so i have been wondering about how dust is going to be produced in this game. there are many tile types that we haven't seen so far but the ones we have seen do not produce as much dust as you would need to pay for maintenance on your buildings. i thought that an arid or desert biome may produce more dust but i personally don't know if there will be such biomes. so if tiles don't produce much dust what other sources can there be? there must be some class of dust producing buildings such as a market or a bank to provide a moderate amount of dust. however for acquiring large amounts must take something else and likely more late game. trade routes between cities internally and externally could be a big producer of dust. however in endless space, extra dust could be produced by a number of different anomalies and special resources. i personally would love to see factions having to fight over specific reasons due to there being an anomaly or rare luxury resource such as dust water that had the potential to produce large amounts of dust. these are just some of my thoughts, i would love fore people to discuss this part of the game. as there have np mention of factions that rely on producing dust i think it would be interesting if fans of economic empires discussed possibilities of that type of faction.

GDD 4 regarding City Economy makes it clear that there are buildings that modify dust output. See /#/endless-legend/forum/7-archives/thread/3592-el-gdd-4-city-economy.



As for how much dust gets produced, the city management screenie we have for the Broken Lords appears to be producing 10 units of dust from exploitation of tiles and the city as a whole is producing 36 units of dust with only one population unit working in dust production:





As for additional production of dust, the GamersGlobal.de coverage from GDC indicates that you can sell all sorts of things into the marketplace--including military units. That means you've got all sorts of means for generating extra dust. See http://www.gamersglobal.de/news/83488/gdc-2014-endless-legend-angeschaut#top



This looks like a desert(ish) biome. Whether its tiles natively produce more dust is another matter. Note also that the biome north of the Broken Lords city management screenie above also looks a lot drier than the biome the city occupies.







The Wild Walkers reveal also gave us a screenie for quests: one of the typical rewards appears to be dust.







I'd also expect that Empire Plans enacted through the expenditure of Prestige include dust-production-oriented options. The GamersGlobal article hinted as much. See http://www.gamersglobal.de/news/83488/gdc-2014-endless-legend-angeschaut#top



At the end of the day, I'm sure that dust production rates will be something subject to extensive balancing through playtesting in Early-Access. The same is almost certainly true of all other types of production. =)

the broken lords use dust instead of food though so it is probably natural for them to produce more dust than other races, i would like to know about dust production in average factions. as you can see in the screenshots, the vaulters only produce 2 dust per turn, so how do they pay for maintenance on buildings? also is there a link to that article in english?

Adventurer_Blitz wrote:
the broken lords use dust instead of food though so it is probably natural for them to produce more dust than other races, i would like to know about dust production in average factions.(1) as you can see in the screenshots, the vaulters only produce 2 dust per turn, so how do they pay for maintenance on buildings?(2) also is there a link to that article in english?(3)

1. This is true, but we only just now know this. The Broken Lords screenies come from late August, so who knows if that particular trait was attached to them at the time (note that the city has one population unit dedicated to food production nonetheless)? Regardless, the tile exploitation is still producing 10 dust on its own. Even if other factions produced a quarter of the dust that the BL do, then they'd still be producing an additional (36 - 10)/4 = 6.5 dust per unit of population.



2. They have a treasury of over 2400 dust in one screenie and over 1700 in another. They got that dust somehow. They may be running at only 2 dust per turn because of unit maintenance. This doesn't strike me as out of line with ES.



3. Alas, GamersGlobal hasn't published in English since about 2009. If I get the time, I'll translate it, but I expect we'll see more GDC coverage this week. TBS games were probably not the highest priority for reporting.

i was also wondering what kind of revenue flexibility can you have without being able to adjust the taxes?

I'm curious about this too. It always struck me as an odd mechanic to drop. It seems like selling stuff to the marketplace is the substitute.

but you can't have the marketplace without the roving clans and someone somewhere has to produce enough dust to pay you for what you dump on the market.

Ah, yes, intrigue =) Maybe that's the point.