Here's how to make the AI build the big boys - and why they sometimes refuse

[Chadmium]

Edit: included some helpful information from those who posted after me and corrected a few things.

So, you've had it up to here with those ugly freakin' Tachidi and decided that you simply can't live another 200 cycles with them in the same galaxy. Time to go to war, but before you do, be sure you're really ready for it -- just like in real life, war is not cheap. So here's the checklist for whether or not you're ready (combined with the reason it often looks like the AI is dumb and only builds the cheapest stuff - I've seen a lot of threads about this - read further to see why it happens).

If you want to step it up to wartime and start building those hefty fleets, you've got to be ready to do just that. Here's what you gotta do:

War Checklist Number One: Check your ships and the shipyards.

Let's say you've built up enough tech now to be able to build Battle Cruisers. Sweet, that's awesome, but keep in mind that just because you can design one doesn't mean you can actually build one. You'll need to check the maximum hull size supported by your big Industry worlds - if they say Light Cruiser or Cruiser, then you are out of luck until you expand those babies (which you must have researched the tech to do).

If not, that's OK... just wait until your next armada to make the Battle Cruisers (being sure to upgrade the shipyards in the meantime) and just use Cruisers and Light Cruisers for now. Along these lines, make sure to design a whole new cadre of new ships and obsoletize (is that a word?) the old ones.

War Checklist Number Two: Can you really afford to do this?

Wars are not cheap. If you look at the military / political setting in the Finance Panel, and notice the settings for peace and prosperity all the way up through holy war, you should see another little detail saying something to the effect of: "Oh, by the way, in order to pull off this total war, we'll only need 35% of your ENTIRE INCOME otherwise, as if not being able to finance those ships isn't enough of a consequence, we'll also raise unrest on you 'cause, hey... we could all use a little more unrest, right? right?

WRONG! ;)

Seriously, you've got to think about whether you can boost the cost because you're going to have to seriously augment those precious PP's.

Ah yes, the PP's. Now we get to the secret reason the stupid AI won't build my big ships, darnit! (Yes, it had me fooled for a long time as well).

Ok, so, PP's are production points, right? Right. You need them to build stuff; everything, in fact, from DEAs to ships. Now, you buy PP's with AU's through the help of Industry, but there is a limit to how many you can get. (It's an exponential diminishing returns thingamagig). It goes like this:

Each PP for which you have an Industry point costs only 1 AU. It still costs a little money (think of the Industry as empty manufacturing plants. When you request something built, they need to be powered, staffed, etc.)

After you've bought as many PP as you have Industry (basically, filled the capacity of your factories), you can still squeeze out more. However, up to twice as many PP's as your Industrial capacity (for that planet), they cost 2 AU per PP (that's TWICE the money for the same thing), after that, 3 AU THRICE the money (and so on up to 6 AU, at which point you cannot go further). So, at the end of the calculation, if this "limit" is LESS PP than it costs to build a Cruiser in a reasonable amount of time, then the AI will try the next size down.

Here's an example (with made-up numbers to show my point):

Gamma IV has 50 Industry (probably 35 or so from an Industrial DEA and the other 15 from the population - as someone specified below, each pop point is good for 3 Industry points. This also means it has 50 capacity)

The Cruiser "JingleBells" costs 12,500 PP to build.

So, let's start paying up.

50 AU for 50 PP + (1x capacity)
100 AU for 50 more PP + (2x capacity)
150 AU for 50 more PP + (3x capacity)
200 AU for 50 more PP + (4x capacity)
300 AU for 50 more PP + (5x capacity)
350 AU for 50 more PP... (6x capacity - this is the limit)

so now we've paid 1150 AUs for 300 PP. At this rate, it will take us 42 turns and 1150 AU's per turn to make that ship.

(note these numbers aren't quite exact, the calculations also take paying for pollution cleanup into account, etc. But this is the basic way it works)

Ah... ain't going to happen, as you can see. So the AI, being the lovely behind the scenes genius that it is, decides that there's no way we want to do this, and goes down to the next ship design. Woops, he'll say, the Destroyer isn't that much better in terms of PP cost and it seems our emperor (or empress, as it were) hasn't designed anything smaller, so I'll go ahead and make the cheap things that make sense in terms of how much PP I have. A cookie if you can guess what these are.....

You got it! Transports, Marines, Scouts, Colony Ships....

What I'm trying to say here is that you've got to have a LOT of PP on one planet before you can really make the big boys. You can't just discover the Battleship, add the shipyard upgrade in two turns, and then expect to churn them out like transports. No... No... remember that every other hull size is approximately TWICE the size (i.e. a Battle Cruiser is twice the size of a Light Cruiser) - that's a HUGE difference, folks - think about it.

Let's do the same example as above, only with 150 Industry instead of 50:

150 AU for 150 PP +
300 AU for 150 PP + (we already have 300 PP now, for only 450 AU instead of 1150 and we only had to go up to 2x capacity instead of 6x.)

Now if we continued this, then our PP limit for this Industry would be 950 instead of 300...

Industry DEAs looking better now? They should - you've got to stretch that mining surplus to the greatest extent possible, this is why rich worlds are very, very important :)

So, in general terms, you'll probably want to fight your early to midgame wars with at LEAST a size class or three smaller than the max you can build. Design your ships at that level and you'll sniffle, tear up, and be the beaming proud galatic ruler of one awesome AI that will do whatever you want as long as you know the right ways to tickle it.

(Later, with maxing populations and techs, this problem isn't so big... you'll have a ton of Industry, but it takes a while to get to "later," especially in this game).


To actually declare war, IF you've gone through your checklist here and actually made it to the other side, then you do this:

* the first step is to jack up the military/political option to at least limited war, and preferably total war.

* the second step is to adjust the general spending sliders right on that screen. Bring down planetary grants a good ways, research maybe a tad, and just be careful with unrest..., and use all the extra to jack into the military slider.

Now clear out some military build queues and hit the turn button. Check them again, and you'll probably see something MUCH more like what you want to see -- your painstakingly autodesigned warships... interspersed with transports and marines occasionally (but it should be in a very nice acceptable ratio -- keep in mind, as Elhana pointed out in another thread, you will need A LOT of ground troops and transports for your war... more than you think).

If all you see are more scouts, transports, marines, mobiles, etc. Then continue down the line to...

* the third step, which you should only need to do if the previous ones didn't quite work for you, is to go into the individual planet and crank up the military spending from it's usual (like 5%) to something more warlike (try 35%). If you're borderline on the PP's, this expensive boost may be enough to make that bigger ship in a reasonable amount of time -- in which case the AI will do it!

And now, it's time for bed -- I hope this helps!

[Lazarous]

Nice, that helps a lot.

Of course, i have the inevitable questions :). So, first off - how does having 'military' in a dev plan for a planet affect how the ai views big ships? Does it make the viceroys consider cranking up the military slider to acceptable wartime levels or does it just make them more prone to build military dea's and planetary defences?

Further, here is a scenario that has been bugging me a LOT, and i've seen it happen over and over. Lets assume that on your homeworld, you have a planetary bank of 2000 AU. You decide to build one of your big boys that the AI simply refuses to do, so you add it to your military queue and increase your military slider until that planet is making lets say -500 AU a turn total (all other sliders taken into consideration), so you'll expect that you can maintain that level of production for 4 turns if unassissted.

Now, here is where it gets weird - if you check the planet next turn, i'll often see that the number of AU's has increased rather than decreased, so i'll now be at something like 2200 AU for the planetary bank. Is this an effect of the empire military grants? If so, how can you tell where grants are going to be sent to? Further, i seem to have this problem on the empire level as well, where the projected expenses for a turn (assume they're negative) have nothing to do with what actually happens.

And a last question - what is the relationship between 'Available balance for this cycle' and 'Treasury balance for this cycle' (both in the finance tab->ledger). The available balance is what is displayed at the very top of your screen as well as the projected change in income...so i always assumed thats how much money you had stored up. But then what is the treasury balance?

Laz

[Oun]

Oh yes, it helps! Thank you very much! You shed light on the two things that were confusing me most - Dev plans and why my Home planet wanted to take 22 turns to build a god***n colony ship. (only 1 Industry DEA)

<adds Chadmium to his "search by name" list>

[Schneeflocke]

Uhm.... you say that the ratio AU:PP is doubling with every step (1:1, 2:1, 4:1, 8:1...). Are you sure that is right? From what I've seen in the manual and other places, it is linear (1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1...) and the maximum is 6:1.

[lozina]

That cost for PP is ONLY for PP's the planet dosent produce via industry DEAs, right? If I have an industry DEA pumping 36 PP- that is mine tax free right? I don't have to pay AUs for those?

[Minrhael]

I'm afraid you do have to pay for those as well; if your planet produces 36 PP via industry DEAs, what's happening is you're paying 36 AU to get 36 PP total to use. Then, if you want more, you start the increased spending, in this case 72 AU for another 36 PP, then 108 for the next 36 AU (assuming it's linear as I thought I read also). At least I'm moderately sure that's how it works ;)

[Sammual]

Originally posted by lozina
That cost for PP is ONLY for PP's the planet dosent produce via industry DEAs, right? If I have an industry DEA pumping 36 PP- that is mine tax free right? I don't have to pay AUs for those?

Nope, unlike Moo2 there is no free lunch in Moo3.

Sammual

[lozina]

Originally posted by Minrhael
I'm afraid you do have to pay for those as well; if your planet produces 36 PP via industry DEAs, what's happening is you're paying 36 AU to get 36 PP total to use. Then, if you want more, you start the increased spending, in this case 72 AU for another 36 PP, then 108 for the next 36 AU (assuming it's linear as I thought I read also). At least I'm moderately sure that's how it works ;)

Ok I don't fully understand the whole production scheme, so please help me:

When you first colonize a planet, it is getting PPs from somewhere even though of course it does not have industry DEA. Are these PPs from the planetary grants? Is there a LIMIT to these PPs? If not, is it possible to pump a planet without an industry DEA to have enough PPs to start building Cruisers or whatever at a reasonable rate, with those penalties of course for so many PPs (in terms of AU cost stepping up) ?

If SO, then just what is the point of specializing a planet in industry? If a highly industrial planet has to pay for it's production the same as would a fledgling colony with a single bioharvesting DEA, why would you try building a planet specialized to shipbuilding?

Another question, how do the empire wide PPs work? If yo have a highly industrialized colony outputting 400 PPs for example, and it is not building anything (you minimize all the production sliders on the queues and terraforming etc...) where do those PPs go? Can other planets use them? They still have to pay the same rate the more they use, right?

Please help me clear this up it is very confusing

[Schneeflocke]

First of all, you DO have Industry even without Industry DEAs as each population point provides 3 Industry.

Secondly, without money (=AU), there are no PP. So you can't set your funding sliders to zero and still have PP. So there is no empire wide PP or excess PP. (This was in response to your last question, by the way)


The sense in havin a highly industrious planet is that without Industry you can't build. Think of Industry as the empty manufacturing plants. If you only have a measly garage workshop, you can't build a colony ship, no matter how much money you put into it.

It seems you don't understand at all what Industry and PP are, so please read my post and the post directly after mine in this thread:

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=268083

[lozina]

OK I actually got it now, many thanks to your posts. I was confused as to wether ALL the PPs produced are subject to those increased AU costs, or just the ones beyond a colony's industry output. I read the initial post wrong to indicate that every PP in a colony no matter how many industry points you have is subject to increased AUs. But now I see its only when you go beyond your industrial capacity. Thanks again

[Elethiomel]

Originally posted by lozina
Ok I don't fully understand the whole production scheme, so please help me:

When you first colonize a planet, it is getting PPs from somewhere even though of course it does not have industry DEA. Are these PPs from the planetary grants? Is there a LIMIT to these PPs? If not, is it possible to pump a planet without an industry DEA to have enough PPs to start building Cruisers or whatever at a reasonable rate, with those penalties of course for so many PPs (in terms of AU cost stepping up) ?

If SO, then just what is the point of specializing a planet in industry? If a highly industrial planet has to pay for it's production the same as would a fledgling colony with a single bioharvesting DEA, why would you try building a planet specialized to shipbuilding?

Another question, how do the empire wide PPs work? If yo have a highly industrialized colony outputting 400 PPs for example, and it is not building anything (you minimize all the production sliders on the queues and terraforming etc...) where do those PPs go? Can other planets use them? They still have to pay the same rate the more they use, right?

Please help me clear this up it is very confusing

I'll try to restate what has been said previously in a more understandable manner.

Think of an Industry DEA's "PP value" as its capacity. Now, up to this capacity you pay 1 AU for every 1 PP you want.

If you want to increase production beyond this, you have to pay more AUs for every PP you get. Thus there is a point to specialising in industry, as the PPs you use will be much cheaper than at a planet where you have no industry DEAs. Besides, there's a limit of 6*capacity to the maximum number of PPs you can get out of any DEA/region/planet/whatever.

Take the example where you have a planet with Industry DEAs and other things that give that planet a capacity of 36 PPs. Now, if you want 36 PPs out of that planet, you need to pay 36 AUs.

If you want 72 PPs, you need to pay 36 AUs for the first 36 PPs, and then 72 AUs for the next36 PPs, making allover expense for 72 PPs 108 AUs.

If you want 108 PPs (assuming the increase is linear) you need to pay 108 AUs more making 108 PPs cost 216 AUs altogether.

If you want 144 PPs, you have to pay an additional 144 AUs, making 144 PPs cost 360 AUs altogether.


However, if you have a planet that has a capacity of 144 PPs, then you only need to pay 144 AUs for those 144 PPs. A difference from the (relatively) low-industry planet of 216 AUs. Which is a significant saving, don't you think?

[Edit: I type slowly.]

[Chadmium]

Yes, I do believe that the progression is linear rather than exponential. (It still adds up very quickly though) and here, stated simply yet elegantly, is why planets will sometimes not build those bigger ships:

Originally posted by Elethiomel <snip> there's a limit of 6*capacity to the maximum number of PPs you can get out of any DEA/region/planet/whatever. <snip>

There is actually a hard limit on how many PPs you can buy yourself up to even if you had infinite AUs. Industry DEAs are some of the most important for this reason.

Thanks for your help everyone, I was only making an educated guess as to the mechanics behind this, but what you all have said makes even more sense. I'll edit my initial post to reflect that!

[Schneeflocke]

Uhm... (again ;)), I am not so sure there is a limit. The limit is that it can't be 7:1, 8:1 and so on, but I think you can use as many AUs as you like, it just will never cost more than 6 AU: 1PP.

But like I said, I am not sure. I don't have a planet with enough money to test it at the moment.

[Chadmium]

Well, even if the game doesn't limit you, paying 6 TIMES the price for a block of industry is extremely ineffecient... remember that everything in the game is in terms of money, money, money, and more money.

With this in mind, paying that much extra when you could stick in some Industry DEAs will take its toll on everything else in your empire. If you can afford to... well, that's your perrogative, but I think there's always a better use for those extra AUs... consider the difference (saying there is no limit) between getting 1000 PP with 100 Industry and with 500 Industry:

500 AU for 500 PP +
1000 AU for 500 PP

1500 AU for 1000 PP - reasonable enough. Now, the other:

100 AU for 100 PP +
200 AU for 100 PP +
300 AU for 100 PP +
400 AU for 100 PP +
500 AU for 100 PP +
600 AU for 100 PP +
600 AU for 100 PP +
600 AU for 100 PP +
600 AU for 100 PP +
600 AU for 100 PP +

4500 AU for 1000PP - Triple the overall cost. That means you could have built THREE of the same ships instead of ONE (in terms of AUs)

[Astyanax]

Originally posted by Lazarous
Nice, that helps a lot.

Further, here is a scenario that has been bugging me a LOT, and i've seen it happen over and over. Lets assume that on your homeworld, you have a planetary bank of 2000 AU. You decide to build one of your big boys that the AI simply refuses to do, so you add it to your military queue and increase your military slider until that planet is making lets say -500 AU a turn total (all other sliders taken into consideration), so you'll expect that you can maintain that level of production for 4 turns if unassissted.

Now, here is where it gets weird - if you check the planet next turn, i'll often see that the number of AU's has increased rather than decreased, so i'll now be at something like 2200 AU for the planetary bank. Is this an effect of the empire military grants? If so, how can you tell where grants are going to be sent to? Further, i seem to have this problem on the empire level as well, where the projected expenses for a turn (assume they're negative) have nothing to do with what actually happens.

And a last question - what is the relationship between 'Available balance for this cycle' and 'Treasury balance for this cycle' (both in the finance tab->ledger). The available balance is what is displayed at the very top of your screen as well as the projected change in income...so i always assumed thats how much money you had stored up. But then what is the treasury balance?

Laz

good questions, good questions.

anyone?

[tleng]

This is a great thread... I finally got my empire working efficiently last night through trial and error and it pretty much follows this thread.

You gotta have industry on planets or else they will be building ground units and maybe scouts and transports... which is not a bad thing though because these units have a place in every TF.

Anyways my larger industrialized planets automatically built my larger carriers and beam weapons units interspersed with some ground units and scouts here and there (if they could get one of them finished the same turn as the carrier).

I just went on a rampage, creating task forces every turn with carriers, beam weapons and transports.

[BrandonW]

treasury balance is the amount of cash sitting in the bank account available for spending.

available balance = treasury balance + income this cycle.

In otherwords, you can spend all your savings + your income if you want. Typically though, you try to keep your expenses nearly the same as your income so you can save the treasury balance for emergencies.

[Chadmium]

Originally posted by Lazarous
<snip> how does having 'military' in a dev plan for a planet affect how the ai views big ships? Does it make the viceroys consider cranking up the military slider to acceptable wartime levels or does it just make them more prone to build military dea's and planetary defences?

Further, here is a scenario that has been bugging me a LOT, and i've seen it happen over and over. Lets assume that on your homeworld, you have a planetary bank of 2000 AU. You decide to build one of your big boys that the AI simply refuses to do, so you add it to your military queue and increase your military slider until that planet is making lets say -500 AU a turn total (all other sliders taken into consideration), so you'll expect that you can maintain that level of production for 4 turns if unassissted.

Now, here is where it gets weird - if you check the planet next turn, i'll often see that the number of AU's has increased rather than decreased, so i'll now be at something like 2200 AU for the planetary bank. Is this an effect of the empire military grants? If so, how can you tell where grants are going to be sent to? Further, i seem to have this problem on the empire level as well, where the projected expenses for a turn (assume they're negative) have nothing to do with what actually happens.

That is odd... I haven't noticed this myself, but then I haven't looked either.

As far as I can tell, it's either a bug or the AI in the background gently adjusting your wild spending habit... I haven't tried anything that drastic before.

(However, I certainly notice that when I have a negative income, next turn my treasury is down).

[GameWarlord]

I find that my balance is ALWAYS in the negative (stupid spies... Why do they make me oppress my people so much?:D) But I seem to always be gaining cash. I always thought that the trade treaties weren't included in the balance and added after... Maybe the AI cuts funding to it's planet??

[Lazarous]

I'm still having trouble weaning myself off from checking on how my planets are doing individually and looking at the big picture, but I'm slowly getting it. On the subject of fleets, i find that the interface for designing/obsoleting ships is atrocious (perhaps not the worst UI in the game, but close). I mean, lets say that i have a new technology like fusion drives, which i want to upgrade all my attack ships with...now, do to this I have to either
a.obsolete every single attack ship that i want to have an upgraded version of (or the ai will preferentially build the slower and cheaper hulls) and then redesign everything i have.
Alternatively, i can b.go through my current designs, select the various ships that i'm upgrading and change the individual components one by one for each ship, create the design then obsolete the old one.
I'm desperately wishing for some sort of 'take this design and replace all components with highest tech' button or something of that sort, because this isn't even fun anymore - its just tedious grunt work.

I suppose the main problem i'm having is that i'm using around 10 designs at a time (2 system defence types, a transport, a colony ship and 6 types of attack ships running the spectrum from recon cutters to BB LRA's) and upgrading for what i consider noticable tech improvements (new drive type, armor type, shield type...to a lesser extent weapon upgrades) is taking a huge amount of time. I just played for 6 hours and only made it to turn 120 or so because of all the micro i'm having to devote to keeping y ships current.

Anyways - Brandon, thanks for clearing up that part of the interface to me. The finance tab makes more sense now (especially why i was having to deal with interest payments when i was at a very positive available balance).

Laz


edit - noticed that no one got around to answering my question as to whether having 'military' in a planets dev plan affected the amount of money an AI would devote to shipbuilding or if this was totally controlled by the military-industrial setting in the finances tab. This seems important to me beacuse right now i'm running my empire almost continuously at total war to make my fleets build up in a reasonable amount of time.

[Gravmania]

Originally posted by Lazarous
I'm still having trouble weaning myself off from checking on how my planets are doing individually and looking at the big picture, but I'm slowly getting it. On the subject of fleets, i find that the interface for designing/obsoleting ships is atrocious.... I'm desperately wishing for some sort of 'take this design and replace all components with highest tech' button or something of that sort, because this isn't even fun anymore - its just tedious grunt work.



Agreed, an "update" button would be most usefull, perhaps it can even be done that ships updated this way are upgraded while in reserve at a rate of <insert number here> for <amount> of AUs.

[Spatzimaus]

This thread needs a sticky. Or, at least, add the info to some sort of FAQ.

[Lazarous]

Originally posted by Gravmania
Agreed, an "update" button would be most usefull, perhaps it can even be done that ships updated this way are upgraded while in reserve at a rate of <insert number here> for <amount> of AUs.


Yeah, that would be a really good idea. You could also have it set up such that any upgrade which changed weapon type or increased some component by more than x tech levels required a complete rebuild of the ship - this way you can simulate how refits are only useful to a point.
If this sort of thing was in the game, it'd let you manage the task forces as semi-coherent units rather than a slapped-together makeshift that you'll only use for 10 turns or whatever until your tech base advances far enough to completely invalidate your current fleet :p

Laz

[Spatzimaus]

I didn't like MoO 2's insta-upgrade method, where a 500-year-old ship could suddenly be superior to a brand-new one. Instead of a simple refit method, don't let upgrades happen fully. Give them a permanent "overhead cost" measured in equipment space. How about this:

You design the new ship type "Enterprise". It's a carrier, tech level 10 in most areas. Time goes on, and newer techs come out. You want to upgrade it, on the assumption that newer tech is better than old, reliable tech. A brand-new ship would be ideal, but that's expensive and takes too much time, and scrapping old ships seems wrong.

So, each subsystem will eventually be replaced. BUT, each upgrade takes up a little extra space; maybe it's a new interface, or new structural changes, or whatever, but inefficiencies will come in every time you put a component where it wasn't intended.

For example, weapons should be easily upgradeable, so let's give them a 10% overhead. If I want to replace my old PD laser cannons, the replacement is 10% larger than it'd be if the ship were designed around them from the start. So, the hard beam that would only take 9 spaces on a new design takes 10 here. I'm still more effective than the old design, but not as good as a brand-new ship.

Engines? 20%. It's still worth it to have a new and improved warp drive, but it's going to cost you. Sensors 10%, Shields 20%, Armor 30% (replating the whole ship wouldn't be easy). Any "specials" like cloaking devices would be 30%.

(Numbers are negotiable, of course, but certain components shouldn't be modular)

The key to this is, DO NOT LET PLAYERS DO IT. Don't design the "upgraded" version, let the AI do it automatically. It'll replace any weapon with a similar but superior weapon while the ship is in reserves, but only if it's worth the space tradeoff. Things like mount size (PD/light/normal/heavy/very heavy/spinal) won't change, basic weapon type won't change...
If you're going to let the player upgrade, make it as simple as giving them four buttons ("Upgrade Weapons", "Upgrade Engines", "Upgrade Shields", "Upgrade Specials"), but don't let them pick exactly what to upgrade to. And, don't do it for individual ships. Select the ship type in the ship design screen, and the four buttons come up; it'll upgrade the ships at your earliest convenience (ASAP for reserves, whenever they return to a friendly star with the right size industry for active ships)

So, a carrier might not need to upgrade the PD weapons I gave it, but it'd definitely want better engines and shields. I might have to remove a couple extra fighters to make room, though.

Basically, after a few rounds of upgrading, the ship will be so inefficient in lost space that you're better off retiring it, but since it's still listed as the original design you won't confuse it for your brand-spankin' new ships. Put an asterisk or something after the name to show it's been modified, though.
You also won't have the MoO 2 situation where a missile-based ship is suddenly refit into a beam-based one with no loss in efficiency.

What'd really be nice is if you could add a few technologies along the way that reduced this space overhead, making refit easier. "Modular Weapons I", TL 10, might reduce weapon replacement overhead by 2%, and there'd be four more at 20, 30, 40, and 50 that dropped an additional 2%, so a TL 50 ship could upgrade for no space cost. Then, do the same for the other categories. But, this'd be more work.

[Schneeflocke]

What if you want to upgrade that way but the upgraded system is bigger and doesn't fit into the hull anymore? I think that would be difficult to automate. I am talking about auto-upgrading the design here, btw, not about refitting the ships.

"Spatzimaus"? LOL (yeah, I know, my handle isn't any better).

[Gravmania]

Introducing inefficiency to refitting.. Sounds very good, more tradeoffs, more strategy

However, introducing refitting at all will require much programming, perhaps food for a possible expasionpack or something.

They have plenty of work ahead of them without adding new stuff/bugs.

An "upgrade" button would be simple to add though :)

[Quarthinos]

Chadmium, another great post (at least it is after everyone else has helped). But I noticed one error. You say a ship is twice as big as the previous class. According to the tech notes in the matrix, and also a post from a BT I remember reading, a ship is twice as big as one TWO size classes smaller. (A Battlecruiser is twice the size of a light cruiser, rather than twice the size of a cruiser). This gives an increase in size of about 1.41 (the square root of 2) per size class.

And I also vote for stickiness.

[Spatzimaus]

Originally posted by Schneeflocke
What if you want to upgrade that way but the upgraded system is bigger and doesn't fit into the hull anymore?

Here's how I see it:

If it's something like guns or fighters, simply reduce the number. 9 good guns is better than 10 bad ones, even if a brand-new ship could hold 10 good guns.
If it's something like the engine, remove less essential systems. A gun here, an ECCM there, whatever.
If there's no possible way to upgrade and still fit (example: a colony ship with no extras), then you simply can't do it. Suck it up and make a new ship.

[amniodarone]

Not only should this thread be stickied... it should be printed off and inserted into the manual!!! Excellent ideas here.... I learned more in 5 minutes than in 4 hours tinkering with the game.... THANKS :)

[Chadmium]

Originally posted by Quarthinos
Chadmium, another great post (at least it is after everyone else has helped).

Yes, thanks to everyone who helped out -- between all of us I think we're figuring things out pretty well! :up:

Originally posted by Quarthinos
I noticed one error. You say a ship is twice as big as the previous class. According to the tech notes in the matrix, and also a post from a BT I remember reading, a ship is twice as big as one TWO size classes smaller. (A Battlecruiser is twice the size of a light cruiser, rather than twice the size of a cruiser). This gives an increase in size of about 1.41 (the square root of 2) per size class.

Ah, okay -- thanks for pointing that out, I must have misread.

Originally posted by Quarthinos

And I also vote for stickiness.

:D

[PhoenixPhlame73]

My question is, is there any consequence for putting it on total war? Say, I'm not at war with anyone, but I want my army to be busyily expanding, is there any reason NOT to put it on a higher limited/total/holy war setting? willit cause me to lose money or what?

Sorry if this has been answered.

[Chadmium]

Well, the four basic consequences are:

1) If you're spending 35% of all your AUs on Military, then you are not spending it on Planetary development, spying, unrest reduction, research, and so on... which can cripple you if you don't have the economy to front it.

2) If other empires detect you building up forces along their borders, it'll ruffle their feathers... (or tentacles, as the case may be).

3) If you look closely at the description of the option for total war, it says something to the effect of "spend 15 - 35% of AUs on military. Any more OR less than this will cause unrest." You have to be careful about this as well -- lots of unrest is really a killer in this game.

4) Even in the reserves, ships cost money to maintain (although it is quite minimal). If you have 50 ships sitting in reserves for 30 turns then you're paying maintenance costs for ships that will already have been obsolete - basically a waste of money (even though a relatively small one). If you bring the ships to active duty and have them patrol around or something, then the maintenance cost is even higher.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

Ok, sorry, I do think I remember reading that.

How much is mainenence?

[Chadmium]

I'm pretty sure I remember reading in the manual that fleet maintenance is as follows (someone may want to doublecheck me, I don't have the manual in front of me):

-- Active Ships cost .5% of the PP it cost to make the ship.
-- Reserves cost .1% of the PP it cost to make the ship.

So, let's say we had a Cruiser that cost us 5,000 PP.

Active, it would cost 25 AUs per turn.
In Reserves, it would cost 5 AUs per turn.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

But you're certain that you're paying in AUs, not PP?

[Chadmium]

Yes, you are paying in AU's, not PP's (I know it's a little confusing since the calculation is based on PP's).

[ShdwBlade]

I have a question for all of you guys. I'm a newb and I admit it though i'm starting to get a feel for the way this all works. I've only got one problem in building my fleet. I've set aside a wonderfully large planet with plenty of regions for DEA's. So I decided since industry is good for warmongers like myself who want to build big ships in reasonable amounts of time that I would plan for 75% of my region locales to house industry DEA's. My problem is that the planet will not build them. I've got 22 population, and 4/4 employment. This is really starting to get a bit irksome since i've got this annoying little Klackon on my borders and I want to squish them like the veritable bugs that they are. Please help if possible.

[Trystan_UZI]

I have a problem with the way the war funding is set up. Why would I want to force the new and younger colonies to spend 15- 35% of their budgets on military? If they don't, they'll get a penality to unrest. I would want my big already developed planets to focus on the war effort and the newer ones to focus on developing. It would be nicier to fit this into the dev plan, like developed planets follow the military budget, newer ones don't and don't get penalized for it.

This is how it works right?

[Tyrac]

I still do not understand, if I set my Empire to total war, why some of my largest industry planets remain on a military setting as low as 5% in some cases.

[Alarmer]

Splendid post, I have learned alot too :)

I was just going to ask why in heck when iam pumping mega battleships from all my planets sometimes the production times jump from say 5 turns to 30 turns and then back to 3-4 turns.

If I have understanded correctly it is because Iam out of money right ??

I have been in battle for over 50 turns atleast and I tend to get this jumping production time quite often, and my bank says i have -4000AU but income and expenses are lined up well .. I must be missing some point in here..

[llaamaboy]

Originally posted by ShdwBlade
I have a question for all of you guys. I'm a newb and I admit it though i'm starting to get a feel for the way this all works. I've only got one problem in building my fleet. I've set aside a wonderfully large planet with plenty of regions for DEA's. So I decided since industry is good for warmongers like myself who want to build big ships in reasonable amounts of time that I would plan for 75% of my region locales to house industry DEA's. My problem is that the planet will not build them. I've got 22 population, and 4/4 employment. This is really starting to get a bit irksome since i've got this annoying little Klackon on my borders and I want to squish them like the veritable bugs that they are. Please help if possible.

Maybe this will help
5th game, 18 hours yesterday. Currant game is on turn 130, customized Psilons (I LOVE a lot of Technology).

Here are some of my thoughts and comments on how to control your planets. At the heart of his is the DEA’s and how to tell the AI to arrange building your planets. I first want to thank everyone who as posted on this subject since it was them that saved all of us a lot of time.

Here are my comments – they may not be 100% accurate, and I sure do not want to argue about anything. These are intended to give a starting point - another view to look at the topic.

On the Planetary Screen, you will notice a “window” called Planet Classifications. In this area, the programs assigns the two ways you have to control plant growth. They are inputted on the Empire/Development Plans window.

Lots of discussion has gone into trying to figure out how Moo3 classifies the planets so you have the correct development plans. Here is my simplified version of that discussion.

Here are your choices: 12 of them
Recreation
Trade
Mine
Planet Defenses
Military
Moral
Farm
Terraforming
Infrastructure
Research
Manufacture
Government

Some have suggested that your planets are affected by as many as 5 of these development plans, some say 4.
What I SEE is TWO defined in the Planet Classifications window. And I assume that ALL PLANETS is a global setting as mentioned before. That leaves 3x3 = 9 ways to influence the planet (remember we only have 12 choices - so more than 4 is probably not correct).
The real question is … how does the AI look at the planet classifications so we can best establish the order of priorities we want?
So here is what I did.

All Planets: Infrastructure, Manufacturing, and Recreation
User Defined 1: Farm, Mining, and Research
User Defined 2: Government, Military, and Trade

What I SAW was the AI building Infrastructure as soon as any new infrastructure came available to build. I also believe that my planets building production very quickly (in a sense, manufacturing is #2 and Mining #5).
Also, I see the AI knock my Miltary building Que when new panetary options become available.

I hade recreation at the top (so to speak) because I HATE unhappy workers, always have, always will. BUT in the current game, I have two unhappy planets!! What’s up with that?
So I looked at all my game saves and NOT one had a Recreation in the DEA’s NOT one! Then, the planets with no unrest, all had Government in the DEA’s! Sure looks to me as if the AI’s by passes Recreation and use Government for the unrest factor.

Ok so lets look at it now …
No Recreation, lets say that Moral is affected by Military and I can set Planetary Defense through the Military Build Que. So that means my next planets will get:

All Planets: Infrastructure, Manufacturing, and Government
User Defined 1: Farm, Mining, and Research
User Defined 2: Military, Trade, and Terraform

If you notice, and if I am right, the 12 choices can be 9, so use the All Planets and two planet classifications at a matrix of 9, and fill in the priority (order) that fits your circumstances.

Hope that helps… someone.

[mojoshivers]

I think someone mentioned in another thread that the priorities are 1.0 to anything you tag a primary priority, .7 to those you tag secondary, and .3 to those you tag tertiary. Then it adds up the priorities according to how many of the 9 slots a particular priority appears in. Those with the higher gets built first, and so and so forth.

The only problem occurs when you set priorties to the mutable classifications such as the positioning classifications. A planet will move from new to frontier to secondary then to core thus moving classifications, and thus priorities all the time. The same will happen with the conditional classifications. Starving goes away. Newly Conquered does too. The only ones that are permanent seem to be All Planets, mineral richness, and the rings (sweet spot, green, &c...), though with terraforming those can change eventually. All this means is that your planets are guaranteed to switch categories all the time so be careful how you set up your DEAs.

[Nightwatch]

I vote this one for a sticky..:D

[Verves2]

Originally posted by Trystan_UZI
I have a problem with the way the war funding is set up. Why would I want to force the new and younger colonies to spend 15- 35% of their budgets on military? If they don't, they'll get a penality to unrest. I would want my big already developed planets to focus on the war effort and the newer ones to focus on developing. It would be nicier to fit this into the dev plan, like developed planets follow the military budget, newer ones don't and don't get penalized for it.

This is how it works right?

What I would do is use the military slider in Finance and increase the amount and make sure their military slider on the local developing planet is set lower.

Personally I would never do that. I would use my lesser developed planets to make transports and troops. The planets that just started out would have their military really really close to zero and the rest into what they need to do. I let the local tax level go really low to offset the unrest since most of their AU come from grants anyhow.

[cpbeller]

I accidently posted this message in another thread without realizing it....even though it also could fit in that thread too, but still, want to know the answer....

ok...I am slowing understanding that the economics side of this game is deep, just not exactly accessable....at least not to my understanding yet....

My number one question though is this:

What are the negatives of maxing out the funding for military (or planetary) build queues? In other words, sliding the funding sliders ALL the way to the right....

I do this in my game, and i don't see any negative hitting me. In fact, i see a positive side: My ships/planetary buildings get built MUCH faster....and, I still have TONS of money....Not sure why, but it is happening...

All i ever do is slide the funding slider all the way to extreme right, build fleets out the wazoo....and still gain an abundance of money. I have not done anything indepth to my economy that I have known about (other than hyper-funding)...

I see so many awesome things and ideas/concepts in this game, but the economic just seems empty. I know there is much more to it, but i am not sure i can see how. Especially if all i am doing is hyper-funding my military queues, and still getting tons of money.

[Ron_Lugge]

Congrats to the original poster-great work!

[Weaselteats]

I found the viceroy is a lot more likely to pump a lot of funds into building a large ship if he has, in addition to a lot of industrial capacity, a lot of money in his planetary balance.

I wondered why someone would choose the spending policy that caused you to save up a balance, figured it wasn't much use. I found it's good to switch to that at times because your planets can build up a bunch of AU, and when they have that surplus, when you switch them later to deficit spending, bump policy up to Total War, and start turning your fronts hostile, your high industry worlds will pump out a lot of ships on their own.

Even later in the game, however, only your most industrious and wealthiest worlds will build your larger designs on their own. The majority of my fleet is usually at least two size classes down from the biggest I can build. I build a LOT of them, though.

[Da_Blade]

Yeah Saving/Spending is my "war-switch" too. When at peace, with the miliary spending set to low, i use "saving" as spending policy. When a war starts i use "Spending" and "Holy War". This gets a HUGE production going! Then after a few turns (10 or so) i crank the military spending down to "Total War". My "Spending" keeps on for a while, but if it's a prolonged war it gets back to "Balanced" again. Basically i only use "Balanced" in the first 80 or so turns, and in prolonged wars where i can't afford to keep spending. Also of course when the enemy has been crippled enough to know my current military forces will be able to handle the rest of it. Be sure to still have a good amount of "Planetary Grants" and "Military Grants", since they will need to augment the newer planets that don't have the balance yet to go on a spending spree. But don't worry, your vic won't spend money he hasn't got, even on "spending".

[AbandonedAngel]

Refits/Upgrades of Ships are a great feature and i do agree that they should be in the game already.
I don't think, however, that complete reworking of ships is an option here, because this task is way to difficult for the AI to handle...just think of the auto-build option we already have.
Does anyone make use of it ? I certainly do not.
Automatic refitting is possible and useful for systems with fixed sizes that are present on most or all of your ships, i.e. system/star drives and shields.
It's absolutely impossible to use this scheme for a ship's weapons bay because of the vast amount of possible redesigns the AI would have to choose between. Just think of it:

-A newly developed weapon doesn't come with any mods. Is it really always better than the old (modded) weapon ?

-The new weapon may have a far better damage/size/range tradeoff, but what if you replace your LRA's main weapons with new guns that deal twice the damage and are much smaller, but have significantly less range ? Is that really what you had in mind when you hit the upgrade button ?

-Some weapons are incredibly expensive to build.
Plasma cannons, for example, cost 10x the AU's than any other weapon you have at the time. Are they really worth such an expensive upgrade ?

-Space considerations. How many fighters/pd missiles/whatever should the AI be allowed to sacrifice in order to just squeeze that one more heavy mounted gun in ? Or should the number of fighters be increased instead ? Maybe a spinal instead of an improved spinal would fit just perfectly ?


These (and many more) are considerations the AI would have to make when refitting a ship and I bet that the results would rarely be satisfying. I myself have had some difficult times creating updated versions of my ships and i certainly don't want a stupid AI to make these decisions for me. Besides, they are also based on my personal tectical preferences in space combat...do I design ships that are fast, get close to the enemy and can make use of weapons with mediocre range but great damage numbers ( I'm not talking of LRA's vs. SRA's here) ? Do you want to blow your enemy to bits with few huge cannons or do you prefer to swarm their shields with dozens and hundreds of smaller rays ? These are questions the aI cannot possibly answer, and therefore, it can't build or refit any ships the way you would want it to.

[Zhaneel]

*Yoink* for my FAQ.

Zhaneel

[naggy]

Income doesn't add up due to a graphical bug where Trade is not displaying correctly. It's on the Bugs/Suggestions folder; as I recall, it's showing the income from your most recent trade-related tech upgrade, not the total trade income. I believe it's being fixed in the Code Patch.

- Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

[R2-Opus2]

There's something else I'd like to see in relation to helping fund that big starship your trying to build.

Harkening back to another one of my favorite turn based games X-COM (btw, I wish they'd update the classic to run on faster machines or op systems. I think companies might be missing out on some good cash playing the nostalgia card :D )...I liked that we could manufacture individual components such as hand guns, weapons mounts for ships, armor for troops, tanks etc., then if need be and there's a surplus of old designs or new designs, sell them off on the black market for extra dough (being careful not to sell what you are using o'course).

I just think that might help the money angle a little bit besides trade or when your industry isn't able to produce the better stuff in bulk yet. I mean, lets say it takes too long to build that Battleship with all the phasers and specials and such on it...go the component making route instead, and make a bunch of individual phasers, and sell off what you don't need (or trade with a another player in MP games for parts rather than just the tech its self...Though as with X-COM, even if I did salvage a bunch of plasma rifles, I'd still need to research the rifle, and the ammo to be able to use it).

Heh, god I loved that game, sorry for the flashback:)

Anyways, something to think about for a 10 year anniversary - Gimmie my old (but current for modern PCs) X-COM! :D

[R2-Opus2]

Just wanted to add that, to counter that benefit (i.e. of selling a refitted but older ship design for extra money for instance) to the black market, could be that an added random event might enhance piracy, that is, the off chance a pirate bought your ship from the black market, and has turned it against you and anyone else they want to terrorize :D

[Dagda]

Originally posted by cpbeller
What are the negatives of maxing out the funding for military (or planetary) build queues? In other words, sliding the funding sliders ALL the way to the right....

Throw the sliders all the way to the right, and 100% of all AU spent on planet go to that queue and that queue only. So set military to 100% and you do no planetary constructuction, building of DEAs, or research on that system. The Viceroy (unless you've shut him off for a planet) promptly says "We need food & running water," and begins reducing that percentage on the very next turn, occasionally by a large amount.

I do this in my game, and i don't see any negative hitting me. In fact, i see a positive side: My ships/planetary buildings get built MUCH faster....and, I still have TONS of money....Not sure why, but it is happening...

You aren't spending any more cash, you're changing where the cash you have is being spent. Yes, you can crank out the military. Meanwhile, those deep core mines your scientists got you? They aren't being built. The other 4 industry DEAs that you hand-placed or would have gotten through DPs? They're still dreams in an architect's head because there's no money going to them. Meanwhile, your slave-drivers in the military workshops are paying quintuple overtime and spending a fortune on IV feeding and sleep-preventing drugs to keep the production lines going 36x7.

If you've gotten the impression that I think this probably is a bad idea, you're right. :)

Remember that as you crank up that slider, the efficiency of your spending drops off a cliff. So you can pump 100% into a queue if you really, really need to get that Titan or Leviathan out in a hurry, but you'd probably be better off aiming for a 2-5 turn window for large vessels and tweaking your DP usage/DEA assignments to increase the industry on a system.

A good example, I started a game with a huge mineral shortage that lasted me through around turn 100. Around 250, I really got a surplus cranking, and started going back to systems with high mineral production (sort Planest by Minerals Produced) and ripping out Mines to replace with industries. I went from 3-4 systems with 2000+ industry to 15 in a matter of about 20 turns.

And that's a huge difference in AU spending. Those extra 1000-1200 production points on those systems cost me 1/2 (or less) with the Industries in there. That's that much more cash going into the bank/grants/reducing taxes.

So I'd stop cranking that slider up (you're not spending more money in total, just more in that particular queue) and focus instead on getting the production of the world in question up. But 100% on a single slider is just too, too much.

[naggy]

Originally posted by R2-Opus2
I liked that we could manufacture individual components such as hand guns, weapons mounts for ships, armor for troops, tanks etc., then if need be and there's a surplus of old designs or new designs, sell them off on the black market for extra dough (being careful not to sell what you are using o'course).


New Special Event...

"Local pirates pick up a Stellar Converter from the New Orions on the black market, causing unrest as your system ships are vaporized..."

- Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by naggy
New Special Event...

"Local pirates pick up a Stellar Converter from the New Orions on the black market, causing unrest as your system ships are vaporized..."

- Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed

Did you actually SEE that?!

And what does it have to do with this thread?

:mad:60:mad:second:mad:limit:mad:

[UnConeD]

I'll try this, but I still have a question. On my main planets, the frickin' AI won't build anything other than troop transports, scouts and magazines.

If I manually place a battleship in the queue, it'll get produced in about 5-10 turns no problem. So it's NOT a problem of production capacity as far as I can see...

They should really implement an adaptive AI in this game. In my games I KEEP emptying my queues, removing the magazines and troop ships, but of course the AI is not programmed to notice this.
A simple 'oh, the player emptied my entire queue... maybe I did something wrong?' would do wonders. But noooooo..... "hey, the queue is empty! MAGAZINE! MAGAZINE! MAGAZINE!".

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by UnConeD
I'll try this, but I still have a question. On my main planets, the frickin' AI won't build anything other than troop transports, scouts and magazines.

If I manually place a battleship in the queue, it'll get produced in about 5-10 turns no problem. So it's NOT a problem of production capacity as far as I can see...

Well, actually if it takes 5-10 turns to build a battleship it IS a problem of production capacity. Moo3 is far more epic than Moo2 ever was, as such the viceroy turns out ships that can be completed in 3-5 turns, not 5-10.

I'm also going to guess that on the 5-10 turn scale 5 turns is if you crank up military spending. If you kick up your economy from "Peace and Prosperity" or "Peace through Strength" to one of the war settings, the AI is MUCH more likely to build battleships. This is because the war settings give the AI a minimum amount to spend, as well a a maximum, while the peace settings only give a maximum. As a result the AI is more-or-less "pressured" into building you a fleet.

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by UnConeD
I'll try this, but I still have a question. On my main planets, the frickin' AI won't build anything other than troop transports, scouts and magazines.

If I manually place a battleship in the queue, it'll get produced in about 5-10 turns no problem. So it's NOT a problem of production capacity as far as I can see...

They should really implement an adaptive AI in this game. In my games I KEEP emptying my queues, removing the magazines and troop ships, but of course the AI is not programmed to notice this.
A simple 'oh, the player emptied my entire queue... maybe I did something wrong?' would do wonders. But noooooo..... "hey, the queue is empty! MAGAZINE! MAGAZINE! MAGAZINE!".

Don't forget, it also builds based off of COST - it isn't just time, its cost. If it costs enough, it won't build it as much as a cheaper ship. And recon/colony craft tend to be cheap.

[nemeanlion12]

Alright, some poor Moo-er asked whether Military DEAs helped military. Here's the answer:

To my knowledge, planet-wise, military DEAs lower unrest. I've checked the planet infrastructure, and that's what is says it does. Maybe, in the big picture, it does something else. You should start a thread about this.

[Ron_Lugge]

*Ahem*:

Do to the need for this thread, I am hereby casting "reanimate" in the hopes of getting it lively again.

[dkass]

A few comments.

First, Tom Hughes mentioned in the Eco 101 thread that the AU cost is actually double per step (ie 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32). Although there may be some bugs with how this works and/or the colors of the sliders (this is discussed in several places). And there are techs that reduce the rates (I don't recall which).

Second, I find that even Limited War over-spends when fighting reasonable wars. I find that "Peace and Prosperity" is more than adequate for a one front war and "Peace Through Strength" is more than enough to handle two or three front wars. Note I'm referring to active fronts (not the silly CP war declarations). Even when playing the Harvesters, I've never found myself fighting more than three fronts. Bumping the economy up highter just seems to stunt my development (I a big believer in Victory through Growth). I suspect this is one of the CP 's biggest problems, it spends too much of its economy on military too early.

Also, I find that 4 to 5 turns is more than fast enough for building my current capital ships. I just don't go through them that fast. Now escorts and recon tend to be a bit more crunchy (I tend to use fairly small ones), but since I probably have 5 times as many planets building them, 5 to 10 turns each is still more than adequate. With my lower military budgets, my viceroys do regularly build even my largest ships on planets capable of producing them in 4 to 5 turns (basically, I'm not overdriving the industry, so the AU cost is reasonable).

Now every now and then (eg discovering a major new region tech), my ship construction grinds to a hald for a few turn (usually three to four). This isn't a problem (but can cause a panic the first few times it occurs).

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by dkass
Second, I find that even Limited War over-spends when fighting reasonable wars. I find that "Peace and Prosperity" is more than adequate for a one front war and "Peace Through Strength" is more than enough to handle two or three front wars. Note I'm referring to active fronts (not the silly CP war declarations). Even when playing the Harvesters, I've never found myself fighting more than three fronts. Bumping the economy up highter just seems to stunt my development (I a big believer in Victory through Growth). I suspect this is one of the CP 's biggest problems, it spends too much of its economy on military too early.

Just to ask, when do you go on the offensive? I've usually fought my first major war between turns 50-80, and I begin invading those cute undefended colonies around turn 30. If you don't choose to at least spend for "limited war" in the early game, these conquests would be impossible, as your production capability is severely limited. It may seem to stunt growth, but believe me, there's nothing "stunted" about annexing a population 5 colony on turn 30.

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by Strifeguard
Just to ask, when do you go on the offensive? I've usually fought my first major war between turns 50-80, and I begin invading those cute undefended colonies around turn 30. If you don't choose to at least spend for "limited war" in the early game, these conquests would be impossible, as your production capability is severely limited. It may seem to stunt growth, but believe me, there's nothing "stunted" about annexing a population 5 colony on turn 30.
In a large map, with fewer people, its harder to go conquestidor that quickly.
:mad:60:mad:second:mad:limit:mad:

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by Ron_Lugge
In a large map, with fewer people, its harder to go conquestidor that quickly.

That's a good point, I often forget that there are so many settings on Moo3, despite the fact that it's part of what makes the game great. From my previous post, you can probably surmise that I usually play on a 3-arm huge, with 16 empires.

Sidenote: What's the most number of empires you've ever seen in a game? On an MP game I played, we ganged up on the most powerful human-controlled empire, splitting it up into about 10 smaller empires, after revolts and such. Though most of the new empires were only a system or two, it was funny to see 23 total empires in the game at the same time. A little-known fact I learned that game is the "Foreign Matrix" screen has a "next" tab so that you can have 2 matrix screens for a total of 32 empires. I haven't been able to find out what happens if you try and create more than 32 empires.

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by Strifeguard
That's a good point, I often forget that there are so many settings on Moo3, despite the fact that it's part of what makes the game great. From my previous post, you can probably surmise that I usually play on a 3-arm huge, with 16 empires.

I thought it was a small cluster map, 16 players. But, oh well. THERE its possible to be conquistador on turn 15. (I did that once, taking over a homeworld by turn 15 - they had bad luck, started 1 starlane away)

I haven't been able to find out what happens if you try and create more than 32 empires. [/B]

No good - can't happen.

[dkass]

Originally posted by Strifeguard
Just to ask, when do you go on the offensive? I've usually fought my first major war between turns 50-80, and I begin invading those cute undefended colonies around turn 30. If you don't choose to at least spend for "limited war" in the early game, these conquests would be impossible, as your production capability is severely limited. It may seem to stunt growth, but believe me, there's nothing "stunted" about annexing a population 5 colony on turn 30.
When I go to war depends entirely on the galaxy parameters (galaxy size and number of opponents) as well as the race I'm playing. I've conquored enemy homeworlds as early as turn 25 (small cluster with 16 opponents). In other games, I still haven't built a single warship on turn 150 (Huge 3-arm galaxy with 3 opponents, when I found myself in an arm).

I can't say I've seen many (non-magnate) pop 5 colonies on turn 30. And I'll note that the boost I get when I conquor it on turn 80 it is equivalent to if I'd conquored it on turn 30 and grown it myself. But I didn't have to feed it, supply the minerals, or supply the grants to get it built. And conquoring it isn't really that much harder in absolute terms, despite its system ships, planetary bases and orbitals (and the necessary force is almost certainly a much smaller percentage of my total industry). Note that the militia is weak and puny if you're using mobiles or armor and have some support units, but they do put up a fight against infantry (marines are moderately better).

In my experience, the only planets really worth conquoring before turn 50 are homeworlds and magnate based colonies. I'll conquor other colonies, but usually only to "mop-up" or for strategic reasons. Actually, this applies to just about any colony less than 40 turns (or so) old, regardless of the actual game turn.

I probably wait a bit longer to start my first war than you do. I basically wait until there are no more decent places that I can colonize. Note that I still usually find myself among the top nations in the game at that point (and once I convert to military ships, I have no problem handling 3 fronts at a time). I just don't see any point in going to war before I'm ready economically and technologically. Part of this is waiting until I can afford it on under 20% of my economy. This is somewhat exagerrated by the weak AI (even with the data patch)--it is not agressive and only marginally competent at expansion.

For comparisons, on Large and Huge galaxies with 16 CP (something I regularly play), I usually start my first war around turn 80 to 120, depending on the exact situation (ie if I have a larger than fair share of expansion space I'll wait later). Based on my limted sampling, I'm not sure how you can reliably find an opponent to fight by turn 30 (Turn 50 is reasonable)--and I always run an agressive exploration program. I should note that one large advantage of a peaceful expansion is that almost everyone "loves" me (this is especially useful if I start in the Senate--I've had complete trade/research treaties with 8 or 9 races at a time; and this is an impressive increase to my economy and research).

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by dkass
I can't say I've seen many (non-magnate) pop 5 colonies on turn 30. And I'll note that the boost I get when I conquor it on turn 80 it is equivalent to if I'd conquored it on turn 30 and grown it myself. But I didn't have to feed it, supply the minerals, or supply the grants to get it built.

In my experience, the only planets really worth conquoring before turn 50 are homeworlds and magnate based colonies. I'll conquor other colonies, but usually only to "mop-up" or for strategic reasons.

Based on my limted sampling, I'm not sure how you can reliably find an opponent to fight by turn 30 (Turn 50 is reasonable)

I've never played a game where I *didn't* run into another empire by turn 15. I always play 3 arm huge, long star lanes-lots, and I've never been left alone until turn 16, certainly not till turn 50.

Perhaps if you're the harvesters and repeatedly start on the fringe it's possible not to see someone until turn 20 or so, but with 16 empires, I don't know it's never happened to me.

Anyway, any colony you can take is ALWAYS worth taking, especially in the beginning of the game. Usually the first colony the AI founds (since it refuses to use its initial colony TF within its home system) will be at about population 5-6 on turn 30 (probably closer to 8-9) and will be wonderfully un- or under-defended.

Regardless, it's worth taking because it will contribute to my empire, not the other way around. If I can get a pop 5 colony on turn 30, and make it spit out 24 minerals or so, that means I can rip out a mining DEA on my homeworld and make into industry, allowing me to crank out colony ships even faster. Who cares if you develop the colony you just seized, when you can feed its output to your industrial worlds instead?

[Jokque]

Originally posted by Chadmium
[i]
... interspersed with transports and marines occasionally (but it should be in a very nice acceptable ratio -- keep in mind, as Elhana pointed out in another thread, you will need A LOT of ground troops and transports for your war... more than you think).

what are you talking about ? :D
i never use any kid of ground troops or transports, i just bomb every planet to oblivion, removing all people on them by attacking the planet itself
why would you want to have a planet thats full of another race you are at war with ?
this is also better since they cant come back the next turn and take their planet back, getting no unrest or anything

[Morris13]

Jokque : That's an astonishingly ineffecient way to expand your empire, especially later in the game. Taking a planet away from your opponent is good, but reducing his production and raising your own at the same time is much, much better. Troop transports and ground troops are super cheap anyway, so it's not like using them has much impact on your ability to build warships, and not only does it take less time to take a planet with troops than it does to glass it, when you DO take it you get all the production capacity and infrastructure that the planet has already built. I've conqured planets that within 10 turns or so were in the top 5 industrial producers in my empire, and it would take at LEAST four or five times that long to build it up to that level of ability from just glassing it and dropping a colony on it.

dkass : I'm sure you're right. One thing I've noticed really crippling the AI's ability to compete with human players is that during the early/mid stages of the game, their rate of expansion is painfully slow. It's pretty rare that by turn 120 or so that I'm not at least twice the size of any of my AI competitors, and in games when I choose not to immediately switch over to expansion through warfare as soon as my borders run firmly into AI opponents, it's usually not till turn 350 or 400 that the AI player's planet counts start to rival mine, and even then a significant part of their empire are red-ring worlds that don't produce well for them.

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by Jokque
what are you talking about ? :D
i never use any kid of ground troops or transports, i just bomb every planet to oblivion, removing all people on them by attacking the planet itself
why would you want to have a planet thats full of another race you are at war with ?
this is also better since they cant come back the next turn and take their planet back, getting no unrest or anything

Guess you never back-fill your empire with enemy races?

[Madbiologist]

I know many other topics are now covered, but in the sprit of the original thread idea (which is still discuased) I have another recomandation to put.

We already heard many people talk about absoleting ships you do not want mass produced. Well I noticed it works very well.

Fist off all I obsolete any ship design I never want to see, even if it is high tech, if I am not going to want to use it, then why build them. Secondly the computer might produce alot of the transports (which also happens to be the smallest ships too). Once I reach a number that is sufficient for the next 100 turns or so, I obsolete the ship. I also make sure it is of the latest design, so if I was to de-obsolete it later, I would find it easily near the bottom of the list.

Secondly, I am sure we all have 1 or 2 system dedicated to building the heavy hitters. Well if you notice the computer churning out certain amount small class ships fast, I make sure my manual worlds do not make them anymore. In my last game the computer was mass producing Carriers and PD ships (which is common for me cause they are the smallest designs), so I made sure I do not produce them manually and let the computer deal out the numbers.

Thirdly, I have the manually controlled planet build the big ones at x5 or x10, this makes for big surges every 15 turns or so. So every 15 turns or so I deploy like 7 full grown Armadas of my deadliest ships. Plus I only need to manually check those planets every other 20-30 turns or so. I also noticed that after a few turns I can put the planetary Econ AI back on and it still yields massive amounts of military production. This is where setting yourself to total war or holy war with a spending budget helps, you still need to jack up the military slider at first but after awhile the computer gets the message.

This one I am not sure about but putting Planetary defense as a Primary on all planets in my Dev Plans seemed to help. My system ships tend to be the smallest so the planets quickly make the planetary defenses, the shipyards, and a full grown system fleet in no time; after that they churn out the starships by the dozen. (I also make my orbitals big but not to big, thus they build one or two but stop there because it is easier to make my light warships).

I tried this and I found myself with 0 piracy, well protected planets, and I had 4 Fleets of 10 taskforces of 18 ships each moving across the map. With 2 other Fleets of the same size comming up in the next 10 turns. 6 Fleets of 180 ships is deadly. With a new one comming out every 12 turns or so.

[Madbiologist]

I know this requires like 10-20 turns of manipulation, maybe even 30 if your still new at it.

However once the show is on the road, the rest is smooth sailing. After all this is war, it does take the attention of the "ruler" to get the ball going.

All war takes some effort to have working right.

I found these tactics work well. After the initial ordeal, my Empire is raging across the galaxy, glassing over planets in one or two rounds; destroying any who declare war on me. Even the New Orions had their forces destroyed by me. And I found this power easy to yield and maintain once I got the ball going as I described before.

[Antimatter]

Originally posted by Morris13
Jokque : That's an astonishingly ineffecient way to expand your empire, especially later in the game. Taking a planet away from your opponent is good, but reducing his production and raising your own at the same time is much, much better. Troop transports and ground troops are super cheap anyway, so it's not like using them has much impact on your ability to build warships, and not only does it take less time to take a planet with troops than it does to glass it, when you DO take it you get all the production capacity and infrastructure that the planet has already built. I've conqured planets that within 10 turns or so were in the top 5 industrial producers in my empire, and it would take at LEAST four or five times that long to build it up to that level of ability from just glassing it and dropping a colony on it.


for me i usualy don't have that sort of problem i just level the world then set the migrate to on, and within maybe 5 turn of slowly ramping up to 1k peop per turn coming in it suddently explodes to up to 20k peop coming in a turn heh maybe that's cause my core world are massivly overpopulated by this point in the game. but usualy within 20 turn i'm at close to max population for that world :)

[TRAPPER]

If you have a race setup the right way you can still build large UBER death ray fleets with the peace and prosperity selected. It's all about racial picks baby.

I don't how large other ppl's fleet are but I have about 90 Behemoths and hundreds of Titans and SuperDreaghtnoughs, I have no smaller ships. And it's with peace and prosperity selected. Kinda Ironic I think. I just started building my Lethiaven ships...

I see no reason why my research should suffer to be able to support a large militery. Like I said, with the right racial picks you don't need to touch any slider in your finance menu. You never even need to worry about. The only time I ajust something is to increase my research spending.

[Da_Blade]

That was exactly my feeling once upon a time. But then i discovered it's far more effective to build a large fleet in a wave and then obsolete (most) design right away again. It actually saves you much more research points in the end.

[nemeanlion12]

I've discovered that if you want a certain ship type, build it at a smaller hull size, so its PP is lower.

[Dagda]

Originally posted by nemeanlion12
I've discovered that if you want a certain ship type, build it at a smaller hull size, so its PP is lower.

If you've got large enough worlds, don't leave the small hulls floating around and the AI will happily fill your reserves with very big ships.

Turn 250 in my current SP game and the smallest hull I've got is a Battleship. 5 turns later, there are around 700 new battleships or larger in my reserves. There's a heavy preference for BB's and it's rare that the AI builds a Super-Dreadnaught, but Roy will build the big 'uns if the production is there and there aren't any "more efficient" options.

[nemeanlion12]

Well, I have some worlds with massive production and I haven't seen an I.F. ship in my reserves. There is a design for one, but I think it may cost too much, even for my manufacturing giants.

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by nemeanlion12
Well, I have some worlds with massive production and I haven't seen an I.F. ship in my reserves. There is a design for one, but I think it may cost too much, even for my manufacturing giants.

This is actually a known problem. For some reason, the AI prefers to build LR, Recon, and Carrier designs over IF and other designs. (ever wonder why those Eagle Attack ships seem to fly off the production lines if left unchecked in the early game?)

I don't know if anyone knows why this happens for sure. I have noticed that if an IF and LR ship are designed at comparable tech levels, the IF ship will tend to be slightly more expensive (usually no more than 10-50 PPs more expensive, but more none the less). Perhaps the AI just repeatedly chooses the less expensive of the 2, but I haven't had the time to adequately test it out yet.

[dkass]

Originally posted by Strifeguard
I've never played a game where I *didn't* run into another empire by turn 15. I always play 3 arm huge, long star lanes-lots, and I've never been left alone until turn 16, certainly not till turn 50.
I see the difference now; I usually play short start-lanes, few. My nearest neighbor homeworld in my current game is 7 jumps away from my homeworld (somewhere around 25 turns in a straight line at Warp I). And his closest colony is still 6 jumps away (in the mid game). This seems to be about typical for my games. I'm in the fringes of the core (in the core itself, they're sometimes close, but sometimes not).

I once looked and found that colonies don't really contribute effectively for their first 40 turns or so (at least in the early game, late game is a different issue). This is when taking everything into account (and don't usually produce a mineral surplus for the first 30 turns--taking into account their own industry). Maybe I need to revisit the issue with more races.

[whyBish]

Originally posted by Strifeguard
Just to ask, when do you go on the offensive? I've usually fought my first major war between turns 50-80, and I begin invading those cute undefended colonies around turn 30. If you don't choose to at least spend for "limited war" in the early game, these conquests would be impossible, as your production capability is severely limited. It may seem to stunt growth, but believe me, there's nothing "stunted" about annexing a population 5 colony on turn 30.

Hehe... I suppose it's a hallmark of a potentially good game when there are so many strategies here. I'll throw my hat in with one of my own.

Perhaps It's because I play single player, perhaps it's because I play the slow tech mod...

I used to have a real poor time with diplomacy. I tried cynoid (with all the nice free picks they get), klackon, eoladi etc. but they always had problems making friends. They did plenty of bombarding planets etc. (which I later found out causes the comp not to like you so much , duh!).

So my new strategy.. play trilarian. In the txt files the icthyosians have the best diplomacy set up. decent relations with everyone except the dinosaurs (and harvesters). Modifying them to start in the senate I can get defensiva alliances with 2-3 AI (16 player) within 30-40 turns, and usually more than half the senate within 60-70.

What good is that? Resolutions etc do no good? Trade is worthless?

Well, the interesting part of the deal is that defensive & higher allies tend to accept your *exchanges* That's right I to never had seen one even offered before, but playing passive I was getting them accepted.

Still you say, what use is a few more techs? Well, the answer is, you can also trade for planets. In my last game, at turn 60 3/4 of my planets were from exchanges rather than my own colony ships. And you know how many planets become colonizable with mixed races!

Starting without creative is not an issue either. Even with the random techs you start with you can find other civs that will have different techs to yourself. Trading for planets with 1.5k-2k pop works best early on, offering 2-3 techs. And since you have defensive pacts you don't need to worry about building up any defense early (which is not much of a benefit at the moment, but post code patch...)

Theres no need to bombard anyone or take them over when you can pretty much send an outpost to any planet and have an appropriate species migrate there.

And a last note... until you get defensive pacts you cant land a colony/system ship in a system that has opposing ships. So with the defensive pact you can be a parasite and colonize in the home system of your ally for free defense (if they do the same with you you should be able to trade them for those planets anyway).

Anyway, I'm not knocking you warmongers ( ;) ) out there, but give it a go for at least one game. It's an interesting change of pace.

(Oh, and yes I do realise that this strat wont be very good in many instances such as if you play low player games or non-AI games ;) )

[ImmortalOne]

I found what races with low production expand too slow, so I prefer playing Cynoid, customised to maximum mining/industry.
Oh yes, I never change government type, Monarchy is more than enough for Cybernetics, I never ever run out of food even with few Bioharvesting Deas. Lack of research usually compensated with amount of planets (Usually I get twice or trice more colonies than most of AI, especially ones who have poor production but alot of research instead).
And of course greatest surplus of Monarchy is bonus to Military production. And don't forget high opressometer to keep enemy spies in prisons/heavens.
First you quickly colonise your home system and then start to expand over galaxy. When I meet firs opponent, and it blocks me from continuing my expansion, I quickly build few TF with IF ships, best ones I can build, and kill that opponent. So I capture 1 or 2 races completely and get few planets from another ones.
Next step - put strong military on borders and start to develop your planets (I mean infrastructure).
To about 200th turn you have Empire with lots of well-developed planets and you can start a Total war with entire galaxy. Also I usually build few offensive TF so I could capture 1-2 enemy border planets, so I continue to expand.
In my last game (Cluster, Medium, 16 civs) at about 200th turn I was at war with all except Klackons (my neighbors, they too quickly protected their homeworld so I preferred to sign non-agression pact and leave them alive) and NewOrions. And my fleet was easily keeping on capturing planets with Peace and Prosperity politics. To 300th turn I got a lack of ground troops, because I was capturing planets too fast, and viceroy was keeping on producing Superdreadnoughts, Transport ships (my own design, Cruiser, carry 4 Troop pods and few PD Lightning fields) and support ground units (another thing needed to be fixed, I mean excess of support units, looks like AI builds 4 support to 1 offensive unit instead of 1 support to 4 offensive).
Now I have 300 IF, 300 PD, 100 LR SuperDreadnoughts and 400 Recon Dreadnoughts in reserves and don't know where to put them... And my military-economic policy is still Peace and Prosperity :-).

[Dagda]

Originally posted by ImmortalOne
Now I have 300 IF, 300 PD, 100 LR SuperDreadnoughts and 400 Recon Dreadnoughts in reserves and don't know where to put them... And my military-economic policy is still Peace and Prosperity :-).

One word, five letters - "Orion." :)

If we put your reserves with the 1000 or so Titans I've got in mine, we could have one hell of a party. ;)

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by whyBish
Anyway, I'm not knocking you warmongers out there, but give it a go for at least one game. It's an interesting change of pace.

I almost always engage very heavily in diplomacy, just not with my neighbors.;)

Huh? You ask, then who am I engaging across the tables? This has a lot to do with game setup, I prefer the most epic scale possible (at least in my mind), so I always choose 16 empires, 3-arm huge, long lanes lots.

I play as humans (Evon just felt like cheating with all those picks, so, call it a challenge), and I usually tweak them into the senate through lowering one of the "average" picks (I change around which one I lower, usually trying to stay away from mining/bioharvesting, etc.) and buy my way into the Senate. That way, I can guarantee as much trade money as I want as soon as I can get it.

So, while I'm diploming away with the races at the other end of the galaxy, my next door neighbors probably have their eyes on the same systems as me, so I take some of their worlds as soon as possible. Buy turn 30, your total empire probably has a population of around 30 (don't have the stats infront of me, so I'm guessing here), and it's usually made up of 10-15 on you imperial seat, 5-8 on your second colony, and 1-3 on a series of smaller colonies. All of this depends, of course, on race, your luck finding worlds, the inclusion of possible magnate civs and splinter colonies, etc. My point is, if I can sieze a neighboring empire's #2 colony around turn 30 (usually a little later, turns 32 or 34, but 30's the goal), it will be woefully undefended (or at least under-defended), and increase my empire's total population by 20%. Usually a division of marines will do the job, or 2 divisions of infantry, if you aren't lucky enough to have support/marines yet, and that early in the game, it's entirely luck.

So, with the new world, new population, I just try and squeeze out minerals, and by-pass economic development almost all-togther. This way, I can include an extra industry DEA or 2 on my imperial seat, which will allow me to expand even faster, and made seize some more neighboring worlds.

Yeah, it's warmongering, but so long as I can trade with empires 50 turns away, via the senate, it's worth it.

[nemeanlion12]

I find that early in the game, I don't have enough manufacturing to start cranking out lots of ships, and, especially, troops (with support). I don't have the tech to build support units, and my army is kept to lots of divisions.

[Dagda]

Originally posted by nemeanlion12
I find that early in the game, I don't have enough manufacturing to start cranking out lots of ships, and, especially, troops (with support). I don't have the tech to build support units, and my army is kept to lots of divisions.

If you've got good relations with your neighbors, you don't really need much of a fleet. But an early war can really put a crimp in your expansion.

[nemeanlion12]

YOU try having good relations with the Nommo if you're the Grendarl. :)

[Strifeguard]

Originally posted by nemeanlion12
YOU try having good relations with the Nommo if you're the Grendarl.

Yeah, I just don't like my next-door neighbors. They act chummy, and then try to set up loads of colonies within my systems. Funny how inexpensive 1 troops ship and 2 infantry units can be in the early game. Almost as funny as the 36 militia and no space-based defenses on my neighbor's #2 planet...

[sL|De]

heres a nice print friendly version of your guide chadmium. Ill be mentioning it on ooMoo as soon as its back online. Nice work too :D

http://lacota.net/moo3outpost/guides/bigboys.html

[Strifeguard]

This is *slightly* OT, but I believe it still applies.

I've been having loads of trouble trying to get the viceroy to voluntarily build orbitals, then I read the latest patch update. Apparently, in some cases, the viceroys will only build orbitals if they're the largest possible size you can design.

At least I think that's what "AI will build orbitals that are not max size for the empire if the design exists." means.

I was designing orbitals like all my other ships, slightly smaller than my maximum design type in order to encourage the maximum number of planets to build them. It now appears that this very tactic is what was causing my viceroys not to build orbitals at all.

I was wondering if anyone has any other experience with the viceroy and orbitals. I'm curious as to what the best orbital design is if I want to encourage the viceroys to build them.

[Ron_Lugge]

Well, *I* always manually assign orbitals - I only want them in critical "node" systems on the frontier, or watching over my industrial heartlands (AKA: My top 3/4 industrial planets)

[Da_Blade]

Sorry evryone but it seems the AI build combat ships based on cost only. At least, cost is the most important part of the modifier. I have been exerimenting a bit with (more or less, within 100 au of each other) equal cost PtD/Recon/CV/IF/SR ships and found the AI built them in pretty much equal proportions. But since that means essentially small beam ships, large carrier and recon ships and medium IF ships i found it too unhandy.

I now use the knowledge to make more or less equal cost pciket and escort ships, so i never have a shortage of those. Then i assign manually x5 builds on the topmost industrial planets.

Works ok for me...

[nemeanlion12]

I sure wish the AI would build everything in equal proportions--

We never win a war fighting with foot soldiers. The more complex weapons win, and the AI should know that Point Defense ships don't make an armada on their own! (ahem my ai)

[Clasby]

Yeah, the only way my Psilons can have a fleet at all is to build little tiny ships - lucky for me I have tech advantage.

[Avatar_Squadron]

Ive seen my AI que up Dreadnaughts before... that could be because it was my world named Angband... size 11 with like 20 industry and a government DEA that gives a 15% bonus to industry, plus superior manufacturing and the natural Engineers trait... the world is relatively under developed on the infrastructure side with less them half the DEA"s with auto factories, however these babies make between 127-150 Industry points EACH. It has over 2,500 industry points, I think its nearing 3k, and its still improving its industrial DEAs (I have robo factories and something else to add: ) ). the place cranks ships out faster then mayflies at a landfill. Note: in this game im roughly between 24 and 30 for tech levels.
I just wanna know, is there anyway I can make it upgrade its DEA's faster?
And oh, BTW, the Jobe system, the one it in, has plenty of Industrial DEA's... so you should see the trade income.. i think the planet makes 30k by itself (most i eat away by cranking it to 100% production, the Government/Military Region plus the large Group Divious quell unrest... even on Peace and Prosperity at 100% i get mayber 2-5 counts of unrest from over driving it, and I have them set to the average citizenship).

[Ron_Lugge]

I'd just add infrastructure as a main devplan. Or manufacture. Or manually pump up the development money slider.

[StonefaceAMCW]

It seems nobody mentioned this before and I was really at loss until I found out.

Your viceroy seems to build a shipyard expansion when he wants to build a ship and his shipyard and the shipyard is to small. This generally means he will not expand your shipyard if you have a buildable design because he will try to build the cheaper ship.

How I found out:
Playing Ithkul I stumbled across a silicoid Empire aound turn 50. I had not build a fleet until then but in a few turns diplomatic contact would be established and war would be declared. Looking at my Planets only three would be able do build Lc the rest was stucked with frigates. I designed a few frigate-sized ships and went to war. Abaut 50 turns later I had the technoligy to build Battleships and had designed one but not a single shipyard expansion had been build. This happenend to me in an ealier game but the issue resolved somehow. I fuddled with devplans for a few turns but gained no result. As a last resort I made my frigates obsolete. Et voilà the VR expanded my shipyard like there was no tommorow.

[ReallyBored]

Incidentally, is there a way to encourage the viceroy to build smaller ships? I redesigned my troop transports (new engines) and have the old ones obsoleted but still around. My whole fleet was redesigned around the new engines and he built my new battle ships just fine (had to obsolete the recons and PDs to stop him, in fact). However, now all he wants to build are my Titan/SD ships and has built a grand total of 3 of the new trannies. There are certainly planets with empty MBQs as well. I ended up shoving a transportx10 on repeat into the MBQ on a couple of my mid-major industrials, but I was curious why he didn't queue any up.

[Beamup]

Originally posted by ReallyBored
Incidentally, is there a way to encourage the viceroy to build smaller ships?

Try setting your empire to Peace & Prosperity. In all probability, Roy can't build your big ships in a reasonable time on 10% spending, so he'll go ahead and build the smaller ones.

But since you want transports specifically, that may be a bit different. Roy may be looking at your ground troop reserve, noting that you already have enough transports to carry them all, but not noticing that the transports are old and obsolete. If you have "enough" transports, Roy generally won't build any more. So, they'd probably get built if you scrapped some/all of the old ones.

[ReallyBored]

Originally posted by Beamup
Try setting your empire to Peace & Prosperity. In all probability, Roy can't build your big ships in a reasonable time on 10% spending, so he'll go ahead and build the smaller ones.


Well, smaller ships in general I usually get by just un-obsoleting them. More than likely there's a bunch of planets with empty MBQs, so they fill with the smaller ships. a couple turns later, re-obs the small ship and let em build out.


But since you want transports specifically, that may be a bit different. Roy may be looking at your ground troop reserve, noting that you already have enough transports to carry them all, but not noticing that the transports are old and obsolete. If you have "enough" transports, Roy generally won't build any more. So, they'd probably get built if you scrapped some/all of the old ones. [/B]

Bah, figures. I'm locked in a 2.5* front war (but winning it), so I don't particularly feel like dropping to P&P right now. Like I said, I manually shoved a couple x10's into MBQs on repeat, so they'll build. I can't scrap old trans, since I need to maintain operational tempo (see winning, above).


---------------------------------
*Before you ask, its 2.5 front because the gasbags were front 3. Now, after pissing me off enough they're down to a few scattered systems and their new imperial capital (rule #1: don't piss off the biggest empire when he has a 5-10 TL and 2 ship class advantage).

[StonefaceAMCW]

I think it was somewhere in the patch readme that the viceroy tries to have enougth tranport to move most (75 or 80%) of your ground troops. If you want your new transports to be build scrap a few old ones or build more ground troops. P&P might help, because if the VR can't build ships he likely will build troops and therefore transports.

[Unotelecrit]

For the firs time in the game I have too many ships, my reservs are up to 3-4 1000 war ships. And AI keeps pomping out more. Is there a way to stop it if so what is going to heppend with the unused production capacity, is it just waisted?

[DeckPrism]

@Unotelecrit
Lower your MPE to Peace and Prosperity and increase the hull sizes on your ship designs. Also you could pump more toward research via imperial grants as well as putting non industry kinds of things (infrastructure, trade, research) higher in your dev plan. Oh and you could obsolete your ship designs if you truely don't want any more right now. Sure you will probably start being inefficient in your spending of money on research, but what else would you spend it on? Go to war, or pump out colony ships, etc.

[JosEPh]

Originally posted by Unotelecrit
For the firs time in the game I have too many ships, my reservs are up to 3-4 1000 war ships. And AI keeps pomping out more.

Could u loan me a couple thousand ?!:cry:

[Unotelecrit]

Originally posted by JosEPh
Could u loan me a couple thousand ?!:cry:

I wish I have 2000 + Short Range Dreadn That I do not use any way :(

[JosEPh]

Originally posted by Unotelecrit
I wish I have 2000 + Short Range Dreadn That I do not use any way :(

In my thread in OT " I almost Quit last night", that game is still being played an' I can only produce about a dozen new ships a turn.:cry:

I'm trying to adjust my deas to pro duce more industry, but it takes time . And I'm fighting all out war against everybody(6 AIs + NO), and I was really trying to be a nice guy!!:(

Hope that game makes it past 300 turns!:sour:

[Unotelecrit]

Nice gize finish last, I am playing the harvesters, every one hates me and I eat them. Actually my strongest industral planet is not mine, I took it from someone along with the heared of tasty nateaves. It has an industy output of over 19K. The way I increase my industty is by capturing large worlds with high pop.
On the same turn i take it I change all DEA to Industry exept GOV and MIL and let them build it up for several turns. Seems to work for me.
Cant wait to see how well the orion planets I just took will develop. One other thing, Concentrate on spying, but try using only sintific spys.
I am in turn 340 or so.

[Archonon]

tag to protect from deletion

[o2bjsm]

thanks for the info...i've just posted for some help on this very topic...two posts too late :D

this should help my next game...

[BrewGuru99]

Further, here is a scenario that has been bugging me a LOT, and i've seen it happen over and over. Lets assume that on your homeworld, you have a planetary bank of 2000 AU. You decide to build one of your big boys that the AI simply refuses to do, so you add it to your military queue and increase your military slider until that planet is making lets say -500 AU a turn total (all other sliders taken into consideration), so you'll expect that you can maintain that level of production for 4 turns if unassissted.

Now, here is where it gets weird - if you check the planet next turn, i'll often see that the number of AU's has increased rather than decreased, so i'll now be at something like 2200 AU for the planetary bank. Is this an effect of the empire military grants? If so, how can you tell where grants are going to be sent to? Further, i seem to have this problem on the empire level as well, where the projected expenses for a turn (assume they're negative) have nothing to do with what actually happens.

And a last question - what is the relationship between 'Available balance for this cycle' and 'Treasury balance for this cycle' (both in the finance tab->ledger). The available balance is what is displayed at the very top of your screen as well as the projected change in income...so i always assumed thats how much money you had stored up. But then what is the treasury balance?



I believe that this occurs if the planet is the system capital. I haven't done any testing, but a while back I questioned this myself and did some quick calculations and found the increased amount to be equal (or close to) 5% of the gross income of the other planets of the system, which matched nicely with the the 5% system tax I had set in the finance tab.

As for the empire's treasury, I found several things that are not calculated into the projected outcome. Off the top of my head I know of the cost for training new spys. Spy maintenance is included in expenses, but if you are training spys (shame if you aren't) then you need to include the cost for the next turn (usually 20 or 30 AU - take total AU left for the spy divided by turns until training is complete). So when I balance my finance I ALWAYS make it 30 AU in the green.

Also, the 'available balance for this cycle' is equal to what you currently have stored in your coffers and what you expect to make over the next turn. The 'Treasury balance for this cycle' is what you have stored in your coffers. (I think, but I'm at work right now so I can't take a quick look at it... It is either that or the net profit/loss to the coffers based on your expenditures for the turn.)

All of this may be in the huge economic thread above... but I haven't tackeled that mess yet...

[MOO Maniac]

Here's a quick question on this thread:

In the same capacity, I've noticed that most of my planets are running turn to turn deficits. Generally, the ending bank is lower than the starting bank. It's worse on my ship building planets obviously. I assume the fix is to crank up the economic development slider on the local planet because I assume that my ship building capacity is directly related to how well the local planetary economy is doing. However, I've also noticed that I rarely have problems with planets being unable to maintain their buildings. Is this a bug (I'm unpatched at the moment)? Or is there income not being counted? And more importantly, will my production go up if I can get my planets running surplusses? Would I need to set planetary policies to encourage this? etc...

[geoffwicca]

thanks for this info mate its helped alot

[Lord_Sadan]

Originally posted by MOO Maniac
Here's a quick question on this thread:
In the same capacity, I've noticed that most of my planets are running turn to turn deficits. Generally, the ending bank is lower than the starting bank. It's worse on my ship building planets obviously. I assume the fix is to crank up the economic development slider on the local planet because I assume that my ship building capacity is directly related to how well the local planetary economy is doing.

G'Day mate,

I am not a newcomer but I guess a "returner" to this game after a 4 month absence. Getting back into it again and finding it still a rewarding game with plenty to think about when it comes to empire building. Plenty of reading on here too to familiarise myself with the game again. ;)

I cannot really give you a definitive answer but can give you some suggestions on fixing the problems your empire is facing. The capacity that your planets have to turn out ships is directly related to how much production (PPs) you have being created on those planets. If there is not enough or too little production, as you well know, not many ships will be produced or it will take a while for those ships to be build - obviously depends on the hull size of the ships in question. A good note here is to usually build ships 2-3 hull sizes smaller than your current largest hull size. This enables your biggest producing planets to turn out those ships with little relative effort. If you go straight to the largest hull size, it will take ages - I had this problem when I first started playing the game and wondered why the A.I had fleets of 100's of ships and I only had 50-60. An example, in my current game, I am playing modified Cynoid and have about 30 planets so far - turn 105 or so. About 10 of those planets build a destroyer-class ship each turn. Another 10 planets - destroyer-class ship in 2 turns and they are still building their industry up at this stage. This is vastly more ships than I used to have being build. I am currently taking it to the Ithkul at the moment and kicking arse.

Now, back to your question. Oh if anyone (especially the experts)want to correct me here, please do as my info is more than likely wrong; anyway AFAIK, the planetary development slider is not going to help you much in this case. If you bump that up, the viceroy will turn to building planet improvements and possibly even try and improve the colour-coding of the planet. What you need to do is to go into the finance screen and check the planetary development style you have chosen. Sorry, I cannot remember the exact name of the option (at work at the moment). I usually set mine to Savings which may seem conservative but it actually works quite well and I dont normally have any problems with finances. The other thing, check out your financial budget and see where most of the money is going - I'd say planetary grants or possibly the military. If you are able, try and reduce the deficit by moving some or all of the sliders slightly to the left. This will have some impact but I dont think it will be all that much as long as you dont reduce the money spent in each by a 1/2 or something like that. Just a few clicks to the left should do it.

I really wish I had the game here as I could go through each screen and find the options I know are there but I cannot remember them enough to explain them. Might save that for a later post here.

However, I've also noticed that I rarely have problems with planets being unable to maintain their buildings. Is this a bug (I'm unpatched at the moment)? Or is there income not being counted?

I dont think this is a bug although I am playing MOO3 on v1.2.5. I would advise you to get that patch and even take a look at some of the mods that are on offer. A good site is here (http://www.moo3mods.com/). As for the second part of your question, I think I will let one of the experts answer that one. Dont know enough about that area to make a definitive comment - and without actually playing MOO3 right now to take a look. :(

And more importantly, will my production go up if I can get my planets running surplusses? Would I need to set planetary policies to encourage this? etc...

I dont think this is the case. If your planets are running surplusses, there will be more money to either spend on that planet or that money will be returned to the empire treasury in which it will be used in one of the economic sliders in the finance screen. If you want production to go up, build more Industry DEAs on planets. Make sure you have the mining capacity to cope.

One other little strategy I use is that I take a look at the Bioharvesting comparison on the main screen of the MOO3 interface. It might say something like 180/90. If it does it means that currently your planets overall are producing 180 food but they only need 90 to keep the population alive. I believe this is inefficient as the Bioharvest DEAs that are being used to make this surplus could easily be turned into making Industry/Mining instead - i.e. More PPs or more Research Points via Research DEAs, in turn, bringing that ratio back down to a more reasonable level. For example, I would be more happy with a ratio of 95-105/90 instead of the original 180.
If you have the same thing, here's what you should try:

Go into the Planets screen and sort them by food production. It will list the biggest producers first (I find generally the biggest producers of food are also the biggest producers of Industry - you may or may not find the same thing depending on how you've configured your empire). Double-click on the first planet on the list and remove some/all of the Bioharvest DEA's and in their place either build Mining or preferably, Industry DEA's. You'll end up wiping out some/all of the food production on this planet only but because you have other planets that have surplusses, they will provide this planet with its food needs and at the same time, give the planet you made the change on a boost when it comes to Industry and Mining or Research etc. Rinse and Repeat as necessary, moving down the planets list from the top.

Side note, you can also do this for the Mining ratio if there is a huge gap there.

I guess my best advice I can give you is to play around with these types of things, read some/all of the strategy guides stickied in the strategy forum on here and see how you go. Because we all have different play-styles, this may or may not work. However, if you keep playing around with the options/setting etc, you'll find a technique that best suits your type of game.

Good Luck! :up:

Sadan01

[Incubi]

of all the help threads, This one has helped my game more than any other. I should have posted this when I first read it months ago. Since I read this thread ( and after hitting my head for notnoticeing how obvious this was ) I have taken this one step further and made sure all my colonies,recons, transports etc are really expensive, more expensive than I would have ever dreamed to make the regular mission ships till really late in the game. And enjoyed some wonder side affects. Like huge colonise that immediatley place 10,000 people on planets. And transports that are no longer blown away by missles or shot down by fighters. And recons that single handedly keep fighters and missles away from my if and carrier ships.


Thanks

[Rockstone]

Originally posted by Nigh****ch
I vote this one for a sticky..:D lol:haha:

[Omena]

You can make the ai to build bigger ships via modding.

Quite simply just modify the modifiers spreadsheet. As far as a can recall changind the ShpCpcty and UniSpace value to something like +75 should make the ai appreciate size over cost.

[Shaper]

@ Omena
Nice observation.

I have constructed this thread in the fan mods section, for the express purpouse of tapping what knowledge you may have regarding the modifiers spreadsheet. Since general modding info outside of the big ships comments is a bit outside of this particular thread.

modifiers.txt (http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=386013)

If you are familiar with other specific effects of changes in this table or are interested in speculating on some of these, I would greatly appreciate hearing what you have to say.

Thanks.

[Morpheus1]

This is what I've been doing

Largest Ship - LR
2nd - Carrier or LR or been thinking of doing Carrier/IF mix
3rd - LR and IF with nearly same cost
Also design LR System ships this size
Maybe if I make Orbitals this size my viceroys will make more of them. I'll have to try this out.
4th - SR or Recon and PD with nearly same cost
5th - Recon and PD nearly same cost

Have you colony starships the size of your 3rd largest ship
Have system Colony ships the size of the 4th

Never had a problem with the AI building too many small ships

[Caboose]

What I dont understand is why my planets with 3k+ industry on holy war continue to pump out my smallest ship designs when they can easily build dreadnoughts in 2-3 turns with like 10% to the production slider.
(about turn 200)

[Morpheus1]

Only design ships with the top 4 ship sizes so your Roy will build systems to allow him to build bigger designs.

[Caboose]

I only use my 3 bigest designs and it only ever builds the smallest. (my current sizes are BC,BA,DN and im about to get Superdreadnoughts)
Its really annoying to see planets that can easily build the "big uns" building small fry and I cant delete the designs b/c i need them 4 my smaller planets. :(

[Morpheus1]

Give your planet roys time to build better shipyards and they will make bigger ships. Give it 10 to 20 turns.

[Caboose]

Hmm 30 turns later my top 15 or so planets have decided to give up building ships at all all they do now is build magazines and psy ops :( Honestly 5k industry building psy ops :mad:

[Morpheus1]

Ok Caboose let me explain further just to clarify.

Any planet that cannot build your smallest ship even with all of the upgrades you can give it for production will build troops and such. Check the maximum size ship the planet can make and then check and make sure it has all of the upgrades available to you built. If the planet cannot build your smallest ship but with upgrades he will be able to do so the roy will automatically build any and all upgrades possible so he can build bigger ships.

In other words check your other planets and verify all of this.

If you build smaller ships yes you can make more of them BUT your roys will not upgrade you very fast to help you build bigger ships.

Hope that helps.

[Unotelecrit]

Just out of curiosity, what is you budget setting? Are you at a holy war? Where is your military spending slider?

[Caboose]

My slider is set at total war.
I understand what u mean, im currently producing 80+ battleship and higher ships per turn from my empire but my "Best" planets seem to not want to build anything even though they can produce my superexpensive superdreadnought orbitals in 1 turn wit habout 20 % on the military slider.
Its really weird...
EDIT: Oh and its not my shipyards they are all good

[Unotelecrit]

I might be off, but I was talking about the slider in the empire screen. You know where you set research, military, and other spending for the whole empire. If the military slider is to low it might prevent the vecs from building expensive designs. Try to make a very low cost superdrednoght (just a shell) and see if you planets will build it. If they do it will probably mean that you problem is with the cost not the size of the ships. If they don’t then I am wrong.

[Caboose]

hmm I seem to have been able to get most of my planets onto the right track except maybe my best 10 planets which refuse to do anything but build ground troops 1 at a time (really irritating)

[Caboose]

AH HA I just discovered you can LOCK build ques (beats self with stick). I never notice things like that :(

[Tarhalindur]

Ensuring that this thread does not disappear with the forum upgrade.

[UnregisteredToo]

Only design ships with the top 4 ship sizes so your Roy will build systems to allow him to build bigger designs.


I have tried experimenting with this (at Holy War) and discovered I suddenly had a rash of planets building system ships (all planets already colonized) and/or troops. What few it did build were unable to become Armadas due to too few supporting ships. I discovered the best way is to let the Viceroy have a full, complete spectrum of ships to choose from, and let come what may. I figure that since enemy empires have access to the same AI as I do, at least it's somewhat equal. :rolleyes:

[elm]

So believe it or not, Holy War could be a perfectly reasonable option when on a colony-building spree.

The higher this setting the larger the projects your Vics will be able to engage in. For example, a Vic limited to spending no more than 10% of his budget on military spending will look at the projects available (bases, colony ships, systemships, warships, missile bases, marines) and spend money only on those military projects that cost less than 10% of his planetary income - your military grants are not taken into account in the projevt selection process. During periods of peace & prosperity, this results in a lot of low-cost development (command center, transports, system ships). Of those within his budget, the Vic will generally work on the ones that cost the least more often than the ones at the top end of that budgetary limit (remember that minimum), and will concentrate on those within the industrial capacity of the planet (planets with a small production capacity will work on projects that they can complete in a reasonable amount of time, like Command Centers and transports).

[SMELLJAB]

During late game, HFoG is so high, roy doesn't want to build cruisers.

However larger ships are more cost effective!!!

So I took off heavy armor (light armor)
And I took off heavy Shields (standard shields)

And I knocked 25% off the price.

Replacing PD weapons with light weapons takes off another 5%.
(light rail guns aren't really ineffecient anyhow)

[KevinG]

Blah, blah, blah, squawk, squawk.....

With a supra efficient industry (superior manufacturing, natural engineers, superior pollution control, tolerant) and superefficient research (supra efficient doens't exist for research unless it's hardcoded (psilon, antaran)(superefficient research is creative and superior research) you can and will build the biggest starship available for you for war once you've reached Bcruisers with absolutely no down time, and the bigger the ships get, the less down time, cuz once Bcruisers are capable, you will be able to colonize at an exponential rate, your immigration and pop growth will also be huge by then and if you expanded properly, you will have a ton of shell systems to finish colonizing and to terraform and otherwise build up.
On average i had X thousand (where X is superior to 2) carrier starships of biggest class and latest tech (i use mixed carriers, 3 missile volleys, 20 space control fighters per carrier and pd is lightmount medium power beam... n.b : you need fighter armor and ion pulse fighter to be really efficient with BCruiser to SupDread size ships, fighter armor is a must from the second you get BCruisers or you will be washed down the drain) before i gained the next class of ships, i would than obsolete old models, create new bigger ships and wait till i had over a hundred carriers in fleet reserves (about 5 turns, supraefficient babies my peeps are) before scrapping every ship belonging to last category.
Keep system ships one size smaller than starships to reduce piracy quicker and migrate till it goes off alone (between 10 and 15 turns even for extreme grav 12 planets despite my peeps hardcoded lowG, small planets).
You will have almost all the tech and waht you don't have you can steal for the tech advances in spying counter the bad spying ability of your race.
The current game I'm playing I have over 500 planets (first time I've taken off both antaran X and senate as victory condi) and over 100 planets with above 22K industry prod (10x behemoth mixed adamantium carrier in 6 turns on average)
At this point you don't count anymore, i could have won the game over 200 cycles ago, but I'm tech crazy (always have been in these games) and I want to finish it so I can Destroy all the nommo planets standing between me and victory (stellar converter baby).
BTW i always conquer the antarans, and I always play with a very bad ground combat race, but my production pumps out armies of battleoids every turn so I don't even know how many I actually have, none of my scroll down lists of ships, troops, will alow me to build my TF's alone since I can't get to all my ships, having 5000 recon and transport and carriers and IF etc... it's actually become redundant at this point.

[KevinG]

Adendum to previous post, keep war policy at peace through strength or peace and prosperity.
Why?

two reasons: one cuz you need to keep on eye on your spending and reduce it accordingly as game goes on otherwise it will bankrupt you (planetary grants are unnecessary if all your planets are selfsufficient, but the viceroy will keep it at the percentage it was at, therefore raising the cost as pop goes up even though no one needs it or not as much)

second: you don't need to have a higher military spending in order to go to war, maintenance is cheap, and the bigger the empire, the cheaper it is proportionally to the empire, you have more money and need to protect less points with big fleets. Not only do you not need to as long as you follow basic supraefficient guidelines, but it will harm you. It will delapidate your income very fast if you're not careful. I have always gone to war with Peace and porsperity or peace through strength and over the space of my games I have never run into a single obstacle facing my ship creation and deployment, my military grants have never gone over 5% of my income, which is as it should be, industry coupled with research will counteract any weaknesses your race has (unless it's a weakness in pollution)
My principle is this for all species creation, a six step guideline to make sure my race will be strong at beginning to mid game and invincible the rest of the way: superior industry, superior research, creative, superior pollution control, tolerant, natural engineers, the rest is cherries or raisins (cherries are good, raisins are not) but those 6 are must haves for anyone who wishes to have a supraefficient utopian society that can create a Leviathan or a T-shirt with the same ease. My chickens squawk and lay a few more fleets to destroy my foes.

[SMELLJAB]

Sounds like a good game there, kevin.

I usually find ithkul on one of my new planets. Then I unplug the computer in disgust. ;)

[KevinG]

Ithkul are ok, I never unplug my com in disgust when I get 'em:noob: (which I always do cuz I look for 'em and always conquer their last planet at least.

Considering I'm a compulsive Cynoid, I'm already hated, by the time I'm halfway through destroying the Ithkul, wherever they may be, everyone in the galaxy hates my guts with a passion and wants me dead. Taking over Ithkul colonies is the bomb too, they are very powerful ground troops, chaching since cynoids suck (I mod them to suck). They are good at research and industry, they are the most resilient pop, even blockaded planets can grow for them. Downside is everyone will hate you within a few turns if they didn't before cuz they grow fast and it's how you want it.

So if you find some Ithkul in your colonies next time, don't fret pet, just use 'em and you'll be happy again;)

[dbouya]

usually.. conquering ithkul and not glassing/gifting the planet...

will eventually destroy most of your entire population... making you ithkul


why would anyone want to be ithkul? if you had simply started as ithkul you coulda been ithkul yet had an extra 50or80 or so race picks

[KevinG]

Usually and eventually are the 2 most important terms you use here.
Also you didn't read the post properly, I said their last planet.
I have played games where I have gone on a conquer fest with the Ithkul and didn't lose my other population centers, so I'm sorry to not agree with you, but it may happen. I do make a habit of controlling my populations better than that though, so that may be why I've never had more Ithkul around than I wanted (fill up my planets in a few turns, huge colony ships, control of build queue so my colony ships are built on other planets than Ithkul planets, migration refusal so they don't leave the planet)
I tend to use the game as opposed to being used by it, but to each his own, thanks for the head's up!!

[JosEPh]

Many have learned to use the captured Ithkul. Others have learned to destroy them. And some do both. D O Y P S (depend on your play style).

JosEPh

[multiworm]

I am playing with humans and turn is almost 200.

I dont exactly remember the numbers since I am at the office now but I have nearly 200, 0000 AU tax and 130 000 AU trade income

I have many ships such as nearly 7 -8 Armadas. And many in the reserves.

I only pay 1400 AU per tern for the ship maintenance and 300 for spies.

So I have nearly 200 times more income then my ship maintenance

I think this is very unbalanced and making the game very easy. Has anybody noticed this before ? and does anybody know which config files should I change for this ?

[MonkeyHead]

thats not many armadas in active service... but yea, it doesnt seem like a lot. want to make it harder? look here: unitvalues.txt in spreadsheets folder. first table says:

TableStart CostandValue
ColumnHeadingsStart Maint ScrapVal SystemBlockedMod OrbitBesiegedMod UnrestL1Mod UnrestL2Mod UnrestL3Mod
RowHeadingsStart
Buildings 0.05 0.5 0.67 0.33 0.75 0.5 0.25
FLU's 0.05 0 1 1 1 1 1
Ships in Reserve 0.005 0.5 1 1 1 1 1
Ships in Service 0.015 0.5 1 1 1 1 1
Armies in Reserve 0.004 0 1 1 1 1 1
Divisions in Service 0.003 0 1 1 1 1 1
Corps in Service 0.002 0 1 1 1 1 1
Armies in Service 0.005 0 1 1 1 1 1
Spies 0.05 0 1 1 1 1 1
Leaders 0.05 0 1 1 1 1 1
TableEnd

changing the numerical values in the first colnum to larger numbers should make your military cost more to maintain.

[danib]

but whiteout giving the orions a bonus to maintaining cost you risk an orion revolt

[MonkeyHead]

ohyea, i remember.... but thats fun! :)

[pedxing]

nobody ever loses by running out of money.

the challenge in Moo3 isn't to see if you can keep from going broke or not.

the challenge is to see if you can build an effective empire or not.

also, remember, your ships and spies are not the only thing you are spending money on... increase the Military, Research, and Grants sliders as far as they will go.

then, if you are still running a surplus, it means your Imperial Tax rate is too high! :D

cut the Imperial rate, and increase the System rate to compensate.

that will funnel more money to your System Seats, which will use the cash to improve production and research.

running up a big treasury doesn't mean the game is too easy... it just means you aren't setting your tax rates right, and that your empire is less efficient than it could be! :haha:

[MonkeyHead]

nobody ever loses by running out of money.
i have, but i did it delibertley to see what would appen but yea, good advice ped. empires arent run to make money. spend more!

[Quinn]

i have, but i did it delibertley to see what would appen but yea, good advice ped. empires arent run to make money. spend more!

I have too, but that was because of the finance wraparound and I really had too much money.

[MonkeyHead]

i set taxes to zero on turn one, and spent lots on sipes, with all fundings set to very high. took about 15 turns, but i went bust and got the game over sequence for only the 3rd or 4th time ever.

[pedxing]

nice. :up:

[MonkeyHead]

the "you lose" anim is actually quite cool. it has fire.

[LordXenophon]

Going down in flames doesn't make losing "cool."

[MonkeyHead]

losing isnt cool - you are right. but fire most certanly is very cool.