I'm sorry, but your answers haven't really explained much to me - but many thanks for trying

Unfortunately, I can't just cast aside my anal-micro-management ways (as much as I would love to!) and it seems wrong to me to try to play a strategy game without understanding the mechanics involved.

What worries me about GalCiv2 isn't the bugs (though I am passionately against companies who release buggy games), it's the fact that these might be actual working features which people end up mistaking for bugs - I just think that would be a shame for the developers. I'm not saying they should change to a more commonly-used system - experimenting with new ideas is good - but that they need to make it clear to people what is going on lest they get an undeserved bad reputation.

Still, I'm beginning to get a few ideas about what I might be doing wrong, which (if I'm right) will be a good start

The way the economy works is now beginning to make sense. Having some kind of reasoning as to why it works might help people learn it a little more easily, but yes... by unlearning what I'd learnt before, it is making sense!

My population definitely didn't grow - I had a 4.6b pop and a 500,000 pop, neither of which changed. I don't know what caused it, though, as it all seems to be working fine now... Perhaps the bug Mortimon mentioned about not having complete turns sometimes?

I figured out where I got the apparent 48 social from, too - 24 for my Civ Capital (or whatever it's called), plus 16 (8 + 100% bonus) for the factory - according to that screen, I did get the bonus straight away. Then remaining 8 came from various production bonuses (10% production due to the capital, 20% social bonus due to my race).

Unfortunately, the only problem I still seem to have is that I've had a factory saying '1 turn' for completion for three turns in a row now... Each turn I was building 1 social and there were no changes in my facilities or spending rates, so I'm totally lost on that one still...

The only other thing is the Core design Colony Ship - can that only transport 500,000 colonists? The image looks like it has 2 colony modules on it, but I could only load it up to 500 (oh, wait... unless my planet only had 500 pop...) I'm also a little surprised that planet pop increase is not based upon the current population level - I think I'm going to try having a planet with no population and see how quickly it grows!

No, I have plenty of cash... For some reason, the estimated time of completion tends to be about half as long as it actually takes!

Well, I did it about 15-20 times.... 1 social point being produced per turn.

First turn it said 30 turns, second turn also said 30.

Third and fourth said 29 turns, fifth and xsixth said 28, and so on...

I'm guessing it's just somewhere along the lines there's been a factor of two that has crept in - if this is right, it should be relatively easy to work around. So an annoying minor bug (if it is a bug and I'm not missing anything!), but can live with it in the short term.

Perhaps this is a bug that's crept into 1.0X?

I have no desire to micro manage a game like Gal-Gic-2. This would make the game dull,tedious and bore the crap out of me,like Civ-4 where ou can play for hours and nothing happens. The complexity of strategy and ideas make this game the best startegy computer game out there.

I've only twice passed turns in planetary view, both by accident - it seems to always happem when I have just loaded a game (for example, when I've replayed the same turn a few times to get used to some of the rules, or after I've been forced to leave my comp for a bit...)

But it only seems to restore the movement rates to all of my ships - no other visible progress seems to be made (no enemy ships move, no construction or research of any kind occurs, neither does population growth - I'm not sure on tax collection, though) so when I have had to do it I've just clicked turn twice in a row and I think it's the required effect

As for the problem with not being able to see the actual construction for social projects (something I do care about, and am entitled to care about!), I've found that this can be viewed accurately in the Empire (?) screen, under the colonies tab. It's also a very quick and easy summary of all the colonies, so micro-management has now become so much quicker because I can see the effects of changing production rates on all colonies at once - a great move by Stardock The only suggest I would make on it is perhaps adding a way to set the 'focus' for each planet in that screen too.

Now that I can actually play this game properly (in the way I wish), it's a lot of fun!

But if I have 100% funding and positive income, and set research to 100% on the sliders manufacturing drops to 0. Thats wasted manufacturing capacity. I have the money to fund those factories, but they arn't running. Why?

Here's how I see it:
For logistical reasons, there is only enough infrastructure to run industry for (for the purposes of example) 100 hrs per week. TOTAL. Perhaps there's not enough power from the solar collectors or whatever, doesn't matter. The 100 hours figure doesn't matter either, it's just a nice round number, you can imagine that events which up your total production capacity up that number too.
Now, the three sliders allow you to specify how you split up the time between the industries. Your factories working 30 hrs, social projects 40 hrs, research industries 30 hrs, or however you set it up.
The production slider allows you to hire the workers to run those industries, all the way up to having enough workers to get 100% efficiency from the industries FOR THE TIME THEY'RE RUNNING.
In a normal setting, the workers won't switch between industries (less efficency due to travel time, logistics, inexperience, whatever), but focussing production on a planet will get workers to move around, causing productivity losses from other industries as the workers leave early to catch the last mag-lev to the focused industry.
The Tax slider allows you to grab enough cash to pay the workers. Excess cash CAN'T be used to fund other industries as they have no more logistical time, it just goes in your bank.

It doesn't matter if you've got your production slider at 100% if your factories don't have any logistical time to produce anything.

Of course that doesn't explain why you can't do it per-planet.

First, I will tell you that I am generally fine with the economic system in GCII. It's definitely not perfect, and if they choose to revise it, I will be thrilled, but it doesn't kill the game for me.

I am also OK with the global budget allocation. My more micro management side sometimes wishes for more planet-level control, but - AI programming issues aside - I understand how this could make micro management extremely tedious in large games. I actually think that the planet-level specialization buttons are a great work around for this issue.

As far as the production sliders go, I definitely understand the complaints about their inefficiency/lack of expalinability with how things work in the "real world".

Ultimately, we just have to learn to live with some things that seem a bit frustrating - like the fact that we might make more than enough cash to fund our industry/research at higher levels, but can't get our factories/labs to run at anything higher than a 100-M,S, and/or R rate. I know everyone is trying to put logic in place to explain why this could be, but none of it will ultimately make sense.

If my budget is positive, but, for example, my research slider is at 50% - why can't I up my research production to, say, 60% utilization. The attempted "real world" answer to this is generally that, "Well, your infrastructure (people, power consumption, etc.) can't work/power any more research despite your having the financial means to pay for it."

OK - fine. But then, why can I instantaneously build another lab and have it immediately go into production at 50% capacity? Those workers wouldn't work in the "crowded" existing labs, but are now happy to work in a nice, shiny new lab? Also, by building this new lab, I have just increased my total spending on research (empire-wide). By building a new structure, I have effectively "fooled" the system into allowing me to increase my expenditures. (Example: My income is 105. My total research and industry output capability is 100, and my output slider is set to 100%. My sliders are at 25-25-50 (M-S-R), therefor, my industry output is 50 (M+S) and my labs output is 50. If I build a lab that has a base research value of 10, then I will be producing 50 industry (25M, 25S) - the same as before - and 55 research (50 from before, plus 50% of the new 10 I just built). Now I am spending all of my income (105) on my outpts (50+55). Why do I have to resort to trickery to accomplish this?

(Also, I get the fact that I can only do this for so long, because I will run out of buildable space. Still, it seems like I have to resort to a cheap trick if I really want to run my economy at its full potential.)

No matter how you try to explain it, it doesn't make a lot of "real world" sense.

Again, though. If the devs want to revise this I will be thrilled, but I am willing to live with it the way it is. It doesn't kill the game for me - it just doesn't make much logical sense to me at times.

No, you're right. You aren't really "fooling" the game. There is a real cost to building another factory or lab that will make you think twice.

Still, the idea that I have to build another plant or lab to increase production when half of my lab/industry capacity is still unutlilized just smacks me as wierd. Once your planet's buildable tiles are all full, then the shifting resources idea works fine with me - "Our fearless leader has said we shall all go to the mines today instead of the labs!". The logic just seems strange until you reach that point.

I will say, however, that if you went to an automatic full-capacity usage methodology ("Want more research? - Build more labs!"), then shifting gears with your economy, like you can do now, would be nearly impossible.

If labs and factories are automatically used at a 100% capacity, then you can't suddently increase your military output when the Yor come calling... And, conversely, you can't revert to researching tech once the threat has subsided.

ooookay, so the slider things work just like I thought they would, but I still can't calculate the output numbers. Looking at my first and only endgame safe, I have this cute little world I invaded:
Population: 10,
manufactory(20)+civilisation capital(24) : 44
Spending Slider: 100%
subsliders: 0/100/0
Approval rating: 100%
Bonuses: No Starbase, Government = Federation = 75%, but race abilities show 50%

My calculation: 44+(0.75*44) = 77, or 44+(0.50*44) = 66
Social Output: 30

So where is my error?

Mooncusser, what about GIGO? Garbage In, Garbage Out! In my experience, it's problems with how the software was written, not the user. (But then, my job IS testing software and firmware! )

Would / should the Civ Capital give 24 in this case? It's not Jeda's homeplanet, but a captured planet... I've not yet captured enough other races' homeworlds to know how this might effect it... would it be downgraded to an initial colony? How much does an initial colony give?

Jeda, what output was listed for the military and research for that planet? Is it possible that a focus was set on one of them, diverting attention away from social (okay, I know that's a bit of a simple thing, but I'm all out of ideas!)

Do Civ Capitals on captured planets downgrade to Civ capitals or stay as they are, then? (I don't know... last few games I played were early campaign games, so once I'd taken over the Drengin's homeworlds and pressed the 'Turn' button, the game ended...)

Mooncusser, in your case, did you have any race bonuses? (These aren't added to the detail page for the colony, I think...)

I must say that, now that I understand the economic mechanics in the game, it does seem to work right!

A factory produces 8pt at 100%, 6 pt at 75%. etc. This number (8 or 6) is then split up according to the military, social and research sliders. At 34/33/33 and 75% production (6pt) each area gets a base of 2 pt. These are then modified by race and planet abilities.

Whoa, that's the first time I've heard it explained that way. I never realized the factory capacity influenced your research. But from playing the game, that makes sense, since I can get research points from a planet that has no research facilities. So that leads to a question then - what do research facilties do? Give a percentage boost to the whatever "production" capacity you put towards research?

I think the light just went on for me