Spending Distribution

[Verrucosus]

I have a question about the spending and the spending distribution sliders on the domestic policy screen: How do these really work?

The manual (p. 24) makes it quite clear that the spending slider determines the percentage of my industrial capacity that is used to convert raw resources into either manufacturing or technology points.

I would have assumed that my industrial capacity is the sum of all the manufacturing and technological points my planetary improvements are capable of producing. This, however, is not the case. Even when I set the spending slider to 100 %, I never spend as much credits as I would have to in order to generate all the manufacturing and techology points my improvements could generate.

This is because the spending distribution slider does not really seem to distribute the spending among the three different areas. That would be difficult because only social and military production, but not research share the same production base. Instead it seems to perform pretty much the same task as the spending slider itself, i. e. setting a percentage of manufacturing points(miltary/social) and of technology points (research) that are actually converted into military/social production and into research. The puzzling aspect here is that only the first two percentages are percentages from the same value (manufacturing points) whereas the third percentage is a percentage from a different value (technology points). The only connection I can see would be a somewhat arbitrary rule that, even with full spending under the spending slider, a percentage of technology point equal to the used percentage of manufacturing points has to remain idle. Such a rule would explain what I have seen in my (very limited) experience with the game so far, but it is certainly not what I would expect from reading the manual or even from looking at the screen. Is it really working this way?

If these observations seem somewhat confused, they are certainly an accurate reflection of my state of mind on this issue. I haven't even touched the focus option, because I feel I have no chance of understanding before I've grasped the basics of the domestic policy screen.

I realize that I have joined the party rather late in the day. Searching older posts I have seen a few that touch upon the subject, but I have not found a more comprehensive explanation of how the sliders work together.

Verrucosus

[LotC]

I'll give this a go and hope that I can articulate it well.

I believe from your observations that you have it right. Say you have a planet with a capacity of 100 Manufacturing Points (mp) from factories and 100 Research Points (rp) from labs. The Production Capacity slider determines overall use of these points. The 3 sub sliders allocate to individual areas.

For instance, with the above available resources, if I set the Production slider to 100% and the sub sliders to 100/0/0 I would get a total of 100 mp devoted to military (shipbuilding) and no social or research. Putting the Production slider at 100% and the sub sliders at 33/33/34 would produce 33 military, 33 social, and 34 research.

Now say I set the Production Capacity slider to 50% and the others at 33/33/34. I would then produce 16 military, 16 social, and 17 research.

As you may be able to surmise from this, you can never fully utilize all of the potential capacity of your labs or factories. The only way for near full utilization of capacity is by building only factories or only labs and using the focus button. If the above makes sense to you then ask me more about this. If it doesn't then I hope someone else comes along.

[Verrucosus]

Thank you, it does make sense.

Just to make sure that I have understood, would it be correct to say that the percentages set both on the spending slider and on the spending distribution slider are modifiers that (one after the other) are to be applied to the planet's manufacturing/technology point capacity in order to determine its actual output of social/military production and research?

For example:
Social Prod. = MPs x Spending % x Social Rate %?

Does this mean that the percentages set under spending distribution are an accurate statement of the distribution of money spent in the three areas only for a planet where (as in your example) factories and labs have the same capacity? For example, if you had
- a capacity of 100 mp and 200 rp,
- a global spending rate of 50 % and
- the default 33/33/34 spending distribution,
would you actually spend about as much on research (34 bc) as you would spend on social and military production together (16 bc + 16 bc = 32 bc)?

[LotC]

Yes, that's correct. Having said all of that though, it's generally advisable to keep the production slider at 100%, unless your economy is tanking badly and you need the cash that turning it down frees up.

[Verrucosus]

I agree. In fact, I've run periods of deficit early in the game when my homeworld doesn't really grow a lot because of the exodus of colonists and the new colonies are too small to contribute much my tax income, but add maintenance costs for all those initial colony projects. Usually it's the trade routes that eventually balance the budget again.

Anyway, thank you for commenting. Now that I've more or less understood how the spending distribution slider works, I will use my next game to take a look at the focus buttons to see how they work exactly.

Verrucosus