Producing nothing

from Stardock Forums
Just saw a post on galciv newsgroup about money still being spent on planets even if they are not producing anything. The author was asking if it is a bug. All replies to this post are wrong, so I decided to post this, in case it may help some players figure out the mechanics of the game.

Everything you build requires maintenance or it will eventually fall apart. If you are producing (building a project) your expenses on a planet are Production + Maintenance. If you are not producing anything on this planet you still have to maintain facilities you have already built on it. MANY of the facilities are NOT production facilities, such as an Entertainment Net, Embassy or Stadium, but you need to spend money to ensure their operation. So, your planet will spend money no matter what.

To reduce planetary spending you can go to the DETAILS window and look at the list of completed projects. Clicking on a project asks you if you want to cancel that project. I never had the need to try it, but I suppose it would destroy that project on this planet. I think that the option is there in case you want to move your manufacturing capital or another facility to a different planet, for example.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I think what people were complaining about was money allocated by the Military/Social/Research spending sliders not being spent. For example, if you set military spending to 10%, all the planets with ships to build will use 10% of production to build them, but planets without any ships to build will spend 10% of their production making nothing.

That's been my biggest problem with the game for a while now. :notsure:
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Look at it this way.. the workers still have to be paid :) Darn Unions LOL

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Nah... really.. it gets spent on the military structure.. eg: starbases (so that they can produce from the mines etc..) If you change your milatery spending and you have starbases then youll notice that your income changes.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
the cost for paying workers and maintaining the facility are the monthly maintainence cost for each one.

I think part of this gripw could be fixed if you got BC for scrapping a building.

And I don't buy the argument that the empire money spent is just mishandeled by the private companies (the manu centers,ect), if so then the empire should not have any maint costs.

SD reads the board. They see that this thing is a big complaint with the players. I know it currently is by design, but HEY, your customers are saying that part is "undesirable". (no offence intended)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
When I capture or flip a star system, it often has stuff on it that I don't really want - planetary defense, Multimedia center etc....stuff that costs a lot for little benefit. I immediatley scrap them.
Otherwise your empires economy starts to suffer as you capture lots of planets and you need to start pushing your spending slider down :(

Also, If there are a few of these unwanted improvements on a planet you can gain well over 10 GC per planet. Conclusion: It is well worthwhile to scrap stuff you dont need.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
One easy fix for this would be to separate the military production modules from the social production modules in starbases (right now they are combined). This way you could build up the military production for stars that you intend to build ships. If you have 5 planets designated for this purpose, and 25 that are set to build nothing in their military queue, the 5 military production planets will get a bigger share of the military resources being spent and less money would be wasted on the build nothing planets.

Individual sliders for each planet would be preferable, but this solution could work without changing too much.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I would really hate having individual sliders for each planet. In order to optimise my strategy, I would have to micromanage every planet individually, slowing the game down to a crawl.


~SDC~
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
My preferred game would have each governor have its own set of sliders.

The difficult thing is programming the AI to use it properly. If it's a choice between the current system, or a more flexible system combined with an incompetent AI, then I'd say stick with the current system.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I say make them all work second shift, reduce their medical coverage and pay only 1x wage for overtime. We will break the back of this union. If they go on strike we just throw in the Altarian scabs. ;)