I'd like more ingame info about the following . . .

Another thing - we have social, research, on each planet page - can we add influence too? That would also be nice to add to the racial screens - we can see all crucial data there but influence.

Grifman

'I'd like more information, specifically understanding the components of economy, production, research and morale . . .'

There's too much detail involved in production/research to specify anything more that a general 'this is good, this is bad' in anything short of a small book.

The general gist, from outward appearances: A planet of a certain class produces a base amount of production, regardless of population (I determined this part by way of colonies of pop. 1 on several different class planets a couple of betas ago, so there are probably some differences from what I notices, but the geenral case should still be similar). That production is split between military and social manufacturing and research in the ratios set on the Domestic Policy screen.

The production in each of those categories is then multiplied by ratios determined by a comparison of some sort between the planet's current and max population (this seemed to be the simplist explanation of the fact that high class planets take higer populations to produce the same amount of production. They get higher total production eventually because they generally have higher morale, and have a higher base production before population is factored in).

The new totals in the three categories are then multiplied by ratios determined by local morale, by means yet unknown (and likely as not, noone outside of Stardock will know them for a while). Then racial traits, your total spending ratio (which is an exact percentage of the total capacity computed at this point), and the buildings at that system are multiplied in to give the total production displayed on the planet screen.

High class planets seem to get some of their base production at no cost (and thus would presumably still produce a little bit even when spending is at 0%), but I haven't looked closely enough to determine how much, beyond the fact that it never seems to be more than two or three points of production in each of the categories, for a total of at a maximum of about 8-10 points, even for class 44+ planets. The one time I had a planet up to class 190 back when I was poking at the IMP files and when morale resources also improved planet quality, I still only got about 25 points of production at no cost.


As for morale, I'm not sure exactly how that's computed, except for the observation that morale is computed with no 1-100% limit, improvements and racial morale bonuses seem to add directly to the final results, then numbers below 15 or above 100% are set to those values.


Economy has no direct connection to production or research beyond the fact that your income is in the basis of taxes, and if more things are being produced, that means there's more to tax. If your production is all in one sector or another, you'll earn less taxes because the people that would normally be employed in the other areas aren't working anymore.

The main influences in a planet's economy are population and morale. Trade routes operate entirely off this basis and the length of the route, and economy improvements (and the Economics racial stat) influence that number, while a planet's taxes are further influenced somewhat by the production sliders (but generally not by much unless the sliders are significantly out of balance. I generally don't notice any difference before a single production area is set to 65% or higher.)

'Another thing - we have social, research, on each planet page - can we add influence too? That would also be nice to add to the racial screens - we can see all crucial data there but influence.'

Influence for an individual planet doesn't appear anywhere, but the system window on the side of the screen when a planet or star is selected shows what seems to be the total of all the planets in that system's influence ratings, before starbase adjustmenets.

My observations generally parallel Arturus's with the following exceptions:

Morale appears to also be related to planet class. The same population on a class 16 planet has a higher morale than on a class 15 planet.

A planet's morale decreases as its population increases.

A planet's population will grow until its morale decreases below 51%.

A planet with a morale below 40% will loose population until its morale reaches 40% or more (I guess the way we are supposed to look at this is that there is some form of attrition taking place, whether the birth rate has decreased below the death rate, violent crime has increased, or people are migrating off world.)

I have seen planets with morale as low as 4%, so I assume a morale of 1% is possible. I have also seen planets of other races that had a morale of 1% when their treasury had been below the -500bc point for several turns, but I have not seen this yet on Beta 4.

In Beta 4 I have yet to see any resourses allocated to any of my planets when I have the spending rate set to 0%. I suspect that there are other external reasons why one might see some resources allocated with spending at 0%, or possibly a correction was made to the code in Beta 4.

Influence seems to be more of a sector property, perhaps with the idea of turism in mind. A planet or solar system and its social constructions would be part of that influence, but perhaps spacial attractions play a part (speculation on my part). Certainly the upgrades to a star base add to the influence in a sector. Also, there is a bleed-over affect between sectors, there are galactic wide wonders, influence resources, and the special affects of purple and green stars.

One last observation: The tables and/or algorithms used for base morale, base production and research capability, base population growth, and base economy have changed many times during the alpha and beta, and seems to be easy for the SD people to change. I believe we will see changes of base amounts and rates to it again by release date as part of the tuning process.

'My observations generally parallel Arturus's with the following exceptions:'

These aren't so much exceptions as they are elaborations, but they are things I should have mentioned.

In the case of the min morale for pop. growth, I hadn't noticed that it had been pushed up to 51%.

'I have seen planets with morale as low as 4%, so I assume a morale of 1% is possible.'

I've had planets with a morale of 1%, and I've seen planets with a morale of 0%, but never more than two turns after colonization, and not in beta 4. The '15' in my post was a typo, and should have read 1%. <glares at shift key>