What does the Spending Slider actually do?

hi Ardrikk!

you nailed it on the head. The total spending is how much you want to spend of your income per month. and the military, social, and research sliders are the division of the total spending minus Maintenance, leases espionage, Destabalization: GIA (galactic taxes) and tribute. There also might be ceratin mikitary expenses included (usually a small percentage of the total military costs) If you take your total spending down, you will see the "hard" costs you are stuck with.

hope this hlps and feel free to ask any questions

rich
&
louie_the_cat


~SDC~

To clear up 1 point
the spending slider reflect the % of manufacturing capacity of your empire

~SDC~

Hmm, I'm afraid I'm still confused, though I appreciate you responding.

So, the Global Spening Slider (the single one, not the 3 designated Military, Social, and Research), is it:

A) Your income per turn, meaning what you received that turn from taxes, trade, and tribute or
Your total industrial/manufacturing capability as you seem to indicate in your second post?

Or is it both? If the Spending Slider represents only your manufacturing capacity why would you ever NOT set it to 100%?

And is it true, then, that your planets won't produce anything on their own and totally depend on your Spending Slider to allocate money to them to build and research anything (actually, I know you research one thing at a time, on an empire level, but planets contribute research points, effectively, right?)?

So, an extension of the above question is this:
If I set my global Military slider down to 0% (which puts Research and Social each to 50%), does that mean that none of my worlds will be able to build anything military-related (ships mostly, I assume) regardless of whether something is in their build list?
Basically, you said I nailed it on the head in my first post, but I asked a lot of "Is it this or is it that?" style questions, so I'm really not sure which parts you're saying I got right.

Here goes.

Taxes slider - fairly simple its just the tax rate.
Spend Rate - this represents the utilization of you production but costs money

Ideally you want the spend rate at 100% but you will not have enough money most of the game.

At the start of the game you usually set it to 100% but you will be in defeciet spending.
Once you use up your starting money you will have to adjust it downards.

Basically you adjust this slider to keep your budget in balance.


~SDC~

Hmm, okay...so it basically is like MOO3, then, in that you have to pay to keep those imaginary factories running (paying electric bills, employee salaries, scientists' salaries, etc). And you pay this either out of your stockpiled treasury or out of your monthly income (if it's enough to cover what you're shelling out).

And if you don't have enough money (Spending at less than 100%), you're basically forced to let many of your "factories" and "research labs" sit empty and idle.

Then, presumbably, I was right earlier when I said that the higher you set your spending rate, the less of your per-turn-income is going to actually go into making your treasury larger. Correct?

So, if you just needed to stockpile cash in your treasury, for whatever reason, you might need to set your Spending down to a lower percentage to accomplish that?

Have I got it now?

Sounds right.

I think it will be a lot clearer once you have played a few games

~SDC~

Heh, yeah, I'm sure you're right. It's just been bugging me that I didn't really understand how this worked yet and I figured I'd go ahead and ask.

There's probably even a tutorial for when I play my first game that'll walk me through some of this, huh?

Anyway, thanks for your guys' help!

As I understand it, it works like this:

1. Each planet can produce a certain amount of foo per turn (based on class and population). The foo is then converted into social, military and research points, at ratios determined by the three ratio sliders. Then the S M and R points are boosted according to the bonuses from the planet's infrastructure. This is your potential.

2. The potential points are multiplied by the spending slider. If you spend nothing, you get nothing.

3. The cost of those points is then worked out. You're only charged for points that you actually use. If you're not building any ships, your military costs will be zero, regardless of ratios or spending. These costs are the ones that show up on your economy page.

Hi Ardrikk, check out Brad's latest game, specifically jpg 58, a bit past mid point in the page.
the year is Mar 2203(topleft) the game starts in jan 2178.
Look at the various spend rate, and the actual spend numbers that result.
http://www.galciv.com/examples/5/

~SDC~

Okay, yeah...that screenshot does make more sense with what everyone has explained so far.

Am I also right in thinking, based on things Brad has said different places, that when you look at a planet and it say "Military Production 5+2" that the number after the "+" is free production? I remember Brad commenting on that difference between the two. So, do you get your free production points, in each category and from each planet, regardless of how much money you're spending overall and how much you've set the 3 sub-sliders too?

So, in the above example, even if I've set military spending to 0%, will my planet still have those 2 production points to use towards building a ship there?

I'm still shacky on that free production, but if you set your slider to 0% military, the planet will show "insufficient resources", But it would make sense. I'll check in my next game.

~SDC~

As I read it, "free" production is only factored in at the costing stage. Also, AFAICT it's always percentage of the base output. If you set your slider to zero, there's no base output, therefore no free production.

AFAICT ?
It is clear. thanks


~SDC~

AFAICT : As Far As I Can Tell

One of the less used acronyms.

~SDC~

How far can you go into deficit spending, and what penalties are there for going farther into the red? Budgeting is one of my stonger points luckily, considering it's my job.

If you go below -400 credits, your empire shuts down. You stop production until you're above this limit.

- Nobody

Regarding this link
http://www.galciv.com/examples/5/new-58.jpg

Gov expenditures are set to 53%. Is this 53% of your production ability?

Also the Military, Social and Research are set to 41%, 18% and $41%. What I can't figure out is how they get the actual number from these percentages. For example, miltary is 41% and the military expenses are listed as 420 bc. As far as I can tell, 420 bc doesn't seem to be 41% of the government expenses. So how coes 41% in this example equal 420 bc? Could someone explain the calculations?

Experience from the beta: Military expense equals military budgeting + ship maintenance. Thus the number displayed for military expenses is often larger than the percentage distribution would indicate.

But the number displayed for military expense is less than the percentage distribution would indicate. 41% of total active spending(1190 bc) is 488 yet military expense is 420 which makes it looks like your 41% is really 36%. In effect it just the opposite of what you said. Where is the other 68bc (488-460) or 5% that should show up for military expenses if it is truly 41% of gov expenditures?

I must agree, the numbers don't seem to add up. Social is set to 18% and is 94bc, which would indicate Gov expenditure of 522 bc (since 18% of 522 is 94.) Similarly, Research of 41% being 276bc would indicate Gov Expenditure of 673 ?! And if you look at the overall spend rate of 53%, with a total income of 1197bc indcluding trade, shouldn't that be 634 ?!

The spend rate is different and I think I understand that one. It has nothing to do with your income. The 53% spend rate has to do with production capacity. If it's set to 100% then you're running all of your facilities that produce military, social, and research points. The total cost to run all these is 100%, but you don't always have enough income to cover the cost so you have to adjust spending downward which means some of you production ability is just sitting there wasting away, but that's life sometimes.

As for the military, social and research sliders. Those percentages don't equal their corresponding numbers. Could someone not just explain it but actually go thru a calculation using the link in post # 17 as and example?

Disclaimer: I do not have the definitive answer, but I have played enough beta games to believe that the following conclusions are accurate.

There is not enough information on the Domestic Policy screen to account for every bc in the expense column. Some data that is missing from this display (but can be found elsewhere) includes ship maintenance costs and empire bonuses and planetary improvements that modify Military / Social / Research spending.

In the screenshot, the spend rate is 53% which results in a Total Active Spending value of 1190bc. Part of this value is used to cover fixed expenses, which cannot be modified from this screen. The fixed expenses are the last six entries in the Expenses column on the right: Maintenance, Leases, GIA, Espionage, Destabilization, and Tribute. The sum of these fixed expenses is 400bc. Ship maintenance is also a fixed expense, but it is included in the category "Military" along with military construction spending. Of the total Military expenditure of 420bc, let's assume 270bc is ship maintenance. We just can't tell the exact value based on this screenshot alone. This brings our fixed expenses up to 670bc.

Remember that Total Active Spending is 1190bc. Of that, we have determined that 670bc is fixed expenses. This leaves 520bc left over for Military, Social, and Research production. This is where the income distribution sliders come into play. The ratios that were set for Military, Social, and Research spending (41% / 18% / 41%) partition the REMAINING spending allowance into planetary production points on a planet-by-planet basis. Even then, the actual values will rarely be equal to the ratios that were set, because planetary improvements change the amount that is spent in each category. If every planet has built a Research Lab, for example, research spending will be greater than military spending even if the military and research ratios are equal. Continuing the example from the screenshot, we would expect to see values close to 213bc / 94bc / 213bc for Military / Social / Research expenses. The actual values are more like 150bc (don't forget to subtract ship maintenance from the Military expenses value) / 94bc / 276bc, which would indicate that more research boosting planetary improvements have been built than military planetary improvements.

Thanx, I still don't see the big picture but that did help, I guess the only way to truly understand it is to play around with the game and I'll be doing that wednesday

~SDC~

This doesn't totally add up, but it's close:

Total income = 1197
Govt Expenditures = 1197 * 53% = 634

So we're spending 634 on military, social, and reseach combined.

Reseach = 634 * 41% = 260 (actual number is 276, why the difference?)

Social = 634 * 18% = 114 (actual number is 94, why?)

Miliary = 634 * 41% = 260 (actual number is 420 -- is ship maintenance included here? If so, that could account for this difference.)

I think you have the wrong idea cause what i've read suggests that gov expeditures have nothing to do with total income. Read post #4 and #5. They got it right I think.

~SDC~