Resource Usage Question

Maybe your lacking some other material, or it's been sabatouged.

I think its the order of operations, personally.

The deficit shown is based on the net change - whatever you take in that month minus whatever you spend that month. I think that what may be going on is that the game spends and then earns resources ... but I could be wrong.

Lack of population causes a report of lack of resorces as does a population in riot

i have the same thing happen...

i have instances where i have upgraded some ships, still positive on resources, net positive on production, and yet planets report not producing for the turn.

and if i have a negative production, but adequate supplies to cover the net usage, i've still had a ship scrapped occasionally.

- i think the decision is based on usage order- and maybe the resource income from trading comes after all productions are maintainence is paid for?

exactly right

the way its working is that your expence is sucking both your empire production and your storage dry. any shortfall after that will cause your production to stop. after all thats done THEN your trade fills back up your warehouses and the turn compleats so it looks like at the start of your next turn that you didnt use any of your stored goods the previous turn. kinda confusing really, but i can say for sure thats got to be the way it works since building enough storage to hold all your trade stops the shortfall messages.

your empire production and your warehouses combined are the actual numbers that you have to use for production each turn. trade is only really applyed to the NEXT turn since its only added to your empire resources at the end of the turn. and you only get too keep as much as you have warehouse space for. so even if your gaining 100,000 minerals per turn in trade, if you only have storage enough for 50,000 your wasting the other 50,000 totaly.

of corse if you have no trade income then none of this applys and you have to look at other factors.

Something else that could be coming into play is that I don't believe the resources screen takes ship refit costs into consideration when compiling those totals. So be careful with refitting ships!

Another related question that comes up is this: does ship repair cost factor in somehow?

you right it doesnt.

to figure out what you have to spend each turn you would add your empire production to your current stockpile. ignoring trade income totaly.

trade income is only applyed to the next turn, and then you only get as much trade income as you have room to store.

according to the numbers you posted you should be runing a surplus of 12705 (production 51865 + stockpiled 36365 = 88232 available - Maintenance 62402 - Construction Qs 13125 = 12705 positave per turn, with the trade 30841 being dumped into your store at the END of the turn for usage on the next turn.

what im guessing is happening (assuming that you posted the minerals numbers) is that your prolly runing short in one of the other resources. check all of the columns , minerals , food, and radioactive and see if your not runing short in one of them. just add your production and your stockpile and subtract your maintenance and builds que's. ignore trade totaly and see if your in the positave in all 3 types

i ran into this once where i had a huge surplus in minerals and food but wasnt paying attention to radioactive usage and was runing short. took me a few minuts to figure this out.

if thats not the case then id check to make sure that your not using resources in other things per turn like refiting, or your not being attacked by spys, or that one of your space ports isnt cut off or otherwise not working due to damage.

well since both your organics and your radioactivs storage are both full an your mineral storage isnt id still have to look there first.

and is it possable that your upgrading ships? i dont mean you have ships in repair stages after the upgrade, but rather that you have upgraded them that particular turn? as far as i know you arent charged anything for repairs just the initial charge for the upgrade. you get charged a lump of resources when you choose to upgrade that is not reflected in your ballance sheet untill after you do it. even minor upgrades can cost several thousand minerals and even more, ive had cases where an upgrade for a frigate cost me 14,000 minerals. needless to say it sucked my storage dry in no time flat.

outside of that i dont have any more ideas. ive only ever had that trouble when i was spending more per turn than my empire alone was generating and more storage to be able to use more of my trade fixed it. there has to be SOME reason for it though. since ive played atleast 50 full games and countles start and quit games without ever having any trouble with the system that couldnt be explaned one way or another. id have to say it isnt a bug but rather something that we are just missing.

look at the planets that are generating your resources not the ones that are spending them. thats a long shot i admit since a drop in resources due to a lack of population should be reflected in your ballance sheet.

the numbers you posted show that you shouldnt be having any trouble with any planets not getting supplyed. that leads me to think that its a flat out theft or they are used for refiting. neither of wich show up in the ballance sheet.

and im speculating here but i dont think that a problem with a space port would show up on the ballance sheet, after all your still generating the minerals your just not able to shair them with any other planets w/o a space port so they should show up on the ballance sheet as income. check each one and make sure its not damaged and that there is population to man it. as a last resourt build a second one in what ever system is having trouble and see if that fixes the problem. it is possable its a bug ive just never seen before.

Make sure your stockpile/storage is bigger than your costs.
It seems it calculates costs BEFORE it even adds your income into it.

In other words....

Press End Turn
Game spends money from storage reflecting this years costs.
Game stores money from production reflecting this years income to spend next year.

So you are allways spending the previous years income.
Once you get your stockpile over this size, you should be fine.

it doesnt, it will spend your empires production the same year but it WONT spend your trade income.

Press End Turn

game spends storage
game spends empire production

game stores production and trade income to spend next year

I personally thought that it just went through all the planets in sequential order. Planet a has income, planet b spent it all, planet c can't spend any more, planet d has income, planet e spends it.

it doesnt since the few times ive had the issue my starting planet was one of the ones runing out, and since i dont change the line up on my starting planet untill late mid game usualy its generaly one of my better producers.