ministers

[pat]

hi

i'd like to know what parts of the game you guys leave up to minister control.

sometimes i feel overwelmed with all the choices i have to make.

i must admit i'm fairly new though.

tom

[dogscoff]

None. Not a damn thing, and I never have. I wouldn't trust those ministers to get lost in a nebula.

[Slick]

The general concensus is that the ministers are poor. The only one I use is the population transport minister. He does an ok job and I am willing to settle with it because I absolutely find it too boring and cumbersome to manually move population. If you capture enemy population that breathes another atmosphere, he is not smart enough to put them on the right planets, though.

Slick

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by pat:
hi

i'd like to know what parts of the game you guys leave up to minister control.

sometimes i feel overwelmed with all the choices i have to make.

i must admit i'm fairly new though.

tom<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Most people say that ministers are totally stupid. I think for a newbie, thay can give you some good ideas, especially what not to do.

My opinions:
When most, but not all, of the galaxy is colonized, the colonization minister is ok.

Population minister is ok. If you make very small transports - frigate sized or destroyer that is half cargo bays and half supply bays. Otherwise he will empty planets.

Facility minister, design minister, research minister - are weaklings. I can usually do better, or at least I can't do much worse. But hey turn them on for a few turns and see what they do, you may learn something.

Resupply minister is brain-dead. If active all ships turn around at precisely half supplies. Even if the ship has it's minister turned off. Colonizers, suicide ships, troop ships out to capture a planet that has a resupply depot, even a ship on the way to a resupply depot; it just doesn't care. It's impossible to do anything with that one active.

You can probably guess about the others, I don't have a lot of experience with them.

[Sinapus]

I use the population minister, sort of. I find it useful for automatically moving to a planet w/high population. I tend to take some control in what's loaded and where it goes, but sometimes I just let it run.

Otherwise, I have an AI_Research.txt file setup for my race and I tend to let the Research minister use that so I don't have to constantly check things. I'll throw in things I think I need sooner, but otherwise I just let it run.

[Atraikius]

I'll typically give the population minister 3 small transports for shuttling population around, it doesn't do too bad; leveling out all populations at about 1000 on breathable worlds. I'll keep one or two frigates or destroyers with 3-5 cargo to shuttle conquered races around or to collect extra population from moons and tiny worlds to boost the population on the larger medium worlds.

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Slick:
The general concensus is that the ministers are poor.
Slick<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually most players consider Ministers to be akin to vacuum cleaners - they suck.

OTOH - the population transfer minister has kept his head so far in my empire. The rest are feeding the crows. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[trooper]

I trust noone. SO I do all the work by myself !

[HEMAN]

For me as a experinced player, i only use POP transport minister only, & only if i have 10+ worlds to populate. POP minister is ok. But Ive sent suggestions to MM to improve on this,to the effect of this being Moddable, and to increase pop reforced above the three bar limit, as a secondary on a planet.And other minister operations. Hopefully will see somthing in the new patch?.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #48 The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.

[Suicide Junkie]

Minipol: Sounds like an "individual" minister.
You probably needed to give that planet to your minister with the ministers button (Face icon)

[TerranC]

Whatever you do, you do not need a political minister. If you turned it on, you'll know.

[minipol]

i don't use ministers either. the only one i tried to use was (can't remember the name) the one to automatically launch satelites or fighters but that didn't seem to work. in trun based mode you haven't even got a repeat order so it's very cumbersome to manually launch sats

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by TerranC:
Whatever you do, you do not need a political minister. If you turned it on, you'll know.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yikes, I forgot about him. *Shudder* I shouldn't have come down so hard on the resupply minister.

Carrier and troop minister are OK. They're pretty good at moving around a solar system and filling up ships with units. 'Tho sometimes they'll try to leave and travel far away to pickup units.

[Taera]

I started out the learning curve using many ministers - ressuply, pop, mines, troops, carriers, sats, fac construction and more. Then i slowly, one by one, turned them all off.

Only two ministers that are helpful are the mines & sats because its sometimes boring to schedule all the routes for your minelayers (that is too not a problem, wise setup with repeat order removes the need of this one) and sats is a neat minister because it launches all the sats by himself without me bothering to do it. Thats the only minister i use occassionaly. Pop minister sucks - he does not have priority list. I find it easier to build ~4 pop transports and give them orders for the next ~40 turns. And build more if you got new colonies. This way you got both pop transportation and the population of source planet (homeworld) has the time to renew.