surprise! Morale improvements seem to rock

Nice work. Very informative. I would have thought that PQ bonuses would have been better. Guess I was wrong!

Of course the PQ bonuses have no maintainance. But still very insightful. Makes the decision much more difficult.

I don't think the issue is as clear cut as you make it to be, and it's a little premature to draw such conclusions with the limited data at hand. Although it is apparently possible to recover the maintenance costs of Entertainment Networks through taxation of a higher population, this has only been demonstrated under fixed tax rates (i.e. assumptions spoiled if Brad is a hardcore supply side economist). The extra production capacity is nice, but you still have to pay for that with cash. The benefits of morale improvements is clearly non-existant during the initial growth phase of planets that had 100% morale to begin with as well. Furthermore, if PQ has an effect on base tax income, it may still be a better idea to build Soil Enhancements and Habitat Improvements first while morale remains at 100% during early development.

Good analysis. However, I wonder if that would still hold true on say a quality 15 planet to start with. I suppose the outcome could be different if your population were up against the planet quality barrior so to speak. I usually build the in first simply because it's a cheaper build while output is low for a new colony.

My simple analysis from obvservation is that increased PQ does indeed produce more BC per population amount. Three billion people at PQ 20 are worth more BC than 3 billion people at PQ 16. And increased morale means more people. More people are good for taxes no matter what the PQ (unless one totally overpopulates a planet to cause morale problems, of course). The real conundrum is which PQ starts yielding enough BC per billion people to pay for those entertainment centers or media centers?

The short answer without extensive testing is that more PQ and more morale together show nice results, so build the sure fire entertainment centers and stadiums, just hold off a bit on the in between morale boosters like the VR and the media centers on anything but your best planet for now until long term testing is done. The long answer about whether more morale is cost effective under any PQ in every case is going to require some time intensive testing under controlled conditions.

I've just run a quick test of keeping morale at 100% for as long as possible, given a PQ20 starting planet (PQ19 only realy gives you 5% PQ for Soil Enhancement).
I found the following - I've no idea how the formatting will go, but it shows that an Entertainment Network gives better short-term benefits than Soil Improvements.
I stopped in Dec 2183 although I suppose a better test would keep going until the Morale was the same (54 = no more growth)
Note the order you buy them in makes a small difference if you buy both.
The Failure is the month that I first slipped below 100% morale, even at 0% tax - At that point I left taxes at 0% and just kept the months going to get the dates the same (which gives a little more money than not doing that)

Pop $ Morale Failure
Nothing 9071 1733 54 Jul 2180
Ent. Net. 13568 1522 62 May 2182
Soil. Enh. 12212 1293 54 Jul 2181
EN + SE 13614 1325 98 Dec 2183
SE + EN 13818 1331 96 Nov 2183

Make of it what you will.

~SDC~

Hmmm ... should have used .'s instead of spaces. I want a non-proportional font!!!

Of course you have to remember that on your non-starting planet you really don't have the luxury of modifying the tax-rate all over the place to keep morale high so the PQ enhancements are more useful for later than Ent if morale is going to be 100% anyway.
Another interesting test would be to set tax rate at 33% and do the same sort of testing - when does the colony max out population & how big is it?

~SDC~