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Starsector 0.98a is out! (03/27/25)

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Author Topic: Reworking colony economics  (Read 1527 times)

Re-bot-S.AI.

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #15 on: October 29, 2024, 09:46:37 AM »

I will concur on the point with limiting maximum colony player size with resolving colony crises and though I don't think it would fundamentally fix the problem, it will definitely help reduce the easily accessible mad profits.

the issue is this adds an obtrusive feature that the player has to get around
the worse part of which is, you have to wait for the crisis to trigger before you can solve it which is a lot harder if your locked to size 3's till you beat one as crisis's tick a lot slower the smaller you are.

to oversimplify we are half fixing colony engagement being "start colony and then wait for money printing" by just adding even more waiting, which doesn't actually fix the issue, it just kicks it down the road a bit.


I can agree with those above that suggested disconnecting accessibility from profits, and i can agree. while it can be argued that it should have some effect, there's always going to be a limit of how much it helps because eventually you're getting to transport being free, and it's not like cheap transport can make the production of that item any cheaper if all the things going into are already on site.

so disconnecting accessibility from profits does make a lot of sense and in part removes the super money printer colony issue because most of the issue is everyone is boosting their colonies to 200% profit with that.

I do however heavily disagree with OP's view on generalist colonies that put multiple steps of a production chain on one planet, that should not increase logistics cost, that should reduce it seeing as the materials are already on site when they are made. it takes a lot less effort to ship locally around the planet then to ship it around a solar system or to an entirely different star system.

Instead, i suggest making some systems to give the player other options to sometimes give them a reason to not make EVERY colony a generalist, seeing as outside of high hazard worlds you pretty much have every reason to make every planet a generalist, especially with growing industry limits, its just weird not to make use of those slots to make more production and thus more profit.
Put more specifically we could use a way to expand an existing industry to take up multiple slots for even better production at a more efficient upkeep then having two planets running the same industry. that would give some incentive to make at least some planets specialized to make use of these bonus's, especially if you start throwing in colony items.
this would also in a way assist ludic majority as well, as at this time once you reach a large enough size of colony to have 4 industries, sticking with ludic majority actually can be detrimental to the effectiveness of that world as you no longer utilize the maximum output of that world. being able to build even larger farming/light industry would help fill that hole.


on an aside i would like to toss in the ring the importance (or lack thereof) of resource ratings on a colony planet. More specifically the larger a colony gets the less it matters. when you have a size 6 the difference between sparse ore and abundant ore is insignificant at best. and generally, only matters on brand new colonies. after that only hazard really matters at all. having resource values be a multiplier instead of a flat effect would flip things around to mattering a bit less on a new colony but having a large impact on a large one or, perhaps there is some in-between option i have not thought of at this time idk.

ps. i agree with Megas, tech mining really needs some love, it has almost no value to the player except hope of maybe getting lucky and getting a bp or two. even then you almost never get blueprints from it (even on the largest of ruins), and the other outputs from tech mining are so tiny there's no real benefit from building it. pretty much a waste of the player's time.
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Megas

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2024, 12:27:02 PM »

the issue is this adds an obtrusive feature that the player has to get around
the worse part of which is, you have to wait for the crisis to trigger before you can solve it which is a lot harder if your locked to size 3's till you beat one as crisis's tick a lot slower the smaller you are.

to oversimplify we are half fixing colony engagement being "start colony and then wait for money printing" by just adding even more waiting, which doesn't actually fix the issue, it just kicks it down the road a bit.
I already wait long enough before colonies become worth having, beyond being able to build as many meta weapons as I want.  I do not want to wait even longer.

I build one or two colonies in year one.  More come later when I find a good second place and can afford (and defend) them.

I get endgame fleet or at least something that can easily kill big human fleets and maybe a single Ordos at year five or six without much optimization.  If I really built toward meta fleet and skills instead of playing with what I find and picking non-meta skills, the fleet probably could handle multi-Ordos and it is game over then (if I do not care to take over the sector).

I get money printing online by year ten to twelve, when all five colonies are size 6 and hazard pay is gone.  Before then, I make more money grinding 250+k bounties and/or the occasional huge windfall from black market trading.

By the time colonies make a lot of money, I could have been farming for alpha cores for years and colonizing more and more worlds, long after the game is effectively over unless I wanted to colonize the whole sector and/or waited until all the crises have come and gone.  In my last game, I was done before my last crisis with the Hegemony began.
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landryraccoon

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #17 on: October 29, 2024, 03:33:33 PM »


I already wait long enough before colonies become worth having, beyond being able to build as many meta weapons as I want.  I do not want to wait even longer.

I build one or two colonies in year one.  More come later when I find a good second place and can afford (and defend) them.

<snip>

By the time colonies make a lot of money, I could have been farming for alpha cores for years and colonizing more and more worlds, long after the game is effectively over unless I wanted to colonize the whole sector and/or waited until all the crises have come and gone.  In my last game, I was done before my last crisis with the Hegemony began.

Hear, hear. I agree.

Endgame colonies mean the player has infinite money. I am totally fine with this, in fact I think it's a good thing.

Conceptually I think we should think of Starsector's endgame as only starting when money no longer matters to the player. The player can now build the fleet they want with the weapons they want, and running out of supplies/fuel should be a minor concern, something that's dealt with by a minimum of planning and not a continuous emergency. At that point, John Starsector's reason to keep going should be something other than economic - defeating some ultra hard group of enemies, finding rare loot / equipment that money can't buy anywhere, etc..

By that definition, Starsector doesn't really have an endgame yet. Hunting and killing [REDACTED] and [SUPER-REDACTED] are a cool endgame challenge, but there isn't anything beyond that. Prolonging the period before the player has infinite money is just trying to drag out the middle game. I don't see the point.

What would make Starsector eternal, imho, is a real endgame for the player, where they're chasing extremely difficult goals and the early/middle game needs of basic survival and putting together a basic fleet don't matter anymore.
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DeltaEpsilon

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #18 on: October 29, 2024, 07:12:42 PM »

the issue is this adds an obtrusive feature that the player has to get around
the worse part of which is, you have to wait for the crisis to trigger before you can solve it which is a lot harder if your locked to size 3's till you beat one as crisis's tick a lot slower the smaller you are.

to oversimplify we are half fixing colony engagement being "start colony and then wait for money printing" by just adding even more waiting, which doesn't actually fix the issue, it just kicks it down the road a bit.
Well, like I said, it's not a bad idea, it just doesn't fix the underlying issue.

Quote
I do however heavily disagree with OP's view on generalist colonies that put multiple steps of a production chain on one planet, that should not increase logistics cost, that should reduce it seeing as the materials are already on site when they are made. it takes a lot less effort to ship locally around the planet then to ship it around a solar system or to an entirely different star system.
I'm OP. You misunderstand the intention here a bit. You can make a generalist colony, it's just that it's going to require a lot of accessibility in order to be able to export and import all the resources it needs, nearly unmaintainably so, because you end up wasting a lot of money on accessibility-related security/logistics expenses. There is nothing stopping the player from having 300% accessibility general planet in this system and eventually that's still what you might end up with, it's just convenient, but not optimal play due to extreme costs involved with maintaining that high of an accessibility.
Also, it's impossible to produce all resources on one planet due to industry limit, you will have at least a few imported resources.
So, tl;dr, accessibility in this proposal is the true limiter on colony's output and also a tradeoff due to higher accessibility costing possibly exponentially more to upkeep in defenses.

Quote
Instead, i suggest making some systems to give the player other options to sometimes give them a reason to not make EVERY colony a generalist, seeing as outside of high hazard worlds you pretty much have every reason to make every planet a generalist, especially with growing industry limits, its just weird not to make use of those slots to make more production and thus more profit.
Put more specifically we could use a way to expand an existing industry to take up multiple slots for even better production at a more efficient upkeep then having two planets running the same industry. that would give some incentive to make at least some planets specialized to make use of these bonus's, especially if you start throwing in colony items.
The tradeoff here, as mentioned before, is that too much accessibility is simply very expensive. It's better to run two specialized planets with easily accessible 150% accessibility than to run one planet doing everything for 300%. However, two planets are also more likely to get trade disruptions and are less stable compared to having a single universal planet.
The ultimate tradeoff proposed is simply less security, but more profits and more security, but less profits.

Quote
on an aside i would like to toss in the ring the importance (or lack thereof) of resource ratings on a colony planet. More specifically the larger a colony gets the less it matters. when you have a size 6 the difference between sparse ore and abundant ore is insignificant at best. and generally, only matters on brand new colonies. after that only hazard really matters at all. having resource values be a multiplier instead of a flat effect would flip things around to mattering a bit less on a new colony but having a large impact on a large one or, perhaps there is some in-between option i have not thought of at this time idk.
It doesn't matter much for profits, but my proposal buffs the hell out of shortages and trade disruptions (and luddic cell raids) and having extra resources allows the planet to be less vulnerable to shortages.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2024, 07:21:04 PM by DeltaEpsilon »
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Re-bot-S.AI.

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #19 on: October 29, 2024, 10:28:56 PM »

I'm OP. You misunderstand the intention here a bit. You can make a generalist colony, it's just that it's going to require a lot of accessibility in order to be able to export and import all the resources it needs, nearly unmaintainable so, because you end up wasting a lot of money on accessibility-related security/logistics expenses. There is nothing stopping the player from having 300% accessibility general planet in this system and eventually that's still what you might end up with, it's just convenient, but not optimal play due to extreme costs involved with maintaining that high of an accessibility.
Also, it's impossible to produce all resources on one planet due to industry limit, you will have at least a few imported resources.
So, tl;dr, accessibility in this proposal is the true limiter on colony's output and also a tradeoff due to higher accessibility costing possibly exponentially more to upkeep in defenses.

i disagree you should be doing less shipping cause most of those products your producing are immediately used on that planet, the only thing being shipped off world are end products and the extra stuff from the chain
building an entire production chain on one planet technically would be quite cheap because of these cause ultimately you have the fewest things to ship, and your imports would be the simplest elements.
single industry planets kinda end up doing more shipping cause theres much more complex stuff that has to be imported in bulk, and nothing local to consume the outputs, thus maximized need for shipping.

Also, most sources of accessibility do already cost you more to maintain obviously not as much as you earn from it but that would be much more pronounced if accessibility didn't effect your earnings so dang much if you increase above 100%. One car argue the security and other stuff are technically factored into the operating cost of spaceports/megaports

and i ultimately don't see the reason to punish the player for their world producing well, unless of course you don't have the capacity to ship all your outputs. mind you if your making an entire chain and not just random industries on the planet then you dont have to worry that much cause most of that stuff doesnt need to leave or come in cause its already where it needs to be.
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DeltaEpsilon

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2024, 10:38:54 PM »

Quote
Accessibility must no longer affect market share. It must only be delegated to limiting imports/exports, which it already does, but with a new point: imports and exports should be summed and only affect out-of-faction imports.
Accessibility in this proposal only affects out-of-faction imports and exports as stated. Locally-produced and in-faction produced resources do not care about accessibility and work as expected, that's why you're urged to make more colonies to begin with. Exports, on the other hand, do, so if you have built so many industries that have an enormous output, you need an enormous amount of accessibility to be able to export so many goods, otherwise you just end up with oversupply that doesn't get realized. This already happens in the actual game, but it's not a problem for player colonies generally unless they're blockaded. My proposal suggests making accessibility export quota use the sum of all exports, not just limit maximum export of any given resource.

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Also, most sources of accessibility do already cost you more to maintain obviously not as much as you earn from it but that would be much more pronounced if accessibility didn't effect your earnings so dang much if you increase above 100%
Do they? Story points are free, fullerene spool is free, TT deal is free, Kanta can be free. Only megaport and waypoints are extra upkeep for accessibility, really.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2024, 10:41:20 PM by DeltaEpsilon »
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Re-bot-S.AI.

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Re: Reworking colony economics
« Reply #21 on: October 30, 2024, 10:49:51 AM »

Quote
Accessibility must no longer affect market share. It must only be delegated to limiting imports/exports, which it already does, but with a new point: imports and exports should be summed and only affect out-of-faction imports.
Accessibility in this proposal only affects out-of-faction imports and exports as stated. Locally-produced and in-faction produced resources do not care about accessibility and work as expected, that's why you're urged to make more colonies to begin with. Exports, on the other hand, do, so if you have built so many industries that have an enormous output, you need an enormous amount of accessibility to be able to export so many goods, otherwise you just end up with oversupply that doesn't get realized. This already happens in the actual game, but it's not a problem for player colonies generally unless they're blockaded. My proposal suggests making accessibility export quota use the sum of all exports, not just limit maximum export of any given resource.

Quote
Also, most sources of accessibility do already cost you more to maintain obviously not as much as you earn from it but that would be much more pronounced if accessibility didn't effect your earnings so dang much if you increase above 100%
Do they? Story points are free, fullerene spool is free, TT deal is free, Kanta can be free. Only megaport and waypoints are extra upkeep for accessibility, really.

i guess that makes slightly more sense, i still disagree about making it very punishing in upkeep costs as it feels a little over the top though.

as to your second point, i guess it would make sense to have some increase of running cost when running a spool cause its a physical item boosting your accessibility.

the TT deal and Kanta though
those make sense being freebies
tri tacs deal happens cause you kicked their but and now they dont mess with your stuff as much, your faction isn't doing anything at all to maintain anything or do anything; that was you as a player making tri tac back off

its the same gig with kanta and/or any sort of pirate respite, you either kicked their asses or made kanta happy, so now most pirates don't dare attack your faction's stuff, which in turn improves your accessibility do to the trade routes being safer. this also has nothing to do with your factions' expenditures or anything else.

if you wanted to just up the base upkeep of accessibility structures a bit while removing or significantly reducing bonus income from accessibility over 100% then id be in favor of that.
only downside would be figuring out a reason for a player to ever want to have accessibility over 100%, or some other reason to want/need items like fullerene spool cause with just upkeep changes and no bonus money for extra accessibility items like that become pointless for the most part.

I think one option is to have accessibility decrease based on total exports, kinda makes some sense if you think about it cause its a lot harder to get into a port that's super busy. thus, the more exports a planet has, the more likely its going to want to have accessibility boosting items, due to it helping its ports keep stuff flowing at a better rate.

obviously, no matter what having an entire production chain on one planet (say mining, refining and, heavy industry) is still going to be easier cause now everything that colony needs other than food is literally already there, leaving the only shipping being exports. this is why i had that idea of industry expansions to make use of industry slots, to give options that are semi equally as tempting as generalist planets.
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