Private sector running out of cash...

[TheSAguy]

I’m not sure why my private sector does not have any cash on hand, and is in fact going into a bigger and bigger negative each year, even though they have a positive cash flow.
What am I missing here?

I currently have my tax at 20%, but even at 0% they just can’t seem to get any cash on hand. I buy pirate protection as soon as they attack.

I’d appreciate it if someone could possibly look at my save and see why. I’m using the extended civ mod.

Save: Save

[Keston]

The usual reason seems to be building a lot of spaceports (or other structures) that require a larger merchant marine, and paying for the expansion exhausts private funds for a time.

EDIT: I should mention that the boom in private spending can be stopped by reducing or turning off the AI's ability to build private ships and bases Can obsolete all or many designs for a while, then change settings to manual to avoid auto upgrades and retrofits. Return settings as desired.

[TheSAguy]

But this is a new game, I don't even have another colony, I'm just starting to expand to the next star with a few mines.
In my previous game, the private sector was making 300K a year, but yet had a negative cash on hand of 4 Million...

What are they spending the money on and why can't I get it to be positive...

[Airpower]

The private sector pays all the maintenance for resorts, gas and mining bases, gas and mining ships, freighters, passenger ships, and... I think that's it.

They also pay fuel for the above.

A major source of private sector expenses could be if you have expensive mining bases (meaning with lots of weapons or armor), or if you have constructors set to Automate (especially if there are a lot of constructors). Check your gas / mine bases to ensure they're stripped down to the essentials. Put some solar panels on them so the fuel costs are low. Also check how many bases have been built. You should be shooting for 1-3 (or so) sources of each strategic good, and 1-2 sources for up to 10 luxury goods.

[Airpower]

Are you running any mods? I couldn't load your save game.

[Tcby]

He is running distant worlds extended.

[Kilravock]

I think he should try a new game without any mods and set his homeworld quality to a higher level. Maybe try something other than prewarp too. See if it still happens then.

[TheSAguy]

Thanks for the feedback.
As Tcby said, I'm using the MOD: Distant Worlds Extended mod that has the 40 civs.

ORIGINAL: Airpower

The private sector pays all the maintenance for resorts, gas and mining bases, gas and mining ships, freighters, passenger ships, and... I think that's it.

They also pay fuel for the above.

Correct, but after these expenses they still have a positive cashflow. For some reason they are losing money, even with a positive cashflow. I have messages on for Civilians being attacked and that's not happening.

See Screenshot:



So I started a new game and this time I played as the Wekkarus. They have the large economy bonus. I played exactly in the same way as I did with the Quameno and have none of these problems.
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[Aeson]

If you just recently put up your first spaceport, the private sector will order a fairly large number of ships at that point. Also note that the private sector essentially buys mining stations from you, as it seems that when construction starts on a mining base the private sector's cash on hand falls by the cost of the station while the state cash on hand jumps by the cost of the station. If you were using the computer's designs for the mining stations, the 11 in the Quameno game probably cost the private sector about 50K, maybe a bit more if resources are expensive (if resources are very expensive, the mining stations could have cost the private sector two or three times as much as the 50K estimate); if you made a custom designed heavily fortified mining station, the 11 you have in the Quameno game could have cost much more. Additionally, design changes which cause the private sector to retrofit its ships and bases will also take money away from the private sector as they pay the state shipyards to perform the upgrade work.

I would also point out that it seems that the small freighter design in your Quameno game is much more expensive than the small freighter design in your Wekkarus game, though this may be a result of taking the image at a later point in the game when you presumably have hyperdrives and perhaps a size upgrade, or a few more useful components to add to your designs. Why exactly your Quameno game's private sector is so broke, I could not tell you; you'd have to keep an eye on what the private sector is doing and how its cash reserve is looking in order to see what the cause was. However, high ship costs, retrofitting said expensive ships (especially if you've just had a string of retrofit jobs ordered by the computer adding a single component, retrofitting, adding another component, retrofitting again, etc), buying fuel, and buying mining stations are all potential causes of negative cash on hand.

[Kilravock]

Aeson seems on point with the expense of the private sector ships and bases overwhelming the income and cash reserve the private sector has on hand. The the private sector is over building and going broke from not only the maintenance costs and taxes, but from building and retro fitting. Your economy, that is your home world can't support what the AI is programed to do.

What setting is the quality of your homeworld/starting system? I know for a fact that Excellent will have your private sector swimming in cash in a short time. Normal gives a challenge without killing your economy. Harsh makes it difficult to build or colonize anything until your homeworld's population and development/culture grows large enough. On that setting you may have to delay building a star port for a awhile to prevent the AI from building ships or just have very low taxes and not upgrade ships.

[TheSAguy]

I'm playing on very hard, with my home system on Agreeable. (One above Normal)

The private sector cashflow is positive, so maintenance is not the problem, so it must be them retrofitting. Since my tech is extremely fast, this must happen a lot for them. When I have some time, I'll start a new game and turn off re-design and upgrade for the Private sector and see how that goes.

Thanks for all the feedback!

[Aeson]

The private sector cashflow is positive, so maintenance is not the problem, so it must be them retrofitting.

Don't forget the fuel costs, especially if you don't yet have energy collectors to take care of their power requirements while idling. Burning around the home system, especially if you don't have a convenient source of Caslon (or Hydrogen, if you've already obtained NovaCore reactors as Quameno or fusion reactors as anyone else despite not having expanded much beyond your home system) or a hyperdrive, can get fairly expensive as your freighters need lots of fuel for each leg of the journey. One way of reducing private sector fuel costs in the early game, illogical though it may seem, is to not build any mines other than on bodies in close proximity to your homeworld (e.g. your homeworld's moons, or the gas giant your homeworld orbits, or the other moons of the gas giant your homeworld orbits), as this will keep whatever freighters your private sector builds from taking long cruises to the other side of the system to pick up a load of steel or something like that while burning 300 fuel (240 credits at minimum fuel costs) to get there, though you can't do anything like that about the mining ships. Alternatively, you can mark all the private sector freighters and mining ships as obsolete before your spaceport goes up and they won't build anything until they have a non-obsolete design to work with, allowing them to build up a larger cash reserve or allowing you to tax them a bit more heavily.

Also, you cannot prevent the private sector from automatically retrofitting its ships, if it has the money to do so and a new design to retrofit its ships to. Private sector ships and stations are always on automatic upgrades. You can of course prevent them from having a new design to which they could upgrade their current ships by controlling their designs manually.

[TheSAguy]

So I played a little last night, had the private sector ships and bases totally on manual upgrade and cash was not a problem!
Quameno research must be too fast for the AI to handle the way I play.

[TheSAguy]

So I spoke to soon…

It happened again. [:@]

I had the private sector on fully manual control and all their ships and bases were just the essentials, with a shield and some armor so they could take a hit or two.

With one system totally under my control, mining all planets, my private sector had about 500K on cash and 15 ships.
As soon as I expand to a second colony and some close by start to mine, they start to lose cash.
At this point they have about 50 ships. From this point the cash on hand goes deeper and deeper into the negative.
I realize that there will be an initial drop in cash as they buy new ships for the expansion, but it keeps dropping even though they don’t buy anymore ships. I stopped expanding hoping things would stabilize.

Cashflow is positive throughout this process. It never drops.
I even made all the private sector ship designs obsolete, so in theory they could not build any more ships, but still they go deeper and deeper into the negative cash on hand.

Recap:
• They have a positive Cashflow.
• They have cheap ships and bases. (All with energy collectors to save fuel.)
• Upgrades are on manual, so they should not be upgrading over and over.
• Even after making all private sector ships obsolete they still keep losing cash.

Where is all the money going?? (This is like an African Democracy…)
This is really game breaking for me and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I REALLY need so help [8|]

[Aeson]

How many mining stations have you ordered recently? Each time a construction ship starts building a mining station, the private sector pays for it. If you just ordered up 10 mining stations that each cost 50,000 credits, you just sent your private sector a 500,000 credit bill.

How much is fuel costing you? Fuel costs are not considered when computing cashflow, and instead reduces the cash reserve. Energy collectors, by their description, do not help ships that are moving, and usually right around the time you get a new colony you'll see rather few idle freighters as they're all trying to bring the stores on the new colony to an acceptable level. If you're using the Warp Bubble Generator, even very short trips can have rather high fuel costs due to how slow the drive is and how much energy it requires (a Warp Bubble Generator requires ~10 fuel just to travel a single system diameter, compared to about 1 fuel for the Gerax Hyperdrive to do the same). Even the better hyperdrives can still leave you with rather large fuel costs, which can drive your private sector's cash reserve negative especially if your private sector's cashflow is rather low (even if positive). Keep an eye on the fuel costs - that's a year-to-date value that's been subtracted from cash on hand, not something that affects the cashflow.

[TheSAguy]

Thanks Aeson,
I'm going to start a new game this afternoon and will document my progress a little better.
What concerns me is that after each expansion, I wait a long time before doing the next, so things should even out.
I also don't build 10 bases at once. I only have two constructors, so that should not be the problem.

Let's say it is fuel that's the culprit. Do I solve that by just having a lot of Caslon mining stations?

[Aeson]

Let's say it is fuel that's the culprit. Do I solve that by just having a lot of Caslon mining stations?

Building more gas mining stations is a potential solution, but will only help if caslon is expensive or if the new mining stations will (significantly) reduce the travel distance required for refueling. If caslon is already 0.8 credits per unit and the gas mines are all close in to your colonized systems, adding more gas mines likely will not help.

The other thing you can try to do is improve the fuel efficiency of your freighters. Look at them, get an idea for how much they carry on each trip, and design your cargo capacity around that level rather than creating larger designs that make runs while carrying far less than they have the capacity for. Strip off unnecessary components that add to static energy requirements or force you to have additional habitation modules and life support units. Use more fuel efficient engines or hyperdrives. Make sure your ships have energy collectors to cover their energy requirements while idling.

[TheSAguy]

Okay, I give up. My private sector only has 7 ships and I have 8 mining stations in total. (2 of the 3 gas are on Caslon)
Cash-flow is Cashflow is +62K, yet they are still losing money each turn.

Here is my save: Save Game
Could someone please, PLEASE tell me why...[&o] I'm running the Ext Race mod.

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[feelotraveller]

Is your private sector buying a lot of resources? If you don't have 'sufficient' units of a given type of resource the private sector will buy them from independents and other empires. I'm not sure that they can buy when in negative cash but it's possible. Select your freighters one by one and see if they are headed to or from an independent, or other empire colony. If so check the cargo of the ones on the return journey to see how much and what they are carrying. That said 400k+ would be a lot of resources...

Unfortunately I can't look at your savegame since I do not have the mods you do. Best bet if you want someone to look at a savegame is to make the game in vanilla and then just about everyone will be able to open it.

(If the bug does not replicate in vanilla then you know it's mod specific...)

[Tcby]

I'll check your save today...hopefully the answer is straightforward

If you have any earlier saves please also upload those. Probably autosaves.