Is it just me, or is supply and demand in this game weird and make no sense? I've been building up 4 colonies and tweaking them but have noticed some things that have completely contradicted the way that I would have thought these concepts should work. For example, I have both a Tech-Mining and a Refining facility on one of my colonies. The Tech-Miner produces 6 units of metals while the Refinery produces 10. Now, logically this should mean that I am producing 16 units of metal but no! For whatever reason it only counts the largest producer and says that my colony is making 10 units of metal. This holds true for all industries.
What makes even less sense is supply and demand. For example, let's say I have 3 colonies producing different quantities of metals - 10 units, 8 units and 4 units. Let's also assume I have 3 colonies that are consuming metals - 9 units, 8 units, and 7 units. Now logically, that should be a total supply of 22 units and a demand of 24 units resulting in a deficit of 2 units. But no! The game only seems to care about the largest producer and consumer. As a result, the colony that produces 10 units could easily supply all 3 of the others and, in fact, could hypothetically supply an infinite number of consumers so long as none of them demand more than 10 units.
Essentially, it seems that all you want is one production facility of each type for the most part so long as the colony is rich and large enough to supply all the rest. Some industries seem to justify redundancies because of the net value of the exports like Food but for everything else, all you need is one large producer. Which means that all you really need are about two colonies with different resources to produce everything the galaxy could ever need and make a fortune (unless you found some godlike planet that has every resource).
Why does it work this way? It just seems so confusing because it contradicts basic logic unless I'm missing something.