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Post by euphorion on May 8, 2017 4:11:22 GMT -5
Just wondering if I'm missing something...
The early-/mid game is always interesting and challenging. There's never enough credits, there are never enough ships, you can never research quickly enough...and politics can really get you sweating.
After I started playing again after a few years break I did a few games on Crazy ...and still considered the AI quite dull. After I took away about half their planets with 500k+ on the bank I couldn't get myself to continue playing.
So I started a game on Impossible (Degla, 32 planets) and failed a few times miserably very early (politics screwed me up - and most importantly my usual factions didn't work so it took a few tries until I figured out that I will need the 3 econ factions Valtos, Javat + Mok)
Now AI really gave me a hard time until I got settled, but with patience and once the economic power really kicked in I never got into major troubled either. At turn 450-500 I started invading and now at turn 640 I again wonder why I should even continue the game: - I got way more ships than I absolutely need - I'm still running at 3k+/turn and 200k+ in the bank with a full invasion force and several colony3 ships waiting - Once I got Trade Stabilization and managed to get 3 Trade alliances running the risk of negative politics is almost non existant (and even if politics go wrong - as it did once about 50 turns ago - I can easily overcome it before running dry on funds) - The 2 AIs have no chance whatsoever to endanger any planet or ships of mine - I don't even bother building updated ships as even the age old ones I'm still using are more than sufficient to blast the AI ships out of space (they attack along the same paths always anyway...)
Sure I could use less easy faction combos, maybe certain maps make it more difficult - but I still I bet that this would only incease the difficulty of the first 200-300 turns. If you survived that, got your economy running and have sufficient defenses - it's likely again just grinding the AI down.
So it is just me or is the late game really that dull always? Is there anything I'm missing ?
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Post by euphorion on Apr 3, 2017 3:33:54 GMT -5
Hello, after a longer break I installed the game (ST4X Elite) again on my Amazon Fire - just wondering that version number is still 2.6.9 despite several updates having been done between 2.6.9 and the current 2.6.29 . Amazon not receiving the updates anylonger?
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Post by euphorion on Jul 31, 2015 7:54:26 GMT -5
This all boils down to one must-have-addition to the game: we need a Death Star! ;-)
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Post by euphorion on Jul 28, 2015 10:37:30 GMT -5
I agree and disagree.
I do agree that the setup of the research tree makes constructing a Cutter quite awkward. You need to research that research path up to the Ship, a seperate one for the Reactor and yet another one for the weapon to actually use with the ship.
Imho a viable change to be implemented would be to have the smallest Grav Driver (or maybe even an somewhat weaker version than the current Heavy Vengence Gravcannon) available together with the Ship tech.
Otoh I do not agree that you can only make the ship "late game". My 1st Cutter looked like that: Cutter Reactor 10 (3AP/3MP 4000 mass 4 refuel) Gun Barrage Precision Barrage Heavy Vengence Gravcannon (28-61 Dmg) Superior Duranium Cladding (5 Armor, 1 Evade, 1 Stealth) Combat Crew (4+Dmg, 1+Attack, 4% Critical)
So you don't really need Reactor 15. When I rolled out those Ships they were (and still are) absolute dominators, usually 1-shot killing every hostile ship. (my top one from the first version has some 110 kills)
Only the 2nd (and current) version applied reactor 15, the Heavy Raptor (34-69), better armor and better Crew.
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Post by euphorion on Jul 27, 2015 7:52:17 GMT -5
Hmmm....I found the opposite to be true. Especially early game Cadar and Thulun worlds are way more profitable than Javat simply because I can actually build tons of mines early on on them, whereas Javat worlds seem to struggle to keep up with pop growth until you could build some factories and some extra habs. Only then you can start building those Mines.
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Post by euphorion on Jul 17, 2015 6:15:27 GMT -5
Viel Spaß ;-) (have fun)
I personally can't understand all those people who install an app which is quite obviously in English and then leave a bad review/complain because that is so.
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Post by euphorion on Jul 17, 2015 2:54:57 GMT -5
The first number on the colony screen is the NET income? So total income generated minus maintenance? OMG. That explains a lot. Not very intuitive though ;-)
And I never understood why my empire is still generating a profit when so many individual colonies are running at a "loss" (first positive number < the maintenance cost number) Thanks eternalheathen, that was about the most useful one-liner here in this forum for me!
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Post by euphorion on Jul 13, 2015 5:24:43 GMT -5
I'd guess it's indeed random - but would be very interested to learn if it were otherwise. I had a game I had to abort as almost all of my first colonies were Q7-Q8. In the game I started afterwards I got almost all colonies (especially the most important first 5-10) at the upper range or even at the maximum.
I general I'd prefer a more narrow Quality bands for colonies instead of the "2-22" or whatever. But then again, if you play a map like "Garden" where almost all planets are "10-..." it's pretty boring as well ;-)
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Post by euphorion on Jul 10, 2015 3:06:17 GMT -5
There is not a single screen where you can see everything - which is not THAT bad. It's getting slighhtly more problematic that often you get inconsistent numbers at different screens.
Anyway, if you concern is "just" balancing your budget - that can be done.
I'd start at the empire Summary Screen.
Here you can get 3 main information: #1) Colonies of the Empire "Your world economies turns out a total revenue of $28974 .... our profit is $8993"
#2) Colony Status "Maintenance costs $12925"
#3) Fleet "Fleet maintenance costs $7056"
So this gets you the broad picture Total income: +29000 ./. Colonies: - 13000 ./. Fleet : - 7000 = Profit: +9000
The good news here is that those numbers add up and give you a good indication where to start looking for budget balancing.
Another good information you can find in this screen is the maintenance rate for colonies and fleet. Fleet maintenance rate is mainly driven (afaik) where your ships are (green or red fields) and if you got many damaged ships and/or low WF Colony maintenance is driven by colony morale Both are also influenced by politics afaik.
If one (or both) of those rates are very high (>100%) - start looking for reasons for that (more about that below).
Now the question you got to raise is if you are in immediate financial trouble or if you still got sufficients funds but are burning through them turn by turn.
If you are in immediate financial stress and need to get a profit right now, there are 3 main options for you: 1) destroy ships you don't urgently need. concentrate on those ships that are badly damaged. The "Ship" button on the map screen can help you indentify the most costly ships. For each ship you see there the actual maintenance cost and in brackets the "100%" maintenance cost. I eg have a a ship that is "$100 ($125)" (this is full HPs, full WF at a green field) and another one that is "$273 ($171)" - the latter one is damaged, at low WF and in a red field. Once I was in a strong financial stress and running low on funds - I scrapped a full fleet if military transports as those ships where all damaged and in red fields. 2) Get as many Planets to Idle production as possible. Quite obvious one. 3) Optimize colony installations. If you find yourself having built way too strong overcapacity - you might want to consider scrapping some of it. When you for instance got 10 population on a planet but did built 20 Hab units, you might want to consider scrapping some of those. Unused buildings (Habs, factories, Morale,...) just add maintenance without contributing to your economy But in general you shouldn't get to such a situation in first place.
If you are looking more to the long term, there are way more options of course. It's just general advice now, as there are way too many possibilities to list em all. - Politics: very important in ST4X , so try to keep as many positive Treaties going as possible. - don't "overbuild" too much (see above), Try to keep Hab units, Factories and Morale aligned to your actual population, which just a "little" buffer for future growth (how you define "little" is up to you ;-) ) - Keep ships at green fields if you can. - Try to maximize your income (duh!) - Sometimes it might be better to scrap badly damaged ships and build them anew (esp. if they got low repair rates) - ...
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Post by euphorion on Jul 8, 2015 8:51:25 GMT -5
you need to add a space between "11985" and ")" ;-)
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Post by euphorion on Jul 8, 2015 2:18:32 GMT -5
When my empire is large and I have many ships, movement and combat becomes very mundane and repetitive sometimes. Having to micro manage the fleet is killing my interest in what is a great game, with a good future. +1
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Post by euphorion on Jul 7, 2015 5:05:21 GMT -5
So...I'm really punished with Spy Battles in my current game. Once I had one running for 4+ years - 'til I read here that you should balance EP to avoid it. Found Thuluns to have more than twice the EP of Javat, fixed that and half a year later it was gone. After a 1-year-break I got a new Spy Battle between Thulun and Cadar now, which again is lastinmg for at least a year now.
So I ran the EP numbers again. For all I can tell they are almost perfectly balanced - so is there another reason for a Spy Battle (beside just bad luck)?
Also: when looking at the different sources for EP in the game, there are some HIGHLY confusing numbers to be found :
#1) Going through the Colonies one by one and adding up the EP numbers there:
Thulun: 48 6+6+6+6+4+4+3+3+3+4+2+1+0 (the last world is a Q4 that was waiting to go to Independent Traders, but at this time it was still a T-colony)
Cadar: 43 6+5+6+4+4+3+5+5+2+1+1+1
Javat: 46 5+5+6+5+4+6+3+4+4+2+1+1
Independent: 5 2+1+1+1
Sum: 137 (142 incl. Indep.) #2) The Faction Statistics/summary screens:
The numbers in brackets are the difference in absolute and relative terms to the manually calculated numbers from the individual colonies: T: 36 (-12/-25%) C: 31 (-12/-28%) J: 34 (-12/-26%) (Sum: 101)
If not for that 13th Thulun colony, we could assume that for whatever reason 1EP is substracted for each colony. Maybe it's -1 for each colony that is producing at least 1 EP or some completly different logic?
#3) The total of the Empire Summary screen: "Our political efforts generate 191 Espionage Points (EP)"
191?
Now I got 2 Alliances (T+J & C+J) running, which are supposed to add 2 EP per colony (no idea if that would be added at the individual colonies or at the Empire level) - this might be 50 EP there.
-> at least that number also gets added to a new Treaty-project. - - - - - - - - - -
And actually it might all make sense - if we assume that this EP number that is listed at the Faction Staticics page is simply wrong.
We might have 142 + 50 EP bonus for Alliances, which gets us to 192, which is quite close to 191 after all.
Still - if this would be correct , why the confusing numbers at the Faction Statistics pages?
And could any of those differences in EP (+/-5 or +/-10%) be the reason for a prolonged Spy Battle?
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Post by euphorion on Jul 6, 2015 2:58:21 GMT -5
Well... I'd take the money over the RP anytime.
The current Spy battle costs me 5k/turn (had been generating +6k before - barely recovered from the Spy battle before), went down to +500. I love how they went directly from Full Alliance to Spy Battle . /sigh.
Anyway, as we are at the topic: I was struggling with a Spy Battle for several years, until I reads here that EP can be a driving factor for it. Found the "hidden" Faction Stats and saw that Javat was at less than half the EP than Thulun. Fixed it and half a year later Spy Battle was gone I could just upgrade everything to a 3-way-alliance. Then as described above one went from Alliance to Spy Battle directly and is lasting for a year already again.
As far as I see everything is pretty balanced, EP are +/-2 between all factions, Planets +/-1, Ships +/-5, RP +/-10. Trade isn't shown, but when I had that last Spy Battle I added all TP up manually and they were pretty damn close anyway (+/-10), this shouldn't have changed strongly as the main developments were all done.
Is it just bad luck, or is there some other factor I'm not watching that may cause/prolong it?
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Post by euphorion on Jul 3, 2015 9:53:25 GMT -5
well, as far as I am concerned: nvm then. There are probably more important developments than this one.
Just out of curiousity: Why doesn't the game crash if I don't own any ship? (just started a new game, colonized the 3 worlds and then destroyed the 3 start ships)
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Post by euphorion on Jul 3, 2015 7:14:13 GMT -5
If it's not too much trouble, it'd be a great help to the micro-managers like me to have both Progress and ETC displayed on the ALL PROJECTS screen too.
I'm aware that it's a complete derailing of this thread - but can you play this game in any other way than by micromanaging? ;-) There are no "AI governours", no standing orders for ships (attack/patrol/defend/...), nothing that could take any burden off your shoulders.
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