Newbie Questions on Research/Income/Expansion

[FerretStyle]

ORIGINAL: Tree Dog

I said "homeworld", you know, the world that usually is at max population or close to it, and will be better developed than any other colonies for years.
This'll give you a huge income boost, and make people fly away to the colonies.
If anything, YOU are losing total empire population by having your homeworld at "max" and wasting away the constant growth I get from people leaving before it hits the limit.

But I said... in my post... "if the colony isn't at max". I thought I made that exception pretty clear.


Besides, I would usually keep my homeworld at +17 happiness or higher and never noticed it reach max pop in the first place. It would seem that expansion ensures immigration as long as taxes are lower at the target colony. I would assume that overtaxing would lower the amount of potential population you end up having to transfer, due to lowering the growth rate of the largest colony.

[desiriel]

ORIGINAL: FerretStyle

Your private sector looks fine... could have better cash flow but they have a ton of money on hand.

I'd get rid of one constructor ship, all military ships and possibly downgrade the large space port to a medium (my rule of thumb is medium for populations of 10000m+ and large for 15000m+). Incorporate some research labs into your space port for the time being and destroy your research stations (this usually isn't necessary for me but you have an emergency), only keep enough research labs to reach your cap. Then crank up taxes on your homeworld. That should get you some positive cash flow.

Trade with other empires if you need some cash to be able to afford to do this.

Get rid of troops if you don't need them, too.

Thank you Ferret for the inputs. I'll try that.

[Plant]

You make 15k a year? What did you set your tax rate at ... 15%?
Would explain why you can't afford any military ships.
Did design your military ships to be mostly weapons, or did you find them? They have very high firepower ratings!
I guess you haven't met any pirates, or they don't attack you, since you seem to be living fine with 4 military ships on 5 systems.

On the other hand, you shouldn't have any problems in the supply of new colonies since you have an extraordinary amount of freighters.
I think that you don't need the small starport and the medium starport yet, the large starport alone should be enough for all your construction needs, which appears to be none at all.
Also, forget about the private sector; being able to protect yourself is much more important than having frieghters. FerretStyle says that they could have better cashflow, but what has actually hppened is that they have already spent all their money on freighters and so have to pay maintainence for it; they are already fat off your low taxrate, at the expense of your state being able to pay for anything.