It is true that trading companies often represent at least 90% of my dust income at the end of a game.
Devs said they were currently trying to make them less exponential, so hope I hope it will come soon!
I like inflation on itself and how it works right now, but trading companies just get too much value out of it in my opinion.

Ok, let's say I am endgame lumeris, who wants to buyout a ship to defend myself from industry heavy military empire for.... oh 20K dust/CP, right, nevermind. Right, my way of play is unplayable and all my racial dust income is rendered irrelevant, while actually increasing opposing non-dust empire income from direct sales. Ingenius. That will show those military empires alright!
Speaking from experience, in order to expand reasonably, with lumeris you want to just hug the market on every turn for that extra dust for you to expand and praying that the inflated price increase on your planet buyout does not result in you not having enough money to expand... again. Talking about not screwing yourself over.

The market is a problem. I don't think this has anything to do with inflation though - except that being able to buy things from the market is a powerful thing, and the more you buy using your dust production, the more inflation penalises you. The opposite is true for selling. 

So I got a feeling inflation does indeed go up too high....

I'd say it goes the wrong way!

A militarist empire has a lot of strategic resources (for their ships), and has cherry-picked conquered systems with lots of resources. It therefore makes more dust by selling those on the market.  Almost certainly they are helped, not hindered, by inflation.

This is something I really noticed when playing Vaulters, seeing as they can get more titanium and hyperium, or get it from not having the resource. And you kinda wanna prioritize lots of strategic with them.

I played with a friend going fairly economical, as he likes to play that, while I went militarist for Vaulters. We kept about at the same kind of dust, while his dust income was much higher, I could easily catch up to anything he had by selling my abundance of resources.

So I got a feeling inflation does indeed go up too high, allowing factions with lots of resources to still keep up with any faction that prioritize dust research and improvements. They set the bars, but it kinda comes to bite themselves in the butt when it benefits those with resources just as much, while dust income barely matters. Which I think should still be a thing, but not as much as atm.

I've made that last comment into an idea, because this seems a fairly fundamental change to the game. But the current system of inflation is both confusing and completely contrary to stated design.

That description rather does put it all in perspective.

It certainly removes some of the fun; I barely use the buyout function as it's very rarely worth it. Dust is way more critical for buying ship-refits, luxuries, and strategic metals, even after keeping up with trade infrastructure. When I reached "economic victory" on the Vaulters patch (turn 139, 1.125 million Dust on Exceptional galaxy size), the cost of a medium-size ship was still higher than raw dust income (combining with sold luxuries makes it so I can buy nearly 3 of my newest Coordinator hulls at 72k each, yay!). Hardly an efficient use of dust when my top 10 systems range from 5806 to 3708 industry per turn and each medium ship costing ~1800 industry (raw cost ~2400 but I have accumulated all sorts of discounts). Even so, I can't buy enough of the strategics I need either because of the high cost (sometimes), or simply because there's none left for sale on the market (most of the time). Part of the problem is that I'm trying to build every structure in the game for 39 systems, but even before the late game I had problems buying enough strategics that I wanted.

Dust isn't something that can win you a game, but heavy investment is still needed to just continue participating in market & buyout mechanics. For reference, a conquest victory could have been won 28 turns ago, science victory 17 turns ago, and wonder victory too if I wasnt greedy. Granted, I didnt bother to trade with the AI and it's only Hard difficulty, but the issue is still inflation making dust a lacklustre source of hard power. The game has been won several times over and Dust still isn't a major source of my empire's power. If I really wanted strategics, the better way is usually spending industry on ships to beat another AI into submission, then extort hundreds of it. 

Yup, bumping this 7 months old comment, for it is still an issue and it is still not adressed.

I rather like the inflation system as it stands. The thing I often dislike about 4X games is when you get to the late game and your individual decisions are trivialized by abundance. If I were to make a change then maybe make it so that inflation works on a system level... and perhaps not just for dust expenditure, but also industry aswell. The more development a system has the longer it takes to develope it further could make specializing systems more relevant, and then make it so that new systems found in the late game have more of a chance to catch up and be relevant, instead of perpetually behind.

Also, inflation could be an effective way to modify the existing economic win condition. The target dust income could start much lower, but be increased by inflation, meaning in order to win you'd need to have a large percentage of the total income generated by the whole galaxy.

paralethadox wrote:

I don't think selling stuff increases the amount of dust generated to win the economic victory, you have to generate it o:

You're right, dust from selling resources don't count towards economic victory, but thing is that for general purpose (buying stuff) dust from selling resources is the main source of income. No way you'll be able to generate 5 mil. dust per turn, but you're able to aquire enough resources to sell em for 5 mil. dust per turn.

I don't think selling stuff increases the amount of dust generated to win the economic victory, you have to generate it o:

Hello, i strongly agree that inflation is always over the top. Also even traiding companies income isn't an issue becouse you would not be able to upgrade them if not for... resource trade. 

In my recent Lumeris playthrough my traiding companies were generating around 100K dust income, but... at the same time every turn i'm earning 4-5 mil. by selling resources. And... even with such an abudance of dust i'm able to buy only a few tier 4-5 buildings / turn in my 23 system empire. So in endgame even trade companies themself aren't contributing much compared to selling resources (for example 100K dust from trade routes is nothing when a single building costs around 800K). 

Another thing i'd like to point is in ES2 you can't specialize in dust - everyone is able to generate insane amounts (Lumeris simply achieve goal faster due to quest providing +3 luxury per deposit). 

So all in all not trade companies themself generate too much dust, but resource selling makes income from every other source miserable. 

Behold, the new and amazing feature of ES2, inflation.

It surely comes as a hard counter to our old favourite ES1 strategies revolving around sheredyn faction bonus and techs that simply managed to keep you afloat at 100% tax rate and was further emporewed by strong on CP kill dust rewards.

But isn't it going a little bit too far?

When compared to endless legend or ES1, when in mid to late game you could simply instantly purchase all upgrades for said system within a turn's notice, it felt good being dust oriented, it felt empowering, it is a lot different now.. 

Depending on the number of players buyout and other inflatable prices can climb to double by as little as turn 10 @ fast.

Sure, if you are trading, this can turn to your benefit, but if you are not, well screw you, obviously everyone is trading and it makes all the uninflated values lose their meaning.

Could we perhaps slow it down a bit?

Could we add a number of players factor to it aswell?

What do YOU think and how do you feel inflation?

If you invest in real Dust, you move closer to Economic victory, but begin ruining Dust for everyone with inflation, self included.

The purpose of inflation was indeed to make Pacifist empires able to hurt Militarist empires indirectly, by driving inflation up. If you're the one driving it up, granted you may suffer from it, but imagine for the other empires who don't generate a lot of Dust :).

Maybe if we had more active tools to actually impact Inflation it would be perceived better. In the meantime, if a lot of players feel your way, I believe we could tweak the values to slightly reduce it.

Thanks for the feedback,

Dragar wrote:

Ressurecting this, because there are a number of facts about inflation woth laying out, and we've been discussing the woes of Lumeris lately (who are directly related, being the most dust-focused of all the factions), and trade routes (which are related to dust mechanics).

On inflation:

• It affects market values.
• It affects upgrades.
• It does not affect fleet maintenance/upkeep (making it very questionable as a tool to cripple military empires in the first place!).
• It does not affect building maintenance.
• It affects dust buyout costs (but not influence buyout - if you are UE, one point of influence is worth the same amount of production turn 1 as turn 100, unlike dust - which is worth less).
• It is higher on higher difficulty settings - AI bonuses drive inflation up even higher than normal. This means dust improvements are worth less on higher difficulty settings. 
• Lumeris colonization costs are affected - a Lumeris player should prioritise making dust from the market, not by making dust itself, as the former drives up inflation, while the latter doesn't. Lumeris are also penalized more on higher difficulty settings.
• It doesn't affect trade-routes - but it does affect the resources generated by trade routes. The more inflation, the more valuable the resources portion of a trade route (and the less valuable the dust portion).

So let's say Empire A mostly ignores dust, and pays for maintenance by selling its titanium, and empire B builds dust improvements and trade routes and uses it for buyouts. Then inflation hurts empire B, because prices go up while their dust generated does not, while actually helping empire A, because one titanium sold pays for more and more maintenance.

It does the exact opposite of its stated purpose, allowing ressource/militarist-focused empires to hurt dust/pacifist ones.

YertyL wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Ressurecting this, because there are a number of facts about inflation woth laying out, and we've been discussing the woes of Lumeris lately (who are directly related, being the most dust-focused of all the factions), and trade routes (which are related to dust mechanics).

On inflation:

• It affects market values.
• It affects upgrades.
• It does not affect fleet maintenance/upkeep (making it very questionable as a tool to cripple military empires in the first place!).
• It does not affect building maintenance.
• It affects dust buyout costs (but not influence buyout - if you are UE, one point of influence is worth the same amount of production turn 1 as turn 100, unlike dust - which is worth less).
• It is higher on higher difficulty settings - AI bonuses drive inflation up even higher than normal. This means dust improvements are worth less on higher difficulty settings. 
• Lumeris colonization costs are affected - a Lumeris player should prioritise making dust from the market, not by making dust itself, as the former drives up inflation, while the latter doesn't. Lumeris are also penalized more on higher difficulty settings.
• It doesn't affect trade-routes - but it does affect the resources generated by trade routes. The more inflation, the more valuable the resources portion of a trade route (and the less valuable the dust portion).

So let's say Empire A mostly ignores dust, and pays for maintenance by selling its titanium, and empire B builds dust improvements and trade routes and uses it for buyouts. Then inflation hurts empire B, because prices go up while their dust generated does not, while actually helping empire A, because one titanium sold pays for more and more maintenance.

It does the exact opposite of its stated purpose, allowing ressource/militarist-focused empires to hurt dust/pacifist ones.

That can be reversed if there are some significant penalties for negative dust production values.

Considering over the past few days, if inflation absolutely has to be kept, it occurs to me a good way to do it would be to change it to actual inflation.

What we have now is technically not inflation. Inflation results from individual sellers raising their prices independently, and thus causing a ripple effect where everyone else raises prices to keep up. In response governments print money to keep the amount of money in the economy more or less proportional to the rising prices. What we have instead is hyperinflation, which is only supposed to happen with excessive money printing beyond the rate needed to keep up with inflation.

So really inflation should be tied to the passage of turns, so it increases linearly over the course of the game, regardless of Dust output. So to show how things can be fixed a bit, I'm gonna give some examples of problems and the changes that solve them:

Earning Dust raises Inflation: Tie it to the passage of time instead, so inflation can be beaten through high Dust generation instead of further punishing it.

Inflation Rewards Trash: Remove or greatly reduce market price floors while increasing the number of items which cost low tier resources to prevent Militarist (and thus expansionist) factions from subsidizing their economies with inflation by selling tons of trash resources.

Inflation Doesn't Punish War: With inflation tied to time, and thus having a very stable linear progression and predetermined cap, it becomes reasonable to tie it to Upkeep, punishing the use of overly large fleets not backed by significant Dust income. This has the double benefit of making Dust hero skills and Upkeep reduction effects valuable.

Inflation Doesn't Reward Peace: With inflation no longer driven by Dust generation, factions with many Trade Deals and FIDSI rewards for Peace can safely outpace inflation in a way that belligerent empires cannot. This does not necessarily prevent large wars between coalitions with many allies though.

As a bonus, some other changes could be made. For example, Super Spuds could provide -15% System Upkeep Reduction, which would be significantly less OP when stacked than the current -15% Buyout Cost Reduction (which has caused issues before with allowing empires to buy out hundreds of ships), but also more rewarding for using on just one or two development projects due to increased Upkeep costs from inflation.

Ultimately though, this still has Dust producers subsidizing Resource producers, because that's just what inflation does in reality.

IceGremlin wrote:

A decent proposal with agreeably simplified logic behind it.

We could also tie random events which now focus on market prices of commodities to inflation aswell, so that it could increase, or decrease at slight percentage erratically.

It might not even be that game greaking considering that current dust producing factions do strongly rely on market sales aswell as their own dust output and reducing market values would go hand in hand with reduced inflation and balance itself out with the new buying power provided.

CyRob wrote:

I have said before in a different thread that dust inflation did not make sense lore-wise but thinking about it again I think it can. (TL;DR of the post in other thread, Dust acts like Fiat money mechanically but a commodity currency lore-wise)

Thinking about it again inflation can make sense lore-wise if considered in a certain way.

It was said that the Endless tried to recreate the Lost’s dust, but they could not get it to the same level of quality. I assume they made several attempts getting slightly better over time but still nowhere near.

So back to inflation, this means as dust is produced it is at first the high quality Lost dust but slowly has more and more lower quality dust mixed in as the high-quality lost veins dry up, making an X amount of dust worth less over time the dust produced is less able to do its magic.

This is the historically the route that many commodity currencies followed with debasement (talked about in the linked post) So if the lore aspect of inflation was that dust was being debased it would work quite well (e.g. like a silver coin going from 98% Silver to 2% silver (this happened in less than 300 years in the Roman empire) although in this case it would be dust going from 100% Lost’s dust to 2% Lost’s & 98% Endless’s dust)

For this lore change to fit well with the mechanic & to improve the mechanic there is one change that will need to be made (many other changes could also be made but this one is needed for it to make sense);
When inflation increases dust stockpiles (The dust empires own) would gain interest of the same amount (due to being purer than the current galactic level thus worth more)

So, in order to counter inflation, apply anti-inflation?  Seems like a good idea, cyrob! but then the devs needs to adapt these extra dust income people will get whit the economic victory, right? Since it will be easer to achieve it...

This is something I was getting at in the other thread some dust sources (not just improvements) add new dust to the economy and others are just taking it from the economy and putting it into the empire's coffers. 

Making Inflation have a linear increase means that it does not fit its goal (admittedly it does not currently) It becomes an issue that everyone needs to deal with, but pacifists might be more able to. But if tied to dust production then it’s an issue that is can be greatly increased by the pacifists to be used against militarists. Changes to the system need to be made but I’m against making inflation liner, it’s the option that makes the least lore sense.

I would prefer Inflation lore & mechanics wise be due to debasement, that is to say over time the standard mix of galactic dust is of more & more lower quality dust (We know there is high quality Lost dust which due to Isyander’s actions is common in the beginning and the Endless has several strains of lower quality dust)

I agree with you on; Applying inflation to upkeep (of course this would require upkeep amounts to be rebalanced around it as they are not suited to it currently) Reducing Price floors (I would have all price floors be 1 or 0 and allow them to be reached quicker) & having Super spuds reduce upkeep.

Additional changes I would like to have would be:

As already mentioned, Stockpiles gaining interest, the main difference between inflation with fiat currencies and commodity currency (caused by debasement) is that government stockpiles of commodity currencies retain value, while fiat do not.

So, to have this be a feature in-game simply the empire stockpile gains interest equal to how much inflation changed. E.g. Empire has 100 dusted stored Inflation goes from 1.00 to 1.05 (a 5% increase) so the Empire gains 5 dust (5% of what they had stored)

I would like Inflation to be tied to dust production but in a way that makes more sense, 

All dust sources can go into 2 categories:  New Dust coming into the economy, And Dust from the Galactic economy then going into the coffers. 

• The New dust sources have a fixed production (well it can be variable with something like +X per Y, but by fixed I mean that it’s not affected by inflation) 

(This eliminates the feedback loop of inflation causing more dust to be produced and then increasing inflation)

• The dust from the economy have their production altered by inflation, and because of that should have a much lower base production than currently.

All dust costs also fit into two categories: those using up the dust (taking it out of the economy) and those transferring it to some other part of the economy.

• Those using it up are the costs needing dust for its magical properties, healing heroes, repairing ships. These are affected by inflation.
• Those transferring dust are all the other dust costs, most notably upkeep. These are also affected by inflation.

Now to calculate inflation instead of just the global dust per turn produced, it would use the total dust production from only new dust sources and possibly that minus the total dust used up (It’s unknown if it makes sense lore-wise, is dust used gone forever or eventually finds its way back to a planet surface etc.)

This is quite complicated. 

I have to agree that the marketplace prices are more of a problem than inflation itself. 

I think that while not solving the problem with dust inflation, we could make dust production a bit more useful by incentivising buying resources from the marketplace (maybe by lowering the transaction fees for the buyer?). 

This would make it so that while the resource-hoarding empires could still make a lot of dust by selling their stuff, the stuff they sell would fall more easily to the hands of those who are driving up the inflation.

Also, if the market section for ships was fixed (I mean it's always filled with trash) and selling ships was made more viable, it could create interesting situations where militaristic empires could make a lot of dust quick by selling their advanced ships, but in doing so would give the pacifistic dust-producing empires a chance to get their hands on some nice fleets when they need them the most.

Touko wrote:

I have to agree that the marketplace prices are more of a problem than inflation itself. 

I think that while not solving the problem with dust inflation, we could make dust production a bit more useful by incentivising buying resources from the marketplace (maybe by lowering the transaction fees for the buyer?). 

This would make it so that while the resource-hoarding empires could still make a lot of dust by selling their stuff, the stuff they sell would fall more easily to the hands of those who are driving up the inflation.

Also, if the market section for ships was fixed (I mean it's always filled with trash) and selling ships was made more viable, it could create interesting situations where militaristic empires could make a lot of dust quick by selling their advanced ships, but in doing so would give the pacifistic dust-producing empires a chance to get their hands on some nice fleets when they need them the most.

Doesn't work. By reducing buy prices you also increase the ability of resource producers to mass sell, buy back, and potentially mass sell again. The more prices are lowered the easier it gets to produce an infinite loop. Also it makes it easier for them to sell one resource to obtain another.

Biggest problem of inflation in all forms is everyone uses identical currency.