Ringworlds

[Stockman]

I have to ask someone out there to hold my hand and tell me exactly how to make these ringworlds and sphereworlds. I find nothing on the cd yet from reading all this great forum info it seems that these items are old hat to you guys. I can't even find a ship big enough to carry one of those 20,000 componets. How stupid am I, I can take it so please lay it on me cause I am lost on this fun part of the game.

[LintMan]

The only thing that can fit one of the ring/sphereworld components is a starbase, and since they have no engines, you pretty much have to build them on site.

So here's what you do:
0) Make sure you have ungodly amounts of resources available to spend.
1) build a large fleet of cheap space yard ships (10-20 or so of them).
2) Send them to the sector containing the star you want to build the ring/sphereworld around.
3) Create 3-4 star base designs, each containing either the plating, cable, or ring/sphereworld generator component.
4) Start all your space yards building the necessary amounts of each component, on site.
Ringworld - 5 cable bases, 5 plating bases, and a ringworld gen base.
Sphereworld - 10 cable, 10 plating, and a sphereworld generator base.
5) Hint: The generator bases take a lot longer to build, so you might want to start those in advance.
6) Another hint: you can mothball the bases after they've been build to keep your maintenance down some, but remember you'll need lots of on-hand resources to unmothball them later.
7) When everythings done, select the generator base, and use the stellar manipulation option to create the ring/sphereworld.

FYI: it really isn't cost-effective to do this; it's far cheaper to make some planet-builder ships and use them to convert asteroid fields to planets.

Have fun!

[rdouglass]

I agree except for the mothball idea - it takes a lot of resources to "un-mothball" them suckers. What I do is build the different component bases to within 1 turn of completion. Then I put the construction queue for that ship on hold. Then I wait for the generator component to get to 1 turn of completion, take all construction queues off hold, end turn, and generate the ring / sphere world. You end up paying zero maintenance on the bases and no resources un-mothballing ships.

I also don't agree with the planet building instead. I don't know 'bout the rest of you, but most of my asteroid fields are in the Med to Tiny range - there doesn't seem to be many large or huge fields to make large and huge planets. Then also you get a random world type / atmosphere. With a ring / sphere world, they are built with the same type / atmosphere your beginning species uses. I usually have a colonizer and a large transport full of pop waiting 1 sector away to instantly colonize the sucker. I also think they're easier to defend than 10-15 planets in possibly more than 1 system.

[LintMan]

That's a great idea about putting the queues on hold rather than mothballing the bases.

About planet building - The all-asteroid systems I see on my current map all seem to have about 3-5 huge/large fields and another 2 or so medium fields, plus some small and tiny ones. The all-asteroid systems aren't all that common, but my (large) empire contains at least 4 systems of that sort very suitable for planet building, but I guess everyones mileage may vary on that.

As far as getting random world type and atmosphere, by the time you're up to the planet-building techs, you've most likely gotten all the colonization techs, and also have researched Atmosphere Converter III. So within 30 turns of so of creating the planets you'll have the right atmosphere. (Sounds slow, but it takes that long to build a ringworld anyway!). Or if you wanted to, you could bring along a planet-destroyer ship and try again for a habitable planet next turn.

Benefits to planet building:
- free planets! You pay the maint cost of your planet-builder ship(s), but that's it - no large space-yard-ship fleet, no cable/plating/gen bases to build.
- fast - each planet builder ship can build a planet every turn if there's enough asteroid fields around.
- much quicker growth if you have replication centers. If you have 5 built planets, they can grow at 200mil (5 * 40mil) per turn total, whereas a ring/sphereworld would only grow at 40mil/turn.
- equivalent of greater numbers of facilities. It only takes 2 huge built planets to equal the facils of a ringworld, or 4 to equal a sphereworld, one asteroid system can far outstrip a sphereworld for facility capacity.
- quicker buildup - since you have a production queue for every built planet, you can fill up all your planets' facility slots more quickly than you could fill the 50/100 facils using the single queue in a ring/sphereworld. Similarly, if you put a shipyard on each built planet, you'd have a far greater overall ship production capacity than even a fully populated sphereworld.

Negatives:
- planet values are random instead of maxed out, so some planets might not be suitable for resource production.
- spread-out planets are tougher to defend than a single ring/sphereworld.
- if you don't have any asteroid systems or regular systems with huge/large asteroids, building planets is less beneficial.