Wealth: Expanding the uses and needs for it

[Malorn (OP)]

So wealth has been in the game forever, but as far as I can tell, it's never really that limiting of a factor.  But, it represents one of two resources which are unlimited, the other being workforce. As such, there's a lot of interesting things one could do with it. Sadly, you never really seem to run low on wealth. Fair warning, this is a long post, discussing theory, etc. But I figure, we all play Aurora...a lot of words aren't going to scare anyone off. 

So, let's look at the real world...wealth is often a vastly more limiting factor then actual mineral resources. The US, for example, has access to vast mineral resources, but often doesn't have the wealth to divert those resources into purely national pursuits.  Now, a lot of this is done via roleplay, and that's fine, but that leaves us with a resource that is currently fairly unimportant.  Steve has done some great things with trying to make wealth necessary, and I like those things, but I think they could be improved on in various ways.

I'll be referencing the attached image of one of my games for some examples. It's a quite a modest empire, which highlights just how plentiful wealth is.  I only have two primary planets, and the second one is still growing quite rapidly. Note also, this is my bugged game where no civilian transports are spawning(yes, they are enabled), so all this income is purely from a few mining colonies and large populations. This again reduces my income so honestly I think I'm on the low end of incomes, overall.

• Research! This is a great use of wealth, and a major one. Having wealth be a limiting factor on research is a great thing. The only thing I would suggest, is that perhaps it isn't limiting enough. I could be operating a LOT more research labs at this point, the only reason I am not is because I don't want to make the game boring and progress to the top of the tech tree too quickly. Taking the brakes off, I think I could probably triple my research comfortably. Of course, it's still very expensive,a and perhaps we can find more uses for wealth, research will be just fine as it is. But making research a bit less about 'how many labs can I build' would be very good, because it extends the time at certain tech levels, expanding the game and encouraging tradeoffs and choices.
  
  
• Maintenance Supplies! As you can see, that is where most of my wealth is going, and I don't really have that large of a military force in the first place. I'm actually a little curious, am I paying anything for my large civilian fleet? In any case, I think that is a keystone here. Civilians don't cost maintenance supplies, which is a perfect design decision. Assuming that they don't cost wealth instead, perhaps they ought to? It would be a nice balancing effect on building vast numbers of civilian ships. This assumes that we are not already paying for civilian shipping, which if we are...that's great. If we aren't, maybe we should be, with some balance adjustments.
  
  
• Ground units...I think the maintenance price needs to increase, along with other changes which make it much easier to restore and maintain ground units. Wealth is the only real 'limiting factor' to stockpiling vast numbers of ground troops, and it frankly isn't that much of a limit currently. Otherwise, great plan, wealth is a wonderful cost choice.
  
  
• So...let's move on to new ways to spend our money: this one be a little controversial. Right now, I can maintain a literally unlimited number of automated and normal mines. In fact, manned mines actually create wealth in large amounts, a nice balance perk to using them over automated mines. But that means that we are basically getting minerals for 'free', and the only limit on how many minerals we can mine is how many mines we can make. Mines produce minerals, which are needed to make more mines, so it's basically exponential with only itself as a limitation. It would be very interesting to change that. A simple 'you have to pay your workers/maintain your machines' cost, using wealth. This would mean that manned mines would be much cheaper, obviously, since they produce wealth, further encouraging their use when possible.
  
  
• Finally, there are few other small things that could have a wealth cost as a balancing factor. Deep space tracking stations, for example, meaning that where to put them requires a little more thought. Terraforming stations also come to mind, paying a bit for terraforming would be a nice balancing factor, limiting the ability of a nation to just build vast numbers of transformers. Finally, military academies, because they generate an incredibly important resource, but are a one-time cost.
  

As a final aside, let me mention what shouldn't have any wealth cost, and why. Most production already uses wealth for manufacturing when in use. Shipyards, ordnance, fighters: all of them have wealth costs, you are already 'paying someone to make them'. Perfectly logical. Fuel refineries...just not worth it. Spaceports and all the rest, again, limited benefit, and you already have to get the resources there to use them. Finally, infrastructure...and I thought about that hard. While it having a wealth upkeep would be interesting, I think would be very punishing since having spare infrastructure is quite common, and it generates itself via civilian trade.

:::

Anyway, that's my summery of where I stand on wealth right now. Having to build and maintain large civilian populations is ultimately a good thing for gameplay. It creates targets for conflict, increases the value of large inhabitable planets, and makes it far more worthwhile to conquer populations rather then kill them. It's also a great realism element, since strong economies tend to produce strong nations. It would also make finding nice planets far more exciting, something which would logically be valuable, according to most good science fiction. This means you would need large populations to fund your mining colonies, your research, your ships. Maintaining large populations in multiple locations becoming quite useful, especially if they can devote their time to producing wealth. Which means you need ships to protect them, planets to house them, and risk them being attacked.

I don't think I'm reinventing the wheel here. Steve is has already done a lot in this direction, and I'm not trying to imply that my ideas will be something that has never occurred to him. But I'd love to hear if other people have other experiences. Do you find wealth as plentiful as I do? Would it be interesting to need to maintain large civilian populations to fund mining efforts? What would these new uses for wealth change about research, or maintaining large numbers of ships? How would this improve civilians, since trade can generate a LOT of wealth?

Thanks for sticking with me through all of this, I look forward to hearing what people think about my little bit of gametheory.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my opinion your analysis is pretty good... there are a few things that should have a wealth costs that currently don't have it. Things like Academies, Mines and definitely commercial ship designs and all production oriented space constructions such as fuel harvesters and terraformers should cost wealth while they operate too.


Wealth are mostly a non issue in most of my campaigns and you rarely have to make choices of what to use your wealth on as it is a bit too easy to come by.


The issue with mines and perpetual growth I think is a really great argument for why mines should have a cost, especially automatic mines because regular mines would both cost wealth but also generate wealth would then make automated mines more in lines with how important they are and how they can expand an empire with no real limits other than access to Corrundium. If there was a running cost of automated mined then spreading out the mineral extraction on both manned and unmanned mining site would be a real choice in terms of Corrundium.

[Malorn (OP)]

In my opinion your analysis is pretty good... there are a few things that should have a wealth costs that currently don't have it. Things like Academies, Mines and definitely commercial ship designs and all production oriented space constructions such as fuel harvesters and terraformers should cost wealth while they operate too.


Wealth are mostly a non issue in most of my campaigns and you rarely have to make choices of what to use your wealth on as it is a bit too easy to come by.


The issue with mines and perpetual growth I think is a really great argument for why mines should have a cost, especially automatic mines because regular mines would both cost wealth but also generate wealth would then make automated mines more in lines with how important they are and how they can expand an empire with no real limits other than access to Corrundium. If there was a running cost of automated mined then spreading out the mineral extraction on both manned and unmanned mining site would be a real choice in terms of Corrundium.

Thanks for the feedback. While I've been aurora for a long time, I don't have the gameplay hours invested that a lot of the regulars do, so it's good to see I haven't just been seeing an illusion.

[misanthropope]

im curious for an example of an American resource not being exploited on account of the unavailability of wealth.

projects are, imo, avoided because the return is insufficient for the wealth that would need to be expended, not at all because the wealth is unavailable.  i would go so far as to say it is not difficult to find signs that the american economy has far less real economic opportunity available to it than capital to lubricate those projects.  the economy is a human centipede of paper-pushing "industries" and you've got all these hedge funds and crypto-hedge funds owned directly by banks because those banks can borrow enormous funds at (arguably) negative real rates and fractional-reserve that "to infinity and beyond".

[Malorn (OP)]

im curious for an example of an American resource not being exploited on account of the unavailability of wealth.

projects are, imo, avoided because the return is insufficient for the wealth that would need to be expended, not at all because the wealth is unavailable.  i would go so far as to say it is not difficult to find signs that the american economy has far less real economic opportunity available to it than capital to lubricate those projects.  the economy is a human centipede of paper-pushing "industries" and you've got all these hedge funds and crypto-hedge funds owned directly by banks because those banks can borrow enormous funds at (arguably) negative real rates and fractional-reserve that "to infinity and beyond".

I am speaking of the government, not the civilian economy. Witness the fact that often national parks are barely maintained, funding for universities is running dry, and infrastructure is in dire need of improvement in many areas. Even key projects like internet backbone expansions often struggle heavily for funding. Part of this, of course, is due to US tax and spending policies and priorities, but the government, especially at the federal level, often struggles badly to actually fund anything that isn't considered absolutely vital.

And then there's the nation deficit...which is growing rapidly. This would imply that even the things that are getting funding are actually too much for the government incomes, at least considering national policy. For older examples, go look at the massive struggles Britain continually had paying for it's fleet during the age of sail.

[Zincat]

In my opinion, "wealth" in Aurora is much too simple and approximated to be our real world wealth. I know it gets produced by financial centers etc, but it still does not work as wealth in the real world. You do not really have debt, nor all the complex interactions bewteen wealth and population and inflation and everything else.

For example, a 0.1 million people  civilization with 200 billions wealth stored is immensely rich, while a 200 billion people civilization with 100 total wealth is super poor and cant do anything. But that cannot really be and it does not make that much sense. The 0.1 million people civilization cannot even make use of all that money, so it actually has no value. And the 200 billions people civilization should get things done, no matter what that artificial "wealth" balance is, by going into debt when in dire needs. Also, a lot of things work perfectly fine without wealth as it is. And finally, no matter how large the population is, it does not consume any wealth.

I think that a more apt comparison, which I always make in my head, is to call "Wealth" as "Excess energy" instead, and to call "financial centers" as "power plants"
And if you do that, to me it makes a lot more sense.
You use energy to fund projects and constructions in your empire, and to pay civilian shipping and such.
That 200 billions population above has no excess energy, thus it CANNOT do more because essential services would stop working. It's a literal impossibility.
Stopping production of factories etc will free up energy for other stuff
Population naturally produces energy as excess energy from city complexes, recycling and such. Or you can build dedicated power plants which produce energy and store it in usable units (batteries)
You find batteries in ruins or conquered enemy planets and can use the energy stored inside for your needs

I just think it's a model that works a lot better for a sci-fi setting, and explain better the reason why "wealth" is a hard constraint. As the real world shows you right in this period, central banks can just "produce" more wealth with exceptional measures. That is not so in Aurora, debts and quantitative easing do not exist. 
Thus a more constrained concept, like excess energy, is a more fitting explanation of the situation. Because if you have no energy, you have NO energy. You have to either stop something that is running or produce more, it cannot come out of thin air.

[skoormit]

In my own empire, I find that balancing income with expenses is not terribly challenging, but also not entirely trivial.
It would be trivial if there were no cap on accumulated wealth.
But because I can only keep a balance of 2x my annual racial wealth, I am constantly expanding my spending as my income increases (so as not to reach the cap and "waste" income from a budget surplus).

I expand my spending by:

1) Maintaining research spending as 30% of my total income.
Currently, this means that 40% of my homeworld's industry is devoted to building research labs. My monthly total income is ~7.2k, and research expense is ~2.2k.
I play with a global research speed of 25%. Even spending this much on research, I doubt I will ever finish the tech tree. Forty years in, I am just now about to complete Ion Drive tech.

2) Spending most of the rest of my available industry output on more construction factories.
Confacs, like labs, consume wealth to operate.

3) Purchasing all (or nearly all) mineral output from CMCs.
CMCs are terrible value in the long run compared to the cost of developing equivalent capacity yourself, but they give you minerals now, and you don't have to devote any industry to build them.
If your construction factories are ever idle, you should not be purchasing from CMCs. Build mines/automines instead, and save money in the long run.
But if your confacs, like mine, are always 100% utilized (barring short-term mineral crunches), then purchasing CMC output accelerates your economic growth, by allowing you to continue to build confacs for longer before needing to build mines. Confacs provide a compounding return on investment, while mines are merely linear, given adequate mineral availability.

4) Continually expanding my shipyards.
I have found that shipyard expansion is a large source of wealth, limited only by available workers and available minerals (duranium and neutronium).
Building enough installations to employ 1 million workers costs 2400BP (typically; there are some exceptions for installations not build in large amounts) plus 2400 minerals.
You can employ the same 1 million workers via shipyard expansion (growing capacity or adding slipways) for just 864BP plus 864 minerals (half dur, half neu).
Those workers provide annual taxes of 100 wealth per year at the base rate.
That's a wealth RoI of 11.5% on shipyard expansion activities at the start of the game.
Raising the tax rate to 120 (an RoI of 13.9%) costs 3k RP. Tax rate 140 (ROI 16.2%) costs another 5k RP.
In short, shipyard expansion provides a tremendous avenue for income growth, as long as your pop growth and mining can keep up.



Your economy stats indicate that you have a lot more unemployed workers than I do.
You have a population of 6+B, with monthly worker taxes less than 6k, at a tax rate of 160.
My own empire has a population of ~1.7B, with monthly workers taxes of 4.4k, at a tax rate of 120.

[skoormit]

You do not really have debt...

You can go into debt. While you have a negative balance, you suffer an economic malus equal to the ratio of the debt amount to your annual racial wealth. This is the "Economic Production Modifier" on the colony summary tab.

[Zincat]

You do not really have debt...

You can go into debt. While you have a negative balance, you suffer an economic malus equal to the ratio of the debt amount to your annual racial wealth. This is the "Economic Production Modifier" on the colony summary tab.

My point is, it's NOT the debt as we understand it in the real world.
It's an artificial concept that makes little sense in a production environment.
If you nation is at war, I can assure you your factories will work at full capacity, no matter what your monetary debt is. More money will be "printed". Sure the population will suffer due to inflation etc etc etc. But those factories WILL keep working.

And in fact, the concept that debt lowers production in Aurora makes so much more sense in my "excess energy" scenario. Because less energy than needed = you have to shut down stuff, and so lower total production.

[liveware]

im curious for an example of an American resource not being exploited on account of the unavailability of wealth.

projects are, imo, avoided because the return is insufficient for the wealth that would need to be expended, not at all because the wealth is unavailable.  i would go so far as to say it is not difficult to find signs that the american economy has far less real economic opportunity available to it than capital to lubricate those projects.  the economy is a human centipede of paper-pushing "industries" and you've got all these hedge funds and crypto-hedge funds owned directly by banks because those banks can borrow enormous funds at (arguably) negative real rates and fractional-reserve that "to infinity and beyond".

I think your analysis of modern American economics is fairly accurate (I've been living there my entire life). Many things are intentionally not done NOT because they would have no net return on investment but instead because the rate of return is too low. If you can't show a net return after a year of operations you are probably not going to be competitive.

Also in my own opinion money (capital) is only a means to an end. Wealth is a different concept and is less tangible than physical capital. So your notion that capital 'lubricates' projects is quite consistent with my own view of things.

Not to get too off topic but I recently discovered that US currency is only legally required to be fractionalized out to the 1/1000... so there's definitely room for clever accounting with interest rate calculations knowing that.

[liveware]

So wealth has been in the game forever, but as far as I can tell, it's never really that limiting of a factor.  But, it represents one of two resources which are unlimited, the other being workforce. As such, there's a lot of interesting things one could do with it. Sadly, you never really seem to run low on wealth. Fair warning, this is a long post, discussing theory, etc. But I figure, we all play Aurora...a lot of words aren't going to scare anyone off. 

So, let's look at the real world...wealth is often a vastly more limiting factor then actual mineral resources. The US, for example, has access to vast mineral resources, but often doesn't have the wealth to divert those resources into purely national pursuits.  Now, a lot of this is done via roleplay, and that's fine, but that leaves us with a resource that is currently fairly unimportant.  Steve has done some great things with trying to make wealth necessary, and I like those things, but I think they could be improved on in various ways.

I'll be referencing the attached image of one of my games for some examples. It's a quite a modest empire, which highlights just how plentiful wealth is.  I only have two primary planets, and the second one is still growing quite rapidly. Note also, this is my bugged game where no civilian transports are spawning(yes, they are enabled), so all this income is purely from a few mining colonies and large populations. This again reduces my income so honestly I think I'm on the low end of incomes, overall.

• Research! This is a great use of wealth, and a major one. Having wealth be a limiting factor on research is a great thing. The only thing I would suggest, is that perhaps it isn't limiting enough. I could be operating a LOT more research labs at this point, the only reason I am not is because I don't want to make the game boring and progress to the top of the tech tree too quickly. Taking the brakes off, I think I could probably triple my research comfortably. Of course, it's still very expensive,a and perhaps we can find more uses for wealth, research will be just fine as it is. But making research a bit less about 'how many labs can I build' would be very good, because it extends the time at certain tech levels, expanding the game and encouraging tradeoffs and choices.
  
  
• Maintenance Supplies! As you can see, that is where most of my wealth is going, and I don't really have that large of a military force in the first place. I'm actually a little curious, am I paying anything for my large civilian fleet? In any case, I think that is a keystone here. Civilians don't cost maintenance supplies, which is a perfect design decision. Assuming that they don't cost wealth instead, perhaps they ought to? It would be a nice balancing effect on building vast numbers of civilian ships. This assumes that we are not already paying for civilian shipping, which if we are...that's great. If we aren't, maybe we should be, with some balance adjustments.
  
  
• Ground units...I think the maintenance price needs to increase, along with other changes which make it much easier to restore and maintain ground units. Wealth is the only real 'limiting factor' to stockpiling vast numbers of ground troops, and it frankly isn't that much of a limit currently. Otherwise, great plan, wealth is a wonderful cost choice.
  
  
• So...let's move on to new ways to spend our money: this one be a little controversial. Right now, I can maintain a literally unlimited number of automated and normal mines. In fact, manned mines actually create wealth in large amounts, a nice balance perk to using them over automated mines. But that means that we are basically getting minerals for 'free', and the only limit on how many minerals we can mine is how many mines we can make. Mines produce minerals, which are needed to make more mines, so it's basically exponential with only itself as a limitation. It would be very interesting to change that. A simple 'you have to pay your workers/maintain your machines' cost, using wealth. This would mean that manned mines would be much cheaper, obviously, since they produce wealth, further encouraging their use when possible.
  
  
• Finally, there are few other small things that could have a wealth cost as a balancing factor. Deep space tracking stations, for example, meaning that where to put them requires a little more thought. Terraforming stations also come to mind, paying a bit for terraforming would be a nice balancing factor, limiting the ability of a nation to just build vast numbers of transformers. Finally, military academies, because they generate an incredibly important resource, but are a one-time cost.
  

As a final aside, let me mention what shouldn't have any wealth cost, and why. Most production already uses wealth for manufacturing when in use. Shipyards, ordnance, fighters: all of them have wealth costs, you are already 'paying someone to make them'. Perfectly logical. Fuel refineries...just not worth it. Spaceports and all the rest, again, limited benefit, and you already have to get the resources there to use them. Finally, infrastructure...and I thought about that hard. While it having a wealth upkeep would be interesting, I think would be very punishing since having spare infrastructure is quite common, and it generates itself via civilian trade.

:::

Anyway, that's my summery of where I stand on wealth right now. Having to build and maintain large civilian populations is ultimately a good thing for gameplay. It creates targets for conflict, increases the value of large inhabitable planets, and makes it far more worthwhile to conquer populations rather then kill them. It's also a great realism element, since strong economies tend to produce strong nations. It would also make finding nice planets far more exciting, something which would logically be valuable, according to most good science fiction. This means you would need large populations to fund your mining colonies, your research, your ships. Maintaining large populations in multiple locations becoming quite useful, especially if they can devote their time to producing wealth. Which means you need ships to protect them, planets to house them, and risk them being attacked.

I don't think I'm reinventing the wheel here. Steve is has already done a lot in this direction, and I'm not trying to imply that my ideas will be something that has never occurred to him. But I'd love to hear if other people have other experiences. Do you find wealth as plentiful as I do? Would it be interesting to need to maintain large civilian populations to fund mining efforts? What would these new uses for wealth change about research, or maintaining large numbers of ships? How would this improve civilians, since trade can generate a LOT of wealth?

Thanks for sticking with me through all of this, I look forward to hearing what people think about my little bit of gametheory.

I generally agree with all of your points. I find that wealth is a little too easy to generate in-game (if only real life was so simple!). My general strategy for wealth generation is to keep a slightly positive income and build just enough financial centers to achieve that (civilian trade lines notwithstanding).

In addition to your ideas, I think another interesting option would to be able to use racial wealth to temporarily accelerate research/production projects. That would be especially useful when you stumble upon a NPR unprepared.

[Malorn (OP)]

I generally agree with all of your points. I find that wealth is a little too easy to generate in-game (if only real life was so simple!). My general strategy for wealth generation is to keep a slightly positive income and build just enough financial centers to achieve that (civilian trade lines notwithstanding).

In addition to your ideas, I think another interesting option would to be able to use racial wealth to temporarily accelerate research/production projects. That would be especially useful when you stumble upon a NPR unprepared.

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Though I think it should be extremely inefficient, and thus very much an emergency measure.

Your economy stats indicate that you have a lot more unemployed workers than I do.
You have a population of 6+B, with monthly worker taxes less than 6k, at a tax rate of 160.
My own empire has a population of ~1.7B, with monthly workers taxes of 4.4k, at a tax rate of 120.

Yes, I'm not employing more people largely because I don't need to. My fleet is bottlenecked by the minerals to maintain it, not labor to build it or wealth to maintain it. I am limiting my percentage of researchers very intentionally, so as to avoid finishing the text tree long before I'm ready to finish the game. Apart from research...what really would there be to spend money on?

 Sure, I could start manufacturing financial centers, or building even even larger industrial bases, but those really won't provide me anything. Mining is the real limitation, and that is limited by construction factories and minerals to produce those mines, along with freighters to carry those minerals. This a bit of an odd custom start, so Sol is siting right next door with roughly 15b humans on earth...and we are in a bit of a cold war, so I can't really overextend and push out too far lest I end up having to send my entire fleet off to fight a new NPR and leave myself open to angry xenocidal humans.

Having apart power in my economy is kinda the entire reason I made this post. I could rev up money production to vast degree if I needed, and I don't even have civilian traffic. As it is, I cheer every time they make a new CMC, because I have more then enough money to buy the output.

:::

As to many of the other posts, general economic theory is fascinating certainly, but it's a bit beyond the scope of this critique. But I don't think using energy in this context makes sense, since energy is something which is produced using reactors, etc, rather then by people and economic activity. Equally, not every nation can manage to 'keep the factories going' without money, especially depending on local political support and the scale of the war.

In a total war for survival, that might be possible, but many nations have failed that exact same test, even in extreme wars. Running out of money, as odd as it sounds, has happened, especially outside of our modern context of money, which may well be a passing fad.

[Zincat]

As to many of the other posts, general economic theory is fascinating certainly, but it's a bit beyond the scope of this critique. But I don't think using energy in this context makes sense, since energy is something which is produced using reactors, etc, rather then by people and economic activity. Equally, not every nation can manage to 'keep the factories going' without money, especially depending on local political support and the scale of the war.

In a total war for survival, that might be possible, but many nations have failed that exact same test, even in extreme wars. Running out of money, as odd as it sounds, has happened, especially outside of our modern context of money, which may well be a passing fad.

Allow me to play devil's advocate a bit. Just for fun! 

You assume that a society HAS money. Not all the games I have played had money. At least half of them didn't have the concept of wealth.
Some were hive races.
Other were war clans where anything in the nation was allocated due to fighting prowess
I also played an utopian communist nation once.
None of these scenarios have money. Money does not even EXIST here  And yes, all of these were obviously with civilians "off", so to speak, destroying the civs so they don't pop out.

Stored energy always works, even when money does not exist. There are in fact some commercial sci-fi games which use energy instead of money, for these very reasons. Money does not always make sense, especially in ultra advanced settings.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I also view Wealth as a specific resource that does not necessarily tie to money. In this term it can be anything that make a society function and prosper. So it can be a combination of many things including Money but also social capital, some type or services, health care and whatever types or thing that makes life worth living or a society progress forward.

Wealth don't have to be defined as it can vary so wildly between empires, but the function of it is the same no matter what forms it takes.


But as said the thread is not about what wealth is but how it is handled in the game as a balancing resource. I agree that for example player commercial designs should have a wealth maintenance cost as well as most production forms including mines.

[Malorn (OP)]

Allow me to play devil's advocate a bit. Just for fun! 

You assume that a society HAS money. Not all the games I have played had money. At least half of them didn't have the concept of wealth.
Some were hive races.
Other were war clans where anything in the nation was allocated due to fighting prowess
I also played an utopian communist nation once.
None of these scenarios have money. Money does not even EXIST here  And yes, all of these were obviously with civilians "off", so to speak, destroying the civs so they don't pop out.

Stored energy always works, even when money does not exist. There are in fact some commercial sci-fi games which use energy instead of money, for these very reasons. Money does not always make sense, especially in ultra advanced settings.

I think you are viewing 'money' in far too narrow a context, and getting hung up on semantics. Call it whatever you want, the uses for wealth remain applicable. A nation can run out of wealth just as much as money. And it is already clearly established in many places that wealth represents the wealth that can be accessed by the controlling body of the nation, not a sum total of all wealth the species itself possesses. The mere fact that wealth is created 'out of nothing' makes it clear it does not represent energy. But  hey, if you want to think that the financial centers are actually huge reactors...go for it. You can even fluff it as being matrix style organic battery systems, to explain why all it needs is population and nothing else... Energy makes a fine currency in other games, but in aurora it is generated by trading between planets--which pretty clearly would not result in a net gain of energy. Unless we suppose they were 'exchanging electric charges between the transnewtonian spheres of the planets' or some other random justification.

Sorry, but I care about how a resource is used in the game, not the various ways it can be considered from a lore perspective, at least not here in a suggestion forum. As well debate if TN elements are radioactive, or whether stars secretly contain 99% of all TN elements in the system (likely, based on the lore). There is no gameplay relevance to such a debate, and it feels like a lot of really solid suggestions get lost in the background noise of goofing around(not that my suggestions are necessarily among those 'solid' suggestions). That fluff is very important for roleplaying, but at the same time it can mean that anything someone says can be 'caught out' if you shift perspective enough. Example song and dance: what is 'crew' even. It seems to be same for all races, but what if 'crew' is some sort of measurement of limbs and brainpower, rather then individual separate bodies. WHOA MAN...!

As you said, playing devil's advocate just for fun, I suppose, but it kinda distracts from the points I was hoping to actually hear feedback on, and equally makes it harder for anyone actually reading opinions and being able to consider them without having to wade past a massive debate on the definitions of economy. Reminds me of a another project and another forum, where there was 80 pages of arguing(with admittedly very nice citations) about which English spellings of various Chinese province names ought to be used, when the actual topic was how to model the Chinese economy from 1356 to 1860 and how it evolved during that time. Needless to say, nothing useful was obtained...

So...maybe I'm just triggered by my past traumas? 

Wealth don't have to be defined as it can vary so wildly between empires, but the function of it is the same no matter what forms it takes.

But as said the thread is not about what wealth is but how it is handled in the game as a balancing resource.

Yes, entirely.