Your income is determined from a couple of things:
1. Planet population. More people = more tax income. Planetary upgrades increase the number of people. The first two upgrades also remove the underdevelopment penalty (new planets that haven't been developed generate negative income).

2. Allegiance. Every planet has an allegiance to your empire. As that value goes down, you lose tax income. You can raise it with culture buildings (Broadcast Centers, Media Hubs, Temples of Communion). You can also raise it in some cases by moving your capital, as the maximum allegiance for a planet is based on how far away it is from your capital.

3. Trade routes. Building trade ports lets your planets trade with each other. Every planet with a trade port generates income from it. How much is determined by the longest "chain", that being the number of planets with trade ports that can be travelled to without breaking the chain.


Upkeep lowers your income by some percentage. It starts off at 0% (full income). If you go to your research area, the fleet logistics tab (third one) has upgrades for fleet supply. Each of those upgrades increases your upkeep. The first one for example is 9%, so you lose 9% of all income as upkeep. Course it also lets you have more ships.

The key is to strike a balance. You don't want to increase your upkeep faster then your ability to generate income, so you should only do it when you're ready to build more ships.

Arid, one correction: 2000 supply <> 2000 ships. Most ships cost at least 5 supply, and caps cost 50.

There is a "large fleets" option that you can pick when you start the game, you can select Vasari who have a research upgrade that gives you some extra supply, and you can mod the game. I think that's it.

-- Retro

Not sure if I should post here or make myself a new topic, but on the subject of supply costs.

I've noticed that it's not about how many ships you have, but how many ships you can have. This makes it difficult if you, say, lose a fight (which happens especially on larger maps when you have to divide your forces). Where is the unused supply going?

In my personal opinion, upkeep should be based on a sliding scale. Keep the research costs in, but make it so the research only opens up those supply points. Once they're used by a ship, you start getting upkeep costs. That way, if a battle goes south, you don't have a bunch of unused supply points taking a bite out of your economy. Would also allow us more flexibility in our strategies.