Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: June 25, 2020, 06:50:36 AM »I might also add something that I think IS a balance issue of the game and that is how civilians interact with reduced power efficiency of engines.
I rarely want to research more than 30% perhaps 25% power efficiency of engines as that tend to be more than enough in terms of fuel efficiency for my cargo and mineral haulers. As said, fuel is plenty enough at that point. instead I will hamper my civilian traffic with much slower engines.
I 100% agree with this. After somebody posted about the effect that the minimum engine power tech has on civilian shipping, I stopped researching past 30% in my games.There is a case to be made that sometimes speed is important as getting stuff to a certain place fast can actually be important not just the quantity. You also can factor in lost production of the item you move as well. This is why I tend to build things such as mines in places where there is minerals to mine as I loose less potential production from the time a mine is built and then shipped out. If a trip somewhere take six month that is half a year of lost productivity on that mine for every trip, if I can cut the trip into three months I loose half of that production shortfall... over the course of fifty years that can amount to allot of production. But I obviously need to be able to produce effectively at both locations for this to matter. As I tend to spread out resource gathering and make sure I have a steady stream and slow rise in mineral income to keep pace with production this is important. I don't want to strip mine places as that can leave nasty logistical and planning issues in the future.
Older ships obviously still have their place as they can effectively move stuff that are not time sensitive which might be things like infrastructure, stations, components, minerals and things like that.
This is a great point, and is something I love about the game.
How valuable is speed for freighters, independent of throughput (speed times capacity)?
It's a question that does not have a single correct answer for all uses of freighters across your empire.
Sometimes freighter speed matters A LOT. Like when you have an unexpected mineral crunch at a major production colony. Every day of missing minerals is a day of lost production.
For most non-emergency freighter uses, freighter speed doesn't matter much for it's own sake.
Like on your typical mule runs to bring minerals from your mining sources to your production centers. What matter in these cases is throughput.
Higher speed is certainly "better", because it means cargo is in transit (and therefore not producing value) for less time, but I find that I first want to determine the design that optimizes throughput per cost, and then I might deviate a little bit from that design and pay a small cost premium on throughput in exchange for higher speed.
Certainly there is such a thing as "too slow" for mules. I'm not going to want a mule that travels only 100km/s, no matter how cheap the throughput is. That would just leave too many minerals in transit all the time.
Fortunately, with the relative cost of components in the game, the range of freighter speeds that have optimal throughput per cost is well above the "too slow" threshold.
On the question of refitting freighter engines for speed (rather than for fuel savings, as we have discussed above), I still find that building new ships returns more throughput per cost, unless the gap in engine tech is several levels.
If the upgrade is for ships used as mules, then the speed itself shouldn't be worth much of a price premium. It is throughput you are after.
If the upgrade is for ships used on urgent deliveries, then throughput is not the ultimate measure of value, and the speed increase may be worthwhile.
I think we agree more than we disagrees... my experiences comes mainly from starting a few VERY slow games in C# with 10-20% research, 50% or lower terraforming, 5% survey and not able to easily colonise low gravity worlds. This put a much higher strain on my first 100-150 years in terms of fuel efficiency, therfore upgrading ships... both for speed and fuel efficiency become very important.
Once I have engine size at around 5000t and power efficiency at 30% I have reached a peak performance level where upgrading engines on ships become pointless. I might scrap ships in favour of faster ones eventually but that will usually take hundreds of years and I have not yet reached that point in any of my starting campaigns. I tend to play slow and start a new campaign with every new major release that Steve does...
Speed on freighters can also be very important from a military or overarching strategic perspective, therefore I often keep some very fast less fuel efficient freighters around that can be used for that purpose when necessary and they will perform regular work in the mean time even if not optimal in performance. Upgrading the engines on such ships have a strategic value and have nothing to do with efficiency in any way.