Depression Planets

[Hydro]

Around turn 250 I noticed I was getting messages of planets scrapping buildings for lack of maintenance (I'd gotten them before, but had ignored them). Looking further, I found that there were a half dozen or more planets in my 250+ planet empire that had maintenance that was twice their taxes, and no planetary grants (my empire split is 40 grants, 40 military, 20 research). There were chronic shortfalls. The result is that there was zero building (even on the planet with 14 industry DEAs), infrastructure improvements, terraforming – nothing. Nothing, that is, but a merciless slide to the bottom. What was strange is that these worlds had no real rhyme or reason. One was a captured human world with 100B pop, and another I can recall was a settled world deep in my territory.

I tried upping my grant budget, which did no good. The planet still wasn’t getting any grants (according to the eco summary, at least). Then I switched my empire budget from balanced to savings. This whacked my economic output, but did the depression planets no good (likely because they had no money to start with). Increasing planetary taxes came nowhere near making up for their shortfall, with 3500 maintenance and ~1800 economy (and that was on a 100B planet!). Then I took drastic measures and scrapped mining DEAs (it was a very poor world – the Human AI empire set that up, obviously). This did not good, either, except cleaning up something I should have done when I conquered the planet ages ago.

So my questions:
* It is my understanding that income is derived from economic activity, like mining and production, and trade. Anything else? These depression planets lack production. Because they aren’t making anything, they have no income. Rinse, repleat.
* What do you pay maintenance on? I looked under the DEA, improvements, and other items descriptions and I can find nothing that tells me what costs what.
* Why do these planets fall into this death spiral? Other planets with similar pop have economies 100,000+, yet these poor blighted planets have economies of 1800. What gives?
* Are there certain key structures that need to be built? Some (but not all) of the worlds lacked space ports for some reason. They could have been scrapped before I noted, but I’m not sure.
* Has anyone else seen this? If so, what did you do? Any ideas on how to reverse the death spiral?

[Whoha]

Check if you have really large standing armies at the planet, that will kill you.

[Whoha]

Also industrial production = gdp so put atleast 3 industrial deas at the start of the game, and then rip out mines and farms later on when you can to put more industry and research deas.

Check the planetary economy screen to see where the money is going. Pollution,maintainence(what happens when you invade a planet with 4 armies and just leave them there, disband them immediately),gifts to empire,etc are all killers. Also check and see if you are spending too much on production, supposedly you can overdrive to 8x and more, but it doesn't get you anything except a waste in money.

[Whoha]

Infact, from reading your post thats what it sounds like. You conquered the human empire, and just left a huge standing army on the planet.

[Hydro]

I'll check, but I almost always disband an invading army so they get cycled back into the pool. Maybe I forgot this time. But, what about my interior worlds?

I've already eliminated the mines and the farms. All that's left (that the AI didn't disband because of maintenance problems) are gov, military, and industry.

With no budget to terraforming the planet has been slipping, and population emegrating. Farms are now on Toxic. Bad news, and an even better reason to remove them.

[Kloreep]

While bio and mines (and spaceports) are probably the best source of income, industry DEAs should be giving you a decent economy too - enough to pay maintenance, anyway.

Do these planets have specials like Rapid Rot, Hostile Gases, etc? Specials like those can realy drive up maintenance costs. And, worst of all, I don't think Rapid Rot can be terraformed away with any technologies. (Hostile Gases can.)

[Whoha]

wow thats fairly weird, never had that happen in a game outside of having tons of troops at the planet. Maybe system ships and orbitals are eating up maintenence.

Also for whatever reason I don't have to continue to fund terraforming after it is finished, I have the long live leaders mod, no spy mod, and encyclopedia mod, any idea on where that is coming from?

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Whoha
Also for whatever reason I don't have to continue to fund terraforming after it is finished, I have the long live leaders mod, no spy mod, and encyclopedia mod, any idea on where that is coming from?

Terraforming maintenance is automatically added to your maintenance expense figure. The terraforming slider is only for the initial investment in the change (the most costly part).

Unless you mean the maintenance cost doesn't rise after terraforming? I've never actually watched it.

[Whoha]

ah, thanks Kloreep, thought you had to keep the slider set.

[Hydro]

I looked into my worst planet:

Troops - none
Terraforming maintenance - none (it had reverted, or was reverting)
No specials that impact maintenance, other than being Red 2 (which is very hard on humans and causes 2x maintenance cost) with nasty gravity (which depresses production, and therefore income)

After some TLC it looks like the planet is pulling out of the depression. I can't pin it on one thing since I did many.

One startling event: my empire income increased 2x in about 5 years. This impacts research and military, and also grants to planets. I think this was the key - there was more money to spread around, and that helped it get over the maintenance hump so it could start making things.

How did this happen? I switched from Balanced to Savings. Initially this hammered my empire budget (a decrease of ~10%). Then, it started jumping by huge amounts. I'm thinking that as planets 'saved' their surpluses grew, then they granted this income back to the empire. Therefore, my galactic budget grew by huge amounts (from 30M to 85M!) in about 5 years. There may be other explanations for this, such as a new tech that increased $$ (the only one I can think of is one that mitigated gravity effects, which would increase production and therefore income).

This suggests a new tactic for mature economies - switch to Savings.

Hydro

[bakalov]

Heh, 1800 economy is too small for 100B planet. There must be something wrong with it .... no government? unrest? I don't know .... I usually play with 0 imperial, 0 system taxes, and the planets are ~37%. The empire gains its money from internal trade (about 500k / turn at turn 250). I looked at my capital and its income is ~470K which is more than its GDP. It is true that there was a government DEA with +102% Economy -65 Unrest, but I still wonder how the tax income may be > than the GDP.

The trade income is unsignificantly small when compared to the tax income - about 5% or even less. May be this is a thing that should be tuned too ...

[Whoha]

I think income vs gdp is screwed up right now.

[bakalov]

May be they multiply the tax income by some kind of variable; they should have multiplied the GDP with the same one ..... This way it would be more realistic.

[BenRipped]

The problem is in the CODE! The MORONS at QSI set a limit of only 10 planets per turn to receive GRANT monies and its even worse when you colonize a new planet(s) in a turn... ALL of the GRANT money goes to the NEWLY COLONIZED planet(s)! The code will cycle thru the planets and the ten in most dire need get grant money... except when a new planet is colonized.

To work around this I've started colonizing up to eight to ten planets in a turn once I have about 75 planets and then wait for at least five to ten more turns before colonizing more planets. Also build up your ECONOMIC boosting buildings like RESEARCH, & STOCK facilities. Watch your pollution and keep it less than 1/2 of your building & maint budget per planet... A little Micro Management goes a long way.

Change your payout distribution to ~30% Research, 60+% Grant & what is needed to keep your planets happy... out of revolt makes up the rest.

Also check your TAX levels. They should be as high as possible without causing a revolt condition... check in the Planetary screen per planet and look in DEMOGRAPHIC/UNREST and keep it at or very near ZERO.

Also watch your LEADERS! Some of them cause UNREST! (Unrest + 5% BAD! Unrest - 5% GOOD! ) FIRE the BAD LEADERS!

[Stormhound]

Yeah, I'd have to agree that whoever made the "top 10" decision...which wasn't made until very late in development...wasn't firing on all cylinders that day. It definitely would've been better left as some sort of player decision on how to spread the money, or else spread to some percentage of worlds rather than just 10.