot*.

I've been thinking about this a bit post release and it might be that removing commodity production from Tech-Mining entirely (and leaving only the "free" cargo finds, along with possibly tweaking its costs/output) might be the way to go. It'll get rid of this weird case, and make Tech-Mining less of a threat-magnet, to boot, as well as making it more unique.
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SCC

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #10 on: November 26, 2018, 02:26:17 PM »

In this case, unless tech-mining never truly runs out, I'd like it to fold at the point when there isn't anything more to find. Sometimes I create a temporary colony and it would be a good indication of when to go.

Alex

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2018, 02:28:18 PM »

It's never 100% tapped out, and there's a description of the state of the ruins in the industry tooltip, so it's kind of up to the player when they don't think the outside chance of blueprints is worth it.
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SCC

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2018, 02:44:00 PM »

When they get to the lowest chances for a find, are they affected by ruins' level? In that case, I might never remove vast and extensive ruins' tech-mining, blueprints are just too valuable not to try and find.

Alex

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #13 on: November 26, 2018, 02:48:46 PM »

To a degree - larger ruins have a higher base multiplier, but continued exploitation results in another multiplier that asymptotically approaches zero. So larger ruins will always be more productive than smaller ruins would be after the same amount of time spent Tech-Mining, but could still go well below the output of fresher, smaller ruins.
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Goumindong

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Re: Supply and demand oddities?
« Reply #14 on: November 26, 2018, 02:56:02 PM »

Though the power-scale of production doesn't explain why one planet with 10(^10) supply can fulfill unlimited 10(^10)  demands.

Perhaps a more realistic (but equally simple) model would be; planets with X supply will support all planets demanding X-1 or less.

So to satisfy demand, the largest producer would always need to be one larger than the largest consumer.

The power scale also fails to explain the profitability of exports and acquisition of market share, as these 2 mechanics clearly doesn't operate on the same powers scale.

Also the game needs to explain that production uses a power-scale!!! It's fundamental to making sense of the economy!

Its not 10^n its y^n where y is arbitrarily large
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