Are Machines supposed to be bad at logistics/trade?

[Dr Pippy]

So I've noticed playing my usual assimilators that it's much easier for me to mass-produce other resources than trade, to the point where it's probably more profitable to invest in more tech drones and sell the extra energy even at absurdly discounted market prices than it is to get an equal number of logistics drones. (Haven't done a careful calculation here.) It seems like there are several factors that disadvantage machines in producing trade:

• Logistics drones produce 4 trade. I believe traders produce 8. (Is this correct? I don't play organic empires very often.)
• Machines can't get Trade/Logistics designation on habitats.
• Also no Trade/Logistics designation on Ringworlds.

This isn't a particularly big deal, as I don't find myself relying on trade for much other than wanting to buy lots of dark matter from the market. And I'm not taking any of the traditions that make trade better (Logistics, I think there's some stuff in Versatility). I'm just curious if this state of affairs is an intentional design decision.

 

[GuardianGI]

They used to give 2 trade a month ago. Yes, really.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/1kp7ghp/can_i_talk_about_logistic_drones_for_one_second

 

[jedavis]

Agreed that logistics drones are (still) terrible on a per-pop productivity basis. I've been doing basically starbase economy with Resource Reprocessors for a lot of my trade needs early-game, and then Automation/Optimization Building in nexus districts with Commercial Nexus specializations later; I don't want to spend actual pops on it, but if I was going to sell energy on the market for trade, automation at least gives me a fixed exchange rate.

I don't find myself relying on trade for much other than wanting to buy lots of dark matter from the market

I need it to feed the deficits from moving resources between all of my tiny habitats, and to feed the raw resource support specs on my planets ):

In addition to the factors that you listed, gestalts also don't get Stock Exchange and Commerce Megaplex-equivalent percent trade booster and logistics drone upkeep reduction buildings, nor a Giga-Mall orbital ring booster equivalent. Granted, the base output is so low that % boosts wouldn't matter much, but it's just another way they're behind.

 

[turtleturtle111]

Yea they have the "same" trade as a normal trader in the sense that the empire gets 4 trade from both. But you are also not getting 4 energy credits. The job is terrible and needs to be buffed to 8. Gestalts already cannot form commercial pacts and don't get any of the boosts from megacorps and cannot civilian spam. IDK why this job is a base trade of 4 other then making "trade" match. Not forming commercial pacts alone is a massive killer to logistics income.

Making singular consciousness worse at logistics then many people who do not share a single willpower is an odd choice. That is like the thing singular consciousness is meant to be good at large scale coordination.

 

[Terry Bull]

LOL. Machine empires are bad at Excel jobs huh?

 

[malakhglitch]

Yes, machine intelligences are not optimized for trade... unless they are. It's only until the middle of the early game though unless you messed up your build. As for optimizing MI trade, I honestly haven't tried it out since it only bothers me in the early game, but then again everything is scarce in the early game.

 

[aadf97799c]

logistic drone only give 4 trade value while most individual stuck with wealth creation

each trader still only produce 4 trade value because of it

 

[Dr Pippy]

Yea they have the "same" trade as a normal trader in the sense that the empire gets 4 trade from both. But you are also not getting 4 energy credits. The job is terrible and needs to be buffed to 8. Gestalts already cannot form commercial pacts and don't get any of the boosts from megacorps and cannot civilian spam. IDK why this job is a base trade of 4 other then making "trade" match. Not forming commercial pacts alone is a massive killer to logistics income.

Making singular consciousness worse at logistics then many people who do not share a single willpower is an odd choice. That is like the thing singular consciousness is meant to be good at large scale coordination.

Just on a conceptual level, it seems plausible to me that machines would be very good at logistics but pretty bad at trade. This is a little challenging to represent when both concepts are represented by the same resource. One approach — if this were the direction you wanted to go — might be to leave the logistics drones at 4 trade per 100, but then reduce the logistics costs of deficits and ships by a substantial amount, maybe 50%. If your logistics costs were halved, each logistics drone would provide a comparable amount of logistics support as a trader (so maybe an even larger reduction...), but you'd still have a considerable and thematically appropriate disadvantage for everything market-related.

 

[turtleturtle111]

but you'd still have a considerable and thematically appropriate disadvantage for everything market-related.

But you already have that its called lack of commercial pacts. Seriously commercial pacts are insanely powerful.

 

[turtleturtle111]

each trader still only produce 4 trade value because of it

And the machines still get less and don't have access to commercial pacts for just FREE TRADE BUTTON CLICK. The current behavior makes no sense. Having commercial pacts outweighs any loss from your converted resources and you still get the energy also. Seriously go look what a single commerical pact does for you with a megacorp it is INSANE.

 

[malakhglitch]

I don't think people who like playing MIs focus on the lack of Trade. After all before 4.0 we didn't even have access to that resource.

 

[jedavis]

I don't think people who like playing MIs focus on the lack of Trade. After all before 4.0 we didn't even have access to that resource.

Would that we still didn't. But sadly, now we do, and it would be really nice if we could produce it somewhat-efficiently for (again) planetary deficits, fleet logistics, and raw resource support districts.

 

[turtleturtle111]

I don't think people who like playing MIs focus on the lack of Trade. After all before 4.0 we didn't even have access to that resource.

But you need that resource now. Have you played nanites yet? Holy trade deficits batman.

 

[malakhglitch]

But you need that resource now. Have you played nanites yet? Holy trade deficits batman.

I go for Modularity most of the time so I can only speculate.

 

[turtleturtle111]

Modularity

Yea I imagine modularity doesn't have the same level of planetry trade deficit requirements given that you are getting that -15% job upkeep reduction. (Also the best worker job output bonus just get titian hunters on one planet and your set).

 

[LayZboy]

They could start by adding trade designations to machine/ring worlds.

 

[T5_k]

Stop it with the trade machines do logistics not trade!!!!11!1!1

Jokes aside, on my current playthrough I'm getting ~2k trade surplus, 8 planets, all are 100% specialised, except for one. That one does machine assembly galore and also has 3 districts dedicated to logistics. And those 3 cover everything. Gotta check the numbers when I get home but I don't think support drones (the ones that now make amenities instead of being unemployed) generate any trade?

 

[Anzaman]

But you need that resource now. Have you played nanites yet? Holy trade deficits batman.

Out of curiosity, why Nanite? Due to their innate desire to go ultra wide?

 

[Drullo321]

Would that we still didn't. But sadly, now we do, and it would be really nice if we could produce it somewhat-efficiently for (again) planetary deficits, fleet logistics, and raw resource support districts.

I think here lies the main issue.

With 4.0 alot of the uniqueness of gestalt, especially machine intelligence vanished with the introduction of trade as an additional ressource to them.
Now, gestalts only miss CG (with exception of RS and Paperclips) and food (if Machine Intelligence). I can only imagine with a 4.1, 4.2 or 5.0 it will be mandatorily added to them as well...

So now you forcefully added trade to gestalts. You have two options
A) You want to make trade distinct for gestalts, so they have limited options (missing specialisation, trade policies, buildings, etc) and/or make trade weaker
B) You make trade more similar to individuals, especially in power, as otherwise you have things like those weak logistic drones.

And then if you can combine A plus B, that is what we currently have, you get things like:
- Gestalts don't have access to special trade boosting buildings (on planet, orbital ring or as designation)
- But Gestalts get access to Galactic Commerce Hub FE when doing Cosmogenisis.

I don't like Gestalts, especially MI, become more similar to individual empires each path. They lose their distinctivness.

To solve the current dilemma between gestalt trade purposefully weak (as to be different) but too weak to actually work with, and to not change what is actually done (the general changes to trade) i would generally buff trade for gestalts, like buffing logistic drones, giving access to various previously forbidden buildings (but rename them to better reflect gestalts) but on the other side try to separate trade between gestalt empires and anyone else (individualist and other gestalts).

This can be done by disallowing trade as a "tradeable" ressource with other empires, disallowing other trade policies (for example through joining a trade fed).

This way certain jobs don't feel artifical week (logistic drones) and anomalies like having access to FE trade building but not the normal trade buildings can be solved.

 

[jedavis]

Out of curiosity, why Nanite? Due to their innate desire to go ultra wide?

I definitely felt a deficit spike when I started building nanite research labs and adding nanite upkeep to all my calculators. If I'm correct in my reading of common/strategic_resources/00_strategic_resources.txt , nanites appear to produce 2.5 points of trade deficit per unit imported, just like the other rare resources (living metal, dark matter, and zro). But you're seldom importing tens of units of those other rare resources to single worlds, whereas it's easy to hit a three-digit nanite deficit on (say) a research machine world with just a couple nanite research labs (never mind if you actually build them in all the building slots).

And there's no way you're producing a three-digit amount of nanites on any single planet; the basins are few and miner base output is too low. So they have to get imported from either lots of basins on lots of worlds, or more commonly harvester starbases.