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.