Upkeep as a smuggler

[Kadrush]

Hy, I just bought and download the Shadows expansion.

I played a few years as a smuggler and realized that the game wasnt charging me for ship maintenance. I got no steady costs at all.

Is that a bug or is it on purpose? Like, first few years free of maintenance?

(edit) just and update, it is a bug related. After a few restarts the game started to charge me with maint from the start. I have a savegame if needed.
(edit 2) thats odd, the only different thing that i did before was to give a lot of orders before unpausing the game.

[elliotg]

Pirates have much lower ship maintenance costs than standard planetary empires. Also, their home base spaceport has zero ship maintenance costs.

It may be that the maintenance costs of your ships are so low that the Empire Summary screen rounds them off as 0K, but you will still be paying *some* maintenance for them. You can see the actual maintenance cost in the Ships and Bases screen (Maintenance Cost column).

Thanks
Elliot

[elliotg]

Also, the Empire Summary screen for pirate economy displays things differently than for a normal empire: it shows current and previous years actual costs instead of current estimates of maintenance costs. So you will start with zero maintenance listed as expenses, but throughout the calendar year you will gradually start paying maintenance.

[Kadrush]

Elliot, in the save game i have i played for 3 years without spending a single penny on ship maintenance even after building a lot of military ships.

[elliotg]

Do you have a savegame where you saw this problem? Please upload it if you do.

Thanks
Elliot