Funding Research

Tech capital was changed in TA; it now functions as a planetary racial bonus.  What this means for you is that it adds on to your previous bonus, instead of multiplying it by 2.  For Tough, where there's no difficulty-based hidden bonus to research, this means, with the following:

25 (Altarians) +20 (customization) +20 (Technologists) +10 (Planetary Improvements) = +75%
+Tech Capital = +175, so 2.75x your base production.

In DA this would be +75=1.75, *2 = 3.5x your base production.
Essentially, you lose as much of your base production as your total racial bonus -is-, comparative to DA.
Granted, this fails to account for either the Research Coordination Center or the Omega Research Center, but their mechanics haven't changed since DA.  And, for the record, the Omega's description is misleading-it states it provides an empire-wide bonus, but only provides a planet-wide bonus, making it not actually worth the tech points to get.

You can alleviate this somewhat by playing on a higher difficulty, since difficulties higher than Tough get a hidden bonus (not shown anywhere but in your actual rp) to research, based on the research bonus you already have, which makes the breakpoint about 62% racial bonus on Suicidal (up until then, you're actually generating more research than DA).

But that's not the answer you're looking for.  Particularly as you would be spending even MORE money on research.

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Max pop is well and good, but it would help to know how many of them had actually maxed.  And how late in the game is this?  49% is a little low, I would tend to expect at least 59%, which is about 18% more taxes, for only an additional -22 morale.

Your planet count is a little low, but from personal experience I'd say you should have been okay, if perhaps a little tight-would you care to list your expenses?  Did you happen to do a large amount of lease buying?

Thanks for the information. This was late enough in the game that all of my planets had maxed at 14b (one intensive farm per planet). I would have upped the tax rate, but I wasn't certain I wanted to take the moral hit... I didn't have any morale starbases, and the Altarians don't have many morale boosting techs. I don't know what my expenses were at this point... I rarely lease build anything unless I absolutely MUST (for instance, if I see an enemy building Xanthium Hulls) so my expenses were nothing out of the ordinary. Only two advanced factories per planet unless it was one of 3 production planets. The rest was basically nothing but stockmarkets.

I used your information and played a game with the same settings (I'm still too green to take on higher than tough, I think), and I fared much better economically. I had 15 planets from the initial colonization phase, I had 2 fully upgraded morale starbases making ~60% tax rates a non-issue, and I had 2 planets with morale boosting tiles that supported 20B pop. I was never in negative spending territory, but I still could only afford one research planet: One neutrality learning center on a precursor mine, one center on a x2 research bonus square, two other neutrality centers with no bonus tiles, a tech capital, an omega research center, a research coordination center, and 3 fully upgraded economy starbases still only generated ~1,100RP. :/ I guess if I want more research, I'll need to play on bigger maps against more difficult opponents.

Once your planets are maxed, you can afford to run at 21% approval, except the week of the elections (twice yearly), for which you'll want about 60% to guarantee winning.

Even up until that point, if you're not Breeder, 100% helps, but it's not that large of a difference from 41% if you need the money.  You still get normal growth at 41% approval (planet based, minimum, so your empire may deviate slightly on average).

More planets will definitely help (large map is big enough for now, just turn everything to abundant and watch what happens), but I still think there's something we're missing.

Perhaps it's the production planets-what are you building, and how fast?

There's nothing wrong with attempting to do everything at once, but I typically will only do research or only do building at one time-except if I focus on research with 100% military, which is something else entirely.

You don't necessarily need to stack up research on one planet to the maximum-some players have done that for kicks, myself included, but it's really not economically viable.  And since research is done on an empire wide basis*, it really only matters how much you have collectively, not per planet.  You do want your tech capital to be as high as it can be, yes, but there's a point where it's just not worth the money anymore.

The same goes for econ - it is on an empire wide basis (as well as on the planetary scale). So devoting certain planets to research and other planets to economy makes sense. Econ planets need to be high PQ with the ability for a high population.

I agree that you should make your Tech Capital your primary research planet. Forget all about econ, max population or manufacturing on that planet. Best to wait a bit before setting down that Tech Capitol until you get a planet with some good research bonus tiles.

Research costs more than anything else. So you have to offset it with some really good econ planets.

I don't build anything on new colonies until pop reaches 5B. After that, I build two traditional factories regardless of what my focus for that planet will be. If I decide the planet is good for production, I build a starport. If it's an economic planet, I build some economic structures and a farm. My production planets stick with two factories and a starport at first while I churn out a few small-hulled constructors to make starbases and some defenders. Once I have some starbases and a strong enough military to deter would-be attackers, I research to advanced factories, I place my manufacturing capital, and I start building medium-hulled fighters. If I don't have any bonus tiles of any worth, I might build 3-4 advanced factories on the same planet, or I may develop nearby asteroids... Other than that, I don't develop much in the way of production. At this point, I'll typically research thru stockmarkets and intensive farming, and THEN I research through neutrality learning centers. 

     I'm thinking now that maybe I ran into some sort of bug in the first game I played because I haven't had nearly the same economic woes since then... 2 games now with the same settings and I don't even have to tech trade (okay, once early on) to stay alive.

So with this in mind, let's say I have a PQ 17 planet that can house a lot of people if I want it to. My max population on any econ world so far has been 20B because I don't like being below 70% morale (I'm a people pleaser IRL too). I guess I could try upping that to say, 30-40B people?

Once you go over 20B things go down hill really fast, until around 25B or so. It is not linear, it is progressive.

If you could manage to make 25B people happy, you could keep 100B happy.

Population has a double effect on morale-a malus and a multiplier.  20B is -66%, while 25B is -90% (for DA/TA; for DL 25B is only -80%).

This means if you have 5 VRCs on the planet in question, and a 120% racial morale bonus (for instance), you'll get 5x40=200x0.33=+66 morale out of the VRCs to balance out your -66 from pop at 20B, and 120x0.33=+40 from racial morale.  But at 25B, you'll only get 200x0.1=20 and 120x0.1=12, for a total of +32, combined with your -90 gives you a net -58, without even counting taxation.  -58 to +40 is almost a 100 point swing in approval, so, as you can see, it's not worth it to have pop that high.

120 is quite low, actually, but it's probably about right for your map, and secondly, in DA/TA, morale is "capped" at 100% from racial-but only AFTER depreciation by population.  What this means for you is the maximum racial morale that is useful in the two above scenarios is 295 and 1000 respectively (that's your hard cap, so to speak).

For the most part, the highest pop I've seen used is 22B, as that's an 8B TA colony + 2x7B adv farms.  This gives you a malus/multiplier of -75%, which means your racial morale stops having an effect at 400, and in our above example, you'd get +50 from VRCs, -75 from pop, and +30 from racial for a net of +5.  But that's atypical for population numbers this high; normally racial morale is maxed out or close to it-something on the order of 90% of its total value-and so all the buildings have to deal with is the tax rate.  (Morale starts at 100, so we get -75 from pop, but +90 or +100 from racial bonuses means a net gain for us.)  But this only really works because a VRC is still giving us +10 each (40*0.25)-it's much, much harder at 25B+.

Additionally, the bonus a planet gets for being greater than class 10 (class 11 and up) is a flat approval bonus; not a morale bonus.  It gets added in at the end (+10).  I could have sworn that the bonus for going Neutral ethically was also a flat approval bonus, but having checked all three of my versions the other day, I have found it is no longer, at least; it is now morale and subject to depreciation.

I'm going to try without reading the rest first of all 15 planets is not enough try a bigger map 48 or more is what you need i know its hard playing a lot of planets but welcome to rts try federalist instead of technologists if you don't have the finance its worse use the other for more constructive things like research later tell me your approval your approval needs to be between 70 and 75% lowering taxes for this approval is good it will benefit in the later game the torians are right in this trade with the yor they have the best research units with low diplomacy its cheaper anyways try researching discovery spheres build market places to fund research remember stock exanges you are only going to beat the torians in the later game can't beat the thalans on this try aggresively trading it will help you especially with the krynn,  arceans, and thalans again my opinion its great don't lower thalans torians or iconians difficulty bring the drengin arceans and dominion of korx to the iconian level add more races this is all i have on research the goal is 1000 bc per week you have to play a long time

All those numbers I agree the more population the better my highest game is 2 trillion overall planets eventually get in 20+ billion the highest i remember is 36 billion if your approval falls below 50% you get rebellions have fun high approval even if that means low taxes and production goes a long way I usually wait untill i'm being bullied to build a military there defensive unless there iconians anyways what your missing is entertainment is worth your while the best for this is the thalans or the krynn if you want to play the thalans tech tree you should customise to have a challenge so you can always the thalans as an opponent I thought higher levels cheat i also get those bonuses

One thing not mentioned in the posts above - best I could tell - was if you had any mining bases.  I have not played TA, but having a couple green economic bonus mining bases with lots of modules helps a lot in DA.

Mining bases help but you can't survive or count on them there there if you are lucky. keep morale high it affect population growth 70-75% is good even if you have to have low production taxes will be lower put some effort on entertainment and science your job will be easier with more planets dark is easier try playing a challenge like dread lords or twilight of the arnor te better the population the more everything even if i don't need to I trade it saves you time with tech research andin twilight of the arnor thalans have tech which will help your morale