Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 06:01:43 AM
Mars
Duranium 23,120,000 Acc: 0.5
Boronide 7,214,596 Acc: 0.6
Corundium 722,500 Acc: 0.1
I still feel completely ignorant about the game in spite of Steve's best efforts in the tutorials, but that looks pretty good for Duranium and Boronide. My question is, can I mine that stuff without being able to set up a colony there and if so, how? Automated mines? If that will work do I just build them, put them in a ship, send them there, and dump them into space along with a mass driver? Or am I out of luck and need to keep looking for habitable planets?
Thanks.
Post by: James Patten on January 07, 2010, 06:18:13 AM
Just start putting Automated Mines and mass drivers there. You'll have to build them on Earth, ship them in a ship with at least 5 cargo holds, and unload them on Mars. Set the mass driver target to Earth (as long as there's another mass driver on Earth) and the game will automatically mine and send to you the minerals. The more automated mines you put, the more minerals they will mine. Eventually you'll have to put more mass drivers on Mars to throw more minerals than 1 alone can handle, but that will take some doing.
The accessibility is OK, not great, but the amounts are really nice. It will take you a long time to mine out the duranium in Mars.
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 06:28:21 AM
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 12:20:29 PM
It's probably right in front of me but I don't see how.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 07, 2010, 12:26:50 PM
Quote from: "Elmo"
Bah. How do I load my automated mine on my freighter?! I looked at every menu I could find and see no way to load cargo.Open the F12 task group window and select the fleet with the freighters. Click on Earth in the System Locations Available list. A list of orders should popup in the second listbox. Click on Load Automated Mine. Now click on Mars and select Unload Automated Mine. If you need to move a lot of them click the Cycle moves checkbox and the orders will keep repeating (or instead use the Repeat button for a specified number of cycles)
Steve
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 01:03:42 PM
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 02:14:21 PM
Edit - Also, do you follow the same procedure to set up an asteroid mining colony? Thanks.
Post by: Hawkeye on January 07, 2010, 04:19:36 PM
Quote from: "Elmo"
OK my Mining Colony on Mars is operational! Would it do any good to assign a Governor to the colony with a mining bonus? Seems like she would be a bit lonely there since it's all automated but if it would increase the yield we'll remind her it's only two years and it's for a good cause.
Edit - Also, do you follow the same procedure to set up an asteroid mining colony? Thanks.
Yes on both counts.
You actually don´t even need to create a colony first. Just order your frighter(s) to drop the mines on the body and aurora will automaticaly create a colony there. This works with all installations, afaik, but not for Xeno- or Geo-teams.
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 04:37:52 PM
Post by: sloanjh on January 07, 2010, 09:01:45 PM
Quote from: "James Patten"
The accessibility is OK, not great, but the amounts are really nice. It will take you a long time to mine out the duranium in Mars.
This is an important point to keep in mind from a cost/benefit point of view. Automated mines cost twice as much as regular mines. An accessiblity of 0.5 means that you'll only get minerals out 1/2 as fast as if the mine were situated on a planet with accessibility of 1.0. So if it's Duranium that you're worried about, your return on investment for mines on Mars is going to be 25% that of putting manned mines on a habitable world with duranium accessibility of 1.0.
That being said, it's awfully hard to find colony-cost 0.0 worlds with lots of 1.0 duranium, plus you have to pay the costs of colonizing the world (transporting workers to man the mines, paying for infrastructure if it's cost 2.0 rather than 0.0, etc).
In my games, Earth usually gets mined out after 10-20 years, by which point I need to find a habitable world with good duranium to which I can move my manned mines. The alternative of converting them to automated mines doesn't work very well, since you don't have any net increase in mining capacity while you're doing the conversion. So all of the new mines I build are usually automated - any manned ones I need I simply transfer off Earth, putting off the day that it's mined out. The location of the automated mines I build is usually controlled by where ever I can find the best accessibility (and at least a 5 year supply) of which ever secondary mineral (e.g. Neutronium or Mercassium) I'm running out of, along with a decent (0.5 or greater) accessibility of Duranium.
Just trying to give you an idea of the calculations that go through people's heads when deciding where to put their mining colonies....
John
Post by: Elmo on January 07, 2010, 09:12:06 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
... I need to find a habitable world with good duranium to which I can move my manned mines. ...
John
Never would have thought to move the manned mines off Earth. Thanks.
Post by: Erik L on January 07, 2010, 09:34:12 PM
Post by: sloanjh on January 07, 2010, 11:44:12 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I usually convert my manned to automated to free up the population for things like research
Interesting....I don't think I've ever run out of workers on Earth itself. On colonies, yes, but not on Earth. It might be because I'm partial to conventional starts - plenty of time for population to grow before I've built up my industry....
Unless you're talking about using automated mines on habitable colonies so the pop can work on industry or research - that I think I've done.
BTW, with the new research rules, I haven't had any motivation to move research labs off Earth to the colonies - I can work on multiple projects while keeping them at home.
John
Post by: Elmo on January 08, 2010, 04:53:46 AM
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 08, 2010, 05:40:02 AM
Quote from: "Elmo"
Th last couple of posts got me thinking so I'm going OT in my own thread for a minute. A lot of 4X games encourage specialization with colonies. One is best suited for research, another for ship building, another for mining, etc. Are there any incentives for that in Aurora or is is best for each colony to be more self sufficient?
It used to be that there was a strong incentive to specialize colonies for reasearch purposes. That was so you could get multiple different leaders with different scientific specializations working on projects. With the change in seting up reasearch projects that has gone away. Currently I would say there is some benifit to specialization for smaller colonies (under 100k) as they won't have the people to do much of anything. By the time you get into the 1billion range, probably not really. I still do like to split my research off from my main industrial planet though. Mostly this is because by the time it is an issue, my homeworld is out of minerals so moving the population to a world with lots of minerals and having the factories/shipyards move as well simplifies the logistics. Moving that much population (about half) is not easy, but it does work out well.
Brian
Post by: waresky on January 08, 2010, 06:13:22 AM
Quote
You must create a "Colony" on Mars in order to mine it, in the F9 System view window click on Mars and there's a "Create Colony" button on the bottom of the window. However it won't be a habitable colony, just a mining colony. You'll see it in your F2 economics window upon refresh and it will be available as a destination in your F12 fleet window immediately
NO.Its a MORE fastest way to Colonizing a planet..
SIMPLE:
Take a Cargo Task group,order: LOAD AUTOMATED MINES at "Earth" then..Unload AUTOMATED MINES at.ie: Alpha Centauri A I..
Fastest-simple
Post by: James Patten on January 08, 2010, 06:20:52 AM
Something you might want to do is assemble a 5-man Survey team and send them to Mars. There is a possibility (slim but real) that they will discover that the GeoSurvey ships didn't know what they were talking about and that the accessibility isn't .5 but something greater. While they are at it they may discover small pockets of other minerals that the GeoSurvey ships missed. Eventually they will find out there's nothing more to find. Try to use officers with the highest survey bonus for the survey team, because the higher the sum of the bonuses the better the team will do.
Post by: Elmo on January 08, 2010, 06:35:17 AM
Post by: James Patten on January 08, 2010, 09:02:36 AM
Post by: sloanjh on January 08, 2010, 09:07:50 AM
Quote from: "James Patten"
AFAIK A survey team (or any team for that matter) can land on anything except a gas giant or a star. Maybe the same technology that gives us artificial gravity on the ships (there is artificial gravity on ships, isn't there?) must give the teams their own little mobile platforms to move around the surface.
There does need to be a colony in place on the body in question, though. It doesn't have to have anything (people or installations) in it, but it's needed as a container into which the survey team can be placed. As has been said before, it's easy to make a colony by going to the F9 screen and hitting the "add colony" button while the body in question is selected.
John
Post by: Erik L on January 08, 2010, 03:23:47 PM
Quote from: "Brian"
Quote from: "Elmo"Th last couple of posts got me thinking so I'm going OT in my own thread for a minute. A lot of 4X games encourage specialization with colonies. One is best suited for research, another for ship building, another for mining, etc. Are there any incentives for that in Aurora or is is best for each colony to be more self sufficient?
It used to be that there was a strong incentive to specialize colonies for reasearch purposes. That was so you could get multiple different leaders with different scientific specializations working on projects. With the change in seting up reasearch projects that has gone away. Currently I would say there is some benifit to specialization for smaller colonies (under 100k) as they won't have the people to do much of anything. By the time you get into the 1billion range, probably not really. I still do like to split my research off from my main industrial planet though. Mostly this is because by the time it is an issue, my homeworld is out of minerals so moving the population to a world with lots of minerals and having the factories/shipyards move as well simplifies the logistics. Moving that much population (about half) is not easy, but it does work out well.
Brian
I'm not sure this holds true in 4.77, but in prior versions you could have 2 colonies research the same tech.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2010, 04:13:37 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
BTW, with the new research rules, I haven't had any motivation to move research labs off Earth to the colonies - I can work on multiple projects while keeping them at home.I have been thinking about that too. Not sure who gave me the idea but I am thinking about having certain astrographic locations that benefit research. A planet very close to a star, or the moon of a gas giant with a strong magnetic field, or a nebula system, or a very cold planet, etc. I need to give this some more thought but it would be cool to have research colonies in some weird and wonderful locations. It would also be better if different locations had benefits to different types of research.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 08, 2010, 04:17:52 PM
Quote from: "Elmo"
Th last couple of posts got me thinking so I'm going OT in my own thread for a minute. A lot of 4X games encourage specialization with colonies. One is best suited for research, another for ship building, another for mining, etc. Are there any incentives for that in Aurora or is is best for each colony to be more self sufficient?You often end up with specialised colonies for various reasons. Planets with a lot of minerals tend to become mining-focused, or with specific minerals may turn into an ordnance production facility or refining operation. The governor will have a major influence, so you might have a Adminstrator with a strong shipbuilding skill and you would concentrate your shipbuilding in that location. A planet with every mineral, even with low accessibility, is perfect for a fleet base because, once equipped with mines, it will supply all the ongoing maintenance you need for any type of ship.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 08, 2010, 07:33:32 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"BTW, with the new research rules, I haven't had any motivation to move research labs off Earth to the colonies - I can work on multiple projects while keeping them at home.I have been thinking about that too. Not sure who gave me the idea but I am thinking about having certain astrographic locations that benefit research. A planet very close to a star, or the moon of a gas giant with a strong magnetic field, or a nebula system, or a very cold planet, etc. I need to give this some more thought but it would be cool to have research colonies in some weird and wonderful locations. It would also be better if different locations had benefits to different types of research.
Steve
Another thought along these lines when I saw Elmo's post about specialization: Agriculture. Do you want to put food supplies into the game?
[stream of conciousness]
On the one hand, it would be lots of micromanagement to require the player to build "Farms" (the equivalent of mines or industrial installations), and then need to ship food between planets in the same way minerals are shipped. This would argue in favor of managing it as part of the civilian sector: the civilians would manage creating farms and growing food. This is actually how it's modeled right now - there's even a special slot in the worker allocations called "agriculture and environment".
A side comment: the first thing I thought of when I read the question about specialization was "Colonies already specialize - they have different levels of the the various trade goods, and civie ships move trade goods from worlds with surpluses to worlds with deficits".
So the lowest level step would be to simply make food YATG (Yet Another Trade Good). I don't like this though, since the various trade goods don't have any "flavor" to them at present - unlike minerals, "plastics" and "civilian transport" are identical in game terms. Plus, there's no way to make colonization decisions based on the types of trade goods that will be produced - you only find out trade good levels after the population grows big enough.
How about food an intermediate level trade good (i.e. closer to behaving like minerals): a world has a "food production efficiency" (similar to colonization cost) which can be found out either when the world is discovered or at the time of geo survey. Like colonization cost, it can be improved by terraforming. This would introduce the concepts of "barren" and "breadbasket" worlds. Food itself should probably be managed as a trade good - shipped by civie contracts (although perhaps shipping my player-owned cargo ships would be allowed too). Population growth on a world would by negatively affected by the ratio of food supply to food demand; if there were enough of a deficit then population would shrink and/or unrest would go up. You could also introduce "orbital" (or ground-based) farms (similar to financial installations) as well which would boost food production on a world by a fixed amount (inflated or deflated by the production efficiency, of course).
A really interesting thought would be to decrease food production efficiency as the population density on a planet goes up. So a high-population homeworld would be in danger of starvation and high unrest due to food shortages, and there would be an incentive to colonize/farm breadbasket worlds.
It seems like this sort of idea sets up food as an independent scarce resource in parallel with minerals, with all the tradeoffs and shortages (i.e. reasons for races to fight over territory) that you're trying to set up in Aurora, but as basically lying in the civilian sector. It would also give a reason for planets to go into uncontrollable rebellion based on food shortages.
Hmmm typing the "civilian sector" stuff just now got me thinking about the civies setting up "civilian farm complexes" on habitable worlds....
[/stream of conciousness]
What do you think?
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 09, 2010, 09:25:38 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Another thought along these lines when I saw Elmo's post about specialization: Agriculture. Do you want to put food supplies into the game?As you mentioned, food is taken into account at the moment in terms of the agricultural sector. The proportion of the workforce assigned to this sector is higher on worlds with higher colony costs to account for the difficulty of food production. Making food an actual resource rather than an abstract concept would be a significant change for the game. I looked into food production very early on and found that it wasn't as big a deal as I thought. In the US, less than 3% of the workforce is involved in agriculture and the US is still a net exporter of food. That is how I derived the 5% agriculture & environmental percentage for an ideal habitable world, assuming a high tech, industrialised society.
[stream of conciousness]
On the one hand, it would be lots of micromanagement to require the player to build "Farms" (the equivalent of mines or industrial installations), and then need to ship food between planets in the same way minerals are shipped. This would argue in favor of managing it as part of the civilian sector: the civilians would manage creating farms and growing food. This is actually how it's modeled right now - there's even a special slot in the worker allocations called "agriculture and environment".
A side comment: the first thing I thought of when I read the question about specialization was "Colonies already specialize - they have different levels of the the various trade goods, and civie ships move trade goods from worlds with surpluses to worlds with deficits".
So the lowest level step would be to simply make food YATG (Yet Another Trade Good). I don't like this though, since the various trade goods don't have any "flavor" to them at present - unlike minerals, "plastics" and "civilian transport" are identical in game terms. Plus, there's no way to make colonization decisions based on the types of trade goods that will be produced - you only find out trade good levels after the population grows big enough.
How about food an intermediate level trade good (i.e. closer to behaving like minerals): a world has a "food production efficiency" (similar to colonization cost) which can be found out either when the world is discovered or at the time of geo survey. Like colonization cost, it can be improved by terraforming. This would introduce the concepts of "barren" and "breadbasket" worlds. Food itself should probably be managed as a trade good - shipped by civie contracts (although perhaps shipping my player-owned cargo ships would be allowed too). Population growth on a world would by negatively affected by the ratio of food supply to food demand; if there were enough of a deficit then population would shrink and/or unrest would go up. You could also introduce "orbital" (or ground-based) farms (similar to financial installations) as well which would boost food production on a world by a fixed amount (inflated or deflated by the production efficiency, of course).
A really interesting thought would be to decrease food production efficiency as the population density on a planet goes up. So a high-population homeworld would be in danger of starvation and high unrest due to food shortages, and there would be an incentive to colonize/farm breadbasket worlds.
It seems like this sort of idea sets up food as an independent scarce resource in parallel with minerals, with all the tradeoffs and shortages (i.e. reasons for races to fight over territory) that you're trying to set up in Aurora, but as basically lying in the civilian sector. It would also give a reason for planets to go into uncontrollable rebellion based on food shortages.
Hmmm typing the "civilian sector" stuff just now got me thinking about the civies setting up "civilian farm complexes" on habitable worlds....
[/stream of conciousness]
What do you think?
I could convert that from an abstract figure into "farm" installations and perhaps have a fertility rating for difference planets, or perhaps require "hydroponic" installations for worlds with a colony cost > 0. In a sense though, the concept of hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and ponos labor if you are interested in etymology
) is already built into the requirement for more infrastructure (which currently covers everything needed to make a hostile planet livable) and a larger agricultural sector on higher colony cost worlds.So the bottom line is that I could do this but I am not sure if the greater complexity would lead to improved gameplay, bearing in mind that the requirement for infrastructure already covers some of the same ground. I am happy to listen to everyone's opinion though and I could add it if there is sufficient interest
Steve
Post by: Father Tim on January 09, 2010, 11:26:49 AM
I wouldn't want to a change that made colonization significantly more difficult. Slightly would be okay, and I suppose if the new system gave me a compelling reason to build colonies where I otherwise wouldn't (Col Cost <2.0 worlds with little or not minerals, mineral-free asteroids maybe) that would be good.
So yeah, if the major effect of the new system is to further restrict the number of 'fantastic' colony sites then I vote no. If it instead increases the number of 'good/great' colony sites, then I vote yes.
Post by: welchbloke on January 09, 2010, 12:32:10 PM
Post by: sloanjh on January 09, 2010, 12:53:15 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
I think the Agriculture & Environment / Infrastructure system already in place adequately handles the topic, though I do admit I miss the idea of freighters full of 'food' plying the tradelanes.Agreed - the purpose of the suggestion was to give more reasons to colonize planets, not to increase the realism of the simulation.
Quote
As it currently stands empires ship farms around, instead of food, which feels a little awkward but not tremendously so.Interesting point. I'd always thought of infrastructure as being air domes, not hydroponic food vats. Seen in this way, I guess the important question in terms of difficulty would be how many person-years a freighter full of food would last. If it's several years for the number of people an equivalent load of infrastructure would support, then it won't be a big impact. If it's several months, then it would be a huge impact. I wouldn't want to make the change if it were a huge impact.
Quote
I wouldn't want to a change that made colonization significantly more difficult. Slightly would be okay, and I suppose if the new system gave me a compelling reason to build colonies where I otherwise wouldn't (Col Cost <2.0 worlds with little or not minerals, mineral-free asteroids maybe) that would be good.That (a reason to build more colonies) was the main purpose of the suggestion - to give a possible use for <2.0 worlds beyond mining or wealth/trade generation. The difficulty would come in if you did too much colonization of barren worlds without finding any food producing worlds to colonize - similar to building to many SY if you haven't found any bodies to mine for Neutronium.
Quote
So yeah, if the major effect of the new system is to further restrict the number of 'fantastic' colony sites then I vote no. If it instead increases the number of 'good/great' colony sites, then I vote yes.I think it depends on your definition of "fantastic". If it's "low colonization cost, plus everything needed by the economy" then it reduces the number of fantastic sites, since it would add "high food production" to "lots of minerals", and increases the number of "good" sites. If it's "low colonization cost, plus high accessibility of a resource I need", then it might actually raise the number of fantastic sites, since high food productivity would be added to the list of resources (right next to minerals).
This reminds me of something I noticed last game - now that the civies are producing infrastructure, colony cost 2 worlds aren't actually much of a burden to colonize. I view this as a good thing, since I think it's made colonization much easier (in the sense I think you're concerned about).
All the above being said, it doesn't sound like this idea has captured Steve's imagination. I threw it out there on the chance he might say "aha! That's a great enhancement to the trade/civie sector mechanisms". Since he didn't, I don't want to push him in that direction, since I think his creativity needs to be engaged in order to make the idea work. This is fine with me - that's why it's called a "suggestion"
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 09, 2010, 01:11:24 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
As you mentioned, food is taken into account at the moment in terms of the agricultural sector. The proportion of the workforce assigned to this sector is higher on worlds with higher colony costs to account for the difficulty of food production. Making food an actual resource rather than an abstract concept would be a significant change for the game. I looked into food production very early on and found that it wasn't as big a deal as I thought. In the US, less than 3% of the workforce is involved in agriculture and the US is still a net exporter of food. That is how I derived the 5% agriculture & environmental percentage for an ideal habitable world, assuming a high tech, industrialised society.Agreed in terms of population, which is why I would keep it in the civie sector (like "plastics"), rather than treating it like Duranium. On the other hand, the food produced itself is an important component of a civilian economy (think of famines in North Korea or Africa). That's the essence that I'd like to capture.
Quote
I could convert that from an abstract figure into "farm" installations and perhaps have a fertility rating for difference planets, or perhaps require "hydroponic" installations for worlds with a colony cost > 0. In a sense though, the concept of hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and ponos labor if you are interested in etymology :-) ) I'm suggesting that shortages of civie trade goods (like "plastics") have a negative impact on the economy, and that there's some way to tell before colonization that a particular world will be good at producing a particular trade good. I just happened to think of "food" as an additional such trade good.QuoteSo the bottom line is that I could do this but I am not sure if the greater complexity would lead to improved gameplay, bearing in mind that the requirement for infrastructure already covers some of the same ground. I am happy to listen to everyone's opinion though and I could add it if there is sufficient interest
I'm not in favor of it as a mechanism for micromanaging food. What I was going for (as described above) is a way of making potential colony sites valuable in a way other than mineral content. If your head's focused on other aspects of Aurora right, now, that's fine - I just wanted to sow the seed....
John
Post by: Elmo on January 10, 2010, 10:14:18 AM
Post by: welchbloke on January 10, 2010, 10:35:07 AM
Quote from: "Elmo"
In my current game the civilian pop has established civilian mining colonies on Luna and Triton but they are not producing any minerals. Do I need to put mass drivers there or do something to help them out?Sounds like the CMCs (civilian mining complex - one for the glossary?) are set to 'minerals to civilian sector'. This thread will explain things : http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1716&hilit=civilian+mining+complex
Post by: sloanjh on January 10, 2010, 10:41:10 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "Elmo"In my current game the civilian pop has established civilian mining colonies on Luna and Triton but they are not producing any minerals. Do I need to put mass drivers there or do something to help them out?Sounds like the CMCs (civilian mining complex - one for the glossary?) are set to 'minerals to civilian sector. This thread will explain things : http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1716&hilit=civilian+mining+complex
One extra point that I had trouble with - the "Minerals go to Civilian Sector" vs. "Purchase Mineral Output" button is on the "Ind Status/Civs" tab of the F2 screen.
John
Post by: Elmo on January 10, 2010, 11:10:06 AM
Post by: waresky on January 10, 2010, 12:55:46 PM
U got a better Manager for ur Empire:)
Post by: sloanjh on January 10, 2010, 04:21:01 PM
Quote from: "Elmo"
Got it. I never would have found that button to buy the minerals. Thanks.
It took me a while
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 11, 2010, 07:06:55 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I'm not in favor of it as a mechanism for micromanaging food. What I was going for (as described above) is a way of making potential colony sites valuable in a way other than mineral content. If your head's focused on other aspects of Aurora right, now, that's fine - I just wanted to sow the seed....Sorry, after reading your reply I realised I misinterpreted your original suggestion. From a pure cosmetic view, making Food one of the civilian trade goods would be easy enough as I could rename an existing one :). All of this would run in the background with perhaps the occasional event that Company X has established a Civilian Transport Manufacturing Plant on Ceti Alpha V, which would increase trade good production for the planet. Food would be treated similar to other trade goods in that respect. This would result in fewer trade goods overall but much more targeted. The effects of shortages in individual trade goods would vary depending on their importance. Food shortages would lead to unrest more quickly than a lack of Wines. At the moment though the player doesn't have to worry about the civilian trade goods. He just has to guard the shipping to get the benefits. If the civilian economy is going to affect unrest on colonies then the player would want to intervene. That level of intervention can't be too high though or it is no longer the 'civilian' sector. The trick would be to add this level of background detail while giving the player occasional meaningful decisions that could affect gameplay without changing the flavour of the civilian sector or adding micromanagment. Hmm, sounds easy enough
I'll have to give this some thought. Before I rush off though, was this your line of thinking or have I just shot off on a tangent?
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 11, 2010, 08:47:13 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I'll have to give this some thought. Before I rush off though, was this your line of thinking or have I just shot off on a tangent?
Yep - that's exactly it. And even if it weren't, it would be a good tangent anyway :-)
Post by: Sotak246 on January 11, 2010, 11:53:22 AM
Mark
Post by: AtomikKrab on January 11, 2010, 10:07:09 PM
Post by: sloanjh on January 12, 2010, 12:15:18 AM
Quote from: "AtomikKrab"
Actually you can ship them in pieces, 1 cargo hold is .2 of an installation like an automated mine, so it might take 5 trips, but a tiny little hauler can set up a mine, this is important for traditional empire games because you don't have to wait for the commercial shipyards to grow large enough to handle a 5 cargo bay freighter. I learned this because I ran out of resources due to a shortage of starting deutrium on earth or whatever the first mineral is called, and I just managed to squeeze out a tiny little one bay hauler that got a mass driver and a mine to venus after 5 trips a piece
You did?!?!?!? My recollection is that we asked Steve for this (fractional transport of 5-hold objects like mine or industry) and he said it would be too hard to implement. Bigger installations (like terraformers or research labs) can be shipped fractionally, but again I thought it was only in 5-hold increments (5 for terraformers, 20 for research IIRC).
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 12, 2010, 09:53:04 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
You can ship anything in smaller increments nowQuote from: "AtomikKrab"Actually you can ship them in pieces, 1 cargo hold is .2 of an installation like an automated mine, so it might take 5 trips, but a tiny little hauler can set up a mine, this is important for traditional empire games because you don't have to wait for the commercial shipyards to grow large enough to handle a 5 cargo bay freighter. I learned this because I ran out of resources due to a shortage of starting deutrium on earth or whatever the first mineral is called, and I just managed to squeeze out a tiny little one bay hauler that got a mass driver and a mine to venus after 5 trips a piece
You did?!?!?!? My recollection is that we asked Steve for this (fractional transport of 5-hold objects like mine or industry) and he said it would be too hard to implement. Bigger installations (like terraformers or research labs) can be shipped fractionally, but again I thought it was only in 5-hold increments (5 for terraformers, 20 for research IIRC).
. I changed it a version or two ago when I rewrote all the cargo handling (the same time I updated troop transport I think).Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 12, 2010, 09:56:33 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"You can ship anything in smaller increments nowQuote from: "AtomikKrab"Actually you can ship them in pieces, 1 cargo hold is .2 of an installation like an automated mine, so it might take 5 trips, but a tiny little hauler can set up a mine, this is important for traditional empire games because you don't have to wait for the commercial shipyards to grow large enough to handle a 5 cargo bay freighter. I learned this because I ran out of resources due to a shortage of starting deutrium on earth or whatever the first mineral is called, and I just managed to squeeze out a tiny little one bay hauler that got a mass driver and a mine to venus after 5 trips a piece
You did?!?!?!? My recollection is that we asked Steve for this (fractional transport of 5-hold objects like mine or industry) and he said it would be too hard to implement. Bigger installations (like terraformers or research labs) can be shipped fractionally, but again I thought it was only in 5-hold increments (5 for terraformers, 20 for research IIRC).
Steve
Cool!! That changes my prioritization between civie jump drives and jump gate.....
John
PS - 9 years since colonization of Mars, and still no civie transport lines - you might want to think about upping the probability for 4.8
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 12, 2010, 10:06:21 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
PS - 9 years since colonization of Mars, and still no civie transport lines - you might want to think about upping the probability for 4.8I assume this was a conventional start? There may be a bug here as I haven't played a conventional start for a while.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 12, 2010, 10:41:06 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"PS - 9 years since colonization of Mars, and still no civie transport lines - you might want to think about upping the probability for 4.8I assume this was a conventional start? There may be a bug here as I haven't played a conventional start for a while.
Steve
Yep - colonized Mars in 2209, it's now 2216. Oops - it's actually only 7 years (I think the "9" came from 2009). Even so, I'm REALLY hurting in terms of not having any civie sector....
John
Post by: Erik L on January 12, 2010, 08:50:03 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"PS - 9 years since colonization of Mars, and still no civie transport lines - you might want to think about upping the probability for 4.8I assume this was a conventional start? There may be a bug here as I haven't played a conventional start for a while.
Steve
I think I've hit this one too. Not nearly 9 years, only a couple, and through a jump gate.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2010, 03:03:26 PM
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 10, 2010, 10:37:57 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Yes it's still true. Steve put in "helper" functionality to a lot of commands so that they'll make a colony if one isn't already there, but I always play it safe and explicitly make the colony from the F9 screen.You can also create colonies directly on the F12 window. Its the second button from the left on the upper row of buttons at the bottom of the window.
I don't have any good ideas as to what might cause the behavior you describe. The only thing I can suggest is to go to the F12 screen, hit "delete all" to clear the orders. Then select Luna (make sure that it has (Pop 0.0m) next to it), and do "drop off team" (picking your team and hitting "Add move"), at which point the order should show up. After doing this, if you've still got error you might try posting a screen shot of the error along with the F12 screen.
Another thought (before posting the screen shot) - can you drop your team off on Earth using the orders? If you can, then something's probably messed up with your Luna colony. Assuming you've got nothing there, simply abandon it and create a new one (from the F9 screen). After that dropping off a team should work ok.
Steve
Post by: randal7 on March 10, 2010, 12:44:06 PM