Dear Devs: The infinite economy makes me sad.

I do feel a certain sentiment towards this, but at some point you simply should have enough trade outposts to compensate

frankly: I dont know if its good or bad.

Perhaps an option for the host to choose? Some people like high-action maps, while others prefer lower action, with higher consequences.

I think this is more a product of the game speed increase, not the infinite resources. I need fewer refineries, but it still remains a cash strapped start where I'm loaded and can't spend it fast enough towards the end, both on credits and mined resources.

I do prefer the drying mines approach though, scarce resources and whatnot. I find myself with nothing to do with quite a few logistics points in even a medium map. As you scrap your research facilities on completing the research you're after, it goes from a tight squeeze to what do I bother to build now.

This worked fine before, I think. You had to create enough refineries before the asteroids ran dry. I don't mind the new inexhaustible asteroids though. Refineries still have their uses. I might rethink it when I finally get my connection fine and can play a multiplayer game, as I'm sure the AI doesn't quite give a true experience of what the game can be. An option for asteroid longevity would be good, and I imagine not all that much work to implement.

I see what you mean, but it also makes games more competitive as players strive to increase overall resource rate.

Plus thats why you have the black market and trade.

The problem is that if you have finite resources, refineries need to get moved down -- and that doesn't really work well for the larger maps, for whatever reason.

I think the current system is more about "economic maintainance" rather than a rush to build refinery's before it all runs dry. Which on large maps you can accumulate a ridiculous amount of wealth from this. Your only limitations are your fleet supply. Hence the cap ship spammage. Good point is it makes for some epic battles

The old system had its merits, but on small maps it would be next to impossible to keep a metal/crystal supply up, and maintain a decent fleet, or recover from a big loss. Even with refinery's.

The only difference between the old, and the new system is you still had infinite resources with the old system IF you had refinery's built. You just didnt generate near the metal/crystal you can with the new system. With the new system the refinery's just help generate resources faster. Which does help on smaller maps.

what i am finding to be a problem is usually i no longer have to build radio stations in home system.

How is not needing a broadcast / media center a problem? Edit: Heck, you never needed one before, either!

I tend to agree with the OP. I've found that with finite resources there is more of a push to expand and come into conflict above and beyond increasing ones fleet capacity. Further, I think it is important that players have to make decisions as what to build given finite resources.

With regards to the comment made by TGE, with finite resources the same drive to increase incoming resource rates would still exist albeit for a limited time.

I understand some of the arguments for infinite resources and the comment regarding refineries. Perhaps an adequate solution would be to just increase the total amount of resources at a given asteroid rather than making them infinite. Further, having some locations contain significantly higher amounts of resources than others may add some more strategic depth and key locations to fight over.

It was actually unknown to me that with the older resource system refineries had the effect of providing infinite resources, and for me this provides more of an argument for the older system where at least here one can still take out the refineries and deny the enemy this capacity.

Finally, although this a game and fiction I do find infinite resources challenges my suspension of disbelief.

Maybe resources could slowly run out.

I like infinite economy simply because especailly in large maps (not even huge), before I leave my home star systems are running out of money, and by the time I've conquered the center star, resources can now only be obtained via refineries.

Kinda loses the need to drive if you don't get much from planets. Also, I would build an elite fleet (usually 6 Sovas, 2 Kols, 1 Marza, 1 of each battlecruiser), get them all to about level 8-12 and they could never be stopped, because the enemy could never recover from the initial assualt.

I have a good Idea I think...

Lets say a basic asteroid produces at a rate of 10... have this eventually run down to say 5, but it stops there and is inifinte...

This way you have an infinite resource collection, but your economy does peak, decline, and then stabilize, it would make the refinery more useful, and reduce the spamming a bit, but without dropping the infinite potential.

Ok, I honestly don't get your problem with an infinite economy.

Refineries are still worth it, since it still gives you more resources then without refineries.

Also the change usually only has an effect in games that last longer then 2 hours (or one and a half hour when you've researched mining technology). Since your usual run of the mill asteroid has around 3500 resources at a rate of 0.5 per second 3500/.5/60/60=~1.9 hours.

The part of the game where you expand usually isn't that much longer then that anyway. It also makes the mining techs more useful now then they were before.

It also helps to speed up the game a bit (not really much though), but mostly it makes the late game much better in larger maps, where you can deplete asteroids before the game is even in the middle phase.

but a smaller empire has no chance of using its resources more efficiently during the important timing, to gain advantage over the larger empire.

The larger empire if mismanaged may not be able to muster the surviving refinery economy before time runs out. Perhaps a small empire does, and suddenly the pendulum swings in favor of the small empire. Thats hard to do, but you can see my point; the ticking clock of resource count down can help a downed player facing a larger one, if he is sufficiently skilled.

Currently there is allot less in hard choices because those infinite resource rates will always be there.

I think the infinite economy has only a partial say in the whole small empire v large empire debate.

imo the problem lies with fleet cap. Large empire has 500 , small empire has 250 (and cant make more) and both sides have good economies.

Theres nothing the small empire can do. It used to be in space RTS games - the person with the largest fleet is the person who has killed more of the oppositions fleet.

This is completely untrue in the medium-large games in Sins , as its so easy just to rebuild a fleet and the most important factor is your maximum cap which determines the strength of your fleet. One saving grace is cap exp , which favors those who kill opposition fleet , but usually there usually equal growth in this between players until one gets a bigger fleetcap.

Your right infinite resources isnt the a lone factor, but it is the largest, as without it is not nearly so easy to replace those fleets. Without it the large empire will still have a harder time building up that fleet cap, because a successful player can destroy ships enough that when the resources dry up, the larger player will not be able to build his fleet to full capacity. And he ended up sticking some important money in that fleet supply.

Hard choices. As opposed to now, where it doesn't matter nearly as much since you will always get more money.

After doing a lot of thinking about it, I think I'll throw my hat in behind Gauntlet.

I understand the infinite asteroids were put in to even out the economy in late game since previously when asteroids depleted the economy would plummet considerably.

But by doing this, mastering the economy and the ability to screw with the other players' economies suffers considerably. Another solution may have been to simply increase how much refinery ships carry, and/or the number of these ships each refinery outputs. Then you would still have a fairly stable and good economy in the late game (provided you took the time to set it up), and the other player would still be able to screw with it by taking out key refineries.

you could also have the basic resource quantity of asteroids be a good chunk higher, that way it will be easier to survive to refinery stage.

Yeah, but I think that falls into the "delaying the inevitable" instead of finding a permanent solution to the problem. If you make them too high, then they won't run out in most games so in essence it'll be infinite as far as those games are concerned. But if you don't make them high enough, the same thing would repeat just a little later in the game.

Basically what I'm trying to say is I don't think the issue is necessarily when it happens, but what to do to make asteroid depletion have less of an impact when it does happen

My solution to this would be to remove all unit caps. Actually allow the player to spend all that extra res and have gargantuan battles between fleets with 100+ cap ships .

Thats not a solution at all. In fact that would make it even more ridiculously hard to compete with even a slightly smaller empire.

On top of the PC requirements for that lol

I'm with Annatar here. If the issue with the original system is that refineries are insufficient to replace extractor income as the asteroids deplete, then beef up the refineries. There are lots of ways to do this:

1) more refinery ships per refinery
2) increase refinery ship speed/acceleration
3) increase the frequency with which refinery ships can revisit an asteroid (i.e. reduce the time that an asteroid becomes "off limits" after a refinery ship visit)
4) increase amount of resources held by individual refinery ships
5) decrease logistic cap consumption of refineries
6) make mining upgrades more powerful, and make them apply to the amount of resources refinery ships give you
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why hasnt any one replied to this idea. i think it is honestly the best one in the thread thus far. Make the out put of asteroids decrease over time in some gradual but significant rate. this is true to real life as well. a Gold mine will produce ALOT of gold at first but then as it is mined you have to dig deeper and deeper into the rock to find smaller and smaller amounts of gold. but it isnt beyond belief that such digging could go on indefinitely. id say make the asteroids maybe decrease to about 30% the initial HIGHER (then now) out put. this would help make early game go faster with more recourses but less credits. then later once refineries are built (costing money and time and even possibly some maintenance cost for the refinery) you could keep your resourses flowing.

also what if some asteroids just need some exploring to find other deposits thus hiking the out put back up again. or even higher then the original out put. or maybe even some that naturally get slightly higher over time before decreasing rapidly. there are all sorts of possibilities that could add some real depth to this aspect of the game.

Some of you here may remember beta 1's economy model. Similar to what we have now except the roids all had finite minerals. Refinery's, and Trading stations were a must have, and we didnt have all the planetary infrastructure that we do now. The biggest difference was there was no fleet supply at all, and no cap ship crews. No hard unit caps at all. However there was an "upkeep" system. Each ship cost "x" amount of credits to maintain per second. This was similar to how newly colonized planets cost upkeep until you develop them. Your fleet was only limited by how much upkeep you could afford. IMO the good point was that it was a pretty realistic system (modern naval ships cost tons of money in maintenance). If you strike on trade posts, or refinery's it could be crippling. The bad point was self explanatory. No need for frigates in the late game, because you could build as many cap ships as you can afford to maintain.

I would like to see a hybrid of that upkeep system brought back. Lose the fleet supply, but keep the cap ship crew research to avoid spammage, and to keep the frigates useful in late game.

I am undecided about if roids should stay infinite, or make them finite again. The infinite roids help, but it didnt change the late game economy much from the pre beta 4 models.