I'm totally new to this game, and couldn't find anything using the search function (both energy and negative are 'too common to search').

I've had energy consumption netting -1 to -10 and everything still seems to grow. Is there a penalty for negative energy? Will it hurt you in the long run? Otherwise, why not always run negative?

TIA.

You produce whatever the percentage of missing energy less than you're supposed to. Say you've got -1 energy and your Solar Plant produces 10 energy. Your mines would be producing 90% of what they should be.

Moved

Thank you.

So if you don't have enough energy for 100% efficiency, and if you don't want to favor one resource over another, it's just as good to have negative energy as to lower efficiencies to get energy to net 0 or positive?

In fact, since I can rarely get net energy to exactly 0, it's probably better to have negative energy (not wasting any) than having net +5 or +10 energy, which is wasting some?

I guess it depends on how you want to play. I myself like having excess energy for when I want to build more mines, but I guess you don't have to.

I certainly agree that having enough energy to run at 100% efficiency is the way to go.. if you can. Right now I'm following the newbie guidelines to get my first small cargo ship, and my energy isn't nearly enough. Perhaps it's because my planet is too cold (9th slot). In any case, following the guidelines, I have metal at 7, crystal and deut at 5, and sol energy at 8. Alas, that gives me -234 energy. I figure I should live with that at least till I can get a small cargo ship and start trying to raid inactives. At that point, I can try to get my energy higher. In the meantime, I have to figure the best configuration to get the resources I need with limited energy.

Make sense, or am I missing some fundamental (and perhaps obvious) fact?

did you read about the part that said reduce your deuterium output to 80% because you wont have enough energy? You can do that thru the "resources" tab

Yes, I read that, but it doesn't cut energy usage nearly enough. In addition, right now I need combustion engine research 2, which requires loads (for a newb) of deut. So I have deut at 100%, and metal at 50%, crystal at 40%, which leaves me at energy -1. Once I get my 1200 deut (which is taking about 5 hrs), then I'll readjust.

Well if you want Combustion, then just turn off your Crystal mines

I think that if you will notice that reducing your deut and following the other steps you will be able to have enough metal/crysta/deut to do your research AND make the cargos. But as this is a long term game, it only matters for about 10-12 hours OR if it were a new Universe and you were trying to get a good head start.

Nothing wrong with the way you are handling it now.