DW2 FAQ/QnA megathread - Ask your question here!

[Jorgen_CAB]

Damaged components will generally not work either, a damaged engine for example will owner the speed of the ship and a damaged weapon will not be able to shoot or at least shoot more rarely, not sure which. A damaged shield certainly don't work at least.

Regarding Ion damage... if you manage to stack enough Iron damage in short enough time that damage will stack. This is how for example Iron damage weapons on fighters actually can overwhelm ship Ion defenses even if they only do a few points of Ion damage. So if you have enough Ion weapons that fire at the same time ships Ion defenses will become overwhelmed and components will start to shut down.

The cost of ships are roughly 5% of the total cost of a ship... but remember that the cost are always depending on the demand of resources so maintenance cost can fluctuate. If you go into a protracted war and start spending accumulated resources and demand goes up so does your maintenance cost of older ships as well.

Income of planets are depending primarily on the population, development and quality of the planet. The higher the tax level the more corruption you will get which means less income of the taxed money will go to both the state and civilian treasuries, this is important. Also once the population reaches above half the supported population the Support Cost of planets will start rising above 1000 credits again. So there is a diminish return after this.
But if you have a healthy economy you might want to lower taxes and raise the happiness of planets so civilian economy get more funding. You can actually extract more funds through bonus income that way than actually collecting taxes. As long as the taxes can cover your ship; troop and facility maintenance plus Colony Growth and Research funding and be at a slight net positive you might consider lower taxes as you can get more money from filtering them through the civilian economy as bonus income. It is a fine and delicate balance act. During wars consider just lowering your Colony Growth and/or Science investment for a time to make sure you cover the additional cost on maintenance of the war effort and war weariness effects.
The economy in the game are a bit deeper than you might first find it once you delve into the dynamics of the different ways you can manipulating it.
When colonizing planets look for big planets with good quality and make sure you have a steady migration to those planets, they will easily become a huge part of your empires income generator. Consider using outposts for potential planets rather than colonizing them properly... building up a large high quality planets first should be a priority.