Actual economic depression!

[Thiosk (OP)]

I know going negative financially isn't TOO terrible, but I refuse to do so and instead cut services and government functions (I guess my government is run by some sort of violent Ron Paul).  I have successfully created an industry bubble and depleted my entire cash reserves.  While I'm able to research at 100%, fuel refining has been halted, shipyard expansion has been set to zero, and I am running at 50% industrial capacity.  This is the second year of the depression.  In response I'm putting up a financial world-- 150 financial centers hasn't put a dent.  At capacity, a 5 day cycle costs about -500 to -1000 credits (cash money dollars) per 5 day construction cycle.

I've opened up three new colonies to move infrastructure around now that most of my colonies are terraformed, to spur the civilians to do something productive.  Including a terrestrial planet with 30 million sorium at .9 accessibility.  Guess where my empire's refinery world will be located?  Woo!

[scoopdjm]

I hope your colonies revolt and become their own empire, in any case you'll never make it out alive,

[TheDeadlyShoe]

IMO, Financial centers arent even worth building for the most part. They take a way long time to pay off at standard wealth rates - so in a very real sense the money you put into them is what's causing the crisis in the first place. Heh. Research into wealth improvement does improve their return... but still, you're looking at like 10 years to pay themselves back.   Good return over the very long turn, but financial crisis is mostly a problem for the first 10-15 years of an empire.

I think part of the problem is that civilians are only sorta profitable without very short runs (like earth-mars).  

[Thiosk (OP)]

I've noticed this too.  What caused my income to dry up was completing terraforming on a series of worlds without opening up new avenues of colonization to drop more infrastructure.  The question becomes: should one ever terraform beyond colony cost 2?!  If it is a financial disadvantage to do so?  Interesting concept.  Perhaps civilian trade goods shipping needs a boost for terraformed worlds!

There are two major reasons for my crisis: I geared my civilization for astonishingly fast industrial development, and ZERO civilian mining centers.  Those are actually important wealth makers early game-- got my first one just last night-- i must be 25 years in or so.

As for financial centers, the world I talked about that I converted to a finance world had zero function.  No minerals, only suitable for colonization.   The other two worlds in the system are a massive mining installation (standard mines, 1500 of them) and a people farm that just exports citizens with a huge +pop bonus on the governor.  The problem with my depression (which is ongoing, incidentally) is that my massive investment in construction factories at the homeworld far outstripped the ability to tax... but I want that production to get the mineral output really high (i'm burning through about 100k corundium per year at full capacity; about 3000 construction factories).  

This little wealth world has 20 m construction workers (400 factories)  They pop out just under 1 financial center per five day cycle. producing new centers just a bit faster than it produces workers to fill them.  Now it has just over 20 million financial sector workers, and its generating almost as much wealth per year as the homeworld... with 15% of the population (150 million versus 1.1 billion).  Its almost like I captured an alien homeworld, wealth wise.  Given the slow rate of growth of civilian populations, I think one of these worlds is a very sound investment as soon as you can afford to divert the resources.  Since you cannot move them, its definatly a diversion of resources-- never put them on a world used for production because you don't want to waste those citizens working finance.

[Arwyn]

I had similar issues in my last game. On my current game, I focused on getting infrastructure on planets quickly, to get the base populations up. I also left a large number of asteroids in Sol for the civies, for the free money. Lots of asteroids with moderate to low concentrations are pretty good for this.

Spreading out earlier also gives the civie shipping lines something to do. My current game has four lines running cargo and colonists, which has been a big help, since it lets me keep my empire freighter and colonizer numbers down and focused on specific tasks, while the civies handle grunt lifting via contracts and "freebie" colonization.

I do build financial centers when I have free cycles, but as TheDeadlyShoe mentions, they ONLY pay off in the long term. I have had them save my butt though in two previous games. At 25 years in, they can be pretty helpful to offset large scale building or loss of smaller colonies due to bad guys.

[Rawb]

I found that financial centers actually really helped me early in my current game where I couldn't run everything I wanted without going into debt. Now I have 17 on Earth so I can keep going positive.

[ExChairman]

Well tested by terraforming Mercury and Venus, placed 26 million each on the planets, started by generating some 900 million each, after a year up to around 1500 million each... And growing.... Had a deficit of around 500 a months but now up to +1100... More plantes with only population will give you money, but you need money to terraformers and emplacement of population...

Here is my terraformer, got some 20 of these brutes around now... And yes I have only run into 3 Precursor systems, 1 is cleansed the 2 others are at my edges so I dont bother with them yet so my navy is small....

Cromwell class Terraformer    553,100 tons     4953 Crew     20401.2 BP      TCS 11082  TH 12500  EM 0
1127 km/s     Armour 10-600     Shields 0-0     Sensors 24/24/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 230    Max Repair 500 MSP
Terraformer: 20 module(s) producing 0.1 atm per annum

Solid Core Anti-matter Drive E0.2 (25)    Power 500    Fuel Use 2%    Signature 500    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 550,000 Litres    Range 89.3 billion km   (916 days at full power)

CIWS-400 (10x10)    Range 1000 km     TS: 40000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Sensor TH1-24 (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-24 (40%) (1)     Sensitivity 24     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  24m km