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[Shooer]

Try Ganymede or Phobos.  I would also report it to the dev on the forum.  He needs to clean up the artifact messages.

[Leyic]

An update on my situation, in case anyone cares. In the week since I last posted, I've managed to set up everything necessary to extract raw materials from Mercury, ship them to Earth, and convert them to cellphones at the rate of 220 per tick. Since demand for cellphones on Earth has steadily been between 300%-400% across the board, this results in an easy $600k revenue per tick and costs under 10% revenue. Since I only have to watch the three routes selling product on a single chart, this certainly takes less work than arbitrage for about the same income. The downside is I've used up nearly all my structure logistics capacity to accomplish this, so any additional income will need to come through arbitrage. Additionally, being invested in only one good, I'm vulnerable to a drop in cellphone demand across Earth; there aren't any other gadgets I can make with the components I make, and to expand into any other component production will use up what little logistics capacity I have left. In any case, it's nice passive income, but disappointing compared to what a good number of fresh arbitrage routes can bring in considering how much investment was required.

There is now a second problem I have to consider: how to defend my stuff off world. Not that I've had any trouble yet, but an undefended staging post is a tempting target, and NPCs don't care about who they hit. I've tried running the combat numbers through some spreadsheet simulations to determine what gives the best bang-for-the-buck, but the results aren't exactly conclusive. Scouts and corvettes are the cheapest to operate per amount of damage they can do across the board versus other ships, but would take loads of logistic capacity to damage anything big. Conversely, dreadnoughts are most efficient logistically, but are terribly inefficient to operate from a financial standpoint. Cruisers seem like the best midpoint on both scales. However, I should also consider that large ships have hangar capacity, and that bombers are effective against said large ships. When I consider a cruiser with a level 2 bomber versus a battleship with a level 5 bomber, I find I need three cruisers to match the performance of the battleship, requiring 2/3rds the upkeep and twice the logistics capacity. There's still a lot I haven't considered (mixed fleets, leveling ships, performance degradation due to damage, other small craft compliments, special units, random effects, etc.) but from what I have considered, it seems like cruiser+bomber is best for financial efficiency while battleship+bomber is best for logistical efficiency. I tried looking through battle histories to confirm my findings, but it seems there hasn't been a lot of ship v. ship combat, which is understandable given the relative difficulty in intercepting moving targets.

Anyhow, that's a lot of text. What I'd like to know is whether or not cruiser+bomber is a reasonable approach to defending my assets from typical raiding threats, assuming I park three or four over critical areas and keep an extra fleet around for retaliatory purposes. Also, what vulnerabilities haven't I accounted for? (Quickly looking over the numbers, five destroyers should win against the single cruiser in ideal combat for the same cost and upkeep and twice logistics, but that's not considering the bomber screen.)

[Sensei]

I've started up Supercomputers manufacturing, with all the materials sourced from Mars. There's no overcrowding penalty on any of the stuff involved with that, and I'm making over 500 computers per turn for great profits (though in retrospect there's way more demand for Industrial Computers, but I don't want to rearrange all my stuff). I also have my component and final processing on mars, which was a mis-step as I could have had a 50% upkeep cost reduction by putting my stuff next to my headquarters on earth, but it's still very profitable and now I cannot be bothered to re-build everything since it takes so long. I also started artifact production at 400% Ocrowd, which is already equal to the entirety of my other production costs combined so I'm not sure if it's worth it. Anyway, my strategy is to keep upgrading my buildings until I'm making a steady 1000 Supercomputers per turn, because why not? If I want later I might be able to just pump different raw materials into the same component and end-product facilities too for a different output.

Military has been a non-issue for me. I was warned I might be attacked on mars so I built up early but nothing ever came of it. What I have noticed just looking at the numbers, though, is that ground units and ground defenses, when upgraded to mid/high level, are just STUPID POWERFUL, and inexpensive in comparison to large ships. Warfare is clearly stacked in favor of defenders by this balance choice. If I were you I'd put a military base on planets where you're worried about being attacked, on top of your favorite building on that planet. Upgrade it and build some static defenses like a fortification, railgun and ion cannon. Then once the base itself is upgraded a bit make some level 4 or 5 Infantry/Armored/Artillery and have them stand on your other buildings. Alternatively make a high level military base at your HQ and ferry high-powered ground units where they're needed by carrier, it will be more powerful and cheaper than a Dreadnought or whatever.

I also wouldn't let the logistics penalty stop you from expanding your operations too much. Less than ~20% or whatever is basically standard operation, and I've seen people with 80% who were perfectly profitable.

Now I have a question for all of you: How viable is it to attack freighters between planets and take their stuff? >

[Shooer]

Can't take stuff from a freighter(or anything else) as long as it's in cargo.  Can take from ground.  So would have to kill freighter to get it to drop it.  Problem is catching freighter, and killing it.  You could set an ambush with enough damage in a single tile that you know that the freighter will be in during a turn.  Just have to figure out what tile the freighter is going to be in.  Combat happens AFTER movement so need to be where it's landing for that turn.  Can't attack mid move since it's basically teleportation.

[Leyic]

Good point on the upgraded ground units. A level 10 ground unit getting a 100x multiplier to offense and defense while a level 10 spacecraft only gets a 3x multiplier at most to one or the other certainly seems overpowered. That said, the documentation doesn't say how much upkeep goes up with an upgrading ground unit. If the multiplier also affects upkeep the same way, then an upgraded ground unit is no more cost effective than a level 1 ground unit. Furthermore, even most level 10 ground units have trouble quickly taking down larger spacecraft, particularly if the spacecraft have a full slate of defensive upgrades. Granted, spacecraft would have an even harder time with the ground units, but the larger craft can carry bombers. But a level 5 bomber is going to have trouble with any level 10 ground unit. So ground units have the advantage, apparently, though the combat would be drawn out, giving an attacker monitoring the situation a chance to pull out.

So I guess level 10 fighters and bombers provide the most cost-effective defense? Bombers to deal with ships and ground units while fighters protect the bombers from other fighters (or possibly variteks since fighters aren't good at taking down fighters). This appears to be what Church does; lots of carriers with bombers, fighters, variteks, and special units. Commandos should be the most cost-effective by the numbers, but like scouts, it'd take loads of them to hurt larger ships (though again, commandos should win given enough time).

Then there are ion cannons, which are even more cost-effective and at level 10 can take down any ship short of a monolith with full hangar upgrades and three level 10 bombers. But those are static encampments and very vulnerable until they get to a high level.

Still searching for a very cost-effective option before I start investing. I'm more concerned about NPCs, really, since they don't care about deterrents and can keep attacking until their base is destroyed.

[Sensei]

I still say plop down some static defenses and make a carrier of ground units if you want to chase down NPC bases (are those a thing?)

The cost of having a mid-level version of all the static defenses (Fort, Railgun, Missiles, Shields, and Ion Cannon) is pretty easy to ignore if your business is profitable. Having all of them will draw a lot of fire off any other ground units you might have there and do damage reliably to any type of attacker.

[Nathiuz]

Planet Name: Nth 2 ( Q T R H V E K M G O M O K N )

No number/letter reassignment or anything, literally just the about string then the cords encryption which was easy enough.

Take every second letter (starting on T, since it is the second letter)   

Regards,
Director Nathiuz Silbermanner
Centauri Colonization Initiative

[deoloth]

Planet Name: Nth 2 ( Q T R H V E K M G O M O K N )

No number/letter reassignment or anything, literally just the about string then the cords encryption which was easy enough.

Take every second letter (starting on T, since it is the second letter)   

Regards,
Director Nathiuz Silbermanner
Centauri Colonization Initiative

Thanks!

[Poltifar]

Just started playing this yesterday. Is it just me, or do all cities on Earth seem to have way more demand on most stuff than there is supply of it? Is this intended, or is it balanced around having more players than there currently is?

[Leyic]

From my understanding of the problem, players are artificially increasing the population of Earth by using "geoboosters" (artifact objects). This results in increased demand as you're seeing, which in turn results in increased revenue when selling to these cities, so most powerful players seem to prefer the artificially increased demand. The downside is that the higher the demand, the faster the population will decrease, so the whole system will come crashing down should people stop deploying geoboosters on Earth.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

That sounds like a comic book villain's evil plan to hold the system hostage.

[Shooer]

See as the same artifacts can do the exact opposite thing, it kind of is.

[Poltifar]

I suppose I'll have to be careful about what I'm producing then, as the overcrowding penalties on resources on Earth are pretty high. They won't possibly be profitable if the demand comes crashing down...

[Leyic]

If you're willing to look over the demand tables and update your routes every three days or so, arbitrage is a cheap way to make lots of money early on. Once you have decent money, build some structure APCs, build a shipyard, level it up enough, and build a freighter*. Then you can get your resources away from Earth and bring them to your headquarters' location for processing. This won't completely help if demand crashes, but the raw materials will be cheaper, and you'll get more revenue from the multiplier being higher for not-raw materials.

*You could skip building a shipyard if you find someone willing to sell you a freighter.

[Poltifar]

How dangerous is space? Should I be making a fleet to protect my freighter once it's built?