I dont understand how the "system dust production" works in this game.

[Rogue187]

I have no indication as to how im going negative 40 "system dust production", or clue to what even dust production is even effected by and how much. I just dont get it, everything else such as ship maintenace, and so on i do understand and get, but "system dust production" its like what the f**k effects that, and how come i cant see what, and how much its effecting it? Am i missing something?

[Lack of Stuff]

System dust production is a product of your system improvements (some of which produce or cost dust to maintain), and you can see them. There are a crapton of improvements so I'm not going to list them. At baseline each planet type also produces a certain value of dust per population unit but once you actually have an empire going it's not the main source of dust.

[Rogue187]

So increasing the population on my planet through upgrades would increase the amount of dust i get? Also does researching affect how much dust is being used by any chance too?

[Lack of Stuff]

Increasing population will increase dust produced but if you don't manage your systems correctly you will still have negative values for whole system output. Researching takes science and only science. However, you can't get improvements to increase your dust without research.

[Rogue187]

Ok cool, that was something i didnt understand as i am new to this kind of game (for some reason i thought increasing the production of my planet would help, but apparently its food that does the trick). Thanks for the help.

[Lack of Stuff]

FIDS are not really mixed.

- Science is solely for your research and does not stack, so always be researching.
- Food determines how many turns it will take for a system to get another population unit.
- Dust is just your gold.
- Industry determines how many things you can build (system improvements, ships, planet specialization)

There's also manpower but that's kinda different. Later on you can get research that can convert some of your industry into Food, Dust, or science.

[freelance47128]

Production is still important as it is what determines your Planet's building speed, but the main source of dust is the heroes you do have .. have their perks dumped into +Dust, science, production & food, the Hero you have for your Fleet... more dmg, HP & Cost Reduction,, there are but the biggest thing is just watch what your building ... spaming out ships & buildings may be fine until you have a massive negaitve income, Techs for Use & throw fleets are Key for war's,, use them only for that war then sell them in Friendly Turf for Dust Back. also for the systems you do colonize make sure the incomes will be worth the cost of expanding ( ex. Multilpe colonizable planets pref with Stat Resouces & Lux) ,, unlike Civ where massive armies turn the tide, Tech will turn the tide & knowing how to use it ,, Use torpedoes & Lazers sit at max Range & win. Build ships in sysyems with one building that gives a ♥♥♥♥ ton of XP to new ships,,, watch as ships that as Rookies start with 600ish HP to vetren's having 2k+ HP on an Accerator (base Offensive ship)

[Gilmoy]

Yes, dust matters. High upkeep costs will drain the fun out of your first few playthroughs, until you appreciate how nice it is to not be broke. If you don't understand building +dust improvements and keeping an eye on your upkeep costs, then welcome to an Amplitude game! :) (Even for those of us from ES1, ES2's upkeep costs were a bit of a surprise/shock, and we're all updating our strategies to compensate.)

Briefly, Amplitude uses the same math for all of FIDSJ, across all of their games. (I use J for influence :) There are no special rules. If you hover over the right places, you can eventually deduce how the math works. (ES2 update 1 seems a tad better at explaining the numbers in popups than EL or ES1.)

For example, your system dust total can be computed as:

~ Dust = SUM[each planet p] [(p's Dust per pop) * p's population ] + p's local "+Dust"
~~~~~ + all flat "+Dust" bonuses affecting this system

The D portion of a planet's FIDS base value is "Dust per pop". All effects (planet-only, system-wide, or global) that say "+x Dust per pop" stack with this. Add all of those effects up, and you get a final FIDS score. Multiply that by the actual population, and add in all local bonuses (usually these are only from racial traits of population actually present), and that's the total FIDS displayed above each planet in the system view. Hover over any line to get a breakdown of the effects.

Now for the system as a whole, add up all colonized planets' final FIDS horizontally, and then add in all flat "+x Dust" bonuses. (Ignore "+ per pop" because they've already been baked into the preceding.) Bonuses per system include system-wide effects (system improvements, Hero governor, blockade penalty, maybe events that specifically target one system) and global effects (laws, events, expansion penalty, ...) Hover over the D score in the system's FIDS and it'll popup a breakdown.

Finally, your empire-wide Dust +/- score is given by SUM(all systems) - SUM(all upkeep), plus other global effects like trade routes or maybe dust-per-turn treaties. Hover over that and it'll show you what's coming from where.

The other components FI_SJ use exactly the same procedure. (J = influence :) If you're running short on dust, just tweak your systems (or your early-game strategy) to produce more dust.

- Every ship, fleet, and system improvement drains dust upkeep. The costs are quite steep (even compared to ES1, so we're getting mildly shocked too), e.g. even the "necessary" early-game system improvements are running -4 dust each. Build just a few of those and you'll exhaust your homeworld's naked dust output. So ... research and build some dust system improvements, set a few Dry planets to dust specialization (and actually move some population there, or it's not helping you), and sometimes choose to colonize the dust-heavy planet even tho it sucks in FI_S.

- When deciding between improvements (or skills, laws, etc.), assess the difference between "+X Dust" constant bonuses and "+X Dust per pop" bonuses. Early improvements, and things like Settlements, often give the constant "+X" bonuses. These can be must-have gamechangers early on, when they outweigh your pop-based contributions. The "+ per pop" bonuses have small effect early on, when your pop is low, but grow with your pop (and eventually dominate?). Later on, you'll choose systems based on this, e.g. a system with only 1-2 planets might never be worth the bother of building up the "+ per pop" improvements, but a system with 4-5 big planets will make the "+ per pop" path a winner.

- When you have 2+ colonies in a system, drag-and-drop your population between planets to maximize their racial trait bonuses, or to shift your output. For example, you should deliberately colonize the 3/3/18/2 planet just because it produces that whopping +18 Dust per pop. Then when you need to raise cash in a hurry for a few turns, move some pop from other planets onto that one. With good planning, "imbalanced" systems (i.e. those whose colonized planets have wildly different FIDS scores) can give you nimble response to adjust as needed.

As an exercise, pause one game and hover over one system's planets (when you have 2+ colonies thereat), and figure out all of your +Dust bonuses, until you understand the numbers. You need to do this only once to gain a sense of the math (but you should do it at least once, or the other players/AI will out-plan you). We loves spreadsheets!

To summarize: In Era 1, you gotta spend at least 1 tech (and maybe 2-3) on dust techs. They're just too good, and you'll starve without them. (Play, starve, nod, adjust.)

[Lack of Stuff]

Once you start snowballing your empire and make trade companies you will have more dust than you know what to do with. I think one of my late game Vodyani is sitting at 327,000 dust per turn.