Difference between revisions of "322,059 resources by Madman, Apr 2009"

Revision as of 01:39, 2 May 2009

Some details (I'll add some howto details in the next few days, contact me to remind me if interested).

Universe and race

240 planets in a small, packed, max minerals, AccBBS, no random events. I'd consider it an average hab draw. The only pregenerating advantage I did allow myself was to create games until I had a universe where the starting planet was close to centered, as trying to fill from an edge or a corner is a huge expansion hit.

• CA, zero points left over,
• IFE, TT, ISB, NRSE, OBRM, NAS
• 0.58g to 1.72g
• -72C to 72C
• 30mR to 72mR
• 20% 1 in 14
• 1/1000
• 15/8/10 G-box
• 10/3/10
• Bio cheap, rest expensive, no start at 3

This is of course a broken race (look at the narrow hab, expensive tech and poor mines), only suitable for testbedding.

Scouting and expansion

It important to have pop (particularly breeder planets) spread relatively evenly over the whole universe as quickly as possible. Otherwise there is the problem of having central planets big trips for all its expansion, and lots of greens near the edge with no breeders nearby. With the sort of effective growth rate I was going for, leaving it 5 years means transferring twice as much pop, so I'd go for that 80% planet 5 years travel away before going for that 70% that is only 2 years travel. The means scouting and expanding really aggressively.

My start:

• 2400:
  • turn research down to 0%, set research to construction,
  • autobuild lots of factories, mines,
  • set the scout and change of heart scouting right away
• 2401:
  • build as many scouts as you can in one turn,
• 2402:
  • send off the scouts,
  • set research to a percentage that allows construction 3 in two years,
• 2404:
  • start building colonizers and medium freighters, and the expansion starts.

I built 15 scouts, and had just about all of the universe scouted by 2420.

Planet hold points

For most of the test, I held planets to 25%. Only very late (no planets with less than about 40% hab) did I increase this briefly to 33%, then to 40% right to the end. 40% was chosen because it has very little less growth than 33%, and allows more factory/mine building. I'd also boost a planet if it was below 25% full and had a breeder with nothing better to do nearby.

After I had all the planets to 25%-40%, any remaining pop got parked in freighters, and got dumped on planets as a waypoint 1 task in turn 50.

Tech gain

First the obvious - get to con 3 in time to expand.

After that, it's a close call, but I went for bio 9 (total terraform 10) ahead of con 4 - the idea is to do the best with pop that I could.

I had a simple system for after that - ignore research completely (set to 0%) until I could get the next level of total terraform in 3 turns at current production with a bit to spare. Then I'd turn all the factory and minebuilding off for three turns, but keep the spacedock/freighter/colony machine ticking over (that is important!), letting a planet slide above the breakpoint if I needed extra resources on the third turn, or alternately setting my weakest (lowest number of factories) colonies to autobuild factories/mines for the third turn.

Somewhere in the middle (between bio 13 and bio 17), I increased con to 8, allowing large freighters - there is a lot of pop moving that needs to be done and large freighters are slightly resource cheaper and hugely ironium cheaper than privateers. In a previous try at this I kept running low in ironium because of all the freighters.

The results were something like:

• 2402: con 3 (medium freighters)
• 2414: bio 9 (TT10)
• 2415: con 4 (privateers, space docks)
• 2426: bio 13 (TT15)
• 2430: con 8 (large freighters)
• 2434: bio 17 (TT20)
• 2439: bio 22 (TT25)
• 2442: bio 25 (TT30)

After 2442, techs didn't matter, so I started focusing on what would get the highest resources at 2450, not worrying about the intervening years (things like building mines before factories where appropriate).

End Game

I did two things right at the end.

Firstly, I had been building up a lot of pop in freighters rather than slowing down the growth rate (you wouldn't do this in a real game, as it hurts the resource intergral), that all got landed on planets that had surplus factories as a waypoint 1 task in 2450.

I also had some planets that weren't going to have complete factories built. In 2449 (in some cases 2448), I lifted any population that was going to be factoryless and shifted it (waypoint 1 task in 2450) to planets with surplus factories.