Food and Energy; making them more valuable to the colony.

[CrashFu]

It's really a shame that a person specializing in food and or energy accomplishes nothing except taking money from the other players for himself, never really contributing anything to said colony because they'll never bring in more than $15 per unit selling to the store...

That got me thinking. Sure, the STORE doesn't need too much food or energy in stock, but what about the space ship?  Considering it's not TOO much bigger than one whole plot, I find it hard to believe that it can manufacture much food or energy mid-voyage. Won't it need to stock up while it's planet-side?

So what if the value of both food and energy would suddenly jump up to a nice respectable amount for the final, end-of-game auction phase, since you're selling it to the ship for the voyage home instead of the planet-side store?

For that matter, do the stockpiles of food and energy the store keeps during the match (assuming you don't empty them early on, in order to gouge your competing players) contribute at all to the colony score?  If not, maybe they should.  That way, colony-minded players might actually be tempted to sell their excess to it, despite how little it is worth during all the other phases of the game. The store supply won't deteriorate, so filling it up ensures a nice little colony boost for the final tally.

[Robbie]

Youre right, the weight of the goods need a redesign. Actually smithore is overpowered and food/energy is underpowered. Crystite is not what it should be, you always earn more money with smithore than crystite because of the high amount of smithore you can produce.

[Coyotek4]

Youre right, the weight of the goods need a redesign. Actually smithore is overpowered and food/energy is underpowered. Crystite is not what it should be, you always earn more money with smithore than crystite because of the high amount of smithore you can produce.

Again, this is due to the lack of EOS for Crystite and will be fixed in the next version.

Food and Energy probably should be a little more important, but the fact is that anyone can go big in Smithore, so I have no problem with its power over the 'lesser' resources.

[CrashFu]

Food and Energy probably should be a little more important, but the fact is that anyone can go big in Smithore, so I have no problem with its power over the 'lesser' resources.

It's not so much the issue of how much money each of the factory types brings in as where you're taking the money from and its relation to the colony itself.  The fact that you MAKE money for not just yourself, but the entire colony's score when you produce smithore, but if you produce food and energy, whether or not you sell it low to be nice, or sell it high to have some vague chance at keeping up with the players who were nabbing the three-mountain plots while you were nabbing rivers and deserts,  the fact is that either way you're still just taking money from another player and not positively influencing the colony score whatsoever.

A guy completely monopolizes the ore industry and he's the hero of the colony.  A guy monopolizes food and energy and it's HIS fault you're all taking a trip to the debtors prison. 


Even if Food and Energy are made to be worth more during the final auction phase, it would still only be for that phase, and even then they'd only be jumping up to the store's SELL value, probably.  (If it was any more, then everyone would just clean out the store on the second-to-last turn, if there was anything there, just to sell it themselves) During the rest of the game, they'd still sell as abysmally low to the store as they do currently, so Ore and Cristite will still be the real money-makers, as they are intended to be.

Only difference really if this change was made would be that people wouldn't scramble to convert all of their food factories into more smithore mines during the last couple rounds, and we might see less of the attitude of "I'd rather let all of mine spoil than allow the store to keep any in stock!" ... ... except of course for the people who don't give a darn about the colony's score and just want to jack up prices for the other players.  That'll still be an option, only now it won't be the only option.

[Eik]

What about increasing the players need for food during the game?
- instead of 3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,5,5,5,5 for example 3,3,4,4,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,7,7,7,7 (while max time when enough food stays the same during each round)

What about needing energy for transporting goods (smithore/crystite) from plot to deposit/store.
- for example: every plot has 4 goods to be transported for no extra energy. And then 1 Energy for every additional 2 goods. If player doesnt have energy to transport goods, then only 4 will be transported to the deposit.

This makes food and energy way more valuable for players having it. Prices will increase dramatically.

[BubbaBrown]

If you chart out the economy of the game:  Energy is the most important commodity followed by Food.

The problem with Food is that it has a fairly direct route in the game economy:  Farm -> Player Time
Player Time is important in the beginning and mid game, but wanes towards the end.  Another problem with Food is that it can be considered a critical constant component of the economy.  Purposely starting a shortage will tend to hurt everyone rather than help one person.  As with the real world, price gouging a needed economic commodity only serves to damn everyone after awhile.

Increasing the needed food may help increase the need, but food is already needed and the game currently doesn't make it easy to have and produce a large amount of it.  To increase the price the store needs to change.  The only time a farmer makes money is when the store runs out and they have the food at the ready.  Every other time they are at the mercy of the store.  The store tends to price fix too much and enforce a limit on prices.  The store needs to be a bit more competitive and be quicker to charge higher and lower prices depending on the current stocks and estimated demand.  The present formulas in the game are way too conservative.

As for Energy, it is needed everywhere, but can be produced in large amounts fairly easily.  The problem that energy is critical for production and the economy.  Prices of energy direct translate to the prices of the other three goods, since their production is dependent on the price of Energy.  You could make it so squares with higher yield potential take up more energy, but this may just cause shortages and other issues.

[Eik]

Increasing the needed food may help increase the need, but food is already needed and the game currently doesn't make it easy to have and produce a large amount of it.

What is the difference between three farms and three smithore plots?

Purposely starting a shortage will tend to hurt everyone rather than help one person.  As with the real world, price gouging a needed economic commodity only serves to damn everyone after awhile.

Creating possible shortages will indeed cause potential harm. Hence a capitalistic world where profitable possibilities arise. The attitude towards food now is: 'ah come on, there is enough for everyone, just give me your food otherwise you ruin our colony'. To: 'ah crap, there is going to be a general shortage if people don't start making food. Please make it and I will pay for it.'

It is not the fault of the shop that it undervaluates food. It uses the same formula for all commodities. Which means that when there is a big shortage the prices will increase dramatically. Seen the fact that the demand for food is never higher then 20 (4 players needing 5 food) and the supply is approximately 16 (4 farms producing 4 each) the price will not increase that much.
It uses the formula: current_price*(0.25+0.75*(D/S))
So at the later levels when demand (D) is highest, the new price is approximately current_price*1.19 (with D=20 and S=16). After this price setting the store will buy for 15 less, so it is fundamental to the game now that the price of food from the store doesn't increase automatically. Creating a shortage (which can be overcome by just making more farms like you would make smithore) will cause players to buy food against a high price and the price of the store will also increase with the formula.

It might seem a little odd to 'damn everyone after awhile'. But that is exactly what the food and energy need. Everyone takes these commodities for granted, and everyone makes money with smithore by making a lot and cause shortages of mules. Not changing the principle of food and energy keeps it as a damned necessity instead of a nice trading opportunity.

As for Energy, it is needed everywhere, but can be produced in large amounts fairly easily.  The problem that energy is critical for production and the economy.  Prices of energy direct translate to the prices of the other three goods, since their production is dependent on the price of Energy.  You could make it so squares with higher yield potential take up more energy, but this may just cause shortages and other issues.

Other issues like for example the need for energy and the increase of the price so trading energy will also become as profitable as making smithore?

[BubbaBrown]

The key to getting any money from critical commodities is to price as high as possible without anyone going without.  If anyone goes without the economic system will suffer and you will in turn.  You can make some serious money by price gouging and not caring if someone goes without.  This would be a perfectly acceptable if the game only relied on your individual score to determine the winner.  The game doesn't and requires that both the colony total be above a level and your score be slightly more than everyone else.  This causes an odd dynamic where you have to be careful in avoiding excessive price gouging as it will slow down the development rate of other types of production by other players.  Short sighted gains can be the downfall of an economic system.  American banking and corporatism is chocked full these kind of examples.

The store is the central issue.  It's the reason smithore is so profitable and it's the reason food and energy are not as profitable.  The store ultimately fixes the price range for goods and is unable to properly react to "Smithore Surges".  From charting the economic system, the only good that should be bringing in any real profit to the system is Crystite.  It's the only good that directly brings new money into the system independent of the store's calculations.  Food is traded for existing player funds or store funds and then consumed.  Energy is traded for existing player funds or store funds, but is then used for production.  Smithore is only traded in for store funds usually, but MULEs are then bought at the store.  The store needs to operate as a closed system, but in the case of "Smithore Surges" it becomes a new and unexpected source of new money.

So the problem isn't that Food and Energy isn't profitable, but Smithore is too profitable because of a game's logic.  The store needs to have limited funds to operate from and react to good surges by immediately dropping the purchase price when it starts to get overstocked.

[GabrielPope]

The store is the central issue.  It's the reason smithore is so profitable and it's the reason food and energy are not as profitable.  The store ultimately fixes the price range for goods and is unable to properly react to "Smithore Surges".  From charting the economic system, the only good that should be bringing in any real profit to the system is Crystite.  It's the only good that directly brings new money into the system independent of the store's calculations.  Food is traded for existing player funds or store funds and then consumed.  Energy is traded for existing player funds or store funds, but is then used for production.  Smithore is only traded in for store funds usually, but MULEs are then bought at the store.  The store needs to operate as a closed system, but in the case of "Smithore Surges" it becomes a new and unexpected source of new money.

So the problem isn't that Food and Energy isn't profitable, but Smithore is too profitable because of a game's logic.  The store needs to have limited funds to operate from and react to good surges by immediately dropping the purchase price when it starts to get overstocked.

Note that you can have food and energy "surges" as well, which also result in new money being generated within the economy. The problem is that the store's price of food and energy is heavily weighted based on the colony's total supply, whereas the store does not consider stockpiled smithore in setting the price of smithore. In essence, the store already anticipates food and energy surges and will keep the price relatively low if it determines that there's a large surplus in the economy.

In other words, if one player has 200 food or 200 energy, then even if the other players have shortages and are paying big bucks, the store will tend to keep the price down--there's no way that such a giant surplus would be useful or necessary, so they're not going to buy 200 units at $200 apiece. But if there's a mule shortage and one player has 200 smithore, the store will happily keep its price at $200+ even though the colony has no use at all for that much smithore (88 smithore is enough to outfit every square with a mule, and by the time someone's put together 200 smithore the map is probably mostly developed.)

[Big Head Zach]

So the Store's essential functions are:

1) Extra storage for Food and Energy that doesn't spoil.
2) Manufactures MULEs.

So, it could be considered that by doing the Smithore strategy, you're simultaneously making lots of money off the store (whose cash reserves are limitless) and also forcing opponents to pay a lot more for MULEs.

I typically don't buy MULEs until their price resolves, because then I don't have to worry about making the money back with production.

Also, bear in mind that Smithore pricing does differ from Food and Energy, in that the D/S ratio is hard-limited between .25 (1 demand for every 4 supply) and 3.0 (3 demand for every 1 supply). In theory, that should keep prices from plummeting or spiking to the min/max, but it also slows the corrective behavior that follows a massive Smithore sell-off. There's at least 2 rounds where Smithore is > $100, even though the Corral is full.

[Eik]

The only pure off-colony income is:
- crystite
- the burning of smithore by the shop after 99 (it keeps buying for the sake of burning it)
- food in the form of time in the pub (little and uncontrollable)

But it is not that strange to distribute this income to all the players according to how important they are. Producing food and energy is very important for the colony, but sucks at getting the big money. So why not increase profitability of food and energy by using these changes?

It is true that total colony money will decrease, but hey, who said life was easy?

[GabrielPope]

But it is not that strange to distribute this income to all the players according to how important they are. Producing food and energy is very important for the colony, but sucks at getting the big money. So why not increase profitability of food and energy by using these changes?

The problem is that there is a low, finite need for food and energy. If one player is making 20+ units of food per turn, and the other players are making 4-5 units per turn, the 20 surplus food is almost completely worthless--and is valued as such by the store (and other players.)

In the original, the big endgame money was almost entirely driven by crystite, assuming competent players. Food, energy, and smithore were all means to an end: producing more crystite. They were ingredients that go into the crystite economy, not major sources of income; sure, in the early-mid game there'd be price spikes that you could take advantage of, but ultimately the game was about trying to manage the necessities to produce as much crystite as possible. But currently, the smithore market is missing the spoilage rule that made it inefficient as a late game cash cow in the original, so you can still do ridiculous things like jacking the store for $50,000 with giant smithore stockpiles.

[Eik]

Ok, ye i'm not familiar with the original game.
Probably the going into a crystite economy is much better then the current.
Hmm sounds like that solves a lot of my anger against the current gameplay. Thanks for resting my mind.

Would be interesting though to see food and energy be more valuable by making the need higher I guess.

[GabrielPope]

Would be interesting though to see food and energy be more valuable by making the need higher I guess.

Well, I think the consensus is that the game needs to retain a "classic mode" that would preserve the core mechanics of the original. This would certainly make for an interesting alternate mode, however.

Another possibility for such an "advanced" mode would be to add additional resource requirements and increase the number of stages in the economy. I'm partial to the concept of having one primary cash resource, but increasing the number of different resources makes it harder to be self-sufficient, which makes being able to sell supplies more valuable. Requiring additional resources for production would be similar in effect to raising food/energy requirements, except that diversifying resource requirements instead of simply raising them would mean it would also be harder for the food/energy suppliers to be self-sufficient, and would make for a more difficult game all around that would require more cooperation to succeed in.

[vaylen]

It seems to me that if the store doesn't take stored smithore into consideration when it sets its smithore price, it should also not take stored food and energy into consideration when setting those prices. So if someone has a large stockpile of energy and someone else has an energy shortage, the store should jack up the energy price very high to encourage the stockpiling player to sell.  This would give food and energy magnates the same playing field as smithore hoarders.