Ringworlds and such

[Taqwus]

You could consider a RW/SW to be mostly a prestige object... although, in the Peacemaker-type game (that I set aside for awhile when I found out about the JA2DL user-created campaign; killed Deidranna (well, several of them... strange mod) again) with a hefty resource surplus I'd started to construct sphereworlds around stars that were listed as unstable, as a preventative measure. I seem to recall that once you get the "star is about to explode" warning, you don't have enough time to build an SW without refit-chains, and you may not be able to build an RW unless you have sufficient spaceyard ships already assembled somewhere and ready to go... and it would have been *cough* irritating to lose a core system to a preventable incident. SWs/RWs prevent such stellar catastrophes (including artificially-induced ones), and are also immune to planet destroyers.

One note is that they start breathable / optimal, and with 150%/150%/150% values. Thus, they're great for monoliths (if you *need* the resources at that point...). The additional population capacity also means that, eventually, you can get some higher production modifiers than you can with a "mere" breathable-huge. It'll still take you basically forever to fill the world with monoliths, unless you're Temporal in which case it'll take you a fraction less.

[Edited when colonDL turned into, well, L...]
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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[This message has been edited by Taqwus (edited 24 July 2001).]

[capnq]

quote:

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here is a 6 player map with each starting point a sphere world. Just go in and edit each sphere to match atmoshpere and planet type

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You don't have to do any editing; SE IV automatically sets the atmosphere of the start world to match the race, and you want the planet type to be Sphereworld. It doesn't matter what your race's planet type is; I have a solo game where my Icy/CO2 race's homeworld is a Gas Giant.

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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, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[tesco samoa]

when I load the map and change my atmosphere to one that is not the sphere world's atmosphere the sphere world changes to a huge planet. This has happened every time. (1.35 and 1.41 )

[Puke]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
1-do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components?
2-I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true?
3-Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.

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no, yes, and yes. someone worked out a cost/benefit analysis a while back and figured out that you can actually make a profit off of ringworlds in a fairly short space of time. I guess organic races would have a good time with replicant centers on one of these, but temporal races would do better in the short run with temporal spaceyards.

someone mentioned that constructions are immune to planet destroyers, i do not think this is so. I thought that they counted as a huge planet and as such could be destroyed by the highest level of planet destroyer. can anyone confirm?

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[BeeDee10]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
BeeDee, do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components? I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true?

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I meant that (if I recall correctly) the Sphereworld Placement Generator starbase will take 5 years (50 turns) to construct using a ship or base mounted Shipyard III. The plates and cables each take only 2.5 years, so start building the placement generator ASAP and worry about getting constructors in to build the remaining components later.

Personally, I like to build 21 BSYs to construct these things rather than using shipyard ships. Less maintenance to support them, and afterward you can use them to quickly pump out the vast number of defensive units the sphereworld can hold while you use the sphereworld's capacity to build facilities (note, filling a sphereworld with monolith facilities will take 6 years at best (assuming you've transported in a large population), so a mix of the specialzed resource facilities may be better.

quote:

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Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.

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Exactly. I kinda wish it was quicker and easier to build these things so that they actually made sense from a practical perspective, but on the other hand the way they are now they're even more "special."

Might be interesting to play a game where the victory condition is to build and fully develop (fill all facility slots) a Sphereworld. You'd have to balance your economy between destroying other players' attempts to build them and building your own. Or take a riskier approach, help someone build a sphereworld and then try to capture it when they're done.

Edit: Aha! Corporal BeeDee is educated about the use of boldface and blockquote on this forum!

[This message has been edited by BeeDee10 (edited 24 July 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Puke:
No, yes, and yes. Someone worked out a cost/benefit analysis a while back and figured out that you can actually make a profit off of ringworlds in a fairly short space of time. I guess organic races would have a good time with replicant centers on one of these, but temporal races would do better in the short run with temporal spaceyards.

Someone mentioned that constructions are immune to planet destroyers, i do not think this is so. I thought that they counted as a huge planet and as such could be destroyed by the highest level of planet destroyer. can anyone confirm?

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Well, the definition of a Ringworld or Sphereworld in the PlanetSize.txt file is stellar size 'huge' so I would guess that a planet destroyer for 'huge' planets would work. What building one of these DOES do is remove the star from the system! So, it effectively makes the star immune to star-destroying weapons. But if someone destroyed the RW/SW you'd have an asteroid field, not a star left behind. Hmm. Not good.

[Puke]

yep, you could then create a star and blow it up. or create a star, and create another sphere, after you made a huge planet out of the asteroids with the high resource bonus.

i actually entertained the idea of blowing up the sphereworld in the furball game, creating a star, and destroying the system as a dooms-day ploy should it look like I had no hope of winning. not only would that have been terribly unsportsmanlike of me, but it would have taken far too long to do, even with temporal yards. although now that i think about it, planet destroyers would not have been a bad idea, they could sit outside the range of those planetary WMGs everyone is packing, and just blown the planet away... to late now i guess.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)