Where's my $(*^$ money!

[Helium Pond]

So, I've seen the income reports be drastically off before, but usually that's in the mid-or-late-game, and the reports is UNDER what I'm actually making. Right now I'm in an MP game as the Believers in which the report is regularly OVER what I actually make. And I can't figure out exactly how. My suspicion is that I'm not getting the commerce income I should be getting, but the numbers don't exactly match up. I'm planetary governor, and I'm currently pop booming, which means I'm running Democracy/Planned. Oh, and I'm also running Wealth. For example, last turn, I had 99 credits. My commerce should have given me 82 credits, and my net income was supposedly 78. So I should have had 259 credits at the start of the next turn. I had 182! 77 credits short. Actually, I guess that looks more like I didn't get my income, since the number is closer to 78 than 82. But.... arrrg. Anybody know what's going on?

(And it's all the more frustrating since I'm plotting an Economic win.)

[Misotu]

Your gross income is the total of both your commerce income and the income produced by your bases. If you scroll through the bases and add it up, you'll find this works out - but I agree that the economy display doesn't make this at all clear.

So your net income = ALL income - costs

The difference you're seeing is probably due to the fact that you're building one or more facilities each turn and I think this causes the game to credit you with a few extra energy for each base that builds a facility (as opposed to a unit). I believe that this energy is based on the mineral output of the base concerned.

That's why the figures don't quite add up ...

Hope this helps - and hope it doesn't screw your game plan too much

[Garth Vader]

That happened to me recently in an MP game. I was the Gaians, I was Planetary governor and was supposed to make ~30 ec in commerce income per turn. Since my maintenance was less than that I figured I'd run 100% labs for a while when I was in demo/green. Well I lost about 20ec that turn which nixed that plan.

[mark13]

HP and Garth,
I believe the net income takes the commerce into account. However, this commerce income is raw energy - rather than going straight to your economy, it goes into your energy pool, which is then further split up into econ, labs and psych.

For a rough idea of how many energy you will get per turn, you should need look no further than the net income - this amount will fluctuate, of course, with population changes etc.

Mark13

Wow - a triple post-cross Sorry Mis, I didn't see your post - it was hiding above Garth's....
[This message has been edited by mark13 (edited November 29, 2000).]

[hellrazor]

I believe your commerce income shows up directly on your city screen added into you total base energy. Also, if you have any bases riot, you will lose energy from those.

edit...just like mark13 said above.
[This message has been edited by hellrazor (edited November 29, 2000).]

[Misotu]

Mark - quite right, should've made that clearer in my original post. Your commerce income goes into your bases first and is then multiplied up through any facilities you have. So if you ran 100% labs, your commerce produces no income at all - just research.

It *is* confusing, the fact that commerce income is displayed above gross income on a separate line. But I believe that this is to give you an idea of how much you stand to lose if you commit an atrocity, lose an election or whatever.

[Garth Vader]

Oh, I get it. So when I switched allocation, I was actually allocating all my commerce energy to labs as well.

[mark13]

Sorry Mis, as I said, I asn't actually aware of your post - it was hiding above Garths's, and I thought it unlikely that two people would have posted between my entering the thread and posting my reply.

edit: You've got it, Garth - the only energy income you should be getting is that from your specialists.
[This message has been edited by mark13 (edited November 29, 2000).]

[Misotu]

No problem Mark - it was obvious to me that you'd probably not read my 2c, the posting times were too close.

[MariOne]

Gross income IS what your collectors actually bring in (BEFORE expenditures, as the word "gross" itself says)
Maintenance are your expenditures, to be taken off your gross income
NET income IS what actually goes into your treasury, to increase your reserves

From your example:
99ec reserves
+78ec net income (PROJECTED!)
=177ec new projected reserves

You should take into account that before the turn comes back to you:
- diplomatic status with other factions may change
- other factions bases may change their economy value, thus also affecting the commerce you're entertaining with those bases
- there are some phases of the preliminary turn updates which occur BEFORE yor new energy calculation.
I can tell for sure that *production* occurs before counting your cash (THAT's the misprogramming causing the Stockpile Energy bug!!!), so you could produce items which increase your maintenace costs and/or your revenues, which effects are taken into account immediately.
I can't recall whether growth works in the same way, or not.
- you could discover/obtain for trade, during the preliminary updates, techs affecting your commerce rating, or allowing you to instantly change SE.
For instance, when you get IndAuto at the beginning of your turn, IF you accept to immediately switch to Wealth, your energy for that turn will be calculated taking the increased SE Ecomomy value into account!


The Commerce values, both the grand total shown in F8 and the factional disaggregate shown in every basewindow, is only a *breakdown*, a detail focusing a partial aspect of the Gross Income (or rather of your whole *energy* production).
It can help you to evaluate how much weight your commerce has on your overall economy, so that you can take better decisions about your diplomacy.

Consider these steps:

1. Energy is *collected* by your workers from the base tiles
2. that value is also used to determine whether THAT bases of yours generates any commerce, faction per faction (treaties or pacts only)
3. 1 + 2 makes your RAW energy: collected plus commerce.
4. Inefficiency is applied to your RAW Energy (3)
5. your NET _Energy_ *produced* by that base is obtained subtracting the Inefficiency Loss (4) from your RAW Energy (3)
6. your NET base Energy is divided into Economy, Psych & Labs according to your SE settings
7. bonuses coming from your specialists (technicians, empaths, ...) and/or from Stockpiling Energy are added to the base Economy value
8. Modifiers from that base facilities are applied to the (7) value (banks, tree farms, ...)

(I report this offhand, so Stockpiling "might" be taken into account after (8), that is, NOT affected by banks & facilities)

SUM the (8) values from all your bases, and you'll obtain your Gross Income.


You see that your Commerce value "concurs" to form your Gross Income, but its impact has to be first curtailed by inefficiency on a base per base basis, allotted according to your SE, and corrected by your bonuses and modifiers, also base per base.
Important to note then that part of your Commerce also flows into your *Research* (and Psych)!!!

That is, do NOT mistake "Economy" with "Energy".
Commerce is part of your RAW Energy,
NOT of your "Economy" alone.
(I restated what mark13 already said)


To add to complexity, remember that:
- smaxv2 fixed it, but in smacv4 there was the Maintenance Bug, making you pay less for your maintenance at Thinker & Transcend levels
- the Stockpile Energy BUG has NOT been fixed, in smaxv2 neither, so after building a facility (with an empty Q) you still gain extra ec (credit to misotu for mentioning this)
- commerce value is reported individually also because some scoring (can't recall which, offhand) uses it as one of its parameters

Hope this helps
As usual, *documented* corrections are welcome and appreciated

MoSe


EDIT:
I forgot to mention that the SE penalty for unbalanced energy allotment is applied AFTER value (8), always base per base.
That is, it's a further and separate (detrimental) effect of your inefficiency.
[This message has been edited by MariOne (edited November 29, 2000).]

[Helium Pond]

Wow, I've been misunderstanding commerce all along. Yeah, because it was reported separately from Gross income, and because the net always equalled the gross minus maintenance costs, I assumed commerce and gross income were separate tallies. I could swear I tracked it once and it worked out, too. But I'll defer to the mass opinion here, because I've just begun watching, because you sound like you know what you're talking about, and plus because it makes more sense.

Hmm. Well, now it means that Econ win is a much longer ways away...

[hellrazor]

Just a minor note...if your trying to calculate your RP's from a base, be sure to remember to add in 2 points for your biology lab (if you have one). I was trying to get the calculations to work out and got very frustrated because it always seemed a little off. Thus your total RP's from a base are:

[RAW ENERGYxLABS%+ SPECIALIST LABS + 2]x BASE MULTIPLYER

I believe the maximum BASE MULTIPLYER is 14:
Network Node + Research Hospital + Nanohospital + Fusion Lab + Quantum Lab = +250% => 3.5 multiplyer

Multiply that by SC and ToE and you get 3.5x4 = 14.

Similarly, the maximum Economy multipler is 7:
Energy Bank + Tree Farm + Hybrid Farm + Fusion Lab + Quantum Lab = +250% => 3.5 multiplyer

Multiply that by the SE and you get 3.5x2 = 7.

For Psych the maximum multiplyer is 3:
Holotheatre + Tree Farm + Hybrid Farm + Research Hospital + Nanohospital = +200% => 3 multiplyer (Hospitals only give +25% psych unlike everything everything else which gives +50%).

One more thing: The special project that gives you RP's for commerce points and all network nodes (Can't remember the name right now) does not multiply those by anything...those points are simply added to your RP's after everything else has been calculated. So there is no overriding reason to put that SP in your research base...as long as the base you put it in has good commerce income.

If anyone has corrections to the above calculations let me know.

[This message has been edited by hellrazor (edited November 30, 2000).]

[Tau Ceti]

If you are in Free Market, the Longevity Vaccine multiplies total economic output in its base by 1.5, so you should be able to reach an econ multiplier of 10.5 .

[hellrazor]

Oh, forgot about that. Thanks.