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Post by D'Kali Hegemony on Feb 11, 2014 1:42:29 GMT
Another thing to keep in mind is strategic location. A planet might be tiny and unbreathable, but is it near a front of a possible war? Refuelling and rearming is the lifeblood of a fleet...
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Post by khizlek on Feb 11, 2014 7:07:41 GMT
Now, I've read it a few times where people state colonies are more rare. I see just as many viable planets as normal, what is it that makes colonies so rare? Is it the amount of time it takes to develop them? Or...? Does it COST more to develop a colony in this mod? I just want to make sure I understand well enough so I don't go grabbing a number of planets, only to be broke. Or on the flip side, just grab one and realize afterwards everyone else has a baker's dozen. Effective colonies aren't rare due to costs, but due to the construction time - they're expensive, but that's run over a long time. So really, it depends on how many you have; 1-10 colonies (probably be ~3-30k at peak construction) won't break the bank of a moderate empire, so long as you're not looking to go on huge spending splurges, but trying to settle every planet may see 20-50 planets all trying to build. If you can, try and settle the most prosperous, breathable planets, plus a fair number to secure systems that you've claimed (so a system with a really nice gas world may need the small rock orbiting planet to be settled if you're a rock race looking to stake your claim). Colonies take a LONG time to develop, and can impact the budget in various ways; 1) Population is key to efficient construction, and this absorbs a fair bit of time. EG: A 1m pop colony building a lvl 1 space yard would take 50 turns - upping population to 5-6m drops it to 19 turns, 15m drops to 16 turns, and 50m to 13 turns (this is off the top of my head). So for any serious colony construction you also need some population transports (Starliners are key, as they can scale mount a Starliner cargo component). 2) What's important when you're colonising is to keep in mind your Organics and Radioactives - each HW will be producing an excess of minerals, so you don't need to worry about that. To keep care of the Org/Rad situation you need either: A) An early colony (such as one in your HW system) that can be quickly colonised (such as a medium colony of your atmosphere that is high in your desired resource) - the aim would be to have this built up to a moderate level before everything else needs lots of investment. B) Remote mining ships or bases to get lots of the key resource fairly quickly. 3) Maintenance of the various transports, colony ships and remote miners. |
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Post by khizlek on Feb 12, 2014 3:35:28 GMT
How is everyone finding the game? Any queries about how some facility/components work, or more advice for running an empire? To be totally honest, I'm rather appalled at how gamey and overpowered the whole 180+% to maintenance reduction + additional 20% maintenance reduction via traders culture is. A 1 missile escort should not cost 9 minerals, 1 organics, and 1 radioactives. Some people argued that limiting this would reduce racial build diversity, and few if anyone voiced similar concerns as I had, so I acquiesced and didn't really oppose it. But now that i'm playing with such a build I'm pretty sure that it is so much better than any other build, that it more or less ruins build diversity via comparative advantage. Had I been more sure of this (and had some backing on it by other players), I would have insisted on a maintenance trait cap, or offered my resignation as game host. What's done is done though, and we'll play this through. But if I ever host another game, it won't be with such a situation. Well my problem is that I'm enamoured w/ a high maintenance bonus in every game I play - I take it as the default option whenever I play. I was fine for a limit, so long as it was equally-ish applied (aka no one could have more than a 15 or 20% difference), though I did think a default rate of 150% would have been good - and afaik I did point out the advantage earlier. (given the time length expected I'm wondering what others may think to the number of 'superpower' empires) H11F, I think you are playing the game the way it should be played, and I commend you on that. Not everyone else took the build. Just half a dozen or so players. But its increasingly clear to me that the players with that build will dominate. One of the players that took the build wanted me to tell everyone to take it, but I would much rather cap that trait so that everyone has more choices in customizing their race to fit their RP style. You shouldn't be automatically fated to be weak just because you refused to stack a single trait to 180+%. I didn't have the support from the other players to push for such a cap, including those who favoured a more RP game. So here we are. However, if and when the people with the over-powered maintenance build overrun the galaxy, perhaps then I may have enough popular support for such a move. This... actually creates an interesting idea that I will posit and see what you think. Personally, I have NEVER been a fan of huge fleets and quickly built ships. Maybe it is just me, but it feels like a very RTS element - QUICK! Build 100+ of this unit so I can swarm everywhere. There needs to be little strategic thought with regards to resource husbandry. Instead, it's push them out and battle and see how I fair! Now, that is not to say there isn't OTHER strategic elements and by and far, SE provides for many of them. But a thought... if ship construction were slower, and maintenance costs higher, would not empires not then think twice about committing a ships to battle? Or contemplate what is truly needed? Not just: I'll build this! and this! and this! Again, I am just brain storming and this is my FIRST multiplayer game, so I could be right out of it. Oh, and as for the RP... I think I am lucking out where I am. If anything, I'm falling behind my companions in my region of space as they seem to be far more active on the RP element. 3 papers this weekend reduced my interest, and I'm cooking food for an entire week today (keto!), but hopefully I can get a few snippits of RP out for them to enjoy as well! H11F. Generally when I RP I play with an industrial focus - concentrating with building capacity improving efficiency and making the most of current resource, hence most of my construction time is spent on building up non-combat ships and trying to export (and yet, I've never managed to actually *sell* any of these ships in game). Therefore the one massive war I did start was because of a presumption on my part that proved incorrect; I won by pumping out lots of ships, but I wasn't the original instigator - I'd argue that in that instance high maintenance reduced hostility, as there wasn't a constant pressure on what to do next. Lower construction is somewhat fine for ships, because you can build more BYS/OSY to cover a slower construction rate - it's planetary facility construction that gets hampered by lower construction rate. Even then it's not as bad - you wait longer for something to happen, but you can still reach the same maximum as a high SY rate player, all things being considered. With maintenance I can definitely see other people's points. Low mainenance bonus wouldn't be a great idea either, especially w/ clustered systems. Imho maintenance *default* should be closer to 125-135% (preferably higher), instead of the current 100%. Well, I agree that maintenance reduction can be overpowered. I've tried that in the past but I was never able to take full advantage of the bonus because I could only pump out so many ships per turn and my research lagged behind. I didn't become a superpower. This time, I tried to sacrifice some more stuff so I would be able to construct more ships and research a little more. There are so many viable strategies that I think it isn't a ticket to win the game. I'm certain that as the game progresses, you will perhaps question your decision to invest so many points in it at the expense of most racial traits. It should be a little more expensive, that's for sure. I think you'll recall from our last game that I managed to square that hole - primarily by sacrificing some of the HW resource capacity for more research, along with a heavy emphasis on OSY construction. It's all a matter of knowing how to leverage your advantages, and to keep in mind the key constraint is time (and other people allying against you). Colony ships are expensive and take a while to build besides moving very slowly. The colonies itself take a very long time to develop and will be a net drain for the first few months and years. You can improve the speed of your colony ships researching "Fast Colony Ships" tech area but don't hold your breath. The increase is only marginal. Colony ships will never be fast. I don't think you would be broke if you took a large number of colonies, but each one of them will require large investments to be worthwhile and you will probably have to spread thin your fleets to defend them. Defensibility should be a major consideration whether to sunk time and resources in a specific world or not. The increase is alright if you're willing to invest the research into it (base 5 speed ship at the last level afair), but then again that same research may be better spent into other avenues (military), so you can hold on to the systems for settlement. To others: During mid-game the gravitic drives can also be quite useful, helping to boost speed for most ships (especially the slow colony ships & starliners) - but it is expensive to research. |
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Post by khizlek on Feb 23, 2014 18:34:41 GMT
Colony ships are expensive and take a while to build besides moving very slowly. The colonies itself take a very long time to develop and will be a net drain for the first few months and years. You can improve the speed of your colony ships researching "Fast Colony Ships" tech area but don't hold your breath. The increase is only marginal. Colony ships will never be fast.I don't think you would be broke if you took a large number of colonies, but each one of them will require large investments to be worthwhile and you will probably have to spread thin your fleets to defend them. Defensibility should be a major consideration whether to sunk time and resources in a specific world or not. To point out the above - on average each lvl of Fast Colony Ships only allows an extra 1 speed (by allowing an extra 2 ships to be included on the ship). IMO gravitic tech is a far better investment - sure it takes longer to research, and you still only get 1-3 extra speed by the end of it, but extra speed can be applied to all ships (albeit with a high supply consumption). Colony specialization is very important in this mod, even more than stock SE4. You will get nowhere if you try to get your colonies and/or homeworld to do a little of everything. If a planet has an above average mineral value, you should certainly only build mineral facilities and a mineral scanner. When its all filled, you can scrap one of the smaller facilities and start building a cultural facility that will multiply your production many times over. If it has an above average organic value, build farm and an agricultural facility. The same goes for Research and Radioactives. Researching Industry can do a lot for you. If you slowly scrap one facility at a time and build a Megaplex version of it on the homeworld, your resource and research base will grow much faster than if you had invested in colonies. The Homeworld is much easier to defend too. The final facilities take ages to build (even the Arcology is much longer when you can build a Minor City & upgrade to a Megapolis is 23 turns or so, and the mineral bonus isn't too high), and you only want to start them until you're absolutely sure you don't want the planet to build anything else for 424-508 turns minimum. Otherwise you'd be better set building the lower tier ones, and concentrating the build time on Megaplex facilities. That being said, cultural facilities do very high bonuses (~2x more than the Arcology for Colony World Culture or 1.5x than Agrarian Ecosystem for Agrarian Culture). This test used an high lvl tech empire, with max construction, Hardy Builders, Large Homeworld, final Space Yard facility - 9450/4725/4725 construction (so basically higher than anything you'll get on a colony, unless you're evacuating all the population & setting up a new capital). Here are the build times (each facility group is listed, so the upgrade lines can seen easily): Settlement facilities 2 - Settlement 3 - Colonial Community (Mineral) Cities 4 - Minor City 5 - City 8 - Major City 17 - Metropolis 43 - Megapolis
Agrarian Cities
2 - Agrarian Settlement
3 - Agrarian Community
7 - Agrarian Society
20 - Agrarian Ecosystem
Spaceport Cities
5 - Minor Spaceport City
6 - Spaceport City
9 - Major Spaceport City
59 - Arcology
424 - Agrarian Cultural Centre
508 - Colony World Cultural Centre
EDIT: Table structure is as follows MORS Extra boost (% extra) -> MORSI (Base production) -> Shield pts -> System boost to research -> Extra functions
What I found interesting on review is that the Spaceport line is less useful than I remember - it's still recommended in systems where you wouldn't build more than 1 facility per planet (such as lots of Small planets with few mediums). Also, I think the Megapolis bugged if it provides less boost than Metropolis does.
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Post by Imperial Hegemon on Feb 23, 2014 21:09:28 GMT
...... And this is why I feel I'll get schooled completely in this game  I already noted I perhaps did not use my racial points as well as others (not sure why I even put points into Political Savvy other than I'm used to doing that), but I mean - I am playing for fun. And I'm having fun. I also don't know this mod THAT well, so I find a lot of things I'm learning as I go. I suspect mistakes will be made, especially when I look at that above chart and think "Well, not a clue what to do on my first colony then!" Clearly I am not as familiar as some others, especially when I see somehow they've managed to produce 15 or so orbital shipyards and I'm at like... 5? Either way, still fun times. |
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Vyrex
Junior Member
Posts: 83 
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Post by Vyrex on Feb 23, 2014 21:29:08 GMT
Meh, hem. You aren't alone in not playing an optimized race, but hey, this is an RP game!
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Post by Tau Ceti Empire on Feb 23, 2014 22:02:54 GMT
There are multiple ways to play an RP game as well. Just because you are weaker economically and militarily, doesn't mean that you can't forge strong alliances and still be a major player, especially at this stage of the game.
Also don't worry about your build. There are many of us (including me) who haven't gone the complete min/max route on build. At this stage of the game most builds are still competitive.
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Post by Imperial Hegemon on Feb 23, 2014 22:18:26 GMT
Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset or anything. I'm enjoying the RP in my little quadrant! Just thinking I might need to reconsider some of my approach.
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Post by khizlek on Feb 23, 2014 23:09:57 GMT
Darn I just lost my post. Basically my table could be more clear. MORSI is Mineral Organic Radioactive Science Intelligence Tables ran as follows: MORS Extra boost (% extra) -> MORSI (Base production) -> Shield pts -> System boost to research -> Extra functions To convert the boost numbers to actual production, convert the % into a decimal figure (so Megapolis 600% extra minerals becomes 7, 30% extra rads becomes 0.3), add 1 (so 7 becomes 8 and 0.3 becomes 1.3), then multiply the base production by that (so 350 mineral production becomes 2800 and 400 radioactive production becomes 520). You can do this with the other extraction facilities as well (though in that case you'd need to include racial pts, planet value and happiness to give a rough figure, and that's kind of pointless for this discussion). And this is why I feel I'll get schooled completely in this game I already noted I perhaps did not use my racial points as well as others (not sure why I even put points into Political Savvy other than I'm used to doing that), but I mean - I am playing for fun. And I'm having fun. Actually Political Savvy isn't a bad idea - organics and radioactives are in short supply in the early game, at least without significant restructuring of your homeworld, or a ridiculously early push into remote mining (in particulr the bases, as you can get 2 of each MOR extraction on the 1500kT hull). Also, it helps provided the best early game bonus to research, which takes far longer to increase when compared to MOR (especially when you're trying to bulk up on Org/Rad). I'm playing for fun as well, it's just that I like to roleplay with megaprojects... I also don't know this mod THAT well, so I find a lot of things I'm learning as I go. I suspect mistakes will be made, especially when I look at that above chart and think "Well, not a clue what to do on my first colony then!" I don't pretend to be the know-all and be-all of the mod, but if you have general questions I'm always open to answer them. Clearly I am not as familiar as some others, especially when I see somehow they've managed to produce 15 or so orbital shipyards and I'm at like... 5? Either way, still fun times. You should also check the 'quality' of them - an 800kT Shipyard (on a 1000kT hull) 'OSY' is of a higher expansion ability than a 400kT SY on a 500kT hull 'BSY', primarily as the OSY can build colony ships or expand BSY numbers fairly quickly. Someone with 10 BSY and 1 OSY is less capable of rapid expansion than an empire with 4 BSY and 6 OSY. |
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Post by Tau Ceti Empire on Feb 23, 2014 23:31:02 GMT
Also in a multiplayer game, you are more likely to keep a large number of alliances for a longer term than the AI. This lets the trade bonuses be a more stable portion of your budget. You don't necessarily have to plan for the AI all declaring war on you on the same turn.
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Post by Imperial Hegemon on Feb 23, 2014 23:41:10 GMT
True. I'm getting good vibes from the alliance front, also enjoying the RP that comes from it! I will try and get something fresh up tonight or tomorrow morning on my own empire.
The tech tree I need to dig into more so I can make smarter choices. I've loaded up a side game and just sort of explore with it, see where things go. That sort of jazz. I'm still a few turns from getting my first colony, so waiting to see how that develops - what should be built, etc.
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Post by Amarr Empire on Feb 24, 2014 0:08:41 GMT
What is the general consensus on the effectiveness of Drones and Fighters? From my experience vs the AI in proportions they are not THAT strong (unlike SEV), however I don't think they require maintenance after the initial pretty hefty investment in resources and time to make them.
Also, can fighters and/or drones be used to supplement troops in invasions?
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Post by Khizlek-G on Feb 24, 2014 1:07:36 GMT
-Units require no maintenance.
-Only Troops can fight ground battles
I didn't have too much dealings with fighters in my last Prop game, but they were devastating, primarily for two reasons
1) The first ships were entirely missile based, so I didn't have anything to shoot down the fighters/drones (missiles can't target them)
2) Having minimum Agressiveness meant that all my ships (and fighters to a lesser degree if I built them) that were built for antiship warfare had great difficulty. I ended up rapidly building a force of small ships to function as oversized fighters, and I still lost more tonnage (but the same level of minerals) due to constant ship losses.
However, if you'd expect combat this early on, then it's likely an attack against the homeworld, and given this stage of the game you'd want to preserve your orbital yards - in that case a mix of fighters (to direct defend the HW), and ships (to destroy the fleet before they get to the HW).
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Post by Imperial Hegemon on Feb 24, 2014 1:47:54 GMT
I've _ALWAYS_ loved fighters. Always. And not entirely because of their application, but because I grew up on Wing Commander and thus feel it's MANDATORY to have them! So, the Imperial Hegemon will have carriers eventually. No matter what That being said, I've also found them to be exceptionally useful - especially as a form of planetary defense. The only thing picking them off are PD weapons, and those are usually secondary to a ships primary offensive capability. So I find them good for that. As to drones... I think that has been my error so far. I researched "Probes" and realized then that a probe couldn't be fit with anti-ship warheads. So... kind of pointless. HOWEVER... if I had researched them back at the VERY beginning they would have been a cheap means of scouting. You can launch a drone from a planet, tell it to "attack" a warp point and it'll go through it. They will keep going until they use up all their supplies. So... even an exploration ship with a drone launcher and a handful of probes could reach out and see a lot more. Had I used them at the beginning that would have been useful. As to using drones as an offensive platform... I'm not 100% sold on it. I am willing to bet as an Anti-Planet weapon system, probably effective. But, as for Anti-Ship... I tried a number of simulator runs and found them lacking. Perhaps it was the lack of speed... plus, to research them, you need to research TWO levels of Robotics. Not exactly the most cheap research path. And one nice thing about SEV over IV - Fighters could also partake in ground combat! |
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Post by Amarr Empire on Feb 24, 2014 2:21:08 GMT
And one nice thing about SEV over IV - Fighters could also partake in ground combat! Fighters and Drones also cost maintenance in V. Not requiring maintenance in IV really allows you to constantly expand your defensive (and lesser extent offensive) capabilities through the production of no maintenance units. |
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I already noted I perhaps did not use my racial points as well as others (not sure why I even put points into Political Savvy other than I'm used to doing that), but I mean - I am playing for fun. And I'm having fun.
