Stellar Manipulation

[TerranC]

I think many people just don't bother with Stellar Manipulation.

Except for the fact that you can construct Ringworlds and Sphearworlds later on, Researching Stellar Manipulation is an unnecessity.

Monolith Facilities maybe tempting as they can extract 900 of all "moolah" types, but they still depend on the percentage of production of the planet, and 100 minerals, organics, or radioactives are lost with every Monolith.

The power to create suns and planets may be tempting, but you can't create planets without Asteroids, You can't create suns unless nothing is in the darn thing, Nebulas and Black Holes actually become beneficial later, even with scanners because of the system abilities and Storms has no absolute value of investing in them unless you want to hide some ships or shipyards in them.

The only about useful Stellar Manipulation techs are Warp Point Creator when you want to cut a shortcut or some parts are cut off from the rest, and Warp Point Destroyer as a way of ignoring those psychotic races.

And Without cheat codes, building ringworlds and sphearworlds will take you lots of time...

Hope that helps

[Phoenix-D]

"High-level cloak generators and stellar manipulation components are a delicious combination on ships, btw."

Fortunately for the continued health of stars everywhere, mines don't care about cloaking

Stellar manip is fun, but most of the time it's a "if you can use this on the enemy you've already won" kind of deal.

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

quote:

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Monolith Facilities maybe tempting as they can extract 900 of all "moolah" types, but they still depend on the percentage of production of the planet, and 100 minerals, organics, or radioactives are lost with every Monolith.

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Umm, wrong. A Monolith III makes 2700 resources, whereas a normal level 3 resource extractor makes only 1000. If you use a lowly Resource Converter I to convert the 1700 extra resources into the type that you claim is lost, you would actually get .5 x 1700 = 850 more of that resource. So, by using Monoliths, you get a lot more resources than if you used regular extractors. And when you add in the bonuses from Robotoid Factories and their ilk, the Monoliths provide an even larger bonus.

Using a Monolith III on a planet with a value of 100/10/10, you get these results:

100% --------- 900 Minerals
10% ---------- 90 Organics
10% ---------- 90 Radioactives

ConVersion to Minerals with Resource Converter III:

90 Org x 0.7 = 63 Minerals
90 Rad x 0.7 = 63 Minerals

Total Production:

900 + 63 + 63 = 1026 Min > 1000 Min from Extractor III

So, even on a relatively poor planet like this, you can actually get more resources using Monoliths than normal Resource Extractors.

[tesco samoa]

IF Stellar is in the game. I build my whole game around these facilities and the resource converter. ( plus value improvement)

Nothing beats internal expansion.

I would suggest that you invest the time in learning how to build them quickly without being hammered by a lack of resources within the first 60 turns

[Loser]

Monolith Facilities are great, really great, though they are time-consuming to build. I usually only use them on good-air, large or huge worlds, and build a Ship Yard 3 (or better yet a TSY3) just to cut down their construction time. But that reasource converter trick makes them even more impressive.... how devious....

As for the length of time it takes to build Ring Worlds or Sphere Worlds (or any tool of Stellar Manipulation), you really have to use the .... um .... 'cascading upgrade series' (got a better term?) technique or you'll never get it built (well, not _never_, but ... 'never'). Ship- (or Base-)based SY3 will build an empty Star Base in six turns IIRC, and once they're all built you need only one turn (and all of Brewster's Millions) to dance-retrofit-dance your way to the right components. *BLAM* : Big-Fracking-Planet-Thing.

[Suicide Junkie]

Emergency build plus the cheapest possible starting design should get you the initial hull in less than 4 turns.

I refer to the technique in general as a series of retrofits, or a "Retroseries".

[Loser]

Good name.

But it's _so_ expensive, to build and to research, does anyone actually use these things (the SW, RW, or 'weapons') in a multiplayer game?

Depriving your enemy of a whole system is sick-in-the-head bad-aft! But is it ever feasible?

Does anyone know how warp-point creation works in multiplayer? Do your opponents know where the new warp point comes from (if they have seen the inside of the system-of-origin) even though they have never gone through it?

How about in simultaneous? DO you have the opportunity to push your payload through a new-made warp-point and close it before your opponent could possibly send a 'surprise package' back through?

You could change the tonnage of the Drone or the SM system-breaking-thing, but it's not possible to mod drones so that they can activate a SM payload over a target star, is it? (that would also be pretty sick-in-the-head cool.)

In an even more unrelated inquiry, has anyone 're-skinned' the entire interface?