What is the number in parens in the title of the Economics window?

[db48x (OP)]

Does anyone know what the amount in parentheses in the titlebar of the economics window is supposed to be? I seem to recall that it was the change in wealth over the most recent increment, but it can't possibly be that. Mine says (-87) right now, but it's been holding steady or going up consistently for the last several years. The wiki doesn't mention this specific number either.

The Wealth / Trade tab says that I have a net income over the last month of 179.2 wealth, which is about 30 per 5-day increment. Over the last three months my income has averaged 35¼, over the last six months it was 64, and so on.

[Froggiest1982]

Does anyone know what the amount in parentheses in the titlebar of the economics window is supposed to be? I seem to recall that it was the change in wealth over the most recent increment, but it can't possibly be that. Mine says (-87) right now, but it's been holding steady or going up consistently for the last several years. The wiki doesn't mention this specific number either.

The Wealth / Trade tab says that I have a net income over the last month of 179.2 wealth, which is about 30 per 5-day increment. Over the last three months my income has averaged 35¼, over the last six months it was 64, and so on.

I am pretty sure it's the real-time change. Furthermore, Your calculation of 30 per 5-day increment is based on a linear model while the amount of wealth spent changes depending on what is being constructed and when and I seem to recall running at different intervals. Only the production runs at 5 days cycles. Finally, you also need to consider civilians: every time they fulfil a contract they generate wealth as well which is added instantly to the calculation if I remember properly.

Obviously, there is a high chance that it's just broken and all the above don't make any sense

[Zap0]

Not sure if that was fixed in 1.12 or not, but it is indeed the delta of wealth from your last increment (or construction cycle?). Only even if you have positive wealth income, your max wealth is capped at 2x your yearly worker income + financial centers (racial wealth). If your wealth goes over that value it is corrected down again, which I presume is the value that gets shown in parens.

[db48x (OP)]

I should mention that my wealth is just under half my annual racial wealth, so I have plenty of room for it to grow. It's generally hovering around that level, not growing very fast.

I decided to write down some actual numbers, in the hope that someone might spot either a pattern or a bug:

Code: [Select]

24,977 (-107)
24,960 (-102)
24,949 (-101)
24,937 (-87)
24,880 (-87)
24,839 (-87)
24,767 (-86)
24,765 (-88)
24,983 (-87) [this increment was interrupted several times, and was probably six or seven days long)
24,940 (-98) [again ~six days]
24,946 (-89) [05:07:15:00]
24,912 (-83)
24,867 (-85) [05:02:00:00]
24,844 (-83)

I'm pumping out new financial centers and construction factories from time to time, so I don't expect the game to give me precise information about the future. It just doesn't look like it correlates to anything in the past either. Or at least not the recent past; perhaps this is how much my finances changed the same week of the _previous_ year; my finances did get go a bit negative not that long ago.

What does it look like in your games?

[Steve Walmsley]

It's the change in wealth since the last construction phase.

[Tree]

Code: [Select]

date           wealth   change  real
16 sep 1965    91,420     
21 sep 1965    91,124    -356    -296
26 sep 1965    90,850    -354    -274
01 oct 1965    90,521    -354    -329
06 oct 1965    90,193    -348    -328
11 oct 1965    89,960    -303    -233
16 oct 1965    89,697    -348    -263I got a bunch of 5 days turns in a row without interruptions.

From the wealth tab:
One month, total income : 5,991.4
Expenditures : 7,714.5
Meaning -1723 over a month which fits the real wealth change (from 91420-89697), but we reach -2063 by adding the values shown by the game in the window's title.

My construction cycle thing is set on 430000 which should be the default since I never touch that, and about 4.98 days.

[db48x (OP)]

It's the change in wealth since the last construction phase.

I guess that means that it isn't calculated correctly.

[Zap0]

If it's supposed to be the change since last construction phase it's quite broken. I've observed similar numbers to what db48x posted, whenever something hits the cap it shows negative numbers despite actually being positive.

Here are some screenshots from my 1.11 game, before and after a construction cycle:

https://i.imgur.com/1OZ4Rt1.png --> https://i.imgur.com/zwfRyJK.png
https://i.imgur.com/HbfUurn.png --> https://i.imgur.com/tSHKq1u.png
https://i.imgur.com/ZIEO9Td.png --> https://i.imgur.com/RhyXEPx.png
https://i.imgur.com/sEcevIm.png --> https://i.imgur.com/d0k26Mg.png
https://i.imgur.com/BD8Rm5f.png --> https://i.imgur.com/XNFPVzb.png
https://i.imgur.com/70EGoDQ.png --> https://i.imgur.com/BDKeRPZ.png

The numbers just don't match up. I thought this being broken was quite obvious and well-known.

[db48x (OP)]

My construction cycle thing is set on 430000 which should be the default since I never touch that, and about 4.98 days.

Interesting side note: when you click the five day button, it adds 432000 to the game clock, notices that an increment has passed at some point during that time, and then calculates how much production happened during the time since the last production cycle. If it gets interrupted and only 2 days pass, then no production is calculated (because it hasn't been at least 430000 seconds since the last one). The next five day increment adds another 432000 seconds, and it then calculates how much production happened over the whole seven days. Thus, we don't really have to care about the exact value of the increment time setting, only about those cases where an interruption caused a longer-than-usual production cycle.

And even then the number should just be current wealth less the wealth at the end of the last production cycle, which ought to be trivial to calculate; the interrupt length shouldn't even come into it.

[db48x (OP)]

froggiest1982 might have the right idea here. Some income and expenses are not added up during the production cycle, but instead happen at more or less random times throughout the cycle. Taxes on civilian trade and payments to civilians for moving installations, for example.

Here's some more data, collected day by day rather than increment by increment:

Code: [Select]

February 22: 24,844 (-83)
February 23: 24,854 (-73)
February 24: 24,864 (-63)
February 25: 24,884 (-43)
February 26: 24,909 (-18)
February 27: 24,826 (-83)
February 28: 24,861 (-48)
    March 1: 24,881 (-28)
    March 2: 24,881 (-28)
    March 3: 24,906 (-3)
    March 4: 24,854 (-83)

In this case, you can see that each day some income comes in, and the number in parens was updated to match. At the end of the production cycle, the new number in parens is calculated, but the income that came in during the cycle is counted as if it was from the previous cycle: 24,861 - 24,909 = -83, sure enough. On the other hand, even that's not perfect; 24,906 - 24,854 ? -83. Perhaps some income came in _during_ that day and therefore doesn't show up in these samples.

Whatever the game is doing, it's not just doing this the obvious way. If it just saved what the wealth was at the time of the last production cycle, it could do a single subtraction and give the right number. Instead it uses the current wealth, which might have been updated at any time during the production cycle, and ends up giving a number that the user can't use to make decisions.

If you really wanted to do this right, you'd save wealth after the dozen most recent production cycles, and then render a sparkline or similar graph in the title bar instead of the single number.

[Tree]

froggiest1982 might have the right idea here. Some income and expenses are not added up during the production cycle, but instead happen at more or less random times throughout the cycle. Taxes on civilian trade and payments to civilians for moving installations, for example.

From the numbers I posted earlier, nothing fits with civilian stuff.
It also really just doesn't fit with new wealth minus old wealth, which would probably make more sense than whatever calculation's happening.

The numbers just don't match up. I thought this being broken was quite obvious and well-known.

A few of those can only be wrong because they already have twice their annual racial wealth and cannot go above that.