class 5 starport planets (somehow stupid, bug/ai problems)

whats wrong with puting a starport and a couple factories on a low quality planet then making military spending the primary focus?
it dosnt take that much longer to build smaller ships.

though
I do agree that the AI build choices seem a bit.... odd sometimes.

The AI appears to have a high priority to build planet "Defenders" and seems
to lack the logic of "build a ship on planet A and send to defend planet B" ...

Lt Byram

You can buy ships pretty quickly, even on a class 5.
And sometimes that extra ship helps. If nothing else it is good for a couple troop transports during a battle.

Though I'll agree that the AI needs building placement tweaks in the current version (1.11), I personally build starports on many class 4-9 planets (never class 3). Some have major bonuses (I've had a Class 4 with a Precursor Mine on several occaisons), the rest I use to build constructors. Considering that you would need 2150* constructor ships before they'd stop being useful--or, for cultural victory, actually NECESSARY--I don't think there's any arguing that you "have too many constructors" at any given point.




*2150 = 43 logistics and average of 50 mods per starbase

I see the point, that you can buy ships from low class planets too, but is that realy a good choice? The same for constructors.

When I run into a pq9- planet, I usualy build 2 markets, a lab, foodstock and something for morale and turn the planet into a standard low cash-cow. In the early game, I have just about 7-10 manufacturing planets with a starport and all are above PQ15. Even when the random map generator is somehow weird, I always have that much at some point and its far enough.

WIth 10 factories, a planet makes constructors within 1 round, battleships in like 4-6, focus on military even faster, so why to bother with low lvl planets? Even the AI can make better use of loq quality worlds then just as "buy the ship here" sites.

Its one point to have such a planet close by of the enemy border, but deep inside of the own territory? Planetary improvements still need a little tweak for the AI.

I sometimes use a low pq out of the way planet as a producer of a reserve force of ships in case my main planets (somehow) all start getting overwhelmed. Some games this ends up being a waste of a planet, but it has saved me a few times.

On large huge maps I use P4 all the time as mini shipyards creating fighters transports and constructors.

I see the AI building a lot of very powerful attack fighters in the late game. So I see this AI tactic as legitimate. Although the AI is not as good as an experienced player at assembling fleets and striking out.

Sorry dm04, I think you're doing it backwards. You want your banks and farms on your best planets, and your factories and labs on your worst planets. This is because the population on a planet multiplies with the banks on the planet to produce money. So you want to have a large population and lots of banks on the same planet. For example, 2 farms and 10 banks on one planet is much better than the same buildings spread across two planets.

Also, a planet with many factories will waste more resource units than planets with fewer factories because overproduction on a ship is wasted. If you have a planet producing 300 RUs and it's building something that costs 450 RUs, it will waste 150 RUs every 2 turns; it wastes an averge of 75 RUs a turn. But if you have the same factories spread across 3 planets each producing 100 RUs a turn, each planet will waste 50 RUs every 5 turns. In total, that's an average of only 30 RUs a turn wasted. So it's a good idea to spread out the factories.

Yeah, when you get down to planets with PQ of 3 or 4, then a starport isn't worth it ( I'd rather have a lab than a starport that is only powered by 1 or 2 factories), but there's nothing wrong with putting a starport on any planet that has more than a few factories.

There isn't much good use for the class 3 and class 4 planets. Early in the game they can produce useful ships. Later, not much, unless they have bonus tiles that can come into use.

Think about it this way. A ship is the only thing a class 4 planet can produce usefully, because it's the only thing that is produced and then flies away instead of taking up space on the planet.

Think about it this way. A ship is the only thing a class 4 planet can produce usefully, because it's the only thing that is produced and then flies away instead of taking up space on the planet.

Well, that assumes it'll eventually get built and fly away.

That's weird logic to begin with, actually. It makes more sense to put research, trade goods, and galactic wonders on small planets, since they instantly work their magics on all worlds. In fact, I ALWAYS use my secondary home planet like this. I just start some factories self-building when I get the planet, then by the time I want trade goods I get them fast because they're paretially paid for by virtue of being an upgrade (upgrades are cheaper than new buildings). Later trade goods build slower since the factories are partially overwritten, but I can just buy them, so meh.

it also needs to learn to build factories as well on planets like those because in one game where the Drengin kept trying to build a ship on thier class 4 world (one of thier worlds in thier system, I forget the name of it) and they had a factory going, but the time to completion was never. I guess the planets specialization was set to military.

and the intelligence was at beginner, so dunno

hm thats a valuable information nullspace, never thought about it this way