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Home » news » forums » Space Empires V » Space Empires V FAQs

Ressource handling strategy

Submitted by Thona on Thu, 2006-11-16 01:26. Space Empires V FAQs

Ok, got the demo working a little Smiling Here a question.

For a "realistic" game you want to play with limited ressources, naturally.

OTOH that means that ressources ARE limited, naturally. And that means that wasting them is not goodin the long turn.

It looks to me like:

* The storage facilities are really really really limited (i.e. small), AND
* all the ressource producing elements simply produce ressources, regardless whether they can be stored or not.

How do you guys handle a good strategy for that? Put one or two large planets aside for storage (of mostly minerals)? Green large planets are not exactly abundant, and make much better research centers:-)

I also seem not to be able to upgrade stroage facilities (i.e. have to tear them down and rebuild them), which makes it even harder to handle that part.

Also, how do you handle the mid game? I can see it coming that I am running out of ressources on the core worlds. Getting new and new settlements is hard thanks to rising maintenance requirements. You guys switch to asteroid belts? What you use there to mine? Takes a LOT of BIG ships to make a difference.

Remote mining - does it also work in a non-colonized system? I had one system two jumps from my homeworld (and directly attached to one that I owned) that had a star, no planets to colonize and a dozen really good asteroid belts (really good as in: 750.000+ minerals earch). Can I remote-mine a system with no colony in it?

‹ Using Blender for creating ship sets very strange combat bug... ›
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SirKid's picture

I can't answer your

Submitted by SirKid on Thu, 2006-11-16 09:43.

I can't answer your questions but I think you bring up a really good point. I've thought about playing a game with limited resources but I never considered that my resource centers might continue to produce resource even if I don't need them thereby waste them. Do you know this happens for sure? If so, sounds like something that should be addressed but I don't have a clue how.

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It gets worse (by design).

Submitted by Thona on Thu, 2006-11-16 10:48.

It gets worse (by design). If you miss a spaceport, they also work - and all ressources get thrown away.

it IS hard, though - unless you very carefully manage your production and put some serious research into storage and actually build a LOT of storage facilities, the consumption varies quite a bit. I also think you can not mothball facilities, or? Otherwise you could just build them "in case" and mothball them, turning them on in case of a shortage, or when the planet is blocked.

I think limited ressoruces make thing a lot of fun, but it is a tad too complicated.

Anyone an answer on remote-mining a remote-system without colony (and not able to have one, due to lack of planets)?

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Rilbur's picture

Remote Mining

Submitted by Rilbur on Thu, 2006-11-16 11:10.

Remote mining, by nature, bypasses any need for a spaceport.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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Mod Designer

Thona wrote: For a

Submitted by Gideon on Thu, 2006-11-16 12:13.

Thona wrote:
For a "realistic" game you want to play with limited ressources, naturally.

I'm not sure how "realistic" that is. Challenging, sure, but the sheer mass of the matter involved in fully playing out a planet is staggering. Only the construction of things like ringworlds and sphereworlds (which DO already eliminated the inner planets in a system, presumably for materials) would be costly enough to be measured on a planetary scale. Ships and buildings are so insignificant comparied to a planet's raw mass of materials, that they don't effectivly count.

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Remote asteroid mining is

Submitted by Bolter on Thu, 2006-11-16 15:50.

Remote asteroid mining is the way to go, really.

All you need is L10 mineral extraction to get the robotic miner component. Slap it on a 110kT large satellite, and just have your largest freighter with a satellite bay deploy them in mass. Satellites are quick & cheap to build as well as low on maintenance.

It takes a while to realize that mounting a robo-miner on a ship hull ends-up costing more in maintenance than it produces. The maintenance cost for a simple frigate with nothing but engines, a master computer, and a robo-miner costs well over the 1k resources it brings in per turn. Once you transition remote extraction into satellites, though, you'll see a huge increase in resources.

Next simply start replacing planet miners for storage, and you'll finally get to the point where you can build up your fleets without concern for maintenance costs. Do leave some planet miners just in case the enemy manages to get a warship lose in your asteroid field (not good!)

_________________________________________
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
Moltke

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Noticed something about robo-miners

Submitted by Supreme Chancel... on Thu, 2006-11-16 16:02.

I was using the same strategy Bolter was using but I noticed that in the game I had going there was a discrepency in the amount of resources replenished per turn. For example, net mineral was saying it was around 100k and I had about 150k/200k in storage. Come next turn it was something like 180k/200k in storage. *scratches head* Something not quite right as the numbers reported from remote mining were not matching the actual results.

Could it have anything to do with the fact that each miner requires 100 supply per turn? I noticed that several of my sat. groups were running out of supplies yet they were still reporting that they were producing.

--
Supreme Chancellor Zannis of the T'Nar Republic

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SC, I think that's because

Submitted by Bolter on Thu, 2006-11-16 16:29.

SC, I think that's because the storage can only fill up as much resources as the planet where it's built has available per turn. No planet has 50kT of resources available per turn, so while you may have a lot of storage available, it will fill-up at the rate that the planet resources can support.

I'm not sure if mining satellites use any of the resources they produce for their own maintenance, but I do know that I've never had one stop mining because of no supplies. In fact, I don't build any supplies into them, and they work fine (?)

_________________________________________
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
Moltke

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Rilbur's picture

Bolter

Submitted by Rilbur on Thu, 2006-11-16 16:59.

Bolter, I have no clue what you were trying to say. Could you try and rephrase that first paragraph?

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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It had to do with Supreme

Submitted by Bolter on Thu, 2006-11-16 17:20.

It had to do with Supreme chancellor's observation that even if you have like 50k surplus resources per turn, and you have 50k free storage available that turn, your storage will not fill up in that single turn.

That is because each storage gets filled from local resources, in the planet where it's physically built, rather than from the empire-wide surplus. So, you may have 50k surplus resources empire-wide, but your storage facility will only fill up as fast as your planet's resources allow.

I hope that's more clear.

_________________________________________
"No plan survives contact with the enemy"
Moltke

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Rilbur's picture

What?

Submitted by Rilbur on Thu, 2006-11-16 19:14.

Um... storage is actually stored locally? Last I checked, I thought storage was empire wide.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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That is because each storage

Submitted by Thona on Sat, 2006-11-18 02:45.

That is because each storage gets filled from local resources

Definitly NOT. I had a setup with dedicated storage planets (I.e. only storage on them) and they still filled up.

Btw., thanks a ton for the info on the maintenance cost too high for ships - did not know that. And the idea with satellites is great. I had the idea to use a base, but bases are not movable and a lot of work. Satellites obviously work. Another reason to go for larger shp sizes asap. Also they are easy to deploy and move - finally the mobility I need to manage supply and demand.

I Just with maintenance cost were less, and building costs higher. Right now the game is spending WAY too much on normal maintenance for ships, compared to the cost to build them.

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Just an addition to make. I

Submitted by Thona on Sat, 2006-11-18 08:12.

Just an addition to make. I managed to get a game into contact with two other empires. BOTH (!) were totally down. No ships, just a handfull (ok, more, but just colonies) with no minerals left.

Seems like our friendly AI has a problem with limited supply scenarios - or I am just running into a very stupid side issue. But two empires without ships looks like I own the map.

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Rilbur's picture

Limited resources and AI, also maintenince Vs. Build costs

Submitted by Rilbur on Sat, 2006-11-18 11:19.

The AI has always had issues with limited resources, IIRC -- even in SEIV.

Also,as far as maintenance Vs. Build cost goes, modding those are INCREDIBLY easy. Well, maintenence anyways -- there's a control in settings.txt for it. TO mod building costs, you'd have to go through components/vehiclesizes and increase everything by the desired amount (adding 0's to make it 10x isn't too terribly hard, just time consuming).

edit:

That said, if you're lazy you could just increase the ship SIZES by 10X and watch costs syrocket as people add more and more stuff in... dunno how the AI would handle either one though.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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Discrepency in resource production

Submitted by Supreme Chancel... on Sat, 2006-11-18 20:05.

Here is what is currently showing for resource production per turn in the game that I am playing:

From Colonies = 74,656
From Ships = 129,040
From Trade = 0
From Tarriffs = 0
From Remote Mining = 129,040
Total = 332,736
Total Expenses 180,780
Net = 151,956

See the problem here? It's counting remote mining twice in both the From Ships line and From Remote Mining lines. So... the net should actually be 22,916.
--
Supreme Chancellor Zannis of the T'Nar Republic

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Rilbur's picture

Sounds Familiar

Submitted by Rilbur on Sat, 2006-11-18 21:18.

That sounds vaguely familiar, like something that used to happen in SEIV.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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Also,as far as maintenance

Submitted by Thona on Sun, 2006-11-19 06:43.

Also,as far as maintenance Vs. Build cost goes, modding those are INCREDIBLY easy.

You mean the developer was so stupid not to think about the balance for a moment himself? Modding-ability is not the same like a well thought out game.

My real complaint goes in two directions:
* Too high mainenacne means that ressource lack immediatly kils your maintenance, instead of primarily slowing down your new development. I would expect a shop to use 2% to 4% of it's build costs for maintenance, mostly.
* It also means that ships are pretty much "build and get rid of" material. Building ships is mostly a factor of shipyards, the resource allocation is a secondary thing as it has to be there ANYWAY for maintenance (unless you mothball the ships, that is, naturally).

If maintenance would e cheaper, compared to higher investments for the items, the way the game is played is fundamentally different.

That said, I am seriously disappointed by the incompetence of the AI on that thing. I do not have the luxury of playing with human opponents, and I rather prefer ressource limited games - but the way it goes that just is not possible, as our AI is just brutlaly incompetent on that thing. Sadly.

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Rilbur's picture

Modding

Submitted by Rilbur on Sun, 2006-11-19 10:15.

Thona wrote:
Also,as far as maintenance Vs. Build cost goes, modding those are INCREDIBLY easy.

You mean the developer was so stupid not to think about the balance for a moment himself? Modding-ability is not the same like a well thought out game.

No, I'm saying you can go ahead and change it to your liking.

The "core" of this series has always been its modding, if you want a better AI try the balance mod -- and I believe several others are working on better stock AI's already.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

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