The Official Colonizer Grieving Thread

[AKO]

The regular CM are very handy when establishing new colonies.

I am cranking out considerable amounts of goodies with my mines.

Later, when better industries appear, I will convert the CM into more mines on colonies.

 

I also made the calculation that it almost takes forever to make a payback, but in the mean time they at least do something. I can always DISM everything I've build and use to pop for other uses.

 

I agree it is a trade off with building defenses, but isn't life about making choices?

[woolfe99]

My only intention was to increase my production as fast as possible and use all my spare pop units. As far as analyzing the cost justification...no I hadn't given it much thought. I would, however, like to know what your analysis is.

The payback period is quite easy to calculate (unlike certain other aspects of the game economics, which leave me perplexed).

 

An SM generates 1000 RR per turn. It costs 45,000 RR to build. Hence, it would take 45 turns to pay for itself, *except*.... you must build at least 4.1 IC's for every stripmine to convert the resources. That's another 184,500 RR's. So you're looking at about 230 turns for total return on investment. There are certain tech advances that can help that out of course. Tech I'm aware of might bring it down in the vicinity of 70 turns.

 

Fortunately, pursuing that strategy is not an irrevocable mistake. You can make CM's and put them into stripmines and IC's temporarily. Just make sure you colonize. That way you can scrap the SM's/IC's and put the CM's and pop into colony mines, which payoff in a little over 20 turns (depending heavily on yields). That figure also can be brought way down with certain tech.

 

- woolfe

[hobknob]

Payback is only relavent when compared to other options. I too calculated cost recovery early on and found it to be fairly steep, but what other alternative do you have? You really have to look at where you will be 20 turns in the future and decide if you should build or if your pop is better left in unemployment. I would say that if you can't get to improved installations quickly then building standard ones is a lot more attractive. Even when you get to the improved varieties it is still a strain to do more than keep unemployment in check. I am currently converting over to Improved IC's and I figure that project alone will require more than 100 turns. Having 15-20,000 extra pop sitting around doesn't necessarily make that go any quicker unless you have been stockpiling iron and timber since the beginning. JMHO

[EternusIV]

Great point about having other options....and deciding that building SM/IC is one of the better ones early on.

 

I'll be honest: I have a skeleton crew for fleet defense.

 

Now that I have better technology, I can build better war ships....but for the first 20 turns, building CM, exploration ships, jump survey ships and CBs isn't a bad strategy at all.

 

I got lazy about 6 turns ago and didnt focus on keeping people employed (ie stopped building gobs of CMs to keep them employed)

 

My advice is to plan your colony CM needs and figure out how quickly you can colonize it well in advance of sending over that first colony/cargo ship.

 

The key is to get those Iron Mines etc. up and running asap as that has the best "return" for your pop/CM usage.

 

Side question: anybody else notice worlds with decent lumber yields are pretty uncommon?

 

Back to oversee my "Improved Construction Materials" production......

[woolfe99]

Payback is only relavent when compared to other options.  I too calculated cost recovery early on and found it to be fairly steep, but what other alternative do you have?  You really have to look at where you will be 20 turns in the future and decide if you should build or if your pop is better left in unemployment.  I would say that if you can't get to improved installations quickly then building standard ones is a lot more attractive.  Even when you get to the improved varieties it is still a strain to do more than keep unemployment in check.  I am currently converting over to Improved IC's and I figure that project alone will require more than 100 turns.  Having 15-20,000 extra pop sitting around doesn't necessarily make that go any quicker unless you have been stockpiling iron and timber since the beginning. JMHO

In the case of building stripmines and IC's, they won't pay you back until after the game is over. And there is of course an opportunity cost - you can build weapons of war instead. To me, whether or not to invest in something that is automatically a negative return is a no-brainer.

 

As I said, mines (as opposed to stripmines), will pay off in a sane time frame. There is nothing wrong with building SM's/IC's if you currently don't have a world (or enough berthings) to colonize, then DISM the SM's/IC's later when you do to free up the pop and CM's for the mines. In fact, it's a smart way to play it, because you're getting a return instead of letting your resources just languish while you wait. But to pursue building SM's and IC's as a long term strategy just doesn't work economically. Even if you don't have the present ability to colonize, there's always on opportunity cost. The math doesn't lie.

 

- Dave

[woolfe99]

Great point about having other options....and deciding that building SM/IC is one of the better ones early on.

 

I'll be honest: I have a skeleton crew for fleet defense.

 

Now that I have better technology, I can build better war ships....but for the first 20 turns, building CM, exploration ships, jump survey ships and CBs isn't a bad strategy at all.

 

I got lazy about 6 turns ago and didnt focus on keeping people employed (ie stopped building gobs of CMs to keep them employed)

 

My advice is to plan your colony CM needs and figure out how quickly you can colonize it well in advance of sending over that first colony/cargo ship.

 

The key is to get those Iron Mines etc. up and running asap as that has the best "return" for your pop/CM usage.

 

Side question: anybody else notice worlds with decent lumber yields are pretty uncommon?

 

Back to oversee my "Improved Construction Materials" production......

"Keeping people employed" is not as critical IMO as some have suggested. There are two components to putting up installations - pop AND CM's. If you are limited by CM's and not pop, there is no particular reason to produce CM's *just* to keep your pop employed, where you'll never be fully compensated for what you spent on the CM's.

 

IIC's allow you to cut down the ROI time for mines by 2/3's. Every IIC you build costs 500 Improved CM's, but allows you to DISM 3 IC's, giving you 1500 CM's and 3 pop, 1000 CM's and 2 pop net gain. You get that "for nothing." It's free. Hence, any CM's you use to build Iron Mines, Lumber Mills, etc. are cut down by 2/3's in cost. If you employ IIC technology in conjunction with aggressive colonization, you can hit a pretty fast economic power curve. I say "pretty fast" because in case anyone hadn't noticed, the economic power curve is a slow or slower in this game than the tech curve, which as many have observed is pretty darn slow.

 

- Dave

[EternusIV]

Dave-

 

You could even go the extreme --

 

Dont build any CMs.

 

Convert your starting SM/IC CMs for power and industry needs for your colony as you go. Instead - build lots of stockpile iron and timber for your Improved CM needs down the line.

 

This strategy is fiscally the most sound to be sure as you have pointed out.....

 

But what about all that extra pop?

 

If I were to stick to the true math as you suggest (and believe me, I struggled wtih this issue mightily early on) I would have thousands upon thousands more unemployed citizenry. Begging the question - why build a breeder race?

 

I chose the middle ground and have no major regrets.

 

Warships - especially when built early on - are still a risk:

 

1) We don't know how to design our ships most effectively for combat yet;

2) The ships we build early on will be outdated within 20 turns

 

At least with CMs/SMs and ICs, we see some a tangible increase in production early on.

 

Nothing will ever "pay for itself" by design anyway.

 

In retrospect - the smartest - and hardest thing to do from a discipline standpint - is to build CBs and a few exploration ships and then stockpile basic resources without building any CMs -- but instead building lots o Improved CMs.

 

Handy items you can build now that will never become outdated: CBs, Cargo Bays, Fuel Tankage, Drone Racks, Fighter Bays.

[woolfe99]

Dave-

 

You could even go the extreme --

 

Dont build any CMs.

 

Convert your starting SM/IC CMs for power and industry needs for your colony as you go. Instead - build lots of stockpile iron and timber for your Improved CM needs down the line.

 

This strategy is fiscally the most sound to be sure as you have pointed out.....

 

But what about all that extra pop?

 

If I were to stick to the true math as you suggest (and believe me, I struggled wtih this issue mightily early on) I would have thousands upon thousands more unemployed citizenry. Begging the question - why build a breeder race?

 

I chose the middle ground and have no regrets.

 

Warships - especially when built early on - are still a risk:

 

1) We don't know how to design our ships most effectively for combat yet;

2) The ships we build early on will be outdated within 20 turns

 

At least with CMs/SMs and ICs, we see some a tangible increase in production early on.

 

Nothing will ever "pay for itself" by design anyway.

 

In retrospect - the smartest - and hardest thing to do from a discipline standpint - is to stockpile basic resources without building any CMs.

Heh. Well that's me. I have never, and will never, build ANY CM's in this game. What I am doing is channeling my resources thusly:

 

Some goes for building berthings and bays, early on.

 

Some goes for building lots of MK IV engines to save transit costs - because at tier 4 engines, it's cheaper to build high AP/fewer berthing ships than low AP/more berthing ships.

 

Some gets stockpiled for improved CM's, until I get IIC's.

 

Some gets stockpiled as level 1 resources (iron, chemicals, gaseous, etc) for later use in warships. No warships are ever built until I have at least 3rd gen tech and I know there won't be any component obsolescence for 40+ turns.

 

My first 2 colonies are set up with CM's that I started the game with. After that, I have IIC's and will slowly substitute them for IC's at a 1 to 3 ratio, freeing up CM's for more colonies. With a 12 AP colony ship with the NTWD, I start to set up colonies quickly (this will happen for me in about 5 turns).

 

As far as taking high reproduction, you'll use up the pop when you find enough colonies, and when you have the NTWD and engines to set them up quickly. You need to do lots of exploration and research the right techs of course. Until then, it's no sweat to have extra pop. Those who did not take high reproduction are always limited by pop it seems, and you aren't. You only need to worry about your ROI on making installations.

 

- Dave

[EternusIV]

Thats a damn good plan, Dave

[woolfe99]

Thats a damn good plan, Dave

Thanks.

 

I want to expand on my point about how awesome high reproduction is.

 

First off, it cuts way down on colony attrition. IMO, possibly more so on a point for point basis than any other lifeform feature that gives a CB.

 

Second, although you may have lots of pop laying around, you never face the limitation that other's face. So it isn't so much the presence of something good, but the absence of something bad. Unlike CM's, pop can never be "made" in this game. It has to grow according to a simple percentage set by your initial lifeform choice. If you don't have enough pop to set up colonies as fast as you otherwise could, you will forever be limited economically. And it's surprising the different between standard and "excellent" reproduction. It's constant scrimping versus and effectively limitless supply. There's no real reason to buy the growth up to "superior" except for the extra advantage in further eliminating attrition.

 

IMO, high reproduction is the *single* best lifeform feature in the game, apart from SRP's and perhaps the three features that give an RM. I would include it in every racial design, unless I just didn't care about economic growth.

[EternusIV]

You're on a roll

 

This has turned out to be a great thread IMHO. Lots of juicy tidbits for newbies.