Economy again...

The money is taken, and split, then used.

You don't run factories at 100% because then you would have absolutely no research.

you can let your factory work at 100%, set the slider at 100%.

if you put everything at 33% than your factory's will only work at 33% there capacity, same goes with research and with buildings up your planets.
its not possible in this game (kinda strange but good for strat) to have all your factory's and researchlabs work at 100% at the same time even though your economy might be big enough (i think they done this to prevent human players to get ahead to much on the IA cause we tend to build a big economy, atleast i do )

Hi!

heres how i understand it (explained via examples):

the tax slider controls your income only - so say you have 100 income from tax. this income is entirely independent from how much you spend, which is controlled by the spending slider. The maximum you can potentially spend is defined by the number of factories and research buildings on your planets (and civ abilities).

imagine just one planet, factories + initial colony total 50 manufacturing points say. if you had spending on 50%, sliders at 100% military and 0% for the others, you would spend 25bc a turn, and it would all go to building a ship on that planet.

change the spending to 100%, you spend 50bc a turn - regardless of the tax rate.

if you then built another factory to take the total to 60 mp on that world, you would then be spending 60bc per turn building ships - which answers the second question - you would build the extra factory to give you the potential to spend more per turn. of course if your taxes (+trade etc) dont provide enough to support this extra spending, it is pointless to build the extra factory. so its all about a balance.

change sliders to 50% social, 50% military, and you will still spend 50bc - 25bc on ships, 25 bc on improvements this time though.

same applies to research -say you have research buildings giving 20tp

100% on research, and you only spend 20bc a turn. 50% mil, 50% research, and you spend 10 on research, 25 on ships so 35bc total.

once you add in civ abilities, it gets more complicated - basically same as above but add the relevant percentage to the number of hammers/beakers you produce, and only charge for half the extra.

to sum up: factorys and labs define potential social, mil and research production, soc/mil/res sliders how much of each production potential can be used, and spending slider how much of your potential spending you actually spend.

sorry if this makes no sense - at if any of its wrong i'm sure you other guys will correct me

Smitty,

Think of it this way.. Military is spent only on constructing SHIPS, Social is spent on constructing BUILDINGS. Labs only do RESEARCH. Basically, all the Individual sliders do is proportion the amount of (milit/social) money that generates MPs (manufacturing points) that are 'spent' each turn. Research is spent in labs to generate RPs (research points).

So lets suppose you have enough factories to produce 50 MP and enough labs to produce 30 RPs. Further, we'll say your spend rate is set to 100%, and is divided 20% Military/ 30% Social/ 50% Research. This would give 20 MPs for constructing a ship, 30 MPs for constructing Tile Improvements, and 15 RPs from your labs.

Where it gets complicated is when you start calculating BONUSES. Bonuses are charged at 50% (half cost). So lets say you build a factory on a 100% manufacturing tile. Your factory (w/o bonuses) produces 7 MP (at 7 BC). On this tile though, it will produce 14 MP (at 11 BC). It's further complicated by racial and govermental bonuses (also at 50%).The actual formula is in the wikipedia.

All the SPEND RATE does is determine the overall Manufactering and Reseach Rate that your factories/labs will produce. Because it cost BCs for each MP and RP, the spend rate allows you to 'under-run' your factories and labs to save some BCs. Say your TOTAL factory capacity is 200 MP, at a cost of 150 BCs. And your Labs provide 100 RP at 75 BCs. Your spending 225 BCs a turn for that. If you cut the spend rate to 50 %, you will genarate 100 MP and 50 RP for 113 BCs. In addition, Manufacturing cost have a limit, based on the total number of factories in your empire. Research is similary restricted by the total number of labs. This is INDEPENDENT of your taxes, colony, military maintenance costs.

So be careful not to build too many factories or labs, as this can and will kill your economy. Instead, try to build as many trade/banks that you can fit, along with morale centers and the occasional farm. Watch your tax rate, and plan big purchases accordingly.

Aack. Maybe I'm better off being blissfully unaware. So... my factories give me the ability to spend more money on production. Check. I don't know the number exactly, but say for example that I build one factory that allows me to spend 10 bc on it. I set my slider to 33/33/33% Now, research is unrelated to factories, correct? So, am I funding the all factories at 66% then having that split amongst military and social, or am I funding 66% of the factories at 100%?

That didn't sound right... Forget the sliders for now. I guess what it boils down to is do I fund twice amount of factories at half the level or just build half the amount of factories at fund them at 100% (regardless of actual funding)? The difference being why do I have to waste tile space if I'm not already utilizing the existing factories at 100% regardless of the amount of funding?

I should just forget it right?

I play on large galaxies on painful and there is generally a period in the early game, after the colony rush, where I have to set my spending slider to less than 100% for a while - sometimes as low as 50%. Generally this is because I have at least one factory on too many planets with no financial infrastructure to support the spending. However, you need a factory on a planet to do the social building so this result seems inevitable. On a good game it might only take me a couple months to recover and move my spending slider up near 100%. On a game that I have managed to over expand or maybe carelessly built a factory on a 300% tile, it can take me up to 6 months or longer to recover. I would assume that everyone has the same issue, but if you don't I would love to know how you avoid this problem. Once I get trade started I never have money worries again, but until then it can be a very tight thing. Also, until fairly late in the game I don't actually keep my spending slider at 100%. It is almost always more cost efficient to be at 99%.

Smitty,

The total money for military and social TOGETHER is 'spent' in the factories, which are 'converted' to MPs, which are then divided into the ratios you set via the sliders.

One other thing to remember is that if social is not being used (nothing being built on your planet), it will be "refunded" (at a small loss) to the military. If military is not being used either, You DO NOT get charged for that planet (besides the normal maintenance fee's, of course). So, you only get charged if you are building (or upgrading) something on that world.

Rripper, thanks.