Newbie Construction Question

[Mechanica]

Greetings

 

I played SN2 and was in the beta test for SN:ROTE until I moved to California in 1998 and lost contact with RTG. I just discovered the website last Friday evening and have sent in my race set-up sheet to Pete and Russ so I'm hoping I will be joining the game very shortly.

 

I've downloaded all the rules and all the player aids available from the ftp directory. However, my home computer only has the spreadsheet with microsoft works and doesn't like to translate the formulas on the excel spreadsheets. So I've had to develop my own spreadsheets for the moment.

 

My initial question is to make sure I understand how construction and production works. Now my understanding of the productions process is that I should prioritize from lowest to highest. The first step, if necessary, is the conversion of raw resources to specific resources (Iron). Then the conversion of specific resources to finished good second (Iron to Steel). And finally the conversion of finished good to component parts (Steel to Cargo Bays).

 

My shipyards construct the actual ships using the components. However, my shipyards can only use the components produced or stockpiled from the previous turn and not the items I make this turn, is that the correct sequence?

 

A small example to make sure I understand the process.

 

Ship design: Commercial Freighter 50,200 total tonnage

50,000 Cargo Bays

1 Mk1 Nuclear Engine

1 Mk1 Nuclear Jump Drive

 

Required finished goods for components

Cargo Bay = 5 steel x 50,000 bays = 250,000 steel

1 Mk1 Nuclear Engine = 200 Steel, 100 Electronics, 100 Synthetic Materials, 100 Processed Radioactives

1 Mk1 Nuclear Jump Drive = 100 Steel, 100 Electronics, 100 Rare Elements, 100 Sythetic Materials

 

Total finished goods

Steel = 250,300

Electronics = 200

Refined Crystals = 400

Rare Elements = 100

Synthetic Materials = 400

Processed Radioactives = 100

Total tonnage of finished goods = 251,500

* 400 Refined Crystals and 200 SynMetal required to make the electronics, have to pay special attention to prioritize electronics after these 2

 

These require the following quantities of specific resources:

Iron = 750,900

Crystals = 1,200

Gaseous Elements = 400

Petrochemicals = 400

Industrial Chemicals = 400

Radioactive Elements = 300

Total tonnage of specific resources = 753,600

 

Now, starting from low to high for actual production and assuming no specific resources available at the moment I would need 30,144 Industrial Complexes to convert 7,536,000 raw resources into the specific resources needed. Then I would need another 3,015 Industries to convert the 753,600 specific resources into finished goods and then another 1,006 ICs to process the 251,500 finished goods to ship components. Ouchies if I don't have specific resource gathering.

 

Now for power productions requirements it is safe to assume that if I only use 6 shipyards or 60,000 tons of capability to build this ship then I only use 600 power units and do not have to power up the full number of shipsyards?

 

Is all shipyard capability within the same pop group combined?

In SN2 you could have a 1x400,000 ton shipyard and a 10x40,000 ton shipyard on the same planet. Same total capacity but a huge difference in quantity of ships constructed. Is this possible in SN:ROTE in the same pop group or would I need to establish a new pop group?

 

 

I also have a question concerning the Mk1 Short range sensors. Are these necessary for exploration ships or just for combat ships? The tech description mentions fire control and targetting but also navigational dutes which explorers tend to do a lot of.

 

Thanks and can't wait to get my startup turn so I can find that my neighboring systems are already on the known star list.

[Sssarass]

Welcome Mechanica,

 

your flow isss correct for production and resssource cossstsss and yesss you need in ssstockpile all ssship componentsss in order to build a ssship. Each Ssshipyard Ssslip letsss you build 1 ssship, but each pop group isss consssidered to have a ssslip even if none are built. A ssshipyard allowsss one to build 10,000 tonsss of ssship (only in the pop group it isss in), you can have carryover i.e. You desssign a million ton ssship with 50 ssshipyardsss you would take 2 turnsss to build and your report would ssshow the ssship at 500,000/1,000,000 built.

 

For example a colonizer type race would on turn one build colonial berthingsss, cargo baysss, a colonial beacon and at least 1 Mk I Nuclear Engine, at a minimum and GEO/PMAP their sssyssstem planetsss for a sssuitable colonial world. Turn 2 build a cargo ssship with at leassst 1000 cargo baysss (colonial beacon weights 1000 tonsss). Turn 3 build a colonizer ssship, load a beacon on cargo ssship, NM to ssselected planet, and drop beacon (COLB). Turn 4 perhapsss ssset up a convoy route (ssstart with CNVR and end with CNVR order to clossse the route) to the planet and keep building your colonizer ssshipsss and put the firssst colonizer on the convoy route with a CONV order, you alssso might want to build cargo ssshipsss to bring home the mined resourcesss (or perhapsss refine them a bit on the colonial world)

 

One quessstion why put a jump drive on a ssship with out fuel tankage (it can't jump by itssself, but could with a ssship with excessssss fuel).

 

Sssensssorsss help with minesss and exploration (Pete posssted a bit on what helpsss with exploration on the forum).

 

Read the forumsss asss they contain usssefull information and help with at leassst your firssst few turnsss, ssshould you have SssRP'sss.

 

Good gaming, perhapsss we ssshall meet oneday,

 

CTO Sssarasss

[Mechanica]

Hi and thanks for the reply.

 

Since I haven't seen any fleet size or number of fleet limitations I've decided to be very specialized with my non-combatants. As such I'll probably match up an exploration ship with a cargo hauler. I'll add a tanker if I send them out system. I'll also have a design for a system survey ship.

 

I have some unlearning to do from SN2. There if you had a 4x40,000 sy then you could pump out four 40,000 tons ships a month or every 2 turns. It looks like here that the SY rating is the total cumulative tonnage that can be constructed in a turn. The number of slips is how many ships can be worked on in the same turn starting with the first ship and working down until the SY runs out of capacity. I will definitely have to keep that in mind.

 

I've been through several of the posts with first time questions and some of those have answered a lot of question. Until I actually get my starting turn in hand I really don't know what other questions might arise.

 

I'm assuming all homeworlds start off with pretty near the same stats. Resource potentials may vary some and atmosphere/gravity setting will vary by race. If someone could post or email me what the starting homeworld looks like that would give me something to play with until the real data actually arives. I think I saw it in a post somewhere in my last 4 days of roaming the boards but have not been able to relocate the post. Of course I'm not expecting to receive system name or system layout.

 

Mechanica

Ex-Unit Prime in another far away region of space.

 

 

Oops, I did think of another question. This concerns AP of ships. Since the baseline of each ship is 2 AP then once I achieve a thrust to tonnage ratio of 1 does the AP increase to 3 or do I actually have to obatin a thrust to tonnage ratio of 3 in order to increase the APs?

 

Which led to another question :lol:

Also how are APs for a fleet determined? By total thrust to tonnage of all ships in the fleet or based on lowest AP or highest AP of any ship?

 

Thanks

[HumVie]

Howdy and welcome,

 

Fleets use the lowest AP ship in the fleet. Min AP for any ship is "2" regardless

of the thrust ratio of the engine(s) to the ship. If you design your ships so the thrust to tonnage ratio is say 10,000 to 10,000 (i.e. theoritical AP 1) the ship is

still rated at "2" AP. All you would have is a slightly better chance of fighter/drone/missile defense.

 

To make it to AP "3", you would need 3 times the thrust to tonnage ratio. In this

case 30,000 to 10,000. This is why a lot of folks go for Mk II Nuclear Engines (500 tons thrust) to Mk I Fusion (1K tons Thrust) to Mk II Fusion Engine (2K tons Thrust) as asap. However, for the Mk I/II Fusion Engines you will need Improved commodities to build them.

 

Also be careful re-using the same fleets. I have seen a couple of cases where

older "2" ships part of a fleet before I merged several fleets together. I later put

Higher AP ships into one of the empty fleets but it still had an AP of "2".

 

 

 

Good Cheer,

Rick McFarland

 

P.S. Nuclear Transwarp is also a good technology to consider getting early on

(requires Advanced Fuel, Superconductors, Mk I Force Shields) as it lets you jump through a warp point and not have your remaining APs zero'd out by the action.

[Paradigm]

I've downloaded all the rules and all the player aids available from the ftp directory. However, my home computer only has the spreadsheet with microsoft works and doesn't like to translate the formulas on the excel spreadsheets. So I've had to develop my own spreadsheets for the moment.

Go here and download install Open Office 1.1.1.:

 

http://www.openoffice.org/

 

It will read / write microsoft Excel spreadsheets. It is not perfect, but does a good job and in my experience works with nearly all microsoft excel spreadsheets (and microsoft word documents, etc.). Plus it's free open source software that runs on a variety of platforms. I've pretty much dumped the overpriced (IMO) microsoft office from all of my windows systems and do not regret it.

 

Note: I have no interest in debating office suites with microsoft apologists here. I'm just trying to help this guy out and give a plug for some good open source software.

[ShadowKitsune]

Side Comment to your Note - If you don't want to get into a debate, Paradigm, you should probably avoid using potentially inflammatory phrases such as "Microsoft apologists".

 

FWIW

[Paradigm]

Side Comment to your Note - If you don't want to get into a debate, Paradigm, you should probably avoid using potentially inflammatory phrases such as "Microsoft apologists".

 

FWIW

A rose by any other name . . .

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Hi Mechanica and Welcome

 

I too looked and looked for this game and used to e-mail RTG regularly every 6 months for a couple of years after SN II folded......(Europe variant)

 

I was in luck, however, and saw a comment in Flagship early enough to manage to get in on Turn 3!

 

Most of what you posted has been verified above, but there is a current bug that we are hoping will be fixed soon......

 

Whilst the Shipyards are supposed to draw power only when being used (ie giving you a choice in how many 'spare' Stripmines you should have), the code doesn't work quite right and the result is that they don't use any at all at the moment.

 

We're hoping for a fix soon as this is open to more than simple abuse as empires get bigger.

 

Thus you can afford to have as many shipyards as you need just now and convert any spare ones to SMs later.

 

And you are quite right in spotting the differences from SN II. Instead of sized shipyards, you now have the shipyards and the slips separate. This means that you can build 10,000 tons of tonnage per Shipyard and work on as many ships as you have Slips.

 

Enjoy - it is big and bad and shows great promise - meet you in 10 years!

[hobknob]

Everything about the startup is random. The only certainty is that you will be on a planet with an atmosphere. As far as the homeworld goes things are much different than they were in SNII. There are 24 different resources that you can have some usable potential, although 2 of those are hydro and geothermal ratings and only effect power production. Each homeworld is different and some are better than others. Generally speaking you should get a dozen or so potentials worth something and most likely won't get anything too great. I haven't heard of anybody with a homeworld potenial over 500 yet, but I have seen lots in the 425 range. In the end you will be able to produce 12-15M tons of stuff from your mines.

 

Homeworlds also vary in temperature from the chilly 50 degree planets to the hot 450 degree planets, gravity ranges from .1 to 5 and axial tilt ranges from 0 to upwards of 75. Some players have even found elevated levels of pollution, or microorganisms or radiation on the homeworld. Atmosphere differs also, but rest assured you do have one.

 

While all homeworlds are similar to a certain extent, that does not carry over to home systems. You can find yourself as the sole planet in a system or as a part of a sytem with 40+ planets and the same goes for warp points. A single warp point is not uncommon or you could have 10 or more. The most I have heard about is 11 at this point.

 

Without delving into the pros and cons of the various possibilities, that is about all there is to the random setup.

 

Another week to go now.

[Sssarass]

Concurring with Hobknob for the mossst part.

 

A few updatesss are the following.

 

Homeworldsss that I have ssseen have producted materialsss from minesss in a range of 800,000 to 3 million, the higher the better for you.

 

Yieldsss I have ssseen have gone up to 500 on homeworldsss and on other planetsss/moonsss/etc... on the upper end have gone from 500 to 1400 ( ). Nice for colonizing.

 

Colonizing has a number of inssstallationsss that help (Fluid Conversssion Plant for oceansss, Dommed Citiesss for Atmosphere, you need improved conssstruction materialsss for thisss, 5000, City'sss and Colonial Training Center for life form bassse bonusssesss)

 

But yieldsss can be changed in a couple of waysss. One is ICE (Instant Coalescing Embrace).

 

It dependsss what you are wanting to accomplisssh in the game, asss I am not sssure I through out the few thoughtsss above.

 

And sssome SssRP'sss are nice to have to get enginesss for colonizer'sss, good weaponsss for piratesss, Indussstrial Ssscience for economic'sss, Gatesss for gating, ......

 

CTO, Sssarasss

[Ur Lord Tedric]

I haven't heard of anybody with a homeworld potenial over 500 yet, but I have seen lots in the 425 range. In the end you will be able to produce 12-15M tons of stuff from your mines.

Yikes!

 

I really, REALLY, hope that you added a decimal point there - otherwise I'm screwed.

 

I thought I was fine getting 1.2M tons of stuff from my HW mines, but that's incredible!"!!!!

 

Disillusioned Chief Planner to Ur-Lord Tedric

[ShadowKitsune]

I sure hope he was using the M as meaning 1,000 times not 1,000,000 times, otherwise the Q Republic is equally in trouble.

[hobknob]

Ooops....

 

Yep it was supposed to be 1.2M to 1.5M tons, although I do know of folks that are getting 2.5 M tons of stuff. The 12M tons of stuff is basically what you can produce from Raw and mines combined.