Dealing with too much territory?

[JodelDiplom]

Hi all,

Short question here: How is one supposed to deal with the situation where you have waaaay too many claimed systems?

I just played a bit into my first campaign since 1.6 or so. After a while noticed that I had run up quite a huge penalty to certain costs (leader recruitment and tech primarily) due to "administrative bloat" or whatever its called, basically I had three times as many claimed systems as my cap number said I could have without penalties. I realized I needed to disband a lot of stations, but had no clue as to how to choose which ones to disband and which ones to keep!

So how do you go about such things?

Obviously I don't want to vacate systems with many resources. I also don't want to abandon strategically valuable "roadblocks" within the hyperlane network. But at the same time I want to retain as many resources as possible, secure systems that have strategic materials (even though I don't have the tech to use them yet) and I think i want to keep a contiguous territory on he galactic map.

So how do you go about this? How much +cost on tech and leaders do you tolerate? Where is the break even point that makes an unoccupied star system worth having for you?

 

[bobucles]

Most star systems are totally useless. The new resource system massively scaled all the low tier resources (more pops, baseline production is 4 per pop) and only has sparse +2s and +3s. Feel free to grab systems with alloys or rares of course.

 

[Dan_Daniel2000]

If you Arent a megacorp, you ignore that number. It literally doesnt matter, having more Systems, planets and districts is Always worth it.

 

[JodelDiplom]

If you Arent a megacorp, you ignore that number. It literally doesnt matter, having more Systems, planets and districts is Always worth it.

But I can't even afford to hire new admirals at +200% or whatever the cost penalty currently is

I should mention, that I only have three colonized planets... And 50 or so star systems. There are a bunch of colonizable planets but they're all just 10% habitability for by species so I'm on the fence about whether I should plop down a colony ship or not. I'm playing a FP game so no extra species for me.

 

[Linusz]

Basically, you only take systems that you need to grab a planet. So you take 2 systems if the planet you need / want to colonize is 2 systems away from your current border. As mentioned above, systems yield that few resources compared to planets, that it is not even worth it.

Aditionally, you take systems that have rare resources or a lot of minerals.

If you want to pay the influence cost, you can also ONLY take systems with planets you colonize. But that might drive up your cohesion and spawn a lot of pirates, so check that.

All that is said from a min/max perspective. If you look for nice borders, you have to act differently, of course.

 

[mergele]

No! Do NOT colonize 10% planets, getting them just to break even in resources takes quite a bit of time and is not something for the early stages.

 

[Roddo]

Don't abandon unless it's useless systems like 2 energy or so. And even those I just tend to keep because I hate the holes in my bloated empire galaxy view. Just buff up your production on planets.
I tend to offset research penalties taking every possible tech that increases tech income (from stations and work), get every buff I can from curiers, annomalies and the like.
What I have not found, is how to offset the penalty for unity. It just gets incredibly hard to counter.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Don't abandon unless it's useless systems like 2 energy or so. And even those I just tend to keep because I hate the holes in my bloated empire galaxy view. Just buff up your production on planets.
I tend to offset research penalties taking every possible tech that increases tech income (from stations and work), get every buff I can from curiers, annomalies and the like.
What I have not found, is how to offset the penalty for unity. It just gets incredibly hard to counter.

Well, to an extent the more population you have, the more unity jobs you can fill, and the more trade (50% of which can go to unity) you produce. I'm not sure how heavily you can leverage the unity gains, since I've mostly just been letting sector AI do most of my planet building on "balanced" settings, but I think I'm on roughly 9 years a unity purchase at the moment in around 2400, even without pushing unity hard.

 

[Tacticus101]

It is a Soft cap, you are generally supposed to be over it and the penalties will get worse as you get more planets and systems.

If you have so many systems that you are losing energy on maintainance, then its a problem, but just high cost for leaders and tech isnt too much of an issue. Really you have two choices, either keep the systems and wait as your planets get larger, which will make the penalties less of an issue, or massively pull back your borders and retake the systems later.