Issue with Exotic Gases, Volatile Motes and Rare Crystals

[Pupique]

Hello guys, I am currently experiencing a crippling issue with these three special resources. You see, my empire got so big that, in order to keep everyone employed, I had to upgrade several buildings in my empire. It was no issue at first, since my empire's economy could handle it smoothly, having a 2k~3k energy credit surplus.

However, because of the supply/demand system (which isn't bad, this isn't the issue), my economy simply tanked overnight, to a point that now I have a 2k deficit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1719519556

As you can see, half of my expenses are because of purchasing these resources. Naturally, I won't be able to support such an expense for much longer, so my bankruptcy is pretty much inevitable... I just hope I can hold it off until the end of the game.

The thing is: shouldn't higher tier buildings (civillian factories, alloy foundries and research labs) use less special resources, or maybe have such resources in more abundance in star systems? They will pretty much become a huge issue in the late game, impossible to fix.

PS.: Minerals are overpriced as well, so abusing refineries is not a solution.

[northernwater]

Do you have Galactic Stock Exchanges? These put my trade values through the roof.

[northernwater]

Convert your unneeded unity production to clerks. You get more jobs and more trade. Can you convert your government to get a better civic? I use gene modification to tweek my pops like crazy and my whole empire is gene modded to perfection by that time in the game. With high research gene modding is trivially short.

[northernwater]

What is you ethics? I play egalitarian pacifists and disallow any offensive wars my entire game, but if you can wage war cherry pick resource planets.

[northernwater]

Also ring worlds can crank out credits like crazy. What traditions did you pick?

[Pupique]

Originally posted by northernwater:

Do you have Galactic Stock Exchanges? These put my trade values through the roof.

Yes, all possible planets have them. My trade income was above 4k.

Originally posted by northernwater:

Convert your unneeded unity production to clerks. You get more jobs and more trade. Can you convert your government to get a better civic? I use gene modification to tweek my pops like crazy and my whole empire is gene modded to perfection by that time in the game. With high research gene modding is trivially short.

Uhh I like the unity producers because they can keep my expensive unity ambitions. They end up being valuable. I already did change my government to add Mining Guilds, which added tons of mineral income. I chose the Transcendence ascension perk, although I see now that Gene Modding would be the best choice. But eh, rookie mistakes.

Originally posted by northernwater:

What is you ethics? I play egalitarian pacifists and disallow any offensive wars my entire game, but if you can wage war cherry pick resource planets.

Fanatic Xenophile and Egalitarian. I chose Xenophile to reduce my diplomatic influence costs to 0, which didn't turn out to be as strong as I expected, since I thought that I could form big federations with 4+ empires. But it worked fine, nevertheless.

I used to play as pacifist because of the Admin Cap and Stability, but then I learned that Empire Sprawl is better off being totally ignored and... well, defensive wars are lame. The other empires hardly ever declare war on me, usually only on early game or late when Awakened Empires are around, so I can't really expand on these cheeky dudes.

Originally posted by northernwater:

Also ring worlds can crank out credits like crazy. What traditions did you pick?

My ring world was recently built, so they were somewhat unproductive. I was using half to produce food, which was scarce also, and the other half to produce energy, although the energy half was even younger.

Regarding traditions... I had them all lol

[northernwater]

I meant perks not traditions, sorry.

You have way to much unity stored up, IMO. It's non-liquid and by late game your edicts last a long time.

I join a federation and they declare war constantly and I never say no so I'm in a war almost all the time without declaring one. I also declare the fallen empires rivals and they will declare war on you ASAP when you do that. So there is no shortage of wars.

I NEVER ignore admin cap. The reductions early and mid game are very valuable to gaining free unity and research fast. Here is my latest game.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1726023534

This game is on Admiral but with scaling, which gave me an unneeded advantage early on. I'll never do scaling again.

[Pupique]

Originally posted by northernwater:

I meant perks not traditions, sorry.

You have way to much unity stored up, IMO. It's non-liquid and by late game your edicts last a long time.

I join a federation and they declare war constantly and I never say no so I'm in a war almost all the time without declaring one. I also declare the fallen empires rivals and they will declare war on you ASAP when you do that. So there is no shortage of wars.

I NEVER ignore admin cap. The reductions early and mid game are very valuable to gaining free unity and research fast. Here is my latest game.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1726023534

This game is on Admiral but with scaling, which gave me an unneeded advantage early on. I'll never do scaling again.

Perks:
1. Imperial Prerrogative (+30 Admin Cap, I shouldn't have bought it);
2. One Vision (+10% unity);
3. Technological Ascendancy (+10% research speed);
4. Mastery of Nature (+2 districts in planets);
5. Mind over Matter (should've gone for Gene mods instead);
6. Transcendence (ditto);
7. Colossus Project (didn't even use it lol);
8. Galactic Wonders.

I don't think they're orthodoxically following that order, since this game has ended days ago, but they're somewhat close to it.

Pacifist doesn't really work well with Federations because you'll have the -50 malus from "not allowing unrestricted wars" or something like that. That's why I didn't pick it, since I had already tried it before.

Regarding the admin cap, I disregard it completely because if I surpass it, it (probably) means I have more planets, which will then bolster all my stats. The sprawl penalties are easily overwhelmed by new planets.

...and your picture isn't available, I don't know why.

[northernwater]

Picture is there now.

Pacifist works if you don't pick fanatic. Then change Philosophy later after you are strong and already.

You ignored admin cap and built to many research stations by the looks of it. This had a snowball effect perhaps. If more planets worked then you wouldn't be in the bad situation you are in, no?

[Pupique]

Originally posted by northernwater:

Picture is there now.

Pacifist works if you don't pick fanatic. Then change Philosophy later after you are strong and already.

You ignored admin cap and built to many research stations by the looks of it. This had a snowball effect perhaps. If more planets worked then you wouldn't be in the bad situation you are in, no?

It wasn't fanatic pacifist, but okay, I see what you mean.

Your game resembles to mine, although mine was obviously worse. From what I see, however, you have lots of planes over a small amount of star systems (24 planets in 56 systems), whereas I had 31 in 147 and all possible planets were colonized, including terraformable barrens. Is that a game gen option or luck?

Also, you seem to have some ecumenopolises, since you already have the perk. Again, they would have "saved" my game since I would only upgrade buildings when unemployment was present and it didn't have room for districts. As they have a huge district cap, I would have built them instead of upgrading buildings, erradicating the issue I had with special resources.

This made me realize that I should play with synthetics or hive minds instead of normal empires for now, until I get the DLC, because I can build Machine or Hive worlds.

[northernwater]

I avoid building outposts unless very valuable or needed, and do not take any systems from neighbors. So my star system count is always low. I snake a bit to get to planets. I was lucky in that I spawned next to a Holy Guardian fallen empire which guaranteed 3 Holy Gaia worlds which I have colonized and I have built a ring world.

My starting settings where 1X habitable worlds and 1X guaranteed habitable world. So these are normal. I don't terraform. Instead I rely on refugees, sign migration treaties and gene mod. Once you have Glandular Acclimation you can colonize with very low habitability then mod that population to suit the planet.

Some luck in planet placement too!

[Nightskies]

Originally posted by Polanski:

Consumer Goods aren't worth 2 EC, so that isn't really worth it.

No... At raw production, goods are worth 1:2 energy.

Energy grid alone makes energy cheaper- you can produce more energy with workers than goods. Yes, you're lacking energy now, but that's a result of other imbalances. Worst case scenario if you're in the red you'll have to disband ships as said before. Oh well. Probably can just ride it out like you said.

[Pupique]

Originally posted by northernwater:

I avoid building outposts unless very valuable or needed, and do not take any systems from neighbors. So my star system count is always low. I snake a bit to get to planets. I was lucky in that I spawned next to a Holy Guardian fallen empire which guaranteed 3 Holy Gaia worlds which I have colonized and I have built a ring world.

My starting settings where 1X habitable worlds and 1X guaranteed habitable world. So these are normal. I don't terraform. Instead I rely on refugees, sign migration treaties and gene mod. Once you have Glandular Acclimation you can colonize with very low habitability then mod that population to suit the planet.

Some luck in planet placement too!

Nice! Yeah you definitely had some luck there too xD

Originally posted by Nightskies:

Originally posted by Polanski:

Consumer Goods aren't worth 2 EC, so that isn't really worth it.

No... At raw production, goods are worth 1:2 energy.

Energy grid alone makes energy cheaper- you can produce more energy with workers than goods. Yes, you're lacking energy now, but that's a result of other imbalances. Worst case scenario if you're in the red you'll have to disband ships as said before. Oh well. Probably can just ride it out like you said.

You're aware that the market prices adjust based on supply and demand, right? There was so much supply for consumer goods that their prices are below 2, I can even load the save and post the screenshot here.

Disbanding ships was definitely not an option since I was on the verge of an imminent war against the awakened empire. It was better to see the economy tank (and it did) than weakening my forces.

In case that you guys don't know, the game did end and I won, but the last years were a huge pain. Several facilities weren't functional because of the lack of special resources, but it managed to stay alive until 2500.

[GIGACHAD]

tl;dr solution:

Grow wide when you can, grow tall when you can't. Think of the pyramid.

Priorities:

1-Expand
2-Secure rare resources
3-Expand tall(upgrade) only as much as rares allow

[Pupique]

Originally posted by Blue Ball(CAN):

tl;dr solution:

Grow wide when you can, grow tall when you can't. Think of the pyramid.

Priorities:

1-Expand
2-Secure rare resources
3-Expand tall(upgrade) only as much as rares allow

Yeah, that's pretty much the method that I employed. I was "forced" to upgrade buildings beyond my rare capacity because of the rampant unemployement had I done otherwise.

[wolfiee]

Originally posted by Pupique:

Hello guys, I am currently experiencing a crippling issue with these three special resources. You see, my empire got so big that, in order to keep everyone employed, I had to upgrade several buildings in my empire. It was no issue at first, since my empire's economy could handle it smoothly, having a 2k~3k energy credit surplus.

However, because of the supply/demand system (which isn't bad, this isn't the issue), my economy simply tanked overnight, to a point that now I have a 2k deficit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1719519556

As you can see, half of my expenses are because of purchasing these resources. Naturally, I won't be able to support such an expense for much longer, so my bankruptcy is pretty much inevitable... I just hope I can hold it off until the end of the game.

The thing is: shouldn't higher tier buildings (civillian factories, alloy foundries and research labs) use less special resources, or maybe have such resources in more abundance in star systems? They will pretty much become a huge issue in the late game, impossible to fix.

PS.: Minerals are overpriced as well, so abusing refineries is not a solution.

Look Through your buildings upkeep, Volatile Motes are used by upgrading the Police buildings, just have a good look at what buildings use up what, dont upgrade till you have enough flow to cover it