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.