Shark7
Posts: 7937
Joined: 7/24/2007
From: The Big Nowhere
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: sbach2o
quote:
ORIGINAL: elanaagain
A poster above suggested only building one spaceport per system. So, if you don't build a second spaceport at the secondary colony (colonized planet/moon) in a system, how do you get the resources of that colony into play? Mining stations disappear when the colony is established...
You do not need mining stations for a planet's resources to be in play. And a spaceport isn't required either. I suggest you watch what happens when you take over an indy planet. Half the merchant fleet will start moving there to strip it of all the accumulated ores and stuff. So having no spaceport on a colony makes sure most of its resources get shipped elsewhere.
The advice of 'only one spaceport per system' isn't the best that can be offered. Actually, only a fraction of your settled planets should have spaceports. Eric suggested around 20%. Shark7 has even fewer, as he states above with good reason, although overexpansion arguably isn't the actual issue. I'd rather blame the extremely poor transport AI.
By having many settled planets per spaceport you actually throw more and more freighters at the problem, to the point you drown it out in sheer mass. The number of freighters the civil sector tries to maintain is mostly determined by the number of colonies, not spaceports.
One last remark about spaceport-less colonies: Just make sure you have a structure with medical center and recreation center (plus the obligatory commerce center) over each. These can be Defensive Bases or Starbase structures, and they make sure the population on the planet grows at a higher rate. I like to send Constructors to build these, as they are usually quicker and put less strain on the colonies' remaining resources.
quote:
ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer
OK, the Trade AI needs to be fixed and improved BADLY.
I have 20 Chromium sources in operation. I have 620K Chromium stockpiled. I have ~300 Freighters in operation, all modified to the same 10 Bay design.
I am seeing this all the time, too. I am speculating a bit here, but I have often seen in this game what I am calling the 'locust swarm syndrome'. Meaning, our freighter fleets (and passenger ships, miners probably as well) are behaving like locusts plagues in that they concentrate in swarms on one thing at a time, thus lacking capacity for other urgent jobs. There is simply no balance.
When the game identifies something that needs to be done it does this with all available means that become available. A need for Tyderios at your home planet at the head of the queue? Next idle freighter gets sent to service that need, and the next and next and so on, because fulfilling it takes time. You need Chromium? It's not at the head of the queue, so no luck there. Wait till it gets there (maybe a couple of game years from now)...
Okay, this is pretty bad speculation on my side here, i.e. quite unfounded. What actually looks to match the behavioral patterns I am seeing, is that not needs on the consumer's side are driving the jobs the freighter fleets are performing, but actually the supplier's. When I take over an indy which has had a lot of time to accumulate mined goos, like mentioned above, there'll be a massive surplus of some materials. I can be pretty sure that an enormous swarm of freighters is going to flock there from all over. Those are then freighters being tied up for a long time and not available to other, more urgent jobs.
Since conquering/colonizing independent colonies makes up a large part of the early to mid game, and the locust swarm feature repeats practically every time, I see this over and over. All that time the many mining stations I have put up are almost untouched by my merchant fleet, because the freighters are so focused on colonies with large stocks of this or that.
I tend, because of a streak of idealism, to build a number of mining stations for all strategic resources around each production center (i.e. spaceport). I still do this although I know it is almost useless, because the stations are ignored for a long, long time. (Colonies without spaceports act like mining stations regarding this consideration, btw.) The primary use of these stations seems to consist in supplying smugglers and indie freighters, which in turn will, with painful delay, service the urgent needs of some constructor (can micromanage that to some degree) or secondary spaceport.
In previous incarnations of DW, this situation relaxed later in a game (with exceptions where this or that bug seemed to hit me hard). I do not know how it stands now, since I didn't play far enough into a game yet (micromanaging all takes lots of time). I hope that mining stations get used more once the resource heavy imbalances (as perceived by the transport AI) are ironed out.
It looks like the game engine has the priorities reversed, going like "where is the most to get, let's see where the surplus can be put to use?", instead of "where is the most urgent hole to plug?". Note, this is still speculation, but matches observation better than my initial ramblings. Ironically, it seems to have gotten better, compared with Legends. Just not good, only that tiny noticable but still not satisfying bit better.
The locust swarm behavior tended to be very prominent with passenger ships in earlier DW versions. In RotS, they would for exmple, in a developed empire with several planets at max population, completely overrun the dock yards of one single planet, queueing up by the dozen or hundreds, managing to move off a couple billion inhabitants, then move on. Same when it came to delivering tourists to resort bases where one resort out of many available was vastly prefered. Back then I could also see ridiculous freighter queues at planets with the rarer luxury resources (note, the rarer ones like 'Bifurian Silk', not the special luxuries which weren't distributed at all after some point).
As you point out, having a base over the planet with the medical and recreation facilities is a must. I personally use a starbase design that is small enough that it can be built anywhere, but also has adequate defenses to act as both defense base and orbital facility....which I also add research modules to. I do believe in multi-tasking. 
_____________________________
Distant Worlds Fan
'When in doubt...attack!'
|
Printable Version
RE: Trade Frustration - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread