X4 is a half baked economic sim

[Falcrack]

X4 does a great job at one aspect of the economy. Namely, ships and stations are constructed out of wares produced at factories. Those wares are constructed out of refined goods, which come from mined resources. Good job Egosoft, this is much better than what we had with X3.

But X4 still falls well short of a fully simulated economy, because it neglects one very critical aspect of any economic sim, which is money. Yes, money matters to the player. But not to any other entity in the game. NPC factions get unlimited money. Which means that to the factions, money might as well not exist, since their ability to build ships and stations is never constrained by money or the lack thereof.

I'm very familiar with people who say that vast interstellar governments would not need to worry about money. Which seems to me nonsense, since all governments need to worry about money. The bigger a government grows, the bigger their expenses, money problems never simply go away because you have the power to print more money. Trying to solve money problems by printing more money just leads to runaway inflation and currency devaluation.

Speaking of currency, why do all factions in X4 have the same currency? I think it would be cool if each faction in the game maintained their own currency. The value of currencies between factions could rise or fall depending on economic conditions. Would definitely increase the game complexity though if you had to deal with multiple currencies, but could lead to some interesting emergent gameplay.

With the diplomacy update for X4, I think it would be nice to be able to influence factions with monetary incentives and disincentives (ie financial aid, tariffs, etc), but if money means nothing to the factions, then that removes money as a way to either support or harm a faction. Giving money to a faction with the current unlimited money model will not help them, just as putting tariffs or taxes on their goods will not harm them.

I think Egosoft should consider consulting an actual economist to help them put together a more compelling, realistic economy model for X4, or X5.

[adeine]

Speaking of currency, why do all factions in X4 have the same currency? I think it would be cool if each faction in the game maintained their own currency. The value of currencies between factions could rise or fall depending on economic conditions. Would definitely increase the game complexity though if you had to deal with multiple currencies, but could lead to some interesting emergent gameplay.

It's because the Teladi won the currency wars/dominated the trade economy, so Teladi credits became the universally accepted currency.

[Starlight_Corporation]

I feel the 'NPC's have unlimited money' complaint is a copout. Advance enough in the game & you can have it too. I currently earn credits faster then I can spend it, that's 'infinite' money, so fail to see why NPC's shouldn't have it too, especially with the amount of assets they start with. A player owning all that would be at the stage of infinite money then as well. It also prevents the hoarding problem -> players tend to hoard wealth & in a closed economic system with limited money, this is bad, because every credit the player hoards is a credit less in the economy. Not an issue when you're a small fish, but a huge issue when you got trillions in assets & need m all funded without crashing the NPC economy.
Also I feel giving NPC factions a limited amount of cash would create very gamey things, like being able to bankrupt the entire universe by yourself, simply because a human will always outsmart an AI script, hence I'm okay with the unlimited money for NPC's, feels much more immersive.

Also, by lore all factions use a single currency, spearheaded by the Teladi to facilitate easier trade (as noted by above poster).

[Targ Collective]

Terran ships work for free for the Terrans like yours work for free for you. They don't have unlimited money, but zero costs.

Factions trading with each other are repaid in gratitude for strengthening each others' economies.

The money markets are for people who don't work for the 'system' - non-governmental employees. You've gone independent so you could do *anything*. Money is a way of holding independents in check, but the various factions use the availability or lack of shipbuilding and stationbuilding resources as their currency.

But in game design terms, it's a balancing nightmare to implement. In practice, money is only a problem if you don't have it. In which case there is total economic paralysis, and military paralysis. Financial scarcity could seriously imbalance the game, and in not-fun ways.

[vvvvvvvv]

governments would not need to worry about money. Which seems to me nonsense, since all governments

Governments care about resources, not money. Money is a convenient exchange unit, nothing else. also you can read game lore about credits. Credits were invented by teladi.

The reason why interstellar government does not need to care about money is because they're all self-sufficient megafactories in practice. Just like what the player can become. Once you can build everything out of everything, you don't really need to buy anything anymore and can redirect resources to build more production when it is necessary. Such scenario does not happen on Earth because no country has every resource and every industry.

Like others said, money in this scenario is for he people that are not part of the systems. It is a trade unit, which limits how much they can order at the megafactory at a time.

[Tharrg]

Wealth in the X4-Galaxy is derived from assets.

1. Ships and military bases. These are used to project a faction's power across the Network.

2. Creating ships and military bases requires one of two things.

2a. Stations to produce the products required for shipbuilding and station building. Access to the natural resources needed for starting the production chain that leads to stations and ships.

2b. A player who can be bribed with credits to produce ships and stations on the Factions' behalf.

X4-Credits have two purposes. To oil the transfer of services between actors, ships and stations in this case, what money was originally designed for. Bribe the player to help a particular faction.

Money is not the resource the OP is suggesting it is. It's to smooth out the trading process and luncheon vouchers for the player. This is not unrealistic: a government can increase its net monetary worth by borrowing money and adding zeros to its currency, however, this does not really change anything. It's the country's natural and human assets that matter. But governments are always going to have deep enough pockets of real money to pay individuals to do stuff for them.

[LameFox]

The sense that it would be cool and maybe some kind of unspecified emergent gameplay frankly just seem like really insufficient reasons to implement such a complex thing.