Ringworlds and such
 

Hi all,

New question: what are ringworlds and when/why would you bother to develop them?
Is there a difference between a ringworld and a sphereworld?

In the few solo games I've played, even making it is hard on myself as I can against the AI, I usually dominate over half the galaxy before I ever get to this stage. And it gets boring then, so I stop playing.
I never even played up to the point where you get Wave Motion Guns and such, but I have opened a wormhole once, just to see what it'd be like http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif
My PBW games usually end even sooner than my solo games http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif

So I hoped someone here could tell me, that way I don;t have to open an old save game and go through the boring motions just to build a ringworld.

Does it provide any bonuses? Huge production capacity? Is it a huge mine? Or more like a monument to yourself?

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

Ringworlds and sphereworlds are essentially really friggin HUGE planets.

Ringworld is something like 10 times the Huge planet size, spheres 20 times..

Phoenix-D

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

They cost a fortune and take forever to build (five years IIRC), but once you've got one built you can turn it into an impregnable fortress. For a Ringworld:

Max Cargo Spaces := 64000

That's space for 2560 heavy fighters, or 106 heavy weapon platforms, not even considering that if you were really insane you could stick up to 100 cargo facility IIIs there for an additional 300,000 cargo spaces (12,000 heavy fighters! You probably _can_ have that many there, since the unit limit only applies to what's in space not what's in storage). It'd take a while to build all those cargo facilities of course, but you can use the base space yards you used to construct the thing in the first place to supply the units.

If you built a sphereworld instead, double all the numbers above; 29,120 heavy fighters or 713 heavy weapons platforms for a sphereworld packed to the gills with cargo facilities. Ringworlds and sphereworlds are inherently immune to planet-destroying and sun-destroying weapons too, BTW. No need to waste resources on gravitational shield facilities for them.

And then, once you've spent hundreds of turns building the mother of all fortresses, you can lose it to a puppet political party thanks to the 1.41 CI bug. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

Eee! Corporal BeeDee! Now _I_ get to terrorize the pitiful PFCs all over the forum!

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

"There is nothing more dangerous than a Lieutenant with a map and compass.."

Phoenix-D

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

here is a 6 player map with each starting point a sphere world. Just go in and edit each sphere to match atmoshpere and planet type. Makes for a great pbem game or a really hard game against tdm mod pack ai's. I wish I could make the game so that you only have 30 turns before the sphere worlds go nova. That would make for an intersting turn. Nothing like starting with 70 billion people 300000 minerals and 126000 research points.

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

You could consider a RW/SW to be mostly a prestige object... although, in the Peacemaker-type game (that I set aside for awhile when I found out about the JA2DL user-created campaign; killed Deidranna (well, several of them... strange mod) again) with a hefty resource surplus I'd started to construct sphereworlds around stars that were listed as unstable, as a preventative measure. I seem to recall that once you get the "star is about to explode" warning, you don't have enough time to build an SW without refit-chains, and you may not be able to build an RW unless you have sufficient spaceyard ships already assembled somewhere and ready to go... and it would have been *cough* irritating to lose a core system to a preventable incident. SWs/RWs prevent such stellar catastrophes (including artificially-induced ones), and are also immune to planet destroyers.

One note is that they start breathable / optimal, and with 150%/150%/150% values. Thus, they're great for monoliths (if you *need* the resources at that point...). The additional population capacity also means that, eventually, you can get some higher production modifiers than you can with a "mere" breathable-huge. It'll still take you basically forever to fill the world with monoliths, unless you're Temporal in which case it'll take you a fraction less. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Edited when colonDL turned into, well, http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon10.gifL...]
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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[This message has been edited by Taqwus (edited 24 July 2001).]

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> here is a 6 player map with each starting point a sphere world. Just go in and edit each sphere to match atmoshpere and planet type<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>You don't have to do any editing; SE IV automatically sets the atmosphere of the start world to match the race, and you want the planet type to be Sphereworld. It doesn't matter what your race's planet type is; I have a solo game where my Icy/CO2 race's homeworld is a Gas Giant.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

when I load the map and change my atmosphere to one that is not the sphere world's atmosphere the sphere world changes to a huge planet. This has happened every time. (1.35 and 1.41 )

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by CW:
1-do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components?
2-I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true?
3-Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

no, yes, and yes. someone worked out a cost/benefit analysis a while back and figured out that you can actually make a profit off of ringworlds in a fairly short space of time. I guess organic races would have a good time with replicant centers on one of these, but temporal races would do better in the short run with temporal spaceyards.

someone mentioned that constructions are immune to planet destroyers, i do not think this is so. I thought that they counted as a huge planet and as such could be destroyed by the highest level of planet destroyer. can anyone confirm?

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by CW:
BeeDee, do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components? I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I meant that (if I recall correctly) the Sphereworld Placement Generator starbase will take 5 years (50 turns) to construct using a ship or base mounted Shipyard III. The plates and cables each take only 2.5 years, so start building the placement generator ASAP and worry about getting constructors in to build the remaining components later.

Personally, I like to build 21 BSYs to construct these things rather than using shipyard ships. Less maintenance to support them, and afterward you can use them to quickly pump out the vast number of defensive units the sphereworld can hold while you use the sphereworld's capacity to build facilities (note, filling a sphereworld with monolith facilities will take 6 years at best (assuming you've transported in a large population), so a mix of the specialzed resource facilities may be better.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly. I kinda wish it was quicker and easier to build these things so that they actually made sense from a practical perspective, but on the other hand the way they are now they're even more "special."

Might be interesting to play a game where the victory condition is to build and fully develop (fill all facility slots) a Sphereworld. You'd have to balance your economy between destroying other players' attempts to build them and building your own. Or take a riskier approach, help someone build a sphereworld and then try to capture it when they're done. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Edit: Aha! Corporal BeeDee is educated about the use of boldface and blockquote on this forum!

[This message has been edited by BeeDee10 (edited 24 July 2001).]

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Puke:
No, yes, and yes. Someone worked out a cost/benefit analysis a while back and figured out that you can actually make a profit off of ringworlds in a fairly short space of time. I guess organic races would have a good time with replicant centers on one of these, but temporal races would do better in the short run with temporal spaceyards.

Someone mentioned that constructions are immune to planet destroyers, i do not think this is so. I thought that they counted as a huge planet and as such could be destroyed by the highest level of planet destroyer. can anyone confirm?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, the definition of a Ringworld or Sphereworld in the PlanetSize.txt file is stellar size 'huge' so I would guess that a planet destroyer for 'huge' planets would work. What building one of these DOES do is remove the star from the system! So, it effectively makes the star immune to star-destroying weapons. But if someone destroyed the RW/SW you'd have an asteroid field, not a star left behind. Hmm. Not good.

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

yep, you could then create a star and blow it up. or create a star, and create another sphere, after you made a huge planet out of the asteroids with the high resource bonus.

i actually entertained the idea of blowing up the sphereworld in the furball game, creating a star, and destroying the system as a dooms-day ploy should it look like I had no hope of winning. not only would that have been terribly unsportsmanlike of me, but it would have taken far too long to do, even with temporal yards. although now that i think about it, planet destroyers would not have been a bad idea, they could sit outside the range of those planetary WMGs everyone is packing, and just blown the planet away... to late now i guess.

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

Hm. I recall actually testing this out myself, and found that planet-destroyers report that ringworlds are too big for them to handle and that you can't create another sun in the system because the ringworld still counts as a sun for stellar creation purposes. I'll redo the test later today and post confirmation.

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

I'm currently in the process of assembling my resources to build a sphere world, just for the fun of it with no real practical purpose, since I'm so far ahead of the two remaining AIs anyway. This is a REALLY large scale project I'm undertaking, because I'm planning to build the super-planet in a blackhole system with 4 damaging warp points which happened to be in the middle of my empire.

So, the first step was to build a warp point opener and a warp point closer, then rebuild the 4 warp points (done). Next I'm building a blackhole destroyer, a star creator and a fleet of 21 construction ships (underway). The Last step will be to build the sphere world itself (to be done).

BeeDee, do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components? I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true? Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

QUOTE:
What building one of these DOES do is remove the star from the system!
/QUOTE

So solar supply collectors won't work in a SW / RW system?

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

See Map10a

for a mod that gives planets equivalent to sphereworlds (NexusHuge). Also the other sizes down to NexusTiny which is 1/5 the size of Huge. The planets are randomly generated at map creation about 1/5 of the regular ones. It makes an interesting start since due to an oversight by MM the initial homeworld placement looks only at the size class, not the actual size by name. Some AI get 8x planets rather than regulars. On a ten planet start it varies all the way from all 10 normal up to about four Nexus style, giving a ratio of 40/10 for the most advantaged. On a single planet start they are either 8/1 or 1/1 of course....

The facilities and population fill up to the actual capacity of the world, which is an impressive list indeed! Some AI would be automatic MEE at turn 1 if set at 500k on a ten good planet start...

Re: Ringworlds and such
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> when I load the map and change my atmosphere to one that is not the sphere world's atmosphere the sphere world changes to a huge planet. This has happened every time. (1.35 and 1.41 )<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>My mistake, I guess I misinterpreted what was done in the patch that allowed home sphereworlds then. I've never tried that myself, so I bow to actual experience with it.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"