You can also acquire and develop economic resources, which help a lot.

Trade routes coupled with econ starbases that have all three trade modules will also help.

Developed morale resources will help you get the morale higher, so taxes can be raised.

Trade goods like Frictionless Clothing, Ultra Spices and Virtual Reality Center help keep morale higher too (so yet higher taxes).

good economy (50-100k bc per turn even??).

Try 1.3M bc per turn at the end of a v1.31 game with the economic prosperity event, 6 economic resources and 438 planets.

This involves a *lot* of planet specialization. With 20 planets it's difficult to specialize much. With only 20 planets, if I were to try to duplicate what I do on a gigantic map, I'd say you'd need 15 planets with only stock markets, one or two farms and one or two VRC's (assuming a couple of morale resources to mine). With the remaining 5 planets, I'd have one research planet (the highest PQ that I had) and four manufacturing planets. Hopefully you could have a single array of 16 econ SB's to boost your tech and manufacturing planets. The tech planet should have nothing but research buildings, tech capital and omega research on it. The manufacturing planets should have only factories and a starport. With the econ SB bonus you should get research values on the order of 5000+ RP's per turn and production of somewhere between 1000 and 2000 MP's per turn on the manufacturing planets. You should be able to easily achieve an average of 1000 bc's per turn per income planet. 15K per turn isn't an unreasonable assumption with 20 planets specialized like this. Double that if you get the prosperity event. As you conquer planets immediately convert them to income only and when you get a good system of planets with a juicy high PQ planet convert the cluster to another research/manufacturing center. Keep doing this and you're on your way to a high income.

I'll use any PQ planet as an income planet but if you're only going to have a few then the higher the PQ the better. As far as pop that depends on morale which depends on the version. In v1.31 I went with two farms for 19B on all income planets regardless of PQ. If you're on v1.4 you'll also need 2-3 VRC's but otherwise there should be nothing else but stock markets on an income planet. No research, no factories, no starport. That's what specialization is all about. A manufacturing planet needs a starport, but no farms, no stock markets, no morale buildings, nothing but factories, starport, and manufacturing bonus buildings. This way you get ten planets worth of manufacturing out of a single planet which is what allows you to give up production on your income planets which thereby increases your income.

If your going to pump out some constructors don't waste them on trade. If you only have four econ SB's you should increase that to 16. All 7 of your planets won't get the full effect but you should at least double if not triple your output from these planets. That should allow you to convert some of your PQ10-11 production planets to income only as well.

I tend not to specialize the vast majority of my planets and you can still get impressive incomes. With ~260 planets and no special events I can get just shy of 250K a turn (should be ~500K on a gigantic map). Under this scenario, all planets have at least one factory (usually three or four) and a star port. Typically one VR center and two farms. Max taxes and just let the population stop growing as they become less happy. No economic bases. Mind Control Center. Max economic race bonus and a racial morale bonus. This is end game, so all the galactic econ and morale resources.

This is really the anti-thesis of mumbles solution, no planets are specialized. Every planet is capable of some ship manufacturing, with a few capable of significant manufacturing. The remaining planet squares are dedicated to economic production, no star bases at all other than on galactic resources and no research buildings at all. This first time I put a stock exchange over a research building on a precursor library...After finishing everything I cared about on the tech tree, of course.

I go this route because I believe I can conquer the galaxy more quickly this way and make up for the lost efficiencies with a quicker moving military machine.

By contrast it's ~Sept 2226 in my current game and with 27 planets I have a gross of ~4k, so a lot of this is optimization I do as the unstoppable war machine starts conquering in a few months. I get enough IC's laid down to support the war machine on new planets and push everything else to economics.

Both solutions are still quite possible from the start you describe.

Thankfully, there are still multiple ways to play!

Yes, I think my play style so far has been same as Purge describes. The one downside is so much micromanagement of your constructor fleets as they pop up on the 20nth turn on some remote planet. Of course having fewer production specialized planets that pump them out faster would mean less micromanagement.

So I suppose you can only specialize later in the game since you will need to start each planet up with at least two factories to get any buildings up in the first place, then decomission them once you've built what you wanted.

I'm playing 1.4 so I'm guessing they took the morale bonus out of the stock exchanges eh..

Also, I thought you could only build 4 starbases in a sector. I haven't tried more than that so I dunno. Unless you mean building at the intersection of 4 sectors? I remember the good old days when you could fill a sector with ship movement enhancement starbases and fling your ships across a gigantic galaxy in one turn haha.

Lastly... what do you do with 500k BC/turn?? ()

Typically one VR center and two farms. Max taxes and just let the population stop growing as they become less happy.

Interesting, using low approval as a limit to pop growth, but what about elections? Do you avoid the higher forms of government?

There's no way to see something like 500k bc per turn until you've developed most all of the planets and all the economic resources in a gigantic/abundant game. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it.

I'm sure the exact amount depends on the version, but I had 500K bc per turn with about 200 planets and only 3 econ resources. At that point there were still about 250 planets and 3 econ resources that I did not own. Plus my military at that point was far less than either of my two main opponents, and there was still plenty of life to the game. I used the 500K bc per turn to buy 30 battleships a turn for quite some time. Even then it wasn't until I took two military resources from the Thalans that my military might started to outweigh their's. With all due respect, if you haven't done it then you don't really know.

I tend not to specialize the vast majority of my planets and you can still get impressive incomes. With ~260 planets and no special events I can get just shy of 250K a turn (should be ~500K on a gigantic map).

Very possible. Doing it right now as a matter of fact. You can specialize a few research planets but the rest can remain as you built them and still pull down 500K/week. If you want more build SMs over the ISs. I usually try to keep a starport on all +13 pq planets for rush buying transports.

I'm sure the exact amount depends on the version, but I had 500K bc per turn with about 200 planets and only 3 econ resources. At that point there were still about 250 planets and 3 econ resources that I did not own.

Still possible in 1.4.

This game I have been focusing on getting a good economy so have not built too much influence stuff. Most of my plannets have 2-4 stock markets, but my income per turn is still only 3-4000 bc per turn. Most of my planets are about 8-10M, with about 75% morale. I suppose 3-4000 bc is not too shabby, but do you vets generate more income than that?

A good planet build on a class 12 (after overbuilding ISs) 2 x Farm. 3 x VRC. 2 x Research. 4 x SM. But that is how I play.

I change the tax rate the turn of the election and then turn it back up the next week. You can check the date of the next election under the government screen. This works great

Cute.

IN DArk AVatar, it will probably get even higher because trade now makes a LOT of money for players and with network effect buildings (fusion power plants, research management centers, food distribution centers) you will be able to fit even more stock markets and such.

Fascinating food for thought there folks , hmmmmm..

You can add engine to the freighter to get it to a planet quicker but once the route is estabilished and it becomes a mini-freighter it will only move 1 space per turn.

Using more than one module per ship does not increase the amount of income per trade. You can't design one b/c once you have put the trade module on a ship it disappears from the modules tab.