Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Starports everywhere? If not, why not?

The AIs seem to want them everywhere.

I've played scads of DL and DA games through many updates, and I'm devoted to the largest maps. I've watched the AIs get steadily better about many things, e.g. ship design and colonization tactics. But I'm scratching my head still when it comes to the apparently universal AI appeal of Starports: I find them on almost every world I conquer, even when there's nothing else there.

My one sloppy notion about how this might make sense relates to the AIs vs. really large maps problem. Could it be that a Starport everywhere makes sense from a short-game POV and the AIs can't change behavior when they're on Huge and Gigantic maps? I will *very* rarely rush-build a Starport when I both have a ridiculous economy and think that a new-to-me sector might need a sudden infusion of firepower or I want to send a constructor or colony ship quickly to the extreme limit of my support range.

Otherwise, Starports on low-to-no industry planets make no sense to me. Please explain and/or speculate.

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A guess?

I have noticed that the AI seems to prefer to not build up a treasury. If that were the case, they would try to maximize their spending so it equaled their income. Therefore, they build starports everywhere to make use of the manufacturing points, which would otherwise be unused and returned to their treasuries (which the AI percieves as bad).

But hey, I have no clue.

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Starports are very Important. They build Starships. I put them on every planet FIRST. The more facilities the more starships, and the more variaties at a time.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

Therefore, they build starports everywhere to make use of the manufacturing points, which would otherwise be unused and returned to their treasuries (which the AI percieves as bad).

Nice insight.

Your guess is probably as good as anyone else this side of Brad's.

But all in all I think GW's observation that Starports on most every planet is a necessity in a short game and the AI's merely do the same thing regardless of game size.

Could it be that a Starport everywhere makes sense from a short-game POV and the AIs can't change behavior when they're on Huge and Gigantic maps?

I used to play gigantic abundant all games exclusively, but I've recently come to appreciate some of the idiosyncracies of the smaller game by playing Metaverse League games. It's not always obvious how a strategy translates based on size but certainly the concept of planet specialization that works so well when you have a large number of planets does not translate well at all to smaller maps. This actually came as a shock to me that required quite a bit of scrambling to recover from.

I would guess that if you're going to have one basic strategy that's used for all game types the safest one to implement would be the general approach where each planet has a bit of everything; production, research and income. As millertime points out production equals ships and ships require starports.

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Myself I put a starport on probably 75-80% of my worlds. I don't specialize many of my worlds. Most of them are self sustaining. As such, a great deal of them need starports.

The only worlds that don't get a starport are those PQ6 and under. Basically anything over PQ6 gets a starport.

All of my planets above PQ6 have generally the same layout. About 10% production facilities, 5% farms, 5% happiness, 40% economy, 30% research, and the other 10 usually a mix of either influence, or special buildings (wonders, defensive structures, etc.) And of course, a starport.

These worlds can't build the largest of my ships very fast, but that's not their purpose. Their purpose is to churn out small to medium sized ships at a decent rate. I usually have 1 or 2 purely production worlds to put out the larger ships.

So basically, whether or not you have a starport on all worlds depends largely upon whether or not you specialize every planet. I'm guessing the AI doesn't specialize their planets, and so they put starports everywhere.

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i used to put a starport on every world, but as i like to play gigantic maps its not really needed. so, for me, i usually have a starport per sector as any decent ship i make past the first year is more than capable of reaching the other planets in a given sector within one turn. on medium or smaller maps, even tho space is more valuable i tend to use my starports a lil more since i need to make sure i can quickly build and defend a world if need be. Tho, I guess its all relative. I like my one per sector technique, but whatever works for you

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I generally like to have one in every system. I too keep most of my planets generalized, roughly 70%, the rest are specialized based on planetary bonuses and the needs of there perticular region of space.

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... I'm guessing the AI doesn't specialize their planets, and so they put starports everywhere.

The AI does specialize its planets. Probably not as extreme as most human players, but still from time to time I've seen some pretty dedicated specialization.

Advantages of having a starport at almost every planet (yep, discovered those the hard way, I tended to have too few starports):
- even with little spending going into production, you can build a sizeable military at a steady pace
- once the ship is ready, it's nearby to defend, no need to cover huge spans of space before your ship will be where it's most needed
- indeed no "waste" of unused production as you can keep building your military and constructors

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i try to put starports on every planet tht i can afford to, i.e. anything over PQ6, i also rush build em (only 186 bc) so wat the hell u might as well

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Generally, I use very low quality planets (less than six) to build trade goods and research/economic facilities only. I do not specialize any other planets, as I largely play on medium maps.

That said, any planet that has at least two factories that I don't foresee upgrading into something else will also have a starport. While these planets cannot build military vessels with any useful frequency, I like to have the pump out constructors at all times, since I use starbases widely.

Is this why the AI does it? I doubt it. But you never know.

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...
That said, any planet that has at least two factories that I don't foresee upgrading into something else will also have a starport. While these planets cannot build military vessels with any useful frequency, I like to have the pump out constructors at all times, since I use starbases widely.

Is this why the AI does it? I doubt it. But you never know.

There's only 1 way, no make that 2 ways to find out: espionage and conquest

The AI tends to build quite a number of constructors + all these starports are quite often used for a gradual increase in military (e.g. 5 planets that will each build some vessel every 20 turns is still quite nice as long as you don't need them urgently)
In addition, they will use this starport-per-planet to rush build military ships if you fail to conquer their planet all at once.

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Hum...Many factors.
-1or2 of heavy industrial plnt for capital ships.
-planet with low qualiy. I rather put starports on them and use as supportive
military production center.

So for me a no starport planet should have next requirement.
-plnts is fairly near the home world.
Have good research bonus,approuval and or agricultural boost,
but not necessary all. Readardless of planet size.
(Given the research coordiantion center, one tile for sp and
several other tile for factories are less evaluated-give more
boost in research instead of being mediocre military center)

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If you build cheap ships (mostly Constructors) on high manufacturing planets - you usually waste resources as there are large left-overs. (If you produce 80% of a constructor in one round - you don't need another 80% for round two. So small planets make excellent cheap ship builders - it takes a while but less ressources get wasted if you only produce 22% of a constructor in one turn.

That is 2%/wasted per turn compared to 30%/per turn on a maufactoring planet!

Btw: what else should you do with those planets? If you have no starport, but factories you are done building the infrastructure soon and then pay money for the buildings without getting anything. If you build labs, you get some research but even with a focus set on civil - it takes ages to get decent research buildings (and buying is rather costly). Wonders take too long to build because you don't have enough tiles + your ratio between factories and completed buildings is lousy, as there is not much space for wonders. Finally population and economy don't make much sense. People are unhappier on crappy planets - population grows more slowly and it takes a while to install (let alone upgrade) economy buildings.

So I have a starport on most planets (I try to build it as late as possible on some planets - trying to use social production for buildings/wonders first). This guarantees me a slow but continuous stream of constructors to upgrade existing starbases.

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