I didn't really put much stock in machine empires being weak but...

[Typee]

I'm actually not convinced letting your mining planets grow is optimal for organics, either. Specialized worlds benefit from several stacking bonuses that make them more efficient. In my current run, I'm going to be experimenting with this to see if reducing most of my colonies down to barebones mining colonies with their growth directed towards a smaller number of large urban worlds works better than growing every planet to be large.

Tell us your findings.
I doubt it's that good to specialize fully in one resource honestly. I mean if you go for all 3 resources, you get the specialization bonus from 5% to 2%, so losing 3% base production isn't a big deal. And you can easily build all 3 "enhancer buildings" on one planet.
I suppose the big benefit of full specialization is the ability to easily gene-mod the whole planet.

 

[happyscrub]

wow, so like all of this is wrong, i mean the planet even has 26 tech-drones (generator jobs)

I'm currently at 59 energy on that planet, with capacitor edict. robot amenities create stability, which boosts pop resource production and it prevents deviancy. Yes, this is pretty much my only planet that's giving me a decent energy income. most planets have 3-4 only energy districts and are running at about -10, their only benefit is slowly making more robots.



THIS IS WITH CAPACITOR OVERLOAD.

1. My math might be wrong, but the concept is the same, energy jobs is only a small portion of what's going on the planet.

2. Even in that new pic you are still mismanaging your pops. Still too many maintenance workers.

3. Still tech jobs are only a small faction of whats going on there too. You got more mineral districts and buildings sucking up energy.

 

[Flyinghotpocket]

yes we all know that the devs forgot about ai. that much was apparent when you start the game with negative energy.

 

[Delthor]

Tell us your findings.

I'll definitely be doing an overview of what I've discovered about planet specialization, habitats, and ringworlds once I finish my current playthrough.

 

[Less2]

You can't really 100% specialize planets until mid/late game with the current system unless you spend thousands of energy and micromanage every grown pop to be resettled on a city world. Your best bet is to split between one base resource and one advanced resource.

Even if you did specialize the efficiency of advanced buildings goes down, since you generally need to manufacture rare resources to run more than a handful, which more than balances out what you are gaining by the specialization.

 

[Nin6]

30% of my pops are on generator jobs and i'm barely breaking even with the capacitor boost, do i need 40 or 50% before i can stop using capacitors every few years?

You could maybe even need more than 30% on power.

If you compare machines to biologicals. They must put pops on mines to generate minerals, and then put pops on consumer goods buildings to generate consumer goods, which is additional pops required. Also biologicals need pops on food for food upkeep for pops.

What upekeep to robots have? Power. Coordinator machines had almost a 3 energy //month upkeep if I remember correctly. So of course, all of your planets will be generator planets. And perhaps one, or maybe two mineral planets to account for the upkeep to produce additional robots.

You dont need additional pops for consumer goods buildings, as research is generated directly from minerals. Robots have an additional influence per year, so yes when I played I had capacity overload constantly on. This was playing as an exterminator. So I did not have to spend it on claiming. As a regular robot I could see it being more difficult to maintain without some thought or calculations.

 

[Nin6]

Except bio reactors are getting nerfed to a 2 - 1 ratio. the minerals to food comparison is faulty, food you only need enough to not go into negatives and maybe enough to periodically pay off Marauders whereas machine empires need to produce enough minerals to not only sustain pop growth but to accumulate enough to actually construct buildings and produce essential products such as alloys. Also Rogue Servitors who DO have to produce food and consumer goods say hi.

Bio reactors convert 20 food to 20 power. And yes its inefficient to get that 20 food. Which is why I said you only want to do it if you run out of other means of generating power. Basically you just use them to convert starbase hydroponics farms to power, because ME's star base build options are limited. No deep space black site, no trading hub. All you really have is service unbrica ( which you will only have one a shipyard ) and fleet logistics. So what do you do with the other two slots... one is going to be a farm, the other is probably going to be either a hyperspace registrar if your economy can handle the 2 energy / month upkeep, or a resource store.

I havnt even tried servitors, but it sounds extremely challenging. I imagine you would probably want to closely monitor you population controls of bio trophies.

 

[Riftwalker]

Using all building slots is easily the biggest trap this game ever had.

did it completely fine on my organic empire and still was getting huge gains in my economy. the fact that i'd have to micro my planets to merely stay positive while under capacitor overload, is severely handicapped against organics. I'm having to go to each of my planets now every few months to tinker with the jobs. most of the tradition trees that give you extra jobs, actually injure your economy, unless you disable them on most planets.

this is simply poor tuning.

like, if prosperity is required, to maintain a functional empire, and not just energy farming planets, then it's poorly tuned. I'm only now getting more wiggle room due to having energy district techs.

you wana know how many mining districts i have? 12, out of 62. I have 12 energy districts on just my capital. I have 35 energy districts in total.

I get most of my minerals from stations, because it's required. Just everything about machine empires is set up to require tedious micro to get normal resource progression. with the current progression i feel that I shouldn't be building building jobs until 2300 at the earliest. meanwhile... I can make a research world almost ASAP for an organic empire...

 

[Riftwalker]

Bio reactors convert 20 food to 20 power.

in the beta patch they produce 15 for 20.

 

[Nin6]

in the beta patch they produce 15 for 20.

Ah ok, well i'm playing with Mods that improve the terrible AI. On the base version

 

[Promethian]

Bio reactors convert 20 food to 20 power. And yes its inefficient to get that 20 food. Which is why I said you only want to do it if you run out of other means of generating power. Basically you just use them to convert starbase hydroponics farms to power, because ME's star base build options are limited. No deep space black site, no trading hub. All you really have is service unbrica ( which you will only have one a shipyard ) and fleet logistics. So what do you do with the other two slots... one is going to be a farm, the other is probably going to be either a hyperspace registrar if your economy can handle the 2 energy / month upkeep, or a resource store.

I havnt even tried servitors, but it sounds extremely challenging. I imagine you would probably want to closely monitor you population controls of bio trophies.

Not on test. Bio burners are 15 energy to 20 food there. Somebody on dev team doesn't understand the difficulty ME have with energy. Nerfing something that takes up a building slot to only be 5% more efficient than just trading it is a poor decision.

On Servitors. You basically ignore the squishpets. They effectively are cheaper coordinators that don't require you to dedicate productive pops to making unity. The challenge is that they require food and consumer goods. However when you consider that every pop requires upkeep the cost of the food and CG comes out about even for them vs maintaining a robot pop. Overall Servitors are in as good a place as any other ME.

 

[Nin6]

@Promethian Yes I actually enjoy robots a lot more now, than in the previous patch where they felt brain dead to play. They feel more rewarding to play. I dont understand what the problem is. Probably because they are different and harder to play. Hive minds on the other hand need some work to balance in the current patch.

15 energy for 20 food, maybe thats why its on a 'test' version??

 

[The Grumpy Buddha]

Oh, and resettling to colonies is nearly mandatory. Getting to 5 pops to build the factory building doubles initial pop growth. Later on, getting to 10 pops to upgrade the planet capital adds 50% to that growth rate. It is almost an exponential curve and resettlement lets you jump past the flat part of the curve to the good part.

I noticed that when trying to move the 5th pop (in the beta), I was getting a warning that if I did so, a building would be destroyed or something odd like that. Can anyone tell me what's going on there?

 

[Black_Shade]

I noticed that when trying to move the 5th pop (in the beta), I was getting a warning that if I did so, a building would be destroyed or something odd like that. Can anyone tell me what's going on there?

The population on the planet you were moving from got reduced to below the threshold for a building slot. So maybe you went from 30 to 29 pop on your homeworld, which removes a buildslot and destroys whatever building was there.

 

[The Grumpy Buddha]

The population on the planet you were moving from got reduced to below the threshold for a building slot. So maybe you went from 30 to 29 pop on your homeworld, which removes a buildslot and destroys whatever building was there.

Oooh thanks! I may nuke one of the Specialist buildings on my homeworld that Wundergoat says aren't necessary early on ... that'll solve the problem. Trying to get a couple settlements early and that growth of 1.1/month is just painful.

 

[Slynx]

So a fully upgraded starbase for Gestalts produces 18 -4 = 14 energy and for a normal race 12 - 4 - 6 = 2 energy.

unless you turn that trade into the consumer goods which will free the slot on 1-2 planets, that'll allow you to build a megaplex... that'll give you 10+ trade jobs....

 

[Kent_Lang]

The fundamental problem with ME is that energy is used in everything from maintaining starbases, to fleets and buildings so the added burden to have to supply your own pops with energy can be tricky to deal with and organics only need to worry about food as it's never really used for much else than pop upkeep, but this isn't news precisely as the MEs has always worked this way. The only difference is that when they got implemented you could put like 2 pops on a Batharium power plant and not worry throughout the early to mid-game.

 

[WhiteKyubey]

When I play ME, I take Supremacy tree first and Raid bombardment as a first ascension perk. I go early aggression against any organic empire I have around and steal 10-15 pops for energy slaves.
- you get 4-5 energy for 1 food (don't need districts, jobs and very little housing)
- you get +3 organic pop growth on all of your planets
Just don't be too greedy and don't steal all the pops - if you steal too many energy slaves stability will drop too much.
After I do that I have no problems with energy as ME and I don't keep any robots on energy work.
You can also try to make a fortress world with "deploy hunter bots" edict. It will make energy production -33% lower, but it will allow much more energy slave pops.

 

[Nakkivene]

The colony you posted is terrible. you have 3 nexus districts, all building slots filled and not all generator/mining districts done, and a bunch of extra jobs. The empty districts all eat up energy.

I made an industrial production core with superconductive/mass-produced and rapid replicators/rockbreakers. I met the khan with giga cannon/neutron launcher battleships and was researching repeatable society long before...

 

[Riftwalker]

The colony you posted is terrible. you have 3 nexus districts, all building slots filled and not all generator/mining districts done, and a bunch of extra jobs. The empty districts all eat up energy.

I made an industrial production core with superconductive/mass-produced and rapid replicators/rockbreakers. I met the khan with giga cannon/neutron launcher battleships and was researching repeatable society long before...

god, why are people still saying it's not a perfect generator world, when it's my capital and 70 years in it produces the most energy out of all my planets. (the run was an attempt at tall play, but it seems almost impossible as a ME)

so far ME has been the only game i stopped early, and it wasn't because it was hard, it was just tedious moving pops constantly and microing jobs. My game afterward I played a megacorp with 8 planets at it's height, 6 of which were city worlds, 1300 or so people on 8 worlds were fed by only 2. I pretty much never had growth or problems with any of my incomes. meanwhile the only time i got significant income was when i was melting people down as a ME, and otherwise just barely being above a zero sum. it simply wasn't fun.