Hello! Every Tuesday from now until release day, check back in to see new content and important announcements about Solar Nations!
Today, the topic of discussion is Industry and how you will interact with your Empire's economy. In short, Solar Nations' economy is a mix of a standard resource management game and a more realistic economy simulator. You will need to balance your nation's economy, but also have to deal with market forces which are difficult to control.
As you can see, the price level of a resource changes with the current "stock" of that resource. Resource costs are factored in to how much the you (the state) and your regions (the private sector) pays for them.
High resource costs are detrimental not only to you, but to your people, and will negatively impact the development of your regions.
Development is the primary determining factor in how many resources a region consumes, and is controlled by the ability of that region to finance it's consumption, shown in the "balance" area. Development will trend towards the maximum sustainable level of consumption in a region, but due to market instability, will likely never get there.
But let's get on to everyone's favorite part of capitalism... rampant industrialization! There are some upgrades which can be built in many levels, which increase the region's production of a specific resource by a very significant amount. Each level of these upgradable upgrades uses 1 industrial capacity (visible in the screenshot as the number within the factory icon).
These upgrades are much cheaper and build much faster than the other more powerful upgrades, so make sure your regions are putting out the highest quantity of manufactured product the galaxy's ever seen!
And don't worry about the environmental concerns of paving over entire continents with concrete, because acid rain is the least of your worries if you are one of the lucky inhabitants of these manufacturing giants!
Those of you with a keen eye will also have noticed a large number of graphical differences between the trailer/steampage screenshots and these, and that is because most of my time recently has been occupied by graphical and sound design, as well as plenty of bugfixing ;), so please leave feedback on the new resource/focus icons.
I am looking forward to finishing this game as much as you are looking forward to playing it!