Excuse me but... thats really not the point... Early game who the hell has spare money? Nobody who's doing the job right. Mid game too. Late Mid-game to late game in a map with say 30 planets and you will have full fleet cap easily.

This is about how an Infinite economy changes focus from resources to fleet cap, not whether or not people are playing right or wrong.

My last point, should concern you far more than you assuming people are playing poorly, and no one is 'freaking' out. We are all just discussing, rather calmly.

My last point btw illustrated how your beloved (and mine too) micromanagement of ship combat is quickly being eclipsed by micro management of economics in games that go long enough... maybe you are playing too many small games to notice, as the current system is pretty optimal for a small game to reach a very large scale, which while fun, is messing up the large scale, and making it very hard for a smaller opponent to save himself as there can be no attrition.

None of this is about build order.

Ok I finaly understand what you are saying,basically early and mid game there is a lack of resources, but after conquering a couple of the enmies planets then the balance of power shifts unequivically to the larger empire.

One way to counter this is to use the black market, if you were to make it cheaper to buy resources and more profitable to sell them for the smaller empire, this would also be realistically true because the smaller empire may only need 100 metal where as the large one may need a several 1000 metal. Another way would be to give pirates a capital ship for every 3 planetoid bodies you controled, asteriods 1/3 desert artic colcanicn and terrian 1/2 in late game so about 2 hrs in this way short games are uneffected.

Between playing Vasari instead of TEC, and going "easy" because he called himself a nub, yes I was. By the time I realized that he was, in fact, a quite skilled player, I was dead in the water. Even though I was building cap ships and frigates, I'd pretty much lost -- I was so busy trying to repair the damage I'd done to myself by "going easy" on him that I was too busy to properly manage my empire (including incoming alert messages), digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole.

Edit:

Btw, just to make a point: One of the reasons I prefer the "infinite economy" is because the old finite economy would cause games to stall out, hard. If a finite economy were brought back, and refineries vastly reduced in cost (in terms of tech level, tech cost, and construction cost) it would be much more bearable. Maybe change is so that your resources are based of refineries from the get-go would be nice -- you start with a refinery at the beginning of the game, and all resource income comes from refineries.

oh trust me, only the people doing the job right have money to spare in the beginning. I dont mean you should swamp out on all upgrades immediately, but you shouldnt be rushing to do a zillion different "nescessary" things at once

the two are innately linked, that is unless you are taking way too long in the game, in which case we loop backwards to my initial point.

yes, I agree the caps should probably be raised, as buying them out is unbearably easy. but that doesnt mean the game has somehow leaped away from economy.

when people panic about not being able to build enough fast enough, thats exactly what this is about.

I've played bunches of games, the only time I see players "eclipsed" is when they are not expanding and building aggressively, then you get what you deserve

there has been no "micromanagement" of economy in this game, its largely placing a few structures hither tither and then playing to take your enemy's planets. perhaps you've played too few games to notice that?

now gaunt I dont intend to insult, but from how I've seen people manage their economies (and my sample pool is not small) there are very very few around currently that can be making any knowledgeable claims, I would stake my money 10/1 on what multi says to any number of other people on these forums in this respect. once you get a good expansion set up the economy falls to the smallest recess of your mind, and the game quickly becomes about battles and fleet positioning. what it was supposed to be about.

Your misunderstanding me.

The battles become increasingly unimportant in comparison to making sure you are spending your large income, 1. To ensure that your fleet supply is full, 2. to get upgrades and buildings, and 3. to research tech. Before you would of course manage these tightly, but there would long periods of 'down' time between battles for this, Now because there is simply So much money and because you are limited by fleet supply alone you need to constantly find ways to spend money in the late game.

Don't you remember the rest of this topic? Its not about what you spend your money on or about making sure you have a great economy, its about the result of the infinite economy.

1. More Caps
2. Caps being less important due to ease of replacement
3. Raids against mines are largely pointless past the very early stage
4. Steam Rolling is encouraged though not the only viable option.

5. 'Wearing' the enemy down economically is unimportant, as since there is an infinite amount of resources as long as you both control the same amount of territory you will never have a financial edge.

6. Finances becomes less important in terms of how you spend it once you hit a certain mid-late game point. This is because it is all so replaceable that it hardly matters.

7. The larger empire, even with only a slight economic advantage now has a much larger advantage than before, in the past a Smarter player could preserve his forces and squander enemy forces, when the resources ran dry the larger player would 'crack' due to squandering his resources.

8. The Sova Embargo ability is pretty much pointless after a point lol

9. The Infinite economy makes refineries less important and thereby destroying them also less important.

10. The black market is useful in the early game and a joke in the late game, you may constantly run out of crystal, but honestly who cares, it doesn't matter how expensive it is, you can afford it on the black market because metal and cash is so plentiful.

11. It orients the game away from Ship Casualties being AS important, now the focus is shifted much more upon planets.

Not all of these are necessarily bad from certain points of view. As the dev's have stated they wanted to reduce Micro Management, and they certainly have, as it hardly matters if I preserve that Dunov after an hour or two of play because it can be replaced with the gobs of money I have stock piled for rainy days.

And btw who was panicking? You didn't think we were panicking until this thread got larger... maybe it isn't so much as a panic attack as the fact that people are having a legitamate issue with the infinite economy as is.

Most of the people in this thread have suggested addendum's, not backtracking, including myself... I think an infinite economy is fine, but there is a huge difference between infinite and abundant... Beta 3 was infinite too, it just was scare and meager, it needed increase, but the current system has No limits on it. No storage limits, no 'peaking' of resource rates slowly being reduced and stabilized at a lower rate, and no technical limits as in less resources being gathered at planets farther and farther away... As a result the game is now relying on fleet supply as its limitation factor (in larger and late games) this is undesirable to everyone, so the solution is in tweaking both the limits to fleet supply and resources not just one.

No one is panicking except for you and P5yy so please address people specifically or don't make generalizations. I think as Brad put it the value here is that the replies and discussion show how important this feature is and how much it needs to be looked at. Some of us might have particular ideas of how to do that, but that really isn't the point of the overall discussion, its to bring forth cool ideas, alert the dev's of possible strategic and tactical results, and ultimately to have fun.


PS: your making a good effort not to be insulting in tone and such, Thank You, I know people have been ragging on you about it too, including myself. Thought you should know your effort was noticed.