Credits[]
Credits represent revenue gained from taxing your population. The rate at which you gain credits can be improved upgrading your planets with additional Population Infrastructure. You can also gain additional income by building a network of Trade Ports. Certain Research projects can also affect your credit income. Additionally, you can also obtain credits by attacking factions with bounties placed on them.
Calculating Income[]
- Each unit of population pays 0.025 credits/sec. It takes 40 population to give you 1 credit/sec.
- Each trade port gives you 1 credit/sec, plus bonuses for your longest trade route. See the Trade Port article for details.
- Planets lose you credits until you upgrade them. The amount varies for each planet type.
Resources[]
Here, "resources" means metal and crystal, as opposed to credits. Most rules are the same for metal and crystal extraction, but there are a few differences.
General Rules for both Metal and Crystal[]
- Your extractors yield 0.40 resources/second at planets with 100% allegiance, 0.20 per second at 50% allegiance, etc.
- Extractors at a UCGW yield 0.53 metal/sec, REGARDLESS of distance from homeworld (allegiance). They are effectively stuck at 133% allegiance, higher than an Advent homeworld with Allure of the Unity (120%).
- All extractors, even the ones at UCGWs, are subject to mining research. If you have the full 40% research, an extractor at a planet with 100% allegiance yields 0.56 resources/second (0.40*1.4). A UCGW extractor will yield 0.75/s (0.40 * 4/3 * 1.4). (If you're checking your game's numbers, see SoaSE's rules for rounding.)
- Each refinery or Resource-Focused Trade Port earns you additional resource income; see the Orbital Refinery page for details.
Differences between Metal and Crystal[]
- While most everything requires all three types of income (credits, metal, and crystal), metal is favored for objects (ships, structures, and infrastructure), while crystal is favored for research. High-tech orbital objects favor more crystal than metal (e.g., research structures, Phase Jump Inhibitor, etc.). Costs for research can be seen at Research Overview.
- When performing resource extraction research, metal research is always cheaper (less Civ labs needed) for Advent and TEC. Metal and crystal research is combined into one topic for Vasari, though. See the research table below.
- While there are both Expert Metal and Expert Crystal Miner Planet Bonuses, Expert Metal Miners can be found on Volcanic Planets, but Expert Crystal Miners can't be found on Ice planets. The first level of Exploration on a Volcano planet might be a godsend, if you're starving for metal. But the reverse is not true, if you just got an Ice planet and are starving for crystal.
Income Modifiers[]
Rates of income are governed by several things:
Allegiance[]
The planet's allegiance level directly affects tax and extractor income. Thus, because Culture increases allegiance 10%, it also increases income 10% (a fixed 10%, relative to an absolute 100%; not +10% relative to the planet's current income). In huge maps with a lot of systems at 25% allegiance, this culture bonus amounts to a 40% increase (35/25=1.40) for the 25% planets for all three types of income. Likewise, the Advent's Allure of the Unity can greatly increase income for a large empire. This is of much more concern on a "centralized" map with one star and a huge number of grav wells. It is much less a concern on smaller maps, or de-centralized large maps with planets close to a lot of stars. (Move your Homeworld as close to a star as possible, in this latter case.)
As stated above, all uncolonizable gravity wells (gas giants, plasma storms, etc.) with extractors effectively have a fixed allegiance of 1.33 (4/3), which causes them to extract resources even better than a homeworld with both culture and Allure of the Unity - even though their allegiance might've otherwise been 25%!
Research[]
All races can research Civ tech in order to increase extractor output; it can be increased up to 40%. There is no research to increase tax income per se, but you can research planetary population increases.
The three races' extractor research tracks differ somewhat:
- Advent and TEC separate metal and crystal; each resource has 3 topics to research of 2 levels each. Each of these 6 levels increase production by 6.67% (6 * 1/15 = 2/5 = 40%). To get both resources to 40%, they must research a total of 12 levels (2 resources x 3 topics x 2 levels).
- The Vasari research metal and crystal together. They have 4 research topics, also with 2 levels each, for a total of 8 levels at 5% each to reach 40% for both resources.
Total research costs to reach 40% for both metal and crystal for the races are:
Grand Totals for 40% Or, Average Cost for 5% Increase (Grand Totals / 8) -------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Race Credits Metal Crystal Credits Metal Crystal ---- ------- ----- ------- ------- ----- ------- Advent 11800 1750 2850 1475 219 356 TEC 9800 1250 2100 1225 156 263 Vasari 8800 1400 2250 1100 175 281
As you can see, the Advent definitely costs more to get both 40% bonuses, plus they need 12 research levels. If you average together TEC and Vasari, Advent costs about 30% more than them. It's not a big problem, but at least now you know it's been looked at.
TEC and Vasari are roughly equal - TEC needs more credits, but less metal and crystal. But don't forget - the Vasari only need 8 research levels, not 12. Still, Vasari's last research topic needs 7 labs, the highest of all races. (Advent needs 6 labs and TEC needs 5.)
Planetary Bonuses[]
Asteroids and Volcanic planets can have Expert Metal Miners, and Asteroids and Desert planets can have Expert Crystal Miners. These increase the extraction rate by 50% for their resource. There is also a bonus called Roiders Outpost on Asteroids and Dead Asteroids that increases metal extraction by 20%.
Putting it all together[]
Credits[]
Planetary credit income is only affected by allegiance. (Trade Ports work differently; see their article.) The base rate is 0.025 credits/second per population. Let's take a look at some examples:
- For a simple example, a planet at 100% allegiance with 100 population gets 2.5 credits/second.
- A cultured, Allured (120% allegiance) Advent Terran homeworld with 322 people (280 x 1.15, max Advent research for Terran planets) gets 9.7 credits/second income. (Plus 4 for being homeworld, for a total of 13.7 c/s.)
- A cultured TEC Terran homeworld with 364 people (280 x 1.30, TEC Terran research) gets 10.0 income (plus 4 for homeworld is 14.0 income). Notice how TEC actually gets a little more than Advent with Allure in this example, because their additional 15% population for Terran planets gives a little more edge than the +10% from Allure.
- A TEC Terran planet with 364 people at 35% allegiance only gets 3.2 credits/second. It's fourth population level ("190 -> 280") has cost 750c 225m 225c, but only adds 117 people (247 -> 364), for 1.0 c/s additional income. It will take 12.5 minutes (750 seconds) to pay off the 750 credits alone, nevermind the metal and crystal.
In a tight game, you might want to think twice before buying those upper population levels, for planets at 25% or 35% allegiance. You spend the same fixed cost for the planet upgrade, but get far less in return, at low allegiance.