TheGraveKnight
Spacefaring
The Motivational Army is watching
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Post by TheGraveKnight on Sept 5, 2016 18:00:23 GMT
So how exactly is currency going to work in the Space stage? I mean up until that point you`ve only been trading with your own species who (usually) have agreed upon some sort of specific currency. But with alien empires, their currency could be something vastly different (stones, metals, maybe even organisms?), so how would you go about trading with them?
(I mean, I hate to bring up Spore but how exactly did the ENTIRE GALAXY agree upon one specific thing to be currency, I don`t think it would work like that)
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The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011
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Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Sept 5, 2016 18:06:55 GMT
A lot of Science Fiction answers this with Credits, which is really just the same problem with a digital feel to it.
I would say it's reasonable that a stellar empire could have the same arbitrage units within its borders. I agree however, that getting different species across a galaxy to agree on money would be insane, especially given the monetary disunity we have as a single species in a digital, globalized civilization.
Perhaps there just wouldn't be a decent way to trade on a galactic scale given the inefficiencies with barter systems? I suppose that wouldn't be a great game mechanic.
Maybe there would be something of value on a very fundamental level, like energy to be traded or an element from the Island of Stability.
Anyway, for as short as my response is, it feels a bit rambling to me, sorry.
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Post by Immortal_Dragon on Sept 6, 2016 15:09:45 GMT
A lot of Science Fiction answers this with Credits, which is really just the same problem with a digital feel to it. I would say it's reasonable that a stellar empire could have the same arbitrage units within its borders. I agree however, that getting different species across a galaxy to agree on money would be insane, especially given the monetary disunity we have as a single species in a digital, globalized civilization. Perhaps there just wouldn't be a decent way to trade on a galactic scale given the inefficiencies with barter systems? I suppose that wouldn't be a great game mechanic. Maybe there would be something of value on a very fundamental level, like energy to be traded or an element from the Island of Stability. Anyway, for as short as my response is, it feels a bit rambling to me, sorry.
Well, Stellaris has Energy Credits, which are energy-backed pieces of currency. But that again runs into the problem of getting multiple (and ostensibly vastly different) species to agree to use it.
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Post by timetraveler22 on Sept 6, 2016 15:30:56 GMT
Why not use space bucks?
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Post by Atrox on Sept 7, 2016 1:38:03 GMT
SPORE*bucks
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Post by ThreeCubed on Sept 7, 2016 2:01:29 GMT
How about a system where the galaxy is generated with a certain "Preferred Mineral", like, gold or silver or iron who knows. And that could be currencyfied?
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Post by Mouthwash on Sept 7, 2016 3:18:46 GMT
If you trade with someone, you're going to have to come to some understanding of value. Thrive isn't an economy sim. A single abstract currency works as a mental placeholder for this understanding.
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TheGraveKnight
Spacefaring
The Motivational Army is watching
Posts: 1,170
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Post by TheGraveKnight on Sept 7, 2016 20:20:22 GMT
If you trade with someone, you're going to have to come to some understanding of value. Thrive isn't an economy sim. A single abstract currency works as a mental placeholder for this understanding. Possible Compromise: Different empires, depending on their type of society (robocracy, democracy, monarchy, etc.) have a "preferred currency" that, while you can still trade using other things, you could get discounts or perhaps more in return by using said preferred currency. This way, there is still a level of logic and thinking involved without being an economy sim.
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Post by Mouthwash on Sept 7, 2016 20:32:16 GMT
If you trade with someone, you're going to have to come to some understanding of value. Thrive isn't an economy sim. A single abstract currency works as a mental placeholder for this understanding. Possible Compromise: Different empires, depending on their type of society (robocracy, democracy, monarchy, etc.) have a "preferred currency" that, while you can still trade using other things, you could get discounts or perhaps more in return by using said preferred currency. This way, there is still a level of logic and thinking involved without being an economy sim. It still begs the question: why is it necessary? Does adding this element to the game improve it? Or does it just add yet another factor that has to be balanced?
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Post by Mouthwash on Sept 7, 2016 20:43:31 GMT
Look, I'm not trying to be grating. I'm trying to explain that games aren't the same things as simulations. They're effective when they use simple rulesets to create emergent gameplay, not when they try to describe everything for the sake of completeness.
(Removed the quote since the post I'm responding to was deleted.)
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TheGraveKnight
Spacefaring
The Motivational Army is watching
Posts: 1,170
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Post by TheGraveKnight on Sept 7, 2016 21:02:18 GMT
Once again, sorry for being so angry. I just thought it was logical and made sense realistically. I forgot that Thrive also wanted to promote gameplay, not just realism.
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Post by Moopli on Sept 8, 2016 19:34:22 GMT
Floating exchange rates are useful for managing trade balances; so there's a valid reason to model different currencies, and it would be easy to do by treating currencies as resources. The question of currencies, exchange rates, etc is also politically pertinent, so we have an even better reason to include that as part of the game's mechanic space.
On the question of whether this falls out of our scope, the only valid answer I can give is that it really depends. For balancing; when currencies are treated as media of exchange, rather than as balancing mechanisms as most games will use them, then the way you tune them isn't much like balancing costs in a regular game, actually it's rather a lot like tuning the compound simulations and auto-evo.
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Post by ThreeCubed on Sept 8, 2016 21:51:43 GMT
Can't wait to play the intergalactic stock market! Really want that supply of Boranium 48
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Post by tammio on Sept 13, 2016 23:27:52 GMT
Well I think adding in exchange rates between space-faring races would burden the player with just too much micro management. And before anyone suggests simulating it automatically: Economy sims are hard. REALY HARD. Basically in order to answer the question how to compare the currencies of two different races we have to consider "what is money?". Here's a few oppinions: Shopenhauer: "Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money" Carl Sandburg: Money is power, freedom, a cussion, the root of all evil, the sum of all blessings. Since we aren't philosophers we need a different kind of deffinition of money Simply (verry simply) put we can define money as the worth attached to a certain unit of Labour. Why? Well Neo-classical economic theory teaches any worker will be paid his marginal productivity => a worker is paid the average output of the Labour he provides to a company. He will use these wages to pay for his consumption. How "good" his salary is depends on how much he can consume with his given salary. How he is paid is not realy important, so long all economic agents agree that the "currency" expresses this relationship. The "ammount" of currency is totaly arbitary. So if everyone aggrees on sea-shels as currency or on coins or on bananas it doesn't realy matter So now we know what money is. Money is a construct to compare the worth of labour supplied and products demanded. Now we have to define a medium, a currency. Obviously the easiest way is to barter with one certain good, lets say Gold. So everybody agrees that goods and services will be traded for Gold . We cut the Gold into standard pieces and put the face of a ruler on them to guaratie weight & purity... and tadah we have a currency. So back to your question TheGraveKnight How does everybod agree on a certain currency/medium? How did Humans agree on Gold beeing the basis of most currencies (historicaly speaking)? The first currency we know of wasn't even gold, but "sheffel" (a unit) of wheat. In ancient assyria wages were not paid in coins or gold but in wheat, excess wheat not eaten would be traded for other products the workers demanded. As a matter of fact we don't know. Gold isn't even that usefull. You can't eat it. You can't make tools from it. But it doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter? Beacause of the laws of supply and demand. Some random bloke in anicent times decided he liked gold. So he was willing to trade many products in return for a little amount of gold. The simple fact he demanded Gold increased the price of good (because an increase in demand in a good will result in rising prices). As the price of Gold rose other people came to associate gold with a higher value than before. Do this a few times and gold is the most precious useless thing on the planet. Two spacefaring races will have the same mechanism: If one race demands a good the other has in excess they will trade for it. In the beginning they will barter. But with time they will realise there is a good they both covett (even if the only reason they want to have it is because the other wants it). If this good is portioned in even quantities you can use it as a medium of barter- a currency. With time as the spacefaring races come to trust each other the barter medium will become obsolete and be replaced by a currency (space credits for example) backed by this good (so 1 Credit is woth a fixed ammount of said good for example Gold) Now a third race joins in inter-stelar trade. What will they do? In order to buy products one race has to offer they will sell products to gain dredits to use for consumption. Any other race joining the trade will have to do the same. and thus everyone accepts credits as the interstelar courrency. Okay soory if my text is difficult to understand, I was trying to express difficult concepts in a foreighn language without using too much economic vocab and I'm realy tired, so maybe I'll reformulate everything tomorrow.
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Post by Moopli on Sept 14, 2016 20:25:13 GMT
That's a good explanation, though you're free to use more precise terms if you want (in a separate post, no need to purge this one).
Here are some unfiltered ideas on how we might model currencies, feel free to critique:
Nations have currencies, recognized media of exchange. Each nation requires taxes to be paid in its own currency, so any economic entity operating within must get their hands on some of that currency to pay those taxes. Any international trade by sub-national entities thus leads to monetary imbalances that must be rectified at least somewhat so taxes can be paid, which are rebalanced by trading currencies against each other; which we equilibriate to set exchange rates. With e.g. a gold standard, a nation relinquishes a certain amount of control over the currency, and indeed since gold is a resource of intrinsic value, then we can include conversion between currency and resource. Debasement is possible as well, through a currency-resource exchange rate that is not static (presumably controlled by the government; though it would be interesting if that were not so, I doubt we could model that). Note that debasement need not necessarily lead to inflation, in this model.
A barter economy could settle on a medium of exchange if the resource chosen is fungible and dense in value (gold more than shekels, shekels more than slaves, slaves (probably) more than land, etc), perhaps.
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Post by tammio on Sept 14, 2016 20:47:07 GMT
Well what I was trying to say was how we humans "evolved" from barter economies over "exchange-medium" trade over coins/money backed by gold to the kind of money with intrinsic value. The way two spacefaring races would interact would propably be the same, only much faster. At first contact and shortly after goods will only be barterd. Later a medium of exchange will be found (later meaning as soon as trade intensifies) wich will shortly after be replaced by courrencies with intrinsic value. It must not even be a governement that set up these courencies, thay may evolve naturaly as bit coins do, or cigarette money in ww2 POW camps did
so in short: no need to moddel different exchange rates or different currencies. It'd just make the game even more hellishly complex without providing any real bennefits for gameplay, expecially since the "money" the player uses is only a tool for him to visualise differences in Purchasing Power Parity expressed in different prices in different marketplaces So you see tat there is a difference in excahngerate because buying that Polonium you need for a shiny new Photon-Torpedo is cheaper on planet A than Planet B
PS: Also who says different planets within one empire need use the same currency? Just think about it. Presumably a space Empire would be more like a fedration of planets or a collective of semi-independent gevernement bodies so why share a currency? So for playabilities sake just give everybody the same currency
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