Colony Production

COLONY PRODUCTIVITY

Each planets population is used to work the Industry, mines, research facilities, etc that are upon the world. Certain tasks (particularly the construction or scrapping of new/old units) will occupy people on an immediate basis, while others are deemed to be "working" at their task throughout the production period. Any people put to tasks that involve either the construction or scrapping of units in the period between production runs will be considered "employed". They remain "employed" regardless of how many turns you submit in the period between production runs, and cannot be used more than once. On the status section of each of your worlds you will see figures for Unemployed Pop and Unemployed Pop Required (shown as Unemp and Unemp req.). These two figures show how many people you need in order to ensure all of your producing units can be manned for the next production turn, and exactly how much of the population is available for use come the production turn. Ideally, this latter figure will always be smaller than the former figure, otherwise your planet will not produce to its full potential when the next production run is instigated (see below).

Each unit of Industry or mine sited on a planet requires a certain number of population to service it. It does not matter if the unit actually produces or not, it still uses people. At the start of any production run, each unit of industry and each mine is "turned on" and attempts to produce. If the Industry unit has enough raw materials to allow it to work and enough people to run it, then it will produce Construction points in output, otherwise it will sit dormant. Once all the industry has been manned the mines will be operated and will produce the relevant materials, provided they too have enough people to run them. All other population-run units will then be tested.

Two hundred and fifty population from your world are required to man any shipyard built there, so on your homeworld, you will require five hundred people to oversee the construction in both shipyards, already included in the Unemp req figure.

Production is done in the following sequence:-

Colonists are fed
Taxes are gathered
Industry Units (IND5 first, then IND4, IND3, IND2 and finally IND1)
Matter transmuters (MAT5 through to MAT1)
HRM Mines (again, HRM5 through to HRM1)
LRM Mines (as above)
Research bases
Computer complexes
Shipyard Construction
Farms (Normal, Subterranean followed by Hydroponics)

Once all available population has been utilised, nothing further will be produced on that production run. This means that a miscalculation can be very costly; if you have enough free people to man all your industry units, all of your HRM mines but only half of your LRM Mines, then you could find yourself short of materials for the following production run. Also, in this scenario you will find that no research is undertaken on the world and your total planetary defence force might fight at a reduced effectiveness.

Following this progression it should become apparent that for your production to function efficiently, your mines should have produced enough raw materials on the PREVIOUS production turn to allow all of your industry to kick in, and must continue to do so. Therefore, to reach full production (with regard to material needs at least), you will need one and a half times as many HRM Mines and an equal number of LRM Mines as you have Industry units, at your initial tech level of one.

As well as construction materials, your planets will provide monetary funds for your use. As Emperor, you will be able to set a planetary tax rate that comes into effect AFTER the next production run. The tax rate can be anywhere from 1 to 75% and will provide credits based on the population of the planet, however, you must be careful how high you set your tax rate - too high a tax will cause unrest, lost production and some population growth could be lost. Additionally, an empire's treasury left continually overflowing will cause inflation that will in turn reduce the value of your coffers by a significant amount each production turn.

PRODUCTION RUNS

As has already been stated, the production stage of the game is completed by means of a "Production Run". This is a section of the game for which the players don't have to submit any orders at all; everything is done automatically, usually operating on a four-week spread. On every turn you will see a date given for the next production run. Any orders you submit to us before this date will take place before the run is done, while orders after this date can utilise whatever materials and goods are produced during the run. For example, you should know your mines will produce X amounts of HRM and LRM, so this material can be used on subsequent orders.

A production run costs the player nothing at all, unless the player has not submitted any orders for the position over the previous month. If this is the case, then the production run is counted as a normal turn and is charged at 2.50 pounds sterling.

The production run shows how the population and materials have been utilised on each of your worlds (colonies and Homeworld), listing how much of each commodity was used, or remained unused, after each part of the production was finished.

There are also sections of the run that show where certain units used up monetary credits for their utilisation (not many do, but there are some), how much pollution was generated during the production period, how much of it was cleaned up, how much the population increased, if there were any additional factors that reduced the population (deaths due to pollution and disease, overcrowding, etc) and how many people were left unemployed and therefore able to produce tradable goods.

As your people grow you will need to have housing pre-prepared for them. Any growth beyond the confines allowed by the current habitation will be considered to have "died off" due to the lack of adequate shelter.

The production run output is relatively self-explanatory, but since the format of this report changes as the your position grows more complex, it is best not to give a line-by-line explanation of how it actually works.