Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DemonOfWrath]

How does everyone manage their empire when it starts growing into multiple systems? After playing a few games where I've gotten to the point of expanding rather easily, I've found that, with the method I'd been using of leaving everything based on Earth, that anything more than one jump away from Sol was simply too big a pain to bother with interface-wise, as it'd end up taking about 10 minutes just to set the orders up to deliver everything needed to the system initially (mines, mass drivers, infrastructure), and transporting the minerals between systems was also too big a hassle (my freighters would move everything across in a month or two, then spam me every 6 hours with interrupts) to do more than once every couple of years. Civilian contracts seemed useless outside Sol (tried it, after a few years nothing had happened), and they're slow as hell anyways.

Would it simply be easier to just ship construction factories out to each system and attempt to have each system self-contained except for ship-building (let each one deal with making its own mines, mass drivers, and supplying new neighbouring systems with infrastructure)?

[The Scout]

I tend to make large freighters, and carry a bunch of automated mine to planets, and mass drivers. I then strip mine everything and bring it back to Earth.

[Osmosis Jones]

How does everyone manage their empire when it starts growing into multiple systems?

Pick a planet in the new system, and colonise the crap out of it. Every other body in the system gets covered in automines and mass drivers send everything to the primary colony. After resources and population are built up enough on that primary one, I... usually get wiped out by aggressive aliens, (or a bug, or lose interest etc) at this point. The idea though is to get enough pop & production capacity out there that the planet is independant and able to start expanding on its own terms, with shipyards etc., rather than ferrying everything back to earth.

[Areyar]

I do a more mixed approach, only very desirable planets get the primary colony treatment, the rest just send all their produce to the nearest primary 'node'.

special cases are strategic, listening and research outposts.

[RedKing]

I do cargo groups of 5 freighters with 5 cargo holds each. This means each freighter can carry 1 mine or factory, and they're still cheap and easy to produce.

Once I have a planet that I want to "seed" with industry, I'll set up one round-trip of orders from my homeworld to the new colony, then hit Repeat with a factor of 19 keyed in. Voila. Continuous shipping of 100 mines, factories, whatever. Having multiple groups allows me to ship multiple kinds of stuff simultaneously.

True, it ain't fast. Currently, I have a set of cargo groups seeding the world Corinth (36 Ophiuchi B-III), to act as a new sector capital and administrative hub for the Trinity system (36 Oph is a hellacious trinary system with no less than six potentially habitable worlds and hundreds of mining opportunities). Total aggregate time for a cargo group to finish is about 6.5 years, because it's roughly 130 days travel time between the two. Though I think that could be fixed with the development of megafreighters with 25 cargo holds each (so that each is equivalent to one cargo group). A group of five of those would only need to make four trips, as opposed to the twenty trips it currently takes. As the travel distance increases, economy of scale becomes more and more efficient.

I've only recently started playing around with the use of civilian orders, but I like it. I have a LOT of civvie freighters floating around, so once I set up some contracts, I actually started to see decent movement of facilities. Nowhere as fast as if I directly moved them myself of course, but that stands to reason. It'd be nice if you could prioritize contracts by awarding subsidies or something. I have money out the wazoo, I'd be willing to spend generously to harness the civilian sector.

[EuchreJack]

Your civilian shipping companies can only travel to other systems through jumpgates.  So if you're willing to ignore the security risk, you can build jumpgates on both sides of the jump point, and start using the civilian shipping.

[Sheb]

Well, I mostly use civies myself. Due to years of generous subsidies, I've got 3 civilian companies, each with roughly 15 freighters, each with 5 cargo holds. Sure I could produce my own freighter, but there is much less micromanagement that way, and I also save fuel and earn money (civilians shipping now account for 10-15% of my income).

I love the simplicity of it: Want to colonize a world? Ask the civies to drop 100 infrastrucutes there, they'll continue bringing people and infrastrucutres for free!

Need a mining colony? Ask the civies, and soon 100 brand new automated mines are sitting there.

[Vorbicon]

Question about building jump gates. From the game forums, I've heard someone say that in addition to the Jump Gate construction ship, you also need some freighters to haul 5 jump gate components with it in the same TG. What are these components? I haven't seen any in any construction menu.

[Tarran]

Question about building jump gates. From the game forums, I've heard someone say that in addition to the Jump Gate construction ship, you also need some freighters to haul 5 jump gate components with it in the same TG.

This is incorrect information. You don't need to haul other components to build a Jump Gate as far as I know.

[Vorbicon]

Gah! I could have been building Jump gates by now, but held off because of that. Also, how long does it take to get accepted to post on the official forums? It's been a week or so since I got my email saying I need my request to be reviewed and approved.

[Tarran]

Also, how long does it take to get accepted to post on the official forums? It's been a week or so since I got my email saying I need my request to be reviewed and approved.

That's strange, I got approved about as soon as I signed up.

If you're desperate, you could email Erik via his email on his profile page or the other stuff he gives out. I'm pretty sure he's the one that approves new profiles, though I'm not 100% sure.

[Vorbicon]

Also, a question about TG training. I have a small group of ships set to train, but they don't seem to be getting anything from it. Is there something I need to set up elsewhere, or am I missing something else?

EDIT: One more tiny question. I have my freighters hauling automated miners to various mining colonies in the system, and I have them set to Cycle Orders. The problem is, when they have to refuel, it deletes the haul orders and sets my freighters to refuel indefinitely which forces me to manually reset their orders again. Any way to bypass this?

[Felius]

Also, a question about TG training. I have a small group of ships set to train, but they don't seem to be getting anything from it. Is there something I need to set up elsewhere, or am I missing something else?

EDIT: One more tiny question. I have my freighters hauling automated miners to various mining colonies in the system, and I have them set to Cycle Orders. The problem is, when they have to refuel, it deletes the haul orders and sets my freighters to refuel indefinitely which forces me to manually reset their orders again. Any way to bypass this?

You can set a refuel order in the order cycle, so whenever they hit the planet with refineries they refuel, and don't need to go to the conditional refueling.

[Vorbicon]

Ah, good idea. I gotta say, it's a real pain trying to track down what's causing the time increments to cut themselves short. Wish the game was better at displaying critical information like that to the player.

[Vorbicon]

So, I build my first Jump Gate, send my ship in to construct one on the other side... only to find alien ships waiting on the other side! Problem is, it's cutting my time increments down to nothing. A 30 day increment gets cut down to one minute. Any way to stop this?

EDIT: Ah, nevermind. They vaporized my ship. Bastards. I want to move my military ships in to get revenge. Is there anything special I need to do in order to get them to engage the aliens?