Some odd and ends questions

[Paul M (OP)]

I've had a rating 80 Xenoarch team on a planet with ruins for nearly a decade now.  The status page still says "Xenoarcheology Team Needed" and I've never gotten either a team improvement or a message about the team doing anything.  I can see the team listed on the team page for that planet but I don't see any particular way to assign the team to do anything.  I'm in the process of shipping a better team to the planet...as well the planetary administrator also has a Xenoarcheology rating.

Can anyone spot anything I am doing wrong?


Anyone know how common gates on jump points are (approximately is good enough)?  I'd have thought that I would have run into one by now...or is there some sort of special condition necessary for finding them?


Civillian investment is triggered by a population in excess of 10 million in a system is it not?  I'm surprised that a civillian mining complex has not showed up in Alpha C, given they showed up at Sol.  That should mean my economy is big enought to generate them.  Or is there something else needed to generate CMCs outside the homesystem?

[Whitecold]

CMC's also depend on racial wealth, and have a huge random component, so waiting might help. Also you need good enough resources surveyed.

Jump gates are IMHO pretty rare. As they aren't associated with any other events, just build your own. They just show up randomly at some points.

Xenoteam just means waiting. If the ruins are large, for a long, long time. Also 80 is not that high for a team, and in the end it is random again. You can wait 2 months or 20 years sometimes.

[Jorgen_CAB]

On pre existing jump gates I'm pretty sure it is random and you just have drawn the short end of the stick. Sometimes I have had plenty of them, sometimes none at all.

On civilian CMC I'm sure it heavily depends on your economy. If you have a good economy they spawn more easily.

You find a better explanation here... http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1716.msg16335.html#msg16335

[Paul M (OP)]

I had seen that message from Steve before but had forgotten where exactly.  The situation is that I have two systems that qualify: Sol and Alpha-C and an yearly income of around 60 000.

So each 5-day increment I have a 6% chance of a new CMC.

If a new one is founded, the colonies are checked in the following order: Earth, Mars, Luna, Io, Calisto, Faewald, Venus.  Clearly it is more likely that Sol will be chosen as the target.  And Sol no longer has any locations that qualify for CMCs.  Until the outer comets, currently too far away to survey, make it back inside the orbit of jupiter to be surveyed there are no qualifying rocks in Sol.  Alpha-C has several sites that qualify but the chance that the selection process gets to Faewald is (.5)^5 = 3%.

If it checked by system population that would work out much better...I have no idea why it checks the colonies within a system rather than just checking: Sol, Alpha-C. 

There doesn't seem to be anything that deals with the situation that a CMC is founded, but the system selected has no viable location.  It seems that in this case you just get nothing.

I have a better Xenoarch team prepared but the 80 team was the best I could do at the time...and realistically an average team will have a rating of 75 (5 people each with a 15 rating).  What is driving me batty is that the message on the summary page saying a team is required.  Yeah the random process is a bit frustrating I think it took 2-3 years to do a ground survey of Callheme...and when it was done it was 10 days after dropping the team off.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I had seen that message from Steve before but had forgotten where exactly.  The situation is that I have two systems that qualify: Sol and Alpha-C and an yearly income of around 60 000.

So each 5-day increment I have a 6% chance of a new CMC.

If a new one is founded, the colonies are checked in the following order: Earth, Mars, Luna, Io, Calisto, Faewald, Venus.  Clearly it is more likely that Sol will be chosen as the target.  And Sol no longer has any locations that qualify for CMCs.  Until the outer comets, currently too far away to survey, make it back inside the orbit of jupiter to be surveyed there are no qualifying rocks in Sol.  Alpha-C has several sites that qualify but the chance that the selection process gets to Faewald is (.5)^5 = 3%.

If it checked by system population that would work out much better...I have no idea why it checks the colonies within a system rather than just checking: Sol, Alpha-C.  

There doesn't seem to be anything that deals with the situation that a CMC is founded, but the system selected has no viable location.  It seems that in this case you just get nothing.

Well... the system might not seem so bad when you have more system populated and you have larger populations than the smaller ones at Sol. Now, you could very well end up with colonies ranking right after Earth in population in several different systems and I guess it want to promote CMC being established in those systems where you have the biggest colonies not total population. So, the presence of very large colonies is more of a factor than total population within a specific system. I guess it is a design decision that a system with a single 500m population world has a greater chance of spawning a MCM than a system with five 100m colonies.

Although, perhaps the selection of colony could have been more like 25% instead of 50% to spread the CMC a little more and instead increase the likelihood of them spawning to a number between 1-2.000.000 instead.

Although the system might lead to a player starting to game the mechanics to spawn more CMC in different systems, which always is a bad thing from a realistic perspective.

In all honesty I do think the whole mechanic could be rethought. It does not have to be more complicated just more realistic and not prone to gameyness by someone who like to "optimize" instead of role-play.  

[Paul M (OP)]

What seems to be missing from the process is something that says "if the system no longer has any available sites 'something' happens."  There is a default for the case that no system is picked...there isn't a default for the system picked not having available sites.  The Gliesse 408 system has a habitable world with a low (30) colony cost and colony present...given several years of transfers it will likely have a good population (it is relatively short transit time from Sol), but that system has zero colony sites that qualify for a CMC so if selected it basically means no CMC is produced.  With Sol also not having available sites it means that 50% of all possible CMC's are never produced (those that roll under 50% for Earth).  And eventually this is true for everyone, as once you start getting CMCs showing up they will rapidly be established at every colony site that qualifies in the system with the largest population.

Basically what I am saying is that a system should be in the competition for the CMC if and only if it has sites available to be mined.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Yes... I would agree that the current system is flawed. A better way would probably be to look at the economy of each individual system and only allow system that has at least one colony with a certain number of population, let's sat 100 million people. Then you need to balance it so it is much less likely for a CMC to be established, especially if the system has a small economy.

I do think that each CMC is sponsored by local trading companies so making the roll once for every eligible system, seems more realistic and fair.

The current system just become weirder the larger the empire you have.

[Erik L]

Think about the M in CMC. Rather than using population as a guide, shouldn't it be using mineral concentrations as a guide? The more minerals, the more likely for some enterprising company to drop a CMC on the body.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that it perhaps should be both. Population and economy is needed to have a certain critical mass for such mega corporation complexes to be possible, while mineral wealth in a system also should play into the calculation. If there are many places for CMC to spawn it should have a higher chance to do so, especially if there are mineral rich sites with easy access.

As long as it is balanced and they don't just spawn within a couple of years everywhere a new system could perhaps be considered.

[Erik L]

Why wouldn't a corp go to System X that has no official "imperial" presence? Yes, they'd have zero protection in case of aliens, but would the profits outweigh the possibility of a lost CMC?

Maybe if there is no formal colony in the system, the CMC is not taxed. This would be incentive for the corps to put stuff out in systems before the bureau of colonization catches up. As for the cost of the CMC, each corp should have a bankroll that funds the construction of ships and CMC.

An adjunct idea would be lightly armed escorts. Nothing up to the standard SOL of the military, but something to protect a convoy in the wilds.

[Whitecold]

Shouldn't we take this over to Suggestions that Steve will see it?

I agree that CMC should be more based on Mineral availability than population size. Maybe any body in a system neighboring an imperial population an jumpgates to it should be eligible for minerals checks. Or just the systems with a population themselves. But really, all the population is needed for is providing a staging point for rotating work crews like on oil rigs, and ship in supplies, financial backing can come from anywhere.

[davidb86]

Why wouldn't a corp go to System X that has no official "imperial" presence? Yes, they'd have zero protection in case of aliens, but would the profits outweigh the possibility of a lost CMC?

For the same reason you do not build a McDonalds in Antarctica.  Yes the land is cheap, but you have no market willing to buy your product.  The CMC has a mass driver that can deliver the minerals in system, but no method of shipping them to another system.  The minerals by themselves are worthless unless you can sell them to a civilian or Imperial market in the system.

[Paul M (OP)]

For the same reason you do not build a McDonalds in Antarctica.  Yes the land is cheap, but you have no market willing to buy your product.  The CMC has a mass driver that can deliver the minerals in system, but no method of shipping them to another system.  The minerals by themselves are worthless unless you can sell them to a civilian or Imperial market in the system.

Just to be clear, I am not saying I want the requirement for a population of 10 million removed.  That seems sensible.  What I am saying is that when a system no longer has any CMC sites it should not be part of the list that determines where a CMC is placed.  And the home system will always be the first on the list (based on the homeworld population being largest) that means that 50% of the time a CMC will not show up after all homeworld sites have been exhausted.  If, as is likely, multiple large population exist in the homesystem then the chance the CMC shows up at all is dramatically reduced.

In my game the list is: Earth, Luna, Mars, Io, Calisto, Faewald, Venus.  (Populations over 10 million)
The chance of a CMC is 6% (60,000 income)
The chance of a CMC in Alpha-C (Faewald) is:
6%*50%*50%*50%*50%*50%*50% ~ 0.09% so I'm not holding my breath.

It would be good also to see the CMCs from a worked out site transfered to the existing still working sites.  The game says that they will be transfered but I've never actually seen any evidence for it happening.  3 months after one site shuts down, picking numbers out of the air, the remaining sites should gain an even share of the CMCs.  So if a complex with 20 CMCs works out a site, and there are 4 remaining working sites in that system they would each gain 5.

Rather humerously...not long after making this post finally my Xenoarch team got their breakthrough.  Just after I had made a second team and had forgotten to pick it up.  So I can now collect them and bring them back to Earth and then mix and match the teams to get a good one (closer to 100).