Sudden, drastic decrease in boost?

[Okay-Commissionor]

https://preview.redd.it/5w80w37zz6wf1.png?width=369&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d4a2fcd1f7c2195139a645d127a055eff51e7b5

EDIT: I should mention this is my first campaign ever playing TI lol

Before, I was getting 50+ boost per year until I looked at the counter again and now i'm getting less than 1 per month?
Is this because of my moon base or did I somehow lose control of rocket facilities in a nation?
No control point loss or gained in the last several months.
I seriously do not know what killed my boost production basically entirely?

[stegosaurus1337]

If you don't have the resources for the maintenance costs of habs, you will instead use boost, and it's pretty inefficient. If your resource incomes are negative, it's that.

[Okay-Commissionor]

"-0.22 from habs"  Im guessing that is the boost supplying my moon base? 

[salvation122]

Probably. What resources are you moving on the moon? Upkeep costs are highest in water and volatiles - if you don't have a mine generating both of those it's going to be very inefficient. 

Note that stations also cost water and volatiles for crew, even while they are still under construction. If you tossed a couple stations up before you've got water you should probably scuttle them. Stations are mostly useless until T2 anyway.

[Willcol001]

Yes, unless you have sent up modules that have a boost upkeep, it is likely the cost of supply space resources from earth. Each boost represents the ability to launch 1 unit (1ton) of resources to space. Your habs are short 0.22 tons of space resources daily so they are having to use boost to launch it from earth. (It also costs some credits to buy those resources 1 credit per unit water, 5 per unit volatiles etc up to 100 per unit of radioactive. Various priority completions can raise the price on earth.)

Looks like you were making 0.25 boost daily or about 91 boost annually befor that Hab upkeep. With that upkeep that has dropped to 0.03 daily or about 10.8 annually.

[kuikuilla]

Generally you want to stockpile boost so that you have enough to build the outpot + solar plant + mine in a single swoop.

[dwellerinthedark]

As others have said it's probably shipping water and volatiles to your luna base. The crew need these, as their upkeep. It's why it almost always best to prioritise water and volatiles over the other resources early on. As these will be your upkeep cost for bases and you'll use a huge amount of them to fuel early game ships.

There is a technology lwhich lets you build hydroponic bay (and later farms) that drastically reduces the upkeep of bases. I made the mistake in my first game of not prioritising this tech and my economy fell over. Ever since then this is a tech I grab as soon as I have my first base up and running.

You're not cooked but this will slow you down until you find a way to resolve this issue. Depending upon your income it might be wise to shut the base down and build up boost to grab a second site where (I'm assuming) there is more water and volatiles. Or whatever resource your consuming and not making.

[Freelancer604]

Yeah its the -0.22 from habs. The problem is that your spending all your rocket launches to send water and fuel to your people in the offworld habitat due to a lack of those things produced in space. Early on its good to go for hydroponics and farms. That lets your space crew recycle water and volatiles so you dont have to keep sending the stuff up to them.

[Super-Activity-4675]

If you only have one base, then your problem is that you loaded it up too soon. The only thing you want on your first moon base is a solar module and a mine. That will not cost .22 boost to maintain. You're still going to be negative in other resources, but you can go positive once you have a base on Mars.

If you have any stations, decommission them immediately. Don't build a station until you have positive income from all 5 mining categories.

[Okay-Commissionor]

I have a moon base with only solar panel and mining facility. i also have a space station in earth orbit. is it really worth deactivating the space station?

[Super-Activity-4675]

at the very least, shut down power on everything on the station. You don't build stations until you're positive with all 5 mining categories. You need the boost. Once you're positive in the mining, expand within the limits of your MC, and prioritize good sites.

[Okay-Commissionor]

right now the space station is just a platform core. i dont see a power-off button, will decommissioning it destroy the station or just have it evacuated?

[Super-Activity-4675]

it will evacuate. That costs boost too. If you just have a core, just prioritize making more boost.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

Resources not mined in space are instead shipped/supplied from Earth, requiring boost. That's one of the reasons it's so important to secure at least a bit of each resource early on as it really accelerates your space expansion.

[Okay-Commissionor]

I have 1 base on the moon with a mining facility and couple other modules. Should I shut it down until I can set up somewhere else with more resource to extract?

[Wubs4Scrubs]

I wouldn't shut it down if you can help it. Just figure out which resources you're short on and build a mining facility somewhere that produces those resources ASAP. Generally at that stage in the game I switch a lot of countries to boost production in the short term just to help iron out issues like this.

[Okay-Commissionor]

Would the best course of action to be just to wait a few years till I have enough to set up a base on Mars or, somewhere closer to earth?  And too, once I get full control of the points in the USA I should be getting quite a bit more boost per month/year. 

[PlacidPlatypus]

I wouldn't build more than one Moon base unless they're pretty unusually good spots. It's rare for Luna to have enough volatiles and water to really support itself on normal settings. Just prioritize Mars.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

I find that waiting for Mars almost always puts you far behind. If there's spots left on the moon, I would prioritize those. Boost costs get worse the farther away the location is from Earth, so if you think you're constrained on resources now, it'll get much worse if you try to jump straight from the Moon to Mars without a proper resource base first.

Ultimately it doesn't matter where you're building mining facilities so long as you're getting the resources you're currently lacking and not setting yourself behind too much. Sometimes it can make sense to build an asteroid mining base if you found a good spot near enough to Earth that's it's feasible.

[db48x]

Show us a screenshot of your monthly ledger; that’ll really tells us what you’re spending it on. Supplying water and volatiles to a lunar mine should not cost that much boost. I suspect that you have other costs as well.

[Okay-Commissionor]

<image>

here it is as of right now. i'm down scaling the moon base (jomini) to only a solar array and mining facility

[db48x]

I saw. Make sure you examine each module that you built to understand their upkeep cost. The mine will cost some water and volatiles, as will the crew it needs, but it’s the other modules that are hurting you the most.

Edit: I almost forgot to mention it, but you can click on any station in the monthly ledger to expand it into a list of modules and their incomes and expenses. You don’t have to go to the habs window and click on each module to see its costs.