FreeOrion

Why is happiness suddenly being introduced? Was morale of a planet passed or are we just assuming that people are ALWAYS unhappy ala Civ.

Money should be used for research and maintenance, and trading to other empires for peace or tech or something.

The rush build model has always been hardcore abused and I really don't like it. (not to mention the "magic" aspect of it).

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

Why would we use money for maintenance? You build things with production, you should maintain them with production.

Why would we use money for research? We have research as a resource.

Why limit trade to money, I should be able to trade anything mobile I have for anything mobile you have... and that means money isn't good for trading because it is useless on its own.

Money however Can be useful if there is some type of 'happiness' (this would fit with it being the thing used to build and maintain spies for example) since 'happiness' doesn't easily tie into any of the existing resources.



I'd personally prefer an 'always unhappy' (where 'happiness' is basically your level of 'revolt/rebellion defense') but that is secondary. Some type of a 'social' resource would increase immersivity and allow an actual 'Domestic Front'... one that got harder to manage as you got closer to winning, as opposed to all the others which get easier to manage as you get closer to winning. (snowballing)

I still haven't heard any reasonable model that doesn’t include money that can easily handle:

1. Paying for things which are a part of your empire but not a part of any particular planet, like spies.

2. Diplomatic transactions. For instance, trading 200 credits for laser tech makes fine sense, trading for 200 minerals begs the question: Which planet are those minerals coming from?

3. Fleet maintenance. Again, do the production or minerals come from the closest planet? The largest planet?

These are large complicated questions without money, but with money they are academic.

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

Why not pay for spies with minerals, or even nutrients? Or spies can be constructed and moved about the galaxy like normal units (like Civ)



Who cares which planet they come from? The assumption is there'd be an global stockpile of excess minerals, ferried around by abstracted fleets of frieghters and stored in abstracted depots.



Could be like Civ, but I'd rather maintenance costs come from the global stockpile of minerals.



I'm not seeing the complication.

Funny.. that sounds exactly like money.

Let me get this straight.. you want to use money (or something that behaves exactly like money) and yet call it something different? Why?

To confuse people?

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

I think we should not have something such as minerals acting as money. If we have no money, then the four resources we have should all be money.

So for example:
training a spy costs
-50 food
-50 research
-20 production
-50 minerals

(I'm not entirely sure what the four resources are exactly)

Yes, that's the point. Minerals in FO already possess many of the traits of money, so why invent a new resource?

Research cannot be stockpiled. Only produced in X amount per turn. Thus you can't "spend" research. It just happens.

If we have a universal stockpile that is not tied to any planet then money and minerals can indeed be interchangable. My problem is this.

Most things that are built aren't upkept with minerals, they are upkept with production. Production CANNOT be stockpiled exactly like research (intellectual production). Therefore we can't have a global stockpile of "production" that we subtract from each turn. Production has to be tied to specific planets. Money however CAN be stockpiled and can be subtracted from each turn and abstracted into "production" or "research" etc. Its basically a mobile form of production. Since you cannot stockpile production you stockpile money.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

Well, the way you explain it, money is another name for stockpiled production. What you seem to be saying is, well, you can't stockpile production, but you can, only you don't call it production. So you'er baiscally proposing that we Do stokpile production?

that is so true ???

Just by reading this page of discussion - Anyway we are going to have a resource that behaves like money. And users wait to see money as they straight ahead know how it behaves and it has immersive value. I think the userfriendliness of this is more important than benefits gained by having one resource less. And it distracts immersion, One way of how immersion can work is what player imagines in his head(at least I do:)), and money transactions/associations have rich visual imaginery (vaults, images of gold&luxury, images of robbery, delivering money to spies, etc.) and I would not want to lose them.

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Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

We're just repeating oursevles now, so let's stop this spiral discussion before it gets any longer.

The only reason I haven't closed it is that I've been tremendously busy lately and I want to confer with my elders (the Emrich & Hughes collective) to get their collective wisdom before we go into public review mode.

-Aq

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

If the game is going to use money it should be called money. It sounds just as ridiculous to call something that behaves exactly like money minerals or production as it does to call acceleration "change in momentum" (change in momentum is the definition of acceleration, but acceleration is more distinct). Unless there is a specific reason to obfuscate the situation there's no reason to call something by a less applicable name. It will not make the game any simpler, it will not eliminate the need for any systems, all it will do is make the game less intuitive.

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

Ablaze, the problem is that people don't agree on how 'Money' behaves.

After all in many TBS's 'Money' grows on trees (ok buildings/people) and you make things out of it (like starship replacement parts or buildings by buying production.)

In reality 'Money' is never created nor destroyed, (unless the government says it is) but what you can doo with it can change overnight.

In most TBSs Money and Production are interchangable, Money is the stockpilable, global form of Production. (There are limits on the interchange but they aren't that significant)

There are two possible debates though as you brought up.

1. What things we want to do, and how the resources that do those things should behave.
2. What the resources that do those things should be called.

If Money is going to behave as you say (a form of stockpiled, Global production) then it should operate the same as production.

The argument is then what do we cll the resource that we build and maintain things with, that we exchange to other people for.

You make a good argument for calling Production, "Money" but not for Money as a seperate resource.

I apologize, but this is getting out of hand. These realism arguments keep coming up because you keep bringing them up. They have no place in this thread. Stop them.

-Aquitaine

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!