State income from civilians

[neofit]

If I understand it correctly, the state creates and upgrades civilian ship designs (whether it's me by hand or the game doing it automatically), then the state gets income from the civilians buying these ships. Do we also get income from civilians retrofitting their ship? I tried to add something trivial, like an extra armor plate to the Light Freighter design and ships started retrofitting to this new design, but I didn't see any income appearing in the Space Port Income revenue field. Maybe it is summed up once a year?

[Bingeling]

Yes, you should get money from civilian retrofits, but I have never payed that much attention to it.

I guess that "forcing" them to add 1 piece of armor is not going to make huge dents in their account...

[neofit]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
I guess that "forcing" them to add 1 piece of armor is not going to make huge dents in their account...

I am not really worried about their accounts, the goal is to have free money for the state coffers.

[Bingeling]

It is not going to be a major income for you either...

If you don't expand way fast, and don't waste massive amounts of money on things you don't need (like those extra colonies you expanded fast), you should not have much problems building a cash buffer on normal or lower difficulty.

Focus on busting pirate bases, colonizing good targets (90%+ quality), and sites that add good (large) star systems to your zone of influence if colonized. Any prospective colony within your capital's circle can wait, spreading population too thinly will not help your economy.