Economics and Production Questions

Does no one know how this all works?

haha I just asked this same question in another thread! I hope someone can explain this.

Basically your number of manu. social and research points are their maximum POSSIBLE that you can utilize. You can never utilize all three of these to their maximum. The two sets of sliders give you two ways of controlling how much of your three areas are utilized. Industrial Spending you want to keep as close to 100% as you possibly can. The bottom three sliders let you dictate what you want to focus on of those three. If you don't need to build any buildings or ships, set manu. and social down to 0% and research up to 100% Then you set your industrial slider to 100% to utilize all of your possible research. You can even click on individual planets and click one of the three bullseye symbols at the top to focus even further. If have built 8 research centers on various planets, setting your industry slider to 50% means you are effectively only using the equivalent of 4 of those buildings, and thus at half capacity. This is kind of complicated and I'm generalizing somewhat, but that should give you the basics. If I need to re-explain I can do that too, haha.

I'll take a stab at it, please correct me if I go wrong.

If you have your spending slider set at 100%, and your research slider is at 100%, then your labs will be at maximum cpapcity. If you have 100% spending and 100% military, then your factories run at max efficiency and all of it goes to building ships. Social is the same as military, but factory output goes to social production instead of ships.

Now, let's say your spending is still at 100%, but you set your research slider on 50% and military slider on 50%. This means that half of your research capacity is being used (if you have a possible 80 tp, you are producing 40 tp) and also half of your factory capacity is put toward building ships (if the factory gives you 16 production units, you are using 8 of them.) If you then decrease the spending slider to 50%, then you are effectively halfing all production, meaning your 40 tp goes to 20 tp and your 8 military production goes to 4.

Questions? Shoot

So it's true that one cannot have factories AND labs both running at max. capacity?

Ok I think I get what you're saying. The 100% on the Industrial Capacity slider just means that if I were to put one of the distribution sliders to 100% it woluld work at full capacity and its impossible regardless of how much surplus I'm making to get my industry running at full potential. It seems a bit silly that even if you've got tons of spare income rolling in you can't divert it to your factories or research centres.

Cheers for your help

Ok I think I get what you're saying. The 100% on the Industrial Capacity slider just means that if I were to put one of the distribution sliders to 100% it woluld work at full capacity and its impossible regardless of how much surplus I'm making to get my industry running at full potential. It seems a bit silly that even if you've got tons of spare income rolling in you can't divert it to your factories or research centres. Cheers for your help

Exactly what I was thinking. You can't have research and social both at 100%
Seems kinda broken to me personally.

It seems a bit silly that even if you've got tons of spare income rolling in you can't divert it to your factories or research centres.

You ahve to thinkg about this. You only have soo many research buildigns, and there is a max on what you can research for those buildings. Buiold more Research buildings to use up more of your money.

Heres the best I can do.
Assume you have enough factorys for 200MP (manufacturing points) and labs for 200TP (tech points).
FYI. MP is used for both military (shields) and social (hammers).
Now if your Industrial capacity (IC) slider is at 100% you would ASSUME that you would be producing 200MP and 200TP but that is not true! You can onlyhave either all your factorys or all your labs working at once, or 50/50 or 25/75 or whatever. NEVER both. Why? Who knows. Sure aint me.
Anyway. The three "focus" bars below it determine how you will be spliting your IC between military, social, and research. And the total of the three "focus" sliders is always 100%.
So you can set 100% military and have all your factorys producing 200MP and turning that into 200 shields for ships, but no social, and no research.
Or set 50% military and 50% social and have your factorys producing 200MP for 100 shields and 100 hammers, and once again no reaserch.
Or set 50% social and 50% research and have your factorys produce 100MP and turn that into 100 hammers and have your labs produce 100TP which is always turned into flasks for research.

Now what your IC slider does is lets you turn down your production and only use say 50% of 100% of your factorys (or labs) capacity to produce 100MP (or TP), and then deviding that however you see fit between social and military (or research). Keeping in mind you can only have EITHER your all your factorys or your labs (or 50/50 or 75/25 or whatever) working at any given time. So you could use 25% of your IC 50/50 between your factorys and labs which is 50MP and 50TP.

Hope that cleared it up for ya.

EDIT: Meh looks like I took to long typing that up. Ahh well glad ya figured that out.

Heres the best I can do. Assume you have enough factorys for 200MP (manufacturing points) and labs for 200TP (tech points). FYI. MP is used for both military (shields) and social (hammers). Now if your Industrial capacity (IC) slider is at 100% you would ASSUME that you would be producing 200MP and 200TP but that is not true! You can onlyhave either all your factorys or all your labs working at once, or 50/50 or 25/75 or whatever. NEVER both. Why? Who knows. Sure aint me. Anyway. The three "focus" bars below it determine how you will be spliting your IC between military, social, and research. And the total of the three "focus" sliders is always 100%. So you can set 100% military and have all your factorys producing 200MP and turning that into 200 shields for ships, but no social, and no research. Or set 50% military and 50% social and have your factorys producing 200MP for 100 shields and 100 hammers, and once again no reaserch. Or set 50% social and 50% research and have your factorys produce 100MP and turn that into 100 hammers and have your labs produce 100TP which is always turned into flasks for research. Now what your IC slider does is lets you turn down your production and only use say 50% of 100% of your factorys (or labs) capacity to produce 100MP (or TP), and then deviding that however you see fit between social and military (or research). Keeping in mind you can only have EITHER your all your factorys or your labs (or 50/50 or 75/25 or whatever) working at any given time. So you could use 25% of your IC 50/50 between your factorys and labs which is 50MP and 50TP. Hope that cleared it up for ya. EDIT: Meh looks like I took to long typing that up. Ahh well glad ya figured that out.

That is what I thought....is this intended? seems broken to me

Do we have documentation on how exactly it works, or are we mostly stuck to guesswork?

I had -guessed- that it functioned this way:

* Your economy generates 90 bc/turn. At 33%, you collect 30 bc worth of taxes.
* You have one planet. This planet has 1 factory that can generate 8 ip/turn. It also has 2 labs that, combined, can generate 16 tp/turn.
* Industrial Production is set to 75%, so your factory generates up to 6 ip/turn, and your labs combine to generate up to 12 tp/turn.

Your sliders are set at 33% social, 33% military, and 34% research. Thus, of your collected taxes:
10 bc goes toward military funding. Either 4 bc or 8 bc gets converted into mp for the ships. The remaining amount (either 6 bc or 2 bc), goes back into the treasury.
10 bc goes toward social funding. Either 4 bc or 8 bc gets converted into sp for the buildings. The remaining amount gets wasted.
10 bc goes toward researching. The last 2 tp the labs could generate never get used.

I think the point he is trying to make is that if you have the money, why can't you have science and industry operating at 100% at the same time.

Also, it isn't so much that the system is "broken", it is a game and can therefore be anything and still not be broken. The object isn't necessary to instill realism, but to create a system that works well in a strategy game. So long as you understand the rules, and know the computer must also follow these rules, then all is fair.

The problem is that this game is hugely ambiguous. Even though it seeems the economy system (science vs industry vs militery) is the one that draws attention the most attention, it isn't the only thing about this game that is very unclear.

Take taxes for example. We know that the amount of bc's we get per planet per turn is based on population. Well, that is nice but how much per unit of population, and how does this base number get modified? I am going to make up some number here as an example. You get 10bc per billion per turn. This is assuming 100% tax rate. So at 33% taxes, you get 3.3bc? I don't know, lets say this is true. So now you build a market, because it increases your "economy". Now lets say that with your market, you now have 115% total at 100% tax rate. That means that you would get 11.5bc per turn. But at 33%, you get approxomately 3.8 bc per turn (33% of 11.5). Or, it could mean that you get 48% of 10bc (33+15). That leaves you with 4.8 bc per turn. Now let us suppose the upkeep for the market is 1bc per turn. Then you could actually be losing money if the first possibility were true. Granted, with a higher population, then you would gain money either way. Anyway, all that is known is that income is somehow related to population, and also somewhat effected by morrale. I didn't include morrale in the hypothetical example, because it gets too complicated. The point being, how can we make an informed decission without "knowing" what we are doing.

The same thing applies to influence points. If a planet is in an area where there is four times as much foreign influece as there is being generated by the planet, then there is a certain percent chance that the planet will rebel. But how can you tell what the influence is in a perticulare square on the map? If someone knows, please tell me. And when something adds a percentage to your influence, then what is the percentage being applied to in the first place? Take a influene starbese for example. It gives a 5% inclrease in influence in the effected area. But 5% of what? The influence that was orriginally in that point on the map? If you build two influence starbases three spaces from each other, is that better than upgrading the orriginal? Don't know, because I am not sure how it works to begin with.

Here is a more basic one. I pick the Terrans. I believe they have a 25% diplomacy rating starting out. I choose expert diplomace as my player determined attribut, spending all four points. That says it will give me a 50% increase in diplomacy. But now if I go to the front screan that displays my attributes, I have a diplomacy rating of 50%. Why isn't it 75%? Do these bonuses start from zero? If so that is fine, but we should know this.

If you take the time to think of it, I am sure it wouldn't take long to find other examples of things that you simply don't understand about the game.

The social wastage issues, and the slider bars are difficult to really understand and therefore get a lot of attention. But they are really only the surface.

I appreciate Gal Civ II very much. I think it is an awsome game, and believe it or not I love its complexity. I knwo that for many people, have an in deapth explanation of how all the math works is not necessary. But for some people, it really is. Civ III was a far more basic system, but it was 100% understandable. There were people that took that game and made it a science. This game has far greater potential. But those people that are going to sit with this game for years, and become masters at it, need the rules!! I will never be great at this game, but I at least want to understand the consiquences of my actions if I so choose to understand.

Yeah... we need some info on the inner workings of this game...

So let me get this right:

When I build a factory, it will never operate at full capacity if I don't set the research slider to zero?

In fact, I tested around a bit by starting a new game and messing with the sliders.
The tests seem to confirm this assumption.

In Moo3 (god forgive me) you could at least drill both sliders for each planet all the way up, if you had the money.

As it is now, the more factories you build, the less mp point are you going to use for each following factory, assuming the research slider isn't set to zero.

Excuse me but, that seems like a very retarded system to me

The research slider should be independent from social/military
But this would certainly crush the current AI...

I gave up quite a while ago trying to work out what each different percentage meant, just that a high percentage is good. In some ways its intuitive; a factory increases production, a resarch lab research and it stops thinking too hard about exactly what each building does.

But I am disappointed that I can have an profit of 2000BC a week (thanks to an economic upturn event) and still not be ALLOWED to make everything run at full efficiency.

Maybe if the sliders were split up so you could choose how to divide you manufacturing points between social and military production with two sliders adding up to 100% and another separate slider for research on its own so I could manage that seperately. It would give me the feeling I had a lot more control over my economy.

When I build a factory, it will never operate at full capacity if I don't set the research slider to zero?

True

Your economy generates 90 bc/turn. At 33%, you collect 30 bc worth of taxes.

Not quite. The taxes rate has an impact on the tax income, but I wouldn't bet it is linear.

* You have one planet. This planet has 1 factory that can generate 8 ip/turn. It also has 2 labs that, combined, can generate 16 tp/turn. * Industrial Production is set to 75%, so your factory generates up to 6 ip/turn, and your labs combine to generate up to 12 tp/turn.

What is industrial production? General spending? military + social spending?

Your sliders are set at 33% social, 33% military, and 34% research. Thus, of your collected taxes: 10 bc goes toward military funding. Either 4 bc or 8 bc gets converted into mp for the ships. The remaining amount (either 6 bc or 2 bc), goes back into the treasury. 10 bc goes toward social funding. Either 4 bc or 8 bc gets converted into sp for the buildings. The remaining amount gets wasted. 10 bc goes toward researching. The last 2 tp the labs could generate never get used.

Not quite: spending has NOTHING to do with taxes. There isn't any split on taxes. Taxes are in the income part, like trade and tourism (and sometimes tribute). Spending are calculated separatly.

Now, let's say your spending is still at 100%, but you set your research slider on 50% and military slider on 50%. This means that half of your research capacity is being used (if you have a possible 80 tp, you are producing 40 tp) and also half of your factory capacity is put toward building ships (if the factory gives you 16 production units, you are using 8 of them.) If you then decrease the spending slider to 50%, then you are effectively halfing all production, meaning your 40 tp goes to 20 tp and your 8 military production goes to 4.

This is the correct behavior.