All my eggs in one basket

Stacking all your economy or manufacturing bonuses in one place is a bad idea in general. The reason for this is that there are soft caps on both based on planet quality, and once those are hit it takes a lot of effort for a small amount more gain.

That is, say you have a class 24 (post-enhancements) Earth, which has a base production capacity of 100IU. With its various wonders and regular buildings and the nearby starbases you have a manufacturing bonus of, say, 400 percent, which isn't at all out of the realm of possibility. This means you'd expect to be getting 500 IU out of it, of which 1/3 of the bonus, or 133 IU, would be free. However, because of the caps, you're likely to be closer to 325 or so. The reason: bonus production is capped at 3xPQ for a total of 72 IU, and paid production at 10xPQ or 240 IU. 72+240=312...but the caps are soft, and so the added bonuses past there might get you just a bit further.

-EtherMage


~SDC~

On the other hand, say you had 2 class-24 planets each with 100IU base and 250% manufacturing bonuses (again, obtainable with the appropriate combination of standard buildings, wonders, and production starbases). Then each you can produce about 640 or so IU between them. If you had instead merely not augmented the second planet, say it only had a 100% bonus and you used the rest of the stuff on Earch to get up to 400$...then you'd only end up with 512 IU by last post's calculations.

Economy bonuses are even more important to spread because the cap is only 4xPQ for tax income from a planet.

-EtherMage


~SDC~

Help me understand these production numbers in relation to the caps you mentioned. I've yet to reach a 100IU base, in fact my base keeps going down as I build improvements in the sector.

Sol V - PQ 31
Military 47 + 121
Social 62+162
Research 206+607
7 Production starbases in the sector.