Creditless Advent

You must not expand too fast. Unless your planet has the proper civil uprgrades you will lose credits instead of gaining tax. Furthermore the upgrades are rather expensive, so do not colonize/upgrade a planet which you cannot defend with proper force. Either leave strong stationary defenses at your flanks (including minefields, a starbase and several hangar bays) and expand with your fleet in one direction or split your fleet, in case you got military superiority (which you'd better have regarding the fact that you spent all your money into hostility).

Got too excited and decided to expand throughout the "island-solar-system" i started with . Now i'm facing enemies from all fronts. Even with splitting my fleet, i can't send enough reinforcements to defend all planets being attacked simultaneously, especially with huge enemy fleets attacking, that fragmented force i sent will get wiped out for no reason.

Anyway i was able to reclaim all the planets I lost but with the upgrades gone, and with a fleet to support etc, my credit is negative, and i don't see any way of ever recovering in this aspect - unless you guys have any idea. Otherwise, i'll restart and keep in mind the suggestion above.. I'd miss my fleet though 

Resource income shouldn't go negative-you could theoretically get out of debt by selling resources to the black market-but this kind of hinges on your not having lost any of your metal/crystal mines at the planets you had to retake, as you can't rebuild them since that costs credits.

Another option is to turtle down on your home planet and perhaps two or three others-you say you're being attacked on all fronts, so the negative income planets should be bombed soon enough.

You're probably just best off restarting and taking the lessons you've learned with you, though.

Huh, sounds as if you are in quite a mess. Just to le me get this straight: " You have invested heavily in fleet upgrade and now the supply costs are killing you if you can't keep the planets you are loosing now, right?

I don't know. Sounds to me as if your only option left is to go with everything you've got to their home planets. They will bring their fleets back to defend them, which should ease the pressure on your border planets. Basically, this is your end game scenario. You absolutly have to destroy their home planets or at least their fleets. If you can spare one or the other siege frigate, send them to other planets of the enemies empire.

Basically, time is against you... You will loose money and you can't reduce the upkeep of your fleet anymore. Set everything on one card, now.

Good luck...

i'd recommend playing on a smaller map until you get the hang of things. learn the ins and outs of the economy on a 1 star, 20 planet map. learn the ins and outs of military strategy on a 1v1 small smap vs. normal AI. 

this game does not at all play like a Civ in Space type of game. its alot faster paced than that and being proactive is very important. the pacing is alot slower than most RTS games but alot faster than most 4x games. takes some time to get the hang of it. sounds to me like you've basically outpaced your econ growth. there's no going back once you've overbuilt fleet logistics upgrades so you're basically screwed. i'd start over. 

He's negative credit income because his planets are underdeveloped, not because his fleet logistics are upgraded.  Fleet size upgrades simply reduce the amount of income you get, they can't force you into the negatives.  The only thing that can force you is the underdevelopment tax that is in effect on a freshly colonized planet.

To the OP I suggest that he try to do two civilian population upgrades to every planet you colonize as soon as possible.  Ideally you can do this the moment you colonize the planet.  This may not give you much of an income boost or total income depeding on your fleet costs, but you should at least not be in the negatives.  In your situation, my strategy would be to focus on planet upgrades over the next little while to correct the negative income problem.  You could also look into setting up one (or more) trade ports at each of your planets.  Since you have negative income, unless you can sell metal/crystal to generate the income needed you may have to scuttle the planets giving you the largest penalties and wait to recolonize once you can afford the civilian upgrades when you retake them.  It would also probably be helpful to take some of the pressure off yourself from the AI.  Since I assume you have a superior fleet, attacking his planets, particularly his home planet if you can get to it, will draw his fleet away and possibly give you some breathing room to get your empire back in order.

Of course, if the AI is in full economic and build boom mode, this may not be possible at your point in the game but you won't know until you try.

-dolynick

I would start a new game. I have usually issues with Advent economy, too.

But it looks like you have expanded too fast, as people already mentioned. There is also good reason to bribe/make friends with 1-2 strong, ideally neighbouring AIs.

Fighting on multiple fronts is already hard on normal, on hard, it is very dangerous. Your ships are not that mobile, and your defenses are only a delay till your fleet can clean the mess if it is a serious attack. So do not overexpand, fortify chokepoints.

also consider taking a progenitor as your free capital ship and using it to colonize.  you get automatic reductions in the cost of upgrading your tax base, which reduces at each level of upgrade

He can't; there's a credit cost and he's negative.

But good advice for future games.

He screwed up.  He should do them as soon as you aquire a planet.  So that you never go negative (in the first place).  Don't colonize a planet unless you can afford the upgrades.  And with the Progenitor Mothership (with the colonize ability) that shouldn't be a problem.  So yeah, start over, and play right.

i also find myself in the position although not quite so severe i just simply wait.... also something that works for me in the begininng is i only expand as far as i need to for research purposes then when im satisfied with my research i continue my expansion and by this point most everything worth researching is researched so all credits can go to immedatly dropping the tax rate on new planets.

as for defending them.... i play advent and spam my planets with turrets and fighter/bombers.  synergy is nice however it doesnt work like i thought it might.... but thats another story.  also make sure to include phase jump inhibiters to impose maximum damage from fighter bombers as the range of the turrets dont reach all that far out side the gravity well or rather construction well...

let me know if this helps u or anyone for that matter

What version of the game is the OP playing?

It is not possible to go negative any version I have played (1.04 onwards). The worst that can happen is that your income counts down to 0 and stays there. The solution then it to get enough resources to sell them for credits (making sure you have enough actual resources too) and then get the fleet upgrade.

Hover over the credit counter at the top - you will see green for positive and red for negative income. As previously stated, negative is due to the underdevelopment penalties you get without getting the civic research.

You can't go negative in credits or resources as far as I'm aware and if you can it's a bug. If your income rates are negative you can pull out of it, I've done it many times. The least complicated solution (but not the only way) is to start by abandoning your worst planets (click the abandon button on the center portrait when you select a planet) and leave them be until you have population/civic upgrades maxed out on the planets you do have.

Point still stands-you can't buy the first planet upgrade without credits.

It's not registering negative on the screen, but it's 0 and it stays there. The credits i get are not enough to cover what i'm using, so basically everything is stagnant at that point since i can't create/develop anything without credits.

I gave up on that particualr game though and started a new one, and i'm pretty much on stable ground right now with my resources. I think i learned my first lessons as a noob in this game  

By the way, still playing the basic version though, about patches, can you skip the previous patches and just update with the latest or i have to update 1 by 1? Also, is it true you're going to lose saved games when you update?

Saved games are generally incompatible from patch to patch.  You don't "lose" them, but you can't play them anymore, either.

Impulse is the updater for Sins, and all it does is update the changed/added files, so it brings you right to the current version.  If you're playing pre-1.05 you may have to update to that first; I'm not positive.

You should have NEVER EVER gotten in that situation. Start over. Look at planets, they lose monye until you get 2 civic upgrades on the planets, 1 on asteroids. That should be your first order of business whenever you take a planet. If you noticed, your income is in red.

Sorry, but that's just stupid. It's common sense. I've heard of people missing it once or twice, but never playing a game to that point.

I've seen it in MP - you explain it to people but they still get it wrong. Its one of those penny dropping things. You either get it straight out, or continue to get it wrong until it just clicks and you repeatedly kick yourself...

(BTW - I got it straight out - my leg is still intact!!!! :D)

How can one make his/her income equal to 0 ??? I mean, c'mon it's like expanding without buying any planet upgrades on a several planets. And that is not good, DEFINITELY not good. You should always have ~1k gold, 100 met & 100 cry before you colonize any planet. You can of course destroy the opposition in the gravity well, but still collonize when you have enough money.

Those are my 0.02€. Cheers!

I'm pretty sure I've had negative credit growth. The opps took over everything I had, I still had a crystal extractor, and one of my allies scuttled an asteroid for me to take over. I didn't have enough credits for an upgrade and my credits drained to zero. They loaned me 1000 crystal and I quickly bought the upgrade before it drained again.

I once got owned because someone blitz to my capital and took it out, and I forgot to re-asign it.  25% alliegence for everyone, so 25% max income for everyone.  I was freaking out trying to figure out why I was getting no resources.

Your income counted DOWN to 0. It did not go BELOW 0. Big difference. One is fixable with an upgrade or two.

Other will be unrecoverable if it gets too far along as you will not able able to buy the upgrades and your allies will not be able to feed you out of it!!!

That's a bit harsh dont you think?  He did say he was new.  He probably knew his income was negative but didn't understand why it was going negative until it was too late.