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whismerhill

Join Date 03/2006

+19

Planet Production Focus: a balance issue ?

or how to not build a single research building

First, let's introduce this thread
this thread is meant to bring something to the attention of stardock crew
I'm currently enjoying the game more than enough right now

testing methods :
-1: new game with race setup with no bonuses to research (+the tech to build xeno labs)
-2: overall spending slider to 100%
-3: I rush build one building on the homeworld only if I need to build one and only test things on this first turn

0 buildings / social 100% / research 0% + focus => 6 points produced in research
1 xenolab / social 100% / research 0% + focus => 6 points produced in research
1 basic factory / social 100% / research 0% + focus => 8 points produced in research

so here we have a factory that produces research points and that's the whole problem using this method it may be possible to bypass entirely the whole research branch and moreover to not build a single research structure

for comparison some more numbers
1 xenolab / social 90% / research 10% => 3 points produced in research
1 xenolab / social 90% / research 10% + focus => 7 points produced in research
0 buildings / social 0% / research 100% => 24 points produced in research
1 basic factory / social 0% / research 100% => 24 points produced in research
1 xenolab / social 0% / research 100% => 32 points produced in research

here we see that outside planetary focus, factories does not produce research

I don't know, maybe all that is an intended feature
I didn't find any thread talking about this, that's why I post it now and not to complain about it since as I said I enjoy playing already...

have fun everyone

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ok Cari_Elf answered this on IRC :
< Cari_Elf > The initial colony gives you some research
< Cari_Elf > and the focus buttons are supposed to give you some production even if you're not spending in those areas
< Cari_Elf > that's what they're for, to shift production
< Cari_Elf > and it's not a 1 to 1 shift on purpose

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Factories provide Military and Social production.

Labs provide Research production.

How precisely is this suprising?

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No, but if you want more Research production on your home world early on it's better to buy another Factory, because you will go from 54 to 64 production and then when you dial it back to 54 you will have, say, 3 extra units of research. If you bought a lab you'd only get one or two extra units, because your sliders are so heavily pushed to military early in the game.

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Factories provide Military and Social production.

with using focus factories can provide a small amount of research

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It's transferred on a 4 for 1 basis IIRC. So yes, if your slider is at less than 20% on research, and you can afford the extra production, then you might as well build factories instead of research buildings and put the focus on research. However, you do NOT get any buildings bonus from "shifted" production. Eg if you had nothing but factories on a planet with the focus on research then building a tech capital would make no difference (well, very little difference...the bonus WOULD be applied to research produced by the initial colony)

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I recently thought about this.

What if, instead of researching down the research tech-line I would focus on the industry-line. I could complete the industry-line twice as quickly. Except for a few money-farm planets, all my planets would be factory only (and a starport). So I could have all of my planets full of high-level factories quickly. they do a decent amount of research when focused on research and can pump out ships quickly if need be.

Doesn't work well in practice.

-Neb

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Doesn't work well in practice.

Really? I found it worked quite nicely. You can churn out perfectly tailored military forces pretty much on demand. You'll only be doing roughly half the research of a normal balanced setup, so tech trading is needed on the higher levels.

You can do it the other way round too...start off with enough factories to build the research labs at a reasonable rate then as you progress into the middle game, convert the factories into labs, put the spending sliders to 100% research and then just focus on social or military as required. Of course, you'll build at a snail's pace but you'll have such a huge tech lead you won't need very many ships to completely dominate. Works fine up to masochistic when you hit a wall. Or at least, *I* hit a wall...it may be possible to still succeed with this strategy if you perfect the little details (the transition is a tricky balancing act).

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I don't even know if it's really necessary to shift
ok I'm not playing at the highest intelligence level but I'm doing fine with at least 3 factories on each world and focus on research for every world
that's with gigantic + habitable too + slowest tech rate

ok some might say that perhaps the game is too easy with this setup, frankly I don't care
but I'm really interested by results for those who say :

Doesn't work well in practice.

please I'd like some explanations as to why, and perhaps some numbers if you can

thanks

edit : another question for you guys : who puts more than 20% on research on average?

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I don't even know if it's really necessary to shift

No it isn't. You'll just win quicker.

edit : another question for you guys : who puts more than 20% on research on average?

OK, now I'm confused. I thought with the first comment you were talking about the "fill the planets with research buildings" strategy with focus on military or social as needed. But now I think you're talking about the "fill with factories and focus on research"? If so, it's a difficulty level thing. Anything above crippling you'll be absolutely battered in the tech race...although frankly there's an excellent chance you will be however you play things. At crippling you shouldn't have too much difficulty keeping up techwise and anything below you should be able to lead quite easily.

I usually put 50% or more into research and my planets are dominated by research labs. I play with no tech trading so I just want to get out to a huge tech lead and dominate that way.

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thanks random50 , there was actually two questions, you answered them fine
as I did not get to the point where I feel confident enough to even scratch the crippling AI level ...

this sheds new light on my future strategies and I thank you for that

but still.... 50% research would seem to put a hurt on my production worlds ...

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If you have a strong enough research lead, you only need very light production because you will be able to design virtually indestructible ships. You will literally be able to totally destroy an enemy fleet of 150+ warships with just a couple of dozen. I often have just 2 or 3 planets turning out my warships. The rest are permanently (fairly slowly) turning out constructors, transports, scouts or any other miscellaneous ships I need.

If it works on the map you're playing, it's a good idea to have a production *cluster* (or clusters) rather than production planets. The idea is to pick a group of 3 or 4 planets which are close enough together to be within the influence of a single economy starbase and cover them in factories. Once you've done that, build as many economy starbases to boost production on those planets as you find necessary to turn out your high end ships at reasonable pace.

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