Game Bottleneck

[Baron Munchausen]

Argh,

It sounds to me like you might be emphasizing ships too much. How much do you spend on units? The best way around the bottleneck is to use every single planet to build units. For that matter, even spaceyard components can build units at a reasonable rate. Admittedly, they are not so effective for offense as ships. Even with carriers you can't attack in the same way using fighters as you can with ships. But I still think units are a vital part of the game.

[Phoenix-D]

"and yet I can't build Dreadnoughts simply because of the insane lead time required."

Yes you can.. you just have to be more patient about it. 7 turns, 5 with emergancy build, for a 4billion pop SYIII planet. Twice that at a ship-based space yard.

If you want lots of ships (in an unmodded game), build lots of contruction bases. If you send part of the newly built bases to build MORE bases, you can get a lot of bases quickly, then start building entire fleets at one location.

"Seriously speaking here, from a game design perspective, it makes sense to be able to build spaceyards that can still eat all of the available resources, as time goes on."

It doesn't, really. One of the few advantages of smaller ships is they take less time to build. Take that away and they're useless, instead of almost useless. It also removed the need to pre-plan what you're going to do, and to hold ships back to defend. That makes offense much nastier.. until you hit a planet. Then a smart player will have built a cargo facility or three, and used his large shipyards to build as many fighters as will fit. A huge planet with a few cargo facilities could throw so many fighters at you- all built in one or two turns!- that SEIV would choke. To say nothing of satilites or mines. Or the impact of being able to build an entire invasion force on one planet in one turn.

You'd also hit your construction limit in just two or three turns- because of maintance. Then all your shipyards would sit idle. IMO *that* doesn't make any sense.

Phoenix-D

[ 29 December 2001: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[MegaTrain]

You concur with your frustration about the lengthy build time for large advanced-technology ships. Sure, it might take you 5-8 or more turns to build a fully loaded Dreadnought, but don't look at it that way. In 5-8 turns, I can have a full FLEET of huge ships, building them at several shipyards simultaneously.

And Phoenix is right--once you have built several formidable fleets, the maintenance does tend to eat right through your huge stockpile of resources.

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by Q:
Yes the space yard capacity is a bottleneck for production in SE IV, but IMHO this is a good change MM made in comparision to SE III where you could build a star destroyer in one or two turns if you had enough resources. In SE IV you are forced to make more long term plans for your construction. And if I want multiple space yards I build several space stations with space yards on this location.

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Actually, in SEIII, although you can buy a heap of ships in one turn, what you end up with the next turn are a heap of ships that have all unbuilt components, and it will take you a long time to assemble the ships into anything useful, during which you must pay maintenance costs. Without mods it always takes several turns to build a large ship in SEIII, which is not always true in SEIV.

PvK

[Q]

In SE III the construction was limited by number of components per turn no matter what the cost of the component. Therefore as in my example it was possible to build a star destroyer as a small ship with few but extremely expensive components in one or two turns. On the other hand cheap mines or fighters you could only build one per turn and spaceyard. Therefore I like the way it is in SE IV much better.

[bearclaw]

I have to agree with Q. At first, I didn't like SE4 way over SE3 but now I do.

And in answer to your second question, I created a race that is maxed out in construction ability. Called the Sethillans. In the beginning of the game, they aren't too much of an advantage. with only SY I's colony ships still take 2 turns to build (the second turn only has 200 minerals left or something like that). Once SY II's are avaliable, then colony ships take only one turn. For the most part, ships can be built about 1 turn faster than normal. But when bigger ships are involved (DN, BS) it can be up to 3 turns faster. The biggest advantage is late in the game, when Stellar Manipulation ships are being built. I've got one game where I'm building a BC that has an opener, a closer, a repair bay, and a quantum reactor and iirc I can build this ship about a year faster than everyone else.