assuming the dyson sphere has an extremely high energy conversion effeciency ratio, the sphere might never get extremely hot and simply radiate excess heat, as most of the star's heat will be turned directly into energy credits.
So ... Dyson Spheres
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assuming the dyson sphere has an extremely high energy conversion effeciency ratio, the sphere might never get extremely hot and simply radiate excess heat, as most of the star's heat will be turned directly into energy credits.
Define bonus. A fully populated ring world would result in a 140% increase in research cost. How many fully developed labs would it take to offset that, nevermind speed up your research?
Well damn. There goes any FUN, or looking forward to and or AWE that building a Dyson's Sphere might have had. Thanks to the "Spreadsheet Warriors" for another inglorious death of a thing by numbers.
This might be 2 pages back, but it's emblematic of the kind of thinking that's plagued this thread since the beginning.
If someone says "Dyson Spheres are underpowered and not worth building", does that imply that they want it to be removed from the game, or that they want it buffed?
People are rallying to the defense of a cause which, presumably, sees the 400-a-month energy bonus as inherent to the concept of a Dyson Sphere, and would view any more energy production as an unforgivable slight to the memory Our Lord Freeman Dyson.
On my 2440 empire? It would require 203 points of science to break even, so let's call it forty labs.
(Fun fact: eight labs would generate 176% research penalty but only require 29 labs [30% of the space] to provide the 255 science needed to break even.)
(To be fair to ring worlds, my example empire has a lot of labs. For a single 25-tile planet to match it in research speed as a standalone empire, even including the +5 to each category each empire gets, it would need to generate 151.6667 points of research from its labs, which would mean nineteen level-four [homeworld-only] labs.)
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That's not how this works. Research cost increase is calculkated additively, not muliplicatively. Let's say you are a mature empire and with planets and pops together have like a 2000% research malus. Now you get yourself a nice little ringworld, which adds a 140% tech malus.
Which brings your total tech malus from 2000% to 2140% - which is an effective increase of 7%.
You'll manage.
I'd like the Mega Structures to be made a pseudo ascension path:
Habitats -> Research Hub/Sentry Array -> Ringworlds -> Dyson Sphere
Make the Dyson sphere something ulttry-lategame, a massive undertaking only feasible for the largest and most prosperous of empires, but make a completed Dyson Spheres completely break the game. If you get it, you win. Or if you don't win ebcause there's no "Dyson Sphere" win condition, your fleets will soon blot out the stars.
That's more like what I want to see from megastructures. A Dyson Sphere doesn't feel like a Dyson Sphere if it doesn't kind of break the game.
But personally I'd just be happy if the bonuses were doubled/quadrupled. 1-200 research from the station, and 800 energy, at least, from the Dyson Sphere. They should cost ridiculous costs in time and resources, but ultimately be a better investment than normal expansion (which we've been doing the entire game up to that point).
I see them as something to build after you're already dominating the galaxy, "and man grew proud."
"Realistic" numbers from even a single fully deployed dyson structure would pretty much set one up for the rest of the game, no matter the length, the only problem from that point forward might be the raw materials needed for whatever you'd want to build and you'd still be running unimaginable energy surplus.
That aside though, i think the output should be tied to how far into the game the project becomes even feasible, at the earliest somewhere between 200 and 300 years. If by any chance the game is still going by then and you've not managed to make much headway due to being more or less boxed in by other empires, even that 400ECm would be of great help, double that and not only would you be able to properly sustain your own territory but also actively push out and claim more.
As a side not, personally i think that such mega structures should always be visible on the galactic map, as they are also essentially a massive 'THERE IS A HIGHLY TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION HERE' notice.
That aside though, i think the output should be tied to how far into the game the project becomes even feasible, at the earliest somewhere between 200 and 300 years. If by any chance the game is still going by then and you've not managed to make much headway due to being more or less boxed in by other empires, even that 400ECm would be of great help, double that and not only would you be able to properly sustain your own territory but also actively push out and claim more.
As a side not, personally i think that such mega structures should always be visible on the galactic map, as they are also essentially a massive 'THERE IS A HIGHLY TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION HERE' notice.
IMO they should have gone for a Dyson Swarm instead of a Dyson Sphere, more realistic and you could have built it in stages and upgraded it over time. Like you build the swarm in five distinct phases, each costing more minerals than the last but having higher outputs in return.
Edit: I'm stupid, you already build them in phases!
Edit: I'm stupid, you already build them in phases!
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Look at the numbers: An endgame energy income of 2200 with a population of 942. A DS can do 400, which is almost a fifth of the income of a very large empire. With one building at one place. 400 is sufficient.
Also it would not be a surprise at all if people spammed them anyway.
Dyson Spheres take 50 years to build, and you cannot build multiple megastructures at the same time.
Wait, what? I know it's only one megastructure per system, but also only building one at once? What happens if you capture a system with a partially completed one? Does it cancel either yours or the newly captured one?
I am inclined to say that if you half-finish a project and don't queue its upgrade, you'll be able to work on a second.
Yes, you can have as many megastructures as you want, but if you say upgrade your Dyson SPhere you can't upgrade any other megastructure while the Dyson Sphere is working.
It depends on the base research of the rest of your empire, but a back of the envelope calculations tells us that for an existing modifier M and research output O, the increase in science output needed to maintain the same speed of teching is 1.4*(O/M). For an empire with a size modifier of say 200% and an output of 500 science, you need an additional
The thing about the science nexus is that since (in the limit where population tends to infinite) the main limit to techspeed is science per pop, building science ringworlds might drag the average science per pop up a bit (since it is compounded by the fact that each planet costs 10 pops as it were, but produce nothing individually), but it's going to be asymptotic, while the nexus is always an advantage, especially for relatively small empires. This isn't applicable to dyson spheres in the same way though since it's not energy-credits per pop that matters, but just the absolute amount generated, minus the upkeep needed to do so (for farms and mines to keep the population fed etc.).
Edit: No wait, made a order of magnitude error. should be 100 times larger, so you'd need 350 if you wanted to keep up with your 500 science per 200 penalty. That sounds far more realistic. Sorry, forgot that 200% = 2.
But yeah basically you need to keep up the ratio of science per pop that you already have empire wide, is what the point is. If you have more than one dedicated science planet per ~ 4 planets or so, it's likely the ratio will go down.
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That is frankly, a really, really, really stupid limitation. If it was a "single dyson sphere", okay. Still questionable. But a single mega structure, with the lenght they take to build? Not cool, absolutely not cool.
Not really, it is a project of massive proportions, you'd basically have gather all of the asteroids/comets in the system and quite possibly stripmine more than one planet. Sure it is a game and realism, even theoretical ought take the backstage when needed but sometimes it is not all that bad.
Sure but if you have the resources to do so, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to do so.
Doesn't make sense. Planets also generate some of their own heat. Should you go deep enough underground (and that's not that much), sun or not it's warm enough.
+ no sun means no stupid solar winds, solar radiations, etc, so your atmosphere is even better off ^^
Not only that but if you have the technology to create dyson structures, ringworlds and spaceborn habitats, being able make a barren/frozen world in a living place is nothing.