Modding question...facilities

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, I think you are wrong about the ineffectiveness of Monoliths in PBW games. Regardless of their high build costs, I have made very effective use of them in a number of games. They are most effective when you have a long period of peace, and so do not need to build a lot of ships in a short amount of time.

I haven't seen long periods of peace in very many of my PBW games.

I can almost see it if as Tesco suggests you wait until you have SY3, but even then unless it is a heavily populated correct atmosphere world, it takes too long to build them.

I did some detailed mathematical analysis once and posted it in the forum and the break even point for Monolith over a single resource facility is something like 2 years. 20 turns is a long time in a game that only Lasts 150 turns. And it's hard to dedicate your planetary facilities to building monolith facilities when they are needed for ships much worse.

I am sorry guys. The math just doesn't add up. Aginst the AI sure, but against humans you are making a mistake spending the time needed to build these things.

In all the PBW games I have been in I have maybe built five. Of course I cannot count the number of monoliths I have captured from other players because they have spent the time and resources to build them, and I came along and took them before they started seeing a return on their investment.

Geoschmo

[Mephisto]

It very much depends on the time you have to build up. A 4 billion world with SY3 can build a monolith in 2 turns. Backed up with a resource converter it will produce much more valuable resources then any other facility. In fact I have rebuild an empire economy in one game during war around the monolith, replacing all the standard facilities with them. It was the only way to increase my production without colonizing new worlds (which I couldn’t, all where already colonized).

[capnq]

I think you should consider what will happen when you build more than one of these on the same planet. Upgrading several of them at once is going to be incredibly expensive.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
It very much depends on the time you have to build up. A 4 billion world with SY3 can build a monolith in 2 turns. Backed up with a resource converter it will produce much more valuable resources then any other facility. In fact I have rebuild an empire economy in one game during war around the monolith, replacing all the standard facilities with them. It was the only way to increase my production without colonizing new worlds (which I couldn’t, all where already colonized).

Very true. If you have no available colonys to build facilities on, or if you have fully built up your colonies and have the resources to spare and nothing to build on them, then retooling your planets over to monoliths does make sense. There it's not a question of tradeoff between building a single resource fac now, or building a monolith now. It's a choice between a monolith now or nothing. It's just that I don't think they make sense until you reach that point, and I very rarely have games against other players that reach that point.

Originally posted by capnq:
I think you should consider what will happen when you build more than one of these on the same planet. Upgrading several of them at once is going to be incredibly expensive.

True enough. But at least them you are getting the resources from the retrofacilities while you do the upgrade.

Basically you could do the same thing i am suggesting without a mod. Simply by filling the planet with single resource facilities and then one at a time scrapping them and building monoltihs. This idea would just save some micromanagment is all. But many people like the Micromanagment. I am just not one of them.

Geoschmo

[ October 01, 2002, 14:22: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[tesco samoa]

don't build them until level 3