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The description for brown stars isn't random, brown stars really are that cool! As in, not really hot enough for fusion. They're basically Jupiter-like planets just barely large enough they're silently smoldering. There are a lot of them around, they're just hard to find since they're so cold and dark. Apart from other, smaller gas giants you'd expect a brown star to have some really dark and frozen planets. The process of solar system formation isn't really any different for them, it's just that in their case the main star didn't really made it to full star
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Apr 27, 2019 21:48
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I'm surprised you aren't going full hog on colony ships like I'd expect you to do in MoO1 if you found a cluster of nice habitables like that. But then again, I suppose the colony ships will come out faster if you get, say, the automated factories rolling first.
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Apr 27, 2019 23:02
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You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky bastard.
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Apr 28, 2019 00:25
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We demand death stars
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Apr 28, 2019 04:01
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Thotimx posted:This is definitely OP IMO. Why is a more primitive race better at farming than a more advanced one? I get that they are an agricultural society ... but certainly a warp-capable race would have the technology and equipment to more than make up for that. At any rate, it won't last but we now have a 467% profit margin. 17 BC income, 3 BC going out to support the starbase and barracks on Mentar. For less than a year into the game, that's pretty darned incredible. I always pictured it as natives getting partial technological uplift by the spacefarers, while remaining fundamentally an agrarian society without much of the supporting economy involved with spacefarers. While I was LPing, I glossed the in-game labor distribution between agriculture, industry, and research as about 5% of the population in 'strategic sectors', while other professions would come from the rest of the population- whereas I assume the labor distribution for natives is closer to 95% farmers. This is also why natives don't generate cash income- essentially their entire economic productivity can be measured in their food output. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Apr 28, 2019 |
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Apr 28, 2019 04:38
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... Twenty.. Max.. Pop.. TUndra. BEFORE Terraforming, Biospheres...
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Apr 28, 2019 06:55
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sebmojo posted:We demand doom stars Fixed before the thread gets sued.
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Apr 28, 2019 07:15
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That toxic world has a very appropriate name. But it will never be better than a "fine" planet. With all the tech you get later, this will end up as an 11 pop world IIRC. With massive maintenance penalties that you can't get rid of, since toxic planets can't be terraformed (except in a very roundabout way, but it would cease being ultra-rich). So a fine planet to churn out industry, but nothing more. Still, you've got a lot of usable planets in your neighborhood, that's a pretty good start. But getting a swamp planet with natives that doesn't have any space monster as a guardian is very rare. Definitely a lucky opening, but I feel like this is compensation for the frankly horrible start last game.
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Apr 28, 2019 07:19
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Oh, don't worry, I'm sure the nearest neighbours will be Sakkra, Klackon and Silicoid  I think brown stars are less likely to have planets, but more likely to have special events/stuff?
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Apr 28, 2019 08:11
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Libluini posted:not really hot enough for fusion. They're basically Jupiter-like planets just barely large enough they're silently smoldering. There are a lot of them around, they're just hard to find since they're so cold and dark. Guess they should have hired you to write the in-game text, because that tells me a million times more than they did  PurpleXVI posted:I'm surprised you aren't going full hog on colony ships like I'd expect you to do in MoO1 if you found a cluster of nice habitables like that. Aside from the answer you got to your own question, you're right here but it was just too early. That's coming soon. MOO2 is a little different: I view the getting of automated factories and research labs the same as I did maxing out industry on your homeworld in MOO1. That happens first, then you have the infrastructure to expand. At the start, maxing out industry with a default race means 4 people producing 9 industry … and 3 pollution. 6 from the first two citizens, while the last two have half industry and half pollution. At that rate I'd need 56 turns to build a Colony Ship. So it just really smacks you around early in the game for trying to build anything big quickly. IMO, that first colony ship you start with is an even bigger deal in the sequel because you ain't replacing it anytime soon. I remember my first game when I was building them instead of Colony Bases because I didn't know how the in-system bases worked … oh I felt massively stupid.  mydad posted:You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky bastard. That's Mr. SixTimesLucky to you! But as Torrannor pointed out, haven't I earned it after the last one? @ nweismuller - That's some high-quality justification there. I'll go with it! sebmojo posted:We demand death stars You'll get em - assuming I don't screw it up. Thing about a promising start is it brings a lot of pressure with it. Last time it was like 'oh well that sucks, yeah would have been tough to win blah blah blah'. It's like the Mrrshan MOO1 game I had when I got early artifacts - there's just the responsibility now of 'you better freaking win this, because you're not going to get a better chance'. But I'm glad it's going well - so far, there's plenty of chances for crap to happen. I wouldn't mind at all if this just ended up being a fun romp of a game - that would actually facilitate my goals for it quite nicely. Also, I really need to eat my words when it comes to space monsters somewhat. Clearly they aren't nearly as omnipresent in good-planet systems as I thought. I either had a really bad memory, or more likely just bad luck with them the first few times I played MOO2. So I'll help myself to an extra-large slice of humble pie on that score. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Apr 28, 2019 |
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Apr 28, 2019 09:34
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I've *never* lucked out on a 20 pop planet in the game at all under normal circumstances, so congrats! Also good no early game food issues, that's just a little quicker you can expand. Also if you get to late game and some of the high end tech, can break out what I remember of abusing said tech. Phase Cloak (makes you impossible ot target or shoot at), Time Warp Facilitator (allows you to take two turns in a row). The truly overkill will in turn throw fast missile racks onto said monstrocity to get in four salvos of missiles in a single turn. The general thing being decloak, charge, shoot, use time warp facilitator to get extra turn, shoot again, cloak at end of turn so can't be shot at
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Apr 28, 2019 09:38
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By the time you have all that technology, missiles are mostly obsolete because of how easy they are to shoot down, but you should have Hyper-X Capacitors, which do the same thing for beams that Fast Missile Racks do for missiles. They rejiggered exactly how the Time Warp Facilitator works, though, so some actual timing is involved in using it properly. I found it's more trouble than it's worth. A Doom Star filled with heavy autofiring disruptor cannons (with a Stellar Converter to clear out planetary defenses) with all the beam-boosting and armor-ignoring and engine-targeting specials that goes first should be able to wipe out a huge chunk of the enemy fleet before they can even get a chance to go. Even if you do lose one of these death balls, you can still win a war of attrition.
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Apr 28, 2019 13:45
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Eh, if you dump all the 'boost energy weapon' techs into one Doom star, I've seen.. Calcs that you can do up to 36 times normal damage in salvos if you throw all of them in. (Then there's things like piercing techs you can throw into it..)
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Apr 29, 2019 03:05
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Thotimx posted:One other thing - MOO2 was a bit ahead of its time on this screen, which I didn't show before. Game and IRL date being thrown in there is a useful thing.
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Apr 29, 2019 08:38
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wedgekree posted:Eh, if you dump all the 'boost energy weapon' techs into one Doom star, I've seen.. Calcs that you can do up to 36 times normal damage in salvos if you throw all of them in. (Then there's things like piercing techs you can throw into it..) I know exactly which FAQ you were referring to, and the x36 multiplier relies on what I consider to be some dodgy math, in that it counts "ignore shield" and "ignore armor" as damage doublers. The problem here is that "ignore shield" can be negated entirely, and the value of "ignore armor" as a multiplier depends on if the opponent is running armor-increasing techs, structure-increasing techs, or both. It's also counting the Hyper-X Capacitor as a doubler (it's not, it lets you fire twice on the first turn and then you need a turn of rest to do it again) and autofire as a tripler (arguable; damage is only tripled if all three shots hit and autofire carries an accuracy penalty that, to be fair, is probably not super relevant by the time you can build these things). Which is not to say that applying all this stuff isn't powerful, but "36 times as much damage" is a little misleading.
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Apr 29, 2019 11:08
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MechaCrash posted:I know exactly which FAQ you were referring to, and the x36 multiplier relies on what I consider to be some dodgy math, in that it counts "ignore shield" and "ignore armor" as damage doublers. The problem here is that "ignore shield" can be negated entirely, and the value of "ignore armor" as a multiplier depends on if the opponent is running armor-increasing techs, structure-increasing techs, or both. It's also counting the Hyper-X Capacitor as a doubler (it's not, it lets you fire twice on the first turn and then you need a turn of rest to do it again) and autofire as a tripler (arguable; damage is only tripled if all three shots hit and autofire carries an accuracy penalty that, to be fair, is probably not super relevant by the time you can build these things). Probably closer to 10x damage accounting for varying enemy combat conditions and damage to your own deathball destroying weapons during an encounter. For the same price, you could get a billion more guns. E: mixing in a few armor or shield piercing weapons to get a little extra power against harder targets is fine. The guns get so huge when you slap every mod on them. Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 15:02
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A Quiet Galaxy The TechnoGeeks have more opportunities now than they know what to do with. I attempted to formulate a plan to take advantage of this. It soon became clear that the main issue is production - we're going to be able to research things far faster than we can use them, due to pollution effects. I decided to switch research up, because while I definitely want Biospheres, I'm not going to get much benefit from them right away. What I need is to get a lot of colony ships out to start making use of the surrounding systems.  First up, I want to get a couple of Chemistry advances, starting with Advanced Metallurgy. The main point here is reducing waste with the Pollution Processor in the next tier. Secondarily though, we'll get a better missile(Merculite), MIRV capability for our starting nuclear ones, increased range, and better armor. All of that will be nice for whenever we meet rivals and need to start ramping up the fleet.  Here's the build list on the homeworld. Finishing up the factory now. Then, given the fact that we're going to have some really big planets to send them to, I want to hit the whole incubator planet thing hard and get our other local planet going right away. After that, another group of freighters to ensure we have enough of those - I'll need to keep a constant eye on that - and then really start expanding into other systems. Bogina first, then Alaozar is the plan.  SD 3502.5 - I wasn't really sure what to do here. We need research to improve our production capability, but meanwhile we need to build stuff now. I decided to split the difference. Most of the workers are producing four industry, two of which are eaten up in pollution. Occasionally there's one who gets an extra in there for five total due to the calculation. Meanwhile it's six research per scientist, so it's not close which we are going to be best at. When unsure of what to do, I often find it useful to try splitting the difference, so that's the way I went here.  Nah, we don't need any warriors yet. SD 3503.3 - Research moves on to Advanced Chemistry. That'll take a bit longer.  Our first incubator planet is established. This takes us to break-even on food and just 1 of 10 freighters not being used to ship it around. A new citizen on the homeworld is available the next turn, but they'll need to farm to ensure we have enough to go around. SD 3503.8 - It took only two turns to get the freighters going. We now have 15, half of them inactive. That's enough wiggle room for now IMO, it would allow for shipping one citizen at a time when the need arises. I've shifted the labor allocation to production a little more. It seems sensible to me to try and synchronize getting the Colony Ship and research done at about the same time. Right now that's 24 turns for the ship, 23 for the research. Eeek, but there's not anything else we can do. That way, as soon as the ship goes out we can build the pollution processor and then be able to get the next one going more quickly.  SD 3504.2 - The automated factory on Mentar I is halfway done, so I'll pay to finish it up.  A new citizen every slightly less than six turns. That will certainly help. For comparison, a piddling 36k was the natural growth rate. And then the wait. Whenever Mentar I got a new citizen, they were transferred to Mentar II to accelerate our main projects. Nice thing was that, being in the same system, there was no travel delay even. Just a short freighter trip across the system, barely time to miss the place you came from before you get to the destination. And for it's own part, the homeworld was still seeing almost 70k new citizens every turn as well. The freighter activity primarily, and also the construction, has reduced profits to a mere 67% (12 expenses, 8 profit). Still a healthy percentage, but we're not making money hand over fist like we were initially.  Belatedly, it occured to me that it might be a good idea to use the extra parsec of range I now had and scout. Unuk has this desert planet along with a Med Rad Rich and a Huge Barr UltraRich HighG. Um again, this isn't a mineral rich galaxy. It really isn't. Is it? The wormhole connects to an orange star on the right edge of the galaxy, 29 parsecs away as the non-singularity flies. That could become one heck of a shortcut. Naturally we had to investigate.  Lomar is possibly the most unimpressive system I've yet found. Small Rad Poor LG for the other one. Most importantly though, it isn't yet occupied.  Well, ya'll called it. We have ourselves some Sakkra. Aside from reporting on a race we didn't know existed (not a fan of that), this tells us they suffered a very minor setback, but more importantly what they were working on. Namely, that they've already advanced further in Physics than us. Which is more than enough to make any true TechnoGeek hate them intensely.  Game isn't even trying to hide who this guy is based on. Instructor we've already seen, but Famous is a new trait. Other leaders are more likely to join us, and the 90 BC is a discount we get off their hiring fee for having him around. It strikes me that Administrator Yota is likely to pay for himself in that way, and that having someone to improve our ship crews probably isn't such a bad thing either. He is hired, and assigned to Vela because I feel better putting him somewhere than not doing so. 'I saw the little runt sitting there on a log. I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yota. Y-O-T-A ... ' ... nvm. Same turn, we hit maximum population of 15M citizens on Mentar II.  Gotta be some pissy crewmen after they spent over seven months (six turns) traveling from Sagan to discover ... a pair of asteroid belts.  Another nothing system except for the wormhole.  This one goes the opposite direction, to a red star in a nebula. How mysterious.  Well then! We had a 16% chance of discovery when Advanced Chemistry came in. Next I'm making a three-tier push into Construction to get Robo-Miners. Along the way, battle pods of course help the ships as discussed last game. Each of the next two tiers will give us multiple helpful things as well.  Space debris was here for a 50BC boost. The other planet is the same, except Rich HG.  The nebula system. We, uh, might not be back soon.  That's the extent of our scouting range for now. Just how fortunate we were at first is becoming clearer. I'm rather stunned that we still haven't hit so much as a space monster though. The top four planets here are the same ones we saw in our initial forays, and they are clearly the best targets with minimal negatives overall. There are smaller rich ones that will definitely be useful, if not eventually excellent, over time. But these four, and the three systems they represent, are clearly my top initial goals for expansion. They won't allow for any further range to the right, a matter that I should ponder in terms of potentially setting up an Outpost. But that can wait. Or it will, even if it can't. Right now I want these.  Now where to send the Colony Ship? I paused to reconsider this. Bogina is the most valuable system overall, but Sagan and Alaozar are probably the most vulnerable to poaching by others. And I don't know where they are yet. So I decide to switch Bogina to last, much as it pains me, and head to Alaozar with Sagan planned to be next. Expanding our scouting range isn't as vital as MOO1, but it still seems a good idea.  ROFL. The TechnoGeeks are blessed. We'll still need to research those fields to get the other options. SD 3506.3 - Pollution Processor comes online the same year. Also ...  The other two balls of rock will be considered later for incubator duty, but for now we have an initial spot to send all those citizens we are growing on Mentar I. Long-term, this will probably be one darned excellent research world.  I might be able to squeeze by without more freighters ... but with a cost of only a tenth of what we'll pay for the next colony ship, the delay is less than two turns. Not worth the risk I don't think. Research output is fairly minimal, at least by our standards, but we're churning out 38 industry now on the homeworld. At that rate, a new system can be settled in 13-14 turns. And the sooner the better in getting to those other two prime pieces of real-estate. After that, I can re-evaluate. That one citizen will stay on Vela now - I like having a bit of growth there to slowly make that planet useful. But any others will definitely get shipped off to Alaozar to build up faster there. In the meantime, we've got some more scouting to do.
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Apr 29, 2019 20:11
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Does seem suspiciously long without bumping into anyone. Maybe they're having all the cursed starter luck this time around.
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Apr 29, 2019 20:28
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Make sure to devote some production to making a spy or two before long. It helps a lot to delay the inevitable tech leeching when you encounter someone. But then again, I can't really blame you for prioritizing colony ships with such an amazing start and it may well be the better choice.
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Apr 29, 2019 20:41
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No matter who you are or what kind of start you have, it seems like early industry is always suffering for the player. I did a couple games over the weekend (first a Creative/Democracy, then a Creative/Subterranean) and the most recent one was a pre-warp start. After gunning straight for Research Lab then Automated Factories, I started a race to build a colony ship for a nearby good planet before any of my neighbors could snap it up. Not only did I lose that race, the Gnolams (who had no bonuses that would meaningfully help them research or produce) were escorting their colony ship with a battleship. I've never been exactly clear on what bonuses the AI gets in an attempt to make them credible opposition, but the early game always feels really dicey, especially on smaller galaxies where you're pretty much guaranteed to be in contact with nearly everyone from the start.
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Apr 29, 2019 21:17
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I think the famous leader perk also attracts leaders that you wouldn't get otherwise, except if your race is charismatic.
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Apr 29, 2019 21:41
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The End of the Beginning Our first citizen transfer to Alaozar is initiated the next turn. It'll take a bit to get there though. I have a feeling faster engines will be more important than usual in this game for a while. Don't think I can afford to switch off the current industrial focus though to get better ones. We'll just have to deal with the delays. Meanwhile, we're using 14 of 15 freighters - definitely a good idea that another set is getting built.  Quercia is left of our territory. Not much to see in the actual 'battle', as the Space Hydra quickly incinerates our scout.  This system is a gold mine. Literally.  And in more ways than one. Only one planet, but it's a heck of a planet. Gravity will be a minor problem, but one that can eventually be solved.  The only yellow star in range, I prioritized this one and we got there at the same time. Other planet is Small-Radiated-Abundant. Above and to the right, it points roughly towards the center of the galaxy and could be useful for that reason. This ocean planet calls out for an eventual outpost I think, but I'm getting greedy if I expect that to actually happen.  Our one remaining scout is now definitely overworked, and has two more red stars to visit. I'll probably invest in another one before too long.  This was a fairly close call to me, but I pulled the trigger and hired Captain Kher. The kicker to me is the trade agreement bonus. Having someone who can both benefit a fleet and accomplish a diplomatic, financial bonus for us at the same time seemed worth it. It can't be too long until until we meet other races, so it seemed a good time to make the investment. I thought of assigning him to our Scout, but decided he was too valuable to risk him in that way.  Lots of stuff happened on SD 3507.3. Along with the promotion here for Director Crassis, we also got our Pods in. The next step gets us armor barracks, fighter garrison, and spaceport. That last one is the first important planetary income booster. Also, a third citizen arrived on Alaozar II. Had to put him in farming in order to not slow down production on the homeworld, but we'd made enough progress to efficiently rush-purchase the automated factory there. So that planet is starting to step up.  Observe the crap. Meanwhile we've scouted about a fifth of the galaxy now. There are eight other races in it. Somewhere. Cause we haven't found them yet.  The wormhole is the only thing worth seeing here. Also, our second Colony Ship is finished and heads to that big tundra planet in Sagan. I thought to send Kher with it, speeding the journey. Until I was informed that Master of Orion II posted:You may not place leaders on non-combat ships Oh fine then.  This isn't even the best planet in the system. We also have: ** Tiny Tundra Abundant LG ** Large Tundra Poor  I'm having a hard time keeping up with where all of this stuff is ... and I'm the one playing the game. So here's a map of what we've discovered. Only Lomar - on the right edge - isn't shown. You do usually get more time in Huge galaxies ... but not this much time. The land-grab phase looks like it's going to last even longer than I thought. Exactly a quarter - 18 of 72 - of the systems have been scouted. And ... crickets.  Which is why I decided to do this. Normally I'd be concerned with getting a barracks up, and I'll definitely want some form of space defense here eventually, but with the total lack of any threat just yet I might as well push towards getting another incubator planet rolling.  Farming is possible, but not a real good idea at just 1.1 per farmer. Dealing with working in a high-gravity environment will suck half the productivity of the industrial sector. But this is a long-term project, and Sagan should eventually be a relative powerhouse. And the tundra landscape is downright cool, amirite? We had a citizen ready and waiting to come here. That's a 5-turn journey from Mentar.  My first scout of a brown star in this LP. I am not exactly impressed.  SD 3508.9 - Normally I would go a bit further than this, but I decided to get a bit of feedback before proceeding. I'll give it 24-48 hours before I play any more. Here's the map. Main thing here is that we're about to finish the last scout - that red one in the lower-left - that we can reach.  Here's how the economy looks.  And here's the list of outstanding targets. As you can see, there's still some good ones out there. A few considerations: ** We are about to finish the colony ship for Bogina, at which point I'll be working on building that up ASAP to get the second nice planet in there and later the smaller rich ones that the system also has. All population transfers will pretty much go there. ** Sagan has a third citizen inbound, after which I figure to let it grow naturally and slowly. I need better technology to really make it useful. ** Speaking of which, I've just started leaning back into research. It'd be nice to get a Biosphere up on Mentar and Vela, and before all that much longer others. ** Vela and Alaozar should be able to handle the food requirements for the foreseeable future. ** Anything sizable we want to build still has to happen on the homeworld, so capacity remains quite limited. Vela and Alaozar are Poor, so they are total non-options for that. Options So I've got several things that occur to me. ** Outposts would be nice on Unuk or Pund, the latter of which would extend our range. Perhaps Lerion as well? If so, I'd probably couple this with building another scout. ** Spies. mydad suggested those, but last game I didn't have any enemy spy activity for quite a while after I met them. Based on that, I'm not sure I need any yet. ** Keep Colonizing. Enoch and Unuk for sure are worth it. ** Time to Militarize. The Space Hydra is guarding considerable riches. Perhaps we should build an initial fleet of MIRV-Destroyers/Frigates and go after that. It also has the benefit of preparing ahead of time for any rival hostilities, and for the fact that the Antarans tend to show up around turn 130 - another 40 turns from now so we have time. We'll want to be ready by then, but will our current tech have any effect on them? ** Other Ideas?. Anything and everything else that occurs to you. I don't promise to take a pure vote and act based on that, but let's just say I'll take under very strong advisement. At this point, feel free to discuss anything related to defending against the Antaran raids. I don't think I would botch this beautiful beginning on my own - at this point I've got enough plusses that I'd hope to be able to compete against whatever comes my way - but I am curious how others/more experienced players would recommend transitioning into the midgame from here.
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May 1, 2019 21:16
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From my own experience, I'd suggest militarizing, since I remember the AI being extremely quick to pounce on any perceived weakness even if you get along with them diplomatically.
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May 1, 2019 21:26
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Not encountering any enemies so far is really weird.
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May 1, 2019 21:26
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Spy it up. Even if we meet hostile neighbors, it'll be some time before they get the drives and range to actually get to us thanks to our empty corner
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May 1, 2019 21:50
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PurpleXVI posted:From my own experience, I'd suggest militarizing, since I remember the AI being extremely quick to pounce on any perceived weakness even if you get along with them diplomatically. Yes, this! We DON'T want to encounter other races with virtually no military, especially now that quite some time has passed from game start. Building up a fleet will allow us to take on the space hydra eventually as well, so it's not a wast to militarize now.
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May 1, 2019 21:52
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Yeah on hard or higher if you don't have a fleet they'll declare war inside of five turns after contact. Also you should have one or two spies to prevent theft at first contact but no need for more until contact actually occurs.
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May 1, 2019 22:19
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Obviously you can't do everything. Grabbing the planet behind the space hydra would be a nice coup and double as an excuse to get your military up and running pre-contact, but it's worth mentioning that so long as your fuel cells outrange the enemy, you can get a bit of a buffer - they can't send ships to bomb your planets if they can't reach them. Expanding is of critical importance, as the larger your population base, the more income and production and research you have overall. But you also need a fleet presence, and Quercia I is looking very attractive - I'd split my focus between expanding and also building up a fleet that can take out that Hydra and guard your frontier when you finally make contact with the AI. My suggestions for planets to colonize, in vague order: Quercia I (blocked by the Hydra) Enoch II Bogina III Bogina IV Pund II Unuk V Enoch II and Pund II are actually really good pickups here. Being an Aquatic race, Ocean and Terran planets are great for food generation. You may feel like your food production is sufficient with the existing planets you have, but in practice I find it works out much better to only grow food on planets where you get the biggest bang for your buck. Basically, workers you have farming on a less-than-ideal habitability planet are less efficient because you need more workers to generate the same amount of food - dedicating more workers on your best habitability planets and feeding your entire empire via freighters gets you more production and research than letting every planet feed itself. As previously discussed in the thread, Hydroponic Farms are generally more expensive than simply shipping food, but the side benefit of Hydroponic Farms is every one you build frees up 2 food worth of workers, so if your economy is strong enough to eat the cost building Hydroponic Farms everywhere can be a worthwhile tradeoff to squeeze out some additional research and productivity. Ideally, you still want some production free on your farming planets, so as to be able to continue developing them as you research improved technologies, so you want around one pop worth of farm planet for every 1.5ish pop worth of non-farm. As you get better technologies, you need fewer farmers to feed the same number of people so you can assign fewer farmers and get more overall production/research. In the long run, of course, you want every planet you can afford... Every planet with good productivity should be dedicated to focusing on production and snapped up so long as you can feed it (regardless of its habitability) Every planet with bad productivity but good habitability should be feeding the rest of your empire; snap these up as needed when you can't afford to feed future expansion without sacrificing productivity Any planets that don't have good production or habitability should be passed over until all the good habitability/productivity planets have been snapped up; these are tailor-made research bases and population sources, so that you can later populate new, better planets quickly without impacting your better planets. That doesn't mean you don't want these planets at all, but grab the better ones first.
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May 1, 2019 23:41
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Olesh posted:Being an Aquatic race, Ocean and Terran planets are great for food generation. You may feel like your food production is sufficient with the existing planets you have, but in practice I find it works out much better to only grow food on planets where you get the biggest bang for your buck. Another excellent post of specifics. Regarding this, you may not be aware that the places I'm getting food from right now are: ** Mentar (Ocean) ** Vela (Swamp) ** Alaozar (Ocean) So I think I'm sort of already doing that? We don't get the aquatic bonus on Vela so I could work on getting that one citizen to do something else like research, but other than that … I also usually worry about the money side of things with doing a lot more shipping around than I need to. I'll have to see how that works out with a democracy. Definitely looks like militarize/get spies and then go back to expanding is the winner here.
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May 3, 2019 07:42
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Thotimx posted:Another excellent post of specifics. Regarding this, you may not be aware that the places I'm getting food from right now are: Double back to my post, and my colony suggestions - after Quercia I (which you're not in a position to grab yet), you'll notice that the first pickup I suggested was another food planet. That's not because you have insufficient food right now, but because as your population expands (and as you grab more colonies), you'll want that extra food so you aren't forced to devote ALL your pop on those planets to farming. Edit: Freighting food is cheaper than Hydroponic Farms everywhere, and generally speaking even though I'll usually prefer Biospheres over Hydroponic Farms given the choice, once I have Hydroponic Farms I'll frequently build them just to free up more population away from farming so I can get more people working in industry or research. The Democracy bonus to BC income gives you more economic muscle, so why not use it? So what if it costs more to ship food where it's more population efficient to farm it, that's BC spent to buy production/research. Olesh fucked around with this message at 10:56 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 3, 2019 10:43
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If I remember correctly, the way aquatic works is that it makes tundra and swamp planets count as terran, and terran and ocean planets count as gaia worlds. So Vela is absolutely benefiting from aquatic, it just doesn't produce quite as much food per technogeek as the other worlds do. One really nice thing about aquatic is that barren worlds on the outskirts of the solar system (outer 2 rings, 50% chance for the middle ring IIRC) are only one cheap(ish) terraform into tundra away from being effectively terran, which is a very good deal.
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May 3, 2019 15:05
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IIRC, the thing about cool vs hot stars is that cooler stars tend to be better for farming while hotter stars tend to be more barren but richer in minerals.
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May 3, 2019 17:36
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Fangz posted:IIRC, the thing about cool vs hot stars is that cooler stars tend to be better for farming while hotter stars tend to be more barren but richer in minerals. It makes sense to me. Stars that have been around much longer are likely to have more developed ecosystems on planets than younger hot stars that just now (relatively) got done making molten rock balls coalesce near them. I assume a biome leeches a fair amount of minerals over billions of years. I’m not a space doctor, tho.
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May 3, 2019 17:43
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mydad posted:If I remember correctly, the way aquatic works is that it makes tundra and swamp planets count as terran, and terran and ocean planets count as gaia worlds. So Vela is absolutely benefiting from aquatic, it just doesn't produce quite as much food per technogeek as the other worlds do. You're right, but on Vela the tooltip doesn't actually list the Aquatic part of the bonus because reasons. That's why I didn't think I was getting it. The Aquatic part is specifically broken out on the Ocean worlds. And on Sagan, which is Tundra. But not Vela, for whatever reason. And after looking at it further, swamp and terran both naturally have the same base food production of 2 - Vela then only really gets the bonus there of maximum population boost, not food? 
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May 3, 2019 19:41
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Huh. You're right. I completely forgot that swamps produce 2 food by default. You do get the max pop boost, yeah, it should roughly double your population capacity.
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May 3, 2019 19:55
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That Huge Barren Ultra-Rich is going to be amazing once you get it terraformed a bit. Grab it quickly.
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May 3, 2019 20:35
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Habitable Area and You: A guide to Maximum Population (and Food) On Planets There are two base factors that determine exactly how much population you can fit on a planet - it's size and its habitable area. We'll start with size, because it's simplest. Planet size is displayed as a descriptive text. In order from smallest to largest, these are Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, and Huge. Mathematically, you can describe the planets as Size 1 through 5, with 1 being a Tiny planet and 5 being a Huge planet. The maximum population (100% habitable area) of a planet of Size N is equal to 5 * N, so under normal circumstances a Tiny planet caps out at 5 population and a Huge planet caps out at 25. However, normally you don't get to benefit from 100% of the habitable area of a planet. The available habitable area of a planet is restricted by the planet's biome. There are ten habitable biomes in the game - Toxic, Radiated, Barren, Desert, Tundra, Ocean, Swamp, Arid, Terran, and Gaia. Under normal circumstances, only Gaia planets have 100% habitability. Terran planets provide 80% habitability, Arid planets allow 60%, Swamp planets provide 40%, and all other planets only provide 25% habitability. In addition to its habitability, each biome also features a base of between 0 and 3 food per worker. However, racial picks (such as +1 Food) don't allow you to grow food on a 0 food biome, so keep that in mind. Toxic, Radiated, and Barren planets are 0 food biomes. Desert, Arid, and Tundra planets are 1 food biomes. Swamp, Ocean, and Terran planets are 2 food biomes Gaia is the only 3 food biome. Now, Thotimx is playing an Aquatic race. This means that his race treats Tundra and Swamp planets as if they were Terran, and Terran and Ocean planets as if they were Gaia. Let's break down what this means for those specific planets: Tundra 1 food -> 2 food 25% habitability -> 80% habitability Swamp 2 food -> 2 food (no bonus here!) 40% habitability -> 80% habitability Ocean 2 food -> 3 food 25% habitability -> 100% habitability Terran 2 food -> 3 food 80% habitability -> 100% habitability As you can see, Aquatic is situational, but pretty strong! Two planets that are normally poor colonization options (Tundra and Ocean) get fantastic upgrades, to the tune of +1 food and 3/4 times as much maximum population space out the gate. Swamps get upgraded with double the habitable area (but no extra food), and Terran planets, already a good pick, get +1 food and 25% more max population. It can be a little bit of a gamble, since there's no guarantee that you'll find any planets that allow you to benefit, but considering that the "+1 Food" racial pick is 4 points, Aquatic gives you all that and more for only one more point and a little luck on planet availability, if you're willing to freight food around. There's two other racial picks to discuss here, and we'll start with Tolerant. Tolerant is a 10 cost genetic pick. It eliminates the pollution penalty for production and also claims to increase the maximum population of all colonies by 25%. This is mostly accurate, but misleading. What Tolerant actually does is provide a flat +25% bonus to the habitability of each biome, up to a maximum of 100%. This means that bad habitability biomes that normally only have 25% habitability, instead provide 50%. Swamps go up to 65% habitability, Arid planets provide 85% habitability, and Terran planets cap at 100%. For Gaia planets, of course, Tolerant can't increase the habitability beyond 100%, so it does nothing beyond eliminating the pollution penalty. Then, we have Subterranean. A 6 point genetic pick, Subterranean gives all your colonies a 10% ground combat bonus when defending a colony, but more importantly it also gives a flat 40% bonus to the habitability of all biomes. Unlike Tolerant, Subterranean does not cap habitability at 100%, meaning that for all intents and purposes, Subterranean gives you an extra 2 population per size class on every planet. This means that the shittiest Tiny planet still supports a minimum of 3 population, and the worst Huge planets support 16 - as many as a normal race could support on a Large Terran world. These modifiers can be stacked, of course. You can't normally have an Aquatic Tolerant Subterranean race because that's 21 picks, too many to get without shenanigans. Lastly, any colony upgrades or researches that apply increases to the maximum population of a colony apply at the very end - Biospheres will always increase max population by 2, and Advanced City Planning will always increase maximum population by 5.
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May 3, 2019 21:09
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Another vote for at least a small fleet. As others have said the AI will go for you if you're defenceless.
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May 3, 2019 23:10
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How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Hand Over All My Tech Another 'early' tech, as it was expected to take another couple of years. Here is the previously-mentioned Spaceport.  I thought about diverting here, but decided not to; let's grab Robotics and those Robo-Miners, and then we'll dip back down to some cheaper stuff.  Our last trip here is not particularly impressive. Our colony ship is sent on to Bogina as planned. The suggestions for other systems are noted, but I still think this is best. We are making a play not just for one good planet here, but for four of them. That's more important to me than any one somewhere else. Sooner we get up and running there, the sooner we can send out colony bases to the others in the system.  Here's where we're going on the homeworld. The Raider is your basic MIRV-Frigate with battle pods and an optronic computer. Took the shield off because most anything that hits this is going to destroy it. Building a bunch of these to deal with the Hydra, then modernizing to a fleet built around larger ships later is the plan.  SD 3509.4. Meanwhile our income is up with a Spaceport on the homeworld, a finished Automated Factory at Sagan is helping there ... we're starting to get regular improvements now. Soon it won't even be worth mentioning them all.  I hesitated a bit before doing this, but I'm working on getting spaceports in place to boost our income and I think it's worth it. I also want to make Alaozar defensible sooner rather than later, so rushing that long a few turns seemed a prudent investment. The planet being poor and being a significant food source for us right now complicates those efforts. Elsewhere, I'm just buying the second half of the initial automated factory and then letting them build on their own after that.  The Desert planet being Ultra-Poor and LG, this seems definitely the best choice. It'll give us a second incubator - not as good as Mentar I, but it'll do the job and keep us growing. SD 3509.8 - Our first Spy is now available. I'll stick with that for now.  Vela finished a Lab up a few turns previous. Together they form a welcome addition to our technological efforts.  Bogina extended our range to the lower-right a bit, but we sure don't gain anything from it.  How nice to see you again, Director Rash-lki! Sorry about the whole getting you killed thing last time out. Your fee is acceptable. Meanwhile, Mentar II has finished a third Raider, and I switch back to expansion with a new colony ship. We aren't building as fast as before as some labor has been switched to farming/research, but the biggest investment is still in the industrial sector. Rash-lki's bonus is better (30% to 20%) than is that of Crassis. I send him on to work on the developing system of Bogina, which in the long-run is going to be a more productive one.  Howdy, and go suck an egg. SD 3510.6. Over a hundred turns to first contact.  They got to Enoch faster than we ever could have. Aggressive Militarists, the Darlok look to be a credible threat.  Buildings tracked right with theirs until late 3508, which we pulled away significantly. Our technology is rated at nearly double what theirs is, and that's most of the difference here. I endeavored to get some treaties going before realizing ... well ... that isn't going to happen.  So we'll just have to try to defend both with our fleet and spies. For now, we are way out of their range. It's 17 parsecs from Alaozar to Enoch, and only the Fische-Enoch wormhole even grants the possibility of communications. They can't even scout any of the other systems we've scouted between us. SD 3510.8 - We are informed of a war between the Darlok and Sakkra. Good. Stay up there and fight each other.  Good luck with the prototyping once again gives us this the next turn. The Battlestation is an upgraded Starbase basically, the new state-of-the-line in matters of static defense. Comes with Powered Armor for our troops, and of course the Robo-Miners. Now we can switch back to getting low-level stuff, beginning with Astro Biology.  I think I discovered a bug. The turn before this, I tried to send a citizen from Mentar I to Bogina III as a farmer. The game refused, saying 'no room for another citizen in this job field'. What? Well, there was only one farmer there at the time, another one was grown this year. I think the game had already decided that, and trying to add a second farmer from two different sources was making it think I was trying to divide by zero or something. First time I've run into that.  I wasn't expecting the Biosphere to look like this. I thought it would be a little more ... well, spherical. Or like a BioDome at least kind of look. It's not bad at all, just surprising. Also, this sets a record for me in terms of fastest research in MOO2. Three turns from start to finish.  Yeah, let's get that space academy.  Why am I not surprised. They worked quickly too - they had no spies deployed against us last I checked. They only have one right now, but of course theirs are way better than ours. I'm already building more at Sagan, which is up to 5M citizens and capable of filling in as a producer on small projecdts. Hopefully we can just outnumber them.  Rash-lki is still a better instructor, but he's doubled his leader discount.  And here we go. We have that second spy up and are working towards getting more, but I'm getting the impression it may not matter much. That whole steal-the-galaxy-blind thing was fun in MOO1 as Darloks. It's not so fun in reverse. Oh, and he killed one of our spies who tried to stop him. He died a hero. An incompetent hero going up against a superagent, but a hero nonetheless.  Here's what our guys look like. SD 3511.6 - Darlok spy steals Tritanium Armor. Of course he does. I'm going to laugh if the Darloks beat the crap out of the rest of the galaxy with stuff they stole from us. Right before I start screaming.  I'd like soil enrichment, but I need this just to keep up with the Darloks, who already have it. Also rushing more spies out, as this is going to take some time to acquire and will only help a little. Meanwhile ... "Darlok spy steals Reinforced Hull". Oh, and the colony ship is done, latest one heading of to Pund. I'd rather expand our territory first, then fill in at this point. I want to push the frontier. SD 3511.8 - "Darlok spy steals Robo-Miners". That one ticks me off. We get another spy out there the same year, not that it matters since he just replaces the one they killed. I'm actually rather impressed by this. One Darlok Spy is holding most of our economy hostage. SD 3512.1 - The carnage is over, at least for now. Possibly because we don't have anything else they want, but either way I've got four agents now in the field and they haven't deployed any against us. I can go back to the business of expanding the freaking empire, at least for the moment.  Our next acquisition.  *Sigh*. I admit this is worse than I expected. I don't think anything other superior tech - which they are just going to steal - will make this stop. SD 3512.4 - Alaozar II has a Starbase. I didn't go straight to Battlestation because Antarans. SD 3512.5 - Darlok spy steals Optronic Computer. It's 1-on-5 now. But who cares. Go bother the Sakkra, you're at war with them not us ...  Orange star to the right of Pund. Yay.  Sure did. The 'visit' lasted 3-4 seconds.  Starting to fill out the other planets in Bogina.  Yep, this we know.  Interestingly, at least from this desc - I've been there once but don't remember it - Orion appears to not be 'double Artifact' in MOO2. But it is Ultra Rich, whereas the MOO1 version was standard for industry. Who'd want a piece of junk planet like this anyway? So we still appear to be doing quite well, but it'd be a heck of a lot better if the Darloks would just make like a black hole and disappear.
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May 4, 2019 03:22
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Invading Orion does still get you some of their technological goodies, and in MoO 2 gaia worlds are rather rare I think? What bugs me is that a race can be repulsive and super spies at the same time, how are the Darlok infiltrating your industry and universities when it's physically nigh impossible for any Psilon to have a conversation with them? Fair enough, at least the flavour text on the Darlok means they can just morph into psilons I guess, but why are they repulsive then? And if it's any other race chassis, the Odo gambit isn't even there! None of this makes sense, game! 
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May 4, 2019 05:36
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