I think they meant to make it so social is wasted when a planet is not using it. I think that military is the exception.

I just finished typing a post on the same topic. I'll duplicate the info here, perhaps the admin can winnow out my other post.

I've been enjoying the game for since Friday afternoon, great game, really like it. However, I'm trying to get a better understanding of the game mechanics and have gotten stumped at the spending distribution function. I haven’t been able to back into the numbers. I understand that the bonuses aren’t working as planned, but I think this is something different.

As I understand it you have Manufacturing Points (mp) and Technology Points (tp) to "spend". To spend them requires money, 1 BC for each mp or tp. Further, your spending is not constrained by your tax revenue. Provided you have sufficient reserves you can spend more BC to generate mp/tp than you take in. Theoretically, if I set my spend rate to 100% I should be generating all the potential mp and tp possible on a planet.

My problem is with the Spending Distribution sliders. mp is split between Military production and Social production. Traditional guns or butter economics. tp does not have a split. However, when you use the sliders you are taking your spend rate and portioning it out three ways – Military, Social, and Research. Consequently, even if I have a planet full of research stations and am flush with cash, I can’t make full use of that research potential unless I turn off the Military and Social production. Production spending is being split three ways, however resource potential is split two ways. I should be able to fully fund both research and manufacturing production but cannot.

Here are some numbers to illustrate. I set up Earth with just one basic lab (5 tp) and one basic factory (8 mp). The capital has 24 mp and 24 tp. So, fully funding everything I should be able to get a total of 32 shields/hammers AND 29 flasks. Lets say the capital’s resources are either/or, at a 50/50 split I should still be able to get 20 shields/hammers and 17 flasks. However, if you fully fund and evenly split your spending on the distribution sliders you get 1/3 potential of each – you get 10 of each. An additional problem – if you have unused military or social spending (say a planet with no shipyard or no land left to build on), it subtracts that amount from the total spend and then splits it according to the sliders, so you get short-changed again.

A follow-up question just to confirm: The capital has 24 mp and 24 tp. That’s either/or right? My testing leads me to believe it is. I have read on other posts that population doesn’t tie into planetary production, that they’re just tax revenue. I’ve started some test games, doing nothing but run up the population up to 10B with no change. I can never get both maxed, but can max either separately. In order for the game to work the way I’ve suggested it needs to be both, or you need a slider for dual use facilities.

The best would be if we could determine military, social and research production for each planet.

In my point of view , I would forget all these central "spending rates" things. It would be grateful if I could build ships in one planet with full production and researching on the other with the same throttle. I think that's a bit stupid that I can't build ships on one planet with full production (as far as my budget allows of course) because I need to build up a building on an other planet or I want to research fast on a third.

I would do the following:
Delete those spending rates from central budget and put them to the planet window. Each bar would represent what rate are the military/social/research production is working. Military and social are mutually exclusive.
Example:
I have 1 basic factory and 1 basic research facility: so my maximum capacities are 8 mp and 5 tp. If I set military bar to maxiumum, i produce 8 mp, that costs me 8 bc. If I set it 50%: 4 mp costs 4 bc. I can use up the remaining 4 mp to social if i want to by setting social bar to 50%. If I set it higher, the military bar will be lowered automatically.
But If I want to I can set research bar to maximum apart from production bars.

And what if I can do this on each planet? I can build ships fast on one planet with eg manufacturing capital, while I "research" plenty of 'tp's on another with eg technological capital. And meanwhile I can make new planets build their social buildings fast instead of producting 1or 2 tp or needless military mp.

Honestly, it almost seems like you should have "social" totally separate from "science/ship production"...

??? since factory and manufactory capitol affect both military and social, I am not sure to understand your point.