Matrix Games Forums

Hello,

Fairly new player here. I recently started a pre-warp-start game, and my empire keeps running a -50K+ cashflow deficit. I am avoiding bankruptcy so far because (I think) the bonuses I keep getting (can be about 100~150k) throughout a game year, probably due to the 6 new colonies and many mining bases that have been set up after my homeworld. The game year is now 2122.

I checked the budget books, and maintainence is one of the biggest blackholes in my budget. I am guessing this would then be related to ship design (which I have set on manual). Let me know if this should go to a separate thread (because ship design is a huge topic!), but as a new player I simply have no idea what a lot of the numbers mean. That is, is 100 shields a lot? Is 1000 shields a lot? Is putting 5 vs 25 phaser lances on a frigate or destroyer a lot? Is 1000 total firepower alot for a spaceport? Many more questions...

Another problem might be the almost non-existent taxes that I have manually set for all colonies except the homeworld (which is at 15%). But I remember reading somewhere that keeping taxes low is very important for expansion?

Anyway, I don't know if the seemingly big deficit I am running right now is "normal", and if there are ways to rectify that? Thank you for helping a new player with an amazing game.

Why is the maintenance "too high"? It is because you have too many ships and bases compared to the income.

A common error can be expanding too fast, especially if there are pirates in the game. Newly founded colonies will cost you some money even before you assign ships/troops to defend them against pirate attacks. It takes significant time for a colony to grow large enough to be a useful tax source. You usually can't afford to put a large defense force at many colonies in the early game.

If you have no clue about ship design, I would suggest to automate it and see what kind of stats the AI designs got The numbers will depend on tech level, as better tech has better components. A frigate/destroyer of the AI kind probably got 4-8 weapons, and 3-5 shields or something.

25 weapons sounds rather unsustainable energy wise, there are some guides on ship design if you look at the guide to guides. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3497284. The energy guide is probably a particularly useful read.

In any case, don't be afraid to ask, the worst case is not getting an answer

As long as you make money, the -50k deficit is not a problem. You can look at your empire report (the budget part) to see where your bonus income is from. It could be gifts, resort bases or spaceport fees (most likely).

What happen when you gain new colonies, is that the private sector buys more ships (freighters, mining ships, passenger ships), and this gives money in spaceport fees. This could explain your bonus income if you expand fast, but keep in mind this is mostly a "one time" income.

Having 0 tax on new colonies is probably a good idea. 15% on the capital seem low. If you want to tax hard you can aim to keep the colony happiness around +11 like the AI does with its tax settings. As long as you are gaining cash, there is no need to hurry in changing this, though. You should be able to tax it at least twice as hard, meaning getting twice as much money from it. If you look at the colony list, you see the colony revenues. Taxing the ones with low revenue gains you little, and reduces the population growth for little cash in return. 30% of almost nothing is almost nothing... So having 0 tax on developing colonies is usually beneficial.

That being said, the game is very winnable on normal difficulty (and more) with automated ship design, research, and taxes. It is just reading these forums that may make it seem otherwise.

That is, is 100 shields a lot? Is 1000 shields a lot? Is putting 5 vs 25 phaser lances on a frigate or destroyer a lot? Is 1000 total firepower alot for a spaceport? Many more questions...

100 shields is very little for a warship, if by 100 shields you mean 1 unupgraded Corvidian Shield Generator. Normally, I put 3-5 shield generators on size ~300 warships, which translates to 300-500 shields with an unupgraded Corvidian Shield Generator and can be much, much more with better shield generators; bigger ships will get additional shield generators. As far as armament goes, how big are your frigates and destroyers? 25 Phaser Lances are 225 size units in weapons; that's a lot for a size ~400 warship, but isn't abnormal for a size ~1000 warship (it might be a bit light, depending on your design preferences) and is very little for a size ~1500 warship.

I would tend to expect that a balanced warship would dedicate about 10% to 30% of its size to its weapons, a similar fraction of its size to its defenses, and the rest of its size to supporting components (note that I am using "balanced" in the sense of "capable of resisting its own armament," not "balanced" in the game balance sense). Exact ratios will have to depend on exactly what ship speeds you're looking for and the power requirements of your weapons, of course, so you can expect a blaster-armed warship to dedicate a smaller fraction of its size to its armament than a missile-armed warship would, and will also depend on the intended use of the warship - long range cruisers might give up some of their armament and defenses in exchange for extra fuel, for instance, while a system defense frigate might sacrifice range or speed for an abnormally heavy armament and strong defenses for its size. Also note that as reactors and especially as engines become more and more powerful, you can begin increasing the size fraction of the armament and defenses; you might need ~25% of your ship's size to be dedicated to engines in the early game to get a cruise speed of 20, but that can drop all the way to ~10% of the ship's size to maintain roughly the same speed by the time you're looking at end-game thrusters.

As far as the station firepower goes, it depends heavily on the stage of the game, the size of the station, and what kind of other defenses you're thinking of placing around the planet. 1000 firepower on an early-game Large Space Port is kind of a lot; that's ~200 Maxos Blasters or ~180 Concussion Missiles, which means that the station is enormous (~1000-1800 size units for the weapons alone). I'd tend to cut back heavily on the number of weapons; my Large Space Ports might have ~30-50 long range weapons (missiles or torpedoes, whichever is most developed) and ~20-40 short range weapons (blasters, phasers, railguns), and may well have a lighter armament, especially if I'm going to provide fleets or build defensive bases to support the space ports. 1000 firepower on a late-game Large Space Port isn't terribly heavy; ~30 Titan Beams give you ~900 firepower for 180 size, and that's really only a mid-size vessel's armament in the late game or a relatively large vessel's armament in the mid game (~20% of the ship's size is dedicated to weapons => this ship's size is ~800, which is about mid-size, perhaps even a bit on the light side, in the late game and relatively large in the mid-game).

Thanks for the link to the energy guide! I should really look at that.

I have about 45 ships total, mostly just frigates and escorts. But based on the responses from you and Aeson looks like I've over-powered them slightly since e.g. my frigates have 10+ weapons and sometimes up to 7-8 shields, and my space ports are really big.

As for making money, I increased the tax on my homeworld from 10% to 20% and that reduced the deficit to about -10k!! After some more tweaking I am now just breaking even. I did notice that the population on my homeworld (16000+) is more than an order of magnitude bigger than my second largest colony (1100+). That sounds like a big difference, am I not letting my colonies grow enough?

I am indeed quite afraid of the "one time" incomes you mentioned, but I feel compelled to keep making more colonies as my closest competitors always keep 2-3 more colonies than me and I can't seem to keep up.

Even with my highly-inexperienced manual ship design and fleet management (both of which I have lots of questions about probably suitable for another thread???), I am at 70% in terms of victory conditions... Right now the problem is that again the other empires somehow get more colonies and population than me...

Thanks Aeson and Bingeling for your very useful responses!! I'll need to look into ship design more.

looks like I've over-powered them slightly since e.g. my frigates have 10+ weapons and sometimes up to 7-8 shields,

There's nothing really wrong with that. Also note that this isn't really that far off from the suggestions I made for armament and defense relative to the size of the ship; at 10-30% of the ship's size dedicated to weapons and a further 10-30% of the ship's sized dedicated to defenses, you can expect a size-300 ship to have 30-90 size units of weapons and 30-90 size units of defenses. 8 shields is a bit towards the heavy end of this range, 10+ weapons is in the middle to the upper end (and, if you're using large weapons, perhaps a bit over) this size range, but probably not excessively so. What I gave are loose guidelines which I consider likely to result in an acceptable design (at least by my standards), not anything you have to abide by.

In general, as long as your excess reactor output (listed in the ship designer window) is a bit greater than your hyperspeed energy requirement or the sum of your weapon energy use per second and your (cruise or sprint, depending on preference) energy requirement, whichever is higher, and your ships have a cruise speed of at least 10 (approximately the minimum required speed to catch up to a planet when out of fuel; personally, I prefer cruise speeds around 20-30 early on, and might go higher later), you're doing alright on the design front. Your preference, from the information you gave, seems to be more towards heavier warships; the only problem with that is that it's a bit more difficult for heavier warships to catch targets, though they're more capable in a straight fight.

As for making money, I increased the tax on my homeworld from 10% to 20% and that reduced the deficit to about -10k!! After some more tweaking I am now just breaking even. I did notice that the population on my homeworld (16000+) is more than an order of magnitude bigger than my second largest colony (1100+). That sounds like a big difference, am I not letting my colonies grow enough?

Personally, I tend to start taxing my colonies when they get to somewhere around 5-10 billion population (i.e. 5000-10000M), and keep the tax rates at a level such that the colony has 15 or more happiness (15 happiness is the minimum happiness level at which the face is a yellow smiley face). This keeps them growing reasonably fast and gets a reasonable amount of money in return for the reduced growth rate. Pushing the tax rate up on the larger, more developed colonies and the homeworld while keeping the tax rates on the smaller, less developed colonies can also help grow the colonies faster, as it tends to encourage emigration from the more heavily taxed worlds to the less heavily taxed worlds. If my cashflow looks good (or if I'm expecting my money situation to be at least reasonably stable due to bonus income), I may also leave even relatively large colonies untaxed for a long time. A decently large homeworld can generally support ~30% taxes, and that plus bonus income can fund the empire for quite some time.

Plus, even a relatively small growth rate on a large base population can easily make up for emigration unless emigration occurs at very high rates, and while emigration of a few hundred million people isn't that big of a deal to a colony with ~10 billion people on it (~1% annual population growth will keep the population stable if ~100 million people emigrate from a colony of 10 billion people annually), immigration of a few hundred million people to a colony of a few hundred million to a few billion people is an enormous boost to the colony's growth.

Even with my highly-inexperienced manual ship design and fleet management (both of which I have lots of questions about probably suitable for another thread???)

It's your thread, isn't it? Ask away, or if you prefer create a new thread or bring back one of the older threads; I don't think there's been any particularly recent ship design threads, so I don't think anyone will complain too much if you were to create one or use this as one.

I am indeed quite afraid of the "one time" incomes you mentioned, but I feel compelled to keep making more colonies as my closest competitors always keep 2-3 more colonies than me and I can't seem to keep up.

If the difference is only a couple colonies and you already have ~10 or more colonies, I wouldn't be too worried about keeping up. Especially if there's a weak neighbor you can absorb to make up the difference when your economy is settled enough to support a war, or if there are one or two empires nearby who look like potential allies (e.g. no "we instinctively dislike you" modifiers, or they have "we like your style of government", or you're sharing a lot of trade; if you acquire a superluxury, you can also trade that with select neighbors to try to curry favor; the occasional gift won't hurt, and it's not a terrible idea to leave your intelligence agents on counterespionage rather than sending them out against other empires). The computer isn't exactly good at war planning and using its assets well, and player-designed ships tend to be qualitatively superior to the computer's designs, though the computer will tend to have more ships (which, to a degree, will make up for the potential qualitative inferiority of the warships and the computer's wartime asset utilization issues).

Thanks Aeson. I think the tax and deficit part makes sense now and I am finally in the black with 19 colonies.

I do have a couple small neighbours that instinctively don't like me very much. As for absorbing them, war is the only way, right? As far as I can tell there is no "peaceful" way (ala Civilization series) to absorb a planet unless you're a pirate?

As for ship design, thanks for your encouragement. I'll probably create another thread just so that the content will be obvious from the title of the thread, hopefully making it easier for future people when they look for information?

It is possible for very unhappy colonies to defect to another empire, but that won't happen with a capital planet. It is more for peace loving space hippies (Securan) being enslaved under Dhayut rule and such things.

And since they dislike you, why should they defect that way?

So, if you want them, war it is.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
And since they dislike you, why should they defect that way?

Haha that's true. I guess there's no "cultural" victory in this game in the Civilization sense.

I have won a game without ever being at war. "Winning" is an artificial concept, especially when you decide the win conditions in galaxy setup...

That's true. Even without being able to specify a cultural victory, I am already at 72% victory with the default victory conditions... the next 8% feels hard though.

If you've maxed you tech, the best station defense by cost is 4 x Area Transit Singularities and about a dozen fighter squadrons.

The ATS doesn't do a lot of damage in itself, but with four of them you can pretty much freeze an entire fleet into place - and out of range - while your fighters wipe out them at their own leisure.