Colonizing strategies?

[Tokmok]

Hello

 

How do you guys do your colonization?

 

I have been fortunate to have some worlds in my home system that I´m able to colonize.

 

I made some calculations that for a given yield you get 75% of max production by placing 1/2 the maximum number of mines.

 

and also there is a big difference production-wise between a 400 yeild vs a 200 yield. When you double the yield rating you get 4 times the production.

 

1)

Do you take that into account when you start to colonize and try to put population on several different colonies at once so that you always go after the highest yield ??

 

2)

Do you only put ca 1/2 max Population pr yeild to get the 75% of max Prod

 

 

3) How low a yield do you bother to colonize? According to my calculations

even for a mine that gives 200 crystals etc it takes ca 22,5 turns to pay

it self off (if you translate the 200 crystals to RM and compare it to construction

costs

 

I mean even though you have planets in your home system it takes quite a while to set-up even one colony because the Colonial Berthings are so expensive.

 

thanks

 

Tokmok

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Yes, colonization is a serious business!

 

1) If you are able to colonize in-system then you are lucky and fortunate.

 

2) If you are going for absolute maximums then I would concentrate on high yields first and whatever you can get away with for one power plant - 50% max mines is certainly a useful statistic.

 

3) You also need lots of cargo bays - certainly don't bother moving Industry about in your home system.

 

4) You might want to trade off writing colony routes against the absolute maximums, but in-system ones are short anyway.

 

5) Do not concern yourself with 'pay-back' times - it's definately worth establishing mining colonies even if you're just DISM'ng Stripmines and moving the people and CMs.

 

6) My personal choice is 5xYield - 110 and then add 5 if the answer ends in a Zero. That's the sensible maximum taking in production cost vs SMs and average power.

 

M2CW

 

Chief Planner to Ur-Lord Tedric

[hobknob]

My colonization efforst include many calculations to determine actual yield/mine built returns.

 

FX

With 3 potential worlds with 400,, 300 and 250 yields I have calculated how many mines to build at each one and the breakpoints where each planet would drop below the next lower yield planet. Each planet gets built up a little to take advantage of the highest possible returns. I have also limited my mining efforts to about 70% of max to maximize population efforts. Once everything is up to 70% I may consider going higher if other avenues haven't been developed by then.

 

Even having made a bunch of calculations I still limit colony size to nearest power genration facility output. This means that an asteroid colony with a solar power plant would be limited to 2500 pop increments, more or less. The worlds with hydro or geo power have much different numbers of course.

 

I have also set som lower limits on potential yields that don't seem to be worth the effort given current advances in tech. For me a yield must be over 200 to be worth anything. This, of course, rules out about 80% of my potential insystem resource potentials.

 

[woolfe99]

If population is not a limiting factor (because you have high reproduction), I would max out the mines for each yield. I do this because there is no better place to put your population. Even the last 25% of mines are more efficient than stripmines. If, however, pop is a limiting factor, I would limit the mines accordingly. I would also, as you suggest, focus on the higher yields first.

 

In answer to your final question, I never bother to colonize a world unless it has at least one yield at 300+ in what I call a "primary resource." Those are: iron, lumber, crystals, gaseous, petrochemicals, industrials chemicals, light metals, and radioactives. Secondary resources are certain things like precious metals and gemstones. Those are important if you are focusing on a certain tech that may use them. All the rest are close to useless as far as I am concerned.

 

Yields between 200 and 300 are somewhat useful. Yields below 200 aren't worth much trouble.

 

- woolfe

[Laserwolf]

I currently have run 20 producing colonies. Average pop about 150 or so. Why?

1) The maximum efficiency seen by a pop unit is one person in one mine. It drops from there.

2) Any good mined is automatically 10x better tahn producing it on the HW from RM.

3) because multiple stable convoy runs are a good thing.

 

Contrary to other opinions, 200 is great, when you only have 50 people mining. You need to look at production per unit pop to truly see the strength of being a colonizer.

[hobknob]

My colony sizes are based on other things, such as power generation and resource potential. I also look at total output of a colony. All of my freighters are built on standardized sizes and design so I want there to be enough materials available to completely utilize a freighter. For me that means at least 100,000 tons of material/turn for a small freighter and 400,000 tons of stuff for the large ones. I also have transports opperating in set sizes of 240/turn. Anything that is too low to use the majority of the transport capabilities is not colonized.

 

Once you get Improved stripmines and improved industries you have to refigure your bottom line for colonization. Since they bothe are 3X the standard versions your required potentials will also increase by a similar amount. It is nice to have a colony set up and running on autopilot with the required fleets just working away to drop materials of any kind on the homeworld.

[woolfe99]

My colony sizes are based on other things, such as power generation and resource potential. I also look at total output of a colony. All of my freighters are built on standardized sizes and design so I want there to be enough materials available to completely utilize a freighter. For me that means at least 100,000 tons of material/turn for a small freighter and 400,000 tons of stuff for the large ones. I also have transports opperating in set sizes of 240/turn. Anything that is too low to use the majority of the transport capabilities is not colonized.

 

Once you get Improved stripmines and improved industries you have to refigure your bottom line for colonization. Since they bothe are 3X the standard versions your required potentials will also increase by a similar amount. It is nice to have a colony set up and running on autopilot with the required fleets just working away to drop materials of any kind on the homeworld.

Interesting. I design a new freighter for each colony. I use Mk IV engines to make each a 12 AP ship. I take the total output of the colony and divide by 6 (if the colony is in my home system) to represent the fact that the freighter can make 6 trips per turn on a colony route. The result is the number of cargo bays I need for the freighter, which in turn also dictates the number of engines needed. Perhaps it's too complicated, but it's pretty well optimized. And with tier 4 engines, it's cheaper than having a 2AP freighter with 6x the number of bays.

[Galvorn]

My old core empire is rather stuck with Mk I engines, so I guess my plans are to be inefficient by having lots of holds and berthings. Hopefully, I'll be a bit more efficient in other areas.

 

PS: Woolfe99, I love your valedictory. Yeats truly hit the mark with that poem. Remember: The savage wars of peace....watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hopes to nought.

[MadMartinB]

Population is an issue. After 15 turns my colonizer is going negative on population. I have a big stockpile but as of this turn I will have 8 8AP 30 berthing ships and 5 25 berthing 2 AP Warp ships (+2 30 berthing 2 AP to scrap and convert). 2 more turns to convert all the old ships to new. That leaves me with:

 

10 x 120 + 125 = 1450 people a turn. I have been saving lumber and iron for ages to do the conversion (in mass) to Improved ICs but hey....time is needed.

[woolfe99]

Woolfe99, I love your valedictory. Yeats truly hit the mark with that poem. Remember: The savage wars of peace....watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hopes to nought.

Yes, I am a big lover of Yeats, particularly that poem. Fascinating meditation on the cyclical nature of human history. That line strikes a cord with me. It seems that the most obnoxious and/or incompetent people are always the squeaky wheels, whereas those capable of doing the most good are often aloof or complacent.

 

I am not a huge fan of Kipling, though I like that particular poem (in spite of its extremely controversial and now politically incorrect implications).

[Galvorn]

Politically incorrect, yes, but mostly it was an anti imperial (read colonial) poem. Its reasoning would be from the conservative rather than the liberal. Few argue from that view today. (ok, so I keep a 1908 Britannica around just to see how much our views have changed; it is truly enlightening)

 

Galvorn (a religious colonizing empire)

For the ashes of his fathers, and the temple of his gods...

[EternusIV]

All ideas here look good.

 

I have the fortune of having serious colonization bonuses and can thrive on many worlds. Here is my current strategy:

 

1) Consolidate ALL your CBs. It makes better sense to have a 1,000 CB ship than 10 100 CB ships.....(less orders, less routes and you 'max' out each target colony faster unless you already have NTWDs and even then....)

 

2) Choose the world with high iron or crystal yields that also have hydro/geo potential and colonize it (DONT FORGET THAT COLONY BEACON)

 

3) Bring plenty of cargo with you on the initial run....you need 250k for that first power plant not to mention 500k for the CM required to employ 500 people....750k-1 million cargo bay works fine and once you max out that colony, you'll need most of the cargo ships to haul your new product (I build 250k cargo bay designs with engines for flexibility)

 

4) MAX out the colony with population and leave behind the right amount of cargo ships to deliver your new product!

 

5) Target the next world and repeat steps 1-4

 

Advanced strategy--

 

** Increase the AP of your colony/cargo ships to make more than 1 in-system run per turn...halving your CB/Cargo needs for the convoy route per turn

 

** Slap NTWDs and more APs on colony ships that are travelling beyond your home system to reduce route length

 

I'm on the run or I'd go in more detail but those are my thoughts for now!

[WKE235]

Try this strategy for a challenging game

 

Start with a 4.6 Gravity homeworld frozen rockball and only and asteriod field and gas giant in the home system. Make sure your race has a slight negative to colonization in your design and the homeworld also has other negatives such as a temperatur of 110K and Ammonia atmosphere.

 

With your race and starting worlds designed, ask to make sure that all the worlds (total of 7) one jump from your home system have 2.0 Gravity or less along with atmosphere or temperature problems. Make sure that even the systems two systems out are useless by making all but one a Nexus, and place only three useless worlds in the other system. At this point with 8 star systems for a total of 13 worlds including moons, all pretty useless except the homeworld, you are ready. Find worlds you can get down to Low attrition ratings with Domed Cities and other items at Three jumps out. Now your ready to start colonizing.

 

Having located the worlds, now you build big, big ships. Of course sticking to the desire to make the game a challenge, you will have to avoided researching past Mk II Nuclear Engines. No speeders allowed! There is that annoying lose the remaining AP's after warping rule. Eliminate that by luckily finding NTWD's and FTWD's on your homeworld using explore orders. With minor engines and TWD's, you then build ships with 400 colonial berthings and LOTS of cargo space.

 

What do you think?

[hobknob]

Send RTG $10 and try again if you really want to colonize. If you don't really care about that, then give up colonization for the present and just go with it.

[ShadowKitsune]

Send RTG $10 and try again if you really want to colonize. If you don't really care about that, then give up colonization for the present and just go with it.

And if you're lucky, you might get some kind of uber-world in-system to colonize.