Building New Planets

Spyder · #1 February 20th, 2001, 07:42 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Markavians:
ACtaully. . . it doesn't take forever to make these planets! It only takes 30 turns - 3 years!

THREE YEARS.

How old are you? How many people could you house on one of these planets? How many planets could you make in your lifetime, and so how many people could be born in that time? - hmm? hmm?!

I think Sphere Worlds and ring worlds are great fun to build. You need to be organised and put in hard work. When you have, the rewards are great.

Well, its relative....as late in the game as you gain the technology, is it really worth it to build your own planets? At this point, I'd say no. 40 turns and an unbelievable amount of resources for ONE PLANET which you still have to populate & develop before its useful....not worth the time & trouble at that point in the game I'd say...doesn't have anything to do with my age (43, btw).

At this point in the game, if you aren't well on the way to winning, you should at least be nearly equal to your main competition where the resources would be better spent on offensive & defensive materiel. Of course, playing against real folks could be different...but, because the time lines don't change (ie, it still takes pretty long to get that far out on the research tree), I don't think so....

[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 20 February 2001).]

Nyx · #2 February 20th, 2001, 07:47 PM

Your abbreviations threw me off a bit, what do RD and the variants (I assume P0-5 = plate 1-5, and c0-5 = cable 1-5; but what is RDS1-5?) stand for?

So what you do is build the in-progress bases to have their own shipyards and use them to retrofit themselves/each other so the shipyard ships can move off to build the starting bases at another star? That's brilliant! Don't you need one non-basemounted repair bay or shipyard to do the final retrofit of the Last base though (or is there enough room for the shipyard AND the cable/plate I don't recall off the top of my head)? Still, that looks like a great idea. I especially like how the emergency build slow-effect is used up while the spaceyard ships are in transit and can't build anyway. That's an elegant strategy Alasyr!

As long as each design uses enough tonnage of equipment to be too large for a battlestation and you don't retrofit more than once in a single turn, it does appear to be legit for the contest.

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Editing here: I just looked back and saw where you said s=ship yard. Sorry. But I still wonder what RD means.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[This message has been edited by Nyx (edited 20 February 2001).]

alasyr · #3 February 20th, 2001, 07:58 PM

RDS stands for SBs that start with SY and build other five cable SB (SBC0-4 in post), SBP0-7 are SB wit RW placing comp. mid-retrofit designs.I thougt of puttin repair component on all designs, maybe if there will be enough room for it on final designs.I haven't test it yet, it is still just an idea.If repair bay won't fit I guess I can always bring a repair ship after the retrofiting is done.

Nyx · #4 February 20th, 2001, 08:28 PM

Thanks, I'm interested to see if this works. But won't it cost more than building them normally? Sure you only pay 80% at each step, but you pay 80% several times. Even if you only retrofit once you're paying 50% (original design that gets upgraded)+ 80%(cost of SB with cable or plate) = 130% total. Add in all the extra steps and it appears a lot more expensive. Very fast, but very expensive.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

rdouglass · #5 February 20th, 2001, 08:44 PM

I've been building 'em the 'old fashioned' way. I guess I'm ignorant, but I still don't quite see how you get the Star Bases retrofitted / configured with components that don't violate the "50% upgrade" rule. Do you possibly have a design file that has those bases in it? I would be extremely curious to see it (or parts of it). Maybe just a more detailed list of your previous post - I'm still confused as to your component lists...

As to others, I like building RW's and SW's and do think they are important. They can be a gamebreaker (I would think) ina Human vs Human game. There are other ways of making RW's interesting....

I am currently playing a game now where I have a system with 3 RW's - 2 are steadily building Monolith facilities and are at over 50K of each resource output. The 3rd is filled with Research and Intel fac's. Once I got them built, I gave everything else away (more or less evenly) to all the remaining AI's execpt for 6 Baseships. Then I declared war on all of 'em.

It's been fun fighting my own designs AND theirs as well as trying to recapture all the "strongholds" I had built before. It kept my fleets together (25 plus fleets avg 20 ships each) and attaked me a lot. It makes for a pretty good "scenario". The only downfall is I know all the systems and designs (which are also my own). You guys ought to try it....

EDIT... I forgot to mention that I also gave away 3 RW's. I can't wait to get to them and find out what the AI did with 'em...

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 20 February 2001).]

geoschmo · #6 February 20th, 2001, 09:01 PM

quote:
Thanks, I'm interested to see if this works. But won't it cost more than building them normally? Sure you only pay 80% at each step, but you pay 80% several times. Even if you only retrofit once you're paying 50% (original design that gets upgraded)+ 80%(cost of SB with cable or plate) = 130% total. Add in all the extra steps and it appears a lot more expensive. Very fast, but very expensive.

Nyx, where are you getting the 50% in your figuring here.

When I read Alaysr's post the first thing I thought was what you thought, fast, but more expensive. But I checked out his math and it is correct. Each time you retrofit you only pay 80% of the DIFFERENCE between the two designs. In other words, the sum of all your steps is less than the total would be.

Also, a SB is big enough to hold a ringworld component and a repair bay, but not a Space yard. Keep in mind that the actual work of the retrofit can be done by a repair bay, but you have to have a space yard present to start it. You could design your early steps with space yards and repair bays and not take the space yard out until the Last step. That would work.

Keen insight Alasyr, or Drake or whoever noticed the 80% thing. I had been going on the asumption that retrofit was more expensive than that. Had never bothered to test it before.

Geo

Hydraa · #7 February 21st, 2001, 05:02 AM

With master computers you can fit the spaceyard and ringworld comp on the SB.

On mine I set up a progression of ships to use refit. I set up all of my progressions with the spaceyard. That way it can keep building a new SB while it is being retrofitted itself.

I used the same basic bases and decide at the end if it was becoming a plate or cable at step 6 or to go to step 8 to become a RW component.

I also noticed that you can build the ringworld with all Stellar manip components destroyed. However for the contest I waited the turn to let them be repaired.