Basic questions about the economy

[becephalus]

So I really am missing some base level understanding of the eocnomy, and a great exmaple would be "Morphic Materials". When I have an asteroid that say has the option for "morphic materials" do I put that on a top level planet, or a mid tier planet. I don't quite understand what the "pressure" applies to.

Also is it important to be utilizing your labor all the time or not? I kind of seems to me like you would rapidly bankrupt yourself if you do. Anyway would love some nitty gritties on the economy/strategy from some experts.

[FourGreenFields]

You can build bases on some asteroids. Costs labour, but not money (iIrc) - good way to keep your labour worlds busy.


Pressure makes your civilians build things. Planets have a pressure cap, beyond which they won't be able to use it (or lose efficiency) - on top of that, they may also be limited by the size of the planet.

Therefor, you can't really say "put morphic on top tier planets", but neither the opposite.
Your powerhouses will often not have a native pressure (some scalable resources don't), and get no bonus from morphic materials - but some do, and those can profit.
If the pressure cap is reached, or the planet is full of buildings allready, you also won't profit much from adding more pressure to it.
But if your "top tier" planet has native pressure, and the capacity to use it, it will generally be best to put it there - megacities give production boni, which applies to that, so you get more out of the morphic material.

[piccolo255]

I always, always, always! put morphics on money planets. Everything else can be bought or conquered if you have enough money :)

[dolynick]

Ok. The easiest way to explain pressure...

You've noticed how your planet surface gets little boxes that are "developed" on it and that it's cheaper to build thing in? If so, then you've also surely noticed that some of them slowly get filled in automatically if you haven't manually build on them already. Pressure is the mechanic that decides what kind of buildings get auto built. For instance, if you have science pressure you might see universities getting auto-built. Different pressures build different things.

Morphics increase the pressure type of the planet itself by 2. That is determined by the type/resource of the planet. You don't have to put it on a "top tier" planet, or a low one. You simply put it on whatever planet type you want to boost the resource on.

Opprinnelig skrevet av piccolo255:

I always, always, always! put morphics on money planets. Everything else can be bought or conquered if you have enough money :)

This generally works out well and is a good plan. Tossing morphics on Medicine, Jewelry or the tier 3 money planet is a good move. I will sometimes also put them on Allondium or the other tier 3 types if I feel I want the little boost. I don't generally use them on tier 1s.

[Juffo-Wup is All]

pressure basically acts as a cap on how many buildings of a certain income type can be built

for example if a planet has 10 "income" pressure, it will attempt to build 10 income generation buildings. if space is lacking it'll replace some with more space efficient but less pressure efficient buildings (the exact ratio varies based on income type). if there's still left over pressure when a planet runs out of space, it just gets wasted.

this is the reason why the larger planets (and particularly Vast Plains/ringworlds/etc) are great as economic tree endpoints: smaller planets simply won't have the free slots to utilize huge amounts of pressure while still having room for other buildings.

as for labor: in a perfect world it wouldn't be wasted. in practice you probably won't be able to utilize all of it, 100% of the time; warehouses can cut down on waste by allowing you to save some for when you need it instead of having it all disappear.

[Juffo-Wup is All]

also, there's another cap on pressure itself, which is primarily based on population but also can be affected by buildings and certain other things.

[forrestomintero]

Something worth remembering: if you have enough money, you can buy things that generate influence/energy/defense independent of pressure, so focusing those might not be the best idea in the long run. Research and money are the most valuable resources, and the best use of pressure where you can help it.
Specifically:
Outposts generate defense, and are relatively cheap. They're also always available to everyone.

Solar engines are similarly very cheap, but can only be built during the power zeitgeist, or if you have the right foundation pick on a custom race (can't remember the name off-hand) honestly I always build these when I can because they give tremendous benefits such as easy use of stellar foundries/planet generator artifacts.

Museums can only be built during the art zeitgeist, and are somewhat pricey, but if you have a decent economy you can build a lot of them all at once, and they don't have maintenance costs. The important thing here is that they cost labor, and don't cost maintenance, so they're best to build on those tier 0 production planets, or if you have production asteroids that you don't mind sending to a random planet for a while. They also have no maintenance cost, and give you an immediate 10 influence when built, plus 1 point of influence gen. They add up heavily when you mass-produce them. In my current game I've been hovering between 75-90% of universal influence stake(part of that is abusing stellar foundry artifacts though)

You can also build labs for research, but the maintenance costs on those can stack heavily if you're not careful, so I prefer to just focus on research pressure (still good if a planet has a crystal surface though. They're heavily discounted there)