Building New Planets

[alasyr]

Well actually I think creating an RW can be done with 6 SY ships in 10 turns (concerning TG contest ruling on one retrofit per turn)
using retrofit SB designs (RD later in post).1 ship builds RD for RW placement component (RDP0), other five a constructing 5 RD for platings (RDS0), these designs have SYIII component(SY=space yard).This job on emergency takes 2 turns.RDP0 is refited in the next 7 turns (starting from turn 2 when RDP0 is created) (one refit per turn) to RW placement SB
(RDC0->RDP1->RDP2->RDP3->RDP4->->RDP5->RDP6->FINAL).Meanwhile 5 RDS0 construct on emergency in 2 turns 5 RD for cable SB (RDC0).These are retrofited after 5 turns into 5 plating and 5 cable SBs
(RDC0->RDC1->RDC2->RDC3->RDC4->FINAL,RDS0->RDS1->RDS2->RDS3->RDS4->FINAL).After this all 11 SB must be reparired in one turn (you could put repair bay in SB design or use SY or repair ships)and the next turn RW can be placed.

RD desingn must have totals in minerals something (I haven't tested this yet, but I've done the math) like in this table

PLasting & cable placing comp.
RDS0 & RDC0 20900 RDP0 18100
RDS1 & RDC1 31400 RDP1 27200
RDS2 & RDC2 47000 RDP2 40700
RDS3 & RDC3 70500 RDP3 61100
RDS4 & RDC4 105800 RDP4 91600
RD5 RDP5 137400
RD6 RDP6 206170
FINAL 158500 FINAL 308500

You can notice that there is need for SY ships for only 2 turns.These babies do their part in two turns on emergency and sail away to another "victim" (this would very likely take 2 turn in SY capabily will be on slow anyway).Or they can be scrapped if not nedded anymore.For this final SB designs (maybe just some of them) must have repair bays to repair themselves.It seems that retrofiting (thanks to Drake on this tidbit and a hint on cheapness)
take 10% of removed components value and 70% of newly installed one resulting in 80% maximum resource usage making this method actualy cheaper then building it the normal way.



[This message has been edited by alasyr (edited 20 February 2001).]

[Spyder]

quote:

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Originally posted by Markavians:
ACtaully. . . it doesn't take forever to make these planets! It only takes 30 turns - 3 years!

THREE YEARS.

How old are you? How many people could you house on one of these planets? How many planets could you make in your lifetime, and so how many people could be born in that time? - hmm? hmm?!



I think Sphere Worlds and ring worlds are great fun to build. You need to be organised and put in hard work. When you have, the rewards are great.

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Well, its relative....as late in the game as you gain the technology, is it really worth it to build your own planets? At this point, I'd say no. 40 turns and an unbelievable amount of resources for ONE PLANET which you still have to populate & develop before its useful....not worth the time & trouble at that point in the game I'd say...doesn't have anything to do with my age (43, btw).

At this point in the game, if you aren't well on the way to winning, you should at least be nearly equal to your main competition where the resources would be better spent on offensive & defensive materiel. Of course, playing against real folks could be different...but, because the time lines don't change (ie, it still takes pretty long to get that far out on the research tree), I don't think so....



[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 20 February 2001).]

[Nyx]

Your abbreviations threw me off a bit, what do RD and the variants (I assume P0-5 = plate 1-5, and c0-5 = cable 1-5; but what is RDS1-5?) stand for?

So what you do is build the in-progress bases to have their own shipyards and use them to retrofit themselves/each other so the shipyard ships can move off to build the starting bases at another star? That's brilliant! Don't you need one non-basemounted repair bay or shipyard to do the final retrofit of the Last base though (or is there enough room for the shipyard AND the cable/plate I don't recall off the top of my head)? Still, that looks like a great idea. I especially like how the emergency build slow-effect is used up while the spaceyard ships are in transit and can't build anyway. That's an elegant strategy Alasyr!

As long as each design uses enough tonnage of equipment to be too large for a battlestation and you don't retrofit more than once in a single turn, it does appear to be legit for the contest.

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Editing here: I just looked back and saw where you said s=ship yard. Sorry. But I still wonder what RD means.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[This message has been edited by Nyx (edited 20 February 2001).]

[alasyr]

RDS stands for SBs that start with SY and build other five cable SB (SBC0-4 in post), SBP0-7 are SB wit RW placing comp. mid-retrofit designs.I thougt of puttin repair component on all designs, maybe if there will be enough room for it on final designs.I haven't test it yet, it is still just an idea.If repair bay won't fit I guess I can always bring a repair ship after the retrofiting is done.

[Nyx]

Thanks, I'm interested to see if this works. But won't it cost more than building them normally? Sure you only pay 80% at each step, but you pay 80% several times. Even if you only retrofit once you're paying 50% (original design that gets upgraded)+ 80%(cost of SB with cable or plate) = 130% total. Add in all the extra steps and it appears a lot more expensive. Very fast, but very expensive.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[rdouglass]

I've been building 'em the 'old fashioned' way. I guess I'm ignorant, but I still don't quite see how you get the Star Bases retrofitted / configured with components that don't violate the "50% upgrade" rule. Do you possibly have a design file that has those bases in it? I would be extremely curious to see it (or parts of it). Maybe just a more detailed list of your previous post - I'm still confused as to your component lists...

As to others, I like building RW's and SW's and do think they are important. They can be a gamebreaker (I would think) ina Human vs Human game. There are other ways of making RW's interesting....

I am currently playing a game now where I have a system with 3 RW's - 2 are steadily building Monolith facilities and are at over 50K of each resource output. The 3rd is filled with Research and Intel fac's. Once I got them built, I gave everything else away (more or less evenly) to all the remaining AI's execpt for 6 Baseships. Then I declared war on all of 'em.

It's been fun fighting my own designs AND theirs as well as trying to recapture all the "strongholds" I had built before. It kept my fleets together (25 plus fleets avg 20 ships each) and attaked me a lot. It makes for a pretty good "scenario". The only downfall is I know all the systems and designs (which are also my own). You guys ought to try it....

EDIT... I forgot to mention that I also gave away 3 RW's. I can't wait to get to them and find out what the AI did with 'em...

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 20 February 2001).]

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Thanks, I'm interested to see if this works. But won't it cost more than building them normally? Sure you only pay 80% at each step, but you pay 80% several times. Even if you only retrofit once you're paying 50% (original design that gets upgraded)+ 80%(cost of SB with cable or plate) = 130% total. Add in all the extra steps and it appears a lot more expensive. Very fast, but very expensive.

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Nyx, where are you getting the 50% in your figuring here.

When I read Alaysr's post the first thing I thought was what you thought, fast, but more expensive. But I checked out his math and it is correct. Each time you retrofit you only pay 80% of the DIFFERENCE between the two designs. In other words, the sum of all your steps is less than the total would be.

Also, a SB is big enough to hold a ringworld component and a repair bay, but not a Space yard. Keep in mind that the actual work of the retrofit can be done by a repair bay, but you have to have a space yard present to start it. You could design your early steps with space yards and repair bays and not take the space yard out until the Last step. That would work.

Keen insight Alasyr, or Drake or whoever noticed the 80% thing. I had been going on the asumption that retrofit was more expensive than that. Had never bothered to test it before.

Geo

[Hydraa]

With master computers you can fit the spaceyard and ringworld comp on the SB.

On mine I set up a progression of ships to use refit. I set up all of my progressions with the spaceyard. That way it can keep building a new SB while it is being retrofitted itself.

I used the same basic bases and decide at the end if it was becoming a plate or cable at step 6 or to go to step 8 to become a RW component.

I also noticed that you can build the ringworld with all Stellar manip components destroyed. However for the contest I waited the turn to let them be repaired.

[alasyr]

I took a look at retrofit number for smaller ships and from the retrofit cost is seems that adding new item in design cost 75% (number that Drake suggested was 70%) and removing item from desingn cost 10% of item value.For retrofit you pay max.
10% of 2/3 value of a new design (it's actually value of current design) and 75% of 1/3 of a new design (difference in resources between designs) resulting in 6.66%+25%=31.66% of a new design which is by 1/3 (33.33%) richer in resources than design it derivates from.So in worst case you save 1.66%.

[Spyder]

Alrighty.....

I built a RingWorld Last night. I used 7 construction ships. It took 54 turns (WITH a racial production bonus of 25%) to produce the Space Station with the RingWorld Generator. The other Space Stations were built much more quickly.

As a side note to support my statements below, in the time it took (54 turns) to build the RingWorld, I had completely destroyed my primary competition through Crew Insurrection, Political Puppet Parties, & Resource Appropriation. I didn't even do any other building or combat...I just clicked the mouse 108 times (God, I hate confirmation boxes).

I have to admit that a world that is 5x a Huge Gas Giant is nice, but, at that late point in the game it is irrelevant. This game was my first complete game which was played with fairly easy settings: Few Opponents, Wormholes anywhere, Not all systems Connected, Huge Galaxy, No AI bonus...all else medium or normal.

I met an opponent fairly early, but, I had researched Wormhole makers/killers early and after awhile I closed off his access to me so that I could finish developing the systems I had. After awhile, because I killed his wormhole and separated one of his systems from the others (Evil Grin), he declared war on me and I took over that system and then destroyed him with Intelligence (he eventually surrendered) while I developed planets.



[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 21 February 2001).]