ArrowLance wrote:
It's not a bug as far as I know, dust just is easy to come by now.

Well in some respects it may be, ie the dust-> ind double\tripple etc stacking issue may be playing into this as well.

Owning half galaxy normal map I made around 8900 DUST depending on my present fleet condition. I never used any of those Ind -> Dust buildings. Since I used all of my planets I wasnt building upgrades on, for building my fleet. Every few turns or so I could buy out entire fleets in 1 turn. It was a bit ridiculous.

4x_Fan wrote:
Confirmed ~ this seems terribly bugged. Turn 40 on UE, and I've never been off tax 0%, and never run a negative.



Alpha-1 had it easy on dust, but you still had to have at least one major production system industry->dust.



Alpha-2 seems to be "CAKE! FREE CAKE!" land.

+1

I thought the negative dust would be expanded upon i.e penalties for going into debt (strike / can't pay your factories/scientists etc)

This also expands early-game options : get an army out quickly while going into debt, rush your nearest neighbor, then recover the economy.

Yeah I have it at 0% and am making 5k Dust a turn, that's with No Ind->Dust

I also find it now too easy.

I ran into this last night on my 8 player, huge, slow game. I thought something was off because I just had my taxes at 0% most of the game....guess it wasn't just me!

I own around 9 system now and my fleet is 2nd but my income is 2983 without any taxes, only buildings and trade. I essentially buy everything. Its a bit game breaking.

davea wrote:
I also find it too easy now. I guess the dev team wanted to make one key change, which is fixing the negative dust exploit. So they added auto-scrapping when your dust is negative. But, to avoid players getting angry in the early game, they made dust production higher so that you would not hit zero too easily at the start. Unfortunately the second change (IMHO) is too big. What other games have done is to start the player off with a cash reserve, so there is a buffer, and a big warning in the early game when your cash gets close to zero. If they implement that, then we will have to try buying all the heroes at turn one with the cash. That may need to be tweaked also.

I was thinking that maybe it was more to help the IA than the player...

KnightHawk wrote:
On this I agree! Warn me first - provide "automatic" option and manual option.

Perhaps if you're given a grace of something like -1000 or -2000 (in which you can't spend anything but you can still have a negative forecast) and then once you run that to the limit the game will force you to end the turn in a positive forecast (not in + dust, but without any further drain) and it does this by bringing up a warning when you try to end the turn which says that if you don't rectify the cash situation by manually deleting cash drains then the game will do it for you. Then at the bottom you have the option to proceed with it automatically or cancel the end turn and do it manually.

I also find it too easy now. I guess the dev team wanted to make one key change, which is fixing the negative dust exploit. So they added auto-scrapping when your dust is negative. But, to avoid players getting angry in the early game, they made dust production higher so that you would not hit zero too easily at the start. Unfortunately the second change (IMHO) is too big. What other games have done is to start the player off with a cash reserve, so there is a buffer, and a big warning in the early game when your cash gets close to zero. If they implement that, then we will have to try buying all the heroes at turn one with the cash. That may need to be tweaked also.

Tikigod wrote:
Whilst making dust so easy to obtain does strike me as odd and potentially something that needs to be fixed, it really does depend on how other changes currently impact dust costs and maintenance and future changes planned will further take up excess dust.



For all we know, the increase in dust production could just be a stepping stone implemented early to make sure figures were around intended levels before large changes or the introduction of new factors are rolled out that will take all our precious dust away.... such as all tactic cards eating up dust.

This is what I'm hoping. Instead of having to try to keep your economy balanced, it's easy to balance and you have to decide how much spare cash you want to spend on extra things. This could allow much more difference in play styles, since instead of just always trying to balance your economy, you also need to decide how much you want to take an active hand in things. Importantly, you wouldn't be able to just jump in whenever you felt like, but you'd have to plan ahead and horde dust to make sure you're able to afford interventions when they're necessary.

Oh man, I cant wait to try this out later today!

Tikigod wrote:
Whilst making dust so easy to obtain does strike me as odd and potentially something that needs to be fixed, it really does depend on how other changes currently impact dust costs and maintenance and future changes planned will further take up excess dust.



For all we know, the increase in dust production could just be a stepping stone implemented early to make sure figures were around intended levels before large changes or the introduction of new factors are rolled out that will take all our precious dust away.... such as all tactic cards eating up dust.

Yes I was thinking to something like that. Good point.

Whilst making dust so easy to obtain does strike me as odd and potentially something that needs to be fixed, it really does depend on how other changes currently impact dust costs and maintenance and future changes planned will further take up excess dust.



For all we know, the increase in dust production could just be a stepping stone implemented early to make sure figures were around intended levels before large changes or the introduction of new factors are rolled out that will take all our precious dust away.... such as all tactic cards eating up dust.

KnightHawk wrote:
Well in some respects it may be, ie the dust-> ind double\tripple etc stacking issue may be playing into this as well.

Yes it could, but as I told in my original post I did not used it, and I think 4X_fan neither. Btw thanks you for your post about this in the support section.

It seems that with the new tax mechanism you just have to put the slider on 0% @t1 and it is done, you dont have to play with it until the end of the game, the dust will always be here.



I have tested it with two differents races to compare (hard lvl, slow), and it has been the same each time. I know that the conversion thing Ind > Dust seems bugged, so I didnt use it in my two games.



I dont know if it works as intended, but anyway it is a little too easy now I think...

I had a game going as UE in Alpha 1 which I continued to play on Alpha 2. My dust income skyrocketed after loading in Alpha 2. Now I make +2700 every turn. with tax rate on 30%. I also noticed trade routes going up. One route that gave 18 dust in Alpha 1 gives 49 now in Alpha2.

My personal feeling after a 5h session now is that dust is unbalanced now and needs to be nerfed heavily.

I am now in the middle of my second alpha 2 game with Horatios (first was with Cravers), and for the first time I have to increase a little the slider from 0% to 5-10%. So the 'easy-dust' thing seems not as bad as with the Cravers, it tends to balance a little now, but still, it is far easier than in Alpha 1.



Maybe it is 'work as intended' I dont know, but I prefered how it worked in alpha 1, and I had hoped a step in the other direction in fact, to have expansion a little bit more harder and interesting. Now it is even faster than before, which means : colonize, colonize, colonize, colonize, etc...



Maybe increase upkeep cost of outpost (significantly)? Or block the planet growth when a colonist is building?

ArrowLance wrote:
It's not a bug as far as I know, dust just is easy to come by now.

I'm playing on impossible ~ which has severe system penalties, or should have.



Attached a save ~ turn 40, Impossible, 0% tax, +101 dust / turn, no systems on industry -> dust. Admittedly, playing UE, but still.







Looks kinda buggy to me.
UE Imposs +101 dust 0 tax.zip

KnightHawk wrote:
I haven't ever tried setting my taxes below 40%... guess I'll need to try it and see what you guys are talking about with this bug.

It's not a bug as far as I know, dust just is easy to come by now.

I haven't ever tried setting my taxes below 40%... guess I'll need to try it and see what you guys are talking about with this bug.

4x_Fan wrote:




Alpha-1 had it easy on dust, but you still had to have at least one major production system industry->dust.

You're talking about the star system improvment?

Randeng wrote:
Yes but I don't like that the game chooses for you what to increase, destroy, etc...



Just adding a warning and then, you have to fix the problem.

On this I agree! Warn me first - provide "automatic" option and manual option.

Confirmed ~ this seems terribly bugged. Turn 40 on UE, and I've never been off tax 0%, and never run a negative.



Alpha-1 had it easy on dust, but you still had to have at least one major production system industry->dust.



Alpha-2 seems to be "CAKE! FREE CAKE!" land.

Yes but I don't like that the game chooses for you what to increase, destroy, etc...



Just adding a warning and then, you have to fix the problem.

Randeng wrote:
I think that they should had a "dust limit", and if you reach, i don't know, -2000 dust, the party is over for you.

Though if you have a negative bank balance it's just going to start scraping things constantly on you anyway right? Keep that situation long enough and the AI will come eat you up anyway so not sure the devs really need to end your game, I can for see a situation where one might go negative for awhile even into the thousands but still have a recoverable situation so I wouldn't support a negative amount that automatically ends the game, especially not one so low.

Maybe I should clarify, I am getting +300 dust a turn with 0% tax rate and no systems doing ind-dust production. And this was with the cravers.

Same here, Alpha 2 is way to easy in terms of money gaining.

I think that they should had a "dust limit", and if you reach, i don't know, -2000 dust, the party is over for you.

Kruos wrote:
It seems that with the new tax mechanism you just have to put the slider on 0% @t1 and it is done, you dont have to play with it until and of the game, the dust will always be here.



I have tested it with two differents races to compare (hard lvl, slow), and it has been the same each time. I know that the conversion think Ind > Dust seems bugged, so I didnt use it in my two games.



I dont know if it works as intended, but anyway it is a little too easy now I think...

In my two games since the patch I have noticed my tax slider has pretty much always been on 0 or 5% I don't even use ind-dust.