Opinion wanted

*head explodes in a meaty, gory mess*

Now lets look at the other side of the coin. With the same 100 lvls to invest you put everything into Ag research. On your home planet this means 120% bonus to Ag and on a U.Fertile the bonus is 370%. I`ll assume you plunder all planets NOT a U.Fertile (except for the three outside junk planets) leaving exploration cost`s low to winnow for Fertiles. If my calculations are correct this means 1 pop. on your U.Fertiles will yield 11.1 food per turn. Your home planet will produce 3.6 food per pop. If food prices are 5 credits per unit then profit (from the fertiles) is 55.5 credits plus 11.1 for the raw material (as previously calculated below) for a total profit (minus population needs of .1food per pop and ignoring the home planet) of 66.045 credits per turn. If you put everything into commercial (as opposed to mixing them as below) then the yield for commercial would be 55 credits - food costs. Obviously food production is better than commercial if food costs 5 credits or above per unit. As of this posting however, food costs are 2 or 3 credits per unit. This would yield (at best) 33 credits and change per pop.. Obviously if food prices stay below 5 credits per unit then commercial is the best bet. in an all or nothing scenario ag verses commercial the salient facts are cost of production and the costs of food in the market. Rule of thumb, If food is above 5 Ag is best, below 5 Commercial is best. A combination of Ag and Commercial will yield a steady income and safety from food price fluctuations. Combo`s also have the added perk of flexibility to profit from fluctuations in the food market. In a combo how much you devote to ag will determine your risk and reward.

What is important in this question is the cost of production. For example: Say you have 100 lvls to invest however you like and you have put 90 lvls into commercial and 10 into Ag. 1 pop on a U.fertile with 10 ag lvls yields 8.4 food per turn. 1 pop at 90 lvls into commercial on the same planet yields 50 credits per turn. This means that the cost to produce 1 food is 5.95 credits (50 / 8.4 = 5.95). Every 1 food produces 1 raw material as well. If raw material is 1 credit per (the min amount) then the cost of producing 1 food is therefore 4.95 credits. When the food market goes below 5 credits per unit you can switch your fertiles to commercial production. Ore costs 10,000 credits so your farmers now merchants will have to work 200 turns to return to profitability. If you think the food market is going to stay under 5 credits per unit for longer than a few days then switch. Switch back if you think it`s going to stay over. In this scenario you can easily go for self sufficiency and a surplus and forget the food market all together. When the market is over 5 sell, when below hoard until prices go up. Be advised in this scenerio only grow food on the fertiles and put all the other planets into commercial production.

Hmmm...looking at the price of food since the RT UW...glad I`m not reliant on Food for my income...

on RT i was a commercial terran. But I also made my own food so i didnt have to waist time buying. This was good cause whenever the RT food market hit insane highs like 25 or maxed out to 100. BOOM thats a grip load of extra cash.

On rt the market is heavily reliable, and never stays in one trend more than a month...except the minerals lol

When i was terran, i had a 13k fertile. I made about 15m cash net every turn when food was at 10. It`s profitable but the market shifting variable is problematic.

Food Terrans make a whole lot more than comm terrans, the only drawback is that you have to gordo up a fert for maximum income, but it`s well worth it.

Let me step in here to defend Commerical Terran. Commercial may not be the highest income one can have but it has two aspects. 1. Income isn`t bad. 2. It`s reliable. Advantages are you don`t have to wait for food to be bought, you know your income, and who cares about food prices off the market. ( I`ve max`d my food from the market and waiting for the swing up to dump it for a nice profit. `Course, I had the cash to do that `cause I`m a commerical and make money every turn ":). Also, there`s a lot more large planets out there to build commerical on than Fertiles where you`d make the most cash for food.

Bad points...if food is high and you have a cushion, you can make a ton more cash. (If you run low, depends on how low you want to go for food pricing and if you can wait for it to be posted and then bought. ).

dont worry too much about instability of the food market...if you are terran, as long as food prices are over 5...you will be making tons more than a commerce terran. And splitting research is pointless in the long-run because you become the jack of all trades, but master of none sorta empire. Hope this helps.

it is a bad idea to split your research/infrastructure between the two.
first off, commercial is a bad choice for income in my opinion.
second, if your research is going to anything except what your race is best at, it kind of seems a loss of bonus.

for example. say you have +150 to agr and +50 to ind.

that means agr makes 250 (100 base + bonus) and ind makes 150
you put one level on agr which raises the total by 10% (NOT the modifier)

this would make agr produce 275 (250 start + 10% increase)
if you leveled ind instead you would produce only 165 (150 base + 10% increase)

not sure if those numbers would be right, but that is the example.