RE: Economy woes (Full Version)

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Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/26/2010 7:32:14 PM)

xmudder,

I loaded up your save and took a look. In short order, I was able to return you to profitability and I've uploaded a new save starting with "Mudd" to the same FTP location. If you want, you can download it and keep playing. Here's what I did:

1. You had a lot more ships and bases than you needed, particularly with the additional Democracy maintenance penalty. You had nine construction ships, two medium spaceports under construction, a Capital Ship and so on. I started scrapping these (sorry about the Capital Ship, we probably could have kept that one, but it was over 1k maintenance on its own), retiring them at the nearest shipyard where I could. I also scrapped those that were still under construction in areas where you didn't need more. I also scrapped a few of your destroyers in your fleet as you are not currently at war or at serious risk of imminent war. You had two industrial research stations and a monitoring station, I decided we only needed one industrial research station, etc. I used the Ships and Bases screen with the different drop downs combined with the Empire Summary screen to figure out where the money was going and which ships and bases were not necessary.

2. Your private economy probably had more mining stations than it absolutely needed, so its upkeep was fairly high too and profit was low enough that it wasn't ordering many new ships. By slowing down/scrapping future construction and the excess construction ships, I slowed things down on that front to give them a chance to catch up.

3. You hadn't really done much on the diplomacy front. Through technology trading, I was able to convince the race that was positively disposed to you to form a Mutual Defense pact. I then traded for galaxy maps everywhere I could, which revealed a few more races that were amenable to free trade. I continued this until I'd discovered all that I could through this method and had greater knowledge of local resource locations and plenty of free trade agreements.

4. Your troop upkeep was pretty high, so I disbanded troops where there was more than one unit per planet and disbanded half of your "strike force" loaded on your fleet.

5. Your relations were good enough that I trimmed down to one agent, your most skilled one and set that one to counter intelligence. If you have any issues in that area you can recruit up again.

After all this, it didn't take long for things to start turning a profit again. Let me know if this helps.

I'm also curious how much of that was due to your own construction/build decisions and how much was based on AI suggestions or AI automation? If the latter, we may need to make the AI automation more conservative as far as spending goes.




Hyfrydle -> RE: Economy woes (3/26/2010 8:03:35 PM)

I am uploading my save as I type it is "The Vandragors".



Mus -> RE: Economy woes (3/26/2010 11:27:13 PM)

I was able to slash everything drastically but the economy on my main planet still crashed putting me over 100,000 credits in debt before I was able to get my income in the black.

The crash in my economy seemed to be based on the "GDP value" of the planet in question tanking and I am unclear what this is based on. By the time I was in the black I had more than the planet required in 6 categories of luxury items, during the crash I had zero.

Still noticing an awful lot of idle merchant ships, particularly at the planet that tanked. Do you want my save game?

Also not sure if this is related to automation, I had 11 colonies in 4 systems I think, way more than alien races I was encountering in the middle of my crash. Could be the colonization AI going on an economic death ride?



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/26/2010 11:32:10 PM)

I noticed that even with 15 colonies, my home planet seems to hold 97% of my GDP, the others...barely anything. Seems a bit weird.



Hyfrydle -> RE: Economy woes (3/26/2010 11:34:27 PM)

I just ran a game on full automation with no input from myself and the economy has now crashed. Currently -28409 balance with a -58095 deficit.



Xmudder -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:16:46 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

xmudder,

I loaded up your save and took a look. In short order, I was able to return you to profitability and I've uploaded a new save starting with "Mudd" to the same FTP location. If you want, you can download it and keep playing. Here's what I did:

1. You had a lot more ships and bases than you needed, particularly with the additional Democracy maintenance penalty. You had nine construction ships, two medium spaceports under construction, a Capital Ship and so on. I started scrapping these (sorry about the Capital Ship, we probably could have kept that one, but it was over 1k maintenance on its own), retiring them at the nearest shipyard where I could. I also scrapped those that were still under construction in areas where you didn't need more. I also scrapped a few of your destroyers in your fleet as you are not currently at war or at serious risk of imminent war. You had two industrial research stations and a monitoring station, I decided we only needed one industrial research station, etc. I used the Ships and Bases screen with the different drop downs combined with the Empire Summary screen to figure out where the money was going and which ships and bases were not necessary.

2. Your private economy probably had more mining stations than it absolutely needed, so its upkeep was fairly high too and profit was low enough that it wasn't ordering many new ships. By slowing down/scrapping future construction and the excess construction ships, I slowed things down on that front to give them a chance to catch up.

3. You hadn't really done much on the diplomacy front. Through technology trading, I was able to convince the race that was positively disposed to you to form a Mutual Defense pact. I then traded for galaxy maps everywhere I could, which revealed a few more races that were amenable to free trade. I continued this until I'd discovered all that I could through this method and had greater knowledge of local resource locations and plenty of free trade agreements.

4. Your troop upkeep was pretty high, so I disbanded troops where there was more than one unit per planet and disbanded half of your "strike force" loaded on your fleet.

5. Your relations were good enough that I trimmed down to one agent, your most skilled one and set that one to counter intelligence. If you have any issues in that area you can recruit up again.

After all this, it didn't take long for things to start turning a profit again. Let me know if this helps.

I'm also curious how much of that was due to your own construction/build decisions and how much was based on AI suggestions or AI automation? If the latter, we may need to make the AI automation more conservative as far as spending goes.


I had 6 agents, I cut it to 3. The AI only used 2 of them at a time anyway. All the agents and ground troops were built by the AI, not me. Everything else was built by the ai, with me saying "yes" except for colony ships. That capital ship was a goodie I found, I hope it turned in some nice tech boost when you retired it.

Looks like I need to be more active on the diplomatic front then.

The AI built 2 high tech and 1 industry base in the same star, putting me over my limit tech wise. And 2 defense starbases that I should have said no to.

How do you disband troops?

How long did you play it? that game went from like -20k to -40k a turn in a few minutes when I was playing it. I'll give it a try.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:28:21 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mus I was able to slash everything drastically but the economy on my main planet still crashed putting me over 100,000 credits in debt before I was able to get my income in the black.


I'm wondering how you guys are getting so far in debt, all I've seen so far in the saves is over-building of various high upkeep items.

I wonder if corruption is also playing a role here in terms of reducing primary planet income before your colonies are up to speed?

quote:

Still noticing an awful lot of idle merchant ships, particularly at the planet that tanked. Do you want my save game?


Merchant ships can be idle normally at times, if they are all idle it would indicate some kind of resource problem perhaps (fuel maybe?). Feel free to upload your save, the more we have the better the info we have.

quote:

Also not sure if this is related to automation, I had 11 colonies in 4 systems I think, way more than alien races I was encountering in the middle of my crash. Could be the colonization AI going on an economic death ride?


Well if you colonize quickly before your new colonies contribute to the economy it can drive up costs, but so far what I've seen is manageable. It sounds like in some cases the automated AI is suggesting too much base and ship construction for your economies though.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:30:25 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Xmudder That capital ship was a goodie I found, I hope it turned in some nice tech boost when you retired it.


Yes, you got a very nice tech bonus when I retired that one.

quote:

How do you disband troops?


On the troops screen, click on the unit and then click on disband.

quote:

How long did you play it? that game went from like -20k to -40k a turn in a few minutes when I was playing it. I'll give it a try.


Not long honestly, probably took me 10-15 minutes to turn things around.

It's good to know that you were responding to suggested builds, that indicates that in some cases that AI is steering new players wrong and over-building. I hadn't seen that before but it's clearly happening so we'll see what we can do to tweak that back.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:30:56 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Webbco I noticed that even with 15 colonies, my home planet seems to hold 97% of my GDP, the others...barely anything. Seems a bit weird.


That must be pretty early on still, the other colonies do start pulling their weight once they have some time to develop.



Hyfrydle -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:33:58 AM)

I think the problem might be getting the luxury resources to enable the colonies to develop.



Xmudder -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:44:06 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Xmudder That capital ship was a goodie I found, I hope it turned in some nice tech boost when you retired it.


Yes, you got a very nice tech bonus when I retired that one.

quote:

How do you disband troops?


On the troops screen, click on the unit and then click on disband.

quote:

How long did you play it? that game went from like -20k to -40k a turn in a few minutes when I was playing it. I'll give it a try.


Not long honestly, probably took me 10-15 minutes to turn things around.

It's good to know that you were responding to suggested builds, that indicates that in some cases that AI is steering new players wrong and over-building. I hadn't seen that before but it's clearly happening so we'll see what we can do to tweak that back.


I made the mistake of putting taxes back under AI control, and went from +20 to +2k in a few minutes of playing.

I also seem to have finished research on 3 items? is that really all there is? or do I need a cross tech first?

All I can say on the AIs behalf is that I could afford these ships when I built them, it was later (after they were built perhaps?) that I went into debt.

I wonder if it has something to do with democracy, I get the impression few people use it due to the upkeep costs.

edit: thanks for the help

edit2: the income rebounded back to 20k surplus. I have no idea why.



Jim D Burns -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 12:45:31 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: Webbco I noticed that even with 15 colonies, my home planet seems to hold 97% of my GDP, the others...barely anything. Seems a bit weird.


That must be pretty early on still, the other colonies do start pulling their weight once they have some time to develop.



I’m starting to think the economy tanking may have something to do with the AI shipping out all the luxury items to the new worlds, thus leaving your big income planets devoid of needed luxuries.

Perhaps what is needed is a minimum item level that the AI civilian ships are not allowed to take from your high GDP worlds. Then add a preference to always ship luxury items to high GDP world’s first, so if you only have one of a rare item, it doesn’t get shipped off to the 10 mil rebellious planet and cause taxes to crash on your billion plus population planets.

Are AI missions generated/started at the planets that need the commodity and then directed to a planet that has the commodity? If so this creates a first come first served dilemma, which means large population planets ships may arrive to find nothing left to pick up. A better method would be to create AI missions at the production planet and then decide where to send the commodity based on planetary GDP levels.

This would make sense, since in the games where my economy crashed, things were running along fine for years with not much new construction, then bam down it came. All I really did was add more colonies (something the tips section tells you is a good way to increase income by the way), so perhaps my small luxury production got pulled away from my two big planets and that tanked their GDP?

Jim



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 1:00:57 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Xmudder edit2: the income rebounded back to 20k surplus. I have no idea why.


It's worth keeping in mind that DW's economy is based on a lot of moving parts rather than just a straight "this world produces this much income, add them up and that's your income". A lot of things can potentially be a bit unpredictable, based on pirate activity, wars and resource shortages. Also, you can make a fair bit of money as the state from times when your private citizens decide to use your shipyards to build a lot of ships, but it's hard to predict when those windfalls will happen apart from watching how much money they're making and taking a guess.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 1:03:22 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns I’m starting to think the economy tanking may have something to do with the AI shipping out all the luxury items to the new worlds, thus leaving your big income planets devoid of needed luxuries.


This is a possibility in terms of how the game works, though I'd have to see it happening in a save to know for certain.

quote:

Perhaps what is needed is a minimum item level that the AI civilian ships are not allowed to take from your high GDP worlds. Then add a preference to always ship luxury items to high GDP world’s first, so if you only have one of a rare item, it doesn’t get shipped off to the 10 mil rebellious planet and cause taxes to crash on your billion plus population planets.


Right, if that's causing part of this problem then we could certainly tweak that.

quote:

Are AI missions generated/started at the planets that need the commodity and then directed to a planet that has the commodity? If so this creates a first come first served dilemma, which means large population planets ships may arrive to find nothing left to pick up. A better method would be to create AI missions at the production planet and then decide where to send the commodity based on planetary GDP levels.


Elliot would have to really respond to this one to be sure of the answer.

quote:

This would make sense, since in the games where my economy crashed, things were running along fine for years with not much new construction, then bam down it came. All I really did was add more colonies (something the tips section tells you is a good way to increase income by the way), so perhaps my small luxury production got pulled away from my two big planets and that tanked their GDP?


Do you have a save from that game? Colonies do increase your income, but the period when you've just built a bunch of new colonies and are trying to get them up to speed can be a rougher time.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 2:56:22 AM)

Jim,

I think you may have hit upon one of the causes. Unlike the last save I looked at, in this one (Webbco's save) there was not much over-building. However, the capitol planet was short on luxury resources and its development level (and income) were dropping as a result. To some degree, this is an intended effect of adding a lot of colonies quickly, but I'm going to send it to Elliot for further review and consideration regarding any necessary tweaks. It seems logical to me also to put more emphasis on meeting the primary world(s) demands for luxury resources before bringing them to the new colonies.



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 3:00:02 AM)

I see what you mean, but the demands required by the capital were of commodities that I hadn't even found yet, or didn't have enough mining operations for it.



Mus -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 3:59:13 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hyfrydle

I just ran a game on full automation with no input from myself and the economy has now crashed. Currently -28409 balance with a -58095 deficit.


Check development level and check for amount of luxury resources available on your home planet. In my case my homeworld was over 65% of my GDP and it had tanked down to less than 20% culture rating and its value had cut to one third of it's previous value taking my entire economy with it.

I am convinced this all revolves around luxury item availability on the home planet. Not enough is available or being shipped to the homeworld, and i stress the later statement as in my game I did have lots of available luxury resources they just weren't being sent home.



Mus -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:02:05 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Well if you colonize quickly before your new colonies contribute to the economy it can drive up costs, but so far what I've seen is manageable. It sounds like in some cases the automated AI is suggesting too much base and ship construction for your economies though.


I can confirm that the GDP of my main planet tanked, that I had idle freighters of all kinds, no luxury goods available on the planet, a culture of under 20%, and luxury goods stockpiled in other parts of my empire that were not being transported to a homeworld screaming for them. The economy on my main planet (>65% of my total GDP) got so bad at one point that my total civilian economy was in the red after paying taxes.

I will upload my save when I have more spare time over the weekend.

For now I will be playing with as little automation as possible as I think it is advising overbuilding and overexpansion currently.



Tormodino -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:10:41 AM)

This is my impression as well, Mus.

One game gave me an incredibly wealthy area of space and I had tons of resources.

I let the AI colonize as much as possible and it diverted far too many resources to the new worlds and my economy suffered a great deal. It turned around when I fast forwarded for quite a while, from a deficit of 120k, but this was only thanks to getting a lot of great resources in very strategic locations. If I had not had those the economy would probably never have recovered.

Also, I had to kill a lot of mining stations and ships. The AI builds them like crazy. I don't mind micromanaging the production, but it would be nice to be able to trust the AI not to exaggerate its production or at least adapt a little to the current economy, the needs and its ability to actually transport the goods.



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:12:39 AM)

How do you kill off private sector ships? There's no way of right clicking on them and bringing up a menu



Tormodino -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:14:11 AM)

I don't think you can.

I meant killing off state owned ships.



n01487477 -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:15:07 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tormodino

I don't think you can.

I meant killing off state owned ships.

Can't you scrap them ?



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:19:51 AM)

Ok, I would love it if we actually could kill of mining bases, I have loads of them extracting stuff I don't need!



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:20:58 AM)

No option to scrap mining bases, mining ships, passenger ships or freighters



Tormodino -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:21:08 AM)

No. When I select a private ship and rightclick I get no options.



Tormodino -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:24:51 AM)

Actually, that could be an interesting function of government types. They could allow more and less control of the private sector. What despot in his right mind would respect private property :) And I suppose the Mercantiles would not render  as little as possible to the state, with private mercenary fleets. Oh, the possibilites.



Webbco -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:28:40 AM)

Yeah great idea! If you were more of a left-winger it would be good to stop your population from turning into capitalist pigs! 



EisenHammer -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:37:40 AM)

It looks like a lot people are having problems with the economy. Maybe Matrix's send the wrong version of the game to Digital River and that is why they are not having any problems but everyone else is. I'm just guessing.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:49:56 AM)

It's most likely due to difference in the settings of our games or our playstyles vs. yours. There are also customers doing fine with the economy, so I think it really varies. I do think there is an issue with how luxury resources are distributed in some instances (especially early on when you only have one main world supporting many developing colonies) and that's probably causing a good bit of the issue (that and some over-building, but it's the chicken and the egg to a degree).

We're prioritizing crash fixes as well as this economy issue, so hopefully we will have some economy tweaks for you all soon to make the initial experience less difficult.

Regards,

- Erik



Tormodino -> RE: Economy woes (3/27/2010 4:59:37 AM)

Too soon to ask when the patch might arrive and what it will fix?

It's easter vacation over here and I was hoping to spend vast amounts of time with the game :D



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