Economy Question

An addendum to my post: If my understanding is correct, it seems like the only way to effectively manage your economy is to massively overproduce capacity. If I have the capacity to spend 300/turn on military and social each and the capacity to spend 100/turn on research, and my income is 500/turn... I can't max out research without cutting spending on the other two sliders to 0%, despite having the income to spend 200/turn each on military and social while still maxing out research?

I want to be able to utilize 66% of both my military and social capacity and 100% of my research capacity. That's impossible with the current system, isn't it?

You understand the system correctly. You must remember, however, that the capacity of the building are set with that in mind.

If there was no research, it makes perfect sense: your factories have some production, and you must choose between social and military work. With research, it does not make as much sense as stated, but it does make sense from a game play perspective: when a particular type of production is needed (build ships to defend the planet, research to reach a goal, finish a social project), the entire population can focus on it and Make It Happen much faster than splitting the focus.

It may take some getting used to, but I find it works for me.

I agree that it makes sense with only a military/social split, Hykin. Your factories have a certain capacity and you have to decide how much of the factories to use for which type of production. But, since it appears my understanding is correct, I think it completely falls apart when you add in research. If I'm pulling in 500 bc/turn, why in heck can't I max out my spending if I have the capacity?

It seems to me this leads to stupid results; If I have the capacity for 200/turn in each of the three areas and my income is 400 bc/turn, I can't spend 100/turn military 100/turn social, and 200/turn research despite having both the capacity and the income. HOWEVER, I CAN spend 100/turn military 100/turn social, and 200/turn research if I massively overbuild capacity and have the capacity for 300/turn military and social and 600/turn research - and this is key - despite my income being the exact same amount. Because I can set each slider to 33%.

If I have the same number of people and the same income, why do I need to overbuild capacity in order to spend that income? Why can't I make use of my existing capacity? I shouldn't have to build 3 units of capacity (or whatever) for every unit of income I want to spend.

That doesn't make sense to me at all.

EDIT: After thinking about it, it seems to me that things would make a whole lot more sense if the sliders represented the percentage of your income you spent on each item (up to capacity) instead of the percentage of capacity you use. What would the downside be? Far easier to follow and it doesn't lead to screwed up results like not being able to make use of capacity despite having the income to do it.

I think when you focus on one, such as research, you get only a partial boost. If you think in terms of 'everyone can't be a scientist' than it makes a little sense. If you fund them more, the scientists you have will be able to buy more equipment, have more power, have more resources overall, but still you have the same number of scientist. I don't know if that helped but I do see your point.

Maybe I missed somethign n your question, but I think you are overlooking the role of the spending slider. In your example, with 100bc/week of capacity in each category, to use all 300bc of capacity you would set the3 type sliders to 33 33 and 34. This sets each of the topic areas to use 1/3rd of your total spending. Now go to the spending slider and increase your total spending until, over on the far right under expenses, you see that you are spending 100 bc in each category. If you only have 100 bc of cpacity on each type, this should happen when you set the spending slider to 100%.

Your income has nothing to do with your spending. You are toally free to drive your economy into a shambles spending at 100% and taxing at zero % (although I'd love to see a popup come up if you did so calling you George W. Bush, but I digress) Adjust your tax rate to keep your aproval at the level you want, and if that's not bringing in enough money to support your spending allocations, then you may have to reduce the use of your capacity.

EDIT: After thinking about it, it seems to me that things would make a whole lot more sense if the sliders represented the percentage of your income you spent on each item (up to capacity) instead of the percentage of capacity you use. What would the downside be? Far easier to follow and it doesn't lead to screwed up results like not being able to make use of capacity despite having the income to do it.

Two things, the first is smaller and the second one bigger.
1 - You can't always spend 100% of your income on your industry, because you lack the capacity to do that. So the spend-rate slider would not work intuitivly at all. If you earn 100 bc per week and want to spend 100% of it, with 33% in each category....well, you can't unless you have capacity for at least 33 units in each category.

Some UI changes would be needed to handle this, but that would be no big deal (the big deal would be completely rebalancing and refiguring the economy model!)

2 - Expanding capacity beyond the percentage of income to spend which your sliders are set at would lead to the bizarre-from-a-gaming-perspective result of new capacity past a certain point actually reducing spending in all three areas.

That was a mouthful. What I mean:
You have 100 bc coming in each week, and decide to spend 100% of it. So 100 bc goes into military at 33 bc/week, social spending at 33 bc/week, and research at 34 bc/week. Now... build another lab. It won't increase your research because you will only be spending 33 bc/week in that category, but you do have to pay several bc/week to maintain the building. So now maybe you have 95 bc/week after you build your lab with 5 bc/week maintenance. You now only get 32 research per turn (your 95 bc income*100%spend*34% reearch= 32.3).

The way it is now, building a new lab will ALWAYS increase the amount of research you get if spending on research is above 0%. It will NEVER lower the amount of social or military produciton you get. Instead it will raise the cost of your total output, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

EDIT: After thinking about it, it seems to me that things would make a whole lot more sense if the sliders represented the percentage of your income you spent on each item (up to capacity) instead of the percentage of capacity you use. What would the downside be? Far easier to follow and it doesn't lead to screwed up results like not being able to make use of capacity despite having the income to do it.

Two things, the first is smaller and the second one bigger.
1 - You can't always spend 100% of your income on your industry, because you lack the capacity to do that. So the spend-rate slider would not work intuitivly at all. If you earn 100 bc per week and want to spend 100% of it, with 33% in each category....well, you can't unless you have capacity for at least 33 units in each category.

Some UI changes would be needed to handle this, but that would be no big deal (the big deal would be completely rebalancing and refiguring the economy model!)

2 - Expanding capacity beyond the percentage of income to spend which your sliders are set at would lead to the bizarre-from-a-gaming-perspective result of new capacity past a certain point actually reducing spending in all three areas.

That was a mouthful. What I mean:
You have 100 bc coming in each week, and decide to spend 100% of it. So 100 bc goes into military at 33 bc/week, social spending at 33 bc/week, and research at 34 bc/week. Now... build another lab. It won't increase your research because you will only be spending 33 bc/week in that category, but you do have to pay several bc/week to maintain the building. So now maybe you have 95 bc/week after you build your lab with 5 bc/week maintenance. You now only get 32 research per turn (your 95 bc income*100%spend*34% reearch= 32.3).

The way it is now, building a new lab will ALWAYS increase the amount of research you get if spending on research is above 0%. It will NEVER lower the amount of social or military produciton you get. Instead it will raise the cost of your total output, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective.

EDIT: After thinking about it, it seems to me that things would make a whole lot more sense if the sliders represented the percentage of your income you spent on each item (up to capacity) instead of the percentage of capacity you use. What would the downside be? Far easier to follow and it doesn't lead to screwed up results like not being able to make use of capacity despite having the income to do it.

Two things, the first is smaller and the second one bigger.
1 - You can't always spend 100% of your income on your industry, because you lack the capacity to do that. So the spend-rate slider would not work intuitivly at all. If you earn 100 bc per week and want to spend 100% of it, with 33% in each category....well, you can't unless you have capacity for at least 33 units in each category.

Some UI changes would be needed to handle this, but that would be no big deal (the big deal would be completely rebalancing and refiguring the economy model!)

2 - Expanding capacity beyond the percentage of income to spend which your sliders are set at would lead to the bizarre-from-a-gaming-perspective result of new capacity past a certain point actually reducing spending in all three areas.

That was a mouthful. What I mean:
You have 100 bc coming in each week, and decide to spend 100% of it. So 100 bc goes into military at 33 bc/week, social spending at 33 bc/week, and research at 34 bc/week. Now... build another lab. It won't increase your research because you will only be spending 33 bc/week in that category, but you do have to pay several bc/week to maintain the building. So now maybe you have 95 bc/week after you build your lab with 5 bc/week maintenance. You now only get 32 research per turn (your 95 bc income*100%spend*34% reearch= 32.3).

The way it is now, building a new lab will ALWAYS increase the amount of research you get if spending on research is above 0%. It will NEVER lower the amount of social or military produciton you get. Instead it will raise the cost of your total output, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective.