I was playing a game last night when, in the middle of a serious border clash with a neighbor my research on Improved Robotic Controls 3 came through. I found myself staring at the prompt asking how much of my planetary spending I wanted to allocate to upgrading my factories and I realized that I had no clue how to proceed. I was building ships and still trying to stand up some of my newer colonies while my starting core had been at maxed factories. I realized that with other techs requiring implementation costs (like Improved Terriforming or Soil Enrichment) the game explicitly states how much it will cost so I can decide how to allocate for that cost. However with IRC the game is much more vague. I looked in the OSG and saw the table of cost per factory per level of IIT but it didn't talk about Refit costs. So the reason I am writing is to ask for opinions on how to go about implementing IRC techs in the most efficient way. Usually when it isn't such an issue I just hit 25% or whatever and don't give it a second thought and my colonies just do what they do, but this time I got to thinking about the most efficient way to implement IRCs. For example in order to implement IT10 the cost is 50 BC but I have not seen a similar cost breakdown for IRC3 for example. I suppose that this is because the cost is per factory, but how much is the Refit cost that must be paid before I can build more factories? In a case where some worlds are maxed and otherwise occupied I can hold off building factories until I have some extra production spending, but if I wanted to divert spending from ship building for a bit how much of a speed bump am I looking at? Is there an optimal amount (or percentage) to allocate into upgrading/building factories to get the most bang for my buck? Any comments are welcome!
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Implementing Improved Robotic Controls
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As best I know, the "Refit" mechanic is bugged; your planets might say "Refit" if you allocate the IND slider after a new RC tech but it's a trivial cost. Instead all new factories cost more, regardless of whether they are above your previous RC limit or not.
There's no one answer, you should consider the payback time for a factory. Rest of this post assumes you are building a factory that will be staffed immediately/always - IE you have the population to work it and do not plan to send that pop off to an invasion or new colony anytime soon. So it could apply to a "previously maxed" world or a developing world. if you have RC3 and no other techs, a factory costs 15 production, and produces a profit of .5/turn (since .5 of its production gos to waste cleanup), so 30 years to "break even". If you have RC3, IIT8, and both first-level waste cleanup, the factory costs 12, and makes 11/15 per turn, so "break even" is about 16.4 years. (Both of these ignore discount rates; I'm not sure what a good one is for this game - purpose was to show that other techs significantly affect the return from building more factories. And of course rich/poor planets change these as well) Then you have to compare whatever your current profit against other uses of production would be (in your case, it sounds like bases or fleets for protection might be a higher priority for the next 5 turns). The "do all colonies 25/50/75%" is rarely a good choice. The rate of return from factories doesn't change whether you put 5% of a planets IND slider on it or everything not needed for waste cleanup. So if you think the factory beats out other uses on a planet, probably makes sense to allocate the whole slider. One common exception might be keeping just enough into tech where the tripling bonus applies.
That is correct to the best of my knowledge. The actual total cost to refit all the factories on a given planet at once appears to be equal to the "correct" refit cost for a single factory. (I.e. If you've maxed your homeworld with 100 pop and 200 factories but have no planetology or construction tech yet when you get RC3, it will cost 5 BC to refit all 200 factories before building new factories for 15 BC apiece. Meanwhile, factories at a planet that has zero factories will also cost 15 BC apiece.)
I usually assign each of my planet's spending ratios individually as timmy827 suggested, but choosing None, 25%, 50%, or 75% for all your colonies at once isn't terrible if you like to play very quickly. If so though, which of the three you choose will depend on your strategic goals at that moment: Do you want to maximize industry right away, hold off for soon-to-arrive IIT tech, start industrializing without giving up too much in your current research priorities, etc? There's no one right answer. For my part, I often have individual planets with individual goals, which is part of the reason I always pick "None" and adjust things manually: A backlines Poor world might not need any more factories, a normal front-lines world might want to get started only after finishing a couple more missile bases, and a core Rich world probably wants to put everything into IND above the minimum clean ... but everything varies with the needs of the moment, and rules of thumb, like battle plans, face a high rate of attrition in the face of the enemy.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "break even" times with regards to factories, because factory output is an input to more factories/research/trade/spoils, and thus their value is multiplicative. In almost all cases, the right thing to do is max out the planet as fast as possible.
For example, at the start of the game it costs 10BC to build a factory, you get .5BC after waste cleanup, and so the "break even" point is 20 years. That's a long time, does it mean I should start building a colony ship right away instead? Of course not. You build factories on the first turn, which allows you to build slightly more the next turn, etc. At a certain point you max out your population's ability to support factories, THEN you build a colony ship. The difference between the start and the typical point at which you first "max out": 30 factories = 15BC/turn 150 factories = 75BC/turn So it doesn't take long at all for the cumulative income of a factory rush to "cross above" that of staying with the initial 30 factories. And then you reap the rewards forevermore; you are investing for the future and the returns are fantastic. Now of course this is a dumb contrived early game example, we all know this intuitively, so what about Robotics Controls? I argue that it doesn't matter how much advanced factories cost, you need to build them as soon as possible and get to max utilization again or you will be leaving money on the table. For example, on planets that were previously maxed, another set of expensive factories is really not a huge deal, but you will reap income rewards and the benefits of research/trade/spoils for the rest of the game. And for undeveloped planets, expensive factories suck, but what are you going to do, not build them? No way! Just suck it up and start investing in their potential. So for me, the very instant I get a new Robotics Controls, every planet will build, build, build to max. Except for possibly the following situations: * planet urgently needs missile bases to protect against near-term attack * planet is producing immediately-needed warships * one or more extremely important techs are on the cusp of discovery, and having them sooner outweighs the factories * the end-game is near If the above is not the case: build, build, build! --- Also in general, I tend to leave poor and will always leave ultra-poor worlds to be "people factories" and research stations only. It is depressing to acquire an ultra-poor planet, try to build it up, and have the game end before it maxes out. Why bother in such a case, might as well get a tiny bit more research out of it, or send its people off to die in valorous combat.
That is a good analysis Zygot. I think you leave out two important things, though: The return on investment of technology and colony ships. Let's ignore colony ships and say your only research project is Improved Ecological Restoration. When do you start researching it, and how many points do you devote to it? And with the opposite example where you can only build colony ships and factories, when do you start building a colony ship? Do you max out factories first? Lastly, there is the problem of tying up your population when overbuilding factories early on, preventing you from shipping colonists to new worlds without losing tons of production.
Huh, the OSG states how factories work very differently from how it's actually done in the game. This also expalins why late in game, starting a new planet seem to take a while for the factories to build...
In OSG, from what I understood, it states that new factories cost 10 BC initially, then if you research RC III, the first 2x factories cost 10 BC each, then it refits the existing factories for 5 BC each, then finally builds the 3x factories at 15 BC each. so on 100 pop planet with no factories, those steps go like this: First 200 Factories - 10 BC each Refit 200 Factories - 5 BC each Last 100 Factories - 15 BC each. But apparently the game immediately applies the new cost to all factories, and forces the existing factories to be refitted to the new cost. Since I'm working on Beyond Beyaan which aims to duplicate MoO 1's gameplay, I'm wondering if this is a bug, or an intended feature? If we were to use OSG's method of building, the new planets wouldn't suffer as much late-game because their first factories still cost 10 BC (minus the cost reductions), and they can get up to speed more quickly, while still paying the same amount required when getting to next tier of factories by refitting the existing factories. This can alter the gameplay drastically. 
Dominus Galaxia, a Master of Orion inspired game I'm working on.
That seems like it would get very complicated very fast. Starting a new planet from scratch with multiple IRC techs would result in escalating costs and build time fluctuations as factories multiplied. I think that the way the game actually implements the new tech (applying increased costs to all new factories as soon as the new tech is acquired) makes more sense in a real-world context, and also encourages keeping current on Improved Industrial Tech levels to keep factory costs from skyrocketing and making your new colonies effectively Mineral Poor.
I'm confused then about the Refit part of implementing new IRCs. If timmy827 and RefSteel are right and the Refit cost is a simple 5 BC (or so) then that seems like a bug. I'm not sure that this is correct, as I thought I had seen Refit on my Ind slider last for longer than generating that small amount of BC would take (although I could be thinking of missile base upgrades). It makes sense to require some cost to refit existing factories to use the new controls, although setting that at 1000 BC (cost to refit 200 factories at 5 BC each) seems like a lot. I would be happier to have a flat cost per planet as with the Terraforming techs. That said, I wonder if the game designers nerfed IRC implementation AND missile base upgrade costs in some effort to speed up the game? Applying tech upgrades instantly to existing missile bases without first paying for them has always seemed odd to me, but on the other hand doing it that way could cripple even well-defended planets facing attack before their large number of existing bases could be upgraded. Similarly I wonder if requiring massive upfront investment before allowing factory construction to continue was deemed "un-fun" at some point in development?
I consider it a bug, and I wouldn't mind seeing it fixed. However, how will you handle the situation where you have 10 population out of 50 with 40 factories at IRC4? Under your proposal, the planet would be able to build 100 factories at the low cost. This means that your first 25 million people will be operate 4 factories each at the low cost. Is this how you want it to work out?
(February 6th, 2014, 16:19)Catwalk Wrote: I consider it a bug, and I wouldn't mind seeing it fixed. However, how will you handle the situation where you have 10 population out of 50 with 40 factories at IRC4? Under your proposal, the planet would be able to build 100 factories at the low cost. This means that your first 25 million people will be operate 4 factories each at the low cost. Is this how you want it to work out? No, it'd be intelligent to know that only "2x Factories" has been built, so 10 population can only control 20 factories, despite there being 40 factories. Refitting the factories to be "3x" will allow 10 population to control 30 factories, with 10 "refitted" factories left idling, and so forth. Using your example of 10/50 population, under the premise that population don't change for simplicity: Build - 100 "2x" factories are built, but only 20 can be controlled, with 80 left idling Refit - The 100 "2X" factories are refitted to be "3X", meaning 30 are now controlled Build - 50 extra "3X" factories are built Refit - The 150 "3X" factories are refitted to be "4X", meaning 40 are now controlled and so forth...
Dominus Galaxia, a Master of Orion inspired game I'm working on.
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