Game Bottleneck
 

I'll bet you folks are getting *really* tired of reading my Posts about the obvious. . . so here's the Last one. . . that's rattling around the tiny blob of gum called "Argh's brain" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I have discovered something unpleasant about the default, un-modded SE:IV, and I was wondering if there were any mods that get rid of this, or if others would desire one:

Why can't I build more than one Shipyard, to increase the speed at which I build/repair warships? This turns out to be THE bottleneck. . . when I began doing efficiency calculations. . . just fooling around, mind you. . . I figured out that the ultimate bottleneck on production isn't population and it certainly ain't resources. . . it's not being able to build more than one Shipyard!

So. . . I have three questions connected to this:

1. Other than races' base stats, the availability of resources, the tech level of the Shipyard and that Temporal Science shipyard. . . what else effects ship's build times? I haven't noticed differences due to population. . . spaceborne shipyards produce just as quickly as planetary ones. . . so what else can effect this?

2. Are there any mods that allow you to build multiple Shipyards, or allow all players to build a facility that speeds up Shipyard production, and allows you to buy multiples to further increase the bonus? I'm rather annoyed that such an artificial bottleneck was imposed by the original design- in MOOII, the bottleneck simply didn't exist- pay your dough RIGHT NOW, and you can have a leviathan built by next turn- which is how it's done IRL, when governments are in a real hurry.

3. How many of you experienced players try to max out your ship-building speed? How many of you think that it's less important than other factors?

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Argh,
My Opinion: The beautiy of this game is that there are so many questions, (frustrating or not). "There Ain't no Such Think as a Dumb Question".

As for your actual quesitons? I haven't a clue, (yet).

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

It's a matter of opinion whether this is a bad thing or not. Some feel it's more realisitic. That a space ships is a complicated thing and no matter how many dollars you throw at it, it should take a minimum amount of time to build one. Others agree with you.

You pretty much mentioned all the factors related to production rate. Although typically space yard facilities on a planet do build faster than space yard components in a ship.

I have heard of a mod recently that allows the building of multiple facilities that will boost production, but I haven't seen the details yet. You should be able to find the thread fairly easily. I think it was in the "Pirates life for me..." thread.

You could also modify the data files your self to boost production in a number of ways. Change the base construstion rate in the settings.txt file. Change the facilities.tx file to increase the space yard rate, or add additional levels of space yeard tech. Do the same for the Space Yard component. Modify the Racial Traits .txt file to allow for increased construction racial bonuses.

There is very little about this game you can't change if you don't like it. It's one of the stregths of Spaces Empires IV.

Geoschmo

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Argh,

Have you also noticed that UPGRADES take place all at once? You cannot upgrade one or a few facilities at a time, it has to be all of them? This can be a problem if resources are tight and you've got a large planet to upgrade. You have to spend a lot and get no returns for a long time before the upgrade takes "all at once". I've pointed out the contradiction of forcing build to 'one at a time' and upgrade to 'all at once' before. Would be far more flexible to have it the other way around, but would still be better to have both the same. In other words, we've currently got the worst arrangement! Ringworlds and Sphereworlds would actually be useful, too, since it would be possible to fill one in reasonable game time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I've altered population modifiers in my own stuff. Planets get to 200 percent production bonus at 4 billion and top out at 500 percent with a fully populated sphereworld. Since the AI is so cruddy at managing population this amounts to another advantage for human players, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif In a human vs. human game it would provide some realism. You'd be encouraged to build more things at large population centers because of the much better production time.

[ 28 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]</p>

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Can I boost the rate by which the Space Yard can produce, much like boosting resource production? That way, I can construct planets that are based around building spacecraft, and further-specialize elsewhere. . . just a thought.

IRL, the warships in SE:IV are more like cars than anything else- you're building standardized designs in large numbers. I guess that, to me at least, it makes no intuitive sense to assume that these are all ultra-complicated one-offs like today's modern warships- on the contrary, since they all use the same parts. . . dunno

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

You can boost ship yard built rates, yes. Components.txt for that. The other things affecting production are in settings.txt, I think.

"I haven't noticed differences due to population. . . spaceborne shipyards produce just as quickly as planetary ones. . . so what else can effect this?"

Actually, population does have an effect, as does happyness (both apply only to planets, obviously) All told, ship yards are MUCH slower than planetary yards.

For example: in one of my games, a Jublient planet with 3766 billion population produces at 4200 a turn. A small jublient planet produced at 3000 per turn. All my ship-based yards, on the other hand, produced at just 2000 per turn.

Phoenix-D

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Argh:
Can I boost the rate by which the Space Yard can produce, much like boosting resource production? That way, I can construct planets that are based around building spacecraft, and further-specialize elsewhere. . . just a thought.

IRL, the warships in SE:IV are more like cars than anything else- you're building standardized designs in large numbers. I guess that, to me at least, it makes no intuitive sense to assume that these are all ultra-complicated one-offs like today's modern warships- on the contrary, since they all use the same parts. . . dunno<hr></blockquote>

Yeah, it's a simple edit of the facility.txt file to make space yards more powerful. But that won't change the single item per turn limit. That's in the program code.

There is a cheat, too, but you'll find it tedious. Make a 'dummy' facility with no spaceyard abilities and call it something like "Industrial Infrastructure". Build them on the planets you want & then save game, edit to give those extra facilities space yard abilities, then reload game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Problem is, once you do that you cannot build anymore. Unless you edit facility.txt again to remove the abilities, meaning you cannot use the extra abilities while building new ones.

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Actually, the population of a planet can be a pretty substantial bonus to construction rate. Here are the numbers (population figures are minimums for that bonus level):

Pop - Bonus %
100 - 5%
500 - 10%
1000 - 20%
2000 - 30%
3000 - 40%
4000 - 50%
5000 - 60%
6000 - 70%
7000 - 80%
8000 - 90%
(8000 is the max pop on a huge native-atmosphere planet)

It's awfully hard to get several thousand on EVERY planet (unless you've got incredible reproduction rate), but in my Last game I had several "super construction" planets, which were constructing at over 4500/turn (in NON-emergency mode!). And that was with just 6000 pop and a Spaceyard II. Not too shabby.

Here's a full chart I just whipped up in Excel:
[ 29 December 2001: Message edited by: MegaTrain ]</p>

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Yes the space yard capacity is a bottleneck for production in SE IV, but IMHO this is a good change MM made in comparision to SE III where you could build a star destroyer in one or two turns if you had enough resources. In SE IV you are forced to make more long term plans for your construction. And if I want multiple space yards I build several space stations with space yards on this location.

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Yeah, I can see where MM was going with this. . . but at the same time, I just feel a bit miffed when I hit the "wall" in production about midgame. Seriously speaking here, from a game design perspective, it makes sense to be able to build spaceyards that can still eat all of the available resources, as time goes on. Perhaps what I need to do is modify the tech tree, so that everybody can research further editions of Spaceyard.
I have planets that, if tweaked, are producing upwards of 30,000+ minerals per turn(given all of the optimizations you can get for production) and yet I can't build Dreadnoughts simply because of the insane lead time required. It's very hard to fight a war against opponants who have much cruddier technology overall, but who sacrificed their build queue for Dreadnoughts early on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Now, this may be fair, from some perspectives. . . but it's terribly unrealistic, imho. I mean, I have FAR more resources than I can *ever* possibly use. . . in the amount of time I'd normally use them!

I'll try modifying the research tree, and see how things feel after that. Now, there are some issues that would remain- I'd have to modify the AI files, or they won't research this, don't I?

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

Argh,

It sounds to me like you might be emphasizing ships too much. How much do you spend on units? The best way around the bottleneck is to use every single planet to build units. For that matter, even spaceyard components can build units at a reasonable rate. Admittedly, they are not so effective for offense as ships. Even with carriers you can't attack in the same way using fighters as you can with ships. But I still think units are a vital part of the game.

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

"and yet I can't build Dreadnoughts simply because of the insane lead time required."

Yes you can.. you just have to be more patient about it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif 7 turns, 5 with emergancy build, for a 4billion pop SYIII planet. Twice that at a ship-based space yard.

If you want lots of ships (in an unmodded game), build lots of contruction bases. If you send part of the newly built bases to build MORE bases, you can get a lot of bases quickly, then start building entire fleets at one location.

"Seriously speaking here, from a game design perspective, it makes sense to be able to build spaceyards that can still eat all of the available resources, as time goes on."

It doesn't, really. One of the few advantages of smaller ships is they take less time to build. Take that away and they're useless, instead of almost useless. It also removed the need to pre-plan what you're going to do, and to hold ships back to defend. That makes offense much nastier.. until you hit a planet. Then a smart player will have built a cargo facility or three, and used his large shipyards to build as many fighters as will fit. A huge planet with a few cargo facilities could throw so many fighters at you- all built in one or two turns!- that SEIV would choke. To say nothing of satilites or mines. Or the impact of being able to build an entire invasion force on one planet in one turn.

You'd also hit your construction limit in just two or three turns- because of maintance. Then all your shipyards would sit idle. IMO *that* doesn't make any sense.

Phoenix-D

[ 29 December 2001: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]</p>

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

You concur with your frustration about the lengthy build time for large advanced-technology ships. Sure, it might take you 5-8 or more turns to build a fully loaded Dreadnought, but don't look at it that way. In 5-8 turns, I can have a full FLEET of huge ships, building them at several shipyards simultaneously.

And Phoenix is right--once you have built several formidable fleets, the maintenance does tend to eat right through your huge stockpile of resources.

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Q:
Yes the space yard capacity is a bottleneck for production in SE IV, but IMHO this is a good change MM made in comparision to SE III where you could build a star destroyer in one or two turns if you had enough resources. In SE IV you are forced to make more long term plans for your construction. And if I want multiple space yards I build several space stations with space yards on this location.<hr></blockquote>

Actually, in SEIII, although you can buy a heap of ships in one turn, what you end up with the next turn are a heap of ships that have all unbuilt components, and it will take you a long time to assemble the ships into anything useful, during which you must pay maintenance costs. Without mods it always takes several turns to build a large ship in SEIII, which is not always true in SEIV.

PvK

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

In SE III the construction was limited by number of components per turn no matter what the cost of the component. Therefore as in my example it was possible to build a star destroyer as a small ship with few but extremely expensive components in one or two turns. On the other hand cheap mines or fighters you could only build one per turn and spaceyard. Therefore I like the way it is in SE IV much better.

Re: Game Bottleneck
 

I have to agree with Q. At first, I didn't like SE4 way over SE3 but now I do.

And in answer to your second question, I created a race that is maxed out in construction ability. Called the Sethillans. In the beginning of the game, they aren't too much of an advantage. with only SY I's colony ships still take 2 turns to build (the second turn only has 200 minerals left or something like that). Once SY II's are avaliable, then colony ships take only one turn. For the most part, ships can be built about 1 turn faster than normal. But when bigger ships are involved (DN, BS) it can be up to 3 turns faster. The biggest advantage is late in the game, when Stellar Manipulation ships are being built. I've got one game where I'm building a BC that has an opener, a closer, a repair bay, and a quantum reactor and iirc I can build this ship about a year faster than everyone else.