Ringworlds and Sphereworlds

Alneyan · #1 December 17th, 2003, 08:07 PM

I admit I never considered to build a Sphere World, and I am probably not going to even try. Unless I am trying to build the fabled Sphere World filled with Cultural Centers from Proportions that is.

Joking aside, I believe they need far too much effort to actually be cost-effective. You will need Stellar Manipulation 8 for a Sphere World (5 for a Ring World), then 21 bases in orbit around a sun plus a few construction bases (11 for a Ring World) and then you will need quite a lot of turns as these 200 facilities are somewhat slow to build. Of course, such a world is *very* profitable once fully developed and protected, the problem being to reach this stage in a multiplayer game. And that is a big problem as few multiplayer games actually reach the 200 turns mark, let alone 300 turns when taking into account the time needed to "create" the Sphereworld.

Baron Grazic · #2 December 17th, 2003, 11:05 PM

In 1 PBW game I hosted, we started the game with a Ringworld in the very centre system, that was owned by a High Bonus AI.
The Ringworld changed hands a number of times, but whoever owned it was constantly building units attempting to hold it and it never reached its full potential.

I've never considered one in a PBW game, just to expensive and long to build, let alone hit the point where it would have paid for itself and be making a profit.

Puke · #3 December 17th, 2003, 11:38 PM

I built one in a PBW game. Hell, I built about 10 simultaniously. And I NEEDED to!

There were alot of small wars and political manuverings, but by the late stages of the game it came down to two large alliances, 4 players vs 2 players. The larger alliance controlled two thirds of the map, but had been worn down through other wars, where as the smaller alliance was pretty much fresh and was well built up. I was in on the larger alliance, but Dragonlord was handing us or collective asses.

Even with most of the map, we had built to a point where we were at our limits, and needed to expand our production capacity. ringworlds were the only way to do it, and so thats what we did. I named the first one Molly, because I had promissed a long, long, time ago on this forum that if I ever built a ringworld in a PBW game, I would name it that and post the picture. I also renamed the other planets in the system to be a filmography: Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candels, etc.

the deciding factor in the game was actually intelligence operations. counter intel is pretty effective and takes a truely long and concerted effort to wear down - but after I scrapped all my research centers and replaced them with intel facilities, it was just a matter of time.

While PPP can really screw someone up, it does not work very reliably. the most devastating thing I pulled, was targeted ship defections against the supply and repair ships in enemy fleets. If you target the supply ship, you force the enemy to build Quantum Reactors on every ship. if you target the repair ships, you make sure they cant fight more than one battle at a time. if you target the warp openers, well, then you have them bottled in and YOU get to choose when and where battles occur.

primitive · #4 December 18th, 2003, 12:19 AM

I can top that

I had 36 Ringworlds in the "Return to (micromanagement

) Hell" game, with another 10 or so on the way when the game became to big for PBW and crashed. Of course the resources they produced was very welcome to support my 1500+ Base SYs and 2500+ ships of the line.

Had the Quadruple Molly in one system and was just starting an attempt to build some in a 5 star system with random movement. Always been wondering what would have happened if I had managed to get one built there

Puke · #5 December 18th, 2003, 01:10 AM

technically possible. you will have to wait, on average, 169 turns for chance to drop you on the right sector after all your starbases are built. actually less, if you had multiple stars in there.

Loser · #6 December 18th, 2003, 01:48 AM

Well, they will all move together... And the Stars are toward the center, which, in time, is around where your random-movement-clump will hang out.

I would wonder about the Order, though. Would the SM order go through before the clump moved? Could you make the SM order if the clump were not on a star?

Suicide Junkie · #7 December 18th, 2003, 05:26 AM

While there are 169 potential places for the random movement to pull you towards, the ones near the center are MUCH more likely.

If you are not in the middle, then there is a greater chance to be pulled in the general direction of the center than away, since there are more squares on that side for the pull direction to choose from. (You are pulled towards a random square, not really random directions)
The pull square dosen't even have to be the center, since if you are 2 squares left of center (and up or down at most 2) and the pull (strength 2) is in any of the squares right of the center, you win also.