Planet Capture? Is it worth it?

Atrocities · #1 January 27th, 2001, 02:41 AM

I don't know how many of you are Rebellion fans, (Star Wars Rebellion) but I would hope that many of you are.

In Rebellion, it was a pivital part of the game to CAPTURE planets. Either by diplomacy, or by direct force.

The one thing I have noticed in SEIV is that capturing a planet can become a very difficult thing to do. In my opinion, one that does not warrent the needed aggervation it takes to acheive. Even though capturing a planet my be advantagous to your efforts, the cost of actually capturing the planet, in the time it takes to do so, is far more expensive than it would be to wipe it out and recolonize it.

So, is capturing a planet a viable option in SEIV? Or is it just a waste of time? At first, I thought it was important, but now, I feel that it is just a waste of time.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

Puke · #2 January 27th, 2001, 02:57 AM

BAH! of course it is. its not viable right off, since it takes some time to research troops and get effective weapons on them.

however once you can put men on the ground, it is very valueable.

now dont get me wrong, capturing small colonies with under 20M and about 2 facilities is DUMB. homewolds on the other hand:

Give you a base of population to put on like-atmosphere planets. give you the production bonus from the higher initial population. and the facilities. lets say you recolonize it and have to rebuild all the facilities, it costs you resources for about 2-5 years while you build your 20 or so facilities back with your low initial population, then you can start doing things with the planet. On the other hand, not only do you not have to spend those resources and population rebuilding the planet (if you have people for the right atmosphere type even), but you GET all of the resource / research production from the planet AND you can use it to build other things.

definitly worth it. there is a cutover point though, i probably would not bother for less than about 75M and 10 facilities, unless I was hard pressed for a spaceyard that they had.

SirDarwin · #3 January 27th, 2001, 03:24 AM

Peronsally I think it would be more worth it if the AI were a little more intelligent for decieding what colonists to move to what planets. Its no fun when the AI mixes population, or uses the wrong type.

Tomgs · #4 January 27th, 2001, 04:42 AM

If the AI gets to the point that it makes wise decisions with its assorted colonists then it may come and conquer a few of our worlds. The added resources and capacity this would give it would definately be a good step in the right direction. Now if we could get it to make neutrals surrender to them so they could get easy colonization tech like we can that would be great.

I would like to recieve a message from the AI one day that says: You dared to attack the Phong don't you know that they are subjugated to the great Terran Empire and we will burn your worlds for attacking them.

SirDarwin · #5 January 27th, 2001, 04:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Tomgs:
I would like to recieve a message from the AI one day that says: You dared to attack the Phong don't you know that they are subjugated to the great Terran Empire and we will burn your worlds for attacking them.

That would just be awesome

I really think that when the diplomacy/interaction with the AI gets better this will truly be a awesome game. Right now its a good military game, with the awesome ability to modify. Just no feeling to it

Tomgs · #6 January 27th, 2001, 04:55 AM

Well after I posted the below I read the beta patch thread and read this:

30. Fixed - Improved the Transport Minister so that they only move populations to
planets with atmospheres they can breathe.

So that seems to be improved anyway.

raynor · #7 January 27th, 2001, 09:46 AM

Something to keep in mind:

The AI is fairly poor at choosing which world to build which facilities on. For example, in my current game, I took special care not to destroy the facilities on a huge world before my troops arrived. I was pretty excited when I saw 20 miners plus other facilities. Imagine my shock and dismay when I found the planet value to be just 34% minerals.

I imagine I'll still capture it intact so I can move the Methane breathers around to my other planets.

Tomgs · #8 January 27th, 2001, 11:23 AM

The catch all planet type for the AI is mineral miner worlds thats why you see 1% worlds with a bunch of wasted miners on it. If the planet doesn't fit any critera or all the types it fits have been built in the system it makes the world a mining world.

This especially looks bad when the world next door has 99% minerals and its filled with research facilities. I have seen it before. The AI just doesn't evaluate the worlds nearly as well as a human would it just makes the types it needs on the first suitable planet it colonizes without looking to see if there are better worlds next door.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 27 January 2001).]

Atrocities · #9 January 27th, 2001, 05:01 PM

quote:
The AI is fairly poor at choosing which world to build which facilities on. For example, in my current game, I took special care not to destroy the facilities on a huge world before my troops arrived. I was pretty excited when I saw 20 miners plus other facilities. Imagine my shock and dismay when I found the planet value to be just 34% minerals.

Time to build some value improvement plants.

You see, my prob with taking a planet, is getting my ships to do it for me without me having to do the battle manually. Sometimes, I love to do it my self, but most of the time, its a clean up option, and the AI does not do this very well. In fact, when I set my ship stratigies to CAPTURE PLANET if carring troops, all my ships will do is go to the planet, hoover and use up there turns and DO NOTHING. That really bothers me, for I then have to manually play the next round, and move my ships to the planet, and then drop them. That takes about 5 minutes to do.

In 5 minutes, if the auto feature worked, I could take 3 to 5 planets in stead of just 1.

I do love this game, but this would be a nice fix for the next patch if indeed it is a bug.

------------------
"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

raynor · #10 January 27th, 2001, 07:11 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Tomgs:
The catch all planet type for the AI is mineral miner worlds thats why you see 1% worlds with a bunch of wasted miners on it. If the planet doesn't fit any critera or all the types it fits have been built in the system it makes the world a mining world.
...

Thanks for the info. That explains some of the stuff I've seen.

Generally, when I play, I build research centers on worlds with < 75% on all numbers. But that is just at the beginning of the game while I'm trying to get my research points up to at least 100,000. Since, I'm pouring ALL excess mineral production into fighters, I don't need much storage.

In the middle of the game, I need more minerals for refits plus I've probably accumulated a good bit of research points. At that point, I build storage facilities on worthless worlds.

Finally, towards the end of the game, I start building intel centers to protect myself.

I haven't yet played a game where I was doing so badly that I intentionally built mineral miners on a world that wasn't pretty close to at least 100% on minerals. If the AI was expanding as quickly as it should be, I think it should be hard-wired to *NEVER* build a mineral/organic/radioactive facility when the number is below 75%. I consider any other behaviour to be a bug worthy of calling this game Ascendancy-like...