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Re: About playing 2 ai's Fri, 16 May 2014 14:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
Commander

Messages: 1068
Registered: August 2005
Location: Berlin
iloverushandledzepp wrote on Fri, 16 May 2014 02:28
Wouldn't you just use max ter for greens and cancel out the min ter altruist?


Yes.

Only for the very lazy ones who don't want to do any micromanagement a default order like this would be approbiate:

Min terraform... Up to 5%
Factories... Up to 500
Mines... Up to 500
Max terraform... Up to 10%

While this default order is better than nothing and good for the very lazy ones, in many curcumstance it is suboptimal. It pays off to use a standard default order but to give each new planet a look and adjust it in dependence of the planet and your race design.

So the actual default order I am using is the following:

Factories... Up to 200
Mines... Up to 200
Max terraform... Up to 1%


Adjustments:
1) If it is a yellow planets and you have reasonable factory settings, even on a yellow planet it is often wise to build factories first and to add terraforming only afterwards. There are several exceptions, though, for example:
a) For planets with just -1% or -2% it might be interesting to start terraforming rightaway.
b) If you need the planet going asap, you might overpop it and also start terraforming right away.
c) Germ concentration is low... use the time until some germ can be brought in to terraform.

2) The MAX TERRAFORM 1% is usually just a reminder to myself. If I forget to finetune the planet, the first terraform is mentioned in the messages and latest then I decide what is to happen next with the planet. Sometimes this is terraforming, but sometimes the resources are better spent into research or a dock/Starbase or production of ships.

3) The default order is really just a default. In most cases you do not really want to let it run this way all the time but to stop building factories and mines when the 25% pop capacity (or a higher one) is reached.

4) Especially as an IT you have many choices for finetuning. If I analyse that my bottleneck is actually minerals or a certain type of mineral, I look up the planet list (F3) and might give preference to mines on the planets with the highest concentrations.
Or preference to terraforming for potential breeder planets.
Some planets are more worthwhile to terraform than others: on one planet 1 terraform might give you only 1%, on others upto 4%. Here is a superb tool for Excel on Windows to see what terraforming will give you:
# Per's Terra-Hab-Tool, V 1.03 by Per Rindom (download: Pers-terra-hab-tool_v1.03.zip, 1241 kb)

Quote:
I built a ob with just a gate but it's only the earliest for IT so I can't send over 100kt. I called it the "cheap nest gate"


My first gates as an IT are usually strategical gates, so preference goes to a gate there as fast as possible. The gate shall allow my next wave of colonizer fleets to reach far away planets asap. While at first you loose economic upbuilding power due to building a gate instead of factories, in a mid timeline it pays off with even better economy because your pop idles less time in space and you get to some of those juicy far away greens before your neighbour gets there. And perhaps you might also surprise your neighbour with a destroyer hunting down his unexcorted colonizer fleets in an area he deemed safe because far away from the starting HWs of his neighbours. But don't get too excited about those possibilities of early easy skirmishes. As a rule of thumb, your used destroyers for such a task should not be built extra but rather anyway, as escorts/fuel busters for your colonizer fleets with only a secondary but very satisfying role as hunters afterwards.

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Re: About playing 2 ai's Fri, 16 May 2014 14:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
Commander

Messages: 1068
Registered: August 2005
Location: Berlin
Addon about defense:
NEVER put defenses into your default production order... defenses are MUCH too expensive.

Defenses always should be built only on hot spots where they are really needed. And even then think trice about it. Often enough it would be much better to spend all this resources and minerals into research or a fleet to rather go offensive than defensive. After all you don't need defenses when you are the one wiping the floor instead of sitting duck with your defenses and waiting for the enemy bombers to come to your planet.

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Re: About playing 2 ai's Fri, 16 May 2014 16:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
Commander

Messages: 1068
Registered: August 2005
Location: Berlin
Addon about early IT gates 100kt/250-ly:
iloverushandledzepp wrote on Fri, 16 May 2014 02:28
it's only the earliest for IT so I can't send over 100kt. I called it the "cheap nest gate"


For an IT this is an excellent gate and the need to upgrade comes only with battleships or missile cruisers.

For an IT cargo doesn't count as weight for the gate limit. So you can easily gate a fully loaded freighter or privateer thru those small gates. As a matter of fact you do it even with large freighters, mini bombers, cruisers etc. which will weigh more than 100kt.
An IT doesn NOT loose ships due to overgating as other races except your accumulated damage exceeds 100%. So you can safely overgate weight and distance and with the [url= http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Known_Bugs#Repair_after_g ating_loophole]repair after gating loophole you can easily cope with the damage taken.

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Re: About playing 2 ai's Fri, 16 May 2014 22:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
iloverushandledzepp is currently offline iloverushandledzepp

 
Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 80
Registered: April 2014
Location: Canada
thanks guys and many thanks to altruist Smile interesting facts Smile ill post an update when i can


Drill on the sun?! I'd rather freeze on Pluto than fry on the sun! What? How much minerals did you say? Well, Since you put it that way...

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Re: About playing 2 ai's Sat, 17 May 2014 06:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
m.a@stars is currently offline m.a@stars

 
Commander

Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004
Location: Third star to the left
Altruist wrote on Fri, 16 May 2014 20:25
Only for the very lazy ones who don't want to do any micromanagement a default order like this would be approbiate:

Min terraform... Up to 5%
Factories... Up to 500
Mines... Up to 500
Max terraform... Up to 10%

While this default order is better than nothing and good for the very lazy ones, in many curcumstance it is suboptimal. It pays off to use a standard default order but to give each new planet a look and adjust it in dependence of the planet and your race design.

So the actual default order I am using is the following:

Factories... Up to 200
Mines... Up to 200
Max terraform... Up to 1%

Well, of course these Default Qs are suboptimal and need many tweaks! Whip Don't be lazy and design & testbed a proper Default Q that suits your race, your playstyle and your development needs. Work at computer If you cannot handle all planets with just a single Q due to varying needs, then use other predefined Qs, equally designed & tested before the actual game. Teleport Remember, with effort comes the reward, in this case the ability to waste less time on easily automatable tasks and instead devote your wits to crushing your undeserving enemies. Twisted Evil

Remember also that "auto" never builds above the needs of current pop, so no worries with pop holds either. And of course it's easy to intersperse more urgent orders in between the "auto" ones, which will still be there the next turn when the urgent ones are done. Rolling Eyes

Last but not least, in an AI thread, it makes sense to build Defenses, either as a reminder or as an alternative to dodging packets. Hit over head



So many Stars, so few Missiles!

In space no one can hear you scheme! Deal

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Re: About playing 2 ai's Wed, 21 May 2014 05:49 Go to previous message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
Commander

Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008
nmid wrote on Fri, 16 May 2014 17:08
The problem with that queue is that you'll have no germ to make the occasional scout/coloniser as you won't have any germ.

I put in a couple of mines once the initial factories are built and then a big slot of factories again.


"no germ"

--> if germ crunch hasn't hit planet yet, there is germ
--> if germ crunch has hit planet, there are mines and there is therefore germ
--> if the germ conc is so bad that it can't mine enough, no build order will alleviate the lack of germ

Problems can only, therefore, arise when a planet has to use a significant chunk of its output on stuff with a higher Germ/resource ratio than factories - this is not "the occasional scout or coloniser" unless you're talking about really low-value greens/yellows. Prioritising factories gets the mines built faster in the long run.

(There may also be one turn where it's just used all its Germ but hasn't built many mines yet. But I check for that on a case-by-case basis.)
Quote:
So would you advise something like:

10 factories
10 mines
1 terraform
1000 factories
1000 mines
100 terraform
5 defenses

Or is it better to manually switch planets from "developing" to "production" style queues?


No. Deviations from the build I gave are largely circumstantial and should be done on a case-by-case basis of actual orders, not autobuild.


Quote:
Remember also that "auto" never builds above the needs of current pop, so no worries with pop holds either. And of course it's easy to intersperse more urgent orders in between the "auto" ones, which will still be there the next turn when the urgent ones are done. Rolling Eyes


Not quite. Auto builds to what the pop will be at the start of the next turn - if you're holding a planet at a set %, this means it'll build to one turn of growth MORE than the hold. IE, if I have a 6(12)% 3i HE and I set the autobuild, and I'm holding planets at 137500 (25%), it'll build enough factories for 154000 pop - the extra factories for that extra 16500 pop will go unworked until I release the hold.

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