This is a known bug, loading a save causes the monthly purchase to affect the price without actually performing the trade. Since any monthly trade above 12 minerals is only sustainable through abusing the "snap" behaviour of prices (where they snap back to the base price when they get close), this causes the price to go beyond the snap range and never reset, rapidly increasing the price because 50 minerals a month is will normally increase the price significantly.
52 is perfectly consistent if you never load a save, anything above 20 could theoretically cause you to ruin your prices when you load a save. The current workaround is to clear all monthly orders before saving.
Ah, thank you! This has bugged me for the longest time.
You shouldn't say things like this - someone might mess around and find out! It turns out the opposite is true.
I observed a GA galaxy to 2215, picked a convenient AI (it had a fleet of 61 corvettes), and tested how many alloys I needed to field in order to beat their fleet.
-snip-
While trade builds are ahead on techs, they're behind on Supremacy traditions. Getting -10% ship build cost before starting fleet construction saves more alloys than all 5 of those T1 techs. 10% firerate is on par with the strongest T1 component techs, and the finisher is either Hit and Run, which effectively prevents all ship losses thanks to 3.6's janky disengage mechanics, or No Retreat, which is a power spike on par with T2 components if you don't mind the replacement rates. Trade builds only catch up after they finish Supremacy, by which point you'll have reached T2 components and the marginal headstart on T1 components isn't too important.
The argument isn't doing Mercantile instead of Supremacy, however?
There's two separate arguments that seem to be conflated here. One is using military techs over econ techs (tech order), and one is how you open up your traditions (tradition order).
The tech argument is that it's more useful to invest in the early military techs than the early, mineral/econ techs when aiming for the war in the year 20-30 range. This is because things like 20% mineral techs don't actually translate into 20% more alloys for 20% larger fleets, but that overall fleet size is more dependent on your pop-economy distribution, and quality is what gives the that it's relative 'thrust' potential. I don't believe we're actually in disagreement here, since you're arguing the economic benefit of Supremacy (very true!), not the early econ techs themselves.
To which my answer would be to agree, and acknowledge that a trade build should save the real ship construction for after supremacy, not before, Supremacy's unlock, and be leveraging their unity/tech balance and amount of early dipping to get to Supremacy in a timely manner. (I do love me my Discovery tradition map the stars, but with the various tradition buffs it's not exactly a must-have opener by any means.)
The argument on tradition order is not Mercantile instead of Supremacy, but Mercantile as the main opening before flexing to whatever secondary tradition is most appropriate- be it Supremacy OR Diplomacy as your second tradition. The flexibility is the value, as you can avoid hard-committing to a day 1 corvette rush strategy in favor of having early war OR early federation building as options.
The economic primacy of Supremacy for alloys only matters if you're forced to fight in defense... but a trade build facing such an obvious threat as a neighborhood fanatic purifier would stop trying to complete the Mercantile tree and swap to Supremacy. Mercantile's benefit in this case is if other worlds were already colonized before the discovery, at which point trade policy clerks start to do a lot of work as you shift to a war economy policy.
Continuing your trend of managing to make multiple errors per sentence, pretty much everything else you said is outdated in 3.6.
- Combat computers are above average, but definitely not the single biggest stat boost in the era - you net +5% firerate, and +5% into evasion or similar. Blue lasers is multiplicative ~20% total damage output, with some T2 weapon upgrades almost doubling your effective damage output.
The claim wasn't that combat computers were the biggest stat boost of the era but that combat computers enable the tactic effects enabling mixed combat.
The most relevant mixed combat role in the corvette/destroyer era is the use of starbase defense platforms in an 'anvil' strategy, where the first upgraded combat computer adds a +25% fire rate compared to the base computer. This is unique to defense platforms, but in conjunction with the missile rebalance and recategorization to S-only alpha strike role in the early game, it significantly made a mixed-fleet approach including how to use defense platforms a really, really impactful thing in my memory.
Now, maybe I am mis-remembering this applying to missiles in 3.6 with the ability to missile-stack defense platforms, but a quick check at the wiki does seem to affirm that missiles are S-slot weapons, 'Light' defense platform segments are able to get 4 S slots a segment for 8 per defense platforms, and I don't see or remember anything keeping missiles of defense platforms now that missiles aren't G-slot weapons. Defense platforms may be twice the base cost of a corvette, but with over double the missile capacity, buffable by starbase, and any defense-setup your enemy can tailor itself to beat on the platforms is one that your own fleet can just counter-balance to exploit by design once it jumps in...
Well, I'd call that a mixed-fleet strategy.
While not combat-computer specific, a relevance of this Anvil strategy to the broader topic of other early upgrades over econ is the ability to exploit the victories from jumping in on an engaged enemy.
Even if the enemy is able to FTL in generally good order, the early upgrades for hyperdrives and thrusters are critical for how far you can chase them into their own territory before they can exit emergency FTL and recover. +25% speed across systems, and -25% charge to jump between systems, quickly adds up to additional systems you can reach, siege, and move-on to before the enemy regroups at their home starbase, just as other T1 techs of military significance support your ability to resist outpost attrition and just keep pushing forward to cap as many relevant starbases as you can.
Ultimately, nothing in 3.6 changed the macro-strategy of fleet management in the early game. You still want to rush down the enemy starbase, and the best way to start a rush is by baiting the AI into attacking your combat starbase and then exploiting the retreat. Ship computers are key enablers for defense-platforms, which can be effective supports to attrite enemies at range, and the rest are relevant for strategic exploitation or enabling it.
- I'm not sure what you mean by "tactic effects enabling mixed-combat", but none of the ship behaviours are important until cruisers. While there's a couple cases where meta-fleets have mixed designs (usually for slight variety in P slots, or a couple torpedos for dealing with starbases), they're still mono-tactic and almost always mono-hull. Until T3 tech, combat computers are just +% to a couple minor stats.
The variety in weapons based on the expected enemy defense roll-out, expected PD distirubtion, or ratio of missiles in your forces are precisely what makes specializing the distribution of your fleets useful. While Anvil strategy is the most relevant in the corvette age, destroyers get in on the siege vs skirmish action, corvettes have the missile boat/PD fire rate + evade bias vis-a-vis the Skirmisher hit-the-other-corvette bias, and so on.
- Critter weapons are not "viable to dominant", they're "strict garbage to usable".
- Energy Siphons are as expensive as T2 mass drivers, arguably worse than T0 mass drivers, strictly outclassed by T1 mass drivers,
I have a feeling you're neglecting the overall ship build.
An energy syphon has an average 14.5 dam/hit : avg 2.55 dam/day at 60 range, with modifiers of 200% against shields, 25% against armor, and 100% against hull.
A Coilgun (what I'd call tier 2, but first upgrade) of S-slot is average 14 dam / hit : avg 3.62 dam/day at 50 range, with modifiers of 150% against shield, 50% against armor, and 100% again hull.
This is a favorable matchup for the syphon. The role of the syphon and coilgun before hull damage isn't armor shredding, but shield stripping so that your dedicated anti-armor/anti-hull weapons can do their work to get the best chance of a knockout and not just a withdrawal. The avg. damage over time of just over 1 isn't going to matter compared to the benefits of a more favorable anti-shield/anti-hull distribution, which you start maximizing when 1 Tiyanki functionally meets your shield stripping needs for balanced foes so that your other 2 weapons can focus on the hull damage modifiers.
And this is without going into the edict-boost synergy of strategic resources to boost up energy weapons, where they share the capacity to spike energy weapon damage by 25%, which does not apply to coil guns or autocanons on the same resource line. Which means more easily strategized powerup boosts (you guarantee access to crystals in a few ways, which in turn also empowers your early-game discovery phase efficiency), more reliable power-spike planning, origin/setup synergies (Shroud Teacher or Lithoird-planning), and so on.
- and none of that matters anyway because they're all massively outperformed by T0 flak cannons.
Assuming you meant autocanons (a tier 2 tech depending on T1 mass canons), and not flak batteries (point defense) this is where tech pathing efficiency matters.
If you attend to path to T0 (what I'd call T1) flak canons, you are committing not only to researching the tech, but also to coilguns as a pre-requisite...
and not the other engineering techs instead. Including armor, strategic resources (as both econ and military edict unlocks), upgrading to destroyers, holographic casts, etc. All of which would be facing stiffer tech draw competition if they were competing with coil guns and what coil guns unlock.
By being a
society tech, even as a tier 2 sidegrade, Tiyanki energy syphons work reduce the tech prioritization burden on engineering, allowing for other techs to (a) be researched, and (b) avoid the tech pool draw inflation for increasing the number of potential techs induced by coil guns, and (c) ensuring you get the reverse engineering credit when going after destroyed ships during your conquest phase, getting both direct tech progress and stored research on the back end.
And this is without considering range implications, which is less important as an alphastrike measure and more important for maximizing numeric advantages so that other vessels can support eachother. Corvettes in dogfights can easily run away from eachother to limit the number of ships that can focus-fire, but if you're on the offense you should be the one with more ships in a general area.
Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying autocannons aren't indeed good, or even better ocne unlocked. The change in withdrawal chance calculations alone, if I understand their implications right, was a major buff to them, even before the M and L-slot versions. But autocanons aren't the end-all-be-all that beats the tech considerations for getting your conquest snowball started, and they aren't better
enough to warrant dismissing other tech upgrades over econ upgrades.
- Mining Lasers are a T2 tech, and are a sidegrade to plasma cannons and T2 PD. It's not a favourable sidegrade however, and I'd always use the PD against AI fleets. They do at least have the upside that if you kill a mining fleet very early, you can lock up your physics research with a 5k tech to get an early T2 weapon without first teching 6 T1 techs. A solid power spike, though I'm not sure it's worth delaying disruptors/volatile motes.
You're not delaying volatile motes
because you are securing a guaranteed T2 weapon option that you can invest in when it's the best available option of your current draw.
Which, in turns, helps translate to increasing other stats, not just the weapons in a 1-to-1 comparison, because you can invest in shields / generators / sensors / other strategic options instead of having to prioritize the current weapon upgrade above all else.
Unlike relying on purely card-draw options when the next time you will see a specific weapon option will be, having a tier 2 that's not in competition with your other tier 2 draws lets you invest not
only in that weapon level weapon, but in other things besides the pre-requisite chain as well, or the other parallel paths the pre-requisites unlocks. A mining drone laser build is a 5000 tech, minus the reverse engineering bonus from the mining drone salvage itself. A plasma launcher build is the 5000 tech AND the the 2500 blue lasers tech on the draws they're actually present, while
also having to deal with UV Lasers (4000) and disruptors (5000) competing in the tech draw slots. This is, at a minimum, 2500 research that could go into other physics war-boosting capabilities (ie, shields), as well as the card draw management of having 1 weight-95 tech (blue lasers) in competition versus 3 largely redundant techs of weight 75/75/85 competing with other physics draws.
This is a non-trivial readjustment of your war-preparation techs, as instead of committing 2 tech draws to a weapon at the opportunity cost of other system upgrades, you can choose when the opportunity cost is lowest... even as, implicitly, specing into other things lets you get the maximum reverse engineer benefit when you start slicing the enemy's Blue Lasers / upgrades, further reducing the cost.
- Amoeba Flagella are a decent sidegrade, but irrelevant until cruisers.
Agreed, though I would argue on anvil-strategies at war openers against any AI, missiles are good enough since the 3.6 adjustment to fighter behavior now that they're no longer dual-role offense/defense.
- Regardless of how good critter weapons are, reactor upgrades are not "key for incorporating them".
- The opposite is true - the primary advantage of most critter weapons is their power efficiency. Mining lasers are 7 power vs plasma's 13 (though T2 PD is also 7), cloud lightning is 23 power vs the 40 it would take to field an equivalent number of disruptors, amoeba flagella are 30 power, with standard strike craft being 30/45/60.
Again, I'm discussing through the destroyer age, not the cruiser age, so cloud lightning and amoeba are extremely tangential to the argument.
Reactor upgrades are key to incorporating critter weapons
and the other upgrades (including shields)
because power generator load at the early-game corvette age is quickly overwhelmed by upgraded components without reactors. Hence a dependence on reactor boosters and armor early if you go for components before generators, even though these significantly scale the alloy cost per ship, which affects the scale of the number of ships you can have, which itself is a cost-decreasing function.
Now, we could have an interesting, if separate, conversation on what the good defense builds of the early-game pre-cruisers are. Shields and armor are functionally an alloy-cost vs energy-cost conversion whose value is radically changed by enemy weapon templates. Personally, I've found 2 shield/1 armor builds are more than consistent against the AI, with PD-distribution with PD-corvettes the primary conditional. This obviously smuggles in an assumption of heavy shield bias- and larger returns for having shield techs- that shifts my energy consumption needs. It also smuggles in assumptions about my planning on PD-corvettes, which shapes the penetration argument against missiles, which changes what weapons I'm most concerned about when, etc.
But to a large point, I think it doesn't matter and misses the point- the point isn't what ship is best on a ship-per-ship component substitute level, but the overall macro-economic model. Trade builds are most relevant because of how they change your high-habitability world and energy/mineral/CG economic distribution, secondly because how they can use that change to free up the qualitiative advantage.
But the qualitiative advantage is secondary to the pop-structure economy. Hence the argument that a 20% miner tech doesn't mean 20% larger fleets, and so if you're going to structure your pop pyramid to such an extent that you can have those 20% larger fleets, you should go with quality ships instead for momentum on victory.
Speaking generally, the most important early techs for ship efficiency (disruptors, autocannon/PD, rare crystals, volatile motes) are T2 with either no pre-requisites, or a T1 pre-requisite that you probably wanted anyway (like blue lasers). It's much more important how fast you get to T2, not which T1 techs you picked getting there.
I actually agree in general, but I am positing a trade builds (and, for separate reasons, critters) have a broader selection of which T1 techs it is viable to choose
while getting to, and initially in, the T2 era.
I fully admit am approaching from various sets of assumptions- including a relative split of science-vs-unity prioritization that has you getting through Supremacy at about the same rate you start going through T2. This rests on things like migrating pops from the homeworld to the colonies to get the size 10 upgrade as early as possible, settling low-habitability worlds but leaving trade pops there to fund the CG-construction of science labs and unity jobs on the high-habitability core, and not necessarily doing common tradition dips (ie, map the stars being more optional than not).
I am also aware that various meta-chasing strategies either optimize for pure-society tech (Crisis / Dragon builds), or basically write off unity entirely in favor of pure science. But I am also arguing that the flexibility of which to support, as opposed to hard-committing to one strategy from the start, is part of the advantage of Trade Builds.
If you want to simply refine to pure cut-throat meta chasing, we can do that, but then we'd also be solely discussing hyper forward-focused min-max chasings like not even settling low-habitability or even 80-habitability planets because the colony ship investment and rate-of-return isn't there compared to pulling off that corvette rush. Which I don't think was the intent of having comparisons of habitability, or in general, since there wouldn't even be a discussion on technician builds in a cut-throat meta, since the technicians never have a chance to make the resturn on investment before the game is functionally over.
Ultimately, econ techs are for when you're not going into war in the near future, and any build which intends to will prioritize the war techs first. Trade builds are just a way to not need as many early econ techs as early into the game.
