Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

If you have a healthy economy that can fund colony growth, then low taxes are better than higher taxes, but if you're not able to fund colony growth from a predictable cash flow then low taxes will not make up the difference. Infrastructure requires a certain level of predictable investment.

Having a lot of cash on hand is still valuable and can help in other ways, including paying for colony ships, crash research, etc. but to maximize growth or research you need good cash flow (and ideally also decent cash on hand for those key one time purchases).

Regards,

- Erik

The issue is that you can be at -50k income but still get enough money to stay afloat from bonus income.
And there is no way for you to turn ~100k of Bonus income into Growth.

I think that is a very solid economy that should be able to support colony growth.
But it can not, because most of the income is bonus Income

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That's because it's unpredictable. Long-term funding for growth and research can't be dependent on the swings of bonus income, which is why it's required to come from cashflow

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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That's because it's unpredictable. Long-term funding for growth and research can't be dependent on the swings of bonus income, which is why it's required to come from cashflow

Lack of Predictability? That can be fixed:

Option 1 - Stimulus Package
The thing is I have several hundred thousands in the bank.
I can turn it into stimulus package - bulk sum substracted now, paid out over 12 months, 24 months or however much stability they need.

Predictability for them. I do somehing longterm usefull with my money.

Option 2 - Bonus Income Smoothing
Add all Bonus Income to a specialize storage. Call it "Tax Debt", "Bonus Income Accounting" or the like.
At the end of the month, 1/12th of that store is added as income to the treasury.
This amount is predictable, calculateable, not at all swingy - and thus can be listed on the UI and counted for income. You now have a smooth income from Bonus Income, based on what you actually earned.

Secondary Consierations:
- The exact divider should be player selectable. Like Concurrent Research
- If you are just turning it on (Game start or just changed the value), it should "ramp up" to the proper divider as the storage builds. Start at /2 at the first month. Then add +1 divider before calculating each month. Till you hit the target.

Again, predictabiltiy for them. Plus I actually get a overview about my real income.

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ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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That's because it's unpredictable. Long-term funding for growth and research can't be dependent on the swings of bonus income, which is why it's required to come from cashflow

Lack of Predictability? That can be fixed:

Option 1 - Stimulus Package
The thing is I have several hundred thousands in the bank.
I can turn it into stimulus package - bulk sum substracted now, paid out over 12 months, 24 months or however much stability they need.

Predictability for them. I do somehing longterm usefull with my money.

Option 2 - Bonus Income Smoothing
Add all Bonus Income to a specialize storage. Call it "Tax Debt", "Bonus Income Accounting" or the like.
At the end of the month, 1/12th of that store is added as income to the treasury.
This amount is predictable, calculateable, not at all swingy - and thus can be listed on the UI and counted for income. You now have a smooth income from Bonus Income, based on what you actually earned.

Secondary Consierations:
- The exact divider should be player selectable. Like Concurrent Research
- If you are just turning it on (Game start or just changed the value), it should "ramp up" to the proper divider as the storage builds. Start at /2 at the first month. Then add +1 divider before calculating each month. Till you hit the target.

Again, predictabiltiy for them. Plus I actually get a overview about my real income.

Personally I don't find any of this necessary as the current model require more restraint and planning. It actually is a pretty nice system in my opinion.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

You can see this in the real-world as well. Occasional "emergency spending" packages are nowhere near as effective as predictable consistent investment in an area. You can spend money in the short-term, but you simply can't do certain things that require say a five year or ten year predictable budget if that can't be guaranteed from year to year. In any case, this is the design intent for this release. There are plenty of ways to spend bonus income, but there are also these new ways to spend extra cashflow. You can still play the game so that you over-expand and put yourself in very negative cashflow and things will still work more or less, it just has an effect.

Regards,

- Erik

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It does not stop you from expanding or overspending... it just give you quicker response to things like war production of ships in your cash flow. It means you can probably sustain a large fleet but you will not do so while keeping up with colony growth and research. So you might need to reduce your fleet and armies size after a war now... unless you don't want to fund research or colonies.

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I think that the reasoning given have some merits as in the real life countries and companies work with budgets and money rarely is "saved" in the sense we do in a game. In the real world we usually work with dept and loans and then use revenue to get more dept and loans... ;)

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd
Which only makes the fluff explanation even less sensible

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

You can see this in the real-world as well. Occasional "emergency spending" packages are nowhere near as effective as predictable consistent investment in an area. You can spend money in the short-term, but you simply can't do certain things that require say a five year or ten year predictable budget if that can't be guaranteed from year to year. In any case, this is the design intent for this release. There are plenty of ways to spend bonus income, but there are also these new ways to spend extra cashflow. You can still play the game so that you over-expand and put yourself in very negative cashflow and things will still work more or less, it just has an effect.

Regards,

- Erik

I think you should stop trying to explain it like this.

Becuase if that is the argument - see Option 1. I can turn my stored money into a Predictive income. And it is not like Stimulus has never been done by incuring debt.

It also flies in the face of the fact that Tax income and expenses are not exactly predictable over 5-10 years in a game where:
- I could loose my capital to alien invasions
- have to double my fleetsize all of a sudden
And that in just one month.

If you say "it is to prevent the player for expanding too agressively", you will get acceptance.

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ORIGINAL: Spidey
That's not an unreasonable concept to work with, it's not flat out wrong (as far as I know, anyway), and it promotes balanced budgets as a concept, which is always a nice thing. But the way it is implemented, it doesn't actually force the issue, does it? The player can still deficit spend and as I understand it, that strategy might even come out ahead of a balanced approach in the long run, if the investment secures the right territory that contains the right resources. So what if you're not at peak econ right away if you get sole use of a debris field with some nasty boats? So what if your base econ is suboptimal in the short term if you've got the spice?

I have not played DW2 yet, admittedly, but it seems to me that this way there's a genuine choice to make between an aggressive spend-to-the-limit approach, which is a gamble to secure stuff fast, or a slower approach that secures less stuff here and now but does provide a more stable foundation. It is not an obvious choice, is it? My recollection of DWU is that the choice there was a bit more onesided. Being slow was just not beneficial. You had to respect your construction capacity, your mining capacity, and the logistical limits of your civilians, but beyond that it was balls to the wall and pedal to the metal. As I recall it, at least. It has been a few years.

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

If if allows you to accept it, yes it is a game balance rule. However, it's also based on certain aspects of reality when it comes to long-term planning and spending.

The whole area of bonus funding has bigger plans in the future, which I can't speak in any detail about now, but I expect over time there will be more ways to handle your bonus funding.

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper

I don't understand what the 'reserved' funding does. If it goes into your surplus cash pile, the same pile that gets boosted from civilian ship construction, then it would seem to me to be entirely self defeating. You WANT that money in colony growth and research do you not? Or am I missing something?

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper

I don't understand what the 'reserved' funding does. If it goes into your surplus cash pile, the same pile that gets boosted from civilian ship construction, then it would seem to me to be entirely self defeating. You WANT that money in colony growth and research do you not? Or am I missing something?

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper

I don't understand what the 'reserved' funding does. If it goes into your surplus cash pile, the same pile that gets boosted from civilian ship construction, then it would seem to me to be entirely self defeating. You WANT that money in colony growth and research do you not? Or am I missing something?

You still need on-hand cash to start ship construction. Including Colony Ships.

So nope, it should not go 100% into C-Growth and Research.

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper
In the OP, Erik pointed out that expanding too fast could be a problem. You do not want to be pumping out **** tons of ships and other things, no more than you need. What you DO need is a healthy population growth and solid research, because if you fall behind on either of those things, you are probably losing.

Meanwhile civilian ship construction pours huge amounts of cash into your reserve, a good deal more it seems to me than a 10% reserve would contribute. Shoot, if I could I would be trying hard to pump as much of that civilian paid cash into colony growth and research, not the other way around, which is what happens if you have that 'reserve' set to anything other than zero.

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper

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ORIGINAL: zgrssd

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ORIGINAL: Panpiper

I don't understand what the 'reserved' funding does. If it goes into your surplus cash pile, the same pile that gets boosted from civilian ship construction, then it would seem to me to be entirely self defeating. You WANT that money in colony growth and research do you not? Or am I missing something?

You still need on-hand cash to start ship construction. Including Colony Ships.

So nope, it should not go 100% into C-Growth and Research.

In the OP, Erik pointed out that expanding too fast could be a problem. You do not want to be pumping out **** tons of ships and other things, no more than you need. What you DO need is a healthy population growth and solid research, because if you fall behind on either of those things, you are probably losing.

Meanwhile civilian ship construction pours huge amounts of cash into your reserve, a good deal more it seems to me than a 10% reserve would contribute. Shoot, if I could I would be trying hard to pump as much of that civilian paid cash into colony growth and research, not the other way around, which is what happens if you have that 'reserve' set to anything other than zero.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

That's because it's unpredictable. Long-term funding for growth and research can't be dependent on the swings of bonus income, which is why it's required to come from cashflow.

It's quite possible to manage your expansion and economy to have positive cashflow, but I think it may take getting used to for folks who are used to "expand/rush at all costs". It's also possible to play with negative cashflow and have bonus income keep you afloat, but in DW2 there is a cost for that in the lost growth and research funding as well as some other things that depend on cashflow (more state ships, more troops and bases, more facilties).

In my opinion it's fine to sometimes go negative when you need to, but you should try to avoid staying at negative cashflow for long periods.

Regards,

- Erik

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ORIGINAL: StormingKiwi

You know this is nonsensical, right?

1) Bonus income is also a form of revenue.
2) If your balance is over a billion, a deficit of 5000 a year can be sustained for 200 years.
2b) If that deficit is a productive investment, such as in colony growth, that deficit could be sustained for longer.
3) In reality, the private sector would be furious if the state price gouged them to achieve such massive account balances without any way of keeping the money flowing through the economy.

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ORIGINAL: StormingKiwi

You know this is nonsensical, right?

1) Bonus income is also a form of revenue.
2) If your balance is over a billion, a deficit of 5000 a year can be sustained for 200 years.
2b) If that deficit is a productive investment, such as in colony growth, that deficit could be sustained for longer.
3) In reality, the private sector would be furious if the state price gouged them to achieve such massive account balances without any way of keeping the money flowing through the economy.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I didn't see what happened in Larry's preview, but I do know that the preview build has some exploitable issues where you can gain ridiculous amounts of money through diplomacy (we'll fix these for release). Do you know if that was involved in the billion credits you are referencing?

I can say that it's not typical in my experience to have a billion credits sitting around in DW2.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, the bonus funding mechanics are only a beginning. You can expect more mechanisms for using funds throughout your empire in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

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ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I didn't see what happened in Larry's preview, but I do know that the preview build has some exploitable issues where you can gain ridiculous amounts of money through diplomacy (we'll fix these for release). Do you know if that was involved in the billion credits you are referencing?

I can say that it's not typical in my experience to have a billion credits sitting around in DW2.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, the bonus funding mechanics are only a beginning. You can expect more mechanisms for using funds throughout your empire in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

I just re-watched quickly the last few episodes of the Ackdarian play-through where he had close to a billion at one point. Several crash research would cost him around 200k at that time and was not used.