Question about Production

Besides the spending slider you have three sliders that select the distribution of the spending allocated to military production (MP's), social production (SP's) and research (RP's). Any two of the three sliders can be set and the third will be determined by the requirement that all three must total 100%. Both social and military (ship) production comes from your factories plus the production component of your civilization capitol or initial colony. Research comes from research buildings and the research component of the capitol/colony building.

To really see what's going on with production you first need to actually be producing something at the time. Let's say your building a market center and you have your spending slider at 100% and you also have the social production slider set to 100% which means both research and military production is at 0%. In this case you should see the number of SP's equal to the total production capacity of the planet plus any social production bonuses that the planet or your civilization has. Simple right?

Now it gets more complex. Let's assume you have your spending slider at 100%, your military slider at 50%, your social slider at 50% and your building the same market center and not building any ships. Now you would get the 50% of your production capacity thats scheduled for social production and your social production bonuses plus you get some of the 50% of your production capacity that's scheduled for military production but gets shifted to social production because there's currently no ship being produced. I'm pretty sure you don't get all of your unused military production shifted to social. I'm also pretty sure that you don't get any of your military production bonuses or social production bonuses on unused military production thats shifted to social production in this way.

But wait, there's more. All of this assumes your not using focus. That's when you click on one of the military production, social production or research categories to focus that planets production differently than that set by the three distribution sliders. You can, for example, set focus to research and perform research on the planet with no research buildings at all or with 0% research spending set on the slider. Similarily, you can produce ships with no factories and only research facilities on the planet. Of course, with the civilization capitol or initial colony you always have some production and research on every planet, but I hope you see what I mean. I'm also pretty sure that when you use focus to move one type of production to another you don't get any of your bonuses for any production thus shifted.

If with all this you can actually use arithmetic to calculate what you expect to get in production under various circumstances then you're a better man than I am Gunga Din.

This is how production works to the best of my knowledge. If I have anything wrong (I easily could) or anyone can explain it in a simpler manner, I anxiously await your post.

Thanks for the reply, Mumblefratz... or should I say, MARTIN LUTHER?

Unfortunately, I don't think it resolves the mystery. I'm not using focus, and I have my military, social, and research bars all at 1/3 of overall spending (33%, 33%, and 34%). So if the total industrial capacity on my homeworld is 100 (which it is, by happy coincidence), and my spending is 100%, I should be making 33 military points, 33 social points, and 34 research points. Now, since my manufacturing capacity is only 60, obviously the game couldn't give me 33 military and 33 social, because that would end up being 6 more manufacturing points than the planet can generate, but it should at least be giving me 30 of each, and 34 of the 40 research points the planet could make. But instead of 30, 30, 34 (plus bonuses) I am getting only 14, 16, and 10.

Er, correction: at 100% spending, I'm getting 22, 26, and 15 production on my homeworld. But that's still well short of what I should be getting, especially in the research category (15 instead of 34+).

I'd have thought that:

Military=1.00*0.33*60=20
Social=1.00*0.33*60=20
Research=1.00*0.34*40=14

(ish)
It's a bit closer, but it still doesn't fit your values, so I can only guess that there are some other factors to take into consideration.

No118 is correct. Also don't forget to take into account any production and research bonus for that specific planet (i.e. does it have a moon? rings?) As for your spending discrepancies, any bonus production and research costs only .5bc per point. So for the planet in question, it should be costing between 62 and 63 bc per turn. I don't know how many other planets you have, but the domestic screen (F4) should show you a breakdown of your spending, as well as mention the cost of bonus production.

Also, I wasn't aware that any military production points were transfered to social when ship building was on hold, Unless I missed reading it in the newest features list.

Okay, okay... I've got it now. I think.

My calculations above are wrong because I'm assuming that 33% military spending means 33% of all production (mps and tps) when actually it means 33% of the mps alone. How many tech points my planets can generate is irrelevant to my military spending. So 33% of the 60 mps my homeworld can generate is 20, plus a 10% military bonus is 22, which is exactly the number I'm getting when my spending is at 100%. Likewise with my research, 34% of the 40 tps I can generate is 13.6 (13 rounded down--the game seems to round down). Then with the 20% research bonus added, it's 15.6, which is 15 rounded down.

So the answer to my original question is, I can't get all 100 production points that my homeworld is capable of because I would need to cut research spending down to 0% in order to get all 60 mps, and manufacturing (both social and military) down to 0% in order to get all 40 rps.

Okay, the world makes sense now.

Also, I wasn't aware that any military production points were transfered to social when ship building was on hold, Unless I missed reading it in the newest features list.

To my knowledge military production is NOT transfered to social if it is not used, instead you're not charged for it. Social production, OTOH is transfered to military production when it's not used at a 1:1 ratio (though I'm not sure if a social production bonus would transfer over as well). The transfer of social spending to military was changed in 1.1 IIRC, before that unused social production was simply wasted spending.

An example of how to more or less calculate MP ( SP and RP are similar )

1: Spending% is 90%
2: MP% is 40%
3: Civilization MP bonus is 80%
4: Planetary MP bonus is 10%
5: Economy Starbase bonus is 24%
6: Prodcution capacity is 76
7: no focus being used
8: a build project in the SP build que

Calculate base MP first -- call it MPbase
MPbase = 76 x .9 x .4 = 27 ( rounded down )

Calculate MP bonus next -- call it MPbonus
MPbonus = 27 x ( .8 + .1 + .24 ) = 30 ( rounded down )

Total MP will be 57

Civilization MP bonus can be found on the 'Stats and Graphs' page of the Civilization Manager screen. Just click the abilities tab in the middle of the screen to find your civilization bonus's.

Planetary MP bonus and Economy Starbase bonus can be found on the 'Details' page of the Colony Management screen ( Details tab is lower right of screen )

Also SPbase will be added to MP if there is not an SP project being built and the MP% is not 0%.