Using orbital habitats

[smoelf (OP)]

So far in the time I have played Aurora 4x, I don't think I have ever used orbital habitats for anything. I usually just ship infrastructure and slowly terraform the bodies to increase supported population and it has worked fine so far, but I was wondering if I'm missing out on some strategic advantage.

So, how do you use orbital habitats and what kind of designs you do employ?

[Nori]

I've used them extensively. They give 100% of their population towards manufacturing which is nice. They also ignore planet conditions and grow at a separate rate vs the planet.

These features make them useful for when you need extra pop, when a planet has a low pop cap (research anomaly for instance), or when a planet has a venusian like atmo... I've used them on my home world, on asteroids, on small planets and just for fun.

As for design, no armor of course and I cram at least 1m pop into each one. 5m if I can.. Beyond that anything else you add is just flavor. I usually add a commercial damage control, some maint storage and some ciws.

[Ri0Rdian]

Infrastructure is not an option for high colony cost planets though, and those are the majority of planets you will find.  Going above 4 it becomes too expensive to have infrastructure for pop, so Orbital Habitats are the way to go.

Venusian worlds were a great example, 25+ cost basically screams FOOL for whoever tries to use it to get pop there. Maybe it's just me but I often find huge number of good minerals on such worlds, and even with my huge terraform capability (0.2 per annum) there is no way I am spending decades if not centuries bringing such cost down. So Habitats are the only solution and they work great for that.

[skoormit]

Infrastructure is not an option for high colony cost planets though, and those are the majority of planets you will find.  Going above 4 it becomes too expensive to have infrastructure for pop, so Orbital Habitats are the way to go.

Venusian worlds were a great example, 25+ cost basically screams FOOL for whoever tries to use it to get pop there. Maybe it's just me but I often find huge number of good minerals on such worlds, and even with my huge terraform capability (0.2 per annum) there is no way I am spending decades if not centuries bringing such cost down. So Habitats are the only solution and they work great for that.

Why not just use automines? They cost twice as much as normal mines, but they don't require population.
At what scale does the cost of building orbital hab plus mines become more efficient than just building automines (even if we assume you always have available population)?

[smoelf (OP)]

I've used them extensively. They give 100% of their population towards manufacturing which is nice. They also ignore planet conditions and grow at a separate rate vs the planet.

That is actually brilliant. I had no idea. That would make them extremely useful on smaller planets with worker shortages because population growth can't keep up with installation production.

I hadn't considered that they increase max population on a body. I can see the use in that, but I suppose it would require a rather extensive production to make a significant impact.

[Ri0Rdian]

Infrastructure is not an option for high colony cost planets though, and those are the majority of planets you will find.  Going above 4 it becomes too expensive to have infrastructure for pop, so Orbital Habitats are the way to go.

Venusian worlds were a great example, 25+ cost basically screams FOOL for whoever tries to use it to get pop there. Maybe it's just me but I often find huge number of good minerals on such worlds, and even with my huge terraform capability (0.2 per annum) there is no way I am spending decades if not centuries bringing such cost down. So Habitats are the only solution and they work great for that.

Why not just use automines? They cost twice as much as normal mines, but they don't require population.
At what scale does the cost of building orbital hab plus mines become more efficient than just building automines (even if we assume you always have available population)?

The thing about Automines is, that they are just REALLY convenient. Plop down with or w/o mass driver. Done. Move once done. But as you said, they are twice as expensive. Population is usually not problem past early game (and for players not using default pop practically never). You can use habitat for more things than just mining (you could for example terraform with installations). Also, I have no idea what kind of minerals Habs use but I guess something else than Corundium, which would help tremendously with the crunch (still might cost the same or even more minerals, but different ones so it is better) Also, often people focus too much on minmaxing and everyone plays the same, that is why throwing at least some RP is good, and even here Habs help a lot. Boring to have automines everywhere. Put a single hab with normal mines for some RP 

[xenoscepter]

I like using a 1 million pop Orbital Habitat for Spaceports. They cover the entire pop cost of the spaceport in question, as each one requires 1m pop to function.

[smoelf (OP)]

I like using a 1 million pop Orbital Habitat for Spaceports. They cover the entire pop cost of the spaceport in question, as each one requires 1m pop to function.

How large are your tugs to move that thing? I decided to only build habitats for 'only' 400.000 people as anything larger than that would move way too slow with my current tugs.

[Froggiest1982]

Infrastructure is not an option for high colony cost planets though, and those are the majority of planets you will find.  Going above 4 it becomes too expensive to have infrastructure for pop, so Orbital Habitats are the way to go.

Venusian worlds were a great example, 25+ cost basically screams FOOL for whoever tries to use it to get pop there. Maybe it's just me but I often find huge number of good minerals on such worlds, and even with my huge terraform capability (0.2 per annum) there is no way I am spending decades if not centuries bringing such cost down. So Habitats are the only solution and they work great for that.

Based on Steve's post in regards, the colony cost 6 is the benchmark. So from cost 6 and above Habitats are more cost-effective than the counterparts infrastructure/terraforming in the long and short term.

Also, has to be noted that costs for LG infrastructure it's same as the Habitat per Mpop, therefore, it is viable to use one or the other.

Of course the above is purely numbers. there are many factors that you could put into consideration (logistic in primis) and one of them is also RP.

[skoormit]

Also, has to be noted that costs for LG infrastructure it's same as the Habitat per Mpop, therefore, it is viable to use one or the other.

Except that population living in LG infrastructure will have smaller proportion available for manufacturing work than same population living in orbital hab.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Also, has to be noted that costs for LG infrastructure it's same as the Habitat per Mpop, therefore, it is viable to use one or the other.

Except that population living in LG infrastructure will have smaller proportion available for manufacturing work than same population living in orbital hab.

You have to also note that population living on low G infrastructure planets produce LG infrastructure as a trade goods so will build it for free for itself and once those worlds are built up to their potential they will export it to other worlds for free too.

Since I play most of my games on a 0.33 tolerance to G for humans I can eventually use this to help me colonise new worlds and use the civilian fleets to grow new worlds quite effectively.

Using habitats is still very effective when you want strategically placed colonies. They can help if you are low on Corundium for regular mines rather than auto mines. I would not normally use Habitats for mining efforts unless there is some sort of shortage in Corundium first.

As pointed out Habitats give 100% worker output which is really helpful in some situations. Especially to exploit research bonuses, military colonies and outposts to use maintenance facilities, ordnance factories or just regular factories to produce some local resources. Maybe you want to use some really good administrator to build ships over Venus and place all your Military shipyards there.

There are MANY strategical reasons to use habitats.

[Father Tim]

. . .There are MANY strategical reasons to use habitats.

There are, in fact, so many that OrbHabs should probably be a higher target priority for spoiler races and the more genocidal of regular NPRs.

[QuakeIV]

Regarding that, I do really hope that free-floating colonies without planets eventually become a thing.  I think they would make sense, there would be a lot of benefits, and it would be a cool thing if you eventually had most of your civilization in space because of said benefits.

[Ri0Rdian]

Regarding that, I do really hope that free-floating colonies without planets eventually become a thing.  I think they would make sense, there would be a lot of benefits, and it would be a cool thing if you eventually had most of your civilization in space because of said benefits.

If anyone played Distant Worlds, I loved to plop down a listening station in the middle of nowhere on my borders to always see the traffic. Especially useful in war and hard to find for them!


But I  believe this will not happen in Aurora. There is no mechanic present that I am aware of that has go/to command for anything that is not already established position (comet, asteroid, planet, moon, star) and every fleet is either on one of those or going between them. It would most likely be too much work for very little return (if it can be done easily at all!).

[QuakeIV]

I'm not sure why everyone keeps reacting that way.  Steve had been mentioning at one point that he liked the idea of doing that and as far as I know was designing in that general direciton with how he was writing the code.

Also, you can drop waypoints to fly to arbitrary locations.