Author Topic: Wealth Generation  (Read 13205 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #60 on: January 30, 2019, 04:57:14 AM »
Honestly the new proposal doesn't feel very neat. There seems to be too much overlap with mines already producing minerals, and it is not clear to me what wealth should represent.
Why do financial centers help with ship construction or research anyway?

A radical suggestion would be to make wealth not storable at all, but instead working as a cap on all activities of an empire, representing the amount of resources that can be diverted.

Mines don't produce money and financial centres don't help construction. I've probably made this sound complex by trying to explain how different industries would affect the economy, when in reality the proposal is simple.

Wealth is generated by manufacturing workers, regardless of industry. All workers provide the same wealth benefit (probably 100 wealth per million workers as a base), regardless of whether their industry is currently building something. The single exception is that workers in conventional industry provide one third of the normal tax.

Each financial centre provides a wealth boost (TBD) on top of the tax income from its workers.
 

Offline MarcAFK

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 2005
  • Thanked: 134 times
  • ...it's so simple an idiot could have devised it..
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #61 on: January 30, 2019, 06:44:59 AM »
That sounds fine, though I still believe most population tax revenue should come from service industry so theres a direct opposition between 'factory workers' who produce stuff but cost money, and "service industry" which makes you nothing of value, but tax revenue.
Then other systems could be added to have more control over how much of your population ends up being employable or otherwise sit around being cash cows.
At the moment the only real control you have is dumping more people into high population worlds gives you the maximum service industry, or otherwise offloading people into smaller colonies you get a more productive workforce but lower service industry percentage, which at the moment has no downside its just more production for the cost of shuffling people around, but with my proposal it would lead to lower tax revenue.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #62 on: January 30, 2019, 07:00:46 AM »
That sounds fine, though I still believe most population tax revenue should come from service industry so theres a direct opposition between 'factory workers' who produce stuff but cost money, and "service industry" which makes you nothing of value, but tax revenue.
Then other systems could be added to have more control over how much of your population ends up being employable or otherwise sit around being cash cows.
At the moment the only real control you have is dumping more people into high population worlds gives you the maximum service industry, or otherwise offloading people into smaller colonies you get a more productive workforce but lower service industry percentage, which at the moment has no downside its just more production for the cost of shuffling people around, but with my proposal it would lead to lower tax revenue.

The reason for it being the manufacturing sector and not the service sector is the "India Problem". Service is more realistic in real-world terms, but manufacturing is much better in game play terms.
 

Offline kks

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • Posts: 131
  • Thanked: 13 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #63 on: January 30, 2019, 07:41:31 AM »
I think Steve has made clear what he wants the new system to do. Especially from a gameplay perspective, this is imho a good solution to the current wealth-related problems.

The misunderstanding and arguments against probably mostly come from the difference somebody imagines by thing described as wealth and the system Steve would like to implement. I find it difficult to understand, that the players spending on military construction would increase the general "wealth" (seen as money/food for those hivemind races/...) of the players empire. The population working in these facilities does increase the gouverments capability in (primarily military) construction and power, but they have to been paid/cared for with the gouverments "wealth"(money/food/...).

Therefore, I think, that one could simply rename the system from wealth to something like military ressources or industrial/gouverment capacity. I am sadly very bad at finding suitable names, but others in this thread have proposed similiar thing, so I hope the general direction I mean is clear.
"gouverment ressources" would represent the sum of the capbility of an empire to construct and maintain space and military forces and their supporting logistics foundation (logistics, stateowned feighters, terraformers, ...). This would primarly be the population working in gouverment facilities. An empire needs qualified personel and mines to keep the factories and shipyards running, so mines and financial centres provide more "gouverment ressources" than they consume, while the factories need more "gouverment ressources" than they provide when they construct new things. If the CFs lay idle, they increase "gouverment ressources" by producing things needed for maintanence of facilites or something else.

This would imho neatly solve the issues some here have with the new "wealth" by simply renaming it to something more appropriate for the desired system.
If somebody thinks the name "financial centre" does not fit in this system, it could be renamed to something showing it generates "gouverment ressources". Maybe "specialist training centre" or "bureaucractic department".

The former "wealth" (money/food/...) needed to support the workers would be no longer needed and is abstractet away, as the population not available for (military) gouverment (means not available for the manufacturing sector) would pay the taxes, which can be assumed to be enough to "pay" the manufacturing pops. As such it is no longer needed. Maybe the service sector pop can provide a small amount of "gouverment ressources" representing private manufacturing, research, mining operations, or something similiar.

Here is the original post by Iceranger, which I wanted to support. He has calculated whats practically cunsumes produces these "gouverment ressources" more detailed:

It looks to me that the new wealth model looks more like power than economy, depending on how much 'wealth' we can get from taxes on civs, which is largely out of player's control.

Based on current numbers:
Financial centers: power generator, generates 3x power per million workers
Refineries, mines: small power generator, generates 0.5x power per million workers

Factories, labs: small power consumers, consumes 0.5x power per million workers
Military stuff: large power consumers, consumes (7/8)x (?) power per million workers

To balance your book (without considering civ income, assuming the same worker requirement as in VB6):
1 financial center can support 6 factories, 1 mine can support 1 factories
(10/3) financial centers are needed to support 1 lab
about 26 financial centers are needed to support one 18kt military shipyard (based on the new shipyard worker model)

We may as well rename wealth to power, and then we can have more ways of generating it, rather than only have the choice of building financial centers or cancelling industry jobs.

I do not know if this power was meant to represent electrical energy, or power in the sense of capacity, but maybe military or gouverment power could be a fitting name.
I hope somebody else can help with finding new, better fitting names than "gouverment ressources".

I also hope I could made clear what I ment, and would like to explain it some more, if not.

After this proposal I have only one questions left:
Do you intent to keep some racial modifiers for construction and "wealth" generation? So could we have empires, which need a much larger number of workers to have the same effect, maybe with a smaller impact on planetary population capacity per individual?

And as a long time lurker, I want to use these opportunity to say Thank you and congratulate on the game you are creating, Steve.
 

Offline Hazard

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • H
  • Posts: 643
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #64 on: January 30, 2019, 08:08:48 AM »
The reason for it being the manufacturing sector and not the service sector is the "India Problem". Service is more realistic in real-world terms, but manufacturing is much better in game play terms.

That's... not really true.

I mean, there is a very well defined ration between the manufacturing and service sectors for low colony cost worlds, and IIRC that ratio remains true even for high colony cost worlds as Agriculture & Environment is drawn first and the remainder is divided between Manufacturing and Service.

If you use the Service sector as the tax paying sector you simply need a modifier that increases the effective population required for the same wealth output.


And frankly, with some recoding, or if it's true already, you can have the A&E sector draw primarily from the Service sector for more personnel as colony cost increases, which if the Service sector is your primary income source provides a natural constraint on your wealth production and an incentive for more extensive terraforming efforts. It also means that colony worlds are likely to be a net drain on your economy as small populations are disproportionately weighed towards the Manufacturing sector, drawing in wealth for various purposes, while their Service sector is tiny in comparison and can't pay for its production, while the source of the population now has an about equal decrease between taxation and production.
 

Offline Graham

  • Chief Petty Officer
  • ***
  • Posts: 47
  • Thanked: 17 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #65 on: January 30, 2019, 08:45:02 AM »
The reason for it being the manufacturing sector and not the service sector is the "India Problem". Service is more realistic in real-world terms, but manufacturing is much better in game play terms.

Is the purpose of these changes specifically just to fix the India problem, or to do you want to completely replace the association between population and wealth with industry and wealth? I ask this because it seems like the more intuitive option would simply be to take the existing "wealth generation modifier" and add some rules allowing it to dynamically change with time and player investment. Making it colony dependent would be a plus but not required. This could form a solid basis for economic expansion later down the line if it interested you, but would at least function just as well as the current model.

Additionally you spoke earlier of "unemployed" industrial workers still generating a portion of income. Would this not reinforce the "India problem"?
 

Offline MarcAFK

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 2005
  • Thanked: 134 times
  • ...it's so simple an idiot could have devised it..
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #66 on: January 30, 2019, 10:02:07 AM »
Its true that simply making the service industry as they currently exist the primary wealth producer wouldn't solve the India problem, whats needed is for the service industries to not automatically produce their full taxation potential. There could be a modifiers based on trade, high employment, other civilian activities, etc.
Only worlds which tick every checkbox for civilian activity would be capable of producing their full potential of wealth generation.
The effect I guess is superficially the same as the theoretical india would fail to produce high wealth due to low employment in the proposed changes, compared to this idea where it would also fail to produce high wealth too but due to more complex reasons.
The ultimate difference then is how a player needs to go about increasing their income, on the one hand simply adding more productive facilities and raising employment gives you the wealth boost, while with the service industries and associated modifiers you would need to still ensure a world has high employment, but also good trade and whatever other conditions might be conceivably be determined as necessary to make a good economic producer.
I hope I'm not coming off in the wrong light as I just intend to offer an alternative which might have interesting game play benefits. I see nothing objectively wrong with the proposed system .
Thx for bearing with us through this deluge of ideas, criticism and TLDR.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Jovus

  • Lt. Commander
  • ********
  • J
  • Posts: 220
  • Thanked: 81 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #67 on: January 30, 2019, 10:22:49 AM »
The reason for it being the manufacturing sector and not the service sector is the "India Problem". Service is more realistic in real-world terms, but manufacturing is much better in game play terms.

Would you consider, based on playtesting, a (very much reduced) contribution from raw population as well? That way if someone wants to play "India" he can do so without having to drive a manufacturing sector. After all, the "India" from the problem does have some capabilities, purely from the fact of their large population.

As mentioned, that's all dependent on playtesting for balance points, but I think this could also help avoid situations where the player fights off a threat, but gets bombed into oblivion and is stuck in a negative cycle, unable to get the wealth to get more wealth. Over time, the trickle from raw population should build up enough to allow rebooting.

With your proposed numbers (and no clue what expenditures look like), if 100 wealth comes from 100m manufacturing sector workers, maybe 1 or 5 wealth comes from the same number of 'service sector' workers.

Aside, I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but have you considered what to do regarding wealth from interplanetary trade?

ETA: Just saw your post in the updates thread stating you'd doubled taxes on civilian shipping; does that mean you intend to keep the shipping economy paradigm more or less the same? (Obviously you're playing with the numbers.)
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #68 on: January 30, 2019, 10:48:33 AM »
Yes, I am keeping shipping the same in mechanics terms and increasing the benefit from that. I may also add extra rare goods produced by specific worlds.

A few people have raised the issue that they find it hard to accept manufacturing should not produce wealth as well as capacity, or something on those lines. To take a real world example: a government orders a ship and pays for it. Part of the cost of the ship is the wages of the people who build it. Those wages are then taxed by the government who paid for the ship, so the workers effectively return a portion of the spend to the government. This is how the proposed model will work in principle. The problem isn't really the tax, but the fact that mines and refineries don't cost anything to run, so you get the tax on those wages without any original spend. However, I don't want to start going further down the rabbit hole by charging for mining.

The service sector 'taxes' are used for non-military/industrial purposes such as health, education, welfare, so they cancel out. I could make it more 'realistic' by taking tax from the service sector and adding the welfare, health education costs to offset the extra income, but that seems pointless in game play terms.

Wealth is intended to provide an extra concern for players to avoid them simply building at full capacity with everything while minerals last. It could be replaced by something else entirely, such as power. In that case, I would create various types of power generation infrastructure - some form of Sorium-based power stations, perhaps geothermal on worlds with high tectonics, or solar-generation on worlds with high temperatures, or hydro power on worlds with a lot of water, etc. Even power satellites that absorb solar energy and beam it to the planet that needs it (with a suitable energy efficiency tech line). Wealth balance could be replaced by power storage. That would require a lot more work though than a change to how wealth is currently created but it would solve the "India Problem". However, changing wealth to power would raise the question of what purpose is served by civilian shipping.

I guess I could always do both :)
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #69 on: January 30, 2019, 10:50:57 AM »
The reason for it being the manufacturing sector and not the service sector is the "India Problem". Service is more realistic in real-world terms, but manufacturing is much better in game play terms.

Is the purpose of these changes specifically just to fix the India problem, or to do you want to completely replace the association between population and wealth with industry and wealth? I ask this because it seems like the more intuitive option would simply be to take the existing "wealth generation modifier" and add some rules allowing it to dynamically change with time and player investment. Making it colony dependent would be a plus but not required. This could form a solid basis for economic expansion later down the line if it interested you, but would at least function just as well as the current model.

Additionally you spoke earlier of "unemployed" industrial workers still generating a portion of income. Would this not reinforce the "India problem"?

Primarily to fix the India problem. Unemployed in this sense means workers in factories that aren't building anything, not unused manufacturing population.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #70 on: January 30, 2019, 10:53:11 AM »
I hope I'm not coming off in the wrong light as I just intend to offer an alternative which might have interesting game play benefits. I see nothing objectively wrong with the proposed system .
Thx for bearing with us through this deluge of ideas, criticism and TLDR.

No, it's fine. The reason I start these threads is to hear all the potential ideas and to consider pitfalls I hadn't though about. Even if I don't use or like an idea, I still appreciate the thought behind it.
 

Offline Iceranger

  • Registered
  • Commander
  • *********
  • I
  • Posts: 391
  • Thanked: 229 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #71 on: January 30, 2019, 10:58:29 AM »

Wealth is intended to provide an extra concern for players to avoid them simply building at full capacity with everything while minerals last. It could be replaced by something else entirely, such as power. In that case, I would create various types of power generation infrastructure - some form of Sorium-based power stations, perhaps geothermal on worlds with high tectonics, or solar-generation on worlds with high temperatures, or hydro power on worlds with a lot of water, etc. Even power satellites that absorb solar energy and beam it to the planet that needs it (with a suitable energy efficiency tech line). Wealth balance could be replaced by power storage. That would require a lot more work though than a change to how wealth is currently created but it would solve the "India Problem". However, changing wealth to power would raise the question of what purpose is served by civilian shipping.


It looks to me with your proposed wealth model (minus the civ shippping), changing 'wealth' to 'energy' and 'financial center' to 'power plant', it will almost work flawlessly as the energy system. :)
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #72 on: January 30, 2019, 11:05:28 AM »
I get why people are saying that but I still think wealth works better. I just think of it as gold or its equivalent instead of fiat currency, which is below the level the game is modeling.
 

Offline King-Salomon

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • Posts: 153
  • Thanked: 38 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #73 on: January 30, 2019, 11:42:34 AM »
if wealth would be changed to "power" -that's completly ignoring the upkeep "costs" of military units (especially groudn units) in wealth ... I am afraid that this aspect of wealth is completly forgotten in the discussion at the moment as I am only reading about "installation A costs xy wealth, installation B brings YZ wealth"...

"power" would cover the installation aspect (and part research costs) but not the upkeep costs of the military and the rest of research costs... so I would at least let some kind of "wealth" in the game as it is - even if the "power" idea has some points to it...
 
The following users thanked this post: Steve Walmsley

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Wealth Generation
« Reply #74 on: January 30, 2019, 12:04:11 PM »
It looks to me with your proposed wealth model (minus the civ shippping), changing 'wealth' to 'energy' and 'financial center' to 'power plant', it will almost work flawlessly as the energy system. :)

Except workers producing 'energy' doesn't really make sense compared to producing taxes. If I went down the power route, it would not be based on number of people.