What do you use transport ships for?

[Grandpa Kim]

Fyron, Undertakr, that's what I like about this game: so many ways to do the same thing and its almost impossible to figure out which is best. But here's a question for Undertakr: How much population do you need on each of your 10 planets to match production on my 15 planets each with less than 100 million population? Make it two: What population do you need to reduce planetary ship yard build time to less than 5 turns?

Back to the original question. When it comes to transports, I will use different hulls and configurations depending not only on usage, but tech level, pop growth rate, warp point position, economy etc, ad nauseum. I am only now beginning to develop some standard designs, certainly not all. About the only one I've used for a long time is a pop transport made from the small transport hull. And it can (and does) double as a transport for anything.
MaCready, I use transport hulls to transport anything. Now, 50% of the space must be used for some sort of cargo bay. That includes the cargo bay, satellite bay, mine layer, drone launcher, fighter bay and the colony components. Many mods have a small amount of cargo capacity in other components, notably the supply storage. This allows you to use transports as refuellers.

Kim

[Fyron]

What population do you need to reduce planetary ship yard build time to less than 5 turns?

HI and construction aptitude don't affect construction on planets with no SY, so any race would need 2000 pop to be able to build a SY in 4 turns on a planet (that's a build rate of 2600). I'd sure like to see the colony ship that can transport 2000 people, and the empire that could support a number of these monsters.

[ September 29, 2002, 09:22: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[capnq]

Emergency build cuts a shipyard to 4 turns without needing any other bonuses.

[Taera]

Hate to go offtopic but... i've had an interesting idea come to me - anyone ever thought of designing a SYS of about DN or BB size, putting a SY on it and filling the rest with CARGO MODULES. Then once you come to a planet design a colonizer with 1 engine and colonize. Transport sme population from the ship to the planet, resupply and move to next planet...

[Gryphin]

Taera,
Actully that is on topic. An interesting idea. The only down side would be the Cost in resourses and lost produciton of all of those people.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by capnq:
Emergency build cuts a shipyard to 4 turns without needing any other bonuses.

Yeah, but that results in a lot of lost construction when the planet goes off of EB. You still get more overall with more "smaller" colonies than you would with fewer "larger" colonies doing EB.

Originally posted by Taera:
Hate to go offtopic but... i've had an interesting idea come to me - anyone ever thought of designing a SYS of about DN or BB size, putting a SY on it and filling the rest with CARGO MODULES. Then once you come to a planet design a colonizer with 1 engine and colonize. Transport sme population from the ship to the planet, resupply and move to next planet...

I used to do that all the time in SE3. By the time I get such large ships in SE4, there usually isn't anything left to colonize.

I have started doing something similar in Proportions games though. I send out SYS and a few Pop transports. The SYS build Colony ships, and the Pop transports drop off the pop. Then, they ferry pop from worlds that have grown to 2 mil to new, empty worlds. This is most effective, because colony ships only get to move 2 in Proportions, whereas SYS and Transports can move much more quickly.

[ September 29, 2002, 20:05: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[tesco samoa]

I use transports for automating micromanagement.

Example.

1 system 7 unit building planets. 4 planets building fighters, 2 planets building wp's 1 building troops.

I have 4 transports on repeat orders picking up the units from these planets and dropping them off at a staging area. WHich is set to a way point ( Man I would love 100 waypoints )

At this way point I have a few transports delivering WP's to front line colonies. A few more delivering fighters to fleet staging areas. And a few transports delivering troops to staging areas.

I also build pop transports. And use them.

As the game ages... I have more and more transports...

Because I like to leave repeat orders on... It ends up speeding up those epic 2 to 3 hour turns when you hit the 100 to 200 turn range. Also Helps you remember what your overall stag is.

Remeber think Lazy each turn and automate your empire where possible.

The transport helps out in this ....