With no automation confirmed, how will interstellar economies function?

[echo2361]

I haven't had time to sit down and listen through the whole Giantbomb podcast, but as I read through the notes on reddit I came across this:

"Not going the automation route (a la Distant Worlds and HOI3); no bang for your buck in creating systems that are complicated but end up invisible to the player"

While I can understand the reasoning behind this decision, I am curious to know how interstellar economies will function without automation. Will we still be able to transfer needed resources, like food, between the various planets in our empire? I really like to create specialized colonies good as just one thing which are dependent on others for their continued growth and development.

I hope the system isn't going to be abstracted away to such a level that as long as your empire has +1 food generation and available freighters in a pool, everyone is fed and happy. At the very least, I really want to see freighters moving between my planets even if I have to set up the trade routes myself rather than rely on automation. Seeing a network of freighters and mining ships moving on the map does an incredible amount of good when it comes to creating an immersive experience where we feel like the galaxy is a living thing, not just a game board. Distant Worlds did an amazing job of this, but Stellaris can accomplish that same feat without taking things to the same level of complex automation as DW did.

Also, if we do have freighters actually represented on the map, that allows for all kinds of fun with economic warfare and pirate raids. I just want to make sure interstellar trade isn't totally abstracted away from the map. I don't need full automation as I'm happy to set up trade routes and such.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

I think there has to be *some* kind of automation. Having to choose which tile each pop should work on each planet in an empire of hundreds of planets in a real-time game sounds like a circle of hell.

 

[Kuschelflummi]

They just said, there will be no autmation. Meaning: IF there is a feature, you have to take care of it yourself.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

"Not going the automation route" can mean a lot of things. I doubt it means no automation at any scale, ever. Even having a fleet path find around the map is a form of automation. Fleets fighting each other autonomously with lasers blazing away is a form of automation.

HoI3 and Distant Worlds have major aspects of gameplay that are optional. You can either get into weeds or click a checkbox and let the AI handle that whole area. I think we will not see this, but I would be surprised if there were not some way to let worker placement take care of itself.

 

[echo2361]

Having not heard the interview yet I can't be sure, but Distant World was apparently mentioned when the automation topic came up. The first thing that jumps to my mind when I hear Distant Worlds and automation is the awesome, totally automated private sector that moves most civilian traffic around without player input. I certainly hope they were just referring to the ability in DW to automate other game mechanics like diplomacy and colonization, which I never do as I love playing on full manual, but hearing no automation just made me a little nervous. I'm hoping for some more clarification soon.

 

[Sergei Meranov]

I think it's more likely they mean Distant Worlds automation of mechanics that you can toggle. I, like echo2361, enjoyed the civilian automation/private sector aspect to Distant Worlds because it felt like more of a realistic empire to me because I've never found it makes much sense when the "government" in these games is responsible for building every single ship in space and is the major director of commercial activity.

I'm really hoping that they aren't planning on having the player responsible for building and then dealing with a bunch of trade ships or something where the extent of the interaction is similar to the ships in EU4 where I make a fleet and set it to "patrol" and that somehow earns me money or alternatively creating a trade ship that functions solely as a merchant in eU4 where they just get built and then go sit somewhere passively earning income. I'm just hoping the economic side of things makes sense and isn't too arcadey, but I have enough faith that Paradox will give us reasonably deeps systems.

 

[stilgarpl]

X3: Terran Conflict / Albion Prelude had a nice, fake economy, where you could build your space stations and assign your ship to automatically buy supplies and sell products of those stations. It worked quite well.

But, the Egosoft thought, that it wasn't fun. Players would just set up a station and trade routes and forget about it, just watch as money was raising on their accounts. From time to time they would of course get an alert that station was under attack or there was some kind of disaster, but other than that, you could just keep building stations and watch your empire grow without having to micromanage every damn ship.

So, they changed it in X: Rebirth. Now you have to do everything by yourself. You have to visit NPCs on stations, ask for prices (no Internet or eBay in the future I assume), you have to tell your captains "go there, buy that".
Sounds fun, it's it? Yeah...

Paradox, remember why you've added Auto-invite to plots and Auto-stop plots in CK2. Sometimes micromanaging is fun, where you have to just do one or two things exactly the way you want them... but most of the time, it's just boring.

 

[echo2361]

After actually listening to the podcast, I am now convinced there will not be an automated private sector in Stellaris similar to DW. It was made pretty clear.

This makes me a little sad since the private sector mechanic in DW really brings my empire's economy to life on the map, but I can understand Paradox not wanting to devote resources to something like that the player will have little direct control over.

However, I really do hope we can see freighters and such moving between planets and systems in some form or another. I'd be quite happy with a GalCiv approach, where we manually set up trade routes and see miniature freighters moving along them which can be raided. I'd also be fine with just connecting a series of colonies together in a sector or special trade zone just as long as we actually get to see the economy come to life with freighter movement.

In short, I just don't want to see trade reduced to an abstracted pool on a menu somewhere with no freighters or trade ships actually on the map. Hopefully we'll see something soon to get a better idea of how our economies will function.

 

[valergain]

I'm betting that will something a little(read quite a bit) less detailed then what they had in Vicky 2.

 

[Sergei Meranov]

After actually listening to the podcast, I am now convinced there will not be an automated private sector in Stellaris similar to DW. It was made pretty clear.

This makes me a little sad since the private sector mechanic in DW really brings my empire's economy to life on the map, but I can understand Paradox not wanting to devote resources to something like that the player will have little direct control over.

However, I really do hope we can see freighters and such moving between planets and systems in some form or another. I'd be quite happy with a GalCiv approach, where we manually set up trade routes and see miniature freighters moving along them which can be raided. I'd also be fine with just connecting a series of colonies together in a sector or special trade zone just as long as we actually get to see the economy come to life with freighter movement.

In short, I just don't want to see trade reduced to an abstracted pool on a menu somewhere with no freighters or trade ships actually on the map. Hopefully we'll see something soon to get a better idea of how our economies will function.

Sins of a Solar Empire had a similar mechanic whereby you built the trade stations on your own planets and then trade ships, which could be attacked/destroyed, ferried goods between systems. I'd be generally happy with something like that though I was really hoping for a slightly more nuanced trade system than just "build this building to get X more credits". Something more like DW or Vicky 2 where things require certain resources to build so the trade ships/cargo ships are physical representations of those goods moving around the galaxy and attacking them actually has significance beyond just denying your opponent their 2 space bucks per minute.

 

[iconoclast91]

I private sector based eco would have been the way to go, IMO. I always found it unrealistic to set up, let's say, free trade agreements, and the longer you kept them the more money both of you make. This is not how free trade agreements work.

I would have loved to see the player being forced to give incentives to the private sector (security, taxes) so they start to invest, and free trade agreements actually meaning, under certain circumstances, that some of your industry might ddie, due to cheaper imports. Unemployment, unrest, and foreign investments could have been interesting, and economic interdependencies could have been understood as tool to create a security framework, as peace loving race.

Cheers

 

[echo2361]

Sins of a Solar Empire had a similar mechanic whereby you built the trade stations on your own planets and then trade ships, which could be attacked/destroyed, ferried goods between systems. I'd be generally happy with something like that though I was really hoping for a slightly more nuanced trade system than just "build this building to get X more credits". Something more like DW or Vicky 2 where things require certain resources to build so the trade ships/cargo ships are physical representations of those goods moving around the galaxy and attacking them actually has significance beyond just denying your opponent their 2 space bucks per minute.

Yeah, at the very least I'm hoping for something similar to SoaSE's trade stations with freighters moving between colonies earning credits as they go, but having freighters tied to actual resources other than just money would be great. I don't know how far along in the alpha they are to be considering, or reconsidering, specific features but I sure hope they're listening cause I think a lot of people are looking for some innovation in this area of the game play.

 

[Pius IX]

I assumed it would be like in their other games where the player builds up infrastructure and the private sector economy is strengthened by this but still mostly exists in the background. E.g. in EU4, you use your ships and colonies to establish control of vital trade routes, and then reap the economic benefits through a simple calculation of what % of the trade node you control, with the implication being that your private citizens are hard at work trading and stuff within the zone of control you've established for them. Distant Worlds has actual civilian ships doing all this; a game like EU4 in space just needs a background calculation to represent it. You could still create the visual feeling of a living society by having a bunch of civilian ships flying around as window dressing, with more of them in trade routes and areas with bigger economies, but they should just be a visual representation of the background calculations rather than active participants like in DW.

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

I think there has to be *some* kind of automation. Having to choose which tile each pop should work on each planet in an empire of hundreds of planets in a real-time game sounds like a circle of hell.

Or it sounds like beaurocratic heaven.

 

[Carmilla]

So what I'm getting from this thread is that even if we play as ultra-capitalistic empires where the private sector is the beginning and end of the economy, we're still in practice being space commies due to complete state control over it anyway in all but name?

 

[ranbir]

So what I'm getting from this thread is that even if we play as ultra-capitalistic empires where the private sector is the beginning and end of the economy, we're still in practice being space commies due to complete state control over it anyway in all but name?

Just like every 4x game that isn't Distant Worlds.


But guys remember:

This is a paradox game so all that will be "abstracted" and you won't visually see the 'life' going on. I think not being automated it means we won't -see- it. We'll just see what we normally see in a paradox game, stuff that we control. I think that kinda sucks, seeing the private sector in distant worlds is what made space - usually a boring scene - a little more interesting and populated with life.

 

[Magnus Helvetti]

N-n-n-no automation? B-b-but that's heresy!

 

[echo2361]

I assumed it would be like in their other games where the player builds up infrastructure and the private sector economy is strengthened by this but still mostly exists in the background. E.g. in EU4, you use your ships and colonies to establish control of vital trade routes, and then reap the economic benefits through a simple calculation of what % of the trade node you control, with the implication being that your private citizens are hard at work trading and stuff within the zone of control you've established for them. Distant Worlds has actual civilian ships doing all this; a game like EU4 in space just needs a background calculation to represent it. You could still create the visual feeling of a living society by having a bunch of civilian ships flying around as window dressing, with more of them in trade routes and areas with bigger economies, but they should just be a visual representation of the background calculations rather than active participants like in DW.

I'd be fine with most of what you've described happening behind the scenes, but I would want freighters and trade ships to be more than just window dressing. If they can't interact with anything on the map at all, how are enemy empires, pirates, space monsters, and so on supposed to raid them? I suppose Paradox could go with something like SOTS did, where there is a pool of trade ships and you can send out warships to "raid" those ships which resulted in occasional battles depending on how many trade ships there are and how many raiding ships are involved, but if they're going to bother with putting in freighter visuals (which I certainly hope they do!) I would want us to be able to interact with them on the map somehow.

 

[Andarni]

It's really, really a shame that being inspired by Distant Worlds they didn't took inspiration on the more awesome feature that made that game the best 4X game that it actually exist. It was really awesome in Distant Worlds the feeling of sending a fleet to the economic pole of the enemy and blow the shit out of the freighters that were there. So even If the defense fleet destroyed you just after that the 40% of their economy was fucked up by then and their space totally empty of life. It was amazing I dont understand why they didn't picked that up.

 

[echo2361]

It's really, really a shame that being inspired by Distant Worlds they didn't took inspiration on the more awesome feature that made that game the best 4X game that it actually exist. It was really awesome in Distant Worlds the feeling of sending a fleet to the economic pole of the enemy and blow the shit out of the freighters that were there. So even If the defense fleet destroyed you just after that the 40% of their economy was fucked up by then and their space totally empty of life. It was amazing I dont understand why they didn't picked that up.

Haha. I LOVE doing this in DW. Economic warfare FTW!