Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Sorry to bother, but i was wondering if i could get a quick question answered:

How do you make dyson spheres? I can make the material, but I dont have a ship big enough to hold the elements. The elements only fit on a base.

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

You use construction ships to build bases equiped with the material and components in the same sector as the star. You should build lots of contruction ships because it takes a long time to build the stations, and more ships means faster production of the bases.

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Rules? What Rules?

[This message has been edited by Maverick (edited 03 May 2001).]

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

thanks for the info!

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

The most economic way is to use one or several space yard ships to construct first space yard bases in the sector of the star. I use spacestations with just the space yard and no further unnecessary components. 11 bases for a ring world; 21 for a sphereworld. Bases have lower maintenance costs than ships! As soon as possible you choose one space yard to start with the construction of the ringword/sphereworld placement generator. This component takes twice the construction time than the planetary gravity plating and the hyper density cables. Once the remaining construction time of the placement generator is equal to the construction time of the platings and cables you start to construct simultaneously 5 each of the platings and cables for the ringworld and 10 each for the sphereworld.
This gives you the complete construction of all needed components at the same time, which is essential. Otherwise your empire might go bankrupt due to the astronomic maintenance cost of the constructed but not yet used bases with the components for the sphere-/ringworld!
And Last but not least have a rock colony ship and population transport ready for the new ringword/sphereworld!


[This message has been edited by Q (edited 03 May 2001).]

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

The impatient, profligate types among us can also use the refit trick to build the bases in just a couple o' turns... it'll cost you an arm and several legs, but you can do it. ISTR that it came up when Dracus was discussing how he built vast numbers of 'em for the TwinGalaxies tourney.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Taqwus:
The impatient, profligate types among us can also use the refit trick to build the bases in just a couple o' turns... it'll cost you an arm and several legs, but you can do it. ISTR that it came up when Dracus was discussing how he built vast numbers of 'em for the TwinGalaxies tourney.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How's that work? Make a bunch of bases and retrofit them to be ringworld component bases?

I thought that if there was to high of a cost differnec, you couldn't retrofit one ship into another?

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

There are two details you need to know about refits...

a) The cost limit is based on the cost of the current design, not the original.

b) You don't need to repair a component before you can refit it.

This means that if you have a series of designs of the same hull type where each iteration increases the cost of each resource by no more than 50% (by default; moddable), you can do perform ALL the refits from the start to the end in one turn (as long as you can afford them).

IOW, you can build a cheap starbase in X turns; refit it to a sphereworld base in 1 turn; and then repair it in another turn. You end up paying for it all up front, which could be nasty; I don't know how the cost compares with the maintenance required for the normal multi-year way, which would in any event vary with race.

I've never bothered to work out the design chain, but it can and has been done before. I sometimes refit-chain 600kt+ warships, bringing up older designs (especially captured AI ships) to expensive, new designs, and that rarely takes more than one or two intermediate designs.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

The refit trick is a little bit on the cheating side, wouldn't you agree?

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

When used to construct expensive things very quickly, it does seem quite munchkin. OTOH, it might not be that bad, ethically, if it's FAR more expensive, but I've not crunched the numbers...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>you can build a cheap starbase in X turns; refit it to a sphereworld base in 1 turn; and then repair it in another turn.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not in a simultaneous game. You can only refit/mothball/unmothball ONE ship per turn at any given location, and that stuff takes place when the turn is run by the host, you can't do it "realtime" during your turn. IOW if you have 3 shipyard bases at your homeworld, you can STILL only mothball ONE ship per turn at that location.

Simultaneous really bites for that, among several other things, like launching fighters/satellites, transferring cargo...

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Another question on this thread: how can I get construction ships to combine their efforts to build something? 5 years for on ship to build the ringworld frob is not great when I can have a const. ship each for 2k cables and plating.

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Easy.

You don't.

Phoenix-D

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Re-fit bases????

The cost to build cable or plating is 50,000 of each resource. You can't be right in saying to you just re-fit the base to the new design to cost difference would be right out of the ball park.

How do you do it????

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Aussie: with a _series_ of refits. IOW, build a cheap base (design 1). Refit to a 50% more expensive design (design 2). Refit again to a design 50% more expensive than design 2 (design 3); continue until you can refit to a gravity plating/hyper-density cable/world generator base. Someone posted a design series once. Unfortunately for me, I think it involved mostly organic components. I prefer temporal tech, and decided the whole series refit thing was a bit "munchkin" (thanks for the new term Taqwus) anyway, so I haven't worked it out for myself. Not to mention I don't get enough time to play to make it worthwhile to work out such things...

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

I think that as of a couple of patches ago, refits are limited to 150% of the *original* cost of the ship/base.

(Though maybe I just screwed up my intermediate design.)

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Resistence is futile.

Re: Newbie building sphere/ringworld question
 

Naah. Not in 1.35, at least for ships. ~280 turns so far, 255-system quadrant, and I've had only two "real" battlecruiser designs. The first used regular shields, a live crew, no tachyon sensors or cloaking device, and nothing special in the way of engines or supply. The second used the maximum tech in shields, had cloaking and tachyon sensors, a solar sail, and switched to master computers as well as more minor upgrades... thus boosting cost in organics by greater than 50%.

So I made a 'meta' design between the two; basically, the first with the master computer instead of crew, or something like that -- so that this 'meta' could be refitted into the late-game model. It let me, so it's not yet based on original cost.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night