Figuring out the economy, maint rate
Jul 13, 2014 10:53:14 GMT -5
phantombudgie and Officer Genious like this
Post by jayte on Jul 13, 2014 10:53:14 GMT -5
Hello Friends, been enjoying this game quite a bit. After killing off the Xeno in hard difficulty, I thought I'd try to figure out how the economy works.
Namely, the maint rate % seems to just randomly increase, then stay there.
Here is where I was at close to when the game ended. Note the high average morale, but still high maint rate. Really frustrating! Now, in a real game where I wasn't about to win this wouldn't have been an issue, because normally, I run a small and tight navy. However, for as late as the game it was, my fleet wasn't unreasonably huge: 26 ships total, 3 battlecruisers, two advanced carriers, 8 invader transports, 2 smaller regular cruisers, 3 regular carriers, and the rest were fighters.
None of this is the point though, the point is the maint rate. When your economy is pushing 11k a round, every percentage point in maint rate is HUGE.
Note that there were no embargos or anything going on at the moment:
A couple turns later, the maint rate goes lower:
No idea why.
Unfortunately, it goes right back up a couple turns later. Remember, the game is over, so it's not like fighters are dying and causing morale hits or anything.
The crazy thing is I had THREE alliances:
At this point I decide to do something about the only colony that had 'low' morale. I decided against addressing this before because its low quality meant that I'd have had to destroy its only factory.
I installed an orbital defense for an extra population, a spice thingy level one, and destroyed its only factory
As I'm doing this, the maint goes up again.
Random fluctuation lowers it a bit:
Finally my last system is fixed. Average Morale 10 and it looks like the maint rate is going back down.
Refusing to go down
And still
Then it randomly goes up lol
Observations:
In the earlier parts of the game, I routinely held maint rates around 85-90%. However, a spike to 110% caused me to almost lose the game when I was unable to field a navy to defend. While I got extremely lucky and held off the Xeno long enough for their aggression to reduce, the maint stayed high for a very long time, then once it dropped, I was able to rebuild. I have literally no idea what caused this, especially since it doesn't appear that having ships in green or red squares effects the maint rate. Even having them healed up didn't make it go lower!
Questions:
1) Does maint rate rise and fall randomly over long periods of time?
2) I BELIEVE that colony morale makes maint rate higher or lower. This is intuitive. What else affects it?
3) I stopped building palaces as they are inefficient at what they do compared to a hab 4 + a spice thingy. As I stopped building these and colonizing other worlds, the first major maint rate increase happened, which nearly caused me to lose the game. Do palaces lower maint rate?
4) Perhaps it's not palaces that cause lower maint rate, but maybe not having your colonies defended makes maint rate higher? I think after my tablet charges, I'll install orbital defenses on every colony and observe the maint rate.
What has everyone else noticed? Is there a readup on this that I've missed?
Love the game!
Namely, the maint rate % seems to just randomly increase, then stay there.
Here is where I was at close to when the game ended. Note the high average morale, but still high maint rate. Really frustrating! Now, in a real game where I wasn't about to win this wouldn't have been an issue, because normally, I run a small and tight navy. However, for as late as the game it was, my fleet wasn't unreasonably huge: 26 ships total, 3 battlecruisers, two advanced carriers, 8 invader transports, 2 smaller regular cruisers, 3 regular carriers, and the rest were fighters.
None of this is the point though, the point is the maint rate. When your economy is pushing 11k a round, every percentage point in maint rate is HUGE.
Note that there were no embargos or anything going on at the moment:
A couple turns later, the maint rate goes lower:
No idea why.
Unfortunately, it goes right back up a couple turns later. Remember, the game is over, so it's not like fighters are dying and causing morale hits or anything.
The crazy thing is I had THREE alliances:
At this point I decide to do something about the only colony that had 'low' morale. I decided against addressing this before because its low quality meant that I'd have had to destroy its only factory.
I installed an orbital defense for an extra population, a spice thingy level one, and destroyed its only factory
As I'm doing this, the maint goes up again.
Random fluctuation lowers it a bit:
Finally my last system is fixed. Average Morale 10 and it looks like the maint rate is going back down.
Refusing to go down
And still
Then it randomly goes up lol
Observations:
In the earlier parts of the game, I routinely held maint rates around 85-90%. However, a spike to 110% caused me to almost lose the game when I was unable to field a navy to defend. While I got extremely lucky and held off the Xeno long enough for their aggression to reduce, the maint stayed high for a very long time, then once it dropped, I was able to rebuild. I have literally no idea what caused this, especially since it doesn't appear that having ships in green or red squares effects the maint rate. Even having them healed up didn't make it go lower!
Questions:
1) Does maint rate rise and fall randomly over long periods of time?
2) I BELIEVE that colony morale makes maint rate higher or lower. This is intuitive. What else affects it?
3) I stopped building palaces as they are inefficient at what they do compared to a hab 4 + a spice thingy. As I stopped building these and colonizing other worlds, the first major maint rate increase happened, which nearly caused me to lose the game. Do palaces lower maint rate?
4) Perhaps it's not palaces that cause lower maint rate, but maybe not having your colonies defended makes maint rate higher? I think after my tablet charges, I'll install orbital defenses on every colony and observe the maint rate.
What has everyone else noticed? Is there a readup on this that I've missed?
Love the game!
The missing key might be that factories don't make much money if at all when that planet is building things, so you're paying maintenance with no income from them when you make stuff. I wiped my games and started a new one on Hard where I go pretty much mine-crazy, and while I'm not ridiculously rich yet (I need to study for a better navy before better mines!), I get like $200-400 a turn thanks to those mines alone, and I know that because my factories are constantly building more of them and therefore aren't making me any money. Lol!!!
