Atmosphere conversion?

[Slick]

Starhawk said:
Well I generally find that "other breathers" method very ineffective as it takes a LOT of resources and time to build transports enough to move other breathers to every world that your own pop can't breath on.
I prefer leaving populations where they are and waiting until I have a large stable resource and research base then doing mass atmosphere conversion "blocks" in order to get my populations up.

Interesting. An Atmosphere Converter costs 15000 M, 15000 O, 15000 R. Assuming no construction bonuses, that takes 8 months to build and 2 years to convert the atmosphere on the planet; total = 2.8 years for an ACIII. If you build a spaceyard first, that takes 5 turns and costs 10000 M before you start building the AC. Although a SY III will save you 3 months build time on the AC, it costed you 5 months to build and another 10K minerals. Total time = 3.0 years with a SYIII and an ACIII. This also costs you 1 facility slot on each planet using this method during the conversion. Note: due to a bug in the game, when you scrap your AC, you don't get the resources back. That's just for 1 planet.

For the cost in resources and time that it costs for doing this on 1 planet, several small transports can be built and deployed. Also, planets can be undomed sooner, thus allowing facility construction to begin sooner. If 1M population is placed on a planet, the next turn there will be 2M - that's a 1000% (per year) reproduction rate for the first turn!!!. This method can be used to quickly multiply alien population. When not ferrying population, these transports can be used to move other things around or simply mothballed until needed again. The downside is that you probably want to get all versions of other-breathers and you probably don't want to be at war with everyone else while you are trying to boost your economy. However, even if you only get 1 species of other-breathers, by quickly undoming your roughly 10-20% of your planets, you can quickly gain an economic edge. The economic edge translates directly into being able to build & maintain more ships. In general, he who has the most ships first, wins. It appears to me that the "resources & time" argument benefits other-breathers over atmosphere conversion.

Research: It also requires researching Planetary Engineering then Planet Utilization to at least level 7 - this is costly. These research points are basically spent on purely defensive techs; i.e. you will still need some offensive tech research to win. This may not be a bad thing in itself, however consider that the research spent on planet capture, ship capture, intel, etc., of other-breathers is both offensive and defensive. This means that, if you can capture enemy ships or planets, you are both strengthening your empire and weakening the enemy.

This is just my view on the economics of each method.

[Slick]

While we are on the subject of AC, this was posted in the "Update the FAQ" thread. It kinda surprised me. Can anyone confirm this?:

FunnyMan said:
Correction to 1.3.3 ...with no atmosphere. Gas giants always have an atmosphere (i.e. not None), but an Atmosphere Converter can solidify them into a Rock/None planet.

I enjoy playing as Rock/None I can definitely say that an Atmospheric Converter will change a Gas/Any planet into a Rock/None one.
-FM

[Alneyan]

500 turns after having built that Atmosphere Converter, the planet was still a gas planet. The only way to change its type would be to destroy the planet and recreate it.

Slick, the standard delay to build an Atmosphere Converter will likely be 5 turns, and not 8: Emergency Building does wonder in such situations. All slots will likely be filled already, or you will build facilities taking a single turn to build, so Emergency Building will not really hurt you (unless you have a spaceyard there and want to build ships while the conversion goes on). Otherwise, I fully agree with your analysis.

[Slick]

Agreed. In order to do an analysis, you need to hold some things constant. I didn't want to throw in Hardy Industrialists, enhanced construction aptitude, pop bonuses, etc.; they all would affect the numbers to a small extent. Actually, 5 turns or 8 turns becomes pretty insignificant on the large scale anyways.

[Starhawk]

Well Slick as you stated you don't want to be at war with "everyone" but if you think about it I said I only build Atmohpere converters After I have a stable research and resource base which in short means later in game.

Your theory does have one major flaw it is not he who has the most planets wins it's he who has the most combat power and while your busy building small transports early in game I'd be busy building warships during the same time period, yes I'd have an initial resource crunch but i've survived that in every game I've ever played. And while your busy playing ferry man I'd come in with my fleet and troops and either smash or grab your nicely colonized worlds.

Firepower and fighting ability does not mean planet count, you can have a thousand worlds but if you've been busy building non combat ships while someone has been building warships, your going to lose a LOT of those worlds before you can even fight back.
Now take into account that most people are rarely ever at war with only one person/AI at a time and your adding 2 players or more to the numbers against you, and if BOTH of them are busy building combat craft while your building small trannys then it would get ugly for you very fast.

Now the problem there is that you would not know what kind of ships your enemy is building until you actually encounter his fleet or fleets as the case may be, so you may think your 10 frigates are fine until he comes in with 15 or 20 and maybe a troop ship. And by the fact that you actually HAVE other breathers in your Empire I'd assume you have troops?

I must admit I am not an economist player I am a militaristic player I raid other players to get the resources I want, I land troops on a world and if I can't hold it forever and I know it I scrap the facilities load my troops back onto my ships and move on to the next world, either forcing you to destroy or retake your own worlds and then rebuild them from scratch which will cost you more resources and time.

Now if I ran into one of your transport groups I'd be in pirate heaven, I often build light ships early on designed solely to raid colony ships and transports for population and then scrapping value but let's assume I don't have that technology, I'd just engage and destroy your transports and potentially kill billions of your people in the process.
And trust me if I knew for sure you were using the "other breather" tactic I would send at least some lone warships to hunt for you transport fleets, if just to balance out your population.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think you're far overestimating the requirements here.

You technically need only a single transport to make the rounds, and it only needs to visit each planet once.
All of the transports that you normally have to ferry units to the front lines can bring 1m breathers along for the ride back.

No interruptions to ship production, at all.

[Starhawk]

Suicide Junkie said:
I think you're far overestimating the requirements here.

You technically need only a single transport to make the rounds, and it only needs to visit each planet once.
All of the transports that you normally have to ferry units to the front lines can bring 1m breathers along for the ride back.

No interruptions to ship production, at all.

He's talking small transport aka at most maybe 200 million people now let's take into account that you have to have both the population to drop on planets and the cargo space to hold the population you are transfering, now most systems have a population of well over 200 million!

Heck in my current game, wherein I am moving all alien species off their native worlds to sphereworlds as part of the roleplay, and i have a transport fleet numbering 15 that is having problems evacing the populations of those systems. And 5 of them are just for transporting aliens OFF world, not taking into account the other 10 which are loaded with populations to transfer to these worlds.

The average evac for me of a single system takes about three turns, with 5 totally empty ships ferrying populations from world o sphereworlds and the other ten transporting populations and transferring them.

[Slick]

It doesn't take large numbers of transports to do this. These transports can each undome a planet every turn or two as they move through the empire. One transport can easily take care of a few systems in a short number of turns. I don't consider these few transports to really affect ship production. Also, any cargo-carrying ship can be used to support this effort - carriers, mine layers, etc.

Obtaining the most combat power means that you must have the economy to support it. I believe that I should always be limited by mineral production. If I make more minerals, I should always be able to put them to use at a spaceyard. Being limited by spaceyards, or other resources means to me that I could be more efficient. Like the AI says: "Mineral Planets are the best." Balancing production and construction is vitally important, but the bottom line is that there must be enough resources to support the construction effort for your military. If leveraged properly, the empire with the strongest economy should be the strongest militarily.

edit: much slower than SJ, as usual.