Not a newbie question
 

Value Improvement Facilities. Those delightful facilities which improve the values of your planets. Climate Control Facilities. Those delightful facilities which change your climate to something more pleasing.

It strikes me that these facilities are similar and that one must strike a balance in using them. Building one of them stops you from building another productive facility. For example, the Value improvement plant will boost resource production on a planet, but is it a good investment? Would just building a monolith bring you more resources over the short and medium term than improving the planet and then building a monolith? It gets more complicated if you look at building just a mineral mine or an radioactives mine, as they cost less but also return less. Further, the size of your galaxy and the expected game length will also have an impact on your decision on what to build.

In terms of the climate control facilities, are they worth the trouble? Population isn’t so critical in the game, so is it wiser to ignore your population growth rates except on the homeworlds, where you can ship out millions and still get the population back quickly?

Changing the atmosphere of your planet is, in my non-mathematical thinking, generally worth it as you get many more spaces to build facilities. However, if it is a short game, you might be better off just boosting your technology for extracting resources (and upgrading facilities) than bothering to convert planets, which can take a while and uses up a lot of resource points.

Has anyone done the math (read, I don’t know how) on when they are worth building? I created some charts once for Empire Deluxe, where leaving a city idle boosted the production. I remember discovering that it was very rarely worth doing, but in some situations it made sense. Right now I am in a tight game of PBEM and am looking for any advantage I can get.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

For value improvement facilities, it depends on the size of the planet in question. If you have a small planet (or a domed colony), with small number of facilities, then it probably isn't worth building them because the increase in resource production would be nominal. On medium-huge planet of your atmosphere, it's definitely worth building them.

Say you have 20 Mineral Miner I on a 100% value planet. You'd produce 20x800x1.00=16000 minerals per turn. Add a Value Improvement Plant III (VIP), and the value increases by 3% per year, so you'd get:
20x800x1.00=16000 per turn in first year
20x800x1.03=16480 per turn after 1 year
20x800x1.06=16960 per turn after 2 years
20x800x1.09=17440 per turn after 3 years
20x800x1.12=17920 per turn after 4 years
20x800x1.15=18400 per turn after 5 years
20x800x1.18=18880 per turn after 6 years
20x800x1.21=19360 per turn after 7 years
20x800x1.24=19840 per turn after 8 years

If you had built another mineral miner instead of the VIP, you'd have this:
21x800x1.00=16800 per turn forever

So, after 2 years, the VIP will allow for more production. Here is a list of the total minerals produced for each situation:
20 Mineral Miners and VIP
Year 1: 10x16000=160000 minerals
Year 2: 10x16480=164800 minerals
Year 3: 10x16960=169600 minerals
Year 4: 10x17440=174400 minerals
Year 5: 10x17920=179200 minerals
Total: 848000 minerals

21 Mineral Miners
Year 1: 10x16800=168000 minerals
Year 2: 10x16800=168000 minerals
Year 3: 10x16800=168000 minerals
Year 4: 10x16800=168000 minerals
Year 5: 10x16800=168000 minerals
Total: 840000 minerals


So technically, during the first five years, you'd be better off with building the Mineral Miner than the VIP because you'd make a larger amount of minerals. After 5 years, you'd start making more with the VIP. However, the total doesn't really matter, its the per turn production that really matters. After just three short years, you'd be making more minerals per turn. So, in the short run, the 21 Mineral Miners are better, but in the medium and the long run, the VIP is significantly better.

Hope all that helps you!

Re: Not a newbie question
 

what about say, multiple VIP or Climate control. how about urban pacification centers, i don't know that those have values so how would you do math to figure that out. thanks so much for the math work imperator fyron

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Stacking these facilities will not improve the performace.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Simplify the problem and choose Deeply Religious -- a Nature Shrine acts as a VIP+CCF for the entire system (affecting only your own colonised worlds, that is -- not uncolonised ones.).

That's one VERY nice facility in terms of saving facility slots, construction time, and research.

As for stacking, urban pacs don't stack. I'm not so sure about VIPs 'tho...

Re: Not a newbie question
 

In my experience, VIP's stack (as do climate control facilities).

The Urban Pac Center is almost always worth building. The Temporal Version (Temporal Vacation Service) is even better, since the TVS provides twice the happiness bonus of the UPC. In either case, the happiness bonus gives the best chance for keeping populations Jubilant (with the attendant productivity bonuses) even when you're losing major battles. The Temporal Vacation Service is the first thing I research & the first thing I build in a new system. That way, by the time the spaceports and resource facilities are built, the new planet is at least "Happy" and becomes "Jubilant" soon after.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

That's what I thought http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The verbage of the facility description implies that they can. I routinely build up to 4 VIPs on a Giant planet, and, while I've never played a limited resources game, I think that they'd be almost necessary for that type of scenario.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Atrocities:
Stacking these facilities will not improve the performace.<hr></blockquote>

Are you saying that more than one VIP III won't increase the values more than 3% ?

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Thanks for the ideas, I have been out of town and unable to reply.

Imperator Fyron, your charts are helpful and useful. One thing they make clear is that they are a really long term investment. Three years doesn’t sound like much, but 30 turns against fellow humans is a long time. And to break even, which is important in a long economic war, 50 turns is even longer. Your charts help with my planning.

Does anyone have any comments on climate control facilities? Is it worth the effort to improve the climate of your planets?

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Climate facilities should be included in your long term goals. Anyway of increasing your populations on a planet should be looked into. THis is for production bonuses and defence bonuses. Basically the Climate control will give your planet a 1 to 5 % increase of population a year when it is done. Which makes them a very important long term growth facility.

I know this from experience since I always have a low tolerance level. (-50%) and Climate control are the only way I can get my populations increasing.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

You may be better off with a Replicant Center, assuming you spend the resources on getting Organic technology to start the game with. As your population increases so do the bonuses, and they can add up pretty quickly.

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Imp. Fyron: You also need to take into account the resources not being obtained by a resource generating facility (e.g., mineral mine) during the time it takes to build a VIP. And the cost in resources of the VIP. So they are less valuable than you have calculated. I haven't done the math, but I suspect it will take 6 years to break even, not 5. That's 60 turns! I think you'd be better off colonizing moons, if they are available. (BTW, all those cruddy tiny planets/moons are great for making units. They will be especially great in SEIVG for making drones.)

Re: Not a newbie question
 

Climate Control is great for building up a planet's population, but is it worth it? Again, I am admitting my ignorance of math (I do have an MA in Law though...), but has anyone done the hard numbers on Climate Control. Sure, your population will grow faster and get you a higher production rate, but is it fast enough to justify the start up cost and the loss of production from some other facility not being built?

I am guessing that it is more valuable on large and huge planets and that it you either build it first, or don't bother at all.