Always running out of energy

[FreeMe]

It seems like the single, most important commodity is energy. I never seem to have enough and I have no idea how to stay in the black. Once you've built all the minig stations possible in your empire, then there doesn't seem to be a way to get more "energy". You're done and it's game over.

Are there any tips or tricks?

I thought starbases at points with trade value would generate energy, but they use more energy than they generate, so that was a bust. What's the point of "trade value" anyway?

[ThunderOrigin]

Be economical on what you build early. stations with 2 resource are hardly worth it with terrible Return-On-Investment, especially since they cost 1 energy upkeep, 3 resource is okay, ideally get stations down on 4+ sites. Skip others till your income is higher.
Cherry picking the best mining sites means you will get a better net income to investment ratio and should have more minerals spare for developing your planets. Pops and districts are generally a greater ROI.

[Nightmyre]

The vast majority of your energy should be coming from generator districts. If you find that you're out of energy, there's a good chance it's because you're doing one of the following:

A) Building too many districts early on, which incurs upkeep costs and also potentially results in the AI putting your workers in sub-optimal job assignments
B) Having too many buildings without the base economy to support them - remember, each building not only has its own upkeep, and each specialist not only consumes basic resources (either directly, or indirectly through consumer goods which in turn requires minerals) - but each specialist is also one less worker for the basic job to produce those resources
C) Having too many ships/military upkeep without the economy to support it. Fleets are absolute dead weight if they are not participating in combat, and often can be built up very quickly from scratch. Despite lowered upkeep costs by being docked, they do still add up, and if they aren't docked, they can very quickly bring your energy costs up to an unsustainable level

[Nightmyre]

Originally posted by ThunderOrigin:

Be economical on what you build early. stations with 2 resource are hardly worth it with terrible Return-On-Investment, especially since they cost 1 energy upkeep, 3 resource is okay, ideally get stations down on 4+ sites. Skip others till your income is higher.
Cherry picking the best mining sites means you will get a better net income to investment ratio and should have more minerals spare for developing your planets. Pops and districts are generally a greater ROI.

While true to an extent, the main problem is just that you're limited on influence, so if you just take every system, you may spend longer than necessary grabbing the better ones.

The spaceborne resources shouldn't represent a sizable part of your economy except for very early on. The vast majority of your resources are coming from the workers on your planet. If you're suffering for resources, the place to look first is there.

[Dizzy Ioeuy]

districts

[King Kitty]

Rapid expansion will always put strain on your resources, try to be less fleet-footed about where and when you build, and to what extent. Once you get into midgame, resources shouldn't be an issue if you keep to this general rule. I recommend getting some mods that add megastructures because those can help ease resource strain as well, especially if you do what I do and have an ecumenopolis that produces endless alloys, destroying your mineral income.

[Victor Solomonov]

If you play for machines then yes, it is really tough challenge to balance economy, as those bastards consume way too much energy, but if you play for other races, it is the only resource that keeps growing in production. Of course it all depends on your playstyle. As being said I never had any problems with energy, only in case of machine race.

[adobo]

Don't bother with trade value space resources. Not sure why those exist but they're pretty useless to focus on.

Focus on energy districts first. Space minerals is usually enough till you have a decent pops on planets.

[Legatus Judicum]

Early game is difficult to balance if you seek to expand fast to avoid military conflict. With ~30 systems claimed your eco will run some defficits in more than one ressource (usually energy, consumer goods and food, given that maxing out minerals and alloys is a strong strategy). Just try to use the market and check the job assignments on your planets. From 2250 onwads you will usually enter a boom with surpluses in all areas.
When it comes to trade, it is just a late game thing for most empires. You cant mine it with a station, you need to collect it with a module in your spaceport. Investing 250 alloys just to collect some random 3 trade value is just missmanaging ressources. Trade value gets important later on, but not natural but pop generate. World with some clerk jobs can easily generate more than 100 trade value, which justifies building some tradehubs in a close spaceport.

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Economy#Energy_credits

[FreeMe]

Thanks for the tips, guys

[Exarch_Alpha]

Depending on your map settings terraforming is crucial, so learn well how to get energy.

Trade resources on systems... they are situational. One starbase or two dedicated to trade ok, specially if you can get 15-20 trade or more, but not more than that as anchorages are so important

[Nightmyre]

By far the biggest source of trade will be from your planets later in the game, as you start converting districts to urban ones to provide housing. At that point, you should use a gateway in your home planet system and a few key points throughout your empire, along with a starbase in your home planet system with six trading posts. That'll collect trade throughout your empire with zero piracy.

[AngleWyrm]

I've been building for max population growth the past few games, taking all the species/tech/etc bonuses to pop growth. I've even got a mod that favors the strategy. Part of that strategy is rapid colonization, and so I've built robot construction facilities as my first building everywhere, followed shortly by gene clinics. This I believe has contributed to being negative energy, and fluctuating from month to month. I've been running at -50 to -150 for decades (2220 ~ 2250)

Just now (2236) it's -49 and my 148 population are 110 + 38 robots.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063459746

[stars2heaven]

I'm surprised after so many comments no one has mentioned the efficiency of food production vs pretty much everything else. Because of the worker / production ratio of food you can sell it to the market at a rate that works out to be about as good as if you'd had those workers on generator districts instead. Furthermore, you'll find a lot of AI empires willing to trade food for energy at a 1:1 ratio or better, which makes food more valuable than energy by far when you can trade it this way.

It's ok to be a little in the red if you can make up for it by producing something else more efficiently. Food can be an exceptional source of early-mid game income.

[stars2heaven]

@Anglewyrm Food is your answer, man. Sell some food. I just completed a game myself where I went synth, so machines were always a major energy sink. While energy early on was a struggle to get a lot of, I never had problems being deep in the red at all.

[Damac]

On the left side of your UI there's that pop out list of tabs you can access for different stuff in your game, like tech, ship building and such.

In that list is Markets.

Sell your extra food for energy.