Hello,

I am currently playing a game as the Riftborn. I am including the latest save file so anyone can examine it for themselves and see the exact details I am making reference to.

Dust production dusn't make sense.sav

(Sorry about the typo)

The dust production numbers just don't make sense to me. I am running very low on dust output and I don't think I should be. Please let me list a few things I see.

Empire Approval is at 100% giving me a 30% dust bonus.

Every system is up to level 3 system development which includes Dustcidious Trees. So every member of my populous is getting a +4 dust bonus.
4 of my 6 systems have built Pulvis Production which gives all of their population a +2 bonus (doing a quick check this means only 6 of my 56 population are NOT getting this bonus).
I have what I would consider a very small fleet which costs me ~126 dust/turn.

All of that makes me think i should be swimming in dust, yet I am barely breaking even.

I started to try tracking down the problem. I opened a random system screen (Rasam) to examine the local finances. It says my system dust production is at -6 which intuitively didn't make sense to me. When I hover over it I see a 140 dust production and a 146 cost for star system improvements. Again, the costs just don't seem right. I open the list of improvements to see where the dust is going. It still says my improvements add up to 146 dust but when I count them myself it comes out to 86 dust. Huh?

Okay, I see my mistake in the previous example, I missed the cost of the System Base (60) which was grayed out.

Now what? I have played the game (solitaire) at least a dozen times and I don't ever remember things being this tight financially. When I look at the victory and performance screen I am listed as 2nd in the economy section which would seem to indicate I am doing relatively well compared to my AI opponents.

Can anyone please explain this to me?

Thanks!

I think your right about "just barely getting by on dust". I guess I was hoping that wasn't the case.

Thanks for the advice.

why would you scrap your food production? you can construct a building that totally converts food to industry, its so much better to invest in it than to try to minimize costs.

Pretty sure the food > industry conversion is a final tier tech.  Until you can unlock that tech *AND* build it on the system, there is no real point to having food production > 300 on a system.  My understanding of the 'intended' food progression is:

1) Research and build the tier 1 and tier 2 food improvements as needed to get food production on a system somewhere healthy which I feel is between 100 and 300.

2) The tier 1 ship upgrades also include manpower conversion improvements.  If your systems are greater than 300 food, or you want to slow down growth to avoid overpopulation penalties, or the system is already at maximum capacity, you build one or both of those improvements to curtail food production.

3) If you really want to min/max, after building both manpower conversion improvements, you can demolish food improvements to save on dust upkeep.  I usually only do this if the system has minor populations that produce food on their own.  I also try to maintain happy/ecstatic headroom so that just in case approval goes to content, I don't start losing population units.

4) When you finally reach the endgame and have the food > industry tech in the research queue, add all of the food improvements to your major production system queues in preparation.

Scrapping buildings doesn't feel like an ideal solution which is why I submitted an idea for disabling/mothballing buildings for use later in the game (https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/1414-option-to-disable-system-improvements-remove-instant-scrap).

-HP