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

So, certain that my second factory will produced as desired at the end of my first turn, and confident that my population will be at it like rabbits due to my fiscal generosity, I press the Turn button...

You do not get the factory (or building) the same turn as you buy it, it comes the next turn. I don't quite understand what you are seeing though. As to the pop increase, perhaps you grew in a small enough incriment that it doesn't show up in the sig figs on your display. I don't bother tracking how fast my pop grows, soon enough you have more pop than you really want to deal with anyway

I also think the economic model makes perfect sense as it is implemented. I understand that people have a problem with what they think is waste, but there is really no waste (other than the social, which is addressed in 1.1). Stop trying to apply whatever realism you are using to the game mechanic in question. Just understand the game mechanic and you'll realize that your proposed changes do not infact change anything substinative.

In a nutshell you can have 50 production capacity running at 50% (from linked sliders) or you can have 25 production capacity running at 100% (from unlinked sliders). That implies that they scale down the capacities of buildings, but they are already doing that as it becomes a matter of pace. Now you might argue that your economy will still limit you, but in effect setting up strong economies is almost too easy. Moreover, if you are economy limited anyway, why make the change if your overall production is still going to be the same?

Its a different way of doing economy, its not better or worse than any other method, just different.

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!

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...

Well if your cash balance is below -500BC then you produce nothing, all your taxes simply go to getting you above -500.

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!

If your social spending is too low you can get some wierd values for how long it takes to complete buildings.

I don't know though, I've never seen the behavior you are describing.

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?

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.

Try passing turns while in the galactic view, not planetary.

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!

Zild and all you fellow CIv players ( I played Civ 3 and Civ 4 alot, HoF etc.) the economics and production are NOT Civ. When you build a factory you don't have to have a "pop point" to work it like you do in CIv. A factory running at 100% will produce 8 production points, to be split up between social, military and research. How this is split up depends on what your global sliders are and whether you have focused that planets production in one of the 3 areas.

The global sliders set your tax rate and what percentage of your production capability you are using. Both can be adjusted to ensure a cash flow you can work with. Also, do not try to keep approval at 100%. You dont start losing population (= taxpayers) until a planet hits 40%. If you are in a Deomocracy etc. 60 - 70 % is good to make sure your party maintains control of the legislature.

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.

On the planet screen you can refine this to concentrate more in one of the 3 areas, at the expense of the other 2 for that planet only. Why have production going to military on a low level planet with no starport. Focus on Social until you get your buildings up and then switch that planets focus to Research so the quality planets can get those new techs sooner. So if you focus on Social for that planet you will see the amount given to military and research drop for that planet only. You focus in an area by clicking the icon next to the name of the area you want to focus on, It will light up and the numbers will adjust.

The 28mt is megatons of food available for use to feed your citizens, not production (pt). Your population will not exceed your mt. Population is only important to taxes collected, how many troops you can put on a transport and your happiness (morale) factor. If you take away some population of a planet it effects how much tax is collected and your happiness goes up , but it does not effect how long it takes to build a military or social project.

I feel like I'm rambling but I hope this makes some sense and helps you understand a little better. Just remember this is not Civ nor is it related to it. I do not get into formulas, etc. but just a basic understanding of what effects what makes a world of difference.

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.

Thanks for trying to explain guys (though for the record, I personally have understood this particular nechanic for a couple of days now).

I've been trying to think of a good way of explaining it for other people, and so far Omnisentry's is the best I've seen. I don't think that this mechanic should be chanegd, nor do I think it needs to be 'realistic', but having some kind of explanation as to why it works that way is going to be a lot clearer for many people than the maths. The idea of having a limited power supply is getting towards a good explanation (though that supply obviously increases with the number of facilities built), but out of curiosity does anyone have any other ideas for ways to explain it? (Sorry, I write a lot in my free time, and part of my job is writing instruction manuals )

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.

I don't think 'fooling' the game is really what you are doing - it can be a tough choice between building a new research centre and a new market (no point having lots of research facilities if you can't pay for them - it took me a few games to learn that the hard way )

I still think there could and should be a semi-realistic explanation for it, though... The more I play the game, the more I appreciate this system, I just wish it was easier to explain to new players (especially all those old Civ fans like me!)

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.

I'm tossing my hat into the 'have no idea how the sliders work' pool. I simply leave them where they are except for moving the tax rate when I start to lose money.

This is quite obviously, a bad way to play, and likely why I cannot win a game above normal.

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?

Jeda:

Trying to think of what would be causing this. I know the standard response is to start screaming "Bug!" - but in my experience computers usually run well, it's the humans running them that tend to make mistakes...

The Population and Approval rating shouldn't matter for output. They are more involved with tax income and population growth.

The Civ capital definitely gives you 24 in manufacturing, and I am assuming that you are correct with the 20 in manufacturing output potential from factories. Your idea of how the sliders work is right, you should be getting full social output out of your factories (44). I'm not sure about the federation and race ability bonuses.

Are you sure about the manufacturing from other factories? I find it odd that your total output in 30 - exactly 25% greater than your civilization capital produces.

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!)

I checked in a game - the Initial Colony provides 12 output, so that doesn't make sense either.

For that matter, I tried to add up my production on the colony in my game to see if it made sense. I set the sliders to 100% Output, all in Social.

My manufacturing output max was 30 (Initial Colony (12); Basic Factory (8) and Factory (10)), but my total production was 0 (Military); 39 (Social); 0 (Research). Military and Research were 0 as they should have been, but the Social seems high. The only extra effects that I saw on the detail screen were +3% for an economic starbase, and +30% in Economics (I had a couple of Trade Centers built).

39 in total output doesn't seem to make much sense - that's a 30% increase from the baseline 30. Economics should affect only tax revenue - correct? The +3% starbase bonus should have gotten me 31 in total Social output, assuming upward rounding.

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!

Indeeed. But the game designers do this knowingly, and including waste intentionally is fair, from a game design point of view. The benefit to the player is that it reduces the amount of micro management needed - some players will like this, others will not.

Actually, it is my experience that the presence of this kind of waste is the greatest encouragement to micromanage.
If I can find a way to avoid the waste, then I can better my play. Just making it harder to avoid the waste just makes for more micromanagement, more frustration, and less enjoyment.

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