smmforum

Join Date 09/2006

Shipbuilding Math?

Hi guys. I am a semi-noob who has played 7-8 games on Normal difficulty, Small or Medium map, Terran or Drenghin (depending on my mood). I trade techs and with freighters a lot, but don't use many econ/military starbases. I've done pretty well so far (won every game but 1) but continue to be a bit confused by how best to build planets that can crank out things quickly.

In a game of this size, I tend to see PQ 10-18 planets, rarely any larger. What do you put on a planet to ensure you can produce medium/large ships in just a few turns? I have some planets that pop them out pretty quickly and others that take forever. I can't tell why. They have approximately the same number of manufacturing plants. Are there bonuses I'm not noticing on the faster-producing planets?

Re: research, I have a similar question. If I want to speed up my overall researching ability, what can I do? (I am aware of the sliders - I manipulate them a lot) Is it simply a matter of building as many research facilities as I can?

My basic challenge has been keeping my morale up. I tend to see it plummet. I've learned from this forum to build lots of stock exchanges to offset this, and it works, but those many stock exchanges take up tiles I could be using for manufacturing or research. I'm wondering if there's a better way to balance all of this out.

And what do I do with those crappy PQ 4-5 planets, LOL?

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

One think you may not notice is that your capital world receives a significant industrial bonus.

The number of manufacturing plants does matter; the difference in the speed of production you're seeing from planet to planet could be affected by that, but there could also be bonus tiles you're not noticing (although if you've played more than 1 game for 5 minutes you'd be hard pressed to miss those).

Other possibilities could include the proximity of your economic starbases and whether or not all planets fall under the same bonuses provided by said starbases. Allies could be providing production bonuses to some planets as well because of the "starbases assist allies" UP vote, but I doubt it.

When you say medium and large, are you always building the same medium ships and the same large ships across your territory?

The cost and complexity of a ship has a tremendous affect on the speed of construction. At some point, you will not be able to build frigates and battleships in one, two, or three weeks unless you have tremendously productive planets, simply because the cost of ships in the late stages of the technological game is very high.

As far as low quality planets go . . . I usually avoid extremely low PQ planets unless they have a strategic advantage because it's hard to make them break even. Once terraformed, I will use them as economic centers if they are high enough in quality-- as long as they make a profit, they're worth having. I don't do this, but you could simply colonize them and then destroy the original colony, which I believe makes the planet totally useless.

What I do for very low PQ planets (like a homeworld's companion) is to build a number of factories on them, and then upgrade those factories to trade goods or wonders, etc.

Takes time, but it saves space on the planets I know I want to get the most out of.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well for building large ships quickly, try to get a planet with a 700% bonus to manufacturing, without that on a for example level 16 planet, build 3 entertainment centers, 2 market centers a starport, an orbital defense matrix, and the rest of the tiles industy. that should pump out starships quickly, and quickly research the manufacturing techs.

and one more thing, it takes two turns to pump out a huge hulled ship. but a huge hulled ship with warp drives and advanced weaponry could take at least 10 turns, depending on how expensive the techs are.

If you need a larger war fleet fast try building them with lower end techs, they mihgt not stand up much against enemy fleets but at least you'll quickly have the numbers to defend yourself

Successfully updated karma reason!

and also, even those low end planets that dont break even can be VERY usefull, usually most of my level 5 and under planets are all research that way you can make more space for economic and industrial buildings on your more important planets. and for the rest of the level 5's and under build a couple defense buildings and a few farms and maybe a entertainment center, this way you can take billions of troops off your crappy planets and leave your other armies to defend your important planets

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

The best way to get planets capable of quickly producing capital ships costing ~3500 bc in a realistic time is to use economic starbases. It's best to find a system of 4 or 5 planets near the corner of a sector that contain a couple of high PQ planets. You can place 4 economic SB's in the same and three adjacent sectors so that their influence covers all or almost all the planets in the system. This gives you 16 SB's each of which when loaded with manufacturing modules gives a 24% bonus to production and research. This is a total bonus of 384%.

I usually do this primarily for a research planet and dedicate the highest PQ planet to research buildings along with my tech capital (100% bonus) and omega research center (50% bonus). This results in a reasearch planet with a 534% bonus. I've gotten up to 8K RP's per turn with such a planet. All the other planets in the system I use as manufacturing centers and they get the 384% SB bonus. I usually put my manufacturing center (50% bonus) on one of the smaller ones to boost it a bit. It's pretty easy to get planets capable of producing in the 1000 - 2000 bc per turn range. These can spit out a dreadnought every two or three turns. You'll also have planets in the surrounding systems that will get bonuses in the 196% range. Some of these with good bonus tiles also become pretty good producers.

A couple of points about using these. They cost a *lot* of money. An 8K RP research planet in full research mode could easily cost 2K bc's per turn or more. The manufacturing planets can easily cost between 500 and 1000 bc per turn. You need a very strong economic base to support these planets. Also you really want to dedicate every tile you can on these specialized planets to the specific function. Don't waste tiles on farms or morale buildings or anything but the best research or manufacturing building you have plus the appropriate bonus generating buildings. Of course, you will need a starport on the manufacturing planets but not on the research planet.

For the PQ5's I just plop 4 reasearch buildings on them and forget them. You can also put 3 factories and a starport but they're only really good for building constructors.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

Another thing you can do if you have a *real* strong economy. By that I mean something on the order of 100K bc's per week (I've had up to 900K bc's per week towards the end of a game). You can simply buy the ships directly, but they can easily cost 50K to 100K. You can also let your planets build them for a bit and then buy them, but the most cost effective way is to build just the hull with the engines and perhaps the life support module(s) and then upgrade them with the weapons and defense. This way a ship that would cost 100K to outright buy may "only" cost 35K to upgrade.

Successfully updated karma reason!

As far as low quality planets go . . . I usually avoid extremely low PQ planets unless they have a strategic advantage because it's hard to make them break even. Once terraformed, I will use them as economic centers if they are high enough in quality-- as long as they make a profit, they're worth having. I don't do this, but you could simply colonize them and then destroy the original colony, which I believe makes the planet totally useless.

well you shouldnt use low PQ planets to generate ships. By end game i can generate over 200bc net on a 5pq planet.

I also highly dis-agree with the "strong economy" of over 100bc. Buying a ship costs 10x the cost of building it. It seems smarter to always be producing ships and instead of so many Econ centers to build more manufacturing. Youll be cranking out ships faster.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

I also highly dis-agree with the "strong economy" of over 100bc

That's 100K bc (= 100,000 bc) by the way. Of course building the ships is a much more cost effective way to go, but we're talking about top end ships that cost on the order of 3,000 to 4,000 bc to produce. The average manufacturing planet has a production in the range of 100 to 150 MP's per turn, that will take 30 to 40 turns to produce these kinds of ships. If you have an income around 100,000 bc per week you can upgrade bare hulls into 3 top line battleships per turn. If you need ships fast it's the only way to go.

instead of so many Econ centers to build more manufacturing. Youll be cranking out ships faster.

Sorry, but you're just incorrect here. There's no way to get a planet that produces 2000 MP's per turn without econ bases. One planet like this is worth ten normal dedicated manufacturing planets.

Successfully updated karma reason!