Economic Oddities

[MisadventuresVG]

Hi,

I am currently doing a game play series on YouTube and have ran into a bit of an issue on one of my videos, during my current game which is set in DW:Shadows I have an empire that is doing quite well in terms of income. Then all of a sudden I am seeing my current available cash drop into the negative figures without me doing anything.

For an example:

Bank = +1000
Cash Flow = +8500

One month later

Bank = -4500
Cash Flow = +8500

When I look at the empire budget screen I can't see where this negative 5500 is coming from. I am not doing any purchases, my maintenance is all accounted for, my tax rate and income is massively in the green. And what makes its even more confusing is the fact it repeats in 3 month cycles. The first month I will have positive bank then the next month negative then the last month slightly in the red.

Anyone got any ideas. This all started shortly after I gained the warp field research.

Thank you for any thoughts or advice.

[Cauldyth]

Hmm, any chance it's due to retrofitting of ships? When ships retrofit, you don't pay for them immediately, you pay each individual ship separately as it pulls into the spaceport to retrofit. As a result, many months after you authorize the retrofit, you will still see the money disappearing as the ships trickle in. Since you say it's shortly after you gained warp fields, I'm guessing you're having a major retrofit occur?

[MisadventuresVG]

Nope, I have only 1 ship and I didn't retrofit it, that was exactly my first thought. I figured all the private ships suddenly went in for a wrap drive fit. When I check all the ship designs nothing had changed.

It is causing me serious issue as I can't manage my growth without knowing what is affecting it.

[dostillevi]

The basic answer is that your net income or loss is over the course of the _____(Year? Month?). At any given time, you may be up or down a significant amount of money depending on when stations are built, when things upgrade, etc. The only way to plan is based on income, not cash on hand. Keep that income positive and spend when you have cash on hand. It might be that your constructors are building mining facilities, for example, and each one of those is putting you temporarily in the red.

[Spacecadet]

I can think of several things that can cause this.

Is your Tax Rate Automated or Manual?
If Automated, the rate may have changed for some reason.

If your Tax/Happiness/Plague/etc. have impacted your primary Colony, your net income will drop (population, compliance levels, migration, and so forth).

Immigration (as mentioned above) is another possibility.
If enough people move off your primary world it's going to impact your income.

Expansion.
If you're expanding fairly quickly, now new Colonies have a cost/happiness impact, so that can be a drag on you income.

Also, it seems when you hit a certain number of Colonies/Population that the Corruption issue starts to really kick in.
This last one is pretty difficult to plan for, Tech and slow concentrated growth are the best ways to deal with this.

Remember that now Planetary Facilities have recurring maintenance costs.

Resource costs.
This one I've been having a difficult time controlling myself.
I'm not 100% this is working as it should, but resource shortages (real or perceived) affect the cost of building and maintenance of items/ships.

[MisadventuresVG]

Thank you for all your assistance, I played through the part where my economy was behaving strangely. It appeared to be related to the retrofitting of several research stations. I have the money in the bank and the income was more than sufficient but I was still getting -4500 every 3 months. I did some restructuring within my civilization and got a +12k income and before I knew it the negative figure vanished.

I just put it down to spending inconsistencies within the budget screen.