Orbital Ring Buildings - Resources vs Trade. Trade one seems, terribad?

[DrFranknfurter]

The super-annoying thing about Planetary Ascensions is that they reduce your sprawl but you can only afford enough of them to make a difference if you already have low sprawl.

So their meta might be something like fork off all your big conquered Sectors into Vassals -> Ascend all your core worlds into +% powerhouses -> re-integrate your Vassals? or don't bother if Overlord makes Vassals great.

I can easily see it working that way in future. The % bonuses from Planetary Ascensions probably isn't going to be the most exciting or powerful part of a vassal swarm strategy but I hope it will feel satisfying at least to have only level 10 planets and a tiny amount of empire sprawl with almost every resource coming from vassals that aren't actually as annoying to manage (since you can build in their space, including with holdings and they give you unique bonuses even if they're a bit stupid, but less stupid than before as they still get some AI bonuses). If nothing else it'll be easier than micromanaging hundreds of planets.

Though I think vassal swarms will be a bit of a player-only strategy (also known as an exploit) as I can't imagine the AI will be able or inclined to split away lots of tiny 1-system sectors (otherwise they'll probably just crumble away rather than expanding normally). And as you say ascensions may require you to reduce sprawl first to even afford to ascend your worlds. I'll look forward to giving it a try and comparing it to other styles of play.

 

[-Marauder-]

there is a build made exlusively for trade value power , where clerk are the only job you want on the planet anyway apart from merchant .

megacorporation : Fanatic xenophile + Gospel of the mases + free traders + Tradition merchant + prosperity (for extra clerk jobs) + Thrifty + mind over matter (for the extra spiritualist attraction ) + Universal transaction ( for free trade pact , more likely to happen thx to your absurd trade value) + trade federation +planet designation+ utopian abundance (it help keep stability around 100% and consumer goods are not even close to a problem, and increase the trade value of pops) .

one clerk will produce 4+1 TV + 10% + 10% + 20% + 25% +20% = 5+75% = 8.75 + 30% from hight stability = 11.375 TV for clerk ( if you are member of merchant federation +20% \ if you are president +30% = 12,625 TV \ 13.325 TV )

but naturaly you will transform that in 0.5 energy , 0,25 consumer goods and 0.125 unity . and like that , you don't need to build consumer goods , energy districts or unity buildings . ( if you are, in the best case, a president of a trade legue if can produce 6.6625 energy , 3.33125 consumer goods and 1.665625 unity for clerk .

the advantage , is that all you need to increase your economy and unity is to build more commercial habitats . your only ""problem"" in the whole game will be to not have enought minerals ( if you are keeping up with the production of alloys)


why the mall can't give TV ? because it would be incredibly OP for empires focused on TV . 5% is already a quite powerfull powerup for any that focus on that . the amanaties bonus is not aimed for those that don't actualy use clerks for TV but as stability buster, so they can use less of them ... " but intranteiners are more efficent!" but they are specialist, and occupy a building slot.

edit: i actualy forgot the galatic stock exchange ... thats another 20% trade value.

You're arguing about something that really has no impact on the mall whatsoever.

1. If you go for mass clerks, which would really hurt your mineral/energy production then you don't need 1 amenity, as you'll have plenty of it anyway. So all you get out of this is 5% trade value.

2. You're adding virtually every available modifier and going "TRADE VALUE IS OP!", while ignoring that minerals/energy have just as many, if not more modifiers, all increasing their production rates. Way beyond anything you can achieve with trade value. Let's compare it to technicians and their bonuses.

A technician produces a base of 6 energy. With the new orbital ring, they'll produce 8, and with an energy nexus 10! The basic technician techs add 60% to that. The planetary capital series adds another 60%, unless this was changed this does not modify trade value. Synthetic Thought Patterns are another 5%, oh, they also get the 30% from high stability. All of this adds up to a grand total of 155%, and this is without repeatables and a bunch of other minor techs.

So a single technician under the same circumstances you're postulating for clerks would produce 25,5 energy. Converted to trade value, that's roughly 25,5 trade value. Guess what? The numbers for most other jobs look similar. And as the limiting factor are usually pops...

Compare this with the amount of effort u have to put into planetary ascension tiers and even lvl 10 cannot come close with a single orbital refinery. Why do ascension tiers exist, if putting a ring around a planet grants a way better form of ascending a planets economy?

Because they need an overhaul, really. They are good in theory, but badly implemented.

Ever if you are doing tall(and with 25% penalty why you would want wide?) megacorp you don't want clerks. You usually swimming in energy credits and want something that is not possible/hard to buy like science/rare resources.

May be in multiplayer it is different but in singleplayer trade value(=>and energy) from clerks is just waste of the pop.

Trade value scales badly, and clerks aren't a very good job. There is no repeatable for trade value, and little that nothing that increases the base production. So as the game goes on, clerks actually become progressively worse.

To give a late-game sink for unity when Ascensions and Traditions are already complete.

Ascension tiers weren't intended to be The Best Planet Modifier Around, they were to be an end-game equivalent to repeatable technologies at a time when there was literally 0 use for unity once you had your Ambition edicts funded. There being other- and even bigger- boosts to planetary output than unity investment was never the point because it was never the issue it was intended the solve.

The problem is, that even then they're not really good. And planet ascensions going up empire wide, rather than just the cost of that one planet somewhat makes them moot.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Lastly, if you're getting all your energy from your vassals then you wouldn't want to earn energy from trade and clerks either, you'd just want industry and research and to disable all your clerk jobs anyway for more efficient specialist jobs. So it feels like an odd distraction to even bring that up at all.

I mean, it's as much distraction of bringing up technicians. What's the point of spending 5+ early game years on technicians to boost their numbers if you expect tributaries to make them obsolete? At least the trade build can skip the energy techs and go straight to the physics weapons to help win the wars to get those tributaries, or to seize more pops, at which point 1-to-1 comparisons no longer matter because you conquered 30 extra pops to do whatever.


I think Trade Builds are odd to a lot of people because of how the fundamental role of clerks in a trade build changes over time. They go from primarily energy producers, to CG-economy impactors, to amenity supplements and sprawl-avoiders in a limited building economy in ways that don't directly convert with job numbers.


In the extremely early game, they're energy workers for worlds so bad energy workers don't make sense. Thrifty and a trade designation makes them flat 6 energy anywhere. That's all they are, and all they need to be, as while they're not 'great' they're good enough to let other jobs be great elsewhere.


Once you start down Mercantile and get the CG production policy, they stop being energy producers directly, though, and the strategic role starts edging into the mineral/industrial economy balance, reducing your need for both minerals and CG districts. A 6 TV clerk with stratified economy living standards is eating .1-to-.2 CG, but producing about 3 energy and 1.5-ish net CG. Double that with 2 clerks, and that's the upkeep of the science lab, the urban district opening it, and one of the two researchers, with 2 energy left over to offset other costs. It's not that the trade build at this point removes the need for minerals or more CG, but rather it reduces the amount of CG and CG-upkeep minerals needed, letting you reallocate those minerals into more alloys instead of CG, or those pops into more scientists.

At stage 2, you're trading energy production for a re-arrangement of the shares of your economy dedicated to miners-for-CG, CG-producers-for-science, and CG-production-for-miners/technicians-supporting-CG, freeing up those pops for other needs. IF you need energy directly, you need it from somewhere... but the the strategic trade off is 'more alloys and more science,' which can be leveraged to 'more tributaries and more scientists' as the interim step. Tributaries start to come into player here- giving more minerals to further free up your mineral-worker population, and more energy to make up for the energy deficit- but the trade build is leading into this by making the trade for more favorable tributary-forcing conditions (trading energy you don't need more than maintenance levels of for better empire economy allocation ratios).



At Stage 3, when Tributaries are covering all the energy needs for things like Terraforming or industrial, sure- clerks-as-energy and even Clerks-as-CG are obsolete. But they were before. Technicians are also obsolete. But by this point, with several successful wars under you band, planets are potentially filling up, and you're transitioning to the Building Limit phase of the game- how do you employ the most workers with the fewest building slots dedicted to amenities. And here, again, Clerks have a role- with 2 clerks from urban district covering 4-7.2 amenities, enough to cover all the amenities at 100% habitability with the amenities discount. At this point, the clerk energy/CG upkeep a nice little bonus, but no longer The Point- the ability to have your planet's dedicated urban output increase by almost 10% by having one extra building slot dedicated to science/unity is.


But this is inconsistent. It's changing. It needs to be managed carefully- not swapping to Stage 2 if you still need energy more than CG (such as Corporate empires with the energy-colony ships), and not staying too long in it (not getting tributaries).

For a more scientific comparison I suppose you'd want to start with the exact same galaxy and edit your starting planet to match what it would be in either a trade or non-trade build and compare the two situations in terms of total population, navy and research output every 10 years to see how long the "timing windows" are to see if trade has an advantage in the first 30 years that could extrapolate to eventual success in the late game. (It could be that I just had a terrible start that trade game vs a perfect start the other game).

I did this on a pen-and-paper level with day 1 saved start around the time of the Anglers release. Knowing where the planets and neighborhood were, and so on. Some metrics I had were fleet power by year 30, CG production, and so on.

It was in the context of that level of AAR that I started to realize that Robots were... I hesitate to say overrated, but not the must-have absolute.

Some key takeaways from my experiments there were-

Building robot factories on every planet you can is far more decisive for your ability to wage early wars than trade-vs-technicians. (Robot payoff time to 'break even' 30~40 years after investing, depending on tech roles/modifiers.)

The ability to win an early claim war is far more important than technicians-vs-trade. The sheer number of pops you can add via 'just' a homeworld conquest crushes the comparisons, and the ability to use the conquered species with their 100% homeworld and different habitability is a major wrench in post-combat comparisons. (A different habitability can bring technicians to other areas- a same-habitability makes the trade upkeep-role even more important.)

BUT a trade build/no robots is more conducive to early conquest than a technician-robots build. Both the sheer number of alloys saved not doing robots, AND the early-game tech efficiency of bypassing the energy field techs in favor of shields/generators/mining drone lasers,




(As a further note- in the context of Anglers/non-Anglers and catalytic vs non-catalytic, similar points were-

-Catalytic's movement of alloy-economy to food, while late-game less efficient, greatly reduced the mineral burden to fund BOTH alloys AND science while building the science labs/industrial districts sometimes years faster, much better than a meritoracy delay. This, too, favored early military buildups, and was enlightening in the relevance of lateral-shift economics where you move chokepoint resources (minerals) to non-chokepoints (food) to allow greater specialist buildup faster.


-When using stable market purchases, Pearl Diver CGs consistently gave a better CG economy even before the CG trade policies. The crux ended up being that homeworld CG, while more CG per producer, are much less efficient in the pop-upkeep behind the specialist. You can support 2 Pearl Divers with about .5 Anglers output, but 1 Artisan required about 2.5 upkeep pops, who need more than double the high-habitability worlds to optimize. This was enlightening in the early-game habitability economy.





None of this went into the true tech-rushing meta exploits- no minor relic spam or monthly market exploits that are getting nerfed with Situations- but it was enlightening on a mechanical level as I tried to reverse why things were going against popular beleifs.

 

[DeanTheDull]

The problem is, that even then they're not really good. And planet ascensions going up empire wide, rather than just the cost of that one planet somewhat makes them moot.

Consider in the context of Overlord, and what it's meta is going to be: much rarer and slower vassal-annexations due to contract vetoes, and many more vassals subsidizing eachother while paying tribute to you.

Wider is still 'better', but wide-as-we-know-it is going to hinge on just what point vassal-integration will be agreed to. If the barrier is high- and Devs have repeatedly avoid the question when asked directly- wide as most people know it, from pop/econ blooms doing a carrier-cruiser breakout and incorporating vassals a decade later- is dead. Claim wars and pop-abduction, to fill your planets with your forced subjects (abducted or released), will be much, much more relevant.

 

[Verx90]

You're arguing about something that really has no impact on the mall whatsoever.

1. If you go for mass clerks, which would really hurt your mineral/energy production then you don't need 1 amenity, as you'll have plenty of it anyway. So all you get out of this is 5% trade value.

2. You're adding virtually every available modifier and going "TRADE VALUE IS OP!", while ignoring that minerals/energy have just as many, if not more modifiers, all increasing their production rates. Way beyond anything you can achieve with trade value. Let's compare it to technicians and their bonuses.

A technician produces a base of 6 energy. With the new orbital ring, they'll produce 8, and with an energy nexus 10! The basic technician techs add 60% to that. The planetary capital series adds another 60%, unless this was changed this does not modify trade value. Synthetic Thought Patterns are another 5%, oh, they also get the 30% from high stability. All of this adds up to a grand total of 155%, and this is without repeatables and a bunch of other minor techs.

So a single technician under the same circumstances you're postulating for clerks would produce 25,5 energy. Converted to trade value, that's roughly 25,5 trade value. Guess what? The numbers for most other jobs look similar. And as the limiting factor are usually pops...

add joker " you don't get it " meme here.

you need districts that you could use for alloys , you need planets that have the energy districts .

the trade value build is a no brainer , you get evrything you want with a basic job that come from districts, buildings , traditions . and you need nothing if not alloys and research .

and that mall increase my trade value by 5% ? i'm going to build that shit on any planet i own . it doesn't matter if its not even a trade planet .

and there is no evolution for technician , you know who give you 30 TV ? something that come naturaly from building trade value evrywhere.

technician are a waste of space and infrastructure. its like you actualy build food districts , don't joke with me .

 

[-Marauder-]

add joker " you don't get it " meme here.

you need districts that you could use for alloys , you need planets that have the energy districts .

the trade value build is a no brainer , you get evrything you want with a basic job that come from districts, buildings , traditions . and you need nothing if not alloys and research .

and that mall increase my trade value by 5% ? i'm going to build that shit on any planet i own . it doesn't matter if its not even a trade planet .

and there is no evolution for technician , you know who give you 30 TV ? something that come naturaly from building trade value evrywhere.

technician are a waste of space and infrastructure. its like you actualy build food districts , don't joke with me .

No, I absolutely get it. You're just incredibly wrong. You can absolutely do this, it's just incredibly inefficient and you're not even attempting to refute the math behind it. Instead you just hand wave it away and give some flimsy reasoning that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Clerks are not a good job, will never be a good job either. It's an incredibly inefficient use of pops.

 

[Sutopia]

No, I absolutely get it. You're just incredibly wrong. You can absolutely do this, it's just incredibly inefficient and you're not even attempting to refute the math behind it. Instead you just hand wave it away and give some flimsy reasoning that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Clerks are not a good job, will never be a good job either. It's an incredibly inefficient use of pops.

You should’ve thrown a “no U”, as the pale arguments are as good as stating angler is god tier civic by claiming they don’t need factory worlds.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

[snip]

There's a lot going on there... and everyone plays the game very differently I'm sure. How tributaries work and how viable they are in future depends on a lot of things like the loyalty changes so we shall see if people just stop ever making basic resource districts. I don't actually use tributaries currently, usually just small claim wars and protectorates for the influence bonus has been my general habit. But I'm not playing to win at all costs. I play vs AI and drop games quite regularly, to try to keep invested I amuse myself with little quests - not using planets, not building CG factories, only using lasers, skip to cruisers before fighting, never claiming enemy homeworlds or whatever else I decide would make for a fun challenge vs the AI this time.

Obviously an early rush is great when it works, you've either won or you've lost. I still remember this video:

From TotalBiscuit (I really miss him). Who the hell proxies a tank?

If you win the first fight going all-in with a bit of cheese then the game is over, if you lose that first fight then it's also over nice and fast. Stellaris doesn't let players scout, at least in the first few years intel isn't going to really do anything to spot a rush so rushing feels... kinda exploity to me. The AI and other players can't really see it coming or properly react to it, so I feel it's a bit too easy to do based on how weak the starting starbase of every empire will be with it having one trade/energy collection module and one shipyard instead of actual guns or some special modules or platforms to give it a bit of protection from rushing strategies. It's also dirt cheap to claim enemy capitals in terms of influence when really the population should factor in more... or if not that then captured populations should be a little more difficult to integrate so that the game isn't over when you start building a few ships.

So I agree that early warfare is indeed currently the optimal situation, more pops is great. So any build where war is delayed because of economic development, be it building robots, gene clinics, habitats, clerks, even unity and research buildings will all lose out to just more alloys all the time and the bare minimum needed to support that until you've got a few capitals and can switch into playing catch-up with your now larger pop numbers. You can carry on playing after that point but really you won when the first battle was over no matter how long you end up playing.

But that is almost completely disconnected from the questions here about clerks being good or bad and the orbital ring building not actually helping clerks and trade builds in the mid to late game when they're actually unlocked.

The orbital ring it's a Tier 3 tech, but that only unlocks two modules, to get one building slot needs another Tier 3 tech of Star Fortress and probably waiting a while to build it and for the upgrade to complete, so you really have to compare the output of jobs with all the tier 1-3 bonuses already gained from tech (at least, maybe some repeatables by the time it's active) when you're reaching the point in the game for this to actually matter at all. No matter what opening strategy or rush build you used or didn't use. From this point it's about how trade builds are going to change in the next patch.

The output of Clerks and Technicans at Tier 3 is what matters to the "Stratospheric Ionization Elements" and "The Giga-Mall" giving +2 base output to technicians and +1 amenity to clerks and +5% trade value respectively. Obviously I'm going to be building the Alloy Processing Facilities first on forge worlds, and the other buildings that match the designation of other planets if I have any Mining, Energy or Farming worlds. After that?

I do think Giga-Malls would be something that may use either later for the passive trade boost potentially... maybe. And like you say there's a possible use-case for the amenity boost to free up a building slot I'd use for entertainers if I haven't disabled clerks, likely on research worlds as research doesn't have any corresponding boosting orbital building available... though I still think I'd avoid clerks and use those pops in more efficient jobs, and stick with entertainers until I can't expand anywhere else which never really happens.

In many cases I think adding another orbital hydroponics, resource silo, black site or another standard starbase building would probably be better if I haven't reached the cap of those yet depending on which can be built multiple times in one system. The +5% to trade value is fine and gives me a bit of profit if I have some merchants or enough pops. But building it for the +1 amenity just feels like it'd be weak vs +2 base output that then gets multiplied by at least 1.60 (three +20% boosts you'd have by tier 3, not including the boost from the buildings, designations, events, stability, subsidies and everything else).

I just think it's going to make planets produce at least another 60+ energy each with a rather conservative 10 energy districts and 20 pops employed as technicians, at neutral stability and no repeatables. I doubt a trade build is going to have 1200 trade per planet at that point in the game... even if were to use twice as many pops as technicians all working as merchants instead of clerks it wouldn't be able to get the same benefit with a small 5% bonus. But I'm glad you're happy with Trade and having fun with it in your games.

 

[Verx90]

No, I absolutely get it. You're just incredibly wrong. You can absolutely do this, it's just incredibly inefficient and you're not even attempting to refute the math behind it. Instead you just hand wave it away and give some flimsy reasoning that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Clerks are not a good job, will never be a good job either. It's an incredibly inefficient use of pops.

No u

 

[Verx90]

No, I absolutely get it. You're just incredibly wrong. You can absolutely do this, it's just incredibly inefficient and you're not even attempting to refute the math behind it. Instead you just hand wave it away and give some flimsy reasoning that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Clerks are not a good job, will never be a good job either. It's an incredibly inefficient use of pops.

inefficent pops? what about inefficent districts , inefficent planets ... you want alloys , not energy . energy come from other sources , like food. wasting districts to build energy is a waste of space. you get clerk free jobs that don't require space , and can produce the energy and amanaties that you need. no wasted space for holo theaters , no wasted space for energy districts. only alloys and research matter. and you need districts and buildings to do so. need energy? build an habitat on an useless planetoid and use it as TV planet .

if you are playing hiveminds or robots , you are trolling so there is nothing to say .

 

[maxk94]

If you're comparing it on a high-habitability world, you're missing the point of a trade build- to use your high habitability worlds for jobs like alloys and science, while getting good-enough energy (or CG worth more) from the bad worlds.

when you get the tech for orbital ring, all of your planets might be terraformed. Because it's cheap af

 

[Millbot]

Can't help but feel part of the issue is that people are falling into the trap of "but it's not good all the time!" For good game design, you don't want something to be good in all situations because it then leads to really bland and boring gameplay. There are setups where clerks are a solid choice and this setup makes sense because you don't want the gameplay to be "trade build or non-trade build? Doesn't matter because you're going to put the same crap around you colonized worlds."

The setup means, if you're a non-trade build and have hit the point where pop growth is really slow and you now need to maximize pop efficiency because you're now limited by the jobs from your districts and building. The giga-mall might let you open up you clerk jobs at this point to cover amenity needs, with some bonus resources on side, while you torch your entertainment center in favor something else that lets you get more out of your pops, even if that just means employing unemployed ones.

I kind of suspect some of the idea here is to make sure that orbital rings aren't the first go to option for trade builds either, at least when someone doesn't care about maximizing defense. If we're talking about habitable planets and not moons, there should be goals where someone wants to forgo the orbital ring in favor of a habitat because the habitat is better for pumping out more trade value, than setting up an orbital ring.

 

[HFY]

I kind of suspect some of the idea here is to make sure that orbital rings aren't the first go to option for trade builds either, at least when someone doesn't care about maximizing defense. If we're talking about habitable planets and not moons, there should be goals where someone wants to forgo the orbital ring in favor of a habitat because the habitat is better for pumping out more trade value, than setting up an orbital ring.

In my experience, the rings from Gigastructures don't impact my Habitat choices, because even when I'm using more mods to add resources to planetary bodies there are just SO MANY empty planets floating around with room for the same Trade Habs which would have otherwise been above a planet.

We could create some new mechanics to give us a reason for building an orbital habitat over a populated planet -- I've suggested a few in the past for custom Origins -- but right now there's just not much reason to even consider putting a hab over a populated planet.

Trade Habs can be placed almost anywhere; these planetary rings are specific to relatively rare planets.

Honestly I don't see them competing.

 

[DeanTheDull]

when you get the tech for orbital ring, all of your planets might be terraformed. Because it's cheap af

Sure, but that's honestly the point where the amenity-and-CG role of city-district clerks is most relevant and the technician comparisons are least relevant.

By the time you get the tech for Orbital Ring and build them everywhere, you should be an Overlord whose getting most of your resources from Prospectorium and Tributaries. If you don't have a prospectorium, you have better uses for your alloys and influence than planet rings. The primary interests for the Overlord at this point is maximizing their science/unity employment minimizing their sprawl costs that slow down science/traditions.

High-habitaiblity worlds where all building slots are filled with science and unity jobs, and not being wasted on entertainment buildings or sprawl-inefficient technicians (2 jobs per district vis-a-vis 8), is where the overlord wants to be at. For Unity worlds, the unity-booster ring building may be first priority, but the clerk-amenity is the best secondary if you're not a Spiritualist with amenity-providing priests. For science worlds, there is no science-boosting ring building, and the building slot savings of clerk-amenities is your only functional output increase from rings.

There's always a limit of 12 building slots per planet. 1 is the capital, one is the job booster (Research Lab/whatever). The maximum output difference between 10 science labs and 9 science labs with an entertainer building is going to be those clerk amenities.

 

[Millbot]

In my experience, the rings from Gigastructures don't impact my Habitat choices, because even when I'm using more mods to add resources to planetary bodies there are just SO MANY empty planets floating around with room for the same Trade Habs which would have otherwise been above a planet.

We could create some new mechanics to give us a reason for building an orbital habitat over a populated planet -- I've suggested a few in the past for custom Origins -- but right now there's just not much reason to even consider putting a hab over a populated planet.

Trade Habs can be placed almost anywhere; these planetary rings are specific to relatively rare planets.

Honestly I don't see them competing.

They'll probably have to do some adjustments with the numbers and may have to implement some other changes that aren't number related. Like as I mentioned in some other threads, I'm worried that void dwellers might end up in a spot where their best meta is to develop habitable worlds. When it really should be that they want habitats where they can get them and habitable worlds are usable, but ignorable if they so choose to go that route.

Also on further thought, it shouldn't just be void dweller that has some rather compelling reasons for not always wanting an orbital ring, every chance they get to build one.

So I disagree with ideas that would make things like Giga-Mall the top choice for trade builds. There isn't much point in habitats and orbital rings competing with each other if the choice is always the latter, at that point it's just an illusion of choice. Also different interests mean we can maybe get some stuff that is lagging behind on being useful into a solid choice for some good builds. Kind of excited because orbital rings likely make eternal vigilance more than just a meme pick and further shores up unyielding as a valid tradition choice. Still not convinced grasp the void is going to be worth it; especially, with orbital rings being kind of an indirect nerf to them (who needs more starbases, if I can get blacksites on orbital rings and have all my colonized systems covered, even if they outnumber the soft cap set by my starbase capacity?).

 

[hart30]

What I meant by comparing planetary rings with planetary ascension tiers was, that both are used to improve a planets economy and both are more for tall, than for wide playstyles. Yet the impact of a planetary ring, is way higher, at a way lower cost in comparison. Yes, planetary ascension tiers are not in competition with planetary rings, but I never intended to imply that. Habitats are the ones, which are in direct competition with rings, as they cost the same and can occupy the same spots over habitable planets.

 

[HFY]

They'll probably have to do some adjustments with the numbers and may have to implement some other changes that aren't number related. Like as I mentioned in some other threads, I'm worried that void dwellers might end up in a spot where their best meta is to develop habitable worlds. When it really should be that they want habitats where they can get them and habitable worlds are usable, but ignorable if they so choose to go that route.

Also on further thought, it shouldn't just be void dweller that has some rather compelling reasons for not always wanting an orbital ring, every chance they get to build one.

So I disagree with ideas that would make things like Giga-Mall the top choice for trade builds. There isn't much point in habitats and orbital rings competing with each other if the choice is always the latter, at that point it's just an illusion of choice. Also different interests mean we can maybe get some stuff that is lagging behind on being useful into a solid choice for some good builds. Kind of excited because orbital rings likely make eternal vigilance more than just a meme pick and further shores up unyielding as a valid tradition choice. Still not convinced grasp the void is going to be worth it; especially, with orbital rings being kind of an indirect nerf to them (who needs more starbases, if I can get blacksites on orbital rings and have all my colonized systems covered, even if they outnumber the soft cap set by my starbase capacity?).

I'm not talking about the numbers at all.

I'm saying that the locations where I currently want to build a trade habitat don't overlap the places where I'd want to build a planetary ring.


Also note that Void Dwellers do usually want to settle some planets -- Relic Worlds and Ecumenopoli have nothing equivalent in habs, for example, even if habs are pretty good at other things.

 

[Millbot]

I'm talking about worlds in general. It's one thing if a void dweller settles a relic world and goes with an orbital ring; especially, if they restore it into an ecumenopolis because the alloy output will be crazy. It's another thing if they are putting rings on all the worlds they colonize, even if those worlds are run of the mill and not an ecumenoplis or relic world.

That in turn has the knock on effect where it becomes preferable for the void dweller to get habitable worlds over habitats and that would be poor design. Sure under a certain number of colonies, it makes sense to colonize everything, there is a point where the growth slows down enough, that it can make sense to not want another colony because it's going to take too long to grow the pops and you're not currently interested in messing with the other active methods of getting pops.

Anyways void dwellers should have a setup where outside of maximizing defense or the optimal use out of really specialized world (ex. ecumenopolis), they really prefer habitats over orbital rings in most cases. Ideally, we should have one or two other builds with a similar philosophy, where 7-9 times out of 10, they want a habitat around a colony instead of a ring.

Having different end goals makes for more interesting games, since we avoid having every empire feeling the same. Also makes it possible to make choices actual choices, even if it's heavily tied to early game decisions or empire creation.

 

[-Marauder-]

inefficent pops? what about inefficent districts , inefficent planets ... you want alloys , not energy . energy come from other sources , like food. wasting districts to build energy is a waste of space. you get clerk free jobs that don't require space , and can produce the energy and amanaties that you need. no wasted space for holo theaters , no wasted space for energy districts. only alloys and research matter. and you need districts and buildings to do so. need energy? build an habitat on an useless planetoid and use it as TV planet .

if you are playing hiveminds or robots , you are trolling so there is nothing to say .

Yes, inefficient. You say they're "district" efficient, which isn't even really true, and point towards them using building slots instead. Ignoring that those building slots are what science production needs. TV is fundamentally NOT a good way to produce energy, if anything it's one redeeming feature is it's versatility.

Whatever you're doing, it's not efficient in any way. You're using limited building slots to spam clerks. Who then need a lot of living space. To free up the way more abundant districts, to produce what exactly, alloys? That's not exactly the most efficient use for them. Ecumenopoli, Habitats, etc instead.

Trying to accuse someone of "trolling" because you can't do simple math, and massively overestimate the value of trade is not the way to having a productive discussion.

 

[Verx90]

Yes, inefficient. You say they're "district" efficient, which isn't even really true, and point towards them using building slots instead. Ignoring that those building slots are what science production needs. TV is fundamentally NOT a good way to produce energy, if anything it's one redeeming feature is it's versatility.

Whatever you're doing, it's not efficient in any way. You're using limited building slots to spam clerks. Who then need a lot of living space. To free up the way more abundant districts, to produce what exactly, alloys? That's not exactly the most efficient use for them. Ecumenopoli, Habitats, etc instead.

Trying to accuse someone of "trolling" because you can't do simple math, and massively overestimate the value of trade is not the way to having a productive discussion.

ah... so you want the math .

ok .

i used an habitat in a VERY bad way, but i wanted to show you that even by filling up evry clerk job, i still had a better VALUE than the technician .

if you have an empire focused on trade value, there is not even comparison . the direct value of energy\number of pops is (473:32)14.78 to (1068:55) 19.42 .
(i noticed later that i didn't considerate the UPkeep , the energy habitats has around 32 energy upkeep)
while its true that you can't fill a research planet with trade , you can use trade on alloy production planets . while on habitats you can simply completly specilize the space using it completly and efficently.

you don't need to produce CG, even if you don't want to considerate the commercial federation, when you convert TV to 0.5 energy and 0.25 CG , you can gain a worth of 1.5TV by standard market prices. this is kinda optimistic , as usualy you get 1.10-1.30 of the value by selling CG in stock of 5k when the price is right.

you can play like an gestal, as you don't even need 1 job used on CG .




an empire that is not particolary specilized in TV the pop is specilized in producing energy , i've no idea why someone should do that , but just in case you REALY want to min-max and transoform the pops per-planet .

the planets

i feel like i should make only-erergy only-TV planets , but its ususaly no-sense to have "only planets" soo i used the one with TV to produce alloys with the excessive space and research for the execive space of energy planet.

the Upkeep of the 2 planets is around the same (199 for the energy planet , you can see the upkeep of the TV planet)

i've left the 1 type of TV planets, as i think its simply better to produce more alloys, so its nosense not to have the specialization for more alloy jobs.

i could make the efficency of the 2 plant full pops, but i'm not sure how to evaluate research , and you want to produce research and alloy in any case.
So, lets just calculate the number of pops that are working on anything , apart from alloy and research .

pops to produce energy ( 825:59 ) 13.98 . against ( 788:93) 8.47 .around 14 energy per pop and 2.12 CG and 4.24 energy that are worth around 9.12 energy

this one is way closer, ofc, as the sinth are particolary good at producing resources , the advantage of not having to produce CG is closer and closer to simply buying them from the market IF they are cheap .

lets try with something that you can totaly devote to energy production\TV

2 planet size 15 , one with the right traits for being a full planet for energy production .

the comparison are (679:40)16.98 to (1058:113)9.36 that is worth 10.06 (with normal market price)

(damn me, i forgot to build the galatic stock exchange eeeh... it should have been 1168:113 = 10.34 that are worth 11.1 )


there the advantage of the engieneers are top noch, apart from the fact that you can specilize completly the planet to have energy districts , the bonus of the planet added to it make it perfect.

the TV planet is still quite good , as it produce energy AND CG , giving you the result of 2 planet specilization in one .

but i personaly prefer the habitats , as you can specilize them completly

the energy habitats upkeep is around 65 energy .

not much, but merchant are the better version of clerk, so the more merchant you can spam , the better .

(623:36)17.3 to (493:33)14.94 that are worth 16.06 .

in conclusion, while you can't have TV with a Techonology planet, you can use minerals planet to have tech . putting TV evrywhere there is space , you can dodge the necessity to build CG , and still have a decent production of energy , while having to take resources only as food and minerals . IF you find planets that are particolary good at producing energy , you take more worth from it in the for of technicians , but the technicians are not exatly so much better at producing energy" that should justify using a "non-perfect for energy production" planet for actualy producing energy . thats a waste of space.

i nmy example, i wanted to use all clerk jobs, (apart from the habitat, as it doesn't have enought housing possible ) to be fair, but you don't realy need to fill all clerk jobs , even if you leave some of them because you don't have housing is not realy a problem .

the most important part is that you don't waste planets in producing energy and CG , but have merchant and clerk produce energy and CG for you , for the same space.

and in this example, i showcased a race that is going heavy on resource production and " efficent pops" that are the synth . an empire focused on TV actualy produce more TV than energy for pops .