"The only thing I have to decide now is what to do with all that dust" says our favourite Lumeris matriarch after taking over the galaxy. And it is a difficult question, but unfortunately mostly because the magical, all-powerful substance defining the endless universe is extremely limited in its actual power.

The game seems to think dust is as at least as powerful as the other parts of FIDSI. Moderate gas planets give the same amount of dust as frozen ones science and scorching ones production. The intergalactic supermarket gives as much dust as the Intensive Cultivation gives food, but is actually twice as expensive in tech and production cost. Same thing for Xenotourism agencies vs Interplanetary network, similar effect (+1, +3 on ressource) for twice the cost in tech and production. We have a ressource dedicated just to buyout cost reduction (spuds), and a T3 building that reduces buyout by 10% and gives 2 dust per pop, at the same price as a building that gives +20 production per planet.

The problem is that dust buyout, and any investment in it, is really, really inefficient.

As an example, in my current game at turn 79, I need to pay 4.87 dust to buy out one production -- with two buyout system improvements. 

With one, this is increased to 5.92, and with zero I assume it will be 4.87/0.7=6.95 dust for any one production. Galactic inflation is at a moderate 1.77, so we can assume without any the multiplier would be 6.95/1.77=3.93 ~ 4 dust per production. In other words, upgrading all my systems with superspuds gives me the ability to pay "only" about six dust per production instead of seven, while upgrading all with jadonyx gives me the equivalent of at least 7*60=420 dust per system, per turn.

Since the use of dust is limited otherwise, any empire that heavily invests in dust production will probably want to use it for buyout. This means that any empire that invests in dust instead of production effectively quarters its production, at least.

I would propose two simple changes:

• Kill inflation: As long you can sell ressources on the marketplace, inflation will always hurt empires investing in dust far more than those investing in ressources, e.g. by conquest. It also further nerfs dust system improvements over time that are not exactly strong to begin is, while serving no discernible purpose to me.
• Halve standard buyout costs multiplier from 4 to 2 dust per production. Double the price for the ability to build anywhere instantaneously seems somewhat fair, consider you need to research an extra tech for it; With this an empire that heavily invests into spuds and other reductions can at some point achieve the 1:1 ratio that is actually present in dust production.

I agree with your proposals. While I like inflation as mechanic, it doesn't take into account amount of empires playing. Inflation in a 12-players galaxy will be far stronger then in 2-player, simply because 12 players should produce ~6x times more dust. It gets out of control way too fast. And yes, buyout costs are abyssmal, especially early game.

You make some excellent points. The community agrees with you if our past discussions of trade routes, resource-selling, inflation and the Lumeris are any indication, and it's nice to see such a concise analysis of the problems with dust. Hopefully Amplitude will take notice. I'm not sure that your proposed changes are quite enough, though.

The main issue with your solution is that dust is easier to get than industry, as long as you don't focus on the weaker dust-producing improvements. First, trade companies are a much better source of dust than other system improvements. Increasing dust's value might overpower trade companies, but it would still leave most dust improvements not worth researching and low priority to build, as focusing on trade companies gives higher return for the investment. Second, there are multipliers that apply to dust for which there's no equivalent to industry, with the bonus for empire-wide approval being the main one. If you lower the buyout cost multiplier to two, you're making two points of pre-multiplier dust much more valuable than one point of pre-multiplier industry that you can spend anyywhere, which is likely too strong.

I'd like to have inflation eliminated just as you propose, but a buyout cost multiplier of three (with the cost of retrofitting ships raised so it's equally expensive to "buy" production that way) seems a more reasonable choice. Either way, though, the issue of dust system improvements can't be adressed just by changing the value of dust as long as they're in competition with trade-boosting system improvements.

mamarider wrote:

How come that the original poster finds no use for dust? When the interior core of your empire is set and your main systems produce a lot of FIDSI and Dust in particular, you can use it to broaden your empire by simply buying out core industry focused improvements on any new system you settle on. Or do you really w8 for xii and Predictive Logistics being built on every new planet?

My point was more about the choice of investing in dust production/buyout cost reduction vs investing in industry/anything else. Currently the right side of the tech tree is split into dust and industry focus, as are system upgrades, planets, and to some degree races, and it appears the two are meant to be roughly equally powerful choices -- when in practice they are really, really not.

For example, I find it extremely difficult to even construct a theoretical scenario in which you would rather want to invest in Pulvis Production (+2 dust per pop, 10% buyout reduction) instead of predictive logistics (+20 industry per planet) even though they are on the same tech level and have the exact same cost.

I got your point, and you can be true if looking at the resource value only. But there is more to those technologies than just dust production. You mentioned Pulvis Production, ofc with already positive economy (0+ dust per turn) and having Predictive Logistics  as an option there is not much sense in picking it. But I don't care about dust it gives when I grab it nor do I care about the buyout cost reduction. Those things wil come into place later (as I said) to boost your new colonies. What I grab it for is that juicy hero market and system razing and I actually think this tech is essential for federations because it allows you to surpass the colonization cap without investing into any technology. And xenotourism for example can save you if you fall negative with dust production early and just want to keep it around zero lvls and go all production. Techs that affect trading via trade companies are completely different and again dust is not their main use a lot of the time! When you are playing anything but federation you need those extra luxuries from trade routs to reliably upgrade systems to lvl4. Yes you earn dust from routes but for me it is only to invest into those luxury+science ships asap. Unless I am aiming for economy victory ofc. So my point is those dust techs are really well balanced and I like them a lot. But I can agree that there are few late game ones that give only raw dust and they have such a limited use, like mb only for economy victory or if you went crazy with that buyout.. Never tried to go crazy with potatoes right from the start and I think its pretty inefficient as your lvl2 systen upgrade.

mamarider wrote:

I got your point, and you can be true if looking at the resource value only. But there is more to those technologies than just dust production. You mentioned Pulvis Production, ofc with already positive economy (0+ dust per turn) and having Predictive Logistics  as an option there is not much sense in picking it. But I don't care about dust it gives when I grab it nor do I care about the buyout cost reduction. Those things wil come into place later (as I said) to boost your new colonies... And xenotourism for example can save you if you fall negative with dust production early and just want to keep it around zero lvls and go all production. Techs that affect trading via trade companies are completely different and again dust is not their main use a lot of the time! When you are playing anything but federation you need those extra luxuries from trade routs to reliably upgrade systems to lvl4. Yes you earn dust from routes but for me it is only to invest into those luxury+science ships asap. Unless I am aiming for economy victory ofc. So my point is those dust techs are really well balanced and I like them a lot. But I can agree that there are few late game ones that give only raw dust and they have such a limited use, like mb only for economy victory or if you went crazy with that buyout.. Never tried to go crazy with potatoes right from the start and I think its pretty inefficient as your lvl2 systen upgrade.

You're arguing for how these techs, and Dust in general, aren't actually that bad, but all of your examples are reinforcing that they're pretty bad.

You say you don't care to research Pulvis Production, you're just there for the Marketplace and razing systems. That goes to show that Pulvis Production isn't good. You talk about just trying to stay around +0 Dust, and Xenotourism being good for that early game, and that you only go for Dust production if you want an Economic Victory. That all goes to show that stocked Dust isn't worth much. You even say that you want Trade Routes for the Science and Luxuries, not the Dust, further highlighting that Dust can't be that good if you consistently avoid collecting it.

That kind of highlights the problems with Dust improvements and Bullion Freighters, that the more Dust you produce the worse it gets for buying anything instead of just paying Upkeep. So why use it if you're not filling the bucket for an Economic Victory?

I agree whit some points listed here. To me, the best way to currently get dust, is either selling luxuries or strategics, finding minor faction traits that yields vasts dust bonueses (such as emblyr or Eyder one) increasing pop on systems whit sterile planets and... well, these are basically the only ways i know to increase dust. 

What always bothered me in-game is that most dust production improvements, and even other late game improvements i saw in the tech tree... din't really felt like they where compensating to build, as i can spend my industry elswhere, and reap much more rewards from it. Why build a infraestructure that gives me 25 + dust per system level if i can either build Predictive Logistics instead  or go trough the Infleunce outcome, that is also very necessary for my empire? 

Instead of focusing on dust improvements, there are many other branches i can upgrade my empire upon that are, in the end, much more compensating than spending time and industry on dust-related improvements, because they are not that much usefull yet, and some dust related improvements feel... Stupendously pricefull to build while yielding very little rewards (most late game improvements feel like that for me)

Problem is, i feel like some dust building improvement are relatively obsolete if compared to their other dust counter parts. If i have a galaxy filled whit hot planets but few in pop, i will have terribly low dust income, because i will produce alot of system improvements but i will have few pop to increase dust income, and as one of the best ways to generate dust is having a lot of pop well... 

I sometimes feel like dust improvements are relatively useless if compared to other methods. And that, for me, needs to change. It makes me believe that dust income is not only a matter of having trade companies or not, but a matter of luck, as having the right traits to increase your dust income can appear, or not for your empire, and having a bunch of systems filled whit hot planets is not... really a choice after all. 

I'd like to have more consistent methods of increasing dust income besides simply having to rely on Trade Routes. Maybe that would be a good idea for the game after all?

I wonder if a buff on these structures would do good for them... what y'all think? :)

I didn't make any suggestions, I was adressing my thoughts only to the original poster in the first place and we were talking only about the value of Dust. YertyL told that dust is not as powerfull as other FIDSI and I tried to prove him wrong showing some examples where dust can be useful and highlighted its flexibility. I am against the enormous level of inflation growth as well, btw.

Well, here is my decision from what i understand from everything that has been told yet: 

Either alternatives might be good if: 

• Personally, i believe the only thing that should be fixed in dust economy is not the inflation itself, but the dust-related buildings that increases dust income. Whenever im building my empire and upgrading my systems, i always have three things to always prioritize when building my empire: Industry, Science, Militarry Ships, and ocasionally influence related improvements such as fidsi bonueses or food related improvements.Together, these three infraestructure types , whiteout counting the possible wonders, can consume my whole game in terms of industry and time, since i can either focus on these 3 and build a relatively strong empire, as industry and science are very good concepts for any empire, and you can either earn dust utilizing other methods than simply building infrastructures that increases only a little bit of dust in your empire. I feel like dust improvements should be a relatively powerfull choice to consider when you are expanding your empire, but some structures don't feel (for me) rewarding enough to build, if compared to other options i may have. There are currently many ways to earn dust, but dust improvements are... obsolete? Why should i work to build a structure that may generate for me 100 dust at system level four if whit  a simple law i can raise my dust output to above 1k at that rate because "10 dust per pop est OP" ? I feel like the other methods of increasing dust are much more usefull to increase it if compared to its infraestructure concept, and because of these "Other methods of increasing dust" i can simply avoid building dust related improvements trough the whole game, and easily compete whit other empires in equal scale. Therefore, i believe dust improvements should be an impactant choice trough the game, to make people think if they will build X or Y building ,instead of relying on alternate methods to increase dust and making these dust buildings obsolete trough the entire game. Making dust related improvements "rewarding" enough to compete against Science infrastructure branch, is a step forward for me. 

To make that possible, either deleting inflation or reducing its total potential can help it for the game. Maybe a significant or small change on inflation... or either buffing some dust-related improvements to make them more usefull, if compared to other dust-generating methods... Or maybe improving dust-generating improvements whiteout even touching the inflation?

*Extra factor: I believe dust inflation should be kept, as the game is currently balanced to work whit inflation, and changing its effect on game can affect economic victory, thus generatting far bigger problems for the game than inflation itself.

So thinking things over tonight a bit, in light of inflations stated purpose, it seems to me that the mechanic will always be a bit backwards no matter how much it is tweaked, because it devalues Dust generation, but it's stated purpose is to harm factions which aren't big Dust generators. Even with market floors fixed, it'll still be a bit backwards. And even if we assume it can serve another purpose, it creates the problem of an entire one of the five FIDSI getting worse and worse for no apparent reason.

However, an idea occurred to me for a couple reasons:
- There is supposed to be a mechanic which punishes non-Dust generating factions over Dust generating factions

- Non-Dust generating factions generally use Industry over Dust (or else they'd be a Dust generating faction. after all)

As such, we don't need a mechanic which punishes Dust focus, but rather a mechanic which presents some sort of dynamic obstacle to Industry focus instead. As such I propose some sort of Industrial Inefficiency; a mechanic which would apply a temporary malus to the construction of any newly minted Improvement or Ship Design, but not its Buyout cost.

Pros:

- Thematic. Industry is inflexible and slow to implement new ideas even though it has brute force, while Dust is flexible and gives patronage to favorites.

- Highlights Science. Rushing a tech will give time to absorb the malus, and the Scientist Cost law will help Scientists more rapidly implement cutting edge tech.

- Highlights Refits. Changing a ship design means crashing production as the empire slowly adapts, but refits stay the same in cost.

Cons:

- Players don't dynamically control it. (Though I'd say players never had much control of inflation either)

- Rebalancing, as with all changes. Particularly fixing all the Buyout Cost Reduction stuff, but honestly it's already been broken for a while under inflation.

Note:

- This could also just be limited to Ship Designs but I think it does nicely as is.

Take all this with a grain of salt of course, I just think it's a bit more interesting than what we have now, and solves the core problem that inflation is a mechanic that punishes Dust generation for no reason. (Because of course, it's actual reason for being is to punish non-Dust generating factions)

*Extra factor: I believe dust inflation should be kept, as the game is currently balanced to work whit inflation...

Is it? Nobody builds dust improvements - already a weak resource for returns on investment even before inflation - when you could build another sort of improvement.

Investments in dust infrastructure start weak (okay, it's versatile) and get weaker (due to inflation). That's not balanced at all.

 Given everyone turns off economic victory anyway, that's hardly balanced either!

Velorace wrote:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forums/66-game-design/threads/27202-let-s-talk-about-inflation?page=1#post-258277 

Here is a link from a response from the devs from their view of why inflation should we kept. We should take his arguments and argument whit them! :)

Yeah, except his argument (with much respect to jhell) is wrong. 

Player A is building all the dust buildings and trading HQs, with an intention to use dust to buy improvements and ships, and buy market resources.

Player B  is building all the industry buildings and mines, with an intention to use production to build improvements and ships, and mine resources from planets.

Who is going to suffer more when inflation hits?

It will always take player B the same amount of industry to build the same industry's worth of building. Player A, on the other hand, has to find more and more dust to buy out that building -  every turn, it gets worse, and the more dust they make, the faster it gets worse. Inflation reduces the value of investing in dust production.

So when jhell says "The purpose of inflation was indeed to make Pacifist empires able to hurt Militarist empires indirectly, by driving inflation up"  - that doesn't match what inflation does. It doesn't hurt militarist or pacifist empires; it hurts anyone investing in dust - which probably should be pacifist empires (except nobody invests in dust infrastructure anyway). It does not do its stated intended design, and it arguably does the exact opposite.

CyRob wrote:

Inflation is a very weird feature lore wise,

It is! It makes no sense at all.

Your idea is sound, but it also seems very complicated. Given development resources, just removing resources and tweaking numbers on dust costs/production for balance seems way simpler!

Velorace wrote:

But just one question: How much exactly does the current inflation affect dust production? i haven`t really understood it yet..

It doesn't affect dust production except to devalue it -  by increasing the cost of various actions (buyouts etc.) and market prices.

What it affects I have noted in this post some time ago.

Bridger wrote:

Dragar wrote:

Yeah, except his argument (with much respect to jhell) is wrong. 

Player A is building all the dust buildings and trading HQs, with an intention to use dust to buy improvements and ships, and buy market resources.

Player B  is building all the industry buildings and mines, with an intention to use production to build improvements and ships, and mine resources from planets.

Who is going to suffer more when inflation hits?

It will always take player B the same amount of industry to build the same industry's worth of building. Player A, on the other hand, has to find more and more dust to buy out that building -  every turn, it gets worse, and the more dust they make, the faster it gets worse. Inflation reduces the value of investing in dust production.

So when jhell says "The purpose of inflation was indeed to make Pacifist empires able to hurt Militarist empires indirectly, by driving inflation up"  - that doesn't match what inflation does. It doesn't hurt militarist or pacifist empires; it hurts anyone investing in dust - which probably should be pacifist empires (except nobody invests in dust infrastructure anyway). It does not do its stated intended design, and it arguably does the exact opposite.

Sorry I'm jumping into this conversation late, but...doesn't Player B also suffer from a massive problem in that his dust income won't be able to support his empire?  I never saw dust as soemthing to acquire in large amounts.  Rather, it is something you *must* have to pay for the upkeep of your navy and all the other stuff you do.  You generally don't want to acquire dust just to spend it, you acquire it so you can build more navies and more buildings.

So how are people who ignore dust production possibly able to survive withoug going bankrupt?

1. Player B's expenses will not increase with inflation because inflation does not affect Upkeep. It never has.

2. Player B's income will continuously increase with inflation to meet it, because Player B can sell resources for higher and higher prices of Dust.

3. Unfortunately if Upkeep was affected, and market floors fixed so selling resources was not an infinite solution, I'm afraid it would just result in both Player A and Player B becoming equally impoverished.

WeLoveYou wrote:

Just want to chime in with agreement about a lot that has been said here. A buyout economy *should* be a viable strategy in the game, but even with massive dust production, buyout improvements, and superspuds, it's extremely difficult to run such an economy....

I'm going to say something controversial - I think inflation might be ok as is. It allows for a certain level of economic warfare - produce more dust to reduce the opportunity of other empires to utilise their own dust....

So how about a mechanic that allows players to invest in reducing their inflation?...

While I obviously agree with your first point, and I have put forward your third point before in the past, your second point is unfortunately not a reality because of the reasons Dragar listed earlier. If inflation is driven by empires who produce Dust, and hurts empires use of Dust, then inflation functionally only hurts the empires who are trying to produce Dust, making their choice of resource permanently worse and worse. Inflation as a mechanic is a suicide pact between financial empires, while industrial empires watch from the sidelines without a care. Inflation as-is simply will only hurt the people who cause it, and the wealthier you are, the more you drive it and are hurt by it in turn.

As for a fun way to fight inflation, I put forward in the past an idea wherein the Economic victory would be based in being the first to invest a certain amount of Dust in the marketplace, and inflation would be based on how far behind the leader you were in investment. I'll recreate the more important details here, as I'm uncertain about and not particularly attached to the details about the marketplace producing more resources based on shares owned.

"Inflation: Inflation is determined by the number of Market Shares owned by the player with the most shares. (Not the total owned by all players) Each share they own increases inflation by a specific amount (so the 100th Share ends the game at a very specific amount of inflation, 10x for example), while each share any player owns reduces inflation by that amount for themselves only. As such, players only slightly behind the leader will have better inflation than players very far behind the leader.

This puts inflation in the direct control of Dust producing empires, allows Dust producing empires to suppress inflation by competing for the most Shares, makes Economic Victory more interesting by requiring an investment of Dust rather than pumping out as much as possible"

This could be replaced with a simple meter which is filled specifically with income, perhaps, if it was desired to prevent resource producers from accelerating inflation. It could be tinkered with certainly. In terms of lore, the idea is that the lead empire is manipulating both inflation and their own relative income to manipulate the market on a grand scale for others but not themselves. It also has the nice bonus of adding a tangible benefit for chasing Economic victory.

WeLoveYou wrote:

...Everyone occasionally likes to utilise buyout so saying that dust producing empires only hurt themselves is false. It's still currently the case that big dust producing empires harm lesser dust producing empires, they just also happen to harm themselves (but functionally not as much as big dust producing empires will still be able to buyout more). The idea behind having a new inflation reducing mechanic was to decrease the self harm, while maintaining the harm to others. The point is that the current mechanic fundamentally works as it should, it just doesn't work well enough as currently implemented so could do with something that tweaks that make it worth the difference. At the moment the difference created by the inflation mechanic is 'HighDustEmpire1 can sometimes buyout, LowDustEmpire2 can almost never buyout...

Not all empires use Buyout. It's an optional tech. It's very easy to go all game without using it, and just focus on covering Upkeep costs. I do it all the time because I know what inflation does to buyouts, and I know it doesn't affect Upkeep, so my Dust is best spent on Upkeep rather than purchasing anything.

On the second point, Dust production is extremely bad at affording buyouts, while resource selling does it very easily. That's because Dust production drives inflation but doesn't benefit from it, while resource selling keeps pace with it and doesn't raise it. So High Dust empire and Low Dust empire are both terrible at buyouts compared to the Luxuries empire.

So that being said, inflation exactly as it is right now makes it so that Dust production is bad at buying things, because it is what drives the inability to buy things. The games simulation of inflation is actually hyperinflation, which causes exactly the problems we're seeing now. So it doesn't really work as it should because it's not really inflation but hyperinflation, and with due respect to the developers, inflation as a real concept just does not work the way the game mechanic was meant to.

Hence my suggestion of changing inflation to be something people manage, maybe even create, by deliberately investing in it, which we seem to be in agreement about- a meter to fill with Dust to drive up prices for other people but not yourself, or otherwise a meter which you fill to reduce your own prices without reducing anyone elses.

Autochthon wrote:

Quick thought:

Inflation based on average dust production vs average industry production across all empires. Dust Victory would then be based on dust production supremacy rather than racing to get as much dust as possible.

Normalize inflation so that costs don't get absolutely out of hand and so that investing entirely in dust doesn't hose your dust efficiency entirely (and the galaxy at large).

Care to elaborate with an example for your first point? 4 Dust is already worth 1 Industry by default last I checked, and inflation is what reduces that rate.

IceGremlin wrote:

Care to elaborate with an example for your first point? 4 Dust is already worth 1 Industry by default last I checked, and inflation is what reduces that rate.

Right now inflation is a non-normalized additional multiplier for dust costs. It's based on galaxy wide total dust production. I'm proposing a system that uses average dust production potentially with an adjustment based on average industry production in the galaxy.

I've got to be pretty broad because I don't know the exact mechanics of inflation and I can't seem to find them.

Right now dust inflation is essentially Coefficient Function(Sum All Empire Dust Production)

My suggestion is Coefficient Function(Average All Empire Dust Production)(Average All Empire Industry Production Modifier Function)

That means that investing purely in dust right now results in hosing all dust costs galaxy wide to the point that it's impossible for anyone to buy anything (Inflation increases the dust required to buy one industry). If you use the average dust production in the galaxy to determine inflation then what matters for "benefitting" from your dust focus is that you're above average in production, and it means inflation is lower overall. If you factor average Industry production then you're saying "stuff is even more expensive because peopel aren't producing a lot of it" or "tstuff is less expensive because they produce a lot of it"

The goal is to prevent inflation  from rendering prices essentially unattainable and removing the actual draw for having focused on dust (instantly building things at the cost of not being able to build them as quickly without the dust).

Right now focusing entirely on dust production is shooting yourself i nthe foot. Sure you get out of having to do something (wait) now but in 50-100 turns wheneveryone has a strong baseline dust production that advantage is gone and you've hobbled yourself.

Note: this leaves the potentiallity for dust inflation to be less than 1. It doesn't directly affect how much dust is worth compared to industry baseline, but the 4:1 ratio is not all that bad if you consider that you're always going to have some proportion of industry production and therefore if you have 2:1 Dust:Industry you are effectively paying 75% for constrution of things.

Daynen wrote:

...

As for the counterplay of just not buying luxuries, the trick there is that there's not really a way to specifically buy from any faction--it's just on the market.  Where it came from becomes irrelevant once it's there, because not only do you not know who sold it (unless you control the trade center) but you couldn't tell it which luxuries to buy to avoid buying from Lumeris anyway.

...

That's kind of my point, though. Basing Economic Victory on your ability to produce a product only makes sense if that product is purchased by others. Normally, a lot of people don't buy stuff on the market, because inflation makes it very expensive and honestly you're just gonna use the Luxuries you have or gain new ones through conquest rather rely on the inherently unstable Marketplace to fulfil your needs. So either you don't need your Luxuries to be bought, in which case it doesn't make a lot of sense, or you do need your Luxuries to be bought, in which case people will continue to do as they have always done and just rely on conquest to take what they want instead of buying.

I really think Economic Victory and the Dust Economy would work fine if there was just a clear, simple way for Dust centric factions to reduce Inflation. Personally I say just get rid of it entirely, but if that's not on the table, then it should be something Dust factions specifically can bring to 0.

As I've mentioned elsewhere:

- Tie Inflation to the progress of the player closest to Economic Victory

- Tie Inflation reduction to each empires own progress towards Economic Victory

- Apply Inflation to Upkeep

This way, progress to Economic Victory stops whipping you with inflation, inflation actually fulfils its purpose of letting the Pacifist Dust factions harm everyone else by driving up their costs, encouraging those other factions to lay down arms and turn to peace and trade if they mismanage their Dust badly enough to make no progress towards Economic Victory, and thus no progress towards reducing their own inflation rate by trying to keep pace with the leaders.