Military production is spent on constructing ships if the planet has a Star Port. Amount of military production is set by moving Production capacity slider and Military rate slider on Finance management window, and is represented by shields on the Colony Management screen. Each shield represents 1 bc worth of output. If the shields are in parenthesis, it indicates that they will not be used for ship production, and player will not pay for them. This will occur if:
- the planet doesn't have the Star Port, or
- the Star Port doesn't have a ship queued for construction, or
- the military spending rate is set to 0%.
In the Dark Avatar expansion pack, military and social production works as follows:
- Factories and two colony buildings give base production. Bonus tiles just add their stated bonus to the base production of the building on that tile.
- Manufacturing Capital and various power plants add the stated percent of production to base production.
- The Artificial Slave Center (evil-only tech) adds 50% to base military production, bonus not shown anywhere.
- Production points from asteroid mines are added to base production.
- Production points from focus are added to base production.
- If these production points are not used in social queue (unused social production), they are transferred to military queue.
- If this production is used, then the player pays full amount for it.
- Various other bonuses (the colonization event that enhances production, moon, production-enhancing modules on starbases, initial race abilities and various technologies) add their stated percentage of bonus production to base production. The player pays only half of that bonus. The payment is subtracted from the treasury and is not visible on the planet management screen. The bonus for asteroid mines is calculated for each asteroid field separately and rounded down.
- Excess military production (production over price of the ship - e.g. ship costs 40MP, planet produces 200MPs, so excess is 160MP) is lost, but player still PAYS for it.
- When a ship is bought on a planet, it will be available in the next turn. However all military production on that planet will be wasted (no new ship build, but player will still pay for that production).
- Production on planets with Extreme environments is penalized: if player knows only one half of the extreme tech, a planet's production is halved. If player doesn't have ANY knowledge of planet's environment (he invaded or bought or culturally "flipped" the planet), factories and asteroid mines don't give any production (100% penalty).
- Military production can be stored: put in queue a very expensive ship and let the planet build it until it's almost finished. Then change the ship in queue to Nothing. When you achieve your desired tech(s), design proper ship and put it in queue again. All production points stored from previous ship will be put into this one.
Setting focus on production[]
When a player sets a focus on social or military production, that field takes 1/4 of base research and 1/2 from base production of the other production field, and adds that amount to whatever it already has. After that it adds to the new amount all bonuses the planet and race has in that field, including 50% bonus to mil production from the Artificial Slave Center. Focus does not transfer any production or research points generated with bonuses. Focus from research on non- or 50%-habitable extreme planetary environment is not penalized. Focus also transfers points from asteroid mines, but only the percentage to which the mil and soc sliders are set.
- Game glitch (DA and DL): a planet can still generate production points from focused labs' output, despite empire's production is blocked by being more than 500 BC in debt.