Debt Mechanics

It looks like the only thing that you can purchase with debt are the occasional auctions.  So, if you want to buy anything (black market items, stocks, aluminum, etc.), you need to have cash on hand.

My take on debt is debt accumulated in 2 ways:

1. Life support required - The reason for life support drawing on debt opposed to cash is that it can be difficult to have the cash available to fix the issues which are accruing more debt. If the shortage is large due to high cost life support and it drew from cash on hand first, the cash would be drained before you can purchase another claim or building to correct the issue. If the cash wasn't allowed to remain, the player would end up in a debt spiral.

2. Auctions - The reason auctions draw from cash is that it presents a fairer auction method than just who has the most cash on hand automatically winning the options. If a crucial auction comes up, players can spend their future cash/resources to obtain the crucial auction.

Everything else draws from cash or requires cash to purchase. There is an option to have tighter debt rules than can be enabled which draws from cash first, but I find that annoying. .

I think that the developers have chosen to not allow more freedom obtaining debt is because it creates some weird situations. For example, If I could freely borrow money, early game would be completely different. I would just borrow as much money as reasonable possible and stock up on necessary resources (glass/electronics) while they are cheap, and it would be a question of who could hoard faster. It would also allow for buying up the last bit of stock at no risk because you could just assume as much debt as necessary to buy someone out with no risk because the game would be over. Neither really enhance the game experience. So, restricting the acquisition of debt to the above 2 things, the gameplay experience is more stable.

Not to mention that while your stock is depressed due to debt, i can buy a few thousand shares of you, then sell them back when you get back on your feet, and make a little extra cash from it. In a sense, you make yourself a financial derivative!

That's good information.  Thank you.  I wonder if that will result in unexpected strategies, like driving fast cash gains, by abandoning life support commodities, including power production, to generate larger quantities of cash only commodities while funding needed life support purchases through debt.  Oh well, that's what early access is for.

Those strategies are already in there.

You can get yourself into trouble with debt as it hits your stock price much more than cash on hand.  Also, players (and the AI) can drive up the price (shortages) of a particular commodity that you are dependent on.

I played a game last night where I won a Patent Auction that makes all of my stuff powered by water.  The AI proceeded to sabotage my water production and I ended up racking up a ton of debt, which resulted in me getting bought out first.