Can Someone Explain Trade and Planetary Deficits?

[Ryika]

Because that's a terrible approach. Not only is that planet already producing something, and has a focus on it. You would need to build up an entire second infrastructure on that planet including the bonuses. Then you'd have to massively shift workers away from what the planet is currently producing all to produce a small amount of food and solve a problem short term. Rather than create a proper long term solution with future growth.

It's a bad approach because there's practically no downsides attached to hyperspecializing everything in the live version. But have a high enough tax on local deficits, and the numbers shift more in favor of some local production. Like, if every basic resource that needs to be imported costed you 3 trade value, you'd almost certainly be producing everything locally - of course that's not the desired outcome either, but it should be quite obvious that there can be situations where specialization is not the right answer.

Honestly, this approach is so incredibly flawed and has so many issues on so many levels. It entirely misses the problems at hand, it ignores that you can have at most three zones in the new system, that work force is usually a limiting factor, that you'd have to retool what the planet is currently doing to create inferior production and hurt yourself long term, all to create a stopgap solution.

Basic resources are not even subject to the three zone limit.

The rest of the argument just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's not "inferior production" if the amount of trade value you save makes up for the lower efficiency - you're just inherently assuming that specialization must be stronger than fixing deficits locally in every situation, and that's just not based on anything. It's certainly possible that the balance will end up that way, but it's not some law of nature that hyperspecialization is automatically better than making use of local opportunities.

And sure, workforce is a limiting factor, but whether you're producing food here, or over there on that other planet, the workforce will be used either way. With how easily pops can be moved, it does not really matter where the pops are located until the planet producing alloys and food is full. And even then, depending on how the numbers are tuned and what inherent productivity bonuses the planet brings, the answer to that could still be to just turn another planet into a forge world and leave the farming districts on that first one.

But either way, I think I'll leave this discussion now.

 

[-Marauder-]

It's a bad approach because there's practically no downsides attached to hyperspecializing everything in the live version. But have a high enough tax on local deficits, and the numbers shift more in favor of some local production. Like, if every basic resource that needs to be imported costed you 3 trade value, you'd almost certainly be producing everything locally - of course that's not the desired outcome either, but it should be quite obvious that there can be situations where specialization is not the right answer.


Basic resources are not even subject to the three zone limit.

The rest of the argument just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's not "inferior production" if the amount of trade value you save makes up for the lower efficiency - you're just inherently assuming that specialization must be stronger than fixing deficits locally in every situation, and that's just not based on anything. It's certainly possible that the balance will end up that way, but it's not some law of nature that hyperspecialization is automatically better than making use of local opportunities.

And sure, workforce is a limiting factor, but whether you're producing food here, or over there on that other planet, the workforce will be used either way. With how easily pops can be moved, it does not really matter where the pops are located until the planet producing alloys and food is full. And even then, depending on how the numbers are tuned and what inherent productivity bonuses the planet brings, the answer to that could still be to just turn another planet into a forge world and leave the farming districts on that first one.

But either way, I think I'll leave this discussion now.

"If we create artificial punishment and make something non viable we can force everyone to play horrible all rounder planets." You're not disagreeing with anything I'm saying, you're effectively just defending it. You are defending a reduction in the ability of players to optimize things, to take calculated risks (i.e occupation), to express skill and have freedom.

This entire approach is a heavy handed "equity of outcome" enforcement. Where you'd shoot one racer in the leg to ensure everyone runs equally fast.


You did dodge my question though. Do you actually play the game, if so do you usually play beyond the early game and roughly at what difficulty level. I'm not trying to disregard you based on "skill", but am curious if your experience might fundamentally differ due to the chosen galaxy size, difficulty, etc.

 

[workbot]

"If we create artificial punishment and make something non viable we can force everyone to play horrible all rounder planets." You're not disagreeing with anything I'm saying, you're effectively just defending it. You are defending a reduction in the ability of players to optimize things, to take calculated risks (i.e occupation), to express skill and have freedom.

This entire approach is a heavy handed "equity of outcome" enforcement. Where you'd shoot one racer in the leg to ensure everyone runs equally fast.


You did dodge my question though. Do you actually play the game, if so do you usually play beyond the early game and roughly at what difficulty level. I'm not trying to disregard you based on "skill", but am curious if your experience might fundamentally differ due to the chosen galaxy size, difficulty, etc.

Everything is artificial in this game, because it's a simulation... Before, there were no penalties to hyper specialization.

Now, there are.

I remember people got really mad when leader caps got tightened, too, because it made spamming scientists at the start harder. You may want to ask yourself how much of your anger is simply resistance to change.

Don't need to insult other people. Again, it's a game, and it's not a crime to play "sub-optimally".

I, for example, like to play tall on smaller galaxies with minimum habitable worlds, so for me, the changes are nice because I end up needing to hybridize worlds for a good chunk of the game anyway.

Food is an interesting resource in .5 now, too, because the first agricultural district is 4x as efficient as any other agricultural district, on the merit of being able to put down a zone and place food production buildings on it.

So, with the new type of planet, it may be best to have every planet produce its own food at first, and only build an agri world if your needs are high for whatever reason (cloning, bioships, space fauna, or catalyc processing).

Which I like, personally!

 

[mortache]

If your Forge planet has a bonus modifier to mineral production, why not have some mining districts to make it fuel its own industry?

Because typically that world will be a mineral world anyways, unless the planet is a size 20 with 3 mineral districts (highly unlikely). I actually don't mind the fact that we need to have a dedicated trade world right now, just like bureaucrat world back in the day - as long as the specialization is worth the trouble. The main reason for specialization is the buildings that cost strategic resources, and orbital rings

 

[CocoCincinnati]

I didn't think I would like this change but turns out that I do. If trade now indicates logistics on some level, then it makes sense that you need to devote some of that resource to transporting materials throughout your empire.

 

[Sweeze]

Where exactly do you see this trade penalty? Because as far as I can tell me running a -1000 trade a month deficit has no ill effects, I generate no trade and unemploy all trader jobs and my economy took off.

The game seems to imply that having trade available makes up for ship maintenance or something, but if I console myself in 500k trade so that I don't have a deficit my energy/alloy/food (using biological ships in test game) upkeep for my fleets doesn't change at all.

 

[YANNICK_VACHON]

The thing, they should have named it 'Logistics' and not Trade. I mean, I play Gestalt (and a genocidal one) so I do not have access to the market. So a 'trade deficit' makes no sense at all for me.

Also, the fact that the ships cost changes depending on if they are docked, on the move but in friendly territory or outside makes it even harder to plan ahead. Like I have to change my trade exchanges every time I go to war (I mean I must buy less stuff so my trade stays positive). For a short war, I could just keep the losses if I have a big amount of trade in stock but when you become the crisis and must fight for centuries, your trade stock become depleted