Hmmm, I would also like to be able to fiddle with each planet's spending on an individual basis. We can do that a bit by putting priority on one form of spending but that leads to waste. It would be more work but I don't mind the micromanagement so much. Just one problem..... The AI would be *far* better at it than me! I don't mind popping in to planets every now and again to tweak the spending but the computer AI would check every single planet every single turn, even if it was just to change the spending by 2%! A bit more micromanagement I can take but trying to keep up with the AI in that kind of environment would be FAR too harsh.

I think it might be best just to stick with this system. After all, we're running an empire here, not a perpetual motion machine.

What the hell is going on with the spending distribution sliders?? I have spending at 100% with a positive income, in which case the distribution sliders should do nothing, but they still gimp my overall production by 66%!!!! If I have 100 military production, 100 social production, and 100 research no matter what I do I only end up with 100 of them total!

Seems like several of the people new to the series have been confused by this, but IMHO it's fairy simple.

I hand you a hundred dollar bill, and tell you to spend every bit of it. Are you going to buy three okay things for $33 apiece, or one really nice thing for $100, or some other combination?

You can't magically create $200 extra dollars to buy three nice things, no matter how much fun free money would be.

The way I look at it...and by no means do i have my PH.D in Econ...The only thing that should limit any economy from producing at 100% is (1) Dead weight loss, NA in GC2, (2) Taxes, in GC2 tax rate doesn't decrease Production, (3) Supply and Demand, in GC2 there is unlimited Demandm and unlimited supplies ie no reasources besides money. (4) Population, This is what I want to talk about today.

Lets say I have my spending bars set to 33-33-33. And I begain to buil a planet with 1 fac, 1 lab, 1 farm, 1happy place, 1 market. I have enough Happy People to run each Location at 100% But I can only do it at 33% under the current system. This makes no sence to me what so ever.

I am paying the money for the factories to be run at 100%, I have the Labor pool to run it at 100%, Yet its stuck at 33%.

Another example, I have 2 planets each with enough Population and moral bonus. 1 Planet is all Factories, 1 is all Labs. Why must each planet only run at 33% or at best 50%. Wouldn't the Scientist from Planet A move to Planet B for the Jobs and Vis versa? Eventually causing each planet to run at close to 100%?

If I have the Tax base, and I have the Labor Pool, Why are my factories only running at 33% when I can run EVERYTHING at 100%? This is a huge Dead weigh loss IMO.

To address Luminae's example...your right I can't create free money. But your example should really be "You give me $300, enough to buy 3 nice things at $100, and tell me that nomatter how i spend it, and i must spend it, I can only get $100 worth of goods and services."

Granted if I didn't have the money to run everything at 100% I shouldn't be able to. But if I have the Capital to back it up, and the Labor pool to fill all the slots, My economy should be running at 100%...or close to it.

I think theirs a couple of mistakes as to what people thing is actualy going on here

1) first off, aparently their is not a 1-1 corelation to workers and how efecient a planets assets are, aparently the same 100-500 million people will efficiently work 1 factory or 1 factory 1 spaceport 1 researchlab 1 embasy and 1 entertainment center. The reality is that considering just how automatied you can make a production process nowdays though, its probably not so surprising that by the time the game is set you can basicaly automate production to the point where labor costs for everthing is the same whether or not you use robots or people, Even in Farming.

2) the tax rate combines national investment(the factories-farms-Colony ships and freighters) public works (Star ports and some of the tile improvments) with national defence spending. Everything not spent on "Taxes" for thoes purposes is bascialy kept by the people to spend any way they see fit,

It's the way the numbers on the economy screen work. You get a fraction of your maximum production based on manufacturing capacity x the number on the slider. So 50% capacity x 40% labs gets you 20% of what your labs should be able to do.

Some people like having the decision between labs and factories. Some people want to be able to put in all the money and get all the results. Why isn't there an option to choose one or the other in the menu or something?

Seems like several of the people new to the series have been confused by this, but IMHO it's fairy simple. I hand you a hundred dollar bill, and tell you to spend every bit of it. Are you going to buy three okay things for $33 apiece, or one really nice thing for $100, or some other combination? You can't magically create $200 extra dollars to buy three nice things, no matter how much fun free money would be.

That's easily proven to be incorrect.

You can have spending at set to 100% and still have a positive net income, and be completely unable to "spend every bit of it", for no other reason than that the interface won't allow you to.

Further, the game allows you to go into debt should you not have enough funds on hand at the time.

What the original poster is asking for is *not* to have extra money, but to be able to spend the money that he already has on production at the facilities (factories, labs) that he's already built.

If you have your $100 for the week, for example, and are on a planet where it'll take $50 to run your factories at max and $50 to run your labs at max, the game *won't let you* spend all $100 to do so. Instead, it'll "let you" split your production in such a way as to never allow you to make use all the facilities on a planet at once, regardless of how much extra cash you have.

A number of threads have come up on this subject already, (and will continue to come up, I would expect) until Stardock releases a patch that cuts the Gordian knot tying research and factory production.

I think I also read somewhere that they are fixing it. It will be a Production and a Research slider that are seperate. So you can run both at 100% capacity at the same time. Better make sure you can build a good economy when they implement that.

HI I HAVE JUST HAD THE GAME ONE DAY AND THINK ITS GREAT . BUT,NO MATTER WHAT COMBINATION OF CRAFT I FORM TO TRY AND MAKE A FLEET, I KEEP GETING A MESSAGE THAT I MAST HAVE 2 VALID SHIPS, COULD SOMEONE PLEASE ADVISE ME

It might help to think about the % of spending as % of work hour.

In each game turn, i.e. 1 week.
Let say all population on a planet can only work 1 thing at a time (clone control by a super computer? )
How many hours of a week do you want your population to run your shipyard, social production and lab?
for simplicity, let say spending are set at 100%, factory capacity at 70BC and lab at 7BC

If the shipyard is worked for 2 days, i.e setting the slider to 2/7 or 29% cost 29% of 70BC = 20BC
and Social production is worked for 3 days, i.e. setting the slider to 3/7or 43% cost 43% of 70BC = 30BC
and work the lab for the remaining 2 days of the week, i.e. setting the research slider to 2/7 or 29% cost 29% of 7BC = 2BC

So, total spending = 20+30+7+whatever maintain

That's easily proven to be incorrect. You can have spending at set to 100% and still have a positive net income, and be completely unable to "spend every bit of it", for no other reason than that the interface won't allow you to.

you guys are forgetting that GC requires you to spend money (from taxes) to turn those potential industrial points into acutal production (in other words, factories don't really produce anything, they just allow you to buy production points using your income). if you still have a net income after you turn the industrial spending to 100%, it simply means that you're already buying all the production your factories can generate. there is NOT waste going on!

you guys are forgetting that GC requires you to spend money (from taxes) to turn those potential industrial points into acutal production (in other words, factories don't really produce anything, they just allow you to buy production points using your income). if you still have a net income after you turn the industrial spending to 100%, it simply means that you're already buying all the production your factories can generate. there is NOT waste going on!

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?

And please, people, stop with the explanations via population. Population has nothing to do with manufacturing as far as I can tell.

I'm sorry, guys, but I have to throw my weight in with the confused party!

Years of Civ have obviously got me used to a totally different system, but even after viewing the tutorials, skim-reading the manual and skim-reading this thread, I am still lost... I even did a bit of experimenting, but couldn't figure out what was going on...

As an example, I have my brand new, shiny homeworld, with its 24mt production. I buy a factory straight away on a 100% bonus production tile, so that should give me an extra 2 x 16mt production = 40. Apparently I get a bonus of 10% to production too, for this being my homeworld. Total 44mt.

So I figure if I understand the game right, if I set social spending to 100%, I should get 48 social, right?

I go back into the planet, and it now says 48 social!

Okay... close, but not quite there... I figure what the hell, I'll run with it anyway, see if it works... I've also set my tax rating pretty low so that my approval rating is 100% on both my planets (I colonised the second planet in the first turn with 500,000 brave colonists, but I'm ignoring that for the most part).

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...

Nothing.

No new factories, no population increase.

Okay, as I've typed this, I've figured that maybe you have to finished construction of a building even in the turn you buy it - hence my 48 social was all wasted on that building I'd just bought. Not ideal, but fair enough. But where did my population boost go?

I tried this twice, same results both times... Please guys, any help would be appreciated on this. I'm not dumb, though I must admit I am a little set in my ways! Judging from the reviews, I would imagine the reviewers had no such problems, but I can't for the life of me fathom what's going on here Some people could be forgiven for thinking these are some pretty big bugs here, but I'm praying that's not the answer...

Won't let me edit

Also, another thing, just btw, I noticed that social (and possibly military; stuff that use the factories) production, which uses the factories, increases your potential industrial capacity. Meaning that, you you can throw more money at stuff. Researching, however, does not, it just uses your research facilities, which do not contribute to your industrial capacity. So, if you have a planet, with both factories, and research facilities, you can actually get more social/military production, and more research, by simply having the production slider at 100%, and in that planet, use "focus" on research. This way, the researching uses more money, because you have more industrial capacity, and more money to throw at whatever. It doesn't make sense, but it works.