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Economy woes - 3/26/2010 2:52:55 AM

Jim D Burns

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I�ve started two games, and in both my economy crashed after about 10 or so colonies became part of my empire (both minor conquests and colonized planets). Initially I though the first game was my fault, as I failed to hunt down pirates aggressively. But in the second game, I made sure to destroy every pirate vessel that appeared, not simply drive it away.

Pirate activity decreased dramatically, but it didn�t help. As soon as I got about 10 colonies going, bam down came my economy. I checked the tax levels at two planets that had large enough populations to generate income, and one planet was only generating 3k at 12% with a population over 1 billion. WTF?

I couldn�t find any reason why the tax revenues suddenly dropped to almost non-existence. The amount collected was over 90%, so it was only generating 3k for a billion plus people. If I increased taxes, then the people became unhappy and populations would start declining.

If there is a place to find out what all the effects are, I can�t find it. On the planets screen, when I selected the two planets, they had a modifier of about +20 combined for all the positive modifiers listed. The only negative was a -1 for a bad rep, but I hadn�t even found an alien race yet, so I have no idea what the bad rep was for. Killing pirates perhaps? The game needs a better explanation of everything going on with the economy. Perhaps a new economy button that displays all the positive and negative effects.

This last game the date was 2780.02.09 when I had a nasty crash to desktop, so unfortunately I can�t provide you a save of the situation as there were no auto-saves of my game to pull up. But as this screenshot shows, I had a negative 20k month income at the time. I was faced with having to disband all my ships as the only solution I could figure on doing.

Warning to all players SAVE OFTEN, the game doesn�t do it for you and if you have a crash like I did, there�s no going back.

Jim

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< Message edited by Jim D Burns -- 3/26/2010 3:08:45 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:12:32 AM

Webbco

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That sounds annoying! On the back of that, is there a way to order your ships to patrol and guard a specific trade route from pirates?

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:15:04 AM

hadberz

Posts: 1629
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From: Moncks Corner, SC
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This bug may be screwing up the economy. It's been awhile since I've seen my empire go into the red like that, usually I'm at war with everyone and have trade sanctions against me when that happens.

I would post your dxdiag for Erik or Elliot to look at.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:18:21 AM

Jim D Burns

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Done.

Jim

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:22:52 AM

Erik Rutins

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Hi Jim,

We'll probably need to get a save from you if you think there's a bug at work, but I have no problems with 1.00 or 1.01 keeping my economy in the black. There are really a few main parameters to keep track of that can get you in trouble.

Top three suggestions:

1. Don't overbuild ships or bases, check your upkeep in your empire summary to see how much you are paying for them and scrap ships if you expand beyond your means 2. Check your resource supply vs. demand. If your demand far outstrips your supply on a critical resource, construction can stall, resource prices can skyrocket and everything that uses that resource will start getting expensive. 3. Make sure your people are not unhappy with you for some reason (i.e. excessive war weariness, bad reputation, etc.) as they can decide to stop paying taxes if that happens.

Also, regarding colony income, development and access to luxury resources plays a pretty big role in that too.

I see from the first post that your people were generally happy and that due to the error you don't have a save file. Elliot will take a look at that error message and hopefully have an idea what it means. If you see this happening in another game though, save the game and we can take a look to see what's going on.

I'll move this to the support forum.

Regards,

- Erik

< Message edited by Erik Rutins -- 3/26/2010 3:25:28 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:32:51 AM

LarryP

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I've never had economy problems like that. Every game I play besides DW I have money problems. Not DW though.

I set taxes pretty high at times. 30 is not uncommon for some planets. When they complain, I drop it 5 and they seem to like that I dropped it. After a while most complaining if not all goes away.

Sorry for asking but did you read about economy in the online help (F1)?

You need to understand about the private sector in this game. They are responsible for a great deal of your economy.

It's important to guard your trade routes with your fleets.

Set up as many trade agreements as possible with other races.

You might have to start a game that is not so hard until you learn how the economy works. There are so many options for starting a game. I have set up games and had them run for hours, making money and me not doing anything but reading and closing messages.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:41:47 AM

hadberz

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I would update your video and sound drivers, see if that helps any. For the error I mean.

< Message edited by hadberz -- 3/26/2010 3:42:28 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:50:41 AM

Jim D Burns

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins 1.Don't overbuild ships or bases, check your upkeep in your empire summary to see how much you are paying for them and scrap ships if you expand beyond your means

I had most things set on automatic. Other than an initial recommend of about 8 or so ships early in the game, the AI never asked to build more ships, so none were built. The economy was doing fine with an income of about 75k � 80k and expenses of about 40k � 45k.

Then bam everything tanked and my income went from 75K+ to about 13k - 19k in a matter of a few months. My 100k surplus vanished to the level seen in the above screenshot. Whatever caused it over-building could not have been the problem.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins 2. Check your resource supply vs. demand. If your demand far outstrips your supply on a critical resource, construction can stall, resource prices can skyrocket and everything that uses that resource will start getting expensive.

The problem was tax incomes, not construction, but I�ll check the resources if this happens again.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins 3. Make sure your people are not unhappy with you for some reason (i.e. excessive war weariness, bad reputation, etc.) as they can decide to stop paying taxes if that happens.

As I said, both planets had about +20 in modifiers, with just the -1 for rep. Even so, If I raised taxes beyond the 12% or so level the AI had it set at, the smiley face turned to a frown and populations would have decreased.

I opted not to change it, since tax revenues showed very little effect when 1 bil people provided 3k at 12%, doubling it to 24% to get 6k seemed a total waste given that tens of millions would leave every month at that setting.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins Also, regarding colony income, development and access to luxury resources plays a pretty big role in that too.

I�m pretty sure I had plenty of resources, as some of my planets had 5 listed. But alas, no save to go back to, so I can�t check to be sure.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins I see from the first post that your people were generally happy and that due to the error you don't have a save file. Elliot will take a look at that error message and hopefully have an idea what it means. If you see this happening in another game though, save the game and we can take a look to see what's going on.

I�ll try another game and see what happens. Just to let you know in case it�s a race specific issue, I was playing Human democracy, vs. all other races (none random rolled) on a 1400 star map. Normal pirates and the highest setting for alien life in an old galaxy.

Jim

< Message edited by Jim D Burns -- 3/26/2010 3:51:14 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 5:36:33 AM

elliotg

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Something else to keep an eye on Jim is the development level of your colonies. The tax income from a colony is basically: [population amount] multiplied by [development level]. See the Galactopedia topic "Colony Taxes" under Game Concepts for more details (F1).

In the Colonies screen (F4) you can see development level in the "Culture" column in the list of colonies at the top (7th column). If you have hardly any colonies at or near 100 then this is your problem. Low development levels are usually because of insufficient luxury resources being delivered to your colonies. This could be either because you don't have many sources of luxury resources, or they're not getting from their source to your colonies.

To find out all the resource locations in your empire go to the Expansion Planner screen (/ key) and look at the "Sources" column in the Resources list at the top of the screen. This tells you how many sources of each type of resource you have.

If those resources are simply not reaching your colonies that's probably because pirates or space monsters are chasing your freighters away. Be sure to stomp on them decisively

Also have a read of the Galactopedia topic "Economy Tips" under Game Concepts - this outlines a broad strategy for having a roaring economy.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 5:45:24 AM

Jim D Burns

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Right, but why would it crash? My starting two worlds had high development yet their tax revenue suddenly crashed after many years of good performance.

In the first game I allowed my ships to drive off the pirates instead of always killing them, so that may have been an issue. But in the second game, I destroyed every single pirate and space creature encountered. I even blew up a pirate base, yet the economy suddenly crashed after it was running along fine for many years.

I did note there was already a patch out, so I just installed it, didn�t think to look for one on the release day, lol. So far no issues yet in the now patched game, but I�m nowhere near as far in game yet.

Jim

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 9:08:31 AM

Mus

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My experience so far is that the automated colonization will put your economy on the rocks PDQ. Even with 3 fairly large healthy colonies I also find myself in the red once I start founding a bunch of new colonies.

I guess I will be checking out the luxury resources and figuring out how that works as everyone is saying that might be the issue. I do know I don't have any "stocked" luxury resources, but I frankly don't understand why that isn't part of the private economy and not my problem.

I (as the government) have to take steps to provide luxury resources in order for colonies to develop? If the people want luxury goods why don't they start companies to import them? This is based on the observation that there is all this commercial activity going on that I don't have to control.

Tips appreciated.

< Message edited by Mus -- 3/26/2010 9:18:30 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 10:40:00 AM

theonlystd

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Im having the same issue.. Everything is going fine then bam negative -20k.

and the font on the empire summary page is so small i cant even see whats costing me an arse ton of money...

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 11:11:31 AM

Hyfrydle

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This also effected me on my first game really would like to know what causes the problem I have a save if anyone's interested.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 11:26:08 AM

Mus

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I have tons of idle private economy freighters, anyone else? I also have access to luxury goods, they simply aren't being transported around my empire by my merchant marine, only a fraction of my private cargo ships seem to be doing anything.

Also I noticed the value of my main colonies slowly going down and when I looked at them to try to see what was going on I noticed more and more idle vessels in the private economy.

< Message edited by Mus -- 3/26/2010 11:32:03 AM >

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 11:31:53 AM

EisenHammer

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This is not good.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 11:50:33 AM

elliotg

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Hyfrydle This also effected me on my first game�really would like to know what causes the problem I have a save if anyone's interested.

I would be very interested in seeing that savegame Hyfrydle. Unfortunately I'm not sure where you can upload it. Wait until Erik is back online and he'll let you know where to send it.

Thanks Elliot

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 11:55:26 AM

elliotg

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Mus I have tons of idle private economy freighters, anyone else? I also have access to luxury goods, they simply aren't being transported around my empire by my merchant marine, only a fraction of my private cargo ships seem to be doing anything.

Also I noticed the value of my main colonies slowly going down and when I looked at them to try to see what was going on I noticed more and more idle vessels in the private economy.

Your freighters don't always have jobs to do, so having them hanging around parked at your colonies is ok.

But if you think you're not getting luxury resources to your colonies that's a different matter.

Save games are very welcome for these issues - once Erik is back he can give you the location for uploading these.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 12:29:19 PM

Hyfrydle

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Will upload when I get home at work now.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 3:41:07 PM

Erik Rutins

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Hi guys,

There are many possible reasons for an economy to tank, so I'm not going to worry yet as our test games here are still running fine with no economic issues on the same version.

However, we definitely want to look at these save files so that we can find out what's causing this issue for you. If it's not a bug, then we can advise you on how to avoid it and if it is, we will fix it ASAP.

With that said, I just posted information at the top of this forum regarding where to upload save files for our investigation. If those of you having economic issues can please upload a save and create a thread to point us at it, it would be much appreciated!

We have to handle this through our FTP server as the save files are too large for the forum.

Regards,

- Erik

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Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 4:21:59 PM

Webbco

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Hi folks, I have the same ecomomy struggles too. After colonising about 15 planets, my income is continuously in the red.

The AI sets the tax at 1% at new colonies by default, does it change this as the population increases? All my colonies have tax set to 1% so it doesn't look like it changes!

Reduced my fleet size by about 6 frigates (scrapped them) but this had barely no influence on economy

Not sure how to get luxury commodities to colonies (by the way, everything is set to automated but SUGGEST first)

I haven't had the error message though...must be me not knowing how the game works properly yet!

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 4:30:47 PM

Jim D Burns

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From: Salida, CA.
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quote:

ORIGINAL: elliotg Your freighters don't always have jobs to do, so having them hanging around parked at your colonies is ok.

Hmm, I just had a thought. Is it possible the private freighters are all queuing at the same time for an upgrade of their engines or something and their sudden lack of activity causes income to tank? Then they can�t afford to pay for the upgrade so they get stuck sitting and waiting for income that will never appear now?

If this is the issue, it can probably be fixed by only allowing the AI to queue one ship of each class at a time. Once it finishes a new ship can queue. That way most freighters stay busy at all times.

If it isn�t the issue, please ignore my random thoughts.

Jim

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 4:33:09 PM

Webbco

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I can imagine this making sense since I just had a couple of newly discovered techs just before my economy was playing up. But I'm still seeing trade ships fly all over the place. Hmmm.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 5:18:47 PM

Erik Rutins

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The only time a new tech could cause issues is if it's incorporated into all your new designs, which you then decide to build a lot of, before you have the resources required by the new tech. That's not a typical thing though.

A few more tips - I just ran a test game, got to 15 colonies and made sure to do some things to make the economy tank (overstretched on colonization, overbuilt all kinds of ships and bases, didn't make any particular resources a priority for construction). I was able to recover by doing the following:

1. Took control of some colony tax rates and adjusted them, including on new colonies, to generate some additional revenue without creating too much discontent (note that you need to balance tax rate increases against compliance and happiness, which is why it's often best to leave this automated, but in an economic crisis taking control can help as the automation always likes to keep new colony taxes very low).

2. Scrapped some bases I had discovered and taken control of but which weren't doing much for me. Scrapped all but one construction ship (they are quite expensive). Scrapped a few destroyers.

3. Traded away some technology to improve some alien race attitudes to form some additional free trade pacts and push an existing free trade up to a mutual defense pact. Traded some other techs for straight cash to help the bank account.

4. Found one strategic resource using the expansion planner that was fairly high in price due to supply being below demand and using the cash I gained from tech trades, built another mining station to add another source of supply, which helped reduce the price on that.

5. Kept my fleet parked so that it wouldn't use up fuel. Used Escorts on automation for minor tasks.

6. Traded for more galaxy and territory maps to open up new sources of strategic and luxury goods for my private sector.

The combination of these things got me back into the black in about 15 minutes of play on 2x speed. As my colonies continued to develop, my position grew more comfortable. This is not to say there couldn't be a bug, but if there is one there it seems manageable with careful play and fairly subtle in its effects. If you see this happen to you again, please do upload a save as that will be the best way for us to figure out what you are seeing.

< Message edited by Erik Rutins -- 3/26/2010 5:20:03 PM >

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Erik Rutins
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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 5:25:45 PM

Erik Rutins

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Forgot to mention that in going through my ships I also found a few that had been damaged and were effectively adrift. Rather than paying for the fuel and time to send a construction ship to repair them, I simply scrapped them to save money.

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CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 5:39:51 PM

Webbco

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This tips might be invaluable, thanks Erik. Could I possibly recommend to put these tips at the top if they help people? There seem to be quite a few people struggling with economy-related issues, although I wouldn't want it to be at the expense of finding out for oneself how to stabilise the economy.

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 6:02:04 PM

Xmudder

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The only time a new tech could cause issues is if it's incorporated into all your new designs, which you then decide to build a lot of, before you have the resources required by the new tech. That's not a typical thing though.

A few more tips - I just ran a test game, got to 15 colonies and made sure to do some things to make the economy tank (overstretched on colonization, overbuilt all kinds of ships and bases, didn't make any particular resources a priority for construction). I was able to recover by doing the following:

Why would too many colonies put you in the red?

I've uploaded my economy went to hell savefile at the ftp. Also check out the kraltors that outrun my ships after eating a colony ship.

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Post #: 26

RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 6:16:06 PM

Webbco

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The only time a new tech could cause issues is if it's incorporated into all your new designs, which you then decide to build a lot of, before you have the resources required by the new tech. That's not a typical thing though.

If you've set it to Automate though, doesn't the AI automatically upgrade ships to the latest possible tech? E.g. If you discover a new extractor, the AI calls in all miners and upgrades them with this new piece of equipment?

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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 6:23:45 PM

Erik Rutins

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Xmudder Why would too many colonies put you in the red?

Well, they request and consume luxury resources and put an additional load on your existing private trade fleets and your security forces, which can consume more fuel as well. Typically if you have troop recruitment automated, each colony will get at least one troop unit built there as well, which requires upkeep.

quote:

I've uploaded my economy went to hell savefile at the ftp. Also check out the kraltors that outrun my ships after eating a colony ship.

Thanks, I will take a look and see if I can figure this one out.

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Erik Rutins
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RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 6:25:42 PM

Erik Rutins

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Webbco If you've set it to Automate though, doesn't the AI automatically upgrade ships to the latest possible tech? E.g. If you discover a new extractor, the AI calls in all miners and upgrades them with this new piece of equipment?

Automating ship design means that the AI will always keep your designs updated with all the latest technology. That means that new ships being built or ships being retrofitted will always have the benefit of being as up to date as possible. However, the AI will not retrofit your ships or bases without your instruction. That's something you still need to do. That's why adding in a new tech to your designs will not create a resource problem generally, unless you embark on a widespread retrofitting or if the AI happens to built a ton of ships based on the new design as soon as it's ready (but before you have the resources for it).

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC

For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

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Post #: 29

RE: Economy woes - 3/26/2010 6:34:16 PM

Webbco

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Thanks Erik, that makes sense

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Post #: 30