Atmosphere conversion?

[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]

My small transports can carry 450M; that's using a MC, engines, QR and solar sail with the rest of the space taken up by Cargo Bay III's. Occasionally the transports do need to dump excesss population, but this can usually be coordinated easily enough. There's always the option to jettison them to make room, but I usually don't do that.

In a normal game I routinely have transports which carry 3-4 different breathing populations, once I get them. By (D)ropping all population at the destination, each different species will multiply on the planet at the end of the turn, thus ensuring that there is always >1M of each kind on the planet (unless the planet gets filled). Then I load all non-breathers onto the transport, which undomes the planet, give the planet whatever orders desired and order the transport to (D)rop the population at the next planet. Rinse, repeat. Occasionally the transports are redirected to a different planet to offload accumulated species of one kind or another. Works like a champ. One thing I do to make this more efficient is that if I am colonizing a non-breathing planet, I just put 1M pop on the colonizer. This minimizes the excess population at the point of undoming. Another thing I do is keep a transport with all the different species over the planets where I am building colonizers. This way I can load the correct population onto the colonizer before giving it orders to colonize. This creates an undomed colony from the start. Another option is to first send the colonizer to a planet with the correct population then give it the order to colonize the target planet. Kinda the same outcome using that method.

I also use a few transports to keep my largest native-breathing planets from being wasted because they can't make more population once they are full. When they get full, I'll offload some and dump them at outlying native-breathing planets. This keeps my populations all growing at the max rate.

edit: *sigh* if only the Transport Minister would work this way...

[Grandpa Kim]

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.

First let me say I agree wholeheartedly with Slick. I operate pretty much the same way as he does. I think the most pop transports I've ever had is 5 small and 1 medium. I've never run into a situation even remotely similar to what you describe.

Why do you find it necessary to transport such huge numbers of civilians? You only need enough to place one million on the desired planet. Increasing pop on planets is a laudable goal, but remember, pop bonuses have an upper limit-- 8 billion, I think, in stock, higher in many mods sure, but at some point it's fine to just stand aside and let those breeders multiply.

[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.