Spending Space

It has been brought up by multiple players and is worth bringing up again in the current game climate, spending space. In short as many have mentioned, spending space is prohibitively small for established players, especially with the current wind production system that has been pushed.

With Wind Turbines in such extreme shortage the only feasible method forward is having WT corporations on hand and setting local production contracts to the state. I have a country with 80 Wind Turbine corporations churning them out to maintain current farms and further farm production, and even at low quality it is almost completely chewing through the spending space limit by themselves. Last month after contracts executed left the country with a spending space of -229.80B. This month after contracts left the country with -180.58B spending space. No additional major purchases were made to manipulate the spending space downward, there were a couple contracts also in place for military quality upgrades but a negligible amount. No other needs (food, maintenance, etc) purchased from world market.

The current Wind Farm limit is 5000, which would take (currently) 250 Wind Turbine corporations at 100% production. At 80 WT corporations self-contracted the spending space is already almost completely prohibiting any other country growth and there is no reasonable way to currently get around it. I completely understand that the purpose for the spending space limit is two-fold, both to protect newer players from overspending themselves past bankruptcy and to prevent mass exploitation by advanced players that can use it to corner areas of the world market. The rigidness of the limit, however, is only going to cause more problems as more players continue to grow in the highly touted wind farm industry.

I can't tell you 'hey this is your solution' because ultimately you know the inner workings of the game better than I do. That said, here are a couple possible ideas to brainstorm in addressing the issue:

1 - Tie spending space in with population. Higher population equals higher spending space.

2 - Replenish spending space to a maximum each game month. I could be mistaken, but I believe that currently if enough purchases are made in a month to drop your spending space down to zero, it takes multiple months for the available space to build back up to the limit.

3 - Exempt local contracts from spending space. Common market and world market contracts continue to be subject to spending space limits but local market contracts (products produced by country corporations for the country) are exempt from those limits.

When you seemed to start getting bothered in an earlier discussion on communication and game mechanics you ghosted the conversation. No disrespect was intended and I actually went out of my way to be as diplomatic and sympathetic as possible. Please do not ignore this request and at least respond with your thoughts here. I really want to love the game but the GM behavior has me bothered enough that I'm almost ready to throw my hands up at the game. I'm not saying you have to agree with anything at all that I say, but please at least let there be discussion and be part of that discussion with your player base.

We have used the spending space intensively in recent weeks because of the need to ship products to TA.

The spending limit goes upto 1.6 trillion.

Just now, we saw that the spending limit was good for 15000 wind turbines.
we bought 1500 with immediate orders.
(this should not be possible because it delays delivery to everybody else).

The limit for wind farms is 5000 but I have advised not to do so and said, it will be unsustainable.

You will need 5000 wind turbines per month, which is the production of 250 wind turbine corporations. Maintenance cost will be 500B.

even 500 will be difficult, and then, if this becomes easily possible, electric power price will plunge and all will go bankrupt.

- The spending space is larger with larger population numbers.
- Spending space accumulates quickly. 1.6T is very very high.
- Spending space is open for discussion but the 5000 wind farms cannot be part of it. ordering millions of wind turbines makes no sense as there is no production capacity, probably not enough workers to make that possible.
very high spending spaces will allow for unreasonable orders that will make it impossible to play for smaller countries/players.

The entire issue of a spending space was intended to limit the huge difference between very rich players and most of the others who are not.

It becomes entirely impossible for a player with several countries with a population of 120 million to compete. It will also force them to spend many gold coins.

There are always 5 to 10 players on one side of such issues who want the very high limits. spending, population, huge armies etc.
there are the silent ones who might just give up if they are left behind by a factor of 50.

and of course, when the cost of electric power goes down by 70%, the shouting will be even much worse.
At this point, the use of eectric power is not increasing. It is largely stable while production, mainly by wind, is increasing.

The idea of contracts not counting as part of the spending space came up before, but only for essential products. There is no reason for any increase in weapons or ammunition, or for wind farms and turbines.

There's a few things to unwrap here, so I'll just go through it point by point responding to what you've said. Again, this is not an attempt to pick on you. This is a desire to have a true and informed discussion about the game.

You said you have used the spending space intensively and the limit goes up to 1.6T. I very well could be wrong so feel free to correct me, but it does not seem that the 1.6T resets every month and is just an upper cap for rolling over unspent spending. Just watched one of my country's spending space jump from 426.99B to 958.35B on month turnover (before contracts execute) with no orders made. With a country of ~ 80m.

The Wind Farm limit of 5000 that you have set and then told people not to do. Proof of this can only be found in the forum and by searching specifically for it. Vague game update notes posted only in the forum can't be expected to be memorized and followed by players. The actual Game News section of the game itself, the area that should be the easiest and most accessible place for people to get their information on updates is approaching a year of not being updated.

Further, the advice that even with the limit on Wind Farms it shouldn't be a goal because it will be unsustainable is patently false. Right now, properly maintained Wind Farms are profitable. If everyone in the game builds 5000 Wind Farms, Electric Power will plummet in price. That is absolutely true. They will still be profitable as they are. Let's assume you need to buy a Wind Turbine for your Wind Farm's maintenance at the market price cap at 120Q. So farm maintenance cost 181.44M. Assume everyone has Wind Farms so the price of Electric Power has bottomed out. The market price floor appears to be ~ 51.8% of base price, so 121,212 per EP. Production is 1,250 EP from that farm and minimum quality is 120, so we have in the worst case scenario for a Farm owner:
181,440,000 - Wind Turbine Cost (price cap @ 120Q)
181,818,000 - Electric Power Produced Price (price floor @ 120Q)

Profitable even with maximum maintenance cost and minimum electric power price. Granted it could theoretically come into such surplus that it takes a long time to sell the electric power. In what way is that different than any other product in the game subject to supply and demand?

The argument that Wind Farms cannot be part of discussion regarding spending space is completely counter to your introduction of them to the game. These were touted as the difference makers, the way forward. If I recall correctly you even had intent to add a feature regarding global warming or emissions with Wind Farms helping counter negative effects. You set the limit. Ordering millions of wind turbines does make no sense, I'll give you that. The idea of not being able to self supply also makes no sense. You say there's no production capacity and not enough workers to make that possible. It is completely dependent on the individual country as to what their production capacity is. Any country is limited in any production by the number of workers they have, I'm not sure how this would be considered a special case.

If a player builds beyond their means, they remove the excess to get their finances back in order. Spending space as a method to bridge the gap between the ultra wealthy and the poor is something I completely support. I appreciate that it is a delicate balancing act trying to help newer players not feel like they have an impossible climb. The current format for Spending Limits especially as it pertains to Wind Farms works counter to that. The people that already have hundreds or thousands of trillions don't need the farms. People that are newer and smaller without the extreme finances absolutely can produce more income from the farms than traditional corporations right now which helps them bridge the gap between themselves and the ultra rich faster, but the current execution of the spending cap hamstrings that growth substantially.

The statement of players shouting when negative things happen in game (electric power price dropping in your example) is not constructive. There will always be people that complain about things that impact them personally. That's human nature. It's your job as the representative of your business to filter out the people venting versus the people that bring up logical issues with game mechanics. At least, if you want your game to succeed and have subscribers keep the server humming.

The idea of contracts not counting against spending space being only for essential products begs the question, what is essential? That leaves far too much room for interpretation and disagreement over what is essential. People in Israel would definitely say weapons and ammunition are essential right now. Rural areas of Texas would say their wind turbines are essential.

I feel that the idea of any local contracts not counting against spending space just makes sense. It checks all of the boxes and its hard to argue against. Keep in mind I say Local Market contracts only, meaning products produced by state owned corporations and contracted to the country itself. Common market and international market contracts would still count against spending space. It gives players increasing benefit as they grow in self-sufficiency. Spending space at its core should be something to plug holes. We need a thousand schools but we don't produce any of our own so we're going to buy them from the international market. My country gives your country money in exchange for your products. That makes sense. At the same time, it doesn't make sense that Wind Turbines that the country is producing for its own farms has to be shipped off to the international market because we need to save up for a couple months to buy Fish (just an example). It's losing money to spend money.

Spending space caps are important to limit the size of orders that rich players can place on the open markets, because large orders can create sudden extreme shortages, and prevent other players from buying the goods they need.

However, I don't see the need to include contracts in this limit. Contracts are conducted off market, so they don't create market disruption in the way that large manual orders do. I'd recommend removing contracts from the spending space limits, while keeping the limits on manual purchase orders, to prevent market disruption.

We will not remove all contracts from the spending space as it will allow for unlimited spending that we have explained, is counter productive.

We will look at the possibility to exampt many product contracts, icluding food and many other products that are used by the population.
These products will not include weapons and ammo (that are already part of a different spending space), but rather essentail products that you want countries to be able to keep purchasing.

This will remove most of the problems.

As to the 5000 wind farms, it is the same as buying 100.000.000 batteries of some kind, which is possible, no limits, but if you do, you will go bankrupt.

You can also build 100.000 space centers, no limits, and you will destroy the country.

This entire problem came up with the wind energy.

It could come up with the purchasing of 1.000.000 universities, but no one tried to do it.
This is possible, we did not put any limit to it.

We advise players again, to limit the numbers of wind farms.
It is very difficult to maintain large numbers and at some point, they might bankrupt the country if the price of electric power will plunge.

This is an advise, and as in many other cases, we let players do what they want but they are responsible for the consequences.

The limit of 5000 wind farms is arbitrary and is not needed.
even 2000 is most probably impossible. We will remove this 5000 limit in the next upgrade. No max number.

It is the same as all the examples I mentioned and many more such examples. It is also the same as the max number of countries in an empire. There is no limit and someone once tried to have 400.

At the end, this discussion lead to a probable solution of the contracts problem that could limit the possibility of countries to purchase essential products.
we sometimes see that spending limits become a problem because of such contracts inclsion in the spending space.
Removing essential products from this equation, seems like a good idea.
we will look into it and put messages on the forum as to which products are included and when such a change could take place.

We have looked again into the spending space issue.
As we said before, contracts must remain within the spanding space but
we will increase the spending space and especially for countries with large population, it should go higher.

this change will be part of one of the next two upgrades.

We have substantially increased the spending space, mainly for large population countries but also in all other countries although by a smaller margin.

We do not see any new complaints about the spending space.

Please let us know if the problem is now resolved.