[Pax]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
Is it worth the research?

If you can then, subsequently, BUILD one ... yes.

how many facilities can be built on a ring and a sphere world?

100 facilities for a Ringworld (120 with Advanced Storage).

200 facilities for a Sphereworld (240 with Advanced Storage).

Do they have my type of atmosphere? (Oxygen).[p/quote]

Your type of atmosphere, your HW type, and 150% starting values in all three resource types.

Essentially, if you are playing in a "own HW type, own atmosphere only" game WRT limited colonisation ... you can still guarantee colonising RW or SW you build yourself.

[b]How long do they take to build?
Is it worth it?[/QB]

Time is relative. To build one, you will need eleven (RW) or twenty one (SW) starbases; each component is 2000kT in size, only a starbase can hold them, and a starbase can hold only one.

The componetns are Placement Generator ("Core"), Hyperdensity Cable ("Cable"), and Gravity Plating ("Plate").

RW's need 1 RW Core, 5 Cables, and 5 Plates.

SW's need 1 SW Core, 10 Cables, and 10 Plates.

These components need to ALL be present at the SAME sector -- along with the star itself.

The Cables and Plates CAN BE MOTHBALLED, and the Core will still "see" and use them, and successfully build the SW or RW.

...

The catch is the ungodly COST of them. The Core will be the longest build-time with a Spaceyard Ship, and could take as long as 6.0 years -- 60 turns!!. The Plate and Cables shoudl take just over half that long.

...

Are they worth it? Um. IMO, unless you can GUARANTEE the game will Last nearly forever ... not really. 8P ... They'll take too long to fill up, and way way WAY too long to build all those facilities.

In some mods, that's not needfully true. a Temporal/Organic race in the Pirates and Nomads mod, can make VERY good use of a pshereworld.

With Advanced Storage, I got just such a race to have a world with 77B population (77,000M), and a per-turn output from the temporal spaceyards of 117K per resource type. UGLY.

The Tmeporal-Organic combination is for the Temporal Cloning Center facility (onlyin P&N, sorry), which adds 400M population per planet per turn.