Noob Question

You start with 5000 bc in the bank, so losing money at the beginning of the game isn't a big problem. Just make sure you've built a profitable economy before the starting money is all gone.

Here's how the economy works. Your primary income early on is taxes. So grow your population, so that there are more taxpayers, and increase your tax rate to get more money. The catch is that a high tax rate reduces morale, which reduces your population growth. This is what I do: at the beginning of the game, set taxes low enough so that all your planets have 100% morale because this doubles your population growth. You'll be losing money, so when the starting 5000 bc is gone, increase taxes until morale on all your planets is just above 40%. You'll be making more money now, and your population will be growing at the normal rate as long as you keep morale above 40%. Also, build economic buildings on planets with high populations, and set up trade routes with distant planets for more income.

Planet maintenance, production, and research cost money, so you can save yourself from bankruptcy by reducing your spend rate, or by building fewer factories and labs.

Yeah, and if you're in the hole and going down, its not a stock market crash so dont raise your taxes to 100%. Just wait it out and as long as your approval is over 69% youll be fine.

How do I get them to make money in the beginning of the game?

Build more economic buildings. Also it's a good idea to research up to Trade so you can build your Economic capital. I often build my econ cap on my home planet, though if your first colony is a high PQ planet it's probably a better choice.

The economics of this game are a bit tough to figure out at first but keep at it. You may need to slow down your rate of colonizing new planets. When you colonize a new planet you want it to become profitable as soon as possible. As nullspace said, getting your pop to grow fast by keeping the approval on your colonies at 100% is a big help. I usually buy a factory on the new colony and use it to build 4 market centers or adv. market centers. By the time these are done the colony is self sufficient.

Hi!

All of my colonies keep going bankrupt! How do I get them to make money in the beginning of the game?

Colonize with maximum number of population that goes into one colonizer (500M). Keep taxes at the level that will allow you to have most colonies at 100% approval. The reason behind that is double pop growth --> MUCH more pop quickly --> stronger tax base earlier. After you've spent most of your starting 5000BC, raise taxes to get positive income and still remain above 50% approval on most planets.

To further save money don't buy anything, but the first one or two factories on your homeworld. Let planets build stuff by themself. HTH.

BR, Iztok

The basic economic problem with new colonies occurs because the initial colony building has a production capacity of 12 and a research capacity of 10 and a high maintenance cost ( 12bc per turn I think -- easy for you to check ).
This means with 100% spending and a few civ bonus's the colony probably is generating 24-28bc per turn costs to start with.
With a 49% tax rate it takes 2.5B to 3B population to produce 24-28bc income.

So personally I don't think colonies can really be made both productive and profitable in the early game. I consider it the beginning of the mid game when my colonies are becoming profitable.

Depending on the size of the map it can be very profitable to build or buy survey ships to get more anomalies faster. I like 3 extra survey ships with 3 impulse drives and 3 basic life supports on them. I get them as fast as I can -- usually about 7 turns into the game -- larger maps of course.

I am careful not to create too much production capacity during the colony rush.
Building factories on all new colonies right off will probably create too much capacity.
I do like to take advantage of production bonus tiles on a few planets.
I also like to build a starport on every planet -- I usually use focus on SP to build it.

Since taxes are tied to population the population growth bonus's are nice.

It is possible to get 100 colonies during the colony rush and never move spending off 100%( even at suicidal difficulty ).

This has been discussed in other posts in much more depth.

Thanks a lot for all the help. I will try to use these strategies in my game, but I may just start a new one.

Finding anomalies with survey ships--build them yourself for more range.
I would get about 10% of anomalies give you money. 500, 750, 1000, and
the occasional 2500.

On large, I usually build 3 or so extra ships besides the flagship which
has survey capability.

I use a cargo hull outfitted with a couple of engines and Life Spt and as many sensors as it will hold - using the survey module (which counts as 2 sensors). That way it does double duty as a anomaly getter and an explorer, and later, as a picket ship.

I will build tiny survey ships early, then after the anomoly rush ...I upgrade them to fighters.