[Idea] Expanded role for planets and civilian economy

[Falcrack]

This game is far too focused, IMO, on war in order to drive the economy. There needs to be other ways to drive the economy in the absence of conflict.

My suggestion? Planets can act as a resource sink for excess products. Items sold to trade stations in each sector with a planetary population can be sold to the planet surface, when the stock of the item is sufficiently high in the trade station and the sale price in the trade station is sufficiently low. Ideally, planets should only be willing to pay the lower prices for goods produced in space in order to avoid prioritizing selling to planets over stations in space, and their rate of consumption would be limited by the population size. Providing goods to planets could act as a way to encourage population growth on planets. Planets starved for resources would decrease in population over time.

On the other hand, planets could also produce goods on the surface and ship them to space. But their rate of production would be limited by population and infrastructure on the planet, and the price they would charge to bring items from the surface to space would be higher generally than the price for the items produced in space. Planets could produce their own goods to support themselves when they are advanced enough, but a planet starting out may need a lot of support from space initially before it becomes self-sufficient. Basically, each planet could be like a factory complex with its own logical overview, and the products would be consumed by the population.

Even if the space borne economy becomes totally crippled, the NPC factions could still get a limited supply of certain critical materials in order to rebuild. And even if the faction is totally at peace, their factories would still be producing due to the ability to sell to local planets.

Terraforming would have the effect of increasing planetary population, and also thus increase planetary demand for goods. Terraforming could also include the option to build factories on the planet surface to manufacture different items. I think terraforming should not be tied to the HQ, but could be something done by any S/M build module, even if it is located several sectors away from the target sector. NPC factions would engage in their own terraforming, when the resources are available and not being used for ship production.

If Xenon take over a sector, then they would destroy the local population and remove the industry, and you would need to rebuild and wait for new settlers to come if you regained those sectors.

Finally, one more hope for NPC factions to not have infinite credits, but instead they would receive a steady income based on the size of the planetary population in their owned sectors, coupled with maintenance costs for ship and station upkeep and wages for crew and workforce. Larger empires with more planets with large populations would therefore be better able to support more ships and stations. NPC fleet sizes would not be limited by artificial unit caps, but instead by the capacity of the faction to financially support them.

[adeine]

I think this is a good idea (pretty obviously so as I have been suggesting something along these lines ever since terraforming was announced as a feature ).

The best way to meaningfully integrate this into gameplay in my opinion is to really tie this system to workforce, and make workforce mandatory for non-basic production facilities. If you also replace the current system of magical workforce spawning with TP shuttles sent from these planets that physically ferry workers to stations this would be one of the best improvements to X4, in my opinion:

• It adds meaningful civilian traffic: TP shuttles that get shot down mean a lack of workforce, making it riskier to build in the far reaches if you can't adequately protect the corridor of space towards the nearest planet(s).
• It adds tactical depth to the map layout. For aggressive play styles, you can effectively besiege planets and starve out entire sections of the gate network. The Xenon can do this even more effectively (through hostile terraforming) giving them a much needed leg up against the Community of Planets.
• There are serious consequences to losing sectors to the Xenon. If undoing damage caused by hostile terraforming is a costly and lengthy process the narrative weight placed on the Xenon and the threat they pose isn't just for show anymore.
• It gives a proper use to a civilian economy (with civilian wares/productions) that doesn't directly impact or complicate military supply chains. I suspect inventory wares were kind of envisioned to be a replacement for civilian wares, but they just don't scale or work very well with core X gameplay (not least because you can't produce any of them as a player).
• You could meaningfully flavour these different planetary resource sinks by the type of population, making different regions of the universe feel more distinct. An ocean world full of Boron likely wouldn't run on the same economy as a Terran colony.

Ideally, planets should only be willing to pay the lower prices for goods produced in space in order to avoid prioritizing selling to planets over stations in space, and their rate of consumption would be limited by the population size.

I think the better solution is to have civilian wares be a distinct production tree (maybe with the exception of food and medical products).

On the other hand, planets could also produce goods on the surface and ship them to space. But their rate of production would be limited by population and infrastructure on the planet, and the price they would charge to bring items from the surface to space would be higher generally than the price for the items produced in space. Planets could produce their own goods to support themselves when they are advanced enough, but a planet starting out may need a lot of support from space initially before it becomes self-sufficient. Basically, each planet could be like a factory complex with its own logical overview, and the products would be consumed by the population.

I don't think having planets produce wares that can enter the game universe is a good idea. We obviously can't destroy planets, and having them be a magical resource production facility detracts from what X4 tries to be. I think keeping them strictly as a sink for civilian products would be the better way to go.

Finally, one more hope for NPC factions to not have infinite credits, but instead they would receive a steady income based on the size of the planetary population in their owned sectors, coupled with maintenance costs for ship and station upkeep and wages for crew and workforce. Larger empires with more planets with large populations would therefore be better able to support more ships and stations. NPC fleet sizes would not be limited by artificial unit caps, but instead by the capacity of the faction to financially support them.

While I like this idea, I don't know how feasible it is. NPC factions having infinite credits is a pretty deeply ingrained assumption of the game engine, and it might break the game entirely trying to add it in after the fact. For instance, we're able to sell an arbitrary number of assets to factions. If they had a limited pool of credits, you could completely drain a faction's account by just selling them useless ships.

[Falcrack]

Finally, one more hope for NPC factions to not have infinite credits, but instead they would receive a steady income based on the size of the planetary population in their owned sectors, coupled with maintenance costs for ship and station upkeep and wages for crew and workforce. Larger empires with more planets with large populations would therefore be better able to support more ships and stations. NPC fleet sizes would not be limited by artificial unit caps, but instead by the capacity of the faction to financially support them.

While I like this idea, I don't know how feasible it is. NPC factions having infinite credits is a pretty deeply ingrained assumption of the game engine, and it might break the game entirely trying to add it in after the fact. For instance, we're able to sell an arbitrary number of assets to factions. If they had a limited pool of credits, you could completely drain a faction's account by just selling them useless ships.

You would have to change things up so that you could no longer force a sale of ships to NPC factions. Maybe you could put it up for sale at special used ship seller, and if at some later point the NPC faction decides to purchase your ship if it satisfies their criteria and needs, it would buy it.

[flywlyx]

What I find more appealing is a complete overhaul of the economic system.
If we examine other games similar to X4, such as Mount and Blade or Anno, we could notice a commonality: their economies are not centered around individual factories but rather cities or islands.
Therefore, I believe the preferable option for X4 is to implement a system akin to Anno's, where each sector features a single trade station per faction. This station would fulfill both the functions of a trade station and a defense station. All factories would be linked to this trade station through mass traffic. The advantages of this approach are evident:

• This provides significant computational benefits; traders no longer need to sift through numerous factories but can concentrate on inter-sector trades instead.

• All intra-sector trades will be supplanted by "mass traffic," which requires considerably fewer resources for operation.

• Implementing the civilian economy will be much simpler, as all sector trade is managed by the trade station.

[adeine]

You would have to change things up so that you could no longer force a sale of ships to NPC factions. Maybe you could put it up for sale at special used ship seller, and if at some later point the NPC faction decides to purchase your ship if it satisfies their criteria and needs, it would buy it.

I'm not sure most players would appreciate not being able to sell ships or equipment (you'd also have to change it so changing ship equipment does not give you any money back, otherwise you're either stuck not being able to requip ships at all or can similarly break a faction).

It doesn't end there though, it was just one example of how it might break the game. There's currently no system for the AI to sanity check expenditures, or logic for prioritising them. You could mess a faction up through a station build mission. A faction could (and would) brick itself by trying to build stations in hostile territory, funding their account, and getting them destroyed repeatedly. Pirate factions would not work at all since they rely on ordering ships from other factions and don't have any territory. If you 'give' them money to do so, you've injected infinite money back into the system.

It'd be a daunting task to identify and properly fix all these issues.

[flywlyx]

You would have to change things up so that you could no longer force a sale of ships to NPC factions. Maybe you could put it up for sale at special used ship seller, and if at some later point the NPC faction decides to purchase your ship if it satisfies their criteria and needs, it would buy it.

Miners essentially generate goods out of thin air.
To offset this unlimited source of goods, NPC factions require infinite credit.

[Falcrack]

You would have to change things up so that you could no longer force a sale of ships to NPC factions. Maybe you could put it up for sale at special used ship seller, and if at some later point the NPC faction decides to purchase your ship if it satisfies their criteria and needs, it would buy it.

Miners essentially generate goods out of thin air.
To offset this unlimited source of goods, NPC factions require infinite credit.

I don't follow this logic. If a faction is receiving a steady stream of credits from taxation of the sector population, then they would be able to afford to pay for mined goods. The rate at which they could purchase items would be limited by their income rate, but they would certainly not require infinite credits.

[flywlyx]

I don't follow this logic. If a faction is receiving a steady stream of credits from taxation of the sector population, then they would be able to afford to pay for mined goods. The rate at which they could purchase items would be limited by their income rate, but they would certainly not require infinite credits.

Ah, your taxation also originates from thin air, not solely from production.

Taxation income can be substantial, essentially equal to infinite credit. However, if it's set too low, factions with low income may struggle to afford sufficient military force, resulting in sector losses.

In typical 4X games, warmongers face various penalties, but addressing this complexity in X4 proves challenging.Unless they change the economic system, releasing more computing resources. This type of change could overload their fragile performance.

[Falcrack]

I don't follow this logic. If a faction is receiving a steady stream of credits from taxation of the sector population, then they would be able to afford to pay for mined goods. The rate at which they could purchase items would be limited by their income rate, but they would certainly not require infinite credits.

Ah, your taxation also originates from thin air, not solely from production.

Taxation income can be substantial, essentially equal to infinite credit. However, if it's set too low, factions with low income may struggle to afford sufficient military force, resulting in sector losses.

In typical 4X games, warmongers face various penalties, but addressing this complexity in X4 proves challenging.Unless they change the economic system, releasing more computing resources. This type of change could overload their fragile performance.

Yes, I would want a system where tax income originates from thin air (ie income based on sector population). Not the idea most players have of taxing stations in your sectors.

It would need to be coupled with credits also being consumed through maintenance, wages etc, or else the universe would be flooded with too many credits. With a constant inflow of credits, there needs to be a constant outflow of credits, or credits become meaningless. The rate of credits coming in to the system, coupled with the rate credits leave the system via ship/station maintenance and wages, would dictate the size of an NPC faction. Not theough artificial unit caps, but the financial ability to maintain a fleet of a given size. Faction power would be more directly influenced by the sectors they control, with some sectors having more population and thus providing more income.

In fact, this would limit not just the number of ships and stations of an individual faction can support, but the entire galaxy. The entire galaxy would have a ship and station carrying capacity determined by the total population of the galaxy.

Even the player would run up against these types of limits, where if they try to grow their fleets too large, they would be simply unable to maintain them due to maintenance costs, unless they owned highly populated sectors to be able to support them. This could help keep game performance in late game more acceptable, without the need for unit caps.

If a faction becomes too weak due to losing territory, they would and should be vulnerable to larger empires. But this could be offset by diplomatic penalties applied to larger empires, where the more successful and empire becomes, the more likely that other empires will join in coalitions to cut the larger empire down to size. Additionally, there could be hard-coded AI behaviors where AI factions would stop trying to take sectors from a faction that has become too small. Very large empires could be coded to stop trying to expand once they

As far as performance concerns, a lot of these high level decisions such as when to go to war or invade and what the production goals are would not need to be computed continuously, just periodically. Once a decision has been made to invade a certain sector has been made, it does not need to be continuously remade.

[Imperial Good]

Similar suggestions to this are made fairly regularly and do see quite a bit of support. I think the main issue with it is goal/feature bloat, similar to implementing a FPS shooter aspect. A decently complicated, feature rich civilian economy in the X4 universe could be a full game by itself. As manpower is finite, implementing it would mean something else would not get implemented, and with the scale involved that would be a significant amount of content on the line.

[Nanook]

... and with the scale involved that would be a significant amount of content on the line.

Not to mention a significant amount of CPU cycles (in an already significantly CPU-bound game).

[taztaz502]

... and with the scale involved that would be a significant amount of content on the line.

Not to mention a significant amount of CPU cycles (in an already significantly CPU-bound game).

That’s why X3s economy is far superior to x4.

Should be fairly easy to add consumer products to x4 though, simply have trade stations buy consumer products and have the game flush out the excess every few hours.

Like spaceweed and stimulants.

I hate X4s economy, no demand for anything, can’t be a successful business man and say focus on one or two products like food or medical supplies because 2 production modules can supply the entire galaxy.

Then they removed weapons and weapon transport so can’t even be an arms dealer anymore.

[magitsu]

Should be fairly easy to add consumer products to x4 though, simply have trade stations buy consumer products and have the game flush out the excess every few hours.

At least the removing part is, already done by DeadAir Fill.
Yes, it feels weird that there's so gamey place for the player goods input and then it dries up in an instant, unless there's wild amount of ships being lost and new queued.

Business logic leads towards making new features to sell dlcs, the next time core gameplay truly evolves might be the next title. Similarly like when X4 achieved real economy, which already startead to appeared in mods like X3 Mayhem and XR The New Frontier.

The current setup is probably closer to extraction, with money as lubricant. It could be ok if we just could stop expecting a complete economy that makes sense.