Newbie Questions

Nitram Draw · #1 May 23rd, 2001, 01:22 AM

If you are lazy like me you should have some storage in case you lose some resource producing planets or need to rapidly expand your fleet or upgrade you empire, 400-500k is usually more than enough. You can also spend the extra resources on units and ships like sj says and mothball them if you get in a jam. I like having a cushion.
I agree that in the standard game organic and radioactives are generally not a problem, unless you are an organic race or build a lot of facilities like the converter at one time. Even with your race set to 80% you will usually have enough of these.
Some other characteristics that I have found can be reduced are environmental tolerance (80-90%) and happiness (90-95%). There are facilities that can increase happiness and I have yet to find out what effect a low tolerance has. I usually edit these down on the AI and add to some other area.

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 22 May 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Nitram Draw (edited 22 May 2001).]

dogscoff · #2 May 23rd, 2001, 01:50 AM

Environmental resistance detrmines how well your species reporduces on planets with unsuitable environmental conditions.

I recently started a game where I sacrificed all my env resistance and happiness for production / combat bonuses and now all my planets are angry with 0% reproduction - and that's with urban pacification centre Is and medical facility Is.

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

Nitram Draw · #3 May 23rd, 2001, 01:56 AM

Do you think that is because of the reduction in happiness or resistance?

dogscoff · #4 May 22nd, 2001, 02:14 PM

Both. Minimum resistance causes a direct drop in happiness and/or reproduction (not sure which) unless the population is on an optimal world.

It's now a major problem for me since my planets have a 20% production penalty because of their low happiness levels. I also have no natural population growth so my homeworld populations are getting lower and lower... I'm going to have to start trading / stealing population from other empires soon.

Unless you have some way of boosting happiness and reproduction artificially, or you plan to continually steal population, I do _not_ recommend setting happines & env resistance to minimum levels.

------------------
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

capnq · #5 May 22nd, 2001, 02:24 PM

quote:
1) Other than for role-playing purposes is there any point to getting Religious Tech or Emotionless? (...)
Why emotionless? (3000 POINTS!!!) I've only had people riot when there's a plague...

If you do capture planets, since the captured population takes on most of your attributes, you don't have to garrison the planet to prevent rioting. In any case, production will drop if happiness goes below Indifferent; that never happens with Emotionless. (I think Emotionless gets the same production boost as Happy, but I'm not sure about that.)

quote:
4) Are storage colonies necessary?

I've seen people recommend these things, but I can't see the point... If a planet has low resource value it usually gets turned into a research or intel colony. My RTS mentality tells me that if I've got excess resources I should build a fleet and start declaring war...

In one of my current games, I started off in an isolated cluster with no warp points out to the rest of the galaxy. I hate to "waste" surplus production, so I was actually scrapping resource production facilities to make space for storage facilities until I got Cargo 2 and upgraded everything. I think I ended up with 500K mineral storage, 300K organic, and 400K+ radioactives, all of which are at least 50% full at the moment. When I reach a point where I need more production, I can go the other direction and scrap excess storage.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

LeTharg · #6 May 22nd, 2001, 03:33 PM

I like emotionless--I'm currently playing an emotionless race in a 2000 point PBEM game and am doing fine. I chose it because I don't like to be nagged but it keeps production up, keeps conquered folk from revolting, keeps my options free on wars and treaties (don't have to worry about upsetting the home folks), and means I don't have to research psych etc. early.

I also use troops extensively (although I am at 80%). Captured facilities can be junked if you don't want them but they can be a real time saver. And captured population can be very useful--especially early in the game.

Also, if you don't have ice colonization yet and there is this nice already colonized ice planet, troops allow you to add it to your collection. If you wiped it clean, you couldn't colonize it.

I admit I didn't use emotionless or troops against the AI--why bother? But against humans I think they are worth consideration.

[This message has been edited by LeTharg (edited 22 May 2001).]

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 22nd, 2001, 04:33 PM

quote:
It's now a major problem for me since my planets have a 20% production penalty because of their low happiness levels. I also have no natural population growth so my homeworld populations are getting lower and lower... I'm going to have to start trading / stealing population from other empires soon.
Unless you have some way of boosting happiness and reproduction artificially, or you plan to continually steal population, I do _not_ recommend setting happines & env resistance to minimum levels.

I've started a 2000 point game where I took every one of the five, 1500 point racial tech areas

. I've had to set everything else to minimum levels, except for ship construction (100%), ship defence (125%) and mineral production (80%).
Currently, I have no planets with pop growth, but I've got 12 colonies in 4 systems, covering the center and top left corner of a medium sized map.

Basically, I've been trading everything. I sell ships for technology, then upgrade the ships I'm selling

I've bought organic, crystalline, temporal, and then created kick *** ships to sell to my AI friends for planets, population, tech etc