Any economic blowback when running negative income and money?

[prastagus]

I'm running a complete automation of my empire over 2 days in 4x speed. Currently 300+ years passed since 2100, I'm number one in military strength but I have -100 million in money and -10 million in monthly income and yet it is getting bigger. I don't see any negative consequences of my automation's poor finance.

So does anyone knows the negative consequences of poor finance?

[Bingeling]

Nothing can be bought, that hurts in the long run. And it is not like it will recover from being that far down.

I have seen this happen when the empire has lost territory (and thus tax income) in wars. How are the civilians, btw, as badly broke as the state?

[prastagus]

actually civilian still have positive income around a few hundred thousand sometimes but defintiely cannot cover the -10 million income per month nor make a dent in -100 million total. In the automated game (I played up to a point before I started complete automation), I have the largest number of colony, the biggest military strength (500k+), and many allies. And I still have my Homeworld despite the Shakturi destroyed a few of my planets 150 years or so ago.

I do get that I cannot build more ships but I don't know how did the automation ever get to this point. I checked periodically and saw that even when both income and total money are red, my military strength rose from 300k to 500k in a period of 100 years. Strange

[Bingeling]

Maybe they wiped another empire and inherited a bunch of ships? Or had a pirate clan with quite a few ships surrender?

[prastagus]

that's quite possible. For a 40 colony empire (#1 most colonies in the game), it is still amusing to see it as the top militarily strongest empire with a really broken economy. Actually I don't see any empires actually got wiped out for the entirety of the automation. So most likely some pirates joined and the bunch of ships Ancient Guardian gave me to fight against the Shakturi, crazy ship building in the beginning.

Can you recruit troops with negative cash on hand?

[Bingeling]

You got an empire with a huge negative cash amount, so you are in a superb spot for testing that

I think the negative cashflow should prevent the AI from hiring.

[Werewolf13]

The 100 mil is your empire's debt. The 10 mil is the deficit.

And that is Peanuts. The US has a 17.5 trillion debt and runs a 492 billion annual budget deficit. [X(]

As long as a government can borrow it can operate. Its when the folks who loan money to a government stop doing that that trouble begins.

If DW won't allow you to buy anything with negative cash flow and massive debt the economic model needs to be adjusted or maybe not. Maybe people in the DW universe are smarter than us and just don't loan money to deadbeat governments. [:D]

[mensrea]

"As long as a government can create money from nothing to finance bond auctions it can operate. Its when the folks stop using that governments money as a reserve currency that the trouble begins."

Fixed [;)]

If only Distant Worlds had a central bank/quantitative easing option we could never go broke! Space-Bernanke FTW.

[CrashCourse]

Strange... i have 1 colony and im supporting fleets of about 80 ships (total) and about 30 more ships roaming around as escorts and so on.
im not having any income bonuses from my race, i guess the secret is to focus on economy BEFORE military.
i have mines EVERYWHERE withing my borders, and some distant mines for expansive resources,
i spent a lot of research in the economy branch, and infantry (reduction in maintenance costs).
I have 8 troop ships that i use to invade others, with my upgraded infantry i can do it easily,
basically i control the galaxy with 1 colony (my home world).
lately i also made a new colony, and conquered 1 small colony, also i took 1 home world from some other alien race,
and enslaved the 3rd and last colony of that race.
and with all that, my income is at about +80k (including protection money that i pay to many pirates).

my guess is that your problem is that you didnt researched any financial infrastructure,
and you built ships without looking at the maintenance costs.
but overall, you can hold 500k ships with 5 colonies.