Posted by: Mark Yanning
« on: January 06, 2025, 12:01:30 AM »Do build points expired? After 20 years it seems I can't use them in Ground unit training. I'm sure I had plenty left. Could also be a good way to force investment in the first years.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: January 13, 2021, 05:09:47 PM »Financial centres benefit from wealth tech increases.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 13, 2021, 01:27:33 PM »
FCs require you to invest always-scarce factories (and minerals) to build and do not scale at all - there is not even a tech to improve their output as far as I know (Wealth Generation affects worker taxes only).
I'm pretty sure they scale with Wealth Generation tech. They are described as producing as much wealth as 250 million workers (which obviously scales), and while I haven't double checked recently IIRC they maintain that ratio even with wealth upgrades.
I haven't seen that in my games but I certainly wouldn't mind being wrong here.
Posted by: Droll
« on: January 13, 2021, 01:08:14 PM »
FCs require you to invest always-scarce factories (and minerals) to build and do not scale at all - there is not even a tech to improve their output as far as I know (Wealth Generation affects worker taxes only).
I'm pretty sure they scale with Wealth Generation tech. They are described as producing as much wealth as 250 million workers (which obviously scales), and while I haven't double checked recently IIRC they maintain that ratio even with wealth upgrades.
FCs are very useful for missile based playthroughs, you need lots of mulah for AMMs. And yes FCs almost certainly scale with tech.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: January 13, 2021, 01:00:18 PM »
FCs require you to invest always-scarce factories (and minerals) to build and do not scale at all - there is not even a tech to improve their output as far as I know (Wealth Generation affects worker taxes only).
I'm pretty sure they scale with Wealth Generation tech. They are described as producing as much wealth as 250 million workers (which obviously scales), and while I haven't double checked recently IIRC they maintain that ratio even with wealth upgrades.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 13, 2021, 12:53:23 PM »If this derails, apologies and please move, but as a new player I'm curious about misanthrope's (and others) thoughts as to why the FC 's suck. And what info or data points you use to judge when you can lay off the FC builds and rely on the growing trade economy solely?
Do FC's suck in relation to the other alternative being 'free' of needing minerals or pop once trade gets big enough? Is it because they take a long time to pay off the investment cost? As FC are presented as the only real option for Wealth when starting, I haven't really explored how good they are since it's the only option I have control of directly. My playstyle is heavily into colonies, so I am very interested in learning break even points of when I can expect the Trade economy to really take over.
FCs require you to invest always-scarce factories (and minerals) to build and do not scale at all - there is not even a tech to improve their output as far as I know (Wealth Generation affects worker taxes only). Every other persistent source of wealth income scales with your empire to some degree, whether worker taxes which increase as you have more population and installations, or the various trade and CMC taxes that increase as you expand your colonies and CMCs over time. These other methods of gaining wealth also come as side effects from doing things you would be doing anyways - building, expanding, colonizing, and so on. Only FCs really require a dedicated investment in wealth.
Usually since you start with a bunch of FCs it can make sense to move them offworld, for example Luna or Mars can be good places to dump your FCs and put a wealth-skill governor if they have no useful mineral deposits since you want to colonize them anyways to stimulate civilian shipping and trade. I might also put a few factories on such a planet along with a stock of corbomite and have them slowly build FCs just to give the population something to do (and to find something to do with that worthless corbomite...), but otherwise it's not worth investing in when you could be building mines, factories, shipyards, etc.
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Brings up another question I've had forever....How much Wealth is enough? I know it will change based on Empire size, but is there a standard number or ratio you like to keep as reserve? I know it's the rate of change I need to keep an eagle eye on, but in general do you try to keep your Wealth maxed or 100-200k? With the way building is not immediate in Aurora, I worry less about large immediate costs upsetting my treasury as builds are spread out and use the rate of change as my main barometer.
You want to break even with enough of a reserve to cover any emergency spending. As long as you are not going negative for any long period of time it will be fine, but maintaining that balance takes consistent attention and adjustments (usually in the form of canceling or delaying construction projects). There's no real need for a target reserve but I would say trying to keep it in roughly the same ballpark as your annual income/expenses numbers is a good idea.
Posted by: Kylemmie
« on: January 13, 2021, 11:38:05 AM »financial centers SU HU HU HUCK, getting away from building those wretched things as fast as possible is high on my list. getting trade good and civ eco up makes a huge difference, and it takes a lot of civ capacity to do extra-solar business on a meaningful scale.
If this derails, apologies and please move, but as a new player I'm curious about misanthrope's (and others) thoughts as to why the FC 's suck. And what info or data points you use to judge when you can lay off the FC builds and rely on the growing trade economy solely?
Do FC's suck in relation to the other alternative being 'free' of needing minerals or pop once trade gets big enough? Is it because they take a long time to pay off the investment cost? As FC are presented as the only real option for Wealth when starting, I haven't really explored how good they are since it's the only option I have control of directly. My playstyle is heavily into colonies, so I am very interested in learning break even points of when I can expect the Trade economy to really take over.
Brings up another question I've had forever....How much Wealth is enough? I know it will change based on Empire size, but is there a standard number or ratio you like to keep as reserve? I know it's the rate of change I need to keep an eagle eye on, but in general do you try to keep your Wealth maxed or 100-200k? With the way building is not immediate in Aurora, I worry less about large immediate costs upsetting my treasury as builds are spread out and use the rate of change as my main barometer.
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: January 13, 2021, 11:05:41 AM »a nice little benefit of leaning heavily on comets is that you can delay depletion of earth until after you're comfortably in control of some other real estate (and ideally a conquered alien race). a mine on earth gets you more total tons of mineral than any other site in the solar system, but barring serious military expansion if you're getting enough duranium you probably have a surfeit of everything else.
terraforming mars feels like a big deal to me- a bargain despite the size of the task. even with the first couple wealth techs being easy to research, im usually hitting a wealth crunch at an earlier date than _any_ of the crunches came at me in VB6. and financial centers SU HU HU HUCK, getting away from building those wretched things as fast as possible is high on my list. getting trade good and civ eco up makes a huge difference, and it takes a lot of civ capacity to do extra-solar business on a meaningful scale.
using starting RP/BP to shore up areas where your scientists can't carry you is obviously right, but you can also use the bps to build something that requires a mineral that terra is short of. corundium, i'm looking at you! but also, neutronium or mercassium.
good luck, commit some atrocities for me?
terraforming mars feels like a big deal to me- a bargain despite the size of the task. even with the first couple wealth techs being easy to research, im usually hitting a wealth crunch at an earlier date than _any_ of the crunches came at me in VB6. and financial centers SU HU HU HUCK, getting away from building those wretched things as fast as possible is high on my list. getting trade good and civ eco up makes a huge difference, and it takes a lot of civ capacity to do extra-solar business on a meaningful scale.
using starting RP/BP to shore up areas where your scientists can't carry you is obviously right, but you can also use the bps to build something that requires a mineral that terra is short of. corundium, i'm looking at you! but also, neutronium or mercassium.
good luck, commit some atrocities for me?
Posted by: RougeNPS
« on: January 13, 2021, 12:03:33 AM »The idea of universally applicable support ships will forever be appealing to me. But i prefer modularity so i build a basis and then branch out from it based upon need.
Posted by: sadoeconomist
« on: January 12, 2021, 10:56:16 PM »Yeah, I had a major construction factory bottleneck in my last game so I feel like putting some starting RP into construction speed tech is definitely justified just to try to loosen that up a bit.
Theoretically you could get the ground force construction tech and dump a lot of your starting BPs into construction brigades, too, but I think that might be going a little far, and it might give you cashflow issues.
In the new game I'm working on, I've put together some ship design ideas I hope will work out - I've got an escort carrier designed to the capacity of the larger of my two naval shipyards that could hold either survey craft or fighters, along with a missile-armed destroyer escort designed to the capacity of the smaller one, and both have commercial drives so they can use the same jump tender as my commercial ships. They're very slow but I think they can put up a token commerce/colony defense if needed and I figure I can build frontline warships later once I've got some proper research done. And I was able to design a support ship that can fill the role of jump tender, tug, tanker, supply ship, and rescue ship. By minimizing the designed components needed and reusing them as much as possible, I was able to spend about 5k RP less on them than I did in my first try at the game.
The BP sink I decided to go with was mining platforms - I think terraformers are a good choice as well since they lower the need for infrastructure construction on Earth but I happened to start with multiple very good biology researchers so I thought I'd be better off spending free RP on a tech that was harder for me to get normally. Hopefully I won't need to put any of Earth's construction capacity on mines and I can just rely on comets and asteroids to keep the minerals flowing when Earth starts to run out. That 10k RP for tractor beams and orbital mining probably came out of my engine and weapon techs though, I think I'm going to need to count on not encountering hostiles too soon.
Theoretically you could get the ground force construction tech and dump a lot of your starting BPs into construction brigades, too, but I think that might be going a little far, and it might give you cashflow issues.
In the new game I'm working on, I've put together some ship design ideas I hope will work out - I've got an escort carrier designed to the capacity of the larger of my two naval shipyards that could hold either survey craft or fighters, along with a missile-armed destroyer escort designed to the capacity of the smaller one, and both have commercial drives so they can use the same jump tender as my commercial ships. They're very slow but I think they can put up a token commerce/colony defense if needed and I figure I can build frontline warships later once I've got some proper research done. And I was able to design a support ship that can fill the role of jump tender, tug, tanker, supply ship, and rescue ship. By minimizing the designed components needed and reusing them as much as possible, I was able to spend about 5k RP less on them than I did in my first try at the game.
The BP sink I decided to go with was mining platforms - I think terraformers are a good choice as well since they lower the need for infrastructure construction on Earth but I happened to start with multiple very good biology researchers so I thought I'd be better off spending free RP on a tech that was harder for me to get normally. Hopefully I won't need to put any of Earth's construction capacity on mines and I can just rely on comets and asteroids to keep the minerals flowing when Earth starts to run out. That 10k RP for tractor beams and orbital mining probably came out of my engine and weapon techs though, I think I'm going to need to count on not encountering hostiles too soon.
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: January 12, 2021, 09:50:57 PM »i mean, i was speaking to the conditions specified by OP (including reluctance to spend starting BPs after day 1, which i share). dangit im gonna stay on topic just this one time. new year's resolution.
in the early game your cf capacity is a major choke. taking a bunch of mines or maintenance facilities out of the queue through the magic of fast OOB creation is greatly freeing. in the steady state i maintain a big chunk of commercial capacity because it functions as dirt cheap auxiliary cf capacity, but any modules you're going to want in less than the ~5 years it takes to get that up and running are an attractive option for starting beeps. attractive enough, possibly, to justify skimping on a couple otherwise-superior 5k techs to get tractors and mining modules (or tf module, etc) at the start.
in the early game your cf capacity is a major choke. taking a bunch of mines or maintenance facilities out of the queue through the magic of fast OOB creation is greatly freeing. in the steady state i maintain a big chunk of commercial capacity because it functions as dirt cheap auxiliary cf capacity, but any modules you're going to want in less than the ~5 years it takes to get that up and running are an attractive option for starting beeps. attractive enough, possibly, to justify skimping on a couple otherwise-superior 5k techs to get tractors and mining modules (or tf module, etc) at the start.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 12, 2021, 02:02:01 PM »i don't think mining modules are well-loved. given sol's bounty of comets, it's an automine substitute that doesnt require factory time to deploy. construction factory capacity is very expensive, and offloading maintenance and mining to commercial shipyards- dirt cheap capacity- will noticeably accelerate your early game, despite the increased accounting cost of the modules compared to installations.
colonizing luna with infrastructure while terraforming mars is just the basic formula i have gone with for some time. luna can soak up all the infrastructure humanity can produce for a good long while. having a substantial chunk (1/3, 1/2, from a standard 500 million start) of humanity off-terra is one of my milestones for proper development of the solar system. this is throttled by the time it takes to terraform mars.
wouldn't go for both of these out of the gate, but i feel either is a good investment
I find it depends a lot on your starting conditions. At 500m pop you don't have enough shipyards to spare one for each kind of platform, but you also don't have enough mines on Earth that you need to immediately worry about setting up offworld mining colonies to cover the impending shortages - which also means plans like terraforming Mars before colonizing it are viable. On the other hand at 2b pop Earth will start to run out of some TNEs in five-ish years but you also have enough shipyards (and starting BPs) to push a lot of OMPs and other station classes out the door.
It's also worth noting that infrastructure built early is never wasted just because you could have terraformed instead, as that infra is later able to be shipped to frontier worlds (lots of CC2 planets in the galaxy...) to establish mining or fleet outposts before your terraformer fleet can get to those bodies. Personally I prefer rapid expansion to turtling up in Sol so this is an important consideration for me.
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starting with ion drives is a calculated extravagance at 80k starting research. you will really strain your starting endowment to get that and the most-valuable 4k tier military techs (sensor and missile, basically), and i at least find that the ships i build on that tech level are almost not compatible with the ships i build before. i don't have such a problem with ion ships, esp missile combatants, working with later MP designs. ymmv for sure
Ion drives are horribly implausible at 80k, but at 160k (1b pop) or 200k (1.25b pop, but this is a maximum unless you change it manually so applies to 2b pop also) ion drives are very viable. It's very important to know how your starting population affects what you can accomplish with your starting RPs. The flip side is that tech costs don't scale linearly so 160k RP does not give 2x the tech as 80k RP. For an 80k start I might research NPE drives and 15 cm lasers, then for 160k RP I might research ion drives but still only 15 cm lasers for example. One thing which does scale linearly is the number of one-off techs you can take e.g. orbital modules, command modules, etc. so you can add a lot more capabilities to your fleet at 160k than at 80k even if the quality of your ships is only slightly better.
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: January 12, 2021, 02:18:28 AM »i don't think mining modules are well-loved. given sol's bounty of comets, it's an automine substitute that doesnt require factory time to deploy. construction factory capacity is very expensive, and offloading maintenance and mining to commercial shipyards- dirt cheap capacity- will noticeably accelerate your early game, despite the increased accounting cost of the modules compared to installations.
colonizing luna with infrastructure while terraforming mars is just the basic formula i have gone with for some time. luna can soak up all the infrastructure humanity can produce for a good long while. having a substantial chunk (1/3, 1/2, from a standard 500 million start) of humanity off-terra is one of my milestones for proper development of the solar system. this is throttled by the time it takes to terraform mars.
wouldn't go for both of these out of the gate, but i feel either is a good investment
starting with ion drives is a calculated extravagance at 80k starting research. you will really strain your starting endowment to get that and the most-valuable 4k tier military techs (sensor and missile, basically), and i at least find that the ships i build on that tech level are almost not compatible with the ships i build before. i don't have such a problem with ion ships, esp missile combatants, working with later MP designs. ymmv for sure
colonizing luna with infrastructure while terraforming mars is just the basic formula i have gone with for some time. luna can soak up all the infrastructure humanity can produce for a good long while. having a substantial chunk (1/3, 1/2, from a standard 500 million start) of humanity off-terra is one of my milestones for proper development of the solar system. this is throttled by the time it takes to terraform mars.
wouldn't go for both of these out of the gate, but i feel either is a good investment
starting with ion drives is a calculated extravagance at 80k starting research. you will really strain your starting endowment to get that and the most-valuable 4k tier military techs (sensor and missile, basically), and i at least find that the ships i build on that tech level are almost not compatible with the ships i build before. i don't have such a problem with ion ships, esp missile combatants, working with later MP designs. ymmv for sure
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: January 12, 2021, 12:10:27 AM »one thing is sure, there are a Godzillion ~5k RP projects that feel like barebones necessities.
with anything but the slowest research settings, i feel like it is almost impossible for you to build a starting army or navy that won't be hopelessly obsolete by the time you find some aliens to murder. if you can find a non-research-gimping way to effectively war from the word go let me know about it because that's my jam but i just cant pull it off in A#.
im starting to think the way to go is to spend heavily on tuggable pods of commercial systems: cryogenics, mining, terraforming, maintenance, or even troop transport. having to spend 5k at the start on tractors stings, but man tractors are good. these designs will be useful instantly and useful forever. 3 of these require yet another painful 5k RP sacrifice (pick one at most!), but these pods build slowly, so getting them deployed immediately gains you a lot of time value of money on the research invested.
This is similar to the classic Civilization game-starting quandary - Worker or Warrior first?
It does depend on your game settings quite a lot (both those settings that affect your race, and those which affect the types and distributions of NPR/spoiler threats), but generally an early fleet while likely to go obsolete fairly quickly is also an essential bulwark against early aggression. If you don't meet any aliens until your survey ship gets mauled by Precursors 5 jumps from Sol, then the fleet wasn't really necessary, on the other hand I've had games where the first NPR I met was one knocking on the gates of Sol and I had to mount a tenuous JP defense within the first few years. Obviously it would be ideal long-term to go full economy at the beginning, but it's always a risk to do so unless you turn off starting NPRs and turtle in Sol for a few decades (boring!).
That said, having a decent-size starting fleet is not a loss even if they don't see much action before you jump up a full tech level. On one hand, the crew training you can do in the early game (provided you have the fuel/MSP reserves) will carry over if you refit your ships to the next models which is a significant benefit. On the other hand, keeping your older ships alongside your new fleet ensures you aren't going to be outnumbered by an NPR that started with ships and spent a few decades building dozens more while you slowly teched up to MP drives and 25-cm lasers before laying down your first frigate.
On the flip side, a lot of the early economic techs aren't strictly urgent unless Earth has quite poor mineral deposits - OMPs and FHPs aren't really needed until you've gotten quite a bit of expansion, provided you're smart about developing Earth's economy from the start, and terraforming platforms in the early game are slow enough that you'll need to build infra anyways to colonize Mars or wherever for quite a while. In my 1b pop starts I usually make space in my starting RP to pick up tractor beams, orbital miners, sorium harvesters, and terraforming modules to get off to a fast start but it's certainly not necessary to do so. If anything I would "optimally" prioritize basic troop transports (non-drop), tankers, and such which are not likely to have a shipyard available in the early game due to the need for freighters, colony ships, jump tenders, and so on.
Posted by: Droll
« on: January 11, 2021, 03:59:26 PM »...but i just cant pull it off in A#.
A#? What classified version of aurora did you get your hands on?
