¶ Finances
The Finances view (under Government → Finances) is your empire's balance sheet. It's a read-only dashboard — every income source, every expense line, your current credit balance, and a history of the weekly net for the last several weeks.
You don't control anything from this view directly (per-planet tax is set on each planet itself), but it's where you go to understand why your credits did what they did last week.
¶ What the view shows
The Finances view is split into:
- Current balance — your
credit total right now. Green if positive, red if negative. - Balance history — a bar chart of your weekly net (income minus expenses) over the recent past, so you can spot a trend.
- Income / expense categories (collapsible) — six categories you can click into for a detailed breakdown.
¶ The six categories
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Planets | Every building across your empire that contributes credits — Financial Hubs, AI Economic Hub, etc. — and every building that costs credits (the Portal Gate's −100/week jumps out). Shows quantity per building type, per-building credit effect, and total. |
| Ministers | Per-week salaries of every minister you've appointed. See Cabinet & ministries. |
| Ore Trade | Every active ore conversion you've set up in Resources. Each one costs quantity × the target ore's trade conversion cost per week — higher-tier ores convert at a much higher credit rate. |
| Ship Maintenance | The per-week cost of every ship in your empire, broken down by ship design. Shows ships in production separately from ships in use, so you can see what a new wave will cost when it lands. |
| Spies | Salaries of your active offensive spies. Counter-spy missions are free — only spies you've sent out cost credits. See Spies. |
| Command Hierarchy | Fleet overhead. Below 250 ships in a single fleet this is zero. Above 250 it ramps exponentially — a 500-ship fleet costs roughly 270 credits/week of "command overhead", and the curve gets very steep above that. There's an interactive chart in the detail view that shows the curve. |
¶ Taxes
Tax is set per planet from each planet's population panel (not from the Finances view). Each planet has its own tax rate, 0–100% in 10% steps. New planets default to 33%.
Tax generates credits roughly proportional to the planet's population:
credits/week ≈ ceil(population ÷ (100 ÷ tax%))
So a planet of 1,000 population at 50% tax earns 500 credits/week.
¶ The 10% threshold
Tax above 10% isn't free — it shaves a proportional cut off both production and science on that planet:
| Tax | Production penalty | Science penalty | Tax income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–10% | 0% | 0% | Light |
| 20% | −20% | −20% | Moderate |
| 33% (default) | −33% | −33% | Steady |
| 50% | −50% | −50% | High |
| 80%+ | Crushing | Crushing | Maximum |
It's a deliberate trade-off: the more you tax, the more you collect and the slower the planet builds, researches, and scales. Sitting at 0–10% gives you a small income with no growth penalty, which is what most healthy planets should do most of the time.
Raise tax temporarily to recover from negative credits or fund a one-off expense — don't leave the whole empire at 80% out of habit.
¶ Starting credits and limits
- Players start with 0 credits. Your first week's income — mostly taxes on your starting population — is your initial float.
- There is no upper cap on credits. You can stockpile freely.
- Going below −100 credits triggers bankruptcy penalties (random building / ship / population destruction each week until you climb back out). See Resources → Going negative.
¶ Tips
- Watch the Ship Maintenance line first. It's almost always your biggest expense. A 100-ship empire pays 100× per week — multiply that by your weeks-of-game and ship maintenance is the dominant drain.
- The 250-ship cliff is real. A 240-ship fleet costs nothing in command overhead; a 300-ship one starts adding a noticeable line. Splitting one huge fleet into a few smaller ones costs the same in maintenance but zero in command overhead.
- Default tax of 33% is too high for most planets. Drop new colonies to 10% or under to let them grow, then bump tax up later when the planet is mature.
- Don't over-trade ore. Each conversion rule costs credits weekly, and higher-tier ore conversions are expensive. Set up only the trades you actually need.
- Use the history chart. If your weekly net is sliding red, the bar chart shows it before bankruptcy hits — fix the leak (turn off a minister, raise tax, scrap idle ships) before the penalty system catches you.
¶ Related
- Resources — full credit income/expense list and the bankruptcy penalty rules.
- Cabinet & ministries — appointed minister salaries.
- Spies — offensive vs counter-spy cost.
- Fleets — why splitting a 500-ship fleet into two 250-ship fleets saves you credits.
- Production — how tax above 10% interacts with the planet's build rate.