Hi,

Starting this thread as I read lots of comments in threads dedicated to other things, but all about balance of luxuries. I will be dropping some comments about specific luxuries, feel free to add your own:

Industry:

Lot of people said, Jardonyx should be tuned down as it is a big boost in early game. IMO halved to +2 ind/pop.

Manpower:

Actually what we have is basically an increase to MP cap. This is not per se bad, but, you can get same effec with improvements, and this is not really changing much, except for planets at high risk of invasion.

conversely one trouble we have is the low MP generation for some factions. This added to above, leads me to propose changing Dark Glitter to give Mp per turn, something li +25MP/pop. It can make it more interesting for factions with low MP generation, and in case you're not playing one of these, having more MP is always good to recover quickly after an invasion.

----

For now no more comments, but I follow editing if go into something.

Feel free to share your ideas.

Manpower per pop is certainly much more valuable than manpower limit on systems. I'm very much in favour.

Just noticed that yesterday. I feel like the Dustcidious trees(+4 dust pop), and the t2 dust (+100 dust) are weaks. 

• They could be usefull in early game, but in fact, they are extremly hard to make profitable. To sell 25 luxuries is more worth to use it on any system with few pops, and it's instantly usefull. Most of the systems are like that at this point, and for it, the return from investment on dust trees upgrade is very long. Only the food focused factions might use the trees well on this timing.
• Dust is the only FIDS that directly loose value all along the game, because of the inflation. So, the related luxuries suffer from that. In late, those luxuries become by far the weakest, I think. Also, they participate to increase the inflation.
• Bigger the inflation is, more the trees have value on the market, more it's worth to sell it instead of use it for the systems.
• The major income of all empires come from the sellings of luxuries (that dont affect inflation) and trade routes (that affect in inflation in part). So the trees join the low level dust extra-income, with some system improvements, and some laws. If it's compared with other FIDS resources, it's very weak. The jadonyx is a huge industry boost. The Science molds are at the same level in early, but later they are increased by a lot of improvements and law ; their income can be multiplied a lot. The food luxury have the ability to snowball by iteself (more it produce food, more you get pop that produce food, and you can grow up system super fast ! The eden incense is well balanced from my point of view, and have a true utility and impact, so i feel it's also way better.

So, i think it's the weakest FIDS related luxury in the current state of the game. If the dust economy system is not going to change, i would suggest a buff from those two luxuries.

No i am not greedy. I just want to be more rich, that's all.

Jadonyx is definitely my favorite tier 1 luxury resource to see in my spawn area. It provides a very powerful boost at that stage of the game. I think it could stand a nerf. Maybe +3 per citizen instead of 2 as you propose? Honestly I tend to lean more toward the idea that the other luxuries should be buffed rather than slicing the good one in half and call it a day. 

Redsang can be good, but I find it's often of relatively limited benefit early game... barring some systems that have lucky planet spawns I frequently find my level 2 developments coming out at a time when my established systems are already close to their population cap. Generally I'll build a level 2 development in whatever system is sending out the food ships to my outposts, and actually get level 2 developments as the second thing I build right after the +10 F/I building.

Dustciduous trees are weak long-term for all the reasons SuperMarloWorld outlined above, with regards to inflation and the income from selling luxuries. However, I still find them to be a potent early game bonus - especially if you're going a militaristic playthrough on higher difficulties. Upkeep costs on your military can easily eclipse your income, and starting off with dustciduous trees does a lot to ease this problem up. To be perfectly frank, I'd imagine the best way to balance dustciduous trees would not involve re-balancing the resource itself, but by directly adjusting the rates of dust inflation.

Bluecap mold is good as it is, IMO. I'll usually pick Jadonyx over it if I've got a viable source, but the science bonus really accelerates your research early game. It's a solid choice, and I'll typically use it over anything besides jadonyx for level 1 resources.

Eden Incense is awesome for United Empire and.... well, I don't typically use much of it for other factions. Maybe if my influence generation is low and I want a more expensive law I'll go for it. However, your political parties don't really have their most expensive laws unlocked yet when you first get level 2 available. The most common use eden incense has for me is being used as one of the two resources in a level 3 system development. That's usually the time when I find myself wanting for some more influence. Early game there's not much to spend it on, and late game I tend to stack up an ever growing pile of the stuff.

Transvine is potentially useful, although it's not really ideal for a level 2 development. Generally speaking, when level 2 developments first become available, you will still be underneath your overcolonization limit. If I plan on expanding hard and know I'll take the happiness hit eventually, I might choose transvine pre-emptively, but this is another one that I am more likely to use as one of the level 3 development resources. Approval is more relevant at that stage of the game.

Superspuds are a thing I will choose if nothing else is available. Even then, I'm not happy about it. Since level 2 developments are always 1 turn, building it first thing in a new system and then buying out a bunch of improvements to get it established can be useful. However, it doesn't give any yields and my construction buyouts tend to be limited to border systems where I need stuff quickly and can't afford to wait for it to fly in from home... my core worlds which already have lots of strong industry aren't getting much benefit out of this.

Dark glitter is just marketplace fodder to me. I think your idea is spot on - make it generate manpower instead of increasing the manpower cap size. I think 25 per citizen is much too high, that'd absolutely dwarf all other sources of manpower in the early game. When your first level 2 developments become available, many systems will be making 10 to 15 manpower per turn total. I think 3, 4, or 5 manpower would be much more balanced, but still drastically increase your generation. As it currently stands though, pretty useless. At the early stage of the game your manpower concern is almost always not having enough, rather than hitting the cap.

Same sensations as most of you.

Actually Eden incense and Red sang, are very faction dependant, for ones are great, but for others are completely useless.

Same as @Lemowizard for Dutcidious trees, useful for overcoming fleets upkeep on higher difficulties, but not much more.

About trade resources, in general I feel better selling them, than using the. Maybe they should be reworked an tied to trade system, or give more interesting bonus??

In relation to selling resources rather than using them, it seems to me that the current game mechanics have basically split Dust into two different types.

Domestic Dust moves you towards Economic victory, but drives up inflation so it can't pay for buyouts. Luxury Dust from selling provides enough to buy stuff and doesn't drive up inflation, but doesn't count towards Economic victory. So Dust producing factions are actually quite bad at paying for things and just make inflation worse, while factions who produce Luxuries are much better at earning and using Dust because as inflation increases, they make more money off of their sold trash.

I have a relevant idea here, Resource Leakage, which would entail lowering the price floor of all resources greatly (so we can't make such massive amounts of Dust selling our trash), and actually have to buy back the best Luxuries. This would make players more willing to use Luxuries bought off the market because there's a constant flow of said resource into the market, and thus encourage other players who sell that resource to make money by selling things other players want rather than getting a glorified recycling deposit for their Super Spuds and Glitterdust.

Once inflation has been slashed, or removed entirely, so that Dust actually maintains parity with Industry, and once Food and Growth are reworked so we don't hit pop cap so quickly all the time, related Luxuries should be better balanced against each other.

That's a good idea, I think. You have a really good point about using luxuries bought of the market. I never, ever choose a luxury for a system development unless I can produce it on my own. Even if you're flush with dust and could afford to buy piles and piles of a luxury, you can never count on it to be a reliable source since there's never that much on the market.

IceGremlin summarises the issue very well. If we can remove inflation (a very counter-intuitive and difficult to balance mechanic) at the same time, that seems a huge improvement.