Very confused about spending, production, tp, and mp...please help

I'm having a hard time understanding the financial/production aspects of the game. I just want to understand where all the values come from and how they are calculated.

For example, on the homeworld screen, "Military", "Social", and "Research" are listed at the top. I presume that this is the amount of production that goes into creating ships, creating buildings (labs, farms, etc.), and researching technologies, respectively, and, therefore, it determines how long each task takes to complete? But where do these values come from? I know the amount and distribution of spending on the Finance Management screen plays a role, but even then the amount spent does not seem to always equal the amount produced.

I'm also confused about where mp and tp fit into all of this. For example, on the homeworld screen, when I select "Civilization Capital", it says Industry: 24 mp, Research: 24 tp. But what does this mean and where do these values fit in with respect to the "Military", "Social", and "Research" values I mentioned above?

Thanks for any help provided.

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Something that says 24 mp gives 24 manufacturing points if your economy is set on 100% expenditure, and all of those 100% are focused on either Social Production or Military Production. On the planets themselves it is possible to further focus development of one type, be it Social, Military or Research Production. This kind of focus is called a bonus. For every mp or tp(manufacturing or technology point) a building provides, you pay 1 BC per turn. For every two bonus tp or mp, be it from focus, or a 100/300/700% bonus tile, you pay 1 BC per turn.
Research Production is gained from labs, Military and Social from factories. If a planet is both constructing a building and a ship, with no focus, it will divide the mp evenly between Military and Social Production.
I hope I helped demistify this. Please do ask more questions if something has you stumped. This game is a ball of yarn, and it's quite hard to see the threads when you're starting out.

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Thanks for the help Regicide. I must now sit and ponder what you've said, but I think I'm starting to figure things out.

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Hi!

For every two bonus tp or mp, be it from focus, or a 100/300/700% bonus tile, you pay 1 BC per turn.

AFAIK that's not correct. You pay full price for planetary tile bonuses. Also, focus doesn't give any bonuses, just diverts 25% of base production from other two areas into the area that has focus. In DA bunus production (50% free) comes from race abilities, "capital" and similar buildings, starbases (econ and mining ones) and events at colonizing. In DL you pay full price for increased production from "capitals".

BR, Iztok

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I'm also confused about where mp and tp fit into all of this. For example, on the homeworld screen, when I select "Civilization Capital", it says Industry: 24 mp, Research: 24 tp. But what does this mean and where do these values fit in with respect to the "Military", "Social", and "Research" values I mentioned above?

Thanks for any help provided.

Yeah, it's confusing to me as well, but I can explain in my own way how I think it works, but there are things I simply don't know and have never seen mentioned here.

1. I have no idea how taxes are calculated. All I know is it depends on your population. I suppose if you turned taxes to 100% and then checked how much money you were making (adding back your expenses), you could find out how much each 1 billion people were worth.

2. Production % is how much of the tax revenue you receive each week (turn) is spent on social, military and technology, and how much is converted into money for you to spend (or be extorted out of).

3. No matter how much you put into Production, you can only get as much MP, SP and TP (Military Prod., Social Prod. and Technology Prod.) as per buildings you have set up for them. Your Civilization Capital on your planet has 24 in each, and every other planet has 12. So 100% Production and 100% Technology from the beginning means you get 24 technology points per turn (assuming you have 0% Research Bonus). Even your bonus production costs money, but only 1/2 the normal cost. A 60% bonus to Research would give you 38 TP (24 + 14, which is 60% of 24 rounded down) for 31 BC (24 + 7). Raising taxes will not affect this production, it will only pay for it. Lowering Technology Production will lower the weekly cost but give you less points per turn. Setting Technology spending to 50% would only give you 1/2 of your potential maximum TP. So remember a) When you plop a building down that gives you production, you will be paying for it for the rest of the game unless you set Production to 0%, and

Taxes won't raise or lower your Production, Production % determines how much tax is turned into Production instead of actual money, and Military, Social and Tech Production determine what percentage of your Production is used for MP, SP and TP respectively, and c) Whenever Social Production isn't being utilized on a planet, it's converted into Military Production (assuming your Military is set to at least 1%; when set to 0% this doesn't happen). Otherwise it's just turned back into money for you.

4. You need Military Production to build ships of any kind, Social Production to build improvement buildings on your planets, and Tech Production to make use of capitals and research buildings.

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The more I look at this stuff, the more it makes my head spin. I think I understand income fairly well, it is the spending/expenses/production stuff that messes me up. Here are some further thoughts:

1. I have no idea how taxes are calculated. All I know is it depends on your population. I suppose if you turned taxes to 100% and then checked how much money you were making (adding back your expenses), you could find out how much each 1 billion people were worth.

I think you're right, tax revenue is based on the size of the population. For a given tax rate, the revenue increases as the population increases. However, according to the manual, your civilization's economic ability as well as certain planetary improvements determine how much each individual citizen makes, which in turn affects tax revenue. Thus, a tax rate of 30% for a population of say 1 billion would yield a lot more tax revenue if all of the citizens had high- rather than low-paying jobs.

2. Production % is how much of the tax revenue you receive each week (turn) is spent on social, military and technology, and how much is converted into money for you to spend (or be extorted out of).

I'm not sure this is correct. The amount that can be spent on production capacity appears to be unrelated to the tax revenue. For example, even if you set the tax rate to 0% (resulting in 0 tax revenue), you can still spend just as much on production capacity as you could if the tax rate was set to 100%. Of course, with the 0% tax rate, you are likely to have a negative net income, whereas with the 100% rate you are likely to have a positive net income. The manual (Gold Edition)gives two definitions related to the spending slider for production capacity: 1. "the spending slider determines what percentage of your production capacity you will use" 2. "On the global finanical management screen, you control what percentage of your population to employ." I guess my question at this point would be what determines a civilization's full production capacity??? The second definition makes me think that it is primarily the size of the population, but perhaps there are some other things that factor into the equation.

Well, I had a bunch more that I was gonna write, but I'm too tired to think anymore, plus I'm not even sure if the stuff above is correct....

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Hm, I thought the Military/Social/Technology sliders were for dividing the percentage of Production, but you may be right since you can't set them all to zero. I guess it just means you can't have them all at 100%, but you pay for the production regardless. That means the Production slider now makes no sense to me. All I know is when I lower it, I get less money. *shrug*

I'm tired too. I've been playing this game every night since I've gotten it, but to be honest I'm getting sick of it. I think it's time to quit for a while. Maybe forever, I don't know.

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Planet quality and morale are the two msin governing factors.

Hm, I thought the Military/Social/Technology sliders were for dividing the percentage of Production, but you may be right since you can't set them all to zero

Yes you can.

That means the Production slider now makes no sense to me. All I know is when I lower it, I get less money. *shrug*

Should be the other way around , surely

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