too many ships... ugh

[javaslinger]

Well, I thought I was gonna kick some butt since I was doubling any other empire in ships... However, it seems my newer designs take some serious maintenance and now I'm in some severe mineral shortage..

Any advice?

Thanks,

Ken

[Darwin]

Scrap your most expensive ships, If you have any colony ships already built use them.

And if your in the US, Get some sleep.
Good night man I'm going to bed.

[raynor]

If you click on the 'Recycle' button when your ships are at a shipyard, you can 'Mothball' certain ships. Mothballed ships do not require you to pay maintenance, and the cost to un-mothball them is approximately the same as you would pay every turn for maintenance.

By the way, maintenance is 25% the cost of the ship. So, every four turns you pay the entire cost of the ship again.

One of the most important things you must do in this game is decide how you are going to spend your resources. It is a balance between spending resources to maintain your ships vs. spending resources to build new ships vs. building facilities, etc. A very good way to defend your empire without paying maintenance costs is to build units such as fighters, mines, satellites and weapon platforms. Units don't require maintenance...

[Spyder]

If you feel that those ships are too expensive to just scrap, you can mothball them and save the maintenance also.

Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

[DirectorTsaarx]

Of course, the obvious answer for the long term is to build more mineral miner facilities (and/or more advanced miner facilities); maybe some robotoid factories or mineral scanners or something to increase production. You might also want to consider building some mineral storage facilities, once you get back to having a surplus. Then you can survive a few turns of losing minerals...

[taterbill]

Use trade. I sometimes find that I have radioactives and organics out the wazoo but no minerals. Obviously, I pull out all the stops to find good mineral planets and exploit them, but in the meantime, I can usually keep afloat by trading with my neighbors. If you are on good terms with a race, they will usually trade you 10,000 minerals for 3000 organics plus 3000 rad's every turn, give or take a thousand on either side of the equation. Plus it is good for interspecies relations also. When truly desperate, I have sold technologies for mega-minerals.

[nmoppa]

Your issue is exactly one of the best features of this great game. You have to keep your eye on many aspects to get a balanced expanding empire. Resources are limited, of course, else it would be no fun to conquer the galaxy. There are several ways to produce or obtain more resources, like building resource production units on newly colonised planets, build resource storage facilities to not waste the overproduction and build up resources "in store" to be used later in the game when you definately need it (initial, specially in the beginning you have much more recources per turn available than you can actually use, and all this extra above what your planets can hold "in store" is lost when you hit the next turn button), use trade alliances or trade and research alliances (for as long as they hold they will generates additional resources too) etc. The wise man keeps an eye on the resources balance at the empire screen every turn, not to wind up in lack of resources before it's too late. If you build new ships, that are obviously better than the ones you build before, you might consider scrapping the older models and get some spent resources back and drop the level of resources needed. When the game progresses older ships will have almost no use because the enemy can easily destroy them due to the increase of researched technology. Etc.

This is not a game for the one day gamer. There are soo many possible srategies to explore this game will never get you bored, together with the excellent support by Aaron we might consider calling this game indeed "the only game you will ever need"!

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE <Worf facing another critical fight>

[This message has been edited by nmoppa (edited 28 February 2001).]

[Taqwus]

javaslinger =>

You don't say how early/late your game is, or what your empire's specialties are. Hence, some general notes...

* Trade is one source of resources; so is theft. A single 'bribe transports' (IIRC) operation can take 10k of each resource.

* Certain ships are so obsolete or unnecessary they should/could be scrapped. Old beam ships, for instance, may not have the range or speed to do any damage.

Incidentally, you could also consider moving ships to be scrapped to a neutral system, and then offering them to an AI for a trade (or even a gift, if you really are looking for friends and aren't Mega-Evil).

* Certain ships and bases should be refitted/whittled-down or mothballed. For instance, if memory serves, a base w/ an SY III is more cost-efficient than a base w/ an SY I, so you may be able to replace a stack of SY I bases with a smaller, cheaper, but faster stack of SY III bases. If you don't need them at all for now (and it sounds like you probably don't, since you have so many ships), mothball 'em.

Old missile ships can be mothballed for use as a second-tier defense if the prospect of invasion worries you; missiles work better in numbers, and they'll absorb some PD fire.

Pop transports that had been useful earlier may be mothballed or scrapped.

* Ask yourself whether you need so many ships, or whether you can make do with *few* high-tech ships. For instance, if you have a range advantage (solar collectors or QR), plus a speed advantage (say, solar sail), you may be able to send a number of ships solo (dispersed to hit more targets at once) past enemy fleets (ignore them...) and systematically wipe out all enemy colonies in order of proximity to you. Planet-killing designs can be fairly simple; they only need some shields/armor (to absorb perhaps an attack or two from WPs/sats), a few PDCs, max engines + solar sail, and some planetary napalm (which does *huge* damage). Cloaking and other foo is nice, but optional.

If they can't reach you with any supply left, they'll be sitting ducks even if they *do* come, and they probably won't. Once you start clobbering them, they may not be able to pull their ships back (for scrapping/mothballing) in time to be able to build new ones (due to *their* maintenance cost hampering them). You really don't need that many ships to pull this off, as long as they're good ones.

* To really, really optimize production is best done in a larger quadrant (more time before the fur starts flying), and generally needs:

0 - All three colonization techs. Use every planet...

1 - Planet Utilization tech.
Atmosphere converters, to be more space-efficient.
Value improvement plants -- +3% per year, *each*.
Climate control facilities -- influences population birth rate, indirectly. More people, more production and more potential colonizers.

2. Stellar Manipulation.
For the Monolith III's, and for the planet-makers. Also, I'd recommend wiping out nebulas in your space to make it harder for AIs to hide, just as a matter of principle; and creating stars in empty systems, to help your solar-powered ships.

When you're out of nice planets, make some more.

3. Chemistry / Resource ConVersion.
Combined with M3s, they give you *really* flexible production.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night