0rion79

Join Date 01/2010

Engine for non-combat units?

Pro and cons about speed vs. cost

Until now, I've had the tendency to equip all of my non-combat units (colony ship, advanced transport tropps, space miners and constructos) with the fastest engins that I could afford both thanks to miniaturization tech and new drives technologies.

As result, I've seen the following effects:

- ships become extremely expensive to build and mantain

- only the most powerful planets can build them at a decent speed

- faster are the ships, lesser is the time that they need to reach a destination and this reduce the maintenance cost for those shame ships (if colony or constructors) and the extra speed makes more convenient to build those ships if they have to quickly reach a far away destination.

This may sound quite obvious, but I've also seen that the Ion drive looks like the panacea. At the top of miniaturization and drives technology, the Ion drive looks as the cheapest of all engines: if I fill any ship only with Ion drives, it will be always cheaper to build rather than other ships with different engines that provide the same global speed.

Now, since it is really hard to optimize ships production on very large empires, I was thinking to use the Ion drive only for non-combat units due to the great positive balance among extra speed and production cost, which would make those ships affordable even by planets with a poor production.

What do you think about?

Also, even if unrelated to this question, does it have any meaning to put shields on an ship without weapons, that can't shoot back?

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

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I usually maintain a long-range and short-range (local) design for constructors and colony ships. With a bit of miniaturization and a medium hull, you can crank out local builder/founders without engines and still have them get 'spent' within a reasonable number of turns. I usually build the long-range ships on Cargo hulls and it does often seem like stuffing them with Ion drives gets me the most bang for the BC. But I'm not a strict maximizer.

Hopefully one of the serious scoremonsters can give a solid answer to your design question and your question about an unarmed ship with defenses. I've never tried the latter, but my guess is that the unarmed ship would lose because defenses are a roll, not a fixed number so eventually an armed ship is going to be able to chip through an unarmed ship's defenses and destroy it.

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Rule One: Build only what you need.

I build constructors I call ConFabs. No engines and built within a turn or two of the actual destination. Most of your constructors should be of this type.

Then there is the Long distance Constructor. Designed to put bases out on the edge of my travel range. Extra support modules and engines to get there in a timely fashion. You only need these when your extending your influence or for your trading bases.

Lastly, the "racer" constructor with plenty of engines and support (to go where no man has gone before) to beat the AI to any resource or system for influence bases. Only one or two of these need to be built (as needed), and would apply for late game construction. You should always have one or two around.

Hope this helps and remember, not all games will playout the same so be flexible.

Non combat ships are exactly that. No weapons, no shields! If they can't shoot, they can't win.

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I put Ion engines on all my vessels; with that they are just a little faster than the AI's ships.

and with some defences, but no shields. Until now, it seems in fleet combat, my Mercury corvette don't get fired at all; like the AI's concentrating on my 2-3 Mars Class Fregates with the missilesAnd for non-combat ships going into combat, I do use my Mercury-Class corvette with a Fleet Warp bubble (Terran tech), and it rarely gets shot; the AI seems to concentrate fire on my 2-3 Mars Class Assault Fregate with missiles, lasers and Guns and shields and HP, and....

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I think this is totally valid, since I do it too. I have a survey ship, a constructor, and a space miner design using just ion drives that are useful the entire game. Colony ships, not so much, since I won't be building many after the initial rush. I never arm or armor these ships. Transports would be the real exception, it's useful to make these as fast as possible.

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When I get to the end of the Miniaturization tech tree, I start building a Tiny-hulled Constructor equipped with dual Ion Engines and nothing else (besides the Construction module). Just about any serious production planet will build one in 1-2 turns. Ion engines are great for just getting a non-combat unit where you need it to go in a moderate length of time.

I do also build super-fast Constructors using the Hyperwarp (or equivalent high-tech) engines, and I do the same for all my Transports, because I prefer fast strikes rather than slow advances.

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Your missing one thing What kind of factories do you have. Do you have power plants. How many planets do you have. How many factories are on the planets. Whats your production percent . And whats your military production percent. If any of these are low then you have a problem producing good stuff. You should try to put four factories the best you have. With quantem power plants, and see what happen. If you are the torians trade for factories, If you are the thalans you will need to trade for factories tech. If there is anybody I don't know about do the same.

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