Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today we're going to continue talking about the 2.2 'Le Guin' update, on the topic of the Galactic Market. As said before, we're not yet ready to reveal anything about when Le Guin is coming out, only that it's a long time away and we have many more topics to cover before then. Also as said before, screenshots will contain placeholder art and interfaces and non-final numbers.

The Market
The Market is a new interface accessible from your topbar, where you can buy and sell resources. Resources are bought and sold for Energy Credits, with their prices dependent on a variety of factors such as whether the Galactic Market is founded, supply and demand, and possibly also from various events. On top of the actual price of the resource, there is also a Market Fee which has to be paid for any sale or purchase, equal to 30% of the purchase value. This Market Fee is there so that it will not be possible to make money by purchasing and then immediately re-selling resources at a higher price. Resources can be purchased either in bulk, or by setting up a monthly trade, where you for example specify that you want to sell 20 food and buy 10 minerals per month, and can set a minimum sale/maximum purchase price, if you want to ensure that major fluctuations in price do not disrupt your empire's economy too much.

Internal vs Galactic Market
At the start of the game, empires only have access to the Internal Market, which represents trading with actors inside your empire such as corporations and local governments, or in the case of Gestalt Consciousness empires, resource reprocessing. The prices on the Internal Market are set to always be higher than those on the Galactic Market, so relying too heavily on trading will be disadvantageous in the first few decades of the game. Some empires, such as Devouring Swarms, may only ever have access to the Internal Market (this is something we're still testing and balancing) and so might get better prices there. Once the game has progressed to the point where at least one empire knows about at least 50% of the other empires in the galaxy, the Galactic Market will eventually be founded. One empire that meets the criteria is picked as Market Founder, and their capital system becomes the Market Capital, spawning a special station and map marker to denote it. From then on, any empire (barring possible restrictions for Devouring Swarms and the like) that knows of the Market Capital system has access to the Galactic Market and is able to trade on it. The controller of the Market Capital get a reduction in their Market Fee and increased trade value for their trade routes (more on that in a later DD).

Prices on the Galactic Market are always lower than those on the internal market, though the actual prices will fluctuate based on supply and demand - every time Minerals are sold on the market, prices will drop, and conversely, every time they are bought prices will increase. The purchases and sales you make on the Galactic Market do not just affect your own prices but also those of other empires, so that it is possible to for example massively drive up Food prices by purchasing a huge amount of food, damaging the economy of any empire that is reliant on importing it. It isn't actually possible for a resource to 'run out' on the Market, so you will always be able to purchase critically needed resources, though the cost of doing so may be extremely prohibitive. However, some resources (such as Dark Matter and other rare strategic resources) will not be available until they are actually accessible to empires on the market in large enough quantities, and are not available on the Internal Market at all. The aim of the Galactic Market is to make it so that it is actually a viable strategy to specialize your economy, importing resources that are difficulty for your empire to produce and exporting resources that you can produce easily in large quantities.

Trader Enclaves
Since the Market has much of the same functionality as the Trader Enclaves from Leviathans, we're also changing said Enclaves for those with the Leviathans Story Pack. Instead of trading food, energy and minerals, Trader Enclaves will sell rare resources (Rare Crystals, Volatile Motes and Exotic Gases) in the form of monthly trade deals offered at advantageous prices. Each Trader Enclave will offer only one of these resources. Additionally, once you reach 50+ opinion, Trader Enclaves will sell special Governor-type leaders with unique, trade and commerce related traits. Finally, if you control the home system of a Trader Enclave AND have 50+ opinion with them, you will be able to build a special Starbase building in that system which lowers your Market Fee, allowing for cheaper trading on the Galactic Market.

Finally, just a note to say that we're ignoring the Slave Market tab of the Market screenshots on purpose - this is something that will be covered in a later DD.

That's all for today! Next week we're continuing to talk about the Le Guin update, on the topic of Sectors and Factions.

 

[Exsolutus]

why traders have no influence on internal market? their whole purpose was to give shut-in or hated-by-everyone empires someone to trade with.... *sadface*

That's what the Internal Market itself does now, so it only makes sense. The internal market IS internal after all. If an external entity like trader enclaves influenced it, it wouldn't be very internal.

 

[Matbro]

Are the strategic resources shown on the market screen the only strategic resources that are planned for Le Guin at the moment?

 

[lawrychy]

AMAZING!!!Love it!
BTW,I just wondering whether there will be diplomatic terms like "Open Internal Market" to let Empire A and Empire B to share one combined market,which allow A&B getting lower price and more plenty of resources than single internal market,but more disadvantage compare to galactic market? It can help players at early game period.

 

[Coconut_Cookie]

Wouldn't it be more interesting if the galactic markets location could change over the course of the game. For example that during the game a network of trade nodes (which rise and decline in value) would come to existence with trade distance depending on drive tech. Once a certain node reaches a certain amount of the total quantity of trade goods the galactic market can be founded there. If for some reason things go badly in the system the market is founded for an extended period of time it can move to a different node in the system where conditions are more favourable. I'll admit I don't know what the trade system will look like until the next dev diary but the galactic market that remains in the same system dispite what happens in the rest of the game seems strange.

 

[Madzai]

AI will take prices into account when using the market. Exactly to what degree they will plan for it is something we're still working on.

But will AI used it as described in DD "to build an economy that rely on GM"? Because if it'll try, i think it will be way too easy for a player to abuse it, and drive such AI into a corner. Also, on higher difficulties, won't all AI bonuses cause an inflation so players just can buy stuff due to high prices? Or, on contrary - prices will be too low, because of resources over-abundance?

But if AI will use GM only "occasionally", won't it become an extremely powerful player-only tool? Will AI try to fight player or each other economically?

 

[Spaceception]

With this new system, how will the Diplomacy tab work? Is it just Communications, Research agreements, and Trade systems now? Or can you still trade with specific empires for resources? I'm guessing that has simply been removed, and replaced with this.

 

[xBolivarx]

I’d like it if it would be possible to say „I have 200 energy credits to spare. Buy me as much minerals as you can each month.“

 

[Make Victoria 3]

It is an abstraction... Stellaris does not go into such details.

I also did not say it was an optimal solution... if you had a system the divided the three levels I spoke about and could make it into a resonable streamlined and interesting feature without huge micro I would be all for it.

And what would be wrong about getting less research points from new systems compared to if they were your capital system instead of increasing tech cost? This way the big blob can research technology faster due to beeing able to spend more on research in a single place. And as already mentioned doing the research is the hard part (how to apply this to your current world/environment is also reseaerch and needs to be done once for a given scenario and then you can repeat that (probably not optimal but good enough) way everywhere else).
Also here are some problems with short solutions that any normal child that went maybe 2 or 3 years to school and can do basic math can understand but might take a while to solve if you dont have practise with such problems:

You have a deck of 52 cards 42 are face down and 10 face up but you cant see nor feel or otherwise know where those 10 cards with face up are. Your task is to create two decks of cards that have the similar number of cards with face up in them.

You have the numbers 1 to 21 each written on a seperate sheet of paper. Can you create piles of sheets using each sheet once such that the biggest number of each pile equals the sum of all the other numbers of the pile? If not why not?

You have 4 coins that lie on a flat surface such that their middle points would be the corners of a perfect square. If you can mirror one coin at another meaning you pick two coins draw a line through their middle points and then move one coin to the other side of the other coin (exactly the same distance away as before from the second coin that does not get moved). Can you create a bigger perfect square that way? If not why not?

 

[sesn]

I wonder how overflowing storages will be handeled? Will there automatically sold for something, or will they just drop the price of the good and I should micro my overflow?

 

[Slynx]

That's what the Internal Market itself does now, so it only makes sense. The internal market IS internal after all. If an external entity like trader enclaves influenced it, it wouldn't be very internal.

yet the enclave will become part of your empire if you'll control the system. making it a viable system for someone like Isolationists to expand and conquer every enclave system in their reach.

unless galactic market will be available even for them or space hitlers that'll declare war on everyone they know.

 

[Mr Thursday]

Will Inward Perfection empires have access to the Galactic Market?

I think Inward Perfection would be striving towards Autarky, so maybe they would get (researchable) boosts to their internal market?

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Help me out with the abstraction here: if there's an internal market, this means that those actors produce their own resources that you don't have access to otherwise because, after all, the Pop productions in your empire are only those controlled by the state?

You can come up with any justification.
Some of the top of my head:
- Pops you have on a planet are only the ones working for the state. You may have more of them, but they are working for the private sector. So when a new pop grows, it can either be population growth, or the pop goes from the private sector to the public sector.
- Public/private partnership. When you start a building, you don't dump 200 minerals on a place and let it build itself. A part of these minerals can be used to make some contracts with the private sector.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

Ooooh! I wasn't expecting there would be a founder and that the market would have physical presence. That has potential, I love the idea!

Speaking of potential, have you thought about expanding the economic warfare even more by allowing targeted attacks? For example, something like imposing trade sanctions on specific empires and persuading other empires to do the same? Say, for each empire that signs on the "Blorg Dark Matter Embargo", the Blorg get a 25% market fee penalty on Dark Matter purchases from the Galactic Market? But to prevent abuse, the initiator of the embargo has pay some kind of monthly maintenance (Influence?) to enforce it?

It would allow diplomatically-focused empires to actually utilise the relationships they're cultivating in an active and tangible way, beyond just adding a new member to their federation every couple of decades.

 

[Kilmantor]

To become the market founder seems like a big advantage, especially as it seems you can't lose this status again.
My first thought was at the beginning I build lots of science vessles to be the first one to explore 50% of the galaxy - then I can lean back and relax because no one can steal the founder status off me again.
Why is there the need to have a founder? Isn't the essence of an international market to be decentral?

 

[zorkon08]

Will there be a way to see what another civ exports and imports? Also can I see how strong thier econmy is?

Need this kind of info if im going to do a trade war.

 

[Willsclone]

Will we be able to place embargos on empires we dont like?

 

[bkwyrm13]

I hope there will be options to ban the slave market (we need a Space UN!). I don't want one in my galaxy

Also, I would love to see more graphs and flavour art in the finished UI.

Maybe for the Diplomacy patch when they fix freaking Federations. They're my current annoyance since they barely function (I will eternally vote NO if asked about X empire joining us that I absolutely love and even have a migration treaty with!!) or really DO anything beyond raising opinon atm. The military part sucks if you aren't currently leader since you have zero ability to request assistance.


Hmm, too bad it's called Founder and not Leader/Owner or something. Wonder if we eventually will be able to seize the Global Market to become that Founder, kind of sad it's tied to your capital and isn't a special station you build somewhere that can be claimed. I mean unless you want to build a 2 for 1 giant target on your capital anyways. Destabilizing other empires Internal Markets through espionage could be fun too.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

To become the market founder seems like a big advantage, especially as it seems you can lose this status again.
My first thought was at the beginning I build lots of science vessles to be the first one to explore 50% of the galaxy - then I can lean back and relax because no one can steal the founder status off me again.
Why is there the need to have a founder? Isn't the essence of an international market to be decentral?

Building science ships and recruiting scientists comes at a cost. Early game it's alot of resources that could be spent otherwise, and it also means less science ships searching for anomalies and surveying systems. Another aspect might be that you will make yourself a very attractive target as the owner of the market, if other nations can conquer the market owner status by taking the system from you. I only see benefits to gameplay here.

 

[Milten]

Wonder if we eventually will be able to seize the Global Market to become that Founder, kind of sad it's tied to your capital and isn't a special station you build somewhere that can be claimed.

their capital system becomes the Market Capital, spawning a special station and map marker to denote it. From then on, any empire (barring possible restrictions for Devouring Swarms and the like) that knows of the Market Capital system has access to the Galactic Market and is able to trade on it. The controller of the Market Capital get a reduction in their Market Fee and increased trade value for their trade routes (more on that in a later DD).

 

[Archaeon]

Can the market owner change at any given time? First to 50% of known empires is great, but if theyre a xenophobe (for example) and a trade-heavy xenophile empire shows up, can they contest market ownership?