"Not Enough Money" for building - NOT!

[RemoteLeg]

I've found something that has me puzzled.
I can't build any mining bases because the game says I don't have enough money.

I checked very carefully and the base costs just over 3,000 credits and I have over 300,000 credits on hand.
I checked my "Potential Mining Locations" panel and no mining bases are queued for construction. My constructors are building mining bases right now, but I guess they'll sit idle once they're finished.

Does anybody know what's going on?
I've attached a screenshot of the "Not Enough Money" message - it's not particularly exciting.

[btd64]

Is your cash red or green?....GP

[Bingeling]

The civilians probably lack money, they are the ones paying.

[RemoteLeg]

My money is white, my cash-flow is red (minus 20,000), and my bonus income is white.

Update:
- I can build a mining station by going into the Expansion Planner and queuing one from there.
- I can select a constructor then right-click on a planet to build a mining station there.

It seems the only place it doesn't work is selecting the planet then clicking the "Queue constructor to build a mining base here" button.

I have tried saving then restarting the game.

[Bingeling]

The civilian cash on hand is not shown in that image, though

Economy view, top right, is their cash low?

It should rarely be a problem, but if you tax too hard and do weird stuff, you may run them into the negatives and this happens.

[RemoteLeg]

You're right, Bingeling!
My civilians are broke.


I thought that I paid for the mining bases then civilians purchased them from me after they were built. I guess they won't let me build any unless the civilians are solvent.

Still, it's also good to know I can get around this by queuing new bases from the Expansion Planner or selecting a constructor and ordering it to build a mining station. I guess this forces the civilians further into debt.

[Bingeling]

What kind of difficulty are you playing? Their maintenance hurts badly.

Do you have lots of expensive, custom mines around?

[RemoteLeg]

I'm only playing this game on normal difficulty.
I was having some resource shortages so I spammed mines for a little while - that probably did it.

I don't often pay much attention to my civilians other than keeping them happy in my colonies. I don't have any control over civilian ships and only moderate control over the civilian economy so I tend to ignore them.
I guess I was wrong. [:(]

Thanks for sorting this out.

Using the Expansion Planner or directly telling a constructor to build mining bases when my civilians are bankrupt looks like a loophole/bug.

[Bingeling]

Yes, indeed. That sounds like a bug.

I have never paid much attention to them myself, but things that could help in making them broke:

- Custom designs that make mines more expensive.
- The same for civilian ships.
- Losing civilian ships and bases at a high rate, making the civilians pay for new ones.
- Taxing at the brink of revolt to get max from them.
- Having a lot of constructors spending their time building mines non-stop.

The shortage may hurt them as well, but the fuel bill was not that high. It may make their purchases more expensive too, though.

[Aeson]

Smuggling bonuses can also make the private sector go broke. It's the private sector which foots the bill for resources delivered via smuggling mission, and that includes the bonus paid on top of the normal cost of the resources.

I thought that I paid for the mining bases then civilians purchased them from me after they were built.

Nope. If you take the time and watch your cash on hand, you'll notice that the state treasury is never billed for mining station construction at any time and that the amount in the treasury jumps up and the private sector's cash on hand drops by the purchase cost of the mining station at the time that the construction ship begins work on the mining station (be aware that other expenses and sources of income can make watching for when either treasury is billed or credited for the cost of the mining station difficult). The only expenses associated with mining station construction, as far as the state is concerned, are the maintenance and fuel costs of the construction ship.

[RemoteLeg]

Boy this game is deep! Layers within layers ...
That's one of the things I love about it. No matter how long I play I can still discover something new.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
Custom designs that make mines more expensive.

I assume you mean they're more expensive because I've added too many frills to the designs. Just creating a custom design doesn't add a premium price, does it?

[Bingeling]

Yes of course. Custom or not, what counts is the amount of components and their cost through resources needed.

So an expensive mine would have for instance quite a lot of weapons to fight off pirates.

[Aeson]

I assume you mean they're more expensive because I've added too many frills to the designs. Just creating a custom design doesn't add a premium price, does it?

If you're interested, the formulas for purchase and maintenance costs are supposed to be:

Code: Select all

   [Purchase Cost] = 10 * sum([Resource Amount]n * [Resource Cost per Unit]n, n = 1:N)
    [Maintenance Cost] = 1 + (2 * sum([Resource Amount]n * [Resource Cost per Unit]n, n = 1:N) + [Size]) * product(1 - [Maintenance Savings]m, m = 1:M)

The formulas come from here and, last I checked, seemed to be reasonably accurate, though be aware that the cost per resource unit reported in the Expansion Planner appears to be more heavily rounded than the cost per resource unit that the game uses to compute ship purchase and maintenance costs.