Dust Amounts

[northernwater]

Why did they change dust so much from ES1 to ES2? They just seemed to inflate everything to do with dust.

[Lack of Stuff]

Dust inflation is a mechanic in ES2 so the more you and others produce the more it is devalued. Dust costs at the start of the game are closer to ES1 relative to the amount you can make. When you or someone else really starts raking it in then all dust costs go up by a fairly large margin.

With the improvements available you can still make enough dust to make the inflation a non-issue and there are a few techs to reduce inflation on your empire.

Edit: If you play on the harder difficulties where the AI gets FIDSI bonuses you may get impacted a bit more harshly by inflation early on.

[northernwater]

I see. Thanks.

[Astasia]

You have to play on higher difficulties though because the AI is garbage, so you deal with massive dust inflation right from the start of the game that quickly devalues some dust improvements to the point where their upkeep is higher than their income. It's one of those things that makes me wonder if the devs even play the game. There's only a few ways to make dust, and most of them exploit the inflation mechanic to create ludicrous amounts of dust and push inflation into the extremes (hitting 5-10x inflation is easy over the course of a normal length game). Mostly trade routes and spam selling luxuries on the market by the thousands every turn. Because that's fun.

It's been complained about since early access, people have gone into details of the economic system and explained why it doesn't work at all, but it's been ignored. To be completely honest it's the main reason I have trouble picking up the game again, I started a game as vaulters on endless speed and was at 50% inflation by like turn 50 and I just shut the game off.

[northernwater]

You have a good point to be honest. There is really nothing much to do with luxury goods, no? So you dump the stuff on the market to make dust. I'm at 2.63 dust multiplier, which is 160% inflation?

The AI was not stellar in ES1 either.

[Astasia]

Ya, it starts at 1.0 multiplier and goes up from there. 2.63 means all your dust costs are +160% higher, almost three times as expensive.

[Lucky Shot]

Originally posted by Astasia:

You have to play on higher difficulties though because the AI is garbage, so you deal with massive dust inflation right from the start of the game that quickly devalues some dust improvements to the point where their upkeep is higher than their income. It's one of those things that makes me wonder if the devs even play the game. There's only a few ways to make dust, and most of them exploit the inflation mechanic to create ludicrous amounts of dust and push inflation into the extremes (hitting 5-10x inflation is easy over the course of a normal length game). Mostly trade routes and spam selling luxuries on the market by the thousands every turn. Because that's fun.

It's been complained about since early access, people have gone into details of the economic system and explained why it doesn't work at all, but it's been ignored. To be completely honest it's the main reason I have trouble picking up the game again, I started a game as vaulters on endless speed and was at 50% inflation by like turn 50 and I just shut the game off.

This. On top of it it seems they balanced buildings and ship upkeep with inflation in mind. In my current vaulters game at turn 89 have six systems, every system has at least 4 planets and around 15 pop, and I built xenotourism agencies in every system, plus some dust planetary specialization and careful sweeping. EVERY single system is losing dust every turn, since the improvement's upkeep is balanced around inflation every dust generating building is virtually useless. You are forced to either trade, sell luxuries or both of them.

[northernwater]

Trade generates huge amounst of dust, but if it were not for that I'd be negative. I don't understand what benefit inflation adds to the game

[tremors]

Same here. Haven't been playing for quite a while and started a vaulters game, normal diff. Never before had such a problem to generate enough income. I suppose they rebalanced dust generation mechanics, but can't be bothered to check the changelogs. Bottom line for me: takes the fun out of the game, if I have to start paying so much attention to dust generation.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by northernwater:

Trade generates huge amounst of dust, but if it were not for that I'd be negative. I don't understand what benefit inflation adds to the game

Trade is effected by inflation which is why it can generate so much income, as is the sell price for luxuries. Both of those boost inflation and are boosted by inflation creating a self-feeding spiral of inanity, where a single trade route is generating millions of dust and 999 luxury resources per turn (with those 999 luxuries selling for millions more), while all of your systems are bleeding thousands of dust per turn with every dust improvement built and every step taken to maximize dust income.

It's one of the dumbest systems I have ever seen implemented in any game I have played. It's convoluted and self-defeating, causing and feeding into the very problem it seems it was attempting to solve. Lack of dust isn't an issue in this game, early on you get ridiculous amounts of it from minors, and then trade routes will sort you out the rest of the game, but every system based dust improvement or specialization is absolutely garbage. This makes dust effectively a useless resource, it's trivial to get all you need, but attempting to get any sort of excess in order to do anything beneficial with it (like buyouts) is futile.

[Groo the one]

@Astasia

If I'm not wrong you play on slow game speed. My experience differs (normal game speed), depending on how long I play this game (if I aim for victory conditions I don't experience this crazy behaviour- other experience if I aim for a long lasting game ignoring/preventing victory to hit). In case you expand the total (intended) playtime (sure you do - by free will) you get the experience you write about. Correct me, if I'm mistaken.

[Lack of Stuff]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by northernwater:

Trade generates huge amounst of dust, but if it were not for that I'd be negative. I don't understand what benefit inflation adds to the game

Trade is effected by inflation which is why it can generate so much income, as is the sell price for luxuries. Both of those boost inflation and are boosted by inflation creating a self-feeding spiral of inanity, where a single trade route is generating millions of dust and 999 luxury resources per turn (with those 999 luxuries selling for millions more), while all of your systems are bleeding thousands of dust per turn with every dust improvement built and every step taken to maximize dust income.

It's one of the dumbest systems I have ever seen implemented in any game I have played. It's convoluted and self-defeating, causing and feeding into the very problem it seems it was attempting to solve. Lack of dust isn't an issue in this game, early on you get ridiculous amounts of it from minors, and then trade routes will sort you out the rest of the game, but every system based dust improvement or specialization is absolutely garbage. This makes dust effectively a useless resource, it's trivial to get all you need, but attempting to get any sort of excess in order to do anything beneficial with it (like buyouts) is futile.

Do you have a current game where trade companies are doing this? They were nerfed awhile back. In my current Vaulter game I have a max 3 mature trade company HQs that produce just a little over 1000 dust per turn and maybe a max of 5-6 of luxury resources. By mature I mean say level 20 or so.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Lack of Stuff:

Do you have a current game where trade companies are doing this? They were nerfed awhile back. In my current Vaulter game I have a max 3 mature trade company HQs that produce just a little over 1000 dust per turn and maybe a max of 5-6 of luxury resources. By mature I mean say level 20 or so.

Trade route numbers are sane and fairly balanced at low inflation numbers. The issue is around 5x inflation most of the balancing breaks, and above 10x inflation it's just awful. The last trade route nerf I am aware of was for the 1.0 release and it didn't have any effect on this issue whatsoever. I haven't seriously played the game since then, I've been reading patch notes and booting it up for a few turns now and then, but the bugs and issues always turn me away before I get that far in a game.

Originally posted by Groo the one:

@Astasia

If I'm not wrong you play on slow game speed. My experience differs (normal game speed), depending on how long I play this game (if I aim for victory conditions I don't experience this crazy behaviour- other experience if I aim for a long lasting game ignoring/preventing victory to hit). In case you expand the total (intended) playtime (sure you do - by free will) you get the experience you write about. Correct me, if I'm mistaken.

Gamespeed has an effect on inflation rates so on slower speed like I usually play on inflation actually goes up quite a bit more slowly. Here's a screen somebody took shortly after the 1.0 release with x42 inflation by turn 133 on a faster game speed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928995833

Edit: Target locked did have more trade route nerfs, but they again weren't related to the inflation mechanic so didn't really change anything.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by Lucky Shot:

Originally posted by Astasia:

You have to play on higher difficulties though because the AI is garbage, so you deal with massive dust inflation right from the start of the game that quickly devalues some dust improvements to the point where their upkeep is higher than their income. It's one of those things that makes me wonder if the devs even play the game. There's only a few ways to make dust, and most of them exploit the inflation mechanic to create ludicrous amounts of dust and push inflation into the extremes (hitting 5-10x inflation is easy over the course of a normal length game). Mostly trade routes and spam selling luxuries on the market by the thousands every turn. Because that's fun.

It's been complained about since early access, people have gone into details of the economic system and explained why it doesn't work at all, but it's been ignored. To be completely honest it's the main reason I have trouble picking up the game again, I started a game as vaulters on endless speed and was at 50% inflation by like turn 50 and I just shut the game off.

This. On top of it it seems they balanced buildings and ship upkeep with inflation in mind. In my current vaulters game at turn 89 have six systems, every system has at least 4 planets and around 15 pop, and I built xenotourism agencies in every system, plus some dust planetary specialization and careful sweeping. EVERY single system is losing dust every turn, since the improvement's upkeep is balanced around inflation every dust generating building is virtually useless. You are forced to either trade, sell luxuries or both of them.

No you need to destroy some of your high upkeep buildings. Not every system needs all or even most upgrades to be worthwhile.

[Lack of Stuff]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Lack of Stuff:

Do you have a current game where trade companies are doing this? They were nerfed awhile back. In my current Vaulter game I have a max 3 mature trade company HQs that produce just a little over 1000 dust per turn and maybe a max of 5-6 of luxury resources. By mature I mean say level 20 or so.

Trade route numbers are sane and fairly balanced at low inflation numbers. The issue is around 5x inflation most of the balancing breaks, and above 10x inflation it's just awful. The last trade route nerf I am aware of was for the 1.0 release and it didn't have any effect on this issue whatsoever. I haven't seriously played the game since then, I've been reading patch notes and booting it up for a few turns now and then, but the bugs and issues always turn me away before I get that far in a game.

Originally posted by Groo the one:

@Astasia

If I'm not wrong you play on slow game speed. My experience differs (normal game speed), depending on how long I play this game (if I aim for victory conditions I don't experience this crazy behaviour- other experience if I aim for a long lasting game ignoring/preventing victory to hit). In case you expand the total (intended) playtime (sure you do - by free will) you get the experience you write about. Correct me, if I'm mistaken.

Gamespeed has an effect on inflation rates so on slower speed like I usually play on inflation actually goes up quite a bit more slowly. Here's a screen somebody took shortly after the 1.0 release with x42 inflation by turn 133 on a faster game speed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928995833

Edit: Target locked did have more trade route nerfs, but they again weren't related to the inflation mechanic so didn't really change anything.

That screenshot might be a bug. Here's one of my saves with 50X inflation and the trade companies only make roughly 2000-5000 dust each.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1286065299

Edit: Here's one from my brand new Vaulter game (as in not started on any previous patch version)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1286070541

As you can see 230 turns in (normal speed so adjust as needed) and inflation has only gone up 15x. The trade companies don't make much compared to my systems. Also 3 is the max for HQs now with some racial exceptions which further reduces the gain and inflation. I remember trade HQs used to baloon out really fast but since the patches I havn't seen any of it on new games.

[phadin]

Either way that kind of inflation is insane. It makes the game impossible if you are specifically built for it.

I did notice something though. The tooltip for the inflation rate mentions it affects the trade companies, marketplace, and ship repair/upgrade. It doesnt' mention that the inflation rate affects upkeep (ship or building upkeep). I am wondering perhaps if it's a bug that it affects the city/fleet upkeep. If those were to just maintain constant value instead of inflating, things would be a lot more reasonable.