Economy - running out of money..??

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Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/23/2013 2:11:53 PM

ReadeB

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Joined: 7/22/2013
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Thought I'd ask the experts.

I play large galaxies with lots of pirates and I find myself building defensive fleets, defensive bases and heavily armed space ports to keep the omniscient pirates from raiding any poorly defended colonies. They can smell my new colonies from 2 sectors away.

Only problem is, my ship and base maintenance goes through the roof even with fully researched trade and all the wonders. I realize now that GDP, taxes and corruption are where the money is, but I've read about people saying they have too much money.

Do you guys run undefended colonies and try to intercept pirates manually? I go pirate hunting as often as possible, but I still end up being surprised by huge pirate fleets raiding any undefended colonies.

Strategies?

< Message edited by ReadeB -- 12/23/2013 3:12:40 PM >

Post #: 1

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/23/2013 2:44:38 PM

Darkspire

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From: My Own Private Hell
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I have a fleet of four destroyers at every system and the mines look after themselves, all manually designed. Pirates on full strength on all the sliders and nearby on a 700 10x10. Are you sure it is the ship and base that is causing the cost? I found if I leave the troops on auto in options after a few years it is near twice my ship and base cost for the troops, tried all sorts to calm it down, less troops at colonies, lowest priorities set etc but to no avail, I now just juggle it on and off every few years when I need them.

Darkspire

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(in reply to ReadeB)

Post #: 2

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/23/2013 3:19:18 PM

Canute0

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
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quote:

I go pirate hunting as often as possible, but I still end up being surprised by huge pirate fleets raiding any undefended colonies.

What do you hunt ?
Do you hunt the pirate fleets or do you hunt pirate base ?

Pirates don't create huge fleets from nothing, they need to grow up. New pirate bases don't own huge fleets they comes from older existing bases.
You need to find and eliminate these bases and construtors. Design monitoring stations with nothing else then the basic need + Long range scaner and deploy them at empty space. At this way you notice when a new pirate base, or other unwanted ships show up at your teritory.

Once you have eliminated the pirate bases, you notice most of the defence fleets are not needed anymore and can be moved to the outer colonies.

(in reply to Darkspire)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/23/2013 3:20:06 PM

ReadeB

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I use fleets of 4 frigates (same dif), but have spaceports as well and sometimes defensive bases. I have been just leaving the spaceports and re-assigning the fleets as I expand. Guess I need to compare costs of fleets vs fixed defenses. Also thought the trade I got from spaceports would pay for their maintenance, but taxes are definitely where the income is at.

I keep a small garrison to keep the rabble from revolting when a war takes too long. Learned that one the hard way. Otherwise, all other ground troops are in transports on their way to the next "available" colony.

(in reply to Darkspire)

Post #: 4

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/23/2013 3:32:44 PM

ReadeB

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Joined: 7/22/2013
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Monitoring stations seem like a good plan. Usually just build gas mining stations on fuel with long range sensors.

Saw one of my enemies pepper my space with monitoring stations to check up on me. Didn't realize you could build them in enemy space and didn't think I wanted freighters running around constantly fueling them.

I have assault fleets for pirate bases and use small capture fleets to track down those constructors.

(in reply to Canute0)

Post #: 5

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/26/2013 4:22:29 AM

Timotheus

Posts: 481
Joined: 12/13/2013
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Am a noob but...

Money is not an issue for me. At the beginning of the game, have the starter world (homeworld) grow at 10% even if you lose cashflow in the short term. Before you run to zero, the pop growth will be so big that at taxes of 10% you will be making money hand over fist.

I do not do anything "spacey" before the Gerax hyperdrive (I know - am weird like that).

Keeps pirates away (other than the "assigned" one to you) and you are under the radar.

Once Gyrax hits, then make 3 small, horrible warships able to handle a kaltor or two (and the slugs...). The kaltors always go for that research station in bonus research planet with your uber scientist in it

Feel free to scrap the warships after.

Once colonies are researched, make the simplest small starport with medical unit and recreational unit in it. Build it on every colony (don't forget passenger ship design also).

When new pirates come a-knocking, when you get in contact with new civs, then go whole hog to upgrade your firepower - chiefly with your starports (put shields and weapons on them) and your private bases (same).

Make that uber fleet LATER, once all starports are retrofitted, which will give the AI pause and the pirates, even powerful ones, will ask for LESS money from you.

ASAP get your homeworld to MAX population, is the key to the game.

Aha, tourist resorts also help a bit with an odd roughly 1-2K profit early game.

Edit.

Re: pirates.

Easy peasy. Pay only when they attack you, but make sure you get your starports and research labs to be fortresses in space, with massive shields, torpedoes and beams (I STILL have not tried fighters

). Long range sensor on every starport, research base and PRIVATE base of course.

By this point you should be the one hunting them and not vice versa. Just research standard fuel cell ASAP, unlike myself who keeps forgetting this every game

< Message edited by Timotheus -- 12/26/2013 5:24:56 AM >

(in reply to ReadeB)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/26/2013 1:57:45 PM

ReadeB

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Joined: 7/22/2013
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Cash is no problem in the early game. The problem for me seems to be the expansion/conquer phase.

A little more experimenting has given me some strategy focus.

1. Colonies are where the cash is, focus there. Trade is tiny compared to GDP being generated there.
2. More happiness = higher taxes, but don't put your private economy into negative cashflow.
2. Protect colonies with fleets, spaceports and temporarily defensive bases, but watch costs. Retire or re-allocate forces as threats are pushed back.
3. Go after pirates with a vengeance, even if it helps your neighbors. Destroy bases and capture constructors. I try never to pay pirates, except in the very beginning.
4. Use Long range sensors to keep an eye on pirates as they try to move back in. Monitoring stations, explorers, mining stations are all good platforms.

(in reply to Timotheus)

Post #: 7

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 4:16:13 AM

Timotheus

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Again, the key to cash richness it to settle good quality planets AND more importantly, make their population grow.

If that means low taxes on the planet with 100, 200 or even 500K people, or even 0% tax, and you lose money - it is worth it.

If your reputation is good (mine is at noble - I am such a goody two shoes

) then other races will board their passenger ships and come to your planets.

The problem is that Securans breed like rabbits, and resettling them may not even be a solution...

So, to your points:

1. Colonies are where the cash is, focus there. Trade is tiny compared to GDP being generated there.

Trade is not tiny, at all. It can be bigger than your taxes at many a time.

2. More happiness = higher taxes, but don't put your private economy into negative cashflow.

Yep, happiness. Goes well with lower taxes, which incidentally results in big % growth for your colony pop. Jack up the taxes once you see the red "MAX" next to a planet - that means that the pop is maximized.

2. Protect colonies with fleets, spaceports and temporarily defensive bases, but watch costs. Retire or re-allocate forces as threats are pushed back.

Costs... there are research branches (troop logistics and errr one of them blue tech branches for admin) that lower your costs. Also upgrading commerce works (as well as building Bazaar and other wonders).

Early game, I make Colonial Spaceports with shields, weapons and armor, plus of course MEDICAL and RECREATIONAL one unit each for bonus - in fact, the MAIN reason for spaceport on every planet is for MEDICAL and RECREATIONAL bonus.

Make them cheap but so they can defend the colony from odds and ends (and late game, from full fleets - torps and titan beams rule).

Don't forget to recruit some troops on your planets, as a favorite trick of Das (and I have seen AI do it too!) is to run some troop transports past your multi zillion dollar death star orbital of doom and capture the planet (and the station...) because you had no or very few troops on the surface.

3. Go after pirates with a vengeance, even if it helps your neighbors. Destroy bases and capture constructors. I try never to pay pirates, except in the very beginning.

Correct - although early game I am usually unlucky to get a bunch of them and I have to pay ALL of them. For all that money they don't even kill the slugs in my starting system... bums. Then choose weakest pirate and steal their territory map - then go to town if they are in range. Don't piss all of them off.

Pirate bases - I had big trouble my current game because I didn't know this mechanic. I even lost a colony and had to make troop transports and recruit ASAP to take it back!

Periodically go to colony screen, go to a planet and click "Facilities". If there is a pirate base, build a few troops and attack it.

4. Use Long range sensors to keep an eye on pirates as they try to move back in. Monitoring stations, explorers, mining stations are all good platforms.

LRsensors rule. Also, feel free to put weapons and shields on private bases also - they will defend themselves and you get no upkeep.

(in reply to ReadeB)

Post #: 8

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 7:15:30 AM

Spidey

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Don't tax colonies until they hit max pop. This gives your private sector a bigger cashflow and it makes colonies grow much faster. More pop = more GDP, so it's essentially a trade-off between future and present income, but your capital colony should be able to keep you going while colonies grow. If you're a bit aggressive about it, you can even stomach the negative cashflow early game while your capital zero tax grows to max. This gives you a rather significant economic advantage.

DO NOT build a spaceport at every colony. It sounds useful but all it does is wreck the everlasting crap out of your economy. Spaceports are central hubs that stockpile enormous amounts of everything. If you build too many then the private sector will be so busy trying to distribute everything to everywhere that it can't easily respond to changes in demand. Having just a few spaceports bottlenecks ship production a bit but it also allows your private sector to run up some rather impressive stocks of resources, which in turn allows your shipyards to build bigger batches without running low and also allows construction ships to load up ALL the resources they need for a construction job without having to wait for a civilian freighter to make special deliveries.

Feel free to build a base over every colony. It's not a necessity but it also doesn't hurt as long as you strip the design down to the minimum. A few missile or torpedo launchers, some shielding, the three centers (rec, med, and commerce), some docking bays, and of course enough energy collectors to cover the static usage. That's it. When pirates are not around, you really just need a frame for the three centers. When pirates are around, you really just need it to be sturdy enough to take on a few escorts or frigates. Flying fortresses are fun as hell to design but the upkeep will bleed you dry.

When you do build spaceports then consider stripping down the vanilla designs a bit. You don't really need multiple plants of each type, and you don't need cargo bays at all. You don't need a trainload of crappy guns or the reactor and fuel capacity to keep those crappy guns firing for years on end. Scanners? Labs? I don't care to put either on my spaceports for reasons that will become obvious in the next paragraph.

Feel free to push expenses and responsibilities onto the private sector, particularly if you're not taxing the living daylights out of it. Long range scanners on all mining stations? Science labs on each mine? A good bit of shielding? A few new fazor guns to round things off? Why not? Obviously this can be overdone but if you keep things somewhat reasonable then the private sector is more than stable enough to take the hit. And if you've got 50 mining stations out there with one of each lab and a long range scanner then that's 150 labs and 50 scanners that you're not paying any upkeep for.

Don't forget to upgrade civilian ship designs to use modern tech. More and newer engines, a decent reactor, Kaldos drives for faster warping, more cargo capacity, enough fuel to go places, and a bit of shield to keep away the coldness of space. It won't change the price or the maintenance cost of civvie ships too much but it will do quite a bit for the efficiency of the private sector.

Take care not to overextend yourself or your private sector. Colonizing haphazardly will stretch out your infrastructure and make key vulnerabilities more visible than they have to be. Start out mining the resources in your home system, then expand onwards system by system. The classic fast expansion strategy will give you more colonies quicker but it also makes you vulnerable to pirates just about everywhere and while it's awesome to have a fourth colony in a really rich system, it blows balls to have that colony raided time and again or to constantly lose the private sector ships going there.

In terms of protection, I like using 2-4 beefed up destroyers (size 3-400 or so) per system as well as two or three attack fleets of ~15 destroyers. If a pirate capital ship drops by then gang up on it with protection fleets or throw an attack fleet on it. I really like Kaldos drives for defensive fleets. If you need to go far then they sort of suck but they own big time for defensive purposes.

Try to have at least one long range scanner active in every system. If you're putting them on mining stations then simply throw at least one mine into every system in your zone of control. This way you'll know if a pirate constructor is trying to sneak in a gas mine. Pirate ships have to refuel like anyone else and if they don't have any bases or gas mines then they'll run dry and become quite a lot less annoying.

Try to fit long range scanners onto your exploration ships as soon as possible. If a group of pirates is giving you trouble then shadow their egress vector with a few long range scanner explorers and you'll almost certainly stumble over a base that you can blast to bits.

Don't spam troops everywhere. If you've expanded enough that there's a meaningful distinction between interior and border systems and you're not worried about alien invasions then go through your colonies to make sure they don't have too many troops present. There's exactly zero worth from paying for troops that aren't going to see any combat.

(in reply to Timotheus)

Post #: 9

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 9:19:29 AM

Osito

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That's a very interesting post, Spidey.

I have a question about your recommendation not to colonize haphazardly. I have experienced this over and over again, finding that my colonies expand faster than my infrastucture can keep up, and eventually everything keeps clogging up. I find I have enough resources, but they're in the wrong place, and the private sector shows no real interest in putting them where they're needed. In fact, I stopped playing a few months ago, because I was fed up with games becoming unplayable. I saw that the latest version apparently improves resource distribution, so I'm playing again in the hope that the experience will be better. Anyway, that's a slight diversion from the point which is to ask you this: as far as I can see, many of the alien races see no need to throttle their expansion and they expand very agressively. I find it hard to keep up with them in terms of territory, without churning out colony ships as fast as possible. So how do you keep up with the other races while at the same time not expanding your own colonies too fast?

(in reply to Spidey)

Post #: 10

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 12:09:51 PM

Icemania

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Joined: 6/5/2013
From: Australia
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A few supplementary tips that I consider critical in every game due to the magnitude of the benefit:

1. Consider researching Open Trade Network relatively early so that you can build a Traders Bazaar on your homeworld.
2. Build mines / colonies on Super Luxuries and ensure they are defending. For maximise effectiveness this requires plenty of early exploration.
3. Exploration also yields the Way of the Ancients government type.
4. Once you have a reasonably sized empire research Unlimited Commerce and build a Trade Guild.

(in reply to ReadeB)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 1:38:27 PM

Spidey

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I'm not advising against fast expansion, but merely against haphazard expansion. That is to say, expand fast but do so in an organized manner and don't colonize everything just because you can. The way I see it, you want your empire to remain as compact as possible. This makes everything easier to defend and it keeps ranges short for civilian ships.

If you simply race outwards with colonies left and right, the distances between them will quickly become huge, defending all your colonies becomes next to impossible, and you probably won't have nearby mines providing necessary strategic resources, which can in turn lead to some annoying shortages that take forever to resolve.

I think it's much more efficient to establish an expansion path and then focus on rolling out assets along that path. Think of your empire as a collection of districts and organize your expansion as either an improvement of an existing district or the establishment of a new district. Try to make each district as self-sufficient as possible. Kill off the pirates, build a protection fleet, and get mines up and running. Then move on to the next district.

Granted, this isn't the fastest way to expand but I don't think it's a terribly big drawback. A smaller but more coherent empire with a bigger population and plentiful resources can produce more ships faster than a bigger empire that has resource problems and if aliens try to block your expansion path then you can always invade them. You don't have to get to a system first as long as you have the greater ability to project power in the system.

And about the resources getting stuck, I tend to think of spaceports as the symbol of a district capital colony and try to make sure that it has all the strategic resources within comfortable distance. It's been working out so far. I suspect, without having anywhere near enough empirical data to support it, that a single large spaceport can accomodate an entire sector worth of colonies and mining stations if it has enough docking bays. Of course, I have no experience whatsoever with really huge empires (think 100+ colonies) and I'm always very conservative with my construction queues so some measure of salt should probably be ingested along with my advice.

(in reply to Osito)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/28/2013 5:39:29 PM

Osito

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I see your point, Spidey.

One point that occurred to me after I made my post is that I always play 1400 stars, 15x15 sectors, and I have never played anything else, other than when I'm testing something specific. I suspect the game is rather different on the smaller galaxy sizes. That's not to say I don't think your advice is good (it is good), but I guess my large galaxy sizes are exacerbating the logistical problems (owing to the greater number of stars) and helping the AI with expansion (because they have more space). I usually find I'm way ahead of the AI for the first part of my pre-warp games, because I do everything manually, and I think my designs are much more efficient than the AI is using. But once I get to a certain point I begin to run out of steam a bit, while the AI continues pumping stuff out whatever the situation. A bit like the tortoise and the hare (where the AI is the tortoise).

(in reply to Spidey)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/30/2013 2:31:42 PM

ReadeB

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I play 1400 stars exclusively as well and am running into a similar situation.

Currently playing a late game with a well defined core of colonies. State and private have plenty of cash reserves, but cashflow for both is concerning.

Will start replacing Spaceports with 2 different designs of defensive bases.
1. Safe base with rec, med and comm components and a few defenses.
2. A more heavily defended base for my outer systems.
3 Leave Spaceports only where I plan to build or retrofit ships. 99% of ships are built at homeworld with high-speed shipyards wonder.

Does corruption affect GDP or just taxes? Don't seem to be able to build enough regional capitals to keep it in check. Not that big a deal as long as it only affects taxes.

(in reply to Osito)

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RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/30/2013 7:28:24 PM

CyclopsSlayer

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These are what I use;

Star Base - 10 Shields, Hyper Deny and/or Gravitic system, 3-5 Fighter Bays(depends on era and enemy), Docking Bay, Commerce, Recc, Med, Hab to Boarding 300, misc as needed. About ~80 systems, ~7K cost

Monitor Station - as above, but add Long Range Sensors. LRS are power hogs so will increase the Reactors and Energy collectors needed.

Never more than 1 Monitor per system, each world gets a Star base.
I build few if any Space Ports until the worlds are above 1 Billion population.

ASAP get the Open Trade Networks built on your best world. likely the home planet.
Logistics to reduce troop costs, letting you go grab all those juicy Independent Colonies more efficiently.
Select a Race with Natural Merchant Mod for increased income. Reduced Maintenance is also good.
Sell contested stations, junk techs.
NEVER pay Pirates 1 credit more than you had to, every bit you give to them will come back as Pirate bases and ships when and where you least want them.

(in reply to ReadeB)

Post #: 15

RE: Economy - running out of money..?? - 12/31/2013 11:37:18 AM

Spidey

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Just small thing but I've so far seen no indications that the private sector has any problems paying for long range scanners on mining stations. Throwing LRS on all the mines that are floating everywhere means not having to worry about them on your various state-run bases. It makes it very easy to keep track of systems by simply putting up a gas mine and it gives you plenty of redundant scanning capability.

(in reply to CyclopsSlayer)

Post #: 16