Let's say you have a bunch of planets... like a string of roid, ice, roid, volcanic, desert, that would be all easy to colonize, and you're planning to go econ boom with TEC. What would be an efficient order to do things?
1. Start with your favourite cap... then the colony ship and some cobalt frigs
2. Colonize roid and ice, upgrade civ-inf to cap
3. Research the 2 steps of the first metal harvesting tech
4. Colonize roid and volcanic, max inf on planets, upgrade 2 steps of crystal harvesting
5. Build tradeports, 1 per planet - gets you a string of 4-5
6. Colonize desert, get market discounts, more metal harvesting, research terran&desert population
...
x. next?
Is something like the above a sensible order at all, or is it better do a different sequence? And what after that... how do you really get your econ to rock? At which point should you start building big fleets, or feeding RU to your teammates?
Nothing wrong with your list, though I'd keep it flexible (though I don't know why desert is last). Galaxy geography is the biggest factor in how you should expand. If your near 4 ice worlds and a volcanic world, the volcanic all of a sudden is alot more valuable. You also have to concider what worlds your enemies and pirates are likely to attack from. Step X. should be decide how you are going to use your logistics slots. For econ, you are going to split pretty much all of them between civic research, more trade ports and refineries. The order and ratio you choose will depend on your current supplies and income. If your economy is balanced and in good shape, build the civics. If you are somehow short of credits, have some worlds have 2 tradeports. Crystal and/or metal shortage, build some refineries at strategic locations.
Your econ ultimately begins to rock with the higher lvl civic upgrades. However, you need to survive long enough to get there, and if you let your opponent gain more of the map, he could have an economy just as strong as yours with a better military which = you lose. So really, the answer to all of your questions is it depends, as its all a balancing act.
Your economy will rock when you have about 15+ planets. Thats = to a big income of resources.
Big fleets (in my opinion) should be built when you have researched all the capital ship slots (in fleet research) and then do not rush with researching for fleet slots, you WILL end up F**KED, because you have big upkeep (the last is 75 % I think OH MY GOD!!!) and will have no damn resources for some other Sh*t like bounty, metal/crystal buying, researching and building ships.
Economy is not a science, economy is art, remember that.
If you are a waster, then what the f*ck I am doing here, explaining to you?
If you are economical, then spend the money and resources wisely, every gameplay is different that the one before, so don't expect to use the same tactic again (I'm talking about online gameplay now). A variety of spending should be good, for example 40% of your resources spent for ships and structures, 30% for research and the other 30% for bounty, resuorce/credit buying and planet upgrages. Also a big role in your economy are playing the artifacts, A BIG ROLE.
This is only a suggestion, don't take it too seriously
I want to figure out a good textbook approach - how important each step is and what is usually the optimum sequence. Thus I didn't want to go into much speculation about situational details, so I just gave a typical scenario of planets - it's just a "suppose that" item, the planets listed first are closest, and the assumption is that the desert planet is the farthest, otherwise I'd colonize it just after the 1st asteroid.
Should I research the 1st terran population a bit earlier? I take I'd typically need just 1-2 refineries, would they usually be say step 7. if there is a suitable spot (enough resources with the planet and the few adjancent ones)?
BTW my range of typical scenarios is 20-40 planets for 2-6 players.
The most efficient order of taking those planets depends on what you have in your fleet. If you have a pretty good sized fleet with LRMs and carriers, just own the malitias and make sure either a colony cap is with them or a colony frigate is close behind them, and take the planets in order. Don't waste time skipping some and then coming back later unless the desert planet is likely to be a contested planet.
If you don't have a decent amount of firepower, say just a colony cap, go in the order of how weak the malitias are. In other words, asteroids, volcanic, ice, desert/terran. This is because low lvl colony caps can take a really long time to clear planets by themselves, and your time is better spent getting the asteroids which are mostly ungaurded. The fact your AM will probably be restored in the battle for the planet is another plus.
The amount of refineries I use actually goes pretty much in had with how fast I upgrade my fleet capacity. Tito is right in that you must be careful when you research them. Do it too late and a superior enemy force will be able to take your planets. Do it too soon and your economy will stall and the enemy will get superior numbers AND research anyways. Either way, I find credits recover their income rates alot quick than metal and crsytal do after fleet capacity reserach. Thus I use refineries help replace the resources that are lost from them.
On the first terran pop, if it is a big map yes, as the credit income will be more important. On a small map, wait on it as you'll need to make sure you have sufficient forces to fend of an attack.
Like others said it realy depends and if you want to go econ good scouting is key. You need to see all wolrds 3 jumps from your HW before laying your first techlab.
You should go for non reseach planets first. Roid, netrals, terrans and deserts if the last 2 are not to heavyly defended.
Then volcanics and ice worlds come into play. And wich to go for first depend on which ones you ahve near you, and what are the astroids you already have with your roids and netrals you've capture or gonna capture.
But for the rest it about what you said. Just need to be flexable and scout the worlds around you real good.
You guys are right. I just love how they balanced the economy side with the credits-metal-crystal triad - there is no Right and True Build Order because the whole economy thing revolves around balancing the 3. In this sense an "optimal sequence" is just an academic subject - it's more important to analyze what kind of things make you adapt your plans.
Still, there are some basic errors in the sequence proposed above. Finding the most effective sequence is all about cost optimization and your planned way of balancing. The 1st terran population and the desert population research for example are very cheap, you could get those early - actually the High Density Zoning could be much smarter than upgrading infra on your HW! The other population research for TEC planets is quite expensive, and should come only later, save perhaps the 2nd terran population (3 in total I recall).
Also the very first resource upgrades are very cheap, get them early. The later ones are expensive, concentrate on getting the max amount of planets instead, or put up trade ports - each of these nets you nice cash, and your economy revolves around credits.
Modular architecture is some lowly tech, but apparently undervalued. 20% price cut means you save 50 credits on each resource extractor already, and you'll eventually build more structures such as frigate factories. It's cheap so get it early! Huge Cargo Holds on the other hand is important, but very expensive because you need refineries as well. I'd leave it to the mid-game together with refineries.
Always build resource extractors ASAP!
8%(7.5%)/15%, 23%(22.5%)/30%.
The first and second Terran population upgrades are worth considering, but the first infrastructure upgrade on your homeworld is 280 as opposed to the 190 you start with-almost a 50% increase. In addition, you're looking at needing a civilian lab built plus the time to research the tech before you can grow population on your homeworld. Considering your first two builds should always be capital ship factory and crystal extractor (with metal extractors following close behind), it's not a smart idea. It takes you more time to get the 8% bonus than it takes to get the ~50% bonus. Cost effectiveness is thrown out the window at that point.
There's no reason why you shouldn't research the first two levels (8%/15%) after you've upgraded the infrastructure on your home planet, though-ideally before the population caps at 280, so you don't miss any growth.
The whole point of TEC is Favored Client Discount. This lets you buy resources at a 15% discount - meaning your teammates should almost never buy anything from the market! Instead they will give you their excess cash, and you will be all the buying - so the whole team gets the discount! You will act as the RU fairy that distributes the resources from these transactions and your humongous economy to the needy in your team. This tech is expensive, but in a team well worth it - you might avoid it in early game or SP. However TEC gets other bonuses in this area, too.
I recently played against unfair advent economist following an approach similar to what I listed above. I was lucky because the 2 first planets I colonized where 2/1 split in favor of crystal over metal - this led to a balanced economy so I never really needed the Discount too much. I was outharvesting my opponent by a slight margin in the early game, and finally lost only because he had 2 terran planets on me (well there was a bunch of little noobish mistakes too), so the cpu had more population, better cash flow, bigger fleets...
Because of the Discount, credits will generally play an important part in TEC economies. The balance of the economy could be OK at a typical moment, but special conditions will throw it off - you need different resources for expanding your empire, focusing on research and quickly building a megafleet. But overall TEC is the most flexible faction and that flexibility should be in the service of the team.
Metal will be easy to harvest in quantities, because the tech is cheap. TEC can just sell it on the market, with no regrets, it can actually be a good way to get credits. Credits could be used to buy crystals (with Discount), whenever needed. This would be the basic flow of balance in economy-oriented TEC. In some conditions you could go with a different balancing architecture, and this would show how much the things are interdependent, and it is not possible to give a single formula that explains how to boom with TEC. If you decide to go without Discount, different materials will be valuable to you - which means the practical cost and thus optimum build order for every item will change for you.
I calculate the cost of each item based on the credit values of the other RU types. For TEC, 100 units of metal would be worth around 300 units of credits, because metal is mostly sold to the market. Likewise, crystal would be worth around 400 - you can always buy it for 0.85 * 500 = 425, though usually you'd avoid that. For example, the practical cost of the Huge Cargo Holds tech would be 1000/150/250 = 1000 + 1.5 * 300 + 2.5 * 400 = 2450$.
Balancing is a complex issue that is impacted by conditions outside the economic mechanism, so I couldn't be expected to say my final word on the issue yet at this point. What is your view? Is it smart to buy and sell RUs on the market? (Sometimes I buy something then a minute later I sell the very same thing...) Is the TEC economy really interlocked in such a way with the teammates? Do you believe in the RU Fairy?
That wouldn't work too well since whenever you give/receive credits/resources to/from your allies, it is "taxed" by the fleet upkeep cost, meaning that if both of you even have the first tier of your fleet cap upgraded, you'd be losing more money than gaining.
hmm its just a personal build que
i've got my own, wich definatly works better for me
also, dont build trade ports on every planet, think wich planets you plan to take and try to make huge chains, longer chaisn gives more income then building them just everywhere (only works on large maps tough, dont bother chaining on small / medium maps tradeports everywhere beats it...
if you want an unfair advantage in warfare, go mazra. once level 6 any lrf spam wil die (unless you're fighting a pro who knows when to run)
fast colonizing... akkan capital works well.. has a support aura, ion bolt to stun fleeing capital ships... colonize ability isnt special... but rly helps save the cost of that protev in start... and good for stealing planets from other players
Did they change the Marza's lvl 6 ability from V 1.05 or something? I've seen lots of people talking about it.
In V 1.05 it was just missile barrage... does 150 damage to each enemy in the area of effect. I just downloaded 1.12 today and haven't had the chance to get a lvl 6 marza of my own.
Then it's time for a bug report... Don't get why they would want to penalize teamplay that much by design :-/
does 3k damage over 15 sec or so to ALL targets within that huge radius
25 seconds (20 volleys), but yes.
As a note, shield mitigation and armor do take effect.
My first cap is marza - highly experienced players might prefer the kol if they plan to get it to level 8 when afaik it gets its missile barrage ability. I would assume the akkan lacks so much fighting capability the extra colony frig is worth it. I add just 8 cobalts to my colonization fleet and that's it until late early game when the action with hostile factions starts to warm up. For a small number of planets I'd think this is enough - more fleet and capacity (including 2nd cap ship) would slow down your economy, am I on the correct track here?
Extractors in non-colonizable grav wells are more efficient than on planets - send your colony frig there first, at least if you don't need the planets for cash/defense/slots or you have spare colonizers, or you need to keep the colonizer out of the fight.
How do you get to extract these roids that are in non-colonizable wells? I try to get my colony ship to take them over but they just sit there?
A colony ship has two abilities. Colonize and build extractractors. Vasari's scouts have this second ability. Once you get 40 antimatter in your ship, they can make extractors on these non-colonizable planets. Its usually on autocast, but you can use it like any ability.
So basically, just get a vasari scout or colony ship and stay in that neutral well until you get enough antimatter and it will build it.
The TEC colony frigate (as well as the advent one) has a special ability to take over an extractor. It is on autocast by default - tell the frig to move to the extractor and wait until it has antimatter.
Seems it really pays off to analyze the build order - you'll be so much more effective when you revise your procedure into a better one. Was playing TEC vs Unfair TEC Economist on Flash Point. Pretty much matched it in metal and credits through the early game, and had a 100% harvesting advantage in crystal over the early (and even mid) game. Fighting began very early, pushed him back with a bigger number of cobalts, and seemed to have a fleet advantage over pretty much the entire game. Cheers.
Maxed out both research trees, fleet cap was 2nd largest I think, 8 capitals - the cpu just died a horrible horrible noob death to double marza barrage Fights were big big and laggy!
Hi Varis, In reading thru this post, it looks like you've already refined your build order, and put alot of thought into it. But I'd like to make some specific suggestions. You mentioned:
Yes. So get it before #2. And, I say get both levels, so you save 40%, or 100 credits on each extractor (thus, need a prior civic lab: Sell Mtl>Q Cap Factory>Q Cry>Q Civ lab>2 scouts>Q Mtls>Buy 2 Cry>Research "it">Up Pop...). After about 10 extractors it will have paid for itself (~$1000 cost for the tech). With even bigger $ savings potential on future factories.
You also mention somewhere, that the metal & crystal harvesting upgrades are probably better purchased later (maybe after trade ports). The more extractors you have, the quicker the research will pay for itself. I figure that if you own 3 grav wells, the first metal harvesting upgrades will take about 20 minutes to pay for itself. If you own 6 grav wells, it will pay-off in about half that time. Since Crystal upgrades are tier 2, it takes about double the time to pay off (40 vs 20 min.). And then your money may rather be better off invested in fleet/ships. [Don't forget that neutral extractors are free! And they produce more! So pursue these agressively.] Finally, if you can, colonize the volcano last, (and maybe the ice next to last). And sometimes just skip them completely (especially Volcanos)!
Yes, get as long of a string as possible, and build as many as possible for true "econ boom". But remember that you can get your ally's chain bonuses too, if your trade route connects to their chain. (In our game yesterday morn, you might have noted that you were earning around 3! cred/sec from each trade port, even tho you only had a chain of 4 or so. See my karma for some good info on trade). TEC Developement Mandate might sound like a great deal, giving 4 logistic slots to every planet - so that you can build tradeports on dead asteroids, but it is a tier 6 research (6 labs). And it is expensive. The same is somewhat true of the market discounts (Favored Client Discounts - Tier 4). Often hard to justify.
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet to research.
Regards, Jedi Obi 1
(PS. If you quit, rather than surrender, from an online game... you don't get a "loss", and a hard AI will take over in your stead. If someone surrenders, like Floyd did, then the new AI just sits there, waiting to be killed!)
(PPS. I got disconnected. What happened next? We were beating those 5 hard AI's. I was #1 in several categories, including fleet, the all important one).
Oh, this is a new insight for me! I always thot that those tier 1 population techs didn't kick in untill your population was maxed out (after pop infra on your HW was done building out)! I may need to rethink things. Thanks for your insights.
And, Yes. Always build resource extractors ASAP! (Unless you need factories to attack a nearby enemy). But, I believe: 'Always upgrade population infrastructure ASAP' (untill you are out of the red), is also a priority!
My universal initial build order (for all factions, working on vasari right now) is like this:
C extractor
capship factory
2 x scout
2 x M extractor
2 x assault frig
civlab
HW upgrade can come like 30 mins later, typically. Not sure if the above is the most optimal, but it feels comfortable. And yes, on new planets the 1-2 first population upgrades are a high priority, and should come right after extractors, because you also want to eliminate the underdevelopment bonus, not just get some population growth. BTW use the Search function for the empire tree to find planets you have not yet fully upgraded!
Based on my comparisons, anything that pays itself back in just 20 minutes is a very good investment (remember to figure in all resources spent, plus the build/research time etc!), and you probably should take it. HW upgrade takes over 25 minutes, and the benefit is late even there because you reach max pop only after the first 10 minutes or so. But for TEC, the first levels of metal harvesting bonus are cheap to research, so better get those early, definitely before trade ports.
About the PS - I would prefer to surrender rather than quit, due to the stat. It looks better in your record if 50+% of your games are either Won or Lost, ie. you didn't just quit in the middle or lose connection again. Who wants to play with people who do?
On PPS. I recall whole ICO went down just as soon as we started to gain ground on the cpu. (Anybody else starting to suspect computers are sore losers? And man I bet they hold a grudge too...) The big games just don't get a very big success rate in Sins, due to disconnects and quitting... most people don't want to play even 2+ hours
Don't do that with Vasari.
1 C Extractor, 1 cap factory, 5 scouts, 1 Weapons lab, 2 M extractor. If you aren't planning on pumping out the Assails right away, skip the weapons lab and build 3 more scouts. Trust me, those scouts are worth more than most early TEC econs can make.
BTW is game speed a factor or does it keep the aspect ratio when you scale all settings to Fast? Ie. will calculations based on Normal speeds still hold? (I suppose they at least missed population growth...)
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