Birth of the Federation

I'm playing the Ultimate Mod 5 and I wonffer how to best avoid a financial crisis in my empire which most often ist the Federation.

I start the game with all mai Galactic Powers on "developed". It works fine from the start but hen I have started to colonize the nearby systems and arebuilding the coloniez, I often find myself in a very difficlut economic situation with red numbers starting to come up. Wit the best of luckI manage to get even with an income instead of continuing minus in the bank but it takes a looooong time of being unable to build and develope which makes my empire vulnerable from attacks from the other main empires.

Sometimes my empire is so deep in debt that we have no chance when an enemy declares war on us.

Which is the best ways to avoid such problems?

I don't know about the mod, but in vanilla, the things that cost money are ships, outposts, and starbases. Don't build so many outposts/starbases or warships with high maintenance costs. Don't upgrade to starbases until you are at war.

The key is really building your economy and population. I always end games with hundreds of ships and millions in credits. In the current game I am pushing over 7 million credits, 60K per turn, have 400ish ships, over 150+ systems. It really doesn't matter what empire I play.

So don't over build ships and colonize like crazy. At the beginning I colonize pretty much anything I can while focusing on the biggest systems I can reach first. In the opening turns I am often in a situation where I don't have a lot of military as I am building colony, transport, and scout ships like they are going out of style. I just want to get my population and production up fast.

Also you can sell ships for money. So if you have industry build ships and scrap them.

I should have said to build colony ships, but watch your maintenance costs and don't build more than your economy can support. If your mods haven't fixed the terraforming bug where pairing a colony ship with a transport means you can terraform any planet in one turn, then build a few transports to pair with colony ships, and keep those terraforming, while you build more colony ships to colonize ASAP.
Building a few scouts, minimum of two and remember to watch your budget. Remember, colonizing removes the maintenance cost of a colony ship and starts generating a few credits.

Hi,

* Strive for a large population. People provide free ship support as well as credits. Building colonies is good. Terraforming to boost growth rate is good.

* Let colonies grow. Patience is required because they grow slower than you would like. Only spend credits on essential infrastructure or to make sure not too much production is wasted when there are 2 turns left. Critical infrastructure varies from species to species; for the Federation, Private Farms are too expensive to buy outright: Build them with production. Things are a bit easier in UM5, because the main buildings all cost 110.

* Keep morale up. Morale is much less important in UM5 than in vanilla or in other mods, because it only modifies base values. But it still affects credits, I think.

* Prioritize income-boosting buildings. Not many of these in UM5: Trade Center, Trade Hub and one more.

* Don't build starbases unless absolutely necessary. Sure, they pack a big punch. But they are immobile, they cost a lot to maintain and cannot be demobilized. Build more ships instead.

* Build the right ships. In UM5 as Federation, the only ships you want to build for most of the game are Colony, Transports, scouts (these are the only ships with sensor range) and Explorers. At All tech @8 things change as a new ship becomes available. (You might consider building some strike cruisers once your explorers upgrade to Explorer2.)

* UM5 retains the vanilla-style increases to ship costs for upgrades. This means that it is desirable to build as many Explorer1s as possible before Explorer2 becomes available, and so on. Particularly large leaps occur between scout1 and scout2, and colony1 and colony2. This won't directly help your economy, but will help you prioritize ship production.

* If you cannot support your fleet, attack someone! (And win.) That will reduce your ship cost because you have fewer ships, and increase your population because you now have some of theirs. This is something you need to do anyway.

The Federation is a reasonably good faction in UM5, with a morale-affecting building available at Tech3 and a great research affecting building. (Subatomic Simulators are worthless in UM5; don't bother with these.)

Anyway,

Ken

Oh,

Scrapping ships for money works great in vanilla, but poorly in UM5. The best way to scrap a ship is to die gloriously in victory.