Trade and income explained?

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to understand Trade, Resorts and their associated incomes, and here are my conclusions. Please fix if wrong.

First, I noticed two potential bugs:
Being studied - Resort stations won't create bonus income with your own population : save
- Trade value on the diplomatic screen will sometime never update : save


Then :

- All values, on all screens, are annual. Basically, if nothing changed for one full year, that would be the impact on your budget. Except for Pirates protection deals which are monthly!

- Cashflow (top-right) is an instant view on ("Annual Income" - "Annual Expenses")

- Bonus income (top-right) is ("Space Port Income" + "Foreign Trade Bonuses" + "Resort Income"). It is reset every Jan.01

- Space Port Income is the "Commerce Center" bonus. Everytime a resource is reserved in one of your station with a Commerce Center, you get this bonus (based on the price of the reserved items). If the freighter is destroyed before taking the resource, you still keep the money.

- Space Port Income is also the money paid by the private sector to build ships in your Construction Yards. Since both values are summed (Commerce and Yards), it's not possible to tell the amount you get from each.

- Foreign Trade Bonuses is the "Free Trade Agreement" and "Mutal Protection Pact" bonuses. Everytime you or your partner buy a resource from a foreign station, you will get 20 or 30% (when maxed out) of the value of the bought items.

- The Trade value displayed on the Diplomacy Screen is last year's full monetary value of these exchanges (which you get 20 or 30% of). Note: it's buggy in current's version.

- You don't own the resources, the private sector does. You just tax resources movements and buy the resources when you build a ship or refuel it.

- Every-civilization trades with all the other civilizations by default, unless at War or Trade sanctions are imposed. The "Free Trade Agreement" is just a monetary bonus for both partners in Trade but won't change the amount of trade done. The AI won't favor your partners.

Being studied - Resort bases ...

There. I hope this helps


PS: Trading Super Luxury Resources with a Trade partner is $.$

[pycco]

the income shown is yearly but it reports changes every 27 days i believe.

resort stations because of the way income is reported wont show up regularly unless you have a huge resort chain.
bonus income i believe is mainly from civilian sector buying stuff from the state sector.(might be wrong)

[OzoneGrif_slith]

the income shown is yearly but it reports changes every 27 days i believe.

I tried to understand how and when it is updated, and came to the conclusion it's totally random.

resort stations because of the way income is reported wont show up regularly unless you have a huge resort chain.

In the save I provided, that station was running for years and years. The resort income was still zero. Something's wrong captain.

bonus income i believe is mainly from civilian sector buying stuff from the state sector.

Oh right, I forgot to do this test. I'll try that and come back with a clear answer

[Raap]

A resort station needs passengers to get income, which means passenger transport ships. Don't ask me about the specifics, I rarely seem to get them to make much myself so I've pretty much given up on them. They seem to be very profitable when they do work, but consistency seems to be a problem.

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

the income shown is yearly but it reports changes every 27 days i believe.

I tried to understand how and when it is updated, and came to the conclusion it's totally random.

resort stations because of the way income is reported wont show up regularly unless you have a huge resort chain.

In the save I provided, that station was running for years and years. The resort income was still zero. Something's wrong captain.

bonus income i believe is mainly from civilian sector buying stuff from the state sector.

Oh right, I forgot to do this test. I'll try that and come back with a clear answer

no, im 100% sure it not random the days in the month is higher than 27.

resorts have to have passengers to make $$, which means you have to have friends that know where it is and can reach it. takes some practice to get this part right. try giving all friendly race you territory map.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

A resort station needs passengers to get income

The station in my save has 500k passengers. I'll keep it running for a while to see if the bonus appears.

bonus income i believe is mainly from civilian sector buying stuff from the state sector.

Okay, Civilian ships built at a Space Port generates a "Space Port Income" and thus goes to the "Bonus Income" as well.

[pycco]

ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

A resort station needs passengers to get income

The station in my save has 500k passengers. I'll keep it running for a while to see if the bonus appears.

bonus income i believe is mainly from civilian sector buying stuff from the state sector.

Okay, Civilian ships built at a Space Port generates a "Space Port Income" and thus goes to the "Bonus Income" as well.

like i said the reporting of resort income is finicky at best.

space port income is linked to selling of resources, tourists

[OzoneGrif_slith]

5560k and still zero.

I'm testing the resort base with my own population, next test : try it with foreign population.

[Raap]

Would be really interesting if you could find the answer to the resort base stuff. Making those profitable might prove a nice boost to my economy.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

(I'm not sure if the AI favors partners).

And I just confirmed that. The AI doesn't favor a trade partner, which is sad in a way.


Edit: what follows is wrong

Okay, Resort bases works ONLY with foreigners. Your own population can and will go there, but it won't generate money (bug?).
A basic Recreation Center will give you 2K per year for 100K tourists present onboard.
Which means a Resort base is useless deep inside your borders. You have to put it somewhere close to other civilizations.

[Raap]

Actually, I just did a test myself. With 20K passengers, my resort income immediately jumped to 5K. Then another 20K arrived and it jumped to 8K. A short time later, without any new guests, it jumped to 10K. The passengers appeared to immediately reflect in the resort income, no noticeable delay. These were all my own passengers from my own colonies and passenger ships.

[pycco]

cool beans thx for info

[Raap]

Have you ever seen passengers actually leave the resort?

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Right, I just did a small modification to my test, adding a colony in the Resort base system... and the money instantly dropped to zero.

I have the feeling it's linked to the distance with your colonies maybe.

Edit: Or not, it rose again. Damnit!

Have you ever seen passengers actually leave the resort?

No, never. I continue my tests and randomness is strong with this one. I'm confused about Resort.

[Raap]

Yeah, I've no idea about this. Looks like it's a one-way trip, ever-long vacation. I also can't tell if money keeps ticking in from existing 'customers' or if it's just the new guys that bring in the cash. I suspect the latter.

Looks like my two resort bases at ~30% scenery locations and which have maintenance costs of ~700 are netting me a decent 42K a year.

[OzoneGrif_slith]

I also can't tell if money keeps ticking in from existing 'customers' or if it's just the new guys that bring in the cash. I suspect the latter.

Not what I see. I've had years without incoming tourists, and still got the money. But it's awfully random.


I'm sorry I just don't understand. It just doesn't make sense.

If a developer could help clarify the Resorts, it would make them much more interesting in-game.

Looks like my two resort bases at ~30% scenery locations and which have maintenance costs of ~700 are netting me a decent 42K a year.

And mine at 100% scenery still gives zero.

[pycco]

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some other topics about resorts and how they work nothing solid though, this has been a question for some times it appears.

can any one help with this?

[Darkspire]

This has always been shrouded in mystery, have not seen this question pop up for many moons though.

First off, I never use them, I could never get in the mindset of having tourists floating about in my empire getting shot at and the fact that it was at best, an unreliable source of income.

They do work, but as you have found, very temperamental (read drive me mental). IIRC though the tourist spot has to be within range of a good sized colony, black holes I think were the best to work with. Make sure that the resort base has more than one docking bay, a few recreation centers and much shielding and armor, pirates like to nuke these more than mining bases.

If I can find anything else that may be useful I will post it here.

Darkspire

[pycco]

thank you so much,

[Darkspire]

I am sure there was a bit more info out there on these but these two threads have a fair amount of info in them.

resort base empty

Resort Bases - How Far Is Too Far?

Darkspire