Beginners strategy?

[MadMartinB]

T -

 

50 berthings is nice and can be done but probably is not the best way to go. if you are dropping off 50 colonists a turn (and increasing each turn by 50) you will be building a HUGE amount of stockpiles at the colony which you need to get back.

 

Say you have a 812 iron world (I have one such in system :-) It will make 1.6M a turn which needs to come home.

 

I usually do 45 berthings a turn (maybe 40).

 

On turn 1:

- I do 4-6 colony beacons

- I scrap Pathfinders (for engines) but I make sure I have Slips to handle them pathfinders in Q plus any scraps (or you are slowed down 1 turn)

 

- I build a 1x 253k cargo Bay order (so I can build Hydro on the colonies and also build a 1-3k beacon placement ship)

 

- I set up my Q for a 40-45 berthing ship.

 

- I build 3k

 

Works fine..

[hobknob]

I have a religious government for on eof my positions and have been building plenty of appropriate installations. The result is that my religious characters wind up help out production quite a bit. I don't know if it a cause/effect situation yet.

 

Tok-

 

There is a great deal of personnal preferance in what you do so take everything with a few grains.

 

I wouldn't scrap any pathfinders as they are useful as they sit. I wouldn't wait to build engines since you will still need plenty of Mk I's for slow stuff. Even though you can get to Mk III nuclear or Mk I Fusion in 3 turns you won't be able to think about building them for another 5 turns since you have to also have all of the improved materials. You might as well build stuff slow as you can and then upgrade later.

 

I choose to not combine cargo and colonists and it seems to work out very well. I never have to adjust my cargo convoy routes once they are set up. There comes a time when you won't need any more colonists on a particular colony and it is easier for me to have the fleets seperate. If you really want cargo and colonists together you can always just send a freighter along with it.

 

While the formatting did't come through , here is what some of my earlier production looked like. If you need a spread sheet I have one you are welcome to.

 

I believe the secret to success is in a balanced tooled production that doesn't need to be tweaked every turn.

 

Crystals 1,500,000Tooled

Gaseous Elements 350,000 Tooled

Industrial Chemicals 300,000 Tooled

Iron 5,000,000 Tooled

Light Metals 200,000 Tooled

Lumber 1,000,000 Tooled

Petrochemicals 250,000 Tooled

Radioactive Elements 10,000 Tooled

Transaluminum 50,000 Tooled

Rare Elements 25,000 Tooled

Fuel 15,000 Tooled

Timber 500,000 Tooled

Steel 1,700,000 Tooled

Refined Crystals 500,000 Tooled

Radioactive Elements 6,000 Tooled

Synthetic Materials 300,000 Tooled

Processed Radioactives 2,000 Tooled

Electronics 250,000 Tooled

Construction Materials 250,000 Tooled

Cargo Bay 20,000 Tooled

Fuel Tankage 30,000 Tooled

Fuel Shuttle 20 Tooled

Mk I Nuclear Engine 10 Tooled

Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive 10 Tooled

Type A Science Lab 10 Tooled

Survey Lander 20 Tooled

Colonial Berthing 23

Cargo Bay 496,600 Tooled

[Emanon]

Hey Hobknob,

 

doesn't your que through you into negatives at least for steel, by allmost 50K

 

You make only 1.7 Mill Steel, but use before the extra cargo bays, 1.749 mill

 

250000 CM

100000 CB

150000 FT

48000 FS

2000 Mk I N

1000 Mk I JD

48000 SL

1150000 CB

 

Or did you mess up your que early on and are sitting of a pile o steel

 

If you are a colonizer I would recomend less electronics (about 10-20% of what is listed) and more steel, for berthings and cargo bay.

 

 

Long

Live Emanon

[hobknob]

The colony bearthing and the cargo bays listed at the end are for mopping up purposes and never completely produce. They aren't tooled either, but the check boxes didn't come across and I missed it. As for lots of crystals - you need lots of crystals for electronics and you need lots of electronics for JSS's.

 

The posted production is not for a colonizer either but I was cranking out 20+ berthings a turn just for exploration and science colonies. This production que came from my 3rd turn with the position and changed quite a bit by turn 10 with the addition of improved materials and better tech.

 

[EternusIV]

"The solar power plant is nice as it needs no maintenance (no materials to make power)"

 

hmmmm

 

I guess we've been putting all that improved petroleum into the Solar Power Plant for nothing then? :lol:

 

You dont need any sort of YIELD to make the power, though.

 

Actually - if the game is true to science, any planetary body without an atmosphere should yield something obnoxious like 500,000,000,000 power per turn per large solar power plant.

 

Damn that atmospheric refraction!

 

If we could only cut a stable whole through the Earth's atmosphere, we'd solve our energy problems forever.

[Laserwolf]

Or just build a few more planets to share our orbit would be fine too...

 

but then tidal management would become the next big civil engineering problem.

 

Damn that gravity!

[Tokmok]

Hello

 

When you are about to make choises on which research path to take what is the best deal?

 

1) Is it better to go for the 10 cm Gauss gun or is the Autocannon path better

 

2) Is Light pulse lasers a better path than medium beam lasers

 

3) Is light tractor beams a better path than medium magnetic grapples

 

 

4) In general does it seem to be better to choose new research paths when possible instead of researching the various basic items to its highest generation?

 

 

thanks

 

Tokmok

[woolfe99]

Hello

 

When you are about to make choises on which research path to take what is the best deal?

 

1) Is it better to go for the 10 cm Gauss gun or is the Autocannon path better

 

2) Is Light pulse lasers a better path than medium beam lasers

 

3) Is light tractor beams a better path than medium magnetic grapples

 

 

4) In general does it seem to be better to choose new research paths when possible instead of researching the various basic items to its highest generation?

 

 

thanks

 

Tokmok

There are no clear answers to which path it better, because we do not have statistical information to guage the effectiveness of 1 weapon vs. another.

 

I am under the impression that the pulse laser line may relate to the beam laser line the way that fusion engines relate to nuclear engines. The firepower relative to the research points it takes to get the tech is the same, but pulse laser may have a higher "top end." Also, the two weapon classes may open up to different side branches.

 

As to reseraching laterally versus vertically, I suggest picking 2 or 3 weapons types and taking them as far as possible. It does little good to have low level version of 10 different weapon types. Eventually they'll all become obsolete with the advent of higher level defensive systems. In order to research vertically, you will eventually need to use multiple RC's for each weapon. That isn't feasible with more than about 3 weapon types.

[Tokmok]

Hello

 

Is there any indication that ground combat tech´s like Heavy Truck and other stuff are nessesary for other tech?

 

And for instance to research mines that works in Space you first need to research a similar ground combat tech??

 

 

Or do ground combat tech only lead to more ground combat tech?

 

 

thanks

[woolfe99]

Occasionally ground techs do act as prereqs to ship components, and vice versa. The general rule is no, but there is some cross-over in the tech tree. Hint: heavy trucks isn't one of the things that will be a prereq for a starship component.

[MadMartinB]

Space Weapons and Ground Weapons discussion:

 

All space weapons of the same class are equal. Therefor a Laser which is Adequate is equal to a Lightning Arc Generator or a Sonic Disentegrator etc... As long as they are all of the same class: Poor, Fair, Adequate, Good, Superior.

 

They All dish out the same damage. The difference is in tonnage. A Heavy grapple is Adequate Gravitonics but has a weight of 7000 tons. A Autocannon will eventually be Adequate (30 cm) but may only weight 400 tons. So the Grapple will do more damage because it is heavier. But at the core they do the same

 

Damage/7000 = Damage2/400

 

Ground weapons are actually multipliers. if you do a TAC of a ground unit you will discover that poor weapons do x10 and Fair do x25 so Fair is 2.5 more effective.

 

M

 

PS - I forget the sequence it could be poor, adequate, fair or poor, fair adequate.

[EternusIV]

Poor ---> Fair ----> Adequate

 

Sounds "Good"

 

Har Har Har....

[woolfe99]

I think that it's poor, fair, adequate, superior, phenomenal. Perhaps there's more up the chain though, since there seem to be 8 generations of technology for most systems.

 

I'm glad for the clarification about tonnage. I wondered about that myself. A heavy Beam laser is "adequate" in firepower and a medium beam is "fair," but the heavy beam weighs 3x as much. It wouldn't be right if those ratings weren't relative to tonnage. I knew it had to be that way, but it's nice to have some confirmation.

[hobknob]

Everything is relative, not every weapon will have the same accuracy pattern or viable ranges so that also has to be figured in. Each weapon also has specific defenses that would apply to it.