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Hi I am just learning the game. But basically my question is this. I keep losing money although I don't know why. Right now my State cash on hand is negative -15K, my state cashflow is +9K. My private cash on hand is 67K on my private cashflow is -52K. My cash on hand will seem to slowly improve sometimes making it to even and then it will suddenly drop 10-15K. I think I should be making money with a positive cash flow, but this appears to not be the case. I looked at the galactic encyclopedia and manual, but it didn't give me any answers. If someone could point me in a direction it would be helpful. Thanks.

You are losing money because your maintenance charges are too high

Retire some extra ships or troops, and see how your bank balance recovers

When you retire the ships you can rebuild them from the same parts later if your at the same space port

Do mining bases count towards these maintenance costs as well? If they do, right now I have my constructor ships automated and they have built many mining stations. It might be a better idea to manually control what mining stations are being created?

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

You are losing money because your maintenance charges are too high

Retire some extra ships or troops, and see how your bank balance recovers

When you retire the ships you can rebuild them from the same parts later if your at the same space port

Interesting. I always assumed retiring a ship was the same thing as scraping it ... I better go back and read the galactopedia [:)]

So, from an economic standpoint is retiring similar to "moth balling" a ship. If not that would be a great addition. You could lay up your obsolete ships for a fraction of the maintenance cost and be able to call them up as a reserve in time of need (with an obvious cash dump to bring the ships fully on line again.)

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

When you retire the ships you can rebuild them from the same parts later if your at the same space port

Dam I never knew that,duh.

Check your empire screen and look at the totals of the maintenance charges

Remember your taxes plus resource trades make your profit, so mines are good

Ships and troops and space ports are charges

Although the space port does have a trade centre which generates income

Also, if you've authorized refits, the money doesn't get deducted for a particular ship until it actually arrives at port for the refit. I've had cases where I authorized large refits, and months later I was still getting hit by periodic massive deductions as the ships were still trickling in. [X(]

Mining stations, when it comes to having lots of them, from my experience are only profitable if you have trading partners to sell the excess resources too. Researching the commerce tech helps with making profit on trading as well.

I would suggest to scrap\retire any excess ships you don't need in the military and check your expansion planner and see what resources you have more then enough sources for. Then scrap some of those bases that you don't need and are in an area with excess of those resources.

You could also do what I did in my current game, playing a human military dictatorship. My large fleets and the fact everyone doesn't like me, keeps me in the red. But I fund it with rapid expansion, and selling off my lower tech to everyone. Even sold a few bases. Not the best practice, but can keep you afloat till your colonies catch up tax wise.

Thank you for all the replies. It is definitely a learning process

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

When you retire the ships you can rebuild them from the same parts later if your at the same space port

Dam I never knew that,duh.

I don't think that's how it works, exactly. Can't find a clear reference in the galactopedia, but pretty sure when you "retire" a ship you get the resources used to build it back, and they are stored at the colony/shipyard where decommissioned. So the components aren't sitting there, but the resources are now available for constructing future vessels.

This is indeed how it works, have tested it some time ago.

ORIGINAL:  the1sean
I don't think that's how it works, exactly. Can't find a clear reference in the galactopedia, but pretty sure when you "retire" a ship you get the resources used to build it back, and they are stored at the colony/shipyard where decommissioned. So the components aren't sitting there, but the resources are now available for constructing future vessels.

Indeed.