Draco AP 1

[richardjohns]

I would say I am finding the AP 1 in Draco unforgiving. Two times so far, I have made a mistake and been unable to attack someone. Their is no way to make it up. I find that I have fleets so scattered I am calculating what year they will be able to be useful again. This being said. I am not asking for the AP to be increased. It just shows that each move is strategic and has great value. AP 1 has also increased the number of orders required to get the same things done. You need three times the number of ships to get the same type of scanning one ships would have given you with 2 AP.

[The Fremen]

Yeah AP 1 kinda sucks. Makes for very very slow explorers and convoy routes are much less efficient but there are techs to increase your AP. That has drawbacks too as they will make your ships very fragile as so much space is used for engines that go KABOOM!

[Lord Deependra]

Interesting. On paper, 1 AP fleets are much more powerful as they don't waster space on engines, but strategically, if you can't bring them to bear against your enemy, they are useless. I have some 1 AP warships, but everything else is 2 to 4 AP. I find warp scouts need to be 2 AP to be of any real value, and I have now upgraded most of my freighters to 4 AP.

[The Fremen]

It's all relative. . The AP 1 ships will generally be superior to the greater AP ships in integrity and firepower. If the 1 AP ships are deployed defensively to protect access to a strategically important system then having higher AP isn't really a benefit. It will be however if another route is found to bypass the area that the AP 1 ships are defending. The higher AP ships could exploit their advantage basically outflanking the slower AP ships. A lot depends on the situation. What will definitely affect the outcome of any war given relatively equal levels of technology is the ability of one side to maximize the use of their industrial base and that means feeding those

IC's with things other than raw materials.

[hobknob]

I will say again, i can live with an 8 ap cap, but the 40 or 50% of mass required to get to multiple ap will kill me faster.

 

Freighters are not the issue, war ships and explorers are.

 

LoL

[richardjohns]

The one thing I find interesting is the better the engine the more it cost to build (Advanced materials cost more) but there is no savings when you max out the tech in Draco. What I mean is if you have a colony berthing you cant reach AP 2 for a cost less than it would to build two ships doing the same thing. That being said other than explorers and transports, I will have to agree with hobnob on this. There is really no efficiency increase that is worthwhile.

[The Fremen]

Now that is interesting.

[richardjohns]

In Draco, AP 1 is best for moving materials but not colonists. Any empire can move all the materials off of a planet each turn at AP 1. As long as the chain happens after the production phase. Since, there is a limited amount of material and a production maximum, you will not need 999 + AP only chains of 1AP. You will immediately receive stuff every turn. Another factor is this once your planet has reached the processing of all mined materials you are at maximum. This maximum can be manipulated by research which even when max in Draco pales in comparison to colonization.

 

The funny thing with colonization you want to move slower than 1 AP. Why? If you do not have the construction materials it does not matter how fast your growing or moving colonists. You are always limited by you mined production maximum. Growth in Draco is almost totally useless after you reach your maximum use of mined materials. That is when iron becomes useless and all other resources are toggled depending on needs and everything just stockpiles and may never be used ever in 20 years of game play.

 

Consider after all the strip mines are transferred to industrial center your max growth potential does not matter. Whether you have a high or low growth rate unless your concentrating on the construction materials you not really going to get much out of it. This also requires that your not using any raw resources at all.

 

Should everything be sent to your home world in Draco? Absolutely never unless it is receiving stuff from your home system. It is better to move production away from your home world. Bad thing is this does not increase the speed at which you move stuff depending on the min max of Draco. As long as you at are removing max each turn you gain nothing by moving it faster.

 

Do good colonizers benefit in Draco? The answer is no when the max production is reached on mining conversion it just doesn't matter anymore. Just make sure you have multiple fleets moving them.

 

Does having smaller colonizer or cargo holds help. The answer is no even if you could make a ship with better AP as long as you already reach your max your already done. Should I convert ships to better versions. Nope if you are already at max production its a waste of orders. A fake research improvement.

 

I already figured out for my empire with the exception of one resource all my resources I will ever need for the next 5 years will come from my home system and the system next to it. That will mean I will be at max intake of mined materials.

 

In my opinion, the most valuable thing in Draco will not be iron, pop, etc. We will all have a surplus once the construction materials max is reached. I believe it will be where is you advance fleets located. One advance fleet in the wrong place could reduce an empires production by up to 90 percent. This would force them to restart over again at one home world production compared with the x10 of maxed empires.

[The Fremen]

The wabbits make some interesting points.

[hobknob]

Improved cargo bays make it simple to have 2ap freight haulers.

 

Production is last btw...

[The Fremen]

I can think of a few improved items that would alleviate the 1 AP minimum. How about improved colonial berthings or improved fighter bays and drone racks to name a few . Unlikely that those improvements are in the game but as Pete sometimes says..." You never know"

[Sakarissa]

I hope the Improved Colonial Berthings are in the game. I picture them able to hold more than 1 pop because of sleep berths. They go into the berths and go to sleep for the journey. You can take the space needed for kitchens, rec areas, and such in the basic colonial berthings and use it for sleep berths. Maybe the ICBs can hold 10 or 20 pop instead of the 1 for the BCBs? Maybe require 3G or 4G of both Life and Medical Sciences to open up the tech? Possibly Improved Pharm as well.

[The Fremen]

I'd love to see them too but I said it was unlikely because then it would be possible to actually move the population of a HW which is something Pete wanted to put the kabosh on. Then again you just never know. .

[Guest]

Will it just work in progress so who knows since it new game why not make things very different on then the other

[The Fremen]

Actually SNROTE has been around for around 14 years so it's not a work in progress any more. It's a massive delightfully complex construct that sometimes requires more than the 10 tentacles Pete has genetically engineered into his body to process turns