Hello,
I have not been playing GalCiv2 for very long, and this is my first post. The bug in question has to do with the game's economy, which admittedly I do not understand all that well. It could be that it is meant to operate this way, so let me explain what I mean, and how I think the economy is working wrong.
As I understand it, the economy works like this. Each planet generates some bc's based on its population and tax rate (and some modifiers). This rate is called the income, and is displayed in the middle of the planet status screen above the tiles region. With the income, one can turn military shields into ships, social hammers into planet improvements, or research bottles into technologies all at a cost of one bc per icon. The number of shields, hammers, and bottles a colony is currently converting is displayed along the top of the planet status screenFurthermore, each colony has a maintenence cost, determined by certain buildings. The maintenance cost is displayed above the tile region on the planet status screen. The sum of the shields, the hammers, the bottles and the maintence is called the spending and is displayed between the income and the maintenance on the planet status screen. For instance, if you have income of 50, produce 10 shields, 10 hammers, 5 bottles, and have maintence of 5, then the net income from that planet is 50 - (10+10+5+5) = 20 bc. At the end of the turn, your treasury will increase by 20 bc, if this was the only planet in your empire.
On some of the planets, the spending is not exactly the sum of the shields, bottles, hammers and maintenance. It is sometimes off by one or two, which could indicate rounding (1.3 + 1.3 = 2.6, which would look like 1 + 1 = 3 if all were rounded). However on some planets, these are different by more than 2, which means something else is contributing to the costs, or I just don't understand the economy correctly. This is not the bug, however.
A notable exception to the above calculation is when the planet is not producing a ship. In this case, some parentheses appear around the number of shields (indicated at the upper left of the planet status screen), and these shields are not added to the spending for the planet. For a planet that is not building a ship, the spending is hammers plus bottles plus maintenance (no shields). This is exactly how it should work; if no ship is being built, then no money is being spent converting the resources necessary to build it.
The *bug* is this: when no social project is being built, the hammers are still added to the spending. In other words, bc's are being spent, even though nothing is being built. This might be intentional, as it has a huge effect on the economy; however, it is inconsistent with how the ship-building works. It amounts to an "idle factory tax" equal to its output. What should happen, I think, is that if there is no social proiect, then the parentheses go around the number of hammers, (just like the shields) and the bc's to make those hammers into projects are not spent (just like money not being spent to make shields into ships when there is no ship being built). These bc's would then go into the treasury.
If this is not a bug, then perhaps a "feature" could be added to "turn off" a factory, so that when there are no social projects to build, then the factories will suspend converting shields and I can keep my bc's. I understand that the social production can be completely killed using the economy panel from the main screen, but I would like the ability to selectively choose a planet to halt shield conversion, and let other planets build. Production can be "focused" on a planet-by planet basis, but not arbitrarily changed to eliminate social production.
Admittedly, my knowledge of the economy in this game is incomplete, so if someone would like to clarify it, I would like to hear that as well. Thank you for reading my long post, and perhaps you can help me get this sorted out.
-bw
