Finite resources & value improvement plants

[stecal]

I am playing in my first finite resources game right now and some of my planets are hitting 0 kt for minerals. I know value improvement plants in a regular game add 1, 2, or 3 % up to 150% to resource production. What is the effect in a finite resources game? Does it add a % to the total or just add some kt to the available amount? This is important because 3% of 0 is still 0!

Thanks,

Brainsucker (Gee, can you tell I like Psychic)
Phila, PA

[Phoenix-D]

I think that when you hit zero, you're screwed.

Phoenix-D

[Will]

I've actually had this happen before, so unless it's changed in later patches, this remains true.

Every time the turn hits xxxx.0, the Value Improvement (VI) facilities take the resources remaining and increase them by the percentage. So if it's at 0kT, you are screwed. If it's at 100kT and you have a VI level 3, you get 103kT.

Thus, a "loophole" in a finite resource game is to balance your resource production facilities with VI facilities. Still gives the need for strategizing resource production more carefully, and you may have to move all resource production away from your homeworld(s) until you reach the level of VI mk1 in technology, or make use of somebody else's homeworld

--edit: Forgot, I'm fairly sure the max resources is somewhere between 3mT and 4mT.

[ 10 January 2002: Message edited by: Will ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Too bad you can't invest resources into a colony, and then let the VI plants improve it into a homeworld.

Although, if you went into settings.txt, and entered below "-40" for the "planet value loss when colony destroyed", then you'd be able to recover some of the material that went into building your colonies & facilities, and then the next colony would be able to VI the planet.

You'd still have to get somebody to come along and destroy the planet, but it could work.

[Jmenschenfresser]

In the finite resource games I've played, I usually mine as normal for the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the game, and rush research on larger hulls, solar collectors and remote miners. I then build ships full of miners and mine the asteroids and planets in my allies territories. It is sort of risky after a good number of turns in that your miners will tend to be on the edges of your empire.

It forces you to keep expanding, and it frees up a lot of space for research and intel.

Although once I can remember having to send my Intergalactic KGB to blow up a star in an allies' system so as to gain a field to harvest.

The other thing is to build a monsterous number of storage facilities...so much so you out pace your resource procurement. That way when you actually run low, you are sitting on several million credits.

[Suicide Junkie]

When I played a finite resources game, I took religious (extremely useful for finite)
Every system had to have a nature shrine.
Given a nature shrine, 240KT of any resource can support one extractor indefinitely.
Adding a single ValueImprovement III to the Nature shrine doubles the number of extractors a planet can support indefinitely.