Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

Well Slick as you stated you don't want to be at war with "everyone" but if you think about it I said I only build Atmohpere converters After I have a stable research and resource base which in short means later in game.

Your theory does have one major flaw it is not he who has the most planets wins it's he who has the most combat power and while your busy building small transports early in game I'd be busy building warships during the same time period, yes I'd have an initial resource crunch but i've survived that in every game I've ever played. And while your busy playing ferry man I'd come in with my fleet and troops and either smash or grab your nicely colonized worlds.

Firepower and fighting ability does not mean planet count, you can have a thousand worlds but if you've been busy building non combat ships while someone has been building warships, your going to lose a LOT of those worlds before you can even fight back.
Now take into account that most people are rarely ever at war with only one person/AI at a time and your adding 2 players or more to the numbers against you, and if BOTH of them are busy building combat craft while your building small trannys then it would get ugly for you very fast.

Now the problem there is that you would not know what kind of ships your enemy is building until you actually encounter his fleet or fleets as the case may be, so you may think your 10 frigates are fine until he comes in with 15 or 20 and maybe a troop ship. And by the fact that you actually HAVE other breathers in your Empire I'd assume you have troops?

I must admit I am not an economist player I am a militaristic player I raid other players to get the resources I want, I land troops on a world and if I can't hold it forever and I know it I scrap the facilities load my troops back onto my ships and move on to the next world, either forcing you to destroy or retake your own worlds and then rebuild them from scratch which will cost you more resources and time.

Now if I ran into one of your transport groups I'd be in pirate heaven, I often build light ships early on designed solely to raid colony ships and transports for population and then scrapping value but let's assume I don't have that technology, I'd just engage and destroy your transports and potentially kill billions of your people in the process.
And trust me if I knew for sure you were using the "other breather" tactic I would send at least some lone warships to hunt for you transport fleets, if just to balance out your population.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

I think you're far overestimating the requirements here.

You technically need only a single transport to make the rounds, and it only needs to visit each planet once.
All of the transports that you normally have to ferry units to the front lines can bring 1m breathers along for the ride back.

No interruptions to ship production, at all.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

It doesn't take large numbers of transports to do this. These transports can each undome a planet every turn or two as they move through the empire. One transport can easily take care of a few systems in a short number of turns. I don't consider these few transports to really affect ship production. Also, any cargo-carrying ship can be used to support this effort - carriers, mine layers, etc.

Obtaining the most combat power means that you must have the economy to support it. I believe that I should always be limited by mineral production. If I make more minerals, I should always be able to put them to use at a spaceyard. Being limited by spaceyards, or other resources means to me that I could be more efficient. Like the AI says: "Mineral Planets are the best." Balancing production and construction is vitally important, but the bottom line is that there must be enough resources to support the construction effort for your military. If leveraged properly, the empire with the strongest economy should be the strongest militarily.

edit: much slower than SJ, as usual.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

He's talking small transport aka at most maybe 200 million people now let's take into account that you have to have both the population to drop on planets and the cargo space to hold the population you are transfering, now most systems have a population of well over 200 million!

Heck in my current game, wherein I am moving all alien species off their native worlds to sphereworlds as part of the roleplay, and i have a transport fleet numbering 15 that is having problems evacing the populations of those systems. And 5 of them are just for transporting aliens OFF world, not taking into account the other 10 which are loaded with populations to transfer to these worlds.

The average evac for me of a single system takes about three turns, with 5 totally empty ships ferrying populations from world o sphereworlds and the other ten transporting populations and transferring them.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

Who said anything about safely transporting the previous inhabitants to another world? Just dump them out the airlock. One turn per planet is all it takes with just one transport, and can be done at the same time as the dropoff. If you're not concerned about roleplay, there is absolutely no negative effect for doing this besides losing the usually inconsequentially small population bonus to production and construction rates.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

My small transports can carry 450M; that's using a MC, engines, QR and solar sail with the rest of the space taken up by Cargo Bay III's. Occasionally the transports do need to dump excesss population, but this can usually be coordinated easily enough. There's always the option to jettison them to make room, but I usually don't do that.

In a normal game I routinely have transports which carry 3-4 different breathing populations, once I get them. By (D)ropping all population at the destination, each different species will multiply on the planet at the end of the turn, thus ensuring that there is always >1M of each kind on the planet (unless the planet gets filled). Then I load all non-breathers onto the transport, which undomes the planet, give the planet whatever orders desired and order the transport to (D)rop the population at the next planet. Rinse, repeat. Occasionally the transports are redirected to a different planet to offload accumulated species of one kind or another. Works like a champ. One thing I do to make this more efficient is that if I am colonizing a non-breathing planet, I just put 1M pop on the colonizer. This minimizes the excess population at the point of undoming. Another thing I do is keep a transport with all the different species over the planets where I am building colonizers. This way I can load the correct population onto the colonizer before giving it orders to colonize. This creates an undomed colony from the start. Another option is to first send the colonizer to a planet with the correct population then give it the order to colonize the target planet. Kinda the same outcome using that method.

I also use a few transports to keep my largest native-breathing planets from being wasted because they can't make more population once they are full. When they get full, I'll offload some and dump them at outlying native-breathing planets. This keeps my populations all growing at the max rate.

edit: *sigh* if only the Transport Minister would work this way...

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

Heh each of my 15 large transports can carry 1.9 BILLION people easily, I added shields and armor to the military version so it can only hold about 1.5 billion

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

First let me say I agree wholeheartedly with Slick. I operate pretty much the same way as he does. I think the most pop transports I've ever had is 5 small and 1 medium. I've never run into a situation even remotely similar to what you describe.

Why do you find it necessary to transport such huge numbers of civilians? You only need enough to place one million on the desired planet. Increasing pop on planets is a laudable goal, but remember, pop bonuses have an upper limit-- 8 billion, I think, in stock, higher in many mods sure, but at some point it's fine to just stand aside and let those breeders multiply.

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

I think what he is referring to the RP game, in which (from what I understand) the fleet of transports is being used to move entire planetary populations to the sphereworlds he has built. That would normally take more than a few small transports to pull off http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Atmosphere conversion?
 

Uh yeah as stated with that transport fleet it's part of the RP, 15 transports is more then I usually build in any game unless they are loaded with troop units.
I am moving billions of civilians per turn to completely remove specific species from their native star systems and move in my human populations while the aliens are stuck on their own sphereworlds, For example my Phong Sphereworld contains just about every Phong in the universe and soon so will the Xiati sphereworld once it is completed, their former worlds are then given over to the Human populations within my Empire http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif So that takes both a sizeable fleet and a lot of time to do.