I feel like I broke the economy - or is the economy just weird in ES2?

[Paganizer]

So in my 2nd game I managed to get "trade stations" up and running and WOW. Right now I'm making ~60k dust every turn, but that is not even the "best" part. I'm getting 1000s of luxuries every turn, which I can sell at ABSURD prices, which gives me 100s of thousands more dust EVERY TURN. It takes 2 turns for me to max out several luxuries (ie 999)!
Wouldn't it make more sense if luxury prices went down when I keep selling insane amounts on the market? Seems like market prices are completely random.

Surely I can't be the only one who noticed this?

[Aleksei]

It seems way too easy to end up with luxuries being 999 cap in few turns. There should be more ways to use them. Currently it seems only system improvements use them and that isnt much.

[Star Paladin]

Ya, as UE, both games, I almost always had 100k+ of dust/inf so often. Could buy out buildings/ships never-endingly. Yawn.

[Reor]

This is fun for around 5 Rounds until the Dust-Inflation is making even the cheapest stuff like many 100 times more expensive.
Seriously in the last game i played with a friend the Inflation skyrocketed at some point to like 200x and even with our 200k-400k+ income we couldn´t even instabuy all the first few buildings in new colonies with one roundincome + sold luxuries. When trivial buildings cost around 500k dust and everything that is early midgame allready 2-3 million + this income means nothing, especially when it comes to the lategame buildungs that then hang around 20-30 million..

And in such situations it makes sense that the luxus stuff prices rise too...because the money to buy it loses worth. A LOT OF WORTH. juts look at real examples of inflation in history when even bread costed thausends (for example post WW1 Germany where people were paied in crates and gigantic bags full of money that then still was just worth 2-3 Loaves of bread. Can you imagine what luxus articles like cigarrets coatsed then? they were unbuyable.
This is the problem when to much money is generated, it losses its worth. And the same thing is happening in ES2. In the market tab there is a indicator on the left that shows you the inflation at the moment. And it influences ALL prices. from the market to instabuying stuff.

[Frogsquadron]

We are looking into balancing the economy, especially with regards to trade and the marketplace, to prevent exploits and make economic victory harder to achieve.

[pendantry]

Originally posted by Frogsquadron:

We are looking into balancing the economy, especially with regards to trade and the marketplace, to prevent exploits and make economic victory harder to achieve.

In my latest game I began to suspect there was something screwy about the economy when for the whole game I'd been searching for transvine. I finally found a planet I could acquire from another faction... and it had just TWO transvine on it. But by putting this newly acquired system into my trade route (destroying one subsidiary and building one on this system instead) -- suddenly I wasn't just getting two transvine a turn, I was getting ten times that much. Which makes no sense at all. I should point out that I had NO trade routes passing through any foreign systems, the entire trade linkage was totally within my own little empire.

I think the economy system is badly broken; glad to hear you're working on fixing it!

[Manic]

Originally posted by Reor:

This is fun for around 5 Rounds until the Dust-Inflation is making even the cheapest stuff like many 100 times more expensive.
Seriously in the last game i played with a friend the Inflation skyrocketed at some point to like 200x and even with our 200k-400k+ income we couldn´t even instabuy all the first few buildings in new colonies with one roundincome + sold luxuries. When trivial buildings cost around 500k dust and everything that is early midgame allready 2-3 million + this income means nothing, especially when it comes to the lategame buildungs that then hang around 20-30 million..

And in such situations it makes sense that the luxus stuff prices rise too...because the money to buy it loses worth. A LOT OF WORTH. juts look at real examples of inflation in history when even bread costed thausends (for example post WW1 Germany where people were paied in crates and gigantic bags full of money that then still was just worth 2-3 Loaves of bread. Can you imagine what luxus articles like cigarrets coatsed then? they were unbuyable.
This is the problem when to much money is generated, it losses its worth. And the same thing is happening in ES2. In the market tab there is a indicator on the left that shows you the inflation at the moment. And it influences ALL prices. from the market to instabuying stuff.

Inflation is when the currency loses value, usually because it is printed in amounts that exceed production growth rates. Currency is tied to assets, something that absolutely zero 4x games seem to understand (I assume the devs know nothing about economics). Econ systems in 4x games are always abysmal because they have a separate money making system apart from production, which is nonsense. Money is merely an exchange medium; people don't want money, they want what money can buy. The only way to have a sensible economy in these games is to get rid of all money making buildings, and tie income into trade of produced goods and services, like the real world. Until they do this, there is no fix for the economies, because the economies are nonsense.

In other words, increased wealth and trade does not cause inflation, an imbalance in currency and production growth or loss causes inflation (or deflation).

[pendantry]

Originally posted by Manic:

[...]and tie income into trade of produced goods and services, like the real world.[...]

... except that in the real world, all money is currently fiat and/or made by banks -- both with magic wands -- which is arguably why the world's in the state it's in, but that's another topic.