Puzzlemaker

Join Date 03/2009

Second expansion suggestions (Part 1: Economy Suggestions)

Ideas for more peaceful solutions to problems.

Yo. In case you missed it, my previous suggestion thread is HERE.

So, without further ado, my next set of suggestions. This is part one of three planned, because by the time I finished this my fingers and brain hurt.

New Economic Ideas

Ideas relating to new economic systems.

Black Market

Right now the black market doesn't seem quite that intuitive to use. I have a few suggestions to improve it, and to add more options.

Better Quickbuy and Quicksell tie in

The quickbuy and quicksell buttons should tie into the blackmarket better. The price percentage you choose in the blackmarket should be reflected in the quickbuy and quicksell. The price percentage of the current market you choose should effect the speed at which it is bought up by the magical "third parties" (non players), if at all.

In other words, if you set the price percentage to 50% (selling your resources at half price, like the quicksell behaves now), the resource will be immidietly bought like they are now for quicksell. If you set it higher then that, there will be a delay added, which depends on the current price of the resources. If you set it too high ( > 75%) then the magical "third party" wont purchase it, unless the price is looking good.

This will effectively remove the quicksell and quickbuy options, turning them into simply Buy and Sell.

Small Gui note: The amount you want to buy or sell should be displayed somewhere on the buttons.

Buying Price

You should be able to set your buying price and put your offer on the market, exaclty like how you set your selling price. If an offer is put up on the market that is lower or equal to your buying offer, you automatically buy it. This should tie into my other idea (see above), in that if your buying price is high enough it will be automatically bought from the "third party", removing the "quick" in quickbuy and quicksell (unless you want it fast, then you might have to pay a little extra).

Trading Options

Right now the trading options for other players is rather limited. These can be expanded on to create better alliances, feeding, and economic sabatauge.

Preferred Partner

This lets you give an ally a discout on all the goods you put on the market.

Tariffs

This lets you increase the price another player has to pay for any resources you put on the market. They should be informed when you do this.

Focus (Perhaps too complex/unnessesary)

Lets you lower and raise the focus of a resource. For example, if you have too much crystal, you can lower the focus on this resource. This raises your taxes slightly, and over time, as workers run crystal refineries at lower then max capacity and move into generating taxes for your empire. You can do the opposite to get more of a resource at the cost of credits. This can be good for tweaking your income. However, beware of diminishing returns.

Private Deal (Removed and will be put into next part with some changes)

Misc Economic Suggestions

Tax Control (Probably unnessesary)

Taxes should be settable. Lower taxes means higher growth rate for all planets, and a slightly higher resource gathering rate. Higher taxes slows growth rate, gives you a slightly lower resource gathering rate, but more money of course.

Better Information

You should be able to get better information on what a player is buying and selling on the black market, and what their current deals are (tariffs, discounts, etc.)

Third Party

To go with the above suggestion, you should be able to do certain deals using a third party at a slightly increased price. This should make the deal invisible to other players, usefull when you don't want them to know you have a crystal shortage.

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personally, i think thats a little too involved, all great ideas, but to implement all of those... the micro needed for that would detract from the rest of the game, especially for those not as economically savvy as yourself.

the private deal in particular was a fantastic idea, but far too involved in my opinion... and aside from that, the programming required is immense... i think you are treating planets as individual entities, not part of your enemy's empire... and in theory you are absolutley correct (especially if they are far from the homeworld) but as far as i understand them, in the game mechanics treating each planet as a seperate entity is very very difficult.

there are also all sorts of numbers to flesh out, and then tweaks for each race, for instance, the TEC would understandably, have alot of prowess in this field, where Vasari (i think) would be less effective due to their weaker economy stats within the game. and so if the Vasari and TEC had an economic cold war, realisticly, TEC would win, every time.

however... if you could tweak it for each race, like TEC does exactly what you said, Advent does the same through psychic manipulation, and vasari does it through... idn, computer viruses? simple threats?

idn, but really, the entire thing will have to be simplified imo

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These are all very good ideas, but the game will become far too complex adding all of them.

This one seems pretty good and not overly complicated. I think that if you set low taxes on your planets, the populace like you more and become less vulnerable to enemy culture. Setting taxes too high should cause a revolt if your culture is low.

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second, im not sure if, realisticly, lowering taxes would increase resource production... lower taxes means less expenses for the average joe, means he needs to work less, means less resource income... however higher taxes would be the opposite, he'd have to work more to pay taxes and everything increases...

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i think the OP was saying something about lowering taxes increases resource income? first off do you alter taxes on all your worlds at once? or is it planet by planet... because depending on the level of planet development (i.e. the first button in the planet upgrades screen), lowering taxes globally may actually be a problem, could cause some massive debts and you can experience your globla finnancial crisis in Sins as well as in the real world.

second, im not sure if, realisticly, lowering taxes would increase resource production... lower taxes means less expenses for the average joe, means he needs to work less, means less resource income... however higher taxes would be the opposite, he'd have to work more to pay taxes and everything increases...

When I said "low taxes" i meant it in relative terms. Having taxes too high could cause revolts, having it too low would cause a financial crisis. Having it fairly low, but not too low would increase loyalty.

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I meant for all your worlds, for the taxes.

When people have lower taxes, they are able to get more money for the same amount of work. This increases growth. Thus, low taxes gives you a higher growth rate for all of your colonies, and a slightly increased resource gain. High taxes stops growth, so you get a lower growth rate, and lower resource rate. I didn't even think about the loyalty part.

And yeah, some parts of this are fairly crazy in terms of complexity. Was pretty fun to think up though. And I didn't even get into credit lines!

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Maybe when they're done with SoaSE they can make a spin off game...Sin City (apologies to Mr Miller and Maxis)

All the empire micro you could hope for, with all the spacey stuff going on over your head, mostly out of your control!

Imagine how frustrating it'd get after your planet has been bombarded for the nth time, though...

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i think setting tax rates is a bad idea... they already sort of address it, you upgrade the planet, build cities etc, and support more people to tax.

as it is now, under-developed planets run at a loss (thats Sins 101) so having an even lower tax rate could actually cripple your entire economy

there are a few other things as well, but basically, i think the whole thing is far too complex, sorry, but this isnt quite Sim City

great ideas though, but personally i wouldnt like them implemented

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what the game really needs are better diplomatic options would be nice if it would REALLY move more towards a 4X game not just a wc3 rush in the universe..

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I'd like spy networks so you can see how the other players are doing on resources. Currently the only way in single player to do this is to save, and quit and then view were everyone is at.

I'd like to now which planets are bringing in the most for them, were they are at in the research, and what kind of fleet they have.

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One thing I'd like to see is the concept of inflation. As it is, the black market effectively "pins" the value of credits to somewhere between 2:1 or 5:1 value of any given resource. It isn't free to float beyond those values because the black market ensures there is always an exchange somewhere between those values available. This means that early game resource production is often high but credit production is often low (little/no trade), so prices of the black market are almost always pressed against their bottom limit. Similarly, at the end game prices on the black market are almost perpetually pressed against their upper limit because of trade port spam.

What I propose is to remove the black market limits. Let the price actually float without capping off or slowly returning back to its base levels. What this means is that if there's one player with 100 credits per second of trade income, all he does is cause inflation. Because his credit production far outstrips his crystal/metal production, this will allow the black market and other players to gouge him like they should. This would not only be more realistic and help balance out the late game economy boom, but also serve as a great equalizer to the trade port boom. It would also buff refineries since if your resource income is high, it's you and not the invisible black market smuggler gouging the other players.

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Quoting Darvin3,

reply 10

Most of those economic ideas would suit a turn-based game well. However, the real-time nature of Sins may make them too much to manage on the fly. Some things have to be kept simple because otherwise they detract from the more important parts of the game. I think a good economic system should be lean, requiring little action from the player to manage, but still supporting a great deal of choice.

One thing I'd like to see is the concept of inflation. As it is, the black market effectively "pins" the value of credits to somewhere between 2:1 or 5:1 value of any given resource. It isn't free to float beyond those values because the black market ensures there is always an exchange somewhere between those values available. This means that early game resource production is often high but credit production is often low (little/no trade), so prices of the black market are almost always pressed against their bottom limit. Similarly, at the end game prices on the black market are almost perpetually pressed against their upper limit because of trade port spam.

What I propose is to remove the black market limits. Let the price actually float without capping off or slowly returning back to its base levels. What this means is that if there's one player with 100 credits per second of trade income, all he does is cause inflation. Because his credit production far outstrips his crystal/metal production, this will allow the black market and other players to gouge him like they should. This would not only be more realistic and help balance out the late game economy boom, but also serve as a great equalizer to the trade port boom. It would also buff refineries since if your resource income is high, it's you and not the invisible black market smuggler gouging the other players.

I was thinking about uncapping. However, I can see how it would get pretty annoying, very fast, especially if you have a random map with unbalanced resources. It would also cause things to be unbalanced towards TEC, as if they simply start buying up things no matter what the price, they will drive everyone out of the market.

Also, I made some edits to take into account the unnessesary complexity. I removed the private deal suggestion, which will be reborn in the next part with some changes.

The remaining items I didn't flag is too complex or unnessesary I really do believe should go into the game, especially the black market changes. Right now the black market seems so... shallow I guess.

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The TEC's "favoured client" upgrade is still percentage based. It's not like they don't already have an economic advantage; I don't see any problem with maintaining the status quo here, especially if other races get their own edge. If there's some new cultural bonuses, obviously Advent is going to be the most happy with those, and I'm sure Vasari will get their share of the love as well.

The resource imbalance issue is the only major one, and even then it would take a substantial resource imbalance on the map to create it. On the other hand, if crystal is rare people will just plot down refineries on an ice planet as it is. I think a way to get around loyalty and actually get high returns from fringe world resource output might help out on this mark, and would lead to interesting cases of people fighting far from home for that ice or volcanic planet.

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I don't think I like the tax ideas...

I do like some of what you're saying about the black market. Especially your edits to quick buy/sell. In addition, I think quite buy/sell should also include a slight penalty. When you're in a hurry to buy or sell something you don't have the time to shop around for the best deal/offer.

I'd love to see the ability to buy/trade certain techs. Not every tech, but certain techs that would unlock new building choices based on which combinations you can get. That would REALLY make it interesting. Your games would vary greatly based on who you were able to befreind and what techs you could aquire from them.

I also think there should be a line of "generic" ships, like what the pirates use, that a player could purchase outright from the black market. That could be an interesting new strategy.

Another thing I'd LOVE to see.... Make the Pirates a minor faction, and buff the other minor factions. Then add in a political system for minor factions that you could use to create trade agreements, change them from hostile to neutral to converting them outright, and manipulate how they interact with other factions i.e. bribe a faction that is neutral to an enemy into becoming hostile to them. Let minor factions utilize those resource asteroids located in wells with no colonizable body....

Pirates should be a thing to be feared.... Let them get stronger or weaker bsed on the amount of bounty they have. Pirates should really fall somwhere between minor factions and players in terms of power. Let them take certain types of worlds...like asteroids.

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Quoting dfalken,

reply 13

I don't think I like the tax ideas...

The more I think about them, the more I realize that it's an overcomplication that is really unnessesary.

I do like some of what you're saying about the black market. Especially your edits to quick buy/sell. In addition, I think quite buy/sell should also include a slight penalty. When you're in a hurry to buy or sell something you don't have the time to shop around for the best deal/offer.

Maybe I didn't explain it well enough... That's basically what I suggested. Quck sell and Quick buy are removed, and instead you have buy and sell. They will be purchased by third party guys faster if you have a lower price, and if the price is too high only other players can buy them.

I'd love to see the ability to buy/trade certain techs. Not every tech, but certain techs that would unlock new building choices based on which combinations you can get. That would REALLY make it interesting. Your games would vary greatly based on who you were able to befreind and what techs you could aquire from them.

That is an interesting idea. You should make a thread about that.

I also think there should be a line of "generic" ships, like what the pirates use, that a player could purchase outright from the black market. That could be an interesting new strategy.

I am going to have something like that in my third part.

Another thing I'd LOVE to see.... Make the Pirates a minor faction, and buff the other minor factions. Then add in a political system for minor factions that you could use to create trade agreements, change them from hostile to neutral to converting them outright, and manipulate how they interact with other factions i.e. bribe a faction that is neutral to an enemy into becoming hostile to them. Let minor factions utilize those resource asteroids located in wells with no colonizable body....

This could be interesting.

Pirates should be a thing to be feared.... Let them get stronger or weaker bsed on the amount of bounty they have. Pirates should really fall somwhere between minor factions and players in terms of power. Let them take certain types of worlds...like asteroids.

Agressive pirates would be an interesting option. Probably only if it's togglable between No/Normal/Aggressive pirates.

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