Pointless Buildings

uh, why did you post twice? Sometimes theres a short delay between time of posting and it showing up in recent posts.

Yes there are pointless buildings and pointless techs - eg starbase defences.

You would think it to be a simple enough task to give things enough of a percentage to make them relevant, why this is not always done remains a mystery to me?

They're not pointless, sometimes you just need an extra boost... What would be the fun in a game if everything served a purpose? As an example, 'daydreaming' in The Sims 2. Completely pointless, but still fun to do.

unless in the sims you had 'daydreaming' and also had 'lesser daydreaming'. Lesser daydreaming being less good as daydreaming.

My point being that the galactic resort does somthing which is already done by somthing else but better! Which makes it supremely irrelevant as the OP sugests.

Then go into the xml file and change the '2' into a '4' and you've got your wish.

Which xml file are you referring to, and what, exactly would it change?

A better way would be to give the galactic resort a civilization-wide effect of... say, 30%, PLUS an influence bonus of perhaps 25%. That would make it pretty darn valuable, and would justify a good price tag.

Another method would be to scrap the morale bouns alltogether in exchange for your tourism income doubling up.

If the developers created a new class of improvements that would have an effect on all planets in a system (or a sector, although that would sort of duplicate a starbase) and could only be used once per star system, that would open up a lot of new strategies, especially for low PQ planet colonization and development. Both the resort and the police building would be perfect (and useful) for one per star system buildings.

I did some test and the Secret Police Center works exactly like the 20% morality building. No difference.

You can easily test this. Find a planet that has a low moral. Build a 20% moral building look at new moral for planet, then re-load and instead build the the Secret Police Center. You will see the exact same result.

So it is a pointless building just like the Galactic Resort.

Secret Police Center (only does 20% moral boost which is far less than 40% from the best moral building)
Galactic Resort (only gives 25% moral boost, which is far less than 40% from the best moral building)

These buildings might have been okay before they gave a big boost to the moral buildings, but now they are pointless and a total waste of a tile as you can't destroy these buildings or upgrade them.

- Livonya

agree

Can't speak for the galactic resort, but the secret police center was *supposed* to work differently. The morale bonus was meant to be added to the base and so be unaffected by population. This would make it pointless on low population worlds, but *very* useful on very high population worlds. Unfortunately it was broken, and last I saw (many months ago!) Frogboy wasn't even acknowledging that it *was* useless so I doubt it's been fixed.

Not to mention the Food Distribution Center, or a couple of the 'Hyperion' buildings, or the nerfed manufacturing capital, or the fusion... need I go on?

Or the Galactic Guidebook, or Planetary Defenses, or the Orbital Fleet Manager, or Fertility Clinics.

There seems to be a persistent problem with this sort of stuff in GalCiv. Remember when DL came out and the "better" economy buildings would actually lower your bonus?

Anyhow, the Secret Police Center and Galactic Resort are impressively pointless. The Galactic Guidebook (which will expensively allow all your ships to survey anomalies a few hundred years after the last anomaly has been explored!) is right up there too. But the overall winner in DA has to be the Manufacturing Capital - it gives a 25% bonus to one world, while every single planet you have can be cruising along with a Quantum Power Plant yielding a 100% bonus.

Personally, I always find this sloppiness to be one of the big turnoffs to GC. I feel like I can never trust the game to tell me what stuff is going to do.

Fertility Clinics can be useful if you have a planet that's exclusively producing Troop Tranports. They can use up quite a bit of your population so it would be good to replenish it as quickly as possible, especialy if it's also high production planet and pumping out transports every few turns.

The Fusion Power Plants etc. are good for planets that are being supplied by an asteroid field. They will boost the production from that source as well, not just your Factories.

Do the Fusion plants boost your free production?



That sounds good in theory, but I haven't found use for it in practice. FC's are a little expensive, Aphrodisiac seems to render them entirely unnecessary, and I just mine population off of my planets about to hit the farm limit. I guess you could produce a specialized breeder planet, but that sure takes a lot of micro.

Here I thought I was missing something about the buildings that seemed useless - I thought there must be SOME reason they are there.

Guess not.

Actually it's alot less micro. Just set the shipyard to build only Troop transports, set up a rally point for them, and you can just let it do it's thing. As long as you keep the population high, you can pump out a steady stream of them, without it affecting the local economy at all.

I'm presuming so, though I don't know whether they actually do. The description says X percentage boost to production, so that would imply resources coming from asteroid fields as well.

The last patch buffed the MC and nerfed power plants. So it should be better now.

I suspect several buildings being scoffed here are perfectly handy to some players, depending on their strategies, map settings, etc. (The same goes for starbase defences, which have often been really handy to me.) But I too have never once built an Orbital Fleet Manager, a Hyperion Shipyard, or several other improvements.

It'd be really swell if we had a right-click menu in the build queue that would let us make items visible only on the All list, and a command when you're viewing the All list to make an item visible on New or Old.

Of course what I really want is a way to create and manage multiple build lists, e.g. New Low PQ, New High PQ, Hostile Environment, Money Maker, Ship Builder, etc.

I'm wondering whether the power plants also boost the free production from things like racial bonuses, ethical choices, and economy starbases, as well as the asteroids. Or do you pay for it? I'm pretty sure it does increase your free production from starbases, since those are multiplied with the planet's ip.

How high can you realistically boost a breeder planet's population growth to? Can you realistically achieve 500m/turn and produce a 2B troop transport every 4 turns?

I use starbase defenses all the time. +15 vs. missles sure gives your offensive modules time to buzz thru the massive Drendgin missle cruisers and allow the base to survive.

It has been a while since this was last discussed. Are these still "impressively pointless", or have they been fixed?