Negative cash balance

[nukkxx5058]

What does a negative cash balance mean ? In reality cash cannot be negative. if this is the case it implicitly means that someone lent me money but then I have questions:

Who did ?
Till when ?
What interest rate or conditions ?

This needs to be clarified ...

[Neotheone]

Probably just like in real life you are the government so you are stealing, ooops I mean borrowing from the private sector until you get back in the black. I notice your private sector has plenty of cash on hand and low cash flow so they have money for you to steal, ooops did it again, I mean borrow. Can't wait to see your 15 trillion dollar deficit someday.

[nukkxx5058]

hehehehe sound familiar right ? Other possibility is Bernanke's method : printing money endlessly through QE's.

BTW I really think that this should be clarified, at least in the game. :-)

[jomni]

But is there a cost to this borrowing like in EU?

[Gelatinous Cube]

Not really. You can't build anything if you don't have the money, and in this game that is a big enough penalty.

[nukkxx5058]

I confirm that once the deficit starts to spiral down it is very hard to recover ... I changed my government from republic to feodalism to reduce maintenance costs and I increased tax rate but my cash is still plunging. Empire is collapsing slowly....

[Neotheone]

Just get rid of some high maint facilities and ships like that capital ship and cut your exploration and construction ships in half. I never make any escorts now so you could eliminate those too. Also if this is your early game you don't need those defense bases unless you are just a warmonger. I'm new but I rarely worry about defense or much of offense in the early game. Get colony ships ready so as soon as your explorers find something they are ready to go and colonize. I know it's easy to overspend though because I did it my first few games. Now I usually try to keep half of what I make as reserves or at least keep a 5k sock full of money.

[Erik Rutins]

It's not hard to recover from a deficit, it just takes some practice. Reducing your maintenance costs is the best place to start. Trying to get more free trade agreements also helps, as deficits can be caused by resource shortages as well.

As far as government types go, Republic is generally a good one for overall income and switching governments is always somewhat disruptive, which may make things worse in the short term.

Regards,

- Erik

[nukkxx5058]

Thanks for the advices ! Will try. In fact this is my first game and as I was a bit lost I wasn't cautious at all with spendings I'm now having fun trying to fix the issue and avoiding a disaster  

[nukkxx5058]

OK reducing costs ... So what's is the difference between "retire" and "scrap" ?

[sveint]

Retire regains some materials I think.

Advice: far far too many explorers and constructors. Too many defense/other bases too for your current income. You could possibly even disband some troops.

[nukkxx5058]

Thanks for advices ! I'm back on trend and back in the green territory ! I use to be "Greece" but from now will have a strict "german-like" budgetary policy: austerity dudes !

[Gray Death]

Ha, Germany has masses of debt[:D]

[nukkxx5058]

Yes but you have Super-Angela as a ruler ! Beware aliens ! ))

[Neotheone]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

It's not hard to recover from a deficit, it just takes some practice. Reducing your maintenance costs is the best place to start. Trying to get more free trade agreements also helps, as deficits can be caused by resource shortages as well.

As far as government types go, Republic is generally a good one for overall income and switching governments is always somewhat disruptive, which may make things worse in the short term.

Regards,

- Erik

Lol Erik you would say go Republic when I am playing Democrat. I don't want to go political but I just thought that funny. I do real well economically playing Democrat and the poor are more satisfied then the rich. hehe I just like the stats of Democrat better than Republican, more bonuses than normals.

[Neotheone]

ORIGINAL: nukkxx

Thanks for advices ! I'm back on trend and back in the green territory ! I use to be "Greece" but from now will have a strict "german-like" budgetary policy: austerity dudes !

Good job nukkxx. You can play with your taxes individually on each colony and squeeze a little more out of them and drop your reputation to satisfactory if you wanted. Being respectable is all nice n all but it doesn't put food on your table or ships in space.

[Okim]

Leader Juran Trebulo: colony income -20%

Thats the guy to blame

Also you have too many troops for 9 colonies. I usually have around 10 troops on homeworld with some fast FTL troop ships parked over it and some minimal troops on border colonies. Remember - your colony population gives a significant bonus to your troop strength when invaded and you can always send in reinforcements from another colonies to help fend off invaders.

[nukkxx5058]

ORIGINAL: Okim

Leader Juran Trebulo: colony income -20%

Thats the guy to blame

Good point ! thx. Will fire this moron asap !

[Okim]

Well, while he is preventing you from getting all the cash from your colonies - he does some good things too (like happiness boost).You can fire him, but you have no governors to replace him with and you`ll never know what sado-randomiser will make with the new leader. This new one can even be Kiadian )))

[Okim]

Actually got a question:

Does you leaders bonuses cover all of your colonies? He is a leader of the whole empire after all, not just a homeworld