I do careful micro for the first few turns, because it's critical imo.   After that for new colonies I remember basic stuff like a factory is 30 points so if I have a new colony that has 13 max production I know the right setting at 100% social is 10 and the rest research to reduce waste.   When the colonies are more developed I pay little or no attention unless there is a critical build in place.   Say I want a tech cap built ASAP, then I will go 100$ social and set the wheel to get the minimum turns.   But none of this takes a lot of timel.

I also try to keep things simple by appending a letter to the colony name, using R or M or $ or I.   Specializing actually makes it easier to avoid bad wastage.  Then when I come back I know what to specialize in, but I don't pay too much attention to overflow once the colony is going, and I am sure I am wasting some production.   And the point could be made that when I have 20+ colonies the waste can be huge.

At the current stage of the game with the dumb AI I don't think more is required, but after B5 I am thinking a tighter control on stuff is going to be imperative.   Anxious to see how this is handled.

Vent spleen time...

I missed their last stream I'd like to say thank you to those who asked about overflow yet again.  It's time to take the blinkers off Stardock.  At this point it's turned into a ****ing joke.  If Stardock is trying to make people think the Beta "experience" their offering is just a money grab for a half completed game their doing a great job.  I certainly don't feel feedback's been listened too, just constantly ignored.  There are a huge amount of threads on this topic and their asked about it every stream for months, yes they have a small team working on this but I feel it should have fixed or at least acknowledged ages ago.

What more do beta testers need to do to get the message across, seriously????  It seems Paul might be finally realizing what so many of us have been saying for so long doubt it will in Beta 5 though.  It should be delayed until it is!  I know some people won't agree with me these are my personal opinions, imo a fan boy/yes man attitude is not going to help Stardock make a good game assuming they listen, that's not what a beta tester should do if there's a problem let them know, and if it's something that makes their game infuriating to play definitely let them know, there's been too many people saying this is ok it's not.  Disagree with me?  Name a good 4X game in the last decade without some type of overflow mechanic or one that wouldn't have been a better game with it.

Yeah I agree we should be aiming and asking for the minimum that they've said will be be the case at this point, I've agreed with that for quite a while.  People can ask for more later.  You're right it muddies the waters a bit, but even so with all the excuses of muddy water, small team, limited time to get features in, Paul being relayed wrong information and whatever else I still think some working version of overflow that their able/willing to implement should be in the game by Beta 5.  Release is not that far away it's a too important mechanic not to be in by now.

Do you want to expound a little on why you think that?  One sentence doesn't say much, it suggests you don't know what we're talking about.

There's massive amounts of wasted production and research if you don't micromanage currently (up to 99.9% in a turn in some circumstances), overflow would alleviate the need to micromanage to prevent waste.  If you don't care about that then well are you really playing the game to win or just clicking randomly and hoping.  It becomes a strategy game without a strategy.  Not a way I'd be interested in playing personally.

Watch the soak test in the stream you can clearly see research and production overflow isn't working it never has in any beta.  On completion of a building/research it always returns to the zero amount nothing invested therefore no overflow.

Yes, research overflow does work, and has worked.  (which is really what mortili said, that it does work)  But you'll never get more than 1 tech per turn (except in those cases you mentioned), so it may be hard to notice.  At most it will make your next tech take 1 less turn, but only if you're lucky enough to have the numbers align in your favor.

EDIT: it looks like I was wrong.

I'll try to check it, too.  But it can be difficult to tell with research.  But I'll try.

Please look at the video in my original post, start at 4:33, and tell me what I did wrong. After completing the first tech, I expected some overflow into the next tech. I got none.

the way it worked in b3 was that the overflow was added AFTER you click turn on watever new tech you selected.

basically in rare cases you would complete 2 turns research in 1 Turn.

I tested it in b4 and it doesnt seem to work anymore...

After doing some very quick testing, it looks like research overflow isn't working in any way.  Every time I try, left over research points are lost, are not applied to the next tech you choose, or the next tech in the tech tree.  The developers once (at least once) said that research overflow is in the game, but not communicated well to the player, but as far as I can tell it isn't in the game at all. (except with ideology traits) Maybe they believe it is in the game, but it isn't.

Thank you for validating that I'm not insane, at least on this topic.

Also I learned that, apparently, research costs go up over time?  The first tier of techs took 2 turns for me to research (at 29 research/turn) but as I continued the game (not building or changing anything) those same techs - the ones I didn't grab early - took 3 and eventually 4 turns to complete, still with 29/turn.  I don't mean to change the topic, but I didn't expect that to happen, and it made testing a bit more confusing.  But I still saw zero evidence for working overflow; on a 4 turn tech, each turn gave exactly the same amount of completion - there was no rollover on the first turn of a new tech, ever, even when the last tech obviously had very few points left for its last turn.