Remove or Reverse Inflation

An alternative would be to have upkeep costs grow with inflation, but keep everything else the same. But I think this would be bad for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the AI would probably need to call the baliffs.

I strongly disagree, I think Inflation is a great mechanic in the current state. What is currently wrong is how the market works and how the resources are spawned, especially luxuries. If as a Millitarist Empire you're flooded with Strategics, you're probably not that millitaristic or you're not going to war enough, because you'll need a lot of strategic modules and those end up costing a lot of resources. On the other hand, you're always flooded with Luxuries in the current state of the game, and only 3-5 types at most. This causes 2 problems : 

• First, since you always have tons of luxuries of a few given types, you ALWAYS have more than you need and thus can sell them on the market, which gives you tons of dust.
• Secondly, since you only have access to limited luxuries due to how tier 1 spawn in a clustered manner, and so do every player in the galaxy, you ALWAYS have a monopoly on one or more resources, which given how the prices are fixed, accentuate the previous point even more.

Now at this point, I must point out I'm the one behind the luxury mod so I've seen the effects of reworked generation of luxuries. First of all, declustering the luxuries and reducing the overall amount of depots of a given Luxury while also increasing the number of different types and the yield each depot gives had a lot of positive effects on the prices in the market, the average price of luxuries naturally goes down as the game goes longer because it is now easier to obtain the tier 1 luxuries which in turn reduces the monopoly situation everyone could get passively without caring about the depots, so the income you get from those is way more balanced.

Secondly, since I made the use of luxuries much more natural by fixing the preferences of populations -ie. Industrialists will always ask for Jad, Militarists for Dark glitter, etc no need for additional RNG in the preferences when the depots and the population you interact with are already random- and since I also tweaked the costs of System upgrades, you end up with much less "useless" luxuries that are only good at being sold on the market, coupled with that was also rebalancing their effects in the upgrades to offer more choices, so in the end I find myself mass selling my excess resources a lot less often and instead, I use population boosting and Diplomacy actions with minors a lot more often, and I also use more varried choices in my upgrades.

All in all, I don't think Inflation is perfect in the current state and I'm not saying my mod would fix everything wrong with it currently, but imho the problems lie elsewhere. If the devs were to reiterate on some other gameplay mechanics and fix some of their problems, I'm pretty sure your issues with Inflation would go away on their own. Also if Trade was to be buffed again by offering more options for pacifist empires to increase their outcome WITHOUT making it so easy every Empire can do it just by placing a few HQ and subsidiaries here and there, I think Dust would be more useful.

Kuma wrote:

I strongly disagree, Inflation is a great mechanic in the current state. What is currently wrong is how the market works and how the resources are spawned, especially luxuries. If as a Millitarist Empire you're flooded with Strategics, you're probably not that millitaristic or you're not going to war enough, because you'll need a lot of strategic modules and those end up costing a lot of resources.

What it might be using them for doesn't really matter - the point is that inflation is making its dust income higher, rather than one focusing on dust improvements. It might be choosing to spend that dust in the form of better equipped ships, but this just highlights how strategics are even more valuable than their market price belies. You can't make your dust into better flak cannons if there's no titanium on the market. Regardless: inflation is doing the opposite thing intended.

To put it another way, if I have a load of mines producing gold, and you have a steady job with a paid salary, you certainly have more money than I do. But if the same amount of money buys you less and less gold over time, I'm the one who is benefitting from this effect, whether I'm sleeping on my gold like a dragon or using it to armour my tanks. That's contrary to the design of this mechanic. 

Dragar wrote:

Kuma wrote:

I strongly disagree, Inflation is a great mechanic in the current state. What is currently wrong is how the market works and how the resources are spawned, especially luxuries. If as a Millitarist Empire you're flooded with Strategics, you're probably not that millitaristic or you're not going to war enough, because you'll need a lot of strategic modules and those end up costing a lot of resources.

What it might be using them for doesn't really matter - the point is that inflation is making its dust income higher, rather than one focusing on dust improvements. It might be choosing to spend that dust in the form of better equipped ships, but this just highlights how strategics are even more valuable than their market price belies. You can't make your dust into better flak cannons if there's no titanium on the market. Regardless: inflation is doing the opposite thing intended.

To put it another way, if I have a load of mines producing gold, and you have a steady job with a paid salary, you certainly have more money than I do. But if the same amount of money buys you less and less gold over time, I'm the one who is benefitting from this effect, whether I'm sleeping on my gold like a dragon or using it to armour my tanks. That's contrary to the design of this mechanic. 

If resources are valued higher, then your pacifist player will also benefit from, even moreso because he doesn't use them for his military.

Also, if you have lots of mines making tons of gold every year, but you're not spending it, then that gold becomes more worthless as time goes, that's why in a capitalistic system you want the people with the capital to reinject it into the economy instead of saving it, so your analogy doesn't hold. 

Finally, if you can produce as much Dust by selling your resources as someone whose focus is on Economy, this again, is a direct consequence of the Marketplace having issues and that needs to be fixed, not Inflation.