Money disappearing

[fuke]

Whenever I get towards midgame I start mysteriously losing money, as soon as I get to 2k-3k it gets spent and goes back to about 0, becomes impossible to save up for anything. I have automated retrofit off. How do I find out where the money is going??

[fuke]

Finally saved up 7k and it just disappeared and I only had 100 credits left. Come on lmao

[icedude94]

In a game like this, it's hard to figure stuff out without digging into a save.

[Nightskies]

All income is directly deposited into cash reserves over the year, including tax revenue from individual colonies. All expenses are similarly directly taken from cash reserves. Colony support upkeep included, I think. So your expenses and income aren't like a smooth flow of money, its a jittery fluctuation with a general trend, much like a stock market chart, complete with huge sudden drops and bullish jumps.

Cashflow is a mere yearly estimation that doesn't include bonus income.

[fuke]

This feels different though, I know how DW budget works but a few hours into a game, chunks of money just start disappearing like someone is buying ships. It keeps cleaning me out as soon as I get a few thousand. Could it be buying resources from traders maybe?

[icedude94]

If I was in this position, I would have the economy window open that shows your income and expenses and watch the numbers change in real time as it happens.

[Ozone]

In Distant World, your empire is alive; you buy resources, you buy fuel, you trade; your policies may allow automated constructions and colonization. Even retrofitting or repairing your ships costs money.

All these actions drain your treasury, and you have no word in it... unless you go to the policies screen and set everything to manual; then you will have more control over the various flows (it may take a few years to actually stabilize, the game's world has a massive inertia for everything).

Check your Empire's accounting, all credits and debits are detailed there.

[fuke]

I know how the economy works, I played DW:U a lot. The money just keeps disappearing. No ships are retrofitting, all my fleets are set to manual and ordered to remain stationary because they will automatically suicide into a "350 strength" pirate base in my home system that can kill my 2000+ strength fleets without taking any damage. And they still somehow manage to suicide into it every few years forcing a savescum.

Everything set to manual makes no difference on the income.

I looked at the accounting screen, it's not clear at all where it is going. Sometimes there are maintenance or colony expenses, but I tried to turn those off in funding levels and keep a larger reserve, and it saves a bit more money (I was able to save 10k at one point) but then it still spends all the money. My treasury can not rise above 1k for more than a month or it will auto-spend all my money on something.

Really confused how no one else has this issue bc it happens to me every game.

The projected income isn't just slightly off, it's completely wrong. It says I am making +20,000 but my treasury remains stuck at about zero for years because the money disappears constantly.

Maybe it's because I recently took over a primitive world, I know colonies tank your economy early game. But that world became profitable and supposedly gives me +3000 credits now but I still can't save any money.

Maybe it's military refueling with pirates, I don't see my ships refueling off of their bases though.

[Nightskies]

Please upload your save so we can look at what's going on.

[AK_icebear]

I assume its due to state fleets topping up, or state ships retrofitting, or state facilities being built. All of these can be disabled in the policy settings, but if you have any automation on there is a chance the state will spend money for you.

[fuke]

State ships are not retrofitting, as I said they are all on manual. Only have a few state facilities and those aren't retrofitting/building either.

Thanks Nightskies for offering to look at the save, here it is. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pe0Wt1miiwQcBH7eJ00-SLLXeAkVuIou/view?usp=sharing

[Nightskies]

Your automation is set to Default, which means that designs are automatically handled, and you haven't set any designs to manual. Your spaceports are regularly retrofitting- they've done up to 33 times in this run, not counting the second spaceport. It's like that for research and resort stations too.

Though small, in recent times, your empire bought a few thousand credits worth of resources and fuel. I suspect they've been doing that for a while.

Troop recruitment is also automatic. I can see that your empire just queued up another Armored brigade. That's another few thousand credits. The allocated maintenance for troops will allow for a few more brigades, so the AI will build those soon if it can.

Given the empire's very low income, both in cashflow and bonus income, these little expenses are fairly easily draining the empire's reserves year after year.

For tips on how to make more money... if that's what you desire. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948376176

[Klaatu]

I started the same thread in Discussions - it sounds quite similar to the problem I am having:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/0/3828663116762232436/

[fuke]

Thanks so much Nightskies I will definitely utilize your guide! But it's not the divisions or stations though.

Troop construction is automated at the empire level, but both colonies are set to manual so no automated construction is able to occur. I built all those armored divs myself for a planned invasion.

Also the station/spaceport retrofit cost when a new technology comes out is usually tiny (like less than 100 credits per facility usually, and I only have a few of them), and I keep losing all my cash over a 5 year period when no new techs are coming out so the numbers don't add up. I was keeping an eye on the stations in case they were the culprit, but it doesn't seem to be the case, unless the AI is wasting money by switching between alternating designs but I didn't see that either.

I think that I might have Klaatu's problem, my empire is auto-buying luxury resources maybe, not sure.

[Nightskies]

Your most recent station design was a major upgrade between different hulls (ssp2 to ssp3), so that cost a bit more than the others. The total for resources and fuel was over 5k, which alone comes close to zeroing yearly budget

[Ax4711]

SSP2 to SSP3 was 17k or so IIRC, here we have the missing ~20k.