In other words, the productivity slider is how much money you are spending, and the others where it goes.

If you have 100% productivity, and change research to 100%, then you are only routing that production to research: no money to military or social.

No, that is not correct.

It took me a while to realize this simple fact: The industry on your planets does not give you any wealth. Zilch. Zippo. Nadda. None. Not ever. You are a government. The wealth generated by industry and such goes to the people. Your income comes from the 3 "Big Ts": Taxes, Trade, and Tourism. Industry is what you are investing your money into, but you do not get a return on that investment in money. Your return is in being able to make things like ships and buildings. The more industy and research you have, the more it costs you, even if you are not building anything. If you are not building anything, then you are just paying salaries to people and maintaining equipment that is sitting idle.

I think there is still an unanswered question implied by Pint in the original post. It goes like this: Each colony has a number of flasks of research capacity depending on how many research academies and other research facilities it has on its tiles. Let's say the total for all my colonies is 100 flasks at a given point. If my friend has 120 flasks total in his colonies, he should gain techs in fewer turns than I do, right? Now what is the relationship between the 100 flasks capacity in the colonies, and the positions of the total spending and percentage allocation sliders? Suppose my friend and I have the same total spending income and expense totals, but I have my spending slider set at 100% and my research slider set at 90%, and he has his spending slider set at 60% and his research slider set at 40%...does that mean I am gaining techs faster than he is regardless of the fact that he has more flasks of capacity in his colonies? Putting it another way, do you have to have your spending slider set to 100 and 100% of your spending allocated to research to get the full measure of the total flasks in your colonies? In other words does the total flasks represent a theoretical maximum you can reach? Am I making any sense at all?

If you have read and followed me on this, thanks for your doggedness and your reply if you still have energy to give one.

I have read lots of online stuff, here in the forums as well as the wiki, and have understood very little in terms of tech points and money. I would read it, and then get in the game and try to apply it, and still be lost. There's lots of numbers and details on those pages, but I never quite grapsed how it relates to an actual game.

This explanation clicked. Simple enough, with plenty of room for my own experimentation. I know points cost money, but I was always looking for a financial return on spending the money thusly. I know it's probably explained somewhere online, but this just made it sink in. Things are beginning to make sense.

I'm gonna ramble here a bit, thinking outloud sort of...

Once I pay for a building, that money is gone. And I have to pay to maintain it, regardless if it's actually producing anything or not. That includes salaries.

In one instance, when a lab is producing, it's producing research points, which are spent on learning new researches, and researching them faster. A most likely but incorrect analogy, I'll think of a tp as a scientist, adding one more to the team of scientists doing the actual research.

In the other instance, the factory is producing manufacturing points, which are spent on things like producing new and/or new enhanced components, new construction projects, etc... Every mp point could be one more manfacturer to the team of manufacturers doing the actual building.

Influence and social projects keep these scientists and manufacturers happy, thus going to work and working up to their full potential, researching faster and bulding quicker. If they're not happy, they don't produce as well. Techs research slower, parts get built slower, taxes may not get paid or they'll leave your empire altogether.

I've been looking for the financial link amongst all these elements. And there is none. Well there is, but not as direct as I was looking for. Once a building it finsished, it doesn't produce income. It now makes sense.

Again, I know this is explained elsewhere, but as I said, this simple burst of explanation made a crack in the wall. I see the Colony Management screen in a different light.

Thank you.

I'm pretty sure it works like this. The amount of labs you possess, in all your colonies, is your research production full capacity; your "roof". Lets say you have 20 labs, and these labs are all rated at producing 5 RP, therefore your total is 100 RP possible. However, you may not want to give your labs enough funding to operate at full capacity. This is where the sliders come in. If your sliders are set at 100% total, and 90% research, then you will produce 100 RP x 100% x 90%, or 90 RP. If his labs have a full capacity of 120 RP, but he runs at 60% and 40%, then he will produce 120 RP x 60% x 40%, or approximately 29 RP. After this process is applied to all three components (military, social, and research), all the production you are doing is converted to an amount of bc, which is then deducted from your monthly income. I'm not entirely certain, but I think that the percentages are applied on the planetary level, meaning that, for example, you have 4 planets each producing 5 RP each, and you operate at 100% total and 75% research, each planet will produce approximately 75% of 5 RP, which is 4 RP. This comes out to 16 RP total, which is one more than if it were calculated on the civ-wide level (20 RP x 100% x 75% = 15 RP).

God I hope I didn't F that one up ("F" meaning "foul", of course).

On the bright side, you win the war after blowing up two of his Dea....er Terror Stars.

I second the above message!

To clear up your 2nd question:

All your research centers and factories have a maximum capacity (like 8RP, 12MP,... as stated in the info of the buildings).
Your productivity slider determines the maximum capacity actually used. 50% productivity nets you a maximum of 4RP and 6MP before the research, social and military sliders are applied to these figures.

Say research slider at 25%, social at 50% and military at 25%.
The actual amounts produced are now 25% of 4RP (1RP), and 50 % of 6MP for social (3MP) and 25% of 6MP for military (rounded down 1MP). These are the numbers of hammers, shield and beakers displayed on the planet screen.

It's not that hard to understand but perhaps your "USA level abilities" aren't up to par, who knows?

another way: the productivity slider tells you how much of the max capacity of a facility is used if the spending slider for that facility is 100%. The actual units produced depends on the percentage you actually spend on research, social or military. Beware that social and military both draw from factories. So 25% social , 75% military and 0% research will use the full available capacity of the factory (after the productivity is applied to the maximum capacity ofcourse).



About the 1st question: if no social and no military projects are built, the workers aren't hired and therefore not paid. The money doesn't flow back to your treasury, it was never spent and hasn't left the treasury. That means that the bonus free production units aren't refunded (you have to pay only 50% of starbase and some other bonuses to production and research, the other 50% bonus is free). The net effect is that you only pay for the 10 research, unless some of those are free bonus beakers, in which case you pay even less.