Question about resource converters

Supply chains! Logistics! Believe me, you do NOT want that micro-management nightmare! Years ago I played IIRC Sid Meiers Colonization, which was to colonize the Americas from Europe. It had several different resource raw goods types, several different finished goods types, population was specialized to work in different facilities, there were lots of facilities, and to move it all there were several standard ship designs. I gave up my first game after I declared the Revolution in 1776 for Historical reasons. Reaching that point took 4 months (over 1500 hours gameplay). I had the maximum of IIRC 40 cities, about 90 ships, about 30 working population and 20 military per city, and a turn took between 10-15 hours to setup. I gave up because the miserly King of England only sent a few of his military per turn to attack and I calculated that it would take him another two months of play time to end the war. But I scored a moral victory IMHO.

[CW]

I agree with LCC, and I like the current setup for the resource converter (even better make the "convert" button available anywhere, so I don't have to find the darn planet out of my 200!). The currently logistics requirement is nightmare-ish enough, takes me at least 25 minutes a turn to check up the build queues for my 200 planets, check the status and orders for my fleet of 20 transports, get them to move population, satellites, mines and troops to the right place at the right time, make sure my 150 combat ships are doing something, get the newly captured enemy ships to refiting yards, new/captured colony ships have somewhere to colonise AND with the right population etc etc... The current system is bearable I suppose, but anymore micro-management is not going to be fun!

[Admiral Grover]

[OT]Speaking of Logistics and Supply Chains, if anyone is interested in a semi-4x game that handles these quite impressively check out Conquest: Frontier Wars. I have currently only played the demo, but the system that is set up looks fairly impressive and well thought out.[/OT]

Now on topic, the resource converter is a little silly, especially with the resources being transfered instantaneously. But if you change this system, you would have to change the whole resource management system, and having planets use only the immediate resources available for construction. IMO this is a change that could not be done in a patch, but could possibly be in SEV. Would be very interesting to see.

Regards,

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Admiral Grover
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"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexeplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
- Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
http://admgrover.tripod.com

[Quikngruvn]

quote:

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Originally posted by LazarusLong42:
Originally posted by Puke:
so, you can conclude that either A) the resource converter has some sort of whacked out homeworld-style matter transmission thingy built in that can instantly zap raw materials about the galaxy. or B) that SE4 is silly and has absoluetly no representation for supply chains or logistics.

I'll take 'B.' I've always thought it'd be nice to have supply chains, but then, I've never seen them in any 4X game. Either supplies are available everywhere immediately, or supplies are available only where they're created and you can't move them. <sigh>

LL

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Or, a component of the space port is a matter-to-energy converter/transporter: resources are converted to energy, the energy is beamed to other space ports at the speed of light, and reconverted to matter. And planets/space yards intrinsically have receive capabilities only. And Natural Merchants can do this without a separate facility....

Or is it too far-fetched? (Well, how far-fetched could it be, since twenty races can apparently communicate too each other without an apparent Universal Translator? Infinite Improbability strikes again!)

Quikngruvn

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"That which does not kill you will make you stronger." -- Nietzsche

[This message has been edited by Quikngruvn (edited 26 July 2001).]