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The Disappearing Colony Ship


NeilGartner
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Yes, I've heard the same and just about abusing the DCS. Didn't know there was a problem with the ICE though. My take on bugs is that everyone should know about them when they're discovered, that adds incentive to fixing it NOW and not later and gives everyone a level playing field... Now if Pete intended for people to be able to use ICE this way or the DCS then...

/Locklyn

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After posting that last post, I think some people might think I was being sarcastic. But, the simple truth of the world is that the squeaky wheel gets greased. That being the case, if everyone exploited bugs, it would get fixed. So just to be clear, I was not being sarcastic in the above post. Please share the DCS bug (and any others you may be aware of) so that they get fixed.

 

Thanks again.

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After posting that last post, I think some people might think I was being sarcastic.  But, the simple truth of the world is that the squeaky wheel gets greased.  That being the case, if everyone exploited bugs, it would get fixed.  So just to be clear, I was not being sarcastic in the above post.  Please share the DCS bug (and any others you may be aware of) so that they get fixed.

 

Thanks again.

 

It's not that there is a bugh with DCS. But some have been raising concerns on how they work. Every DCS you place on your world that is powered has a chance to increase a resource. So, the more you place on the world, the more increases you get every turn. If you had 10 plugging away on the world, then all 10 could get increases in a turn. At somewhere between 10 and 15 DCS's, your HW's population growth (depending on your build) will about equal the POP you need to build mines and the like for last turns resource increases. At between 15 and 20, the increases start to exceed your pop growth.

 

Think of it in this way. Lets say your Iron level reaches 1000 using DCS's, and you build up mines to match (5000). Not lets say on you turn the DC's increase the iron production from 1000 to 1050. Your iron ore production just increased by 250,000 tons on the HW without doing anything. Now you build up the iron mines to match (250 more). Sure that only gets you another 6,250 more ore. But, in future turns, you'll get more and more iron increases from the DCS's. If you get another 50 increase per turn, then after about 4-5 turns that 250 will be generating more in ore that if they were used off planet.

 

And of course all the new ore is being turned around to create even more DCS's and power plants (Antimattter power plants generate 25,000 and replace Fusion plants using simple Construction Materials, giving plenty of power for the 100,000 required per turn for the DCS's .. and if your Hydro gets high enough, then...).

 

Once you add in other tech increases like advanced stripmines (9000 Raw per mine) and improvements in industrial tech, the whole result is colonization even all the way back to turn 1 becomes a big waste of time and resources. Your HW will be growing so fast production wise with Raw, various Ores, and industry that you will need every last body on the HW .. and even that can't keep up with the growth.

 

SO .. while limits were placed on R&D (so multiple slots on an item get decreasing levels of increase), no such limiters were built into ICE, DCS's, and other aspects of the economy. You can get into an every escalating geometric increase in your economy with the only limit being POP growth (can be increased using Cloning Centers, Imperial Medical Centers, and other items to "attract" people). Even this limit only slows things down by preventing you from maxing output. But the growth curve continues up and up and up.

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Yes, funny how things get all twisted C.E.X.

 

Are you saying that it IS beneficial to build more and more DCS's? I was under the impression that the "law of decreasing benefits" did apply to DCS's! I can see what you are saying however. It might take a while, but if you continually build DCS's, which continually increase your resource potentials, you would never need to leave the planet... Just continuously improve on your HW.

 

Holy crap, I've been doing this all wrong! I think I have just built my last colony berth...

 

So, now we have the answer. The game will not end with a whimper. It will end with one LARGE BANG!!!

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Ok, I just looked at the ANZ for the Deep Core Surveyor... it says:

 

"Deep Core Surveyor: Deep Core Surveyors are deep tunneling units that search the core of a planet for additional resources. They operate autonomously and may discover new veins of any of a variety of valuable resources. Construction of multiple Deep Core Surveyors can be quite useful, but the benefits of building more than one drop off in a nonlinear fashion. Deep Core Surveyor are energy

hogs, consuming an impressive 100,000 Power per turn."

 

This description says it drops off in a nonlinear fashion. Are you saying that it is wrong? That it does not drop off in nonlinear fashion? What gives?

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Deep Core Surveyors can indeed be an excellent way to raise resource yields on a planet. Yield increases from DCS production do drop off in time, but this does not happen right away, so a world can achieve high yields. Of course, it does take a while to bootstrap yourself into large numbers of DCS's, as they are not all that cheap to build and operate.

 

There are also other ways to raise yields and industrial production on one's worlds. Some are riskier but faster than the DCS route, and other methods have either not been discovered or have been figured out by some but not made publicly known. There is still value in colonization, even heavy colonization, if used in the right situations. Clever combinations of colonization and various industrialization methods can open up lines of production advancement that can be superior to the DCS route.

 

Our intent with SNROTE was that production starts small but as the game progresses, huge fleets built from high production worlds would be seen. Alliance action is definitely to be expected, combining the production output of many worlds to combat enemy alliances. Some empires here and there might have heavily industrialized worlds, but even those empires would be at a serious disadvantage when faced head-on by an enemy alliance. Multiple empires working together can not only combine their production but also have more population and research capabilities at their disposal and could collaborate on their exploration efforts.

 

Even very powerful empires are only really a threat to their immediate neighbors. Defense is absolutely emphasized in SNROTE, giving the small guy a big advantage when defending, and the effort involved in finding every nearby empire can be monumental to say the least, regardless of the industrial output that could be brought to bear.

 

Finally, just doodling around with various methods (some very risky), I can think of more than one way to come up with very significant resource production. That's starting with a very average homeworld, even one with very poor industrial output. It is absolutely possible for even a small guy to catch up in the industrial arena.

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Sigh .. once more the Oracle speaks.

 

"Yield increases from DCS production do drop off in time, but this does not happen right away, so a world can achieve high yields"

 

"There are also other ways to raise yields and industrial production on one's worlds. Some are riskier but faster than the DCS route..."

 

If I roll the chicken bones and consult the spirits, they say to me that phrase 1 from the Oracle indicates increases from DCS's drop off at some point after high yields are achieved (with no word as to what High means).

 

According to the tea leaves, I interpert phrase 2 to indicate ICE is one of those faster methods (as there is risk you could get significat decreases in addition to increases). In other words, perhaps ICE is not bugged and is working fine. And those folks walking around with 10K+ resource levels are perfectly valid (and not a bug as I was told). Of course the Oracle never spoke directly to the question of a bug, or any other such problem, leaving the interpertation to us lowly mortals once more.

 

Sigh.

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Once again, all I can say is WOW a friggin light bulb has just come on!! Time to withdraw ALL funding expended on increasing colonization berths and dump it into pushing ahead on DCS and ICE tech... then implementing it. I think I saw it in another post but just to confirm, my understanding is that DCS's require 3rd Gen Planetary Engineeing and 1st Gen Terraforming, correct?

 

Pete, I petition that you modify the ANZ description of a DCS. One line of the description states: "the benefits of building more than one drop off in a nonlinear fashion". Now in your post you say "Yield increases from DCS production do drop off in time, but this does not happen right away". Based on that plus what has been revealed here in this thread, it appears that it does not drop off in a nonlinear fashion. As such, the description of the ANZ is misleading...

 

Would you modify the ANZ for DCS please so that others do not fall prey to false understandings? A correct description about a year and a half ago could have significantly changed the way I have developed my setup.

 

Thank you.

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EEOC,

 

You say "It's amazing what you can do when you drop 20k ICE and get lucky". Would you elaborate please? What kind of benefit did you experience when getting lucky with dropping 20k ICE?

 

How did you employ ICE? Do you just build it then let it sit in the Stockpiles? Or do you have to issue some special order to "activate" it?

 

Also, did you use basic ICE1 or did you use higher versions of ICE?

 

Thanks.

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EEOC,

 

You say "It's amazing what you can do when you drop 20k ICE and get lucky".  Would you elaborate please?  What kind of benefit did you experience when getting lucky with dropping 20k ICE? 

 

How did you employ ICE?  Do you just build it then let it sit in the Stockpiles?  Or do you have to issue some special order to "activate" it?

 

Also, did you use basic ICE1 or did you use higher versions of ICE?

 

Thanks.

 

You have to stockpile it off world. Ice can do destroy a world or do good. I lost 3 resources completely, had three stay the same and 3 go up. Hydro was one that went up. Makes for lots of power. DCSs hit your main resources (we have 10 now) so Hydro gets hits every turn. While do colonize we cannot man our mines as it is.

 

:thumbsup:

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I've never sure why everyone keeps declaring that everything is a misuse of the system. Many people dropped ICE. I just stockpiled it in huge quantities (took 5 turns of the full economy to do it) and then did it in one bang. My HW was the worst planet in the system anyways.

 

We also have all our mines in a seperate colony on the homeworld with the appropriate installations. This maximizes our hits by our characters. We often get 6 or 7 hits on one resource increasing yield 100+%.

 

The biggest issue is now industrial capacity. One of the reasons to build the DCS (we really no longer need the resource increases) is that when Advanced RC are available (next turn or two) we have 351*250,000 (87M) of advanced CM already ready to be used. So that means we can flip 175k advanced ICs immediately. We are trying to figure out what to do with all the improved ICs (we converted a while ago to that).

 

What this does is enable you to process vast amounts of resources. If you want to process 60M Iron it only takes a fraction of the ICs because you do not have to do the Raw to Iron conversion. In fact if done correctly with some colony worlds you do not run any stripmines.

 

We regularly launch 20M ton warships to protect ourselves from the Templar attack.

 

Makes for some fun battles - here is one:

 

** NAVAL BATTLE REPORT **

The Templars # 724 (No Naval Commanders)

Total tonnage: 10,000.....Base Fire Control: 8 [80,000 bridge]

EEOC - (No Naval Commanders)

Total tonnage: 23,550,100.....Base Fire Control: 1 [0 bridge]

------------------------------- ** Imperial Navy Report: Fleet Order of Battle ** ------------------------------------------

The Templars # 724 [Golden Lion Rampant On A Field Of Black]

1011th Sentry [ROE: Y] *Standard Line* (Fleet Tonnage: 10,000)

[Deploy Location 1] 1 CO Siren (Corvette - 10,000 tons [each])

------------------------------- ** Imperial Navy Report: Fleet Order of Battle ** ------------------------------------------

 

Fleet 8001 [ROE: R] *Column Attack* (Fleet Tonnage: 23,550,100)

[Deploy Location 7] 1 WDNZ HMS Grey Misted Ocean Spray (Assault War Dreadnaught - 23,550,100 tons [each])

<911,250 Fuel>

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EEOC,

I'm not sure how I would stockpile the stuff offworld (the mechanics of it I mean).

 

My understanding is that industrial production happens after all normal movement, convoy routes and movement by standing order occurs. So, if I issue a BI order, that BI will be executed after all movement has ceased for that turn. So, the newly produced ICE would be sent to planetary (or colonial) stockpiles... where apparently it takes effect. So can you explain how I could produce ICE then stockpile it off world?

 

Another question I have is that you got lucky on a drop of 20k of ICE. I assume you mean 20,000 tons. If yes, then why did it take you "5 turns of the full economy" to build 20,000 tons? Did you mean 20M ICE?

 

Did you use ICE-1 or an advanced form of ICE?

 

In order to see an increase a Resource Yield number, does a resource already have to be present? In other words, say i have a HW that has zero potential in Gemstones, does that mean that ICE will not suddenly generate a potential for Gemstones? Conversely, could the release of ICE decrease a Resource Yield to zero, or just some insanely low level?

 

Thanks again.

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