I like the "In-Game Ad" part. Reminds me of an in-game craigslist.



"One hero, rarely used, low miles."

I really am liking the idea of this improved market place system!



My only question is, does the market place tax benefit the person who owns the system? or is it like EL where it is just an additional cost of transactions.



EDIT: When I mean benefit, I meant does the owner gain the dust for whatever the tax rate is?

I've not yet played EL so I'm unfamiliar with how significant this is to the game.



With that said, I would think that this addition would most benefit a race with an economic focus, however the requirements to own it seem to favour scientific (Researching the deed) races most with at best equal footing versus industrial focused ones (going by ES1 game mechanics).



What I would like to see would be a slight advantage for economically minded races.



The best way I can think of would be to make the industry cost higher than usual for that era while either making the buyout cost for that item lower than normal, or give it a fixed, mandatory buyout so that any race needs to have at least some economic investment to own it. The second option would be a nice touch of realism as in making any kind of market you need to invest your own capital initially to get it started, however balance wise it may be too punishing to the non economic races compared to the first option and cause the opposite scenario of only economic races being able to achieve it.



I'm not sure if this would work as intended, as in ES1 even the economic races aren't really that well off in the early game, but it's the best I can come up with at this time.

Seems interesting, looking forward to testing it out.

Although, it's got me a little concerned about late-game. My experiences with EL's late-game were a little overwhelming. Massive Empires, Loads of Cities, and a Craptonne of things to keep track of.

For me, the Market in EL became obsolete mid-late game, and the majority of my time was spent keeping my cities afloat.



From what I've gathered, reading the GDDs, expansion will be similar to ES1 moreso than EL. (Which I'm happy thinking) EL's Era system left me feeling kinda alienated as I'm a completionist, and hated leaving techs behind.

Getting off-track. With ES1's empire expansion, I always felt the need to trade resources. However, in EL; I found I had abundances of most - if not, all - resources.



I suppose I'm worried about how common generating resources will become. I'm almost frightened about accumulating 60-100+ Titanium-70 / turn.

I don't recall it being touched on, so I'm going to put my own 2 cents here:



What if Strategic and Luxury resources worked like Industry and Science did in ES1 - You produce 'X' per turn, if you don't use all of it, it overflows to the next turn only, then is deleted.



So, Sophons generate (2) Titanium-70, they can build 1 ship and 1 improvement that require T-70 (Total of 2), or maybe 1 ship that requires (2) T-70. However, if they were to only use 1 out of the 2 this turn, then the next turn they would have (2) T-70 (+1) for a total of 3 to play with on the new turn.



The way I think this could translate into the market, is Empires can sell off their excess resources to the market, allowing others to improve the amount of resources they can use by however many the buy:



Cravers produce (5) T-70 / turn. They use 3: 2 for ships, and 1 as a table-salt substitute (or something). They then sell the excess (2) T-70 to the market.

Sophons - who, say, have to deal with a threat - need to build more ships. But They only have (2) T-70/turn. Sophons can buy the (2) T-70 from the market (put up by the Cravers) and use them to build additional ships.



I'm not sure how possible that is, but I don't know. I guess I'd prefer something similar as opposed to drowning in literal hundreds of tonnes of T-70.

So, if i'm buying a batch or resources for a price of 100 , and market owner set its tax rates to 25%, should I pay 125 , or 100 (goes 75 to the seller, 25 to market owner)?

What's the purpose in allowing owner to set tax rates? I believe empires will be interested in market place anyway regardless of the taxes, so owner will aim to rise them to the maximum.

Oh god that's so awesome, I can't wait anymore to throw my money at you guys!

Overall sounds good. It was good in EL, but not often used, except when need ans specific resource quickly or you haven't in your empire. Seem you make it far more interesting.

Question about buying/selling in bulk and price variation

The system is designed to prevent exploits of type "sell 1 time x10 resources" vs. "sell 10 times x1 resource". Basically when buying/selling in bulk the price is pre-computed based on the intended quantity and displayed as such to the player.

Like to see you'¡ll fis from the start this EL exploits (which were fixed in beta)



Abuot resources seems to work more like EL than ES1. I had more fun with EL at this respect. Looks good.



About inflation:

- Can you explain a bit more?

- Have you considred to link it, or put a component in its calculation related to the quantity of Dust produced in the entire galaxy? I think introducing this component in the calcs will make it more real, and also will fit better with the game progression, as counting on demand and stock only will make some resources chaep or expensive when you related to empire ecomnomy at a given moment.



finally very good art here too!

Excited to see the market actually relate to the universe around it, too used to always seeing 100+ of any resource for sale in EL, almost made having strategic resource deposits meaningless late game because you could just buy mass resources off the market and come back in a few turns and do it again

I'm really excited by all the news coming out about ES-2, but I don't like the idea of a marketplace handling resources. In fact, I'd say I don't like the idea of stockpiling resources in general for ES-2. Playing ES, I loved the fact that if someone blockaded my system that produced a resource I needed to build my advanced ships, I would have to change my schematics and field another design until I freed the system. In ES, there was a point to using harassing fleets so that your enemy would be forced to engage you. If resources are stockpiled or can simply be bought, I don't see much of a threat from an enemy fleet unless it can invade my system.

I love a lot of this. Making the economic game actually a game rather than a formality (where it's usually just "do i have enough of X? Ok good") sounds great. I love the idea of the marketplace having a location and giving advantages to its owner.



Further the marketplace actually being based on market forces rather than coming with a predetermined stock makes it a LOT more interesting. I don't know if any of the devs have played or watched the development of Offworld Trading Company but there's a whole ton of neat ideas simply around that.



Which brings me to my next point, will their be passive demand and supply shortages that you can somewhat predict? For example can I look at a race and knowing that it's say, sophons, know that their tech/ships require a lot of resource X, and that their region of space doesn't likely have resource X, so I'm going to buy it all up to limit the supply, jack up the price, and hinder them.

Black Market





There should be an unlockable construction for the Black Market. The player to build the black market will enjoy cheaper prices for all future black ops.



It should be possible to finance pirates to pillage a specific type of resource. More than that, the operation should be against all, several or a specific empire. It can also be a 'don't pillage me' type of deal. This way the player will have a 'gamble' where it puts up resources (dust industry or even ships) upfront and the result will be uncertain. It can fail, partially work, or have a super good result. There should be mechanics to improve the odds, with different aspects changing the odds of success.



Every job like this would make pirates/mercs/black ops more powerful, and that's a double-edged sword since anybody can hire them.



Dust would pay bribes

Industry and ships would give better equipment, better odds of success in case of combat.

Science gives greater chance of eavesdropping and getting through without a fight.

Food pays the job for the mercs

Diplomacy can reduce the overall cost of the job.



There should be a minimum number of turns and scale of operation, but the player should be able to set up extra resources to have a stronger operation.



Pillaging always increases the stock in the black market, and will also help the player build up stock of a specific resource.



These black ops can be used to counter a player trying to stranglehold a specific resource, or strengthen one such position.



Black ops should be able to target production of a specific FIDSI in a system, or even be a plain griefing operation to target happiness specifically.

Hello guys and gals!



Here's a new GDD to introduce you to the Marketplace in Endless Space 2. It'll gather some things we learned from EL and new features we would like to add as well!





Rationale

The idea is to have a place where players can wage an Economics war, create resources shortages, and emulate the price fluctuations of a real market.



A strong consequence of this will is to spatially constrain luxury resources on the Galaxy Map, and have a "real" stock for these resources.





EL Marketplace Post-Mortem

After reviewing the game and your feedback, it appeared that the Marketplace felt decorrelated from the actual game world, and was not dynamic enough; it felt like it was a mandatory stop for Heroes but not a really useful one for resources. One of the main issue was the automated stock creation, which we will try to address in ES2.









The Marketplace

Placement

The Marketplace will be an achievable deed from Era 1. The first player to build it will determine its location on one of his systems, and the location will then be fixed for the rest of the game. If this system is captured, the ownership of the marketplace is transferred.



Access

The Marketplace has several gradual unlocks of its content:

• The Units (see Content for details) tab of the Marketplace should be accessible from Science Era 1, as some factions might rely on mercenaries for early military progress
• Era 2 will unlock trading strategic and luxury resources
• Heroes are a special case and will only start to appear when the Academy is physically discovered on the Galaxy
  
  

Ownership benefits

Owning the Marketplace on the Galaxy will provide unique bonuses to the owner:

• Cash and Set transactions taxes: as each transaction made on the Marketplace will be subject to taxes, the owner will be able to set them, at a rate varying from 0% (triggers a global notification to all empires) to 25%
• Information Exchange: all players will have access to this panel for themselves (detailing their past transactions), but the owner will see all past transactions for all players
• Special Title: the owner of the Marketplace will display a special honorific title appended to its Empire or Leader's name (eg. "Meedoc the Trade Magnate")
  
  

Content

Continuation from EL

Except for Stockpiles, all tabs from Endless Legend will be found in ES2's Marketplace, following a similar representation. The main differences lie in how these resources are handled under the hood, which is detailed in the last part of this GDD. Note that all prices will be impacted by a "Dust Inflation" to account for generally growing empires economies (more on inflation in a future subject!) Here is a rapid overview of the above mentioned tabs:

• Resources (strategic and luxury): each resource has its own line, a quantity, a price, and a demand. Resources can reach a "no sale" price and/or stock, symbolizing the market saturation for this resource. Upon first access to a new Era by a player (any player), a set amount of this Era's strategic resources is available for sale in the Marketplace. This set amount is not automatically refilled afterwards
• Units: each unit is sold by 1 and has its own line, a type, its stats, a price, and a demand (tied to its type)
• Heroes: heroes will rarely appear on the market (under very specific conditions), unless other players sell them, as the Academy remains at the heart of the Heroes feature. The tab is shown in the optic where players would be stuck without a hero. Heroes follow the same presentation as units, but are not subject to demand and have a high, fixed initial price
  
  

Posting ads

The Marketplace access in-game will be available from the Economy screen, where you also manage your trade routes. Next to the button, there will be an ad space with horizontally scrolling ads presenting trends in resources/prices, but also and especially player created ads.







What are those?



If the Marketplace runs out of a specific element, a player can post an ad for it once per turn to incite other players to sell it during their turn. The ad can be either public (displaying the poster's empire name) or anonymous. The idea is to provide another slightly more flexible mean than diplomacy to incite resources trade (without replacing a good old fashioned negotiation!)





Economy

As a reminder (for people not familiar with EL ), elements in the marketplace are sold per type (eg. the Titanium resource), and the player can set a specific quantity for resources, and buy/sell them from different panels. Each unit transaction is handled individually and impacts the price per unit for the next transaction; buying/selling in bulk will have a computed final value taking these fluctuations into account. Units (mercenaries) follow the same model but are always sold by 1, whereas Heroes will have a separate model based mostly on fixed prices due to their low availability.



The core difference with EL will be that in ES2 stock is not automatically created, except in very specific cases; and even then, it will be tied to Minor Faction presence. This allows resource shortages or blockades to exist in the world.



The second difference is that demand will be linked to the transactions done on a resource rather that its stock or price, and its price will be computed from this demand. The demand is an indicative value that will have a tendency to go back to a neutral value, to reflect market reaction in excessive cases.



For example (values are for illustration purposes only):

• luxA has a price of 10. The Sophons buy 10 out of a 20 stock of luxA, making the demand grow from 0 to 2, impacting the price from 10 to 100
• The Cravers are also interested in this resource, but its price of 100 is too high for them
• 5 turns pass by with no transaction, making the demand fall to 1.5, and putting luxA price to 65
• The Cravers can now afford their 3 missing luxA and buy them, making the demand go up again to 2.2, impacting the price from 65 to 130
  
  

Last but not least, external Events will be able to influence resource prices and stocks directly, imposed by the game world. A set luxury resource could be reputed to give a disease, and have its price drop for a few turns, or a cache for another one could be found and increase the stock, etc.





VIP Feedback



Suggestion regarding ads

Allowing the owner of the marketplace to erase some ads for a cost -> It's definitely doable.



Suggestion for tax rate

Forcing the owner to change (most likely lower) the tax rate through the pressure system in diplomacy -> very interesting, we'll investigate.



Question about retrofitting units from the marketplace

That is the intention (to be able to), but we need to investigate the technical feasibility.



Questions about balancing and keeping mercenaries/buyouts both viable alternatives

This is something we're definitely aware of. We'll keep track of it and tweak it as we go.



Questions about resource access and overall market usefulness

Definitely something we're aware of, learning from EL. In ES2, luxury resources will be compartmented and will have more uses than in EL, and the market stock will be real in the sense that auto generation of resources will be a rare case.



Question about buying/selling in bulk and price variation

The system is designed to prevent exploits of type "sell 1 time x10 resources" vs. "sell 10 times x1 resource". Basically when buying/selling in bulk the price is pre-computed based on the intended quantity and displayed as such to the player.



Suggestions to alter the system

Add a layer of investment over resource deposits; players could sell shares of those mines to other through the marketplace. Resource generation would be linked to the total of owned shares per resource.

A twist on the above system: have the generated stock be directly sold on the marketplace, granting a tax to owning empires. But they would have to go through the marketplace to buy the resources anyway.

-> These are interesting and we might draw some inspiration for other systems, but they're currently adding an additional layer over resources that we'd like to avoid.



And I believe that is all for now! Impressions?

I am not sure I like the idea of someone physically "owning" the marketplace. I would have much rather had influence play a role in mastering the market and its rates.



That aside, I hope that the new marketplace will be more dynamic and important.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
Black Market





There should be an unlockable construction for the Black Market. The player to build the black market will enjoy cheaper prices for all future black ops.



It should be possible to finance pirates to pillage a specific type of resource. More than that, the operation should be against all, several or a specific empire. It can also be a 'don't pillage me' type of deal. This way the player will have a 'gamble' where it puts up resources (dust industry or even ships) upfront and the result will be uncertain. It can fail, partially work, or have a super good result. There should be mechanics to improve the odds, with different aspects changing the odds of success.



Every job like this would make pirates/mercs/black ops more powerful, and that's a double-edged sword since anybody can hire them.



Dust would pay bribes

Industry and ships would give better equipment, better odds of success in case of combat.

Science gives greater chance of eavesdropping and getting through without a fight.

Food pays the job for the mercs

Diplomacy can reduce the overall cost of the job.



There should be a minimum number of turns and scale of operation, but the player should be able to set up extra resources to have a stronger operation.



Pillaging always increases the stock in the black market, and will also help the player build up stock of a specific resource.



These black ops can be used to counter a player trying to stranglehold a specific resource, or strengthen one such position.



Black ops should be able to target production of a specific FIDSI in a system, or even be a plain griefing operation to target happiness specifically.

I do really like the idea of having black markets, like in ES or EL (I dont recall at the moment:P) the trait allowed trade to races you were even at war with, which was really cool.

Hello,



Thanks for the feedback! On for some answers

o0ber wrote:


does the market place tax benefit the person who owns the system?

Sublustris wrote:
So, if i'm buying a batch or resources for a price of 100 , and market owner set its tax rates to 25%, should I pay 125 , or 100 (goes 75 to the seller, 25 to market owner)?

What's the purpose in allowing owner to set tax rates?

Yes, taxes will benefit the owner of the marketplace directly. They are computed following your proposition: if the batch costs 100 and taxes are 25%, then the price displayed will be 125 and 25 will go to the market owner.



The idea behind setting taxes is to give players other tools to interact indirectly as a sort of modifier on diplomacy. The risk of setting taxes too high is that you might encourage other players to trade resources via diplomacy, whereas putting low taxes might build goodwill towards you.

Hiyouren wrote:


What if Strategic and Luxury resources worked like Industry and Science did in ES1 - You produce 'X' per turn, if you don't use all of it, it overflows to the next turn only, then is deleted. [...]

This is not uninteresting. One problem with this is the potential balancing: as the number of resource sources you manage is low, it requires prices for actions using these resources to be adapted. By selling excess to the marketplace, you will create accumulated stocks that will yield potentially great quantities, and usage might not be able to follow, creating a sort of "infinite" stock feeling. Another issue would be the micro-management: if you want to optimize your sales, you'd need to sell your excess each turn to the marketplace, instead of having the option to let stocks accumulate and sell in bulks.



But as you said, this would iterate on ES1's system, so we'll keep an eye on it.

Triface wrote:


With that said, I would think that this addition would most benefit a race with an economic focus, however the requirements to own it seem to favour scientific (Researching the deed) races most with at best equal footing versus industrial focused ones (going by ES1 game mechanics).



What I would like to see would be a slight advantage for economically minded races.

This is an interesting idea, but I'd like to clarify the starting point: all empires will directly have access to the Era 1 deeds, as they all start in Era 1 . Deeds are usually not researches, think of them as either wonders that you have to build, or in-game actions that you have to perform (e.g.: be the first to fight 10 battles, own 50 ships, etc.) In this light, the Marketplace would most certainly be a buildable wonder, but we might give economics focused empires an advantage in its construction (reduced buyout cost, reduced production cost... we will need to investigate).

lo_fabre wrote:
About inflation:

- Can you explain a bit more?

- Have you considred to link it, or put a component in its calculation related to the quantity of Dust produced in the entire galaxy? I think introducing this component in the calcs will make it more real, and also will fit better with the game progression, as counting on demand and stock only will make some resources chaep or expensive when you related to empire ecomnomy at a given moment.

We are still working internally on this system, but the idea is close to your second point: to tie most prices in the game to the global economical output of the galaxy.

lo_fabre wrote:
finally very good art here too!

Thanks

IronJuggernaut wrote:
Excited to see the market actually relate to the universe around it

Hopefully it translates well in game!

stl0369 wrote:


I'm really excited by all the news coming out about ES-2, but I don't like the idea of a marketplace handling resources. In fact, I'd say I don't like the idea of stockpiling resources in general for ES-2. Playing ES, I loved the fact that if someone blockaded my system that produced a resource I needed to build my advanced ships, I would have to change my schematics and field another design until I freed the system. In ES, there was a point to using harassing fleets so that your enemy would be forced to engage you. If resources are stockpiled or can simply be bought, I don't see much of a threat from an enemy fleet unless it can invade my system.

I understand your concerns, but what you are describing isn't that different between the 2 systems . The current mechanic does give more cushion to players (if you indeed have a stock of a resource), but if a system is blockaded, then resources aren't generated anymore (like in ES1). The marketplace does give an alternative in this kind of situation, but it comes at a cost!

Eji1700 wrote:
Which brings me to my next point, will their be passive demand and supply shortages that you can somewhat predict? For example can I look at a race and knowing that it's say, sophons, know that their tech/ships require a lot of resource X, and that their region of space doesn't likely have resource X, so I'm going to buy it all up to limit the supply, jack up the price, and hinder them.

First of all thanks! I did play Offworld Trading Company and as you said, there are a lot of cool ideas in the game. However, the whole game is about economy and waging economical wars, which is a scale we can't really afford for a single game system in a 4X.



As for your comment, for now we haven't planned a passive supply and demand. However, note that luxury resources (and strategic in part) will be spatially constrained upon generation, so it's totally possible for a player to limit access to this resource, creating a shortage. Moreover, if you manage to identify that an empire has a lot of use for a specific resource, you will be able to limit the supply to hinder them (by buying everything for example), but the initial information will have to be obtained.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
Black Market

I think this is a cool idea, but at this stage it would add a new game system and I am not sure we can afford it. In terms of pirating, we'll have some minor factions acting as early game pirates.

Romeo wrote:
I like the "In-Game Ad" part. Reminds me of an in-game craigslist.



"One hero, rarely used, low miles."

lol

KnightOfPhoenix wrote:
I am not sure I like the idea of someone physically "owning" the marketplace. I would have much rather had influence play a role in mastering the market and its rates.

Depending on how it goes during playtests, we might definitely add another layer of control for ownership of the building, but for now we'd rather go with something very straight-forward.

jhell wrote:


Depending on how it goes during playtests, we might definitely add another layer of control for ownership of the building, but for now we'd rather go with something very straight-forward.

I hope so, because if this stays like this, then the only way to have some control over the market is through physically invading it which is....well inelegant.



I wouldn't mind an empire achieving the breakthrough of building the foundations for a galactic economy, and for being permanently rewarded for doing so. But if the marketplace is going to be a dynamic theater of interaction, then another layer of control and influence is necessary and would be highly welcomed. It could be as simple as spending to push the tax up or down, and spending to buy information on the transactions of a specific empire.



EDIT: also, to prevent abuse, the owners of the market should not be allowed to change tax rates every turn. Rather, they can only set the rate for the next 10 turns, and other factions can then use their influence to move it up or down.

I was wondering, can merchants be represented in your Senate? Not as a political faction, but more as a lobby you could play with (using influence and maybe some dust) to increase or decrease the price of a resource on the next few turns...





Also, in Endless Legend, you can sometimes end a game with hundreds of useless luxury and strategic resources.



I suggest to put a cap on the maximum of each resources you can own. This cap could be increased by reaching new eras, by research...



Resources produced beyond the cap would be selled automatically and half their normal price to the black market, but a different black market from the one described by Brazilian_Joe (comment #11). In my conception of the black market, you can't sell anything in it, only buy, and you will only find resources that results from surplus of other empires. Resources there will cost half the price of the resources on the regular market, but also cost influence points.





If you don't take the idea of a forced cap, I would then like to suggest to let every player set this cap by themselves (or do both, set a max cap and let the player chose another one under the forced one that can be changed at will). In this case, the resources produced beyond the cap chosen by the player will also be sold on the black market.

Thus we will have less micro management to do and have a possibly better dust income.





Please don't tell me that it's not possible to implement such mechanics at this stage of the game, I would be so sad...

jhell wrote:
Yes, taxes will benefit the owner of the marketplace directly. They are computed following your proposition: if the batch costs 100 and taxes are 25%, then the price displayed will be 125 and 25 will go to the market owner.



The idea behind setting taxes is to give players other tools to interact indirectly as a sort of modifier on diplomacy. The risk of setting taxes too high is that you might encourage other players to trade resources via diplomacy, whereas putting low taxes might build goodwill towards you.

Thank you for reply.

Does it mean, that market place owner will benefit from each resource unit twice: once when batch is sold to the market and second time when batch is bought from its stock?