Thanks for clarifying on the white star, Fenn. I will put a flag on it (red, I think) to indicate it is owned by an AI.
Missile ships tend to have issues with endurance in combat, although the 5-rack helps with that. But for now we do not have a good beam option, other than heavy lasers. Our current Weapons research project of Ion Cannon will give us a decent option. The heavy version does enough damage to remain useful for quite some time.
The next ten turns seem likely to be a quiet period, getting our newest colonies going and finishing maxing our other worlds while getting some research done. I don't expect anything to finish during my turn set, but we should make significant progress on a bunch of projects.
Yeah, not to butt in too much, but what I've found is that ECM is much more effective in this game than MoO and as a result missiles are much less effective, including planetary missiles.
Hi, rgp151. Comments (or heckling ) from observers is welcome. We are trying to learn from this succession game.
Does it seem like ECM is more effective in RotP, or is the AI just actually using it more on its ships? I am not sure if the MOO AI tended to put its best ECM on most of its ships. It was pretty good about using whatever battle computer tech it had.
I think it’s probably just more widespread? Hard to test. But yeah I’ve certainly found that missile boats can work as a stopgap solution when I need *something* to push fleets away, but generally can’t be used for much serious warfare.
Also, regarding industrialising the poor world… what’s the alternative to that? Pre-waste an industrialised world with no robotic controls produces 5x as much as one with just people (half pop compared to half pop +2x pop) and waste doesn’t slow things down *that* much. So even if factories do take forever to build, I think we’ve learned that worlds without many factories are so much less effective at everything that they’re hardly worth the effort. Might try calculating how much effective RP we lose in the process of maxing when including the benefits of factories along the way, will take a bit tho since I’m pretty sure I’ll have to break out the calculus, but this is just for my own interest so don’t hold up for it or anything lol.
- Our new colonies have started developing nicely, with some treasury spending to get them going faster. Being able to see how much reserves have neen sent to a colony is very nice, and having the game auto-set the proper max value when you click to send more is very helpful.
- The bugs are doing the usual spying thing, with our intel shutting down one of their networks every turn.
- On turn 88, IRC3 popped. Developed planets are refitting, with Sssla keeping a tiny trickle of research going. (Not sure if research decays in RotP if you do not spend at least a llittle. Anyone know?)
- We scouted a tiny (size 15) rich radiated world in the northwest. I have assigned a blue flag to this system to indicate we will not be able to settle it with our current research into Toxic, but maybe someday.
- We skirmished with a Meklonar ship at a system in the northeast. They were armed and we were not, so we retreated. No planet was shown, so they had not settled it at least as of Turn 86 or so. I assigned a white flag to this system, representing "No info but visited."
Our current neighborhood:
Note the updated yellow flags; there are now SIX of these systems we will be able to colonize once Controlled Toxic is done. I had mis-labelled one. The tech is still some ways off as it is quite expensive, but once we finished building out the IRC3 factories we should be able to tech much faster. A couple other projects are making progress, but it is probably still another turn set at least before we get some new tech to play with.
Realized I forgot to mention the new tech after IRC3. We got only one choice to advance the tree: ECM3. So we have a whole list of ECM and Battle Computer techs to choose from. I considered going back for BC2 just to have something better than the default, but it was not especially cheap. So I picked ECM3 to advance the tree, aand hopefully we will get a better BC at the next tier.
Wow -- looks like some great progress in a short time (in real life; I don't really know what constitutes a short time in-game, but things certainly look promising)! My apologies for contributing so little to the discussion; let's see if I can make up a very little for lost time.
Factories on poor worlds, spoilered for a long discussion that could be wrong because I don't know Remnants as well as I know MoO:
If the economics works at all like MoO's, that 5:1 ratio Dp101 mentions applies only for Silicoids at the start of the game. At least in MoO, population becomes more productive as planetology increases, and every million Sakkra would now be making about 0.8 BC per turn - more than a factory nets even with our waste reduction and clean-up technology, because waste remains a significant factor (for non-Silis) for a long time. That said, thanks to our current tech, RC2 factories on a "merely" Poor world will tend to pay for themselves after about 25 turns, and can be worth building if we don't have a more-critical need coming up before then ... as long as we think we can (or won't have to) defend the colony in the meantime. Whether (and where) RC3 factories are worth it depends on how Remnants handles them. MoO's robotic controls were very buggy: As soon as you got the tech, every pop could work three factories everywhere, and there wasn't any real refit cost to existing factories, but all future factories cost time and a half what they used to. If Remnants does the same thing, we probably shouldn't build facs on our Poor world because the chances are low that we'll be happier with those factories after the nearly-40 turns it would take for them to pay their cost back than with the extra research or population growth the planet could have given us instead - but I might still be wrong due to the larger size of the galaxy.
But I don't think Remnants works that way. If I'm reading haphazard's report (and remembering something Ray F once said) correctly, RotP lets you build RC2 factories at normal price (for us, 9BC apiece) up to twice your planet's Max Size, but only lets your workers there run two factories each, even when you have RC3. Once you hit that limit, you have to pay half the cost of all the factories combined to upgrade them to RC3 before building any more factories. (I don't know whether you refit individual factories, increasing the number a small population can work gradually, or if you have to pay the full price before you get the three-facs-per-pop benefit.) Then, afterward, you can finally build more factories at time and a half the old price, effectively "refitting" them as you go. If I'm right about this, I would suggest that building some facs on a Poor world is okay (though maybe not one we fear might be conquered) but only up to somewhere between say 70-120% of its max population, to ensure those expensive factories never sit idle even when the Poor world is fulfilling its primary purpose: Shipping transports off-world and regrowing population for better worlds and planetary invasions.
If on the other hand each pop can already work three facs apiece and the refit cost only has to be paid before you can build more than 2 x max pop factories and it otherwise works as I just described, it can be worth building Poor world facs up to say 100-180% of the max population for the same reason. And if the game doesn't wait for you to max RC2 factories, but requires you to refit existing factories from the moment the tech comes in before you can build any more, then I would recommend ceasing production of factories on Poor worlds at least until we get much-more-advanced Industrial Tech ... if ever.
In fact, in either case, there's an argument that I should have taken BC3 instead of RC3 at this tech level, and that we shouldn't pay to refit anything short of a Rich world without at least II7 technology! On our homeworld, for example, we would have to pay 900BC just for the privilege of getting to build more, extra-expensive factories; re-maxing it would cost a total of 2250BC and net us an extra ~73 BC per year, which means the project would take more than thirty years to pay for itself ... and potentially much more, since it would give us nothing until we'd paid over 40% of the steep initial cost, and then start slowly paying back as we start building more factories. It's probably still worth it, just, if we have no more-urgent priorities and have to play the long game, seeing no chance of better, earlier gains, especially since the part that we've already paid on our developed worlds means our remaining costs there (the only ones that matter now since we can't get the initial investment back out) are lower. But refitting factories on a Poor world can't possibly be a good idea under such conditions.
(May 3rd, 2024, 23:59)haphazard1 Wrote: (Not sure if research decays in RotP if you do not spend at least a llittle. Anyone know?)
Not only doesn't research decay, but if the tech on which you zero out spending is already in the percentages, it appears you continue to have the same chance of discovering the tech that turn while no longer spending any part of your budget on it! Taking advantage of this seems to me to be a significant part of planning your research strategy.
Oh - and for missile defense, assuming the rules are the same as (they're supposed to be) in MoO, ECM is most effective in a sweet spot where the ship's maneuverability + size-based beam defense is slightly higher than (or for really high ECM, slightly lower than) the missile base/boat's attack level plus the missile type's attack bonus. ECM3 on a huge, sluggish maneuver-1 anvil ship against Stinger missiles from a base with BC4 on top of its Battle Scanner will reduce the missiles' hit probability from 100% to ... 100%. But ECM1 on a speedy maneuver-9 small against that same missile base will literally cut the number of missile hits in half, reducing their hit probability from 20% to 10%. So my suspicion is that Remnants (may have fixed a bug that someone said affected missile to-hit probabilities and/or) has more-effective ECM just because its AIs tend to build more-maneuverable fleets that keep up better with missiles' hit probabilities.
Thanks for the thoughts on factories and poor worlds, RefSteel. Now I am considering the payback time on an ultra-poor world.... The bugs have been busy building factories at their ultra-poor planet; when I looked at the first turn of the set, they had 25+ built there already. Makes me wonder if they get some bonus? (Besides being bugs, I mean.)
I think IRC3 was still the right choice, as the overall increased production will pay off over the longer term. Refit does cost us a bunch up front, which in our current situation means delayed research spending. This means delay of Controlled Toxic, which is not good. But at this point a lot of refit cost has already been paid, so building out the factories is probably the way to go now. Making some better industrial tech a priority is definitely a good idea, though. It will help in the future, at least.
Wait, population becomes more efficient with better planetology?? How have I never come across this before... the stuff about IRC in RotP definitely matches observations at least, regarding all planets building up to 2x pop before going through refit of everything at once (which happily means that IRC3 from an artifacts world on turn 3 doesn't actually end your game). I guess I am up now so I'll stare for a bit at relative payoff time for refitting vs pushing for tech + colonies. (quick edit: with max research we'll be getting 209/turn into planetology and controlled toxic is 2487 RP away, so it'll still be a while).
Also, ftr I'm going to be away this weekend, leaving evening saturday (I'm in PST) so there will be a delay if I can't get it done today, but I'll have my laptop with me to play turns for another game so I shouldn't need to be skipped.
) from observers is welcome. We are trying to learn from this succession game.
![[Image: T090-overview.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/W1JntQHy/T090-overview.jpg)
We got only one choice to advance the tree: ECM3. So we have a whole list of ECM and Battle Computer techs to choose from. I considered going back for BC2 just to have something better than the default, but it was not especially cheap. So I picked ECM3 to advance the tree, aand hopefully we will get a better BC at the next tier.
The bugs have been busy building factories at their ultra-poor planet; when I looked at the first turn of the set, they had 25+ built there already. Makes me wonder if they get some bonus? (Besides being bugs, I mean.)
But at this point a lot of refit cost has already been paid, so building out the factories is probably the way to go now. Making some better industrial tech a priority is definitely a good idea, though. It will help in the future, at least.