Inflation for Upkeep

Do you mean to include only upkeep for ships, or also upkeep for structures?  Increasing upkeep for structures could lead to more cases where structures can't justify their own upkeep costs, which probably has complex follow-on effects for system management and tech choices.

Aw yeaaaah.

Dragar wrote:

it could also be handled by buffing dust producing buildings.

If the concern were that you might reach a point where you can't afford to pay upkeep on necessary buildings, then that would be a possible solution.  But if the concern is that a building's upkeep might get so high that the expense is not justified, then this does not help.  For instance, a building that generates 10 food per turn but costs 300 dust per turn in upkeep is almost certainly not worth using, even if you have no trouble affording it, because 300 dust is simply more valuable than 10 food (in most circumstances).

Of course, it's not necessarily game-breaking if buildings sometimes cost too much upkeep to be worth using; I'm just pointing out that the effects are more complicated, so it would take more effort to think through the ramifications and account for them all.  (Also, it presents a UI issue--if a building was a marginally good deal back when you built it 40 turns ago, but inflation has driven up its upkeep cost to the point where it's just hurting you, how is the player supposed to notice that this has happened?)

I'll also add that, if you want inflation to be usable for economic warfare, then applying it to upkeep makes much more sense than applying it to buyouts.  The empire with tons of dust is going to spend a large percentage of their total dust on buyouts, which means high buyout prices will hurt them a lot, whereas an empire with meager dust production is going to spend most of it on upkeep, which means high buyout prices will make little difference to them.  So right now, inflation mostly hurts the side that is producing more dust.  If you want "intentionally drive up inflation to strain the other guy's economy" to be a thing, then inflation needs to mostly hurt the side that is producing less dust.

I wasn't around whenever the devs announced their design goals for inflation, though.

Absolutely. We've been advancing these arguments since we learned inflation was indeed supposed to be a hindrance to military empires, not to reign in dust ones.

Unfortunately, that inflation hurts dust producers seems counter intuitive to a lot of people.

Hard to understand why that would be counter-intuitive.  Inflation makes dust less valuable per point.  When dust becomes less valuable, that hurts the people who have the most dust.  Seems pretty simple to me.

But even assuming lots of people found it counter-intuitive, I don't see why that should stop the devs from acting on the information.  Math doesn't care whether the man on the street agrees with it, and the devs should be more than capable of verifying it either analytically or empirically.

Because most players would not play Lumeris... dem industry hugging plebs! I want some ES1 sheredyn level shenanigans, and I want them nao.

I agree,

playing as lumeris and accumulating huge masses of wealth, Never spending any of it except upkeep and not being able to buyout structures or buildings late game,
compared to influence which has no inflation, making an empire with imfulence as a from of money (empires will) seems to be better than dust