20K Cap

6 turns is all it took to go from a solid economy to complete production shutdown and back.

Holy Potatoes! That is Insane!

removed/fixed

Let us hope they review this and remove this dastardly demon!

I agree that the 20K cap should be removed.

So now I am at the point that if I don't spend 60-70K bc every turn on ships, social builds, and sundry to get below the cap I loose 25-30K that turn. Reganonomics???

I wonder what Alan Greenspan would have to say about that kind of monetary capital being lost per week.   

So now I am at the point that if I don't spend 60-70K bc every turn on ships, social builds, and sundry to get below the cap I loose 25-30K that turn.

If you don't spend your budget, it'll be reduced. Sounds like Brad is too deeply rooted in business.

More seriously, I really think that the 20K rule is a very bad way of telling the player not to save up a fortune - especially when you need a fortune for projects like upgrading a bunch of ships at the same time.

I agree that this 29K cap is a problem and a nuisance. As FC said, you end up spending all your money so that you don't loose it. This forces you to build up unreasonable numbers of ships that are never needed or used and pushes the military score skyhigh. But, if that is what you have to do to play the game, then it is not really a real time strategy game. It is a micromanaged monopoly game.

Scrap the cap. That's one player limitations that makes absolutely no sense. Is it a programming issue?

I understand that the money should be used. Maybe tie funds above $x to morale drops the same way that going in the red does. With too much money, the tax payers sense corruption. There's always a social project to pay off. It doesn't need a hard cap.

In my experience, you need to research Republic and democracy to have a healthy economy.
The 20K cap seems to come into play only when I am a Dictatorship. I lean towards researching the economic tree as soon as I have enough military techs to protect myself from nearby aggressors. Get to stock exchanges ASAP!

DA has very different economic rules, I even played a game earlier and had over 500,000B in my treasury. Rush buying for war was not even a small worry. In the early game people get really mad over taxes too.

Scrap the cap. That's one player limitations that makes absolutely no sense. Is it a programming issue?

No. I think it's just another left-over from GC1. In GC1 the cap made a little more sense since you couldn't build an uber economy.

Anyway I agree the cap is out of whack. It should at least scale to galaxy size, or planets. Or make it a progressive tax so that the OPs case doesn't happen. (go from 5% at 20K to to 20% at 50k or whatever)

I personally find it annoying to quick-buy stuff every turn to get under the 20k penalty. Which drives me to build more research/production planets to spend the money, but invariably I still need to spend more money.

StarDock doesn't want the players to have loads of cash laying around according to Frogboy.
Instead of setting a hardcap at 20k,,you get an economic penalty.

There are three ways to deal with it:

1) Spend your cash every turn on Social/Economic projects or hand it over to other races (bet they gonna like you eventually

2) Raise your income even further to compensate for it.

3) Lower your taxes so you don't earn more than you spend.

I am with Fuels Chief. I am not necessarily opposed to a cap as such, but I keep finding that 20,000 bc is just too low. I buy one or two high-level buildings, and I'm nearly out of money. And as pointed out already, you virtually cannot upgrade ships in one go, except fairly early in the game.

The problem is that the 20K cap is a fixed number designed to keep people from hoarding cash on small maps. It just makes no sense on larger maps. To me, if he wants to prevent hoarding, this number should be a factor of your income. If you only have an income of 500BC, 20K is to high. If you have an income of 1 Million BC (as some have reached) a 20K cap is insane. Perhaps limit the number to X times you generated income, so it scales with your empire?

I.E. Your income is 2K, and the cap is twice your income. So you cap is 4K. Then when your income is 200K, your cap is 400K.

To deal with the issue of the cash you have at the start of the game, maybe set a number that the cap doesn't go under...

StarDock doesn't want the players to have loads of cash laying around according to Frogboy.

That is a joke right ?

And i thought that GC2 economy system with that money and capacity wasting sliders
was just a convenient way to program a simple resource management system.

But a hard coded cap for "cash" balance that is outright insane.

Sounds like Brad is too deeply rooted in business

IF he were deeply rooted in business then THIS idea of a cash cap wouldn't even exist.
(and also not that wasteful economy setup of GC2)

It is a micromanaged monopoly game.

For myself i will not spent money on such a weird game play "expansion"
(must be my personal hard coded cap to waste money on weird things at zero EUR)

That is a joke right ?

No, not at all.

For myself i will not spent money on such a weird game play "expansion"

Huh? You realize that the cap is present in GC1, GC2 and will probably be in Dark Avatar as well, right? It's nothing new for the expansion.

Thanks for the replies and support.

I.E. Your income is 2K, and the cap is twice your income. So you cap is 4K. Then when your income is 200K, your cap is 400K.

As stated before I am not a code savy guy so I don't know what it would take to do something like what Purge has stated

It should at least scale to galaxy size, or planets. Or make it a progressive tax so that the OPs case doesn't happen. (go from 5% at 20K to to 20% at 50k or whatever)

or like gallagher118.

I guess a pipe dream would be a Galactic Bank sort of like the Selachee handle in Battlefield Earth. Perhaps a new tab on the Domestic policy screen where we can deposit x amount of bc each turn and earn moderate interest rates on. This could then be used for massive upgrades of ships, TG/GW purchases, and what not. Maybe become an available option after researching Galactic Stock Exchanges and implement a minimum balance before withdrawal to avoid cheese tactics that could happen.

IF he were deeply rooted in business then THIS idea of a cash cap wouldn't even exist.

On the contrary. A company or goverment hoarding cash will suffer consequences,,be it stockholders demanding larger payouts or paxpayers demanding that the cash is spent on inprovements that while giving the citizens an easier life doesn't improve the goverment's income.

Ah, but the definition of hoarding is what is in question here and why it needs to slide with size of your empire in some way. 20K is not hoarding in FC's original post of a 200K+ per turn revenue.

Actually, I don't see any real benefit of "scaling" this limit. Even if scaled, at some point you need to make sure you spend your money down below some arbitrary limit. I don't think it matters too much exactly what the limit is.

I have no issue with the 20K limit, but what I do think, is that it should be more obvious that this is happening. Most new people know nothing about it because it's not documented anywhere. I think this graft should show up as an expense that's listed in your domestic policy screen, and your gross income should stay the same. As it is now, with your treasury over 20K, your gross income is just 5%, 10% or 40% less than it otherwise would be and you have no way of knowing it unless you spend your treasury down and see that your income is now 5%, 10% or whatever larger. It's very confusing for the new player.

Not only is it unclear and undocumented, it is not good game play.

Rush bying a player designed dreadnaught with high end technology can easily cost around 60k. And that is just one ship!

The most expensive ship in the world today is a US aircraft carrier. Do you think they could afford to buy another one in an emergency? try 10!

Get the economics of the game fixed!

Rush buying a player designed dreadnaught with high end technology can easily cost around 60k.

Actually you should break this into two pieces. Build the hull then upgrade to the dreadnought. This reduces total cost down to 35K or even less.

I find no difficulty with my income of 1,300,000 bc per turn in buying 30 to 40 of these per turn. Actually I do tend to find it tedious to spend my income down to below 20K each and every turn. If I don't spend my treasury down, my 1.3M bc per week income turns into *only* 700K per week.

My suggestion is that if you want to buy ships like this get your income up to levels that can support it. Otherwise, another tack is to build uber production planets with 16 econ SB production bonus (384%) that can build these types of ships in a turn or two. Actually producing these ships is far more efficient than buying them.

Mumble you completely missed the point of his post, which was building top of the line ships shouldn't be so easy.

The game gets retarded when you need to buy ships every turn to avoid this penalty.

Actually you should break this into two pieces. Build the hull then upgrade to the dreadnought. This reduces total cost down to 35K or even less.

I didn't know that, and it sort of suprises me. I personally consider this cheese if it is true.

The economy in this game does need more work. I miss the days of GC1 when it was quite easy to over build your forces, and you had to go decommission ships. Personally I think the costs and maintenance need to be tweaked up. (god knows how the AI would handle it though...)

The game gets retarded when you need to buy ships every turn to avoid this penalty.

There's truth in what you say, but my point was more that there's either a penalty or there's not. Changing the penalty from 20K to 40K really doesn't matter that much. However, eliminating it entirely does make a big difference. But anyway, you're going to spend the money on something sooner or later, otherwise why earn it in the first place. Yes there is a micro mangement difference between having to spend it every turn versus being allowed to save it for awhile before spending it. If your point is to reduce the micro management of spending money down then make the limit something like ten times your income.

Mumble you completely missed the point of his post, which was building top of the line ships shouldn't be so easy.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I know that I can produce 30 to 40 of these per turn with the appropriate type of production planets or I can simply buy 30 to 40 of these per turn with a sufficient income. Which of these is cheese, pick one and I'll simply do the other. If you think both of these are cheese then make these kind of ships cost ten times more. As long as the AI has to spend either the same amount of money or the same amount of production it really doesn't matter to me. I can out produce them in either case.

I didn't know that, and it sort of suprises me. I personally consider this cheese if it is true.

It is true if you're not neutral. The rush buying of ships benefit that being neutral has is pretty much equivilient to the cost of upgrade versus buy if you're not neutral.

Why not do something similar to Civ4, where a % of income and production is wasted on 'corruption' and that % is tied to the *distance* the income and production is from your homeworld

this would allow a very healthy core of planets but not allow the omgwtfbbqhax income levels that people are achieving with their population + happyness + market spam

Just a thought

Hi!

Changing the penalty from 20K to 40K really doesn't matter that much. However, eliminating it entirely does make a big difference.

Why not implement it in a different way. Like: the more money empire has in treasury, the less happy / loyal their citizens are. "Look how much they have, and they still tax us so high. I refuse to pay taxes / live in such a corrupt empire!"

The decrease in loyality and morale would start with 10000 BC and would progressively increase to reflect the amount of collected money, so it would become increasingly more difficult to collect really high money. The formula could be
((treasury-10000)^(1/4))-5.

This would give the following decrease in morale and loyality:

treasury   decrease
---------+---------
   10000     0.0
   11000     0.6
   12000     1.7
   15000     3.4
   20000     5.0
   25000     6.1
   30000     6.9
   40000     8.2
   50000     9.1 
   75000    11.0
  100000    12.3
  200000    15.9
  500000    21.5
 1000000    26.5 

Just my 2 stotins (in 21 days it will be cents too ).

BR, Iztok