Fixing the Economy

[Mr. Mortius]

There might already be a thread for this, but I thought I'd start a discussion thread anyways. Money is currently next to worthless and needs some sort of end-game sink. Maybe as a partial replacement, money could be used in the development of single use ship-modules, with exponentially increasing costs for increases in effectiveness.

The game as it is: 


I can't imagine spending even a trillion of that, let alone over two quintillion and rapidly increasing.

[Deantwo]

If we ever want character progression and meaningful non-emperor gameplay, then we might need a hard separation between empire treasury and personal wallet. As long as we can just take money and commodities from cities, money will remain worthless.

Empire Treasury
I suggested at one point that military bases should cost money for the empire to maintain. This could then include more expensive military buildings that spawn encounters to fight enemies that enter your space.

We already have ship crew wages in a way, but it isn't super automated. It might be better if ship maintenance and crew wages were paid automatically.

The last money sink for the empire would likely be research or technological development of some kind, but don't know how that should work.

In short it would be nice if empire economics were easy to read and calculate, maybe a nice balance sheet to show tax gain and military expenses.

I keep thinking back to "Star Ruler 2", their empire budget system was interesting and actually fun.

Personal Wallet
Personal funds should probably only be earned. Either through labor pay, mayor wage, or missions.

[Deantwo]

As mentioned in the Money Update: Down with Statism! thread. it would also be interesting if cities had maintenance and wages to pay. So a cities with few citizens would make less income than they were costing.