Production and Econ Bonuses Not Working?

from Stardock Forums
I saw one mention of this in the bug list thread, but it's bothersome enough that I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about it. Am I missing something or do the racial and party bonuses for Economics, Military Production, and Social Production not work?

I tested scenarios where I've maxed out the possible bonus for each of these areas, and I see no effect at all. For Production, I see no increase in production levels, no decrease in the time to build something, and no decrease in the cost (in bc) to build it. For Economics, I see no increase in revenue or decrease in production cost. And that's with these things cranked up around +50%, and trying different settings for the taxation and spending sliders. The only change I see is on the Stats screen, which shows the bonus. The rest of the numbers are always the same, with or without the bonus. No benefit.

So, are these things really broken? If not, can someone explain how I can measure their benefit in concrete terms? I'm looking for something more solid than "I know it works but I can't prove it" or "try this and maybe you'll see a difference".
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Ack! Glad I read this before i got too far with the game I was playing (I was playing Federalists). I started a new game playing as Technologists and i don't notice any change in the numbers for my economy or costs to build stuff, so I think your right, bonuses to Economics are a waste of points. Social/military production bonuses look broken too.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I decided to try this out and see what I could learn about Econ Bonuses and Military Production Bonuses.
I concluding that starting the Economy Bonus DOES in fact give you more starting tax income.
However, starting Military Production Bonus DOES NOT give you more starting military production.

My test Scenerios were:
(A) +30 Econ, Fedralist, +1 Speed
(B) +50 MilitaryProd, War, +1 Speed
I restarted (Ctrl N) several times to get a variety of starting planet qualities.

In each case, I set Tax Level to 40% and Spending to 100% (with Military at 100% and Social and Research at 0)

What I found was as follows:

Planet Quality: | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19
--------------------------------------
(A) Military Prod | 16 | 17 | 17 | 18
(B) Military Prod | 16 | 17 | 17 | 18
--------------------------------------
(A) Tax Income | 11 | 11 | 13 | 13
(B) Tax Income | 9 | 11 | 11 | 11

Hope this helps,
- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~
Groupy 2 - Organize multiple applications into grouped tabs on your Windows desktop
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Matt! You're right, Econ is working. Either the 1.01a fixed the Econ bonus problem or (more likely) I had fooled myself by having tax rate set to a level where the difference didn't show. Bummer about the Military Production not working though. I'd have preferred to have been wrong about that.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Have you read the economics article in the Encyclopedia. The calculation is a little complicated because bonuses are sometimes applied to capacity and sometimes to an outright bonus. I'm sure you're not spending enough to be hitting the capacity mark, so you aren't seeing any increase from that.

I don't know if that's the answer. I just know its complicated, and even after reading that I have trouble accurately predicting what the bonus will be.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, I just read it again. Race bonuses to production only affect capacity. This means that the numbers you are seeing are by design.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
To TheFire

The bonuses are to capacity... yes. But if you set spending to 100 percent and spend it all on social production (if that's where you have your racial bonus), you SHOULD see an increased production - and more money spent. Only problem is... you don't.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I did post this to the bug reports thread several days ago.
As hake mentioned, the reason I set spending to 100% in my test cases was to make sure I'm using
all of my capacity.

- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~