General construction shortages

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General construction shortages - 6/1/2014 6:42:54 PM

Pilcrow

Posts: 9
Joined: 5/31/2014
Status: offline

I need to know what I'm doing wrong. I have begun a pair of games and things seem to develop in a similar manner. First I begin developing my homeworld and my system's mines. Usually I try to colonize early if a suitable planet is in my system. Once I install warp drives, I begin to search for the missing resources and build mines in the surrounding planets. If I find some colonizable planet or an independent colony, I try to add it to my empire, but one by one and waiting until I can cover it with a defence base with medic and recreation centres. I continue developing my mines until I know that my basic needs (1 mine of every strategic resource at least) are met. Once there are a lot of mines I automate some constructors and keep two on hand for urgent bases and repairs. I use to look for the unmet demands in my empire and build more of what is needed.

Meanwhile I use to be fighting a chaotic war with raiders. I tend to have smugglers under contract, to help with early shortages, but fight the rest of the pirates if the ask for too much (more than 1k c.) In my last galaxy there were 14 pirate clans, and sooner or later I'm fed up with financing their fleets. So that means that my mines are close to my colonies where I can respond quickly.

My problem is that once I have four or five colonies, several fleets (one per colony (4 ships each), one firebrigade (6-8 ships), one strike fleet (10-12) and 10 or so automated escorts) as many defence bases and a large space port, I start to have shortage problems.

The money is not a problem by then, I am making more money than I can spend, and my colonies doesn't seem to have many problems. When they have, I order a smuggling mission and it's resolved quickly. But my mines under construction are all stalled, my constructors are all waiting idly and I cant keep expanding. In fact I can't even resolve the problem, because mine construction grinds to a halt.

In a way I don't know exactly what is happening with my constructors. Do they begin building before collecting the necessary resources? If so, why don't they take off to the nearest planet and take what they need? Are they waiting for a freighter to bring what's missing? Is it because no base holds the necessary resources?

I have seen some people checking the on hand v.s. reserved resources, but I don't understand exactly why. Is that part of my problem?

Post #: 1

RE: General construction shortages - 6/1/2014 11:06:24 PM

Bingeling

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline

I am not sure what you are doing wrong either :)

Having too many spaceports can make the constructors fetch materials at a spaceport with insufficient resources. It will go ahead and wait for some freighter to help it. By having fewer spaceports (like one...) you have all your resources in one basket, ready to be picked up.

How is your mine count? Have enough fuel mines (at least one per colony should be a goal, with a few extra). Check if you have one source for every strategic resource (look at the top table in expansion planner). Have some extra sources for the most frequently used like steel. Look at for instance the destroyer design, press the construction summary button, and see what are the most used resources.

If you have a shortage look at the cargo. If reserved (RSVD) is larger than amount, you got a shortage. If that is for a strategic resource, you know that is a problem.

It sounds like you expand very fast. Going more slowly could be the cure that you need. If you increase the difficulty a bit, going slower will become more natural as you can not afford everything at once :)

(in reply to Pilcrow)

Post #: 2

RE: General construction shortages - 6/2/2014 12:19:31 AM

henri51

Posts: 1151
Joined: 1/16/2009
Status: offline

This may or may not be the reason, but one frequent reason for lockdown is that there are too many private ships being constructed (possibly due to more mines that you can handle), or too many ships being refitted, and/or some are waiting for missing resources while freighters take their time bringing in missing resources, or worse, cannot do it because of being low on fuel. This can be a vicious circle, because in this circumstance, trying to build more ship-building facilities will only make things worse because the latter also require resources. So you have to balance everything out. To take a simple example, if one tries right at the start of pre-warp to build the largest fleet possible, one will quickly face ruin due to running out of money on the one hand and being unable to build anything due to lack of resources locking down shipbuilding.

Henri

< Message edited by henri51 -- 6/2/2014 1:20:28 AM >

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 3

RE: General construction shortages - 6/2/2014 1:16:20 PM

Pilcrow

Posts: 9
Joined: 5/31/2014
Status: offline

Well seems that the save in which I had the problems had been overwritten, and can't check the numbers. In a previous pre-shortages save, I have 5 colonies, 7 constructors, 2 shipyards (one is a captured one with no real use, right now) 12 mines and 9 gas mines. I have one of every strategic resources. Thinking about it, it may be that the first shortages caused me to queue a good number of mining stations, and maybe the civilian sector had problems catching up.

More questions:

1. What happens to the resources when a station is scrapped?
2. Is there any difference between a "defensive base" with civilian components ans a "star base" with weapons? Does the AI treat them differently when refuelling/transferring cargo?
3. Is there any fixed ratio between mines and civilian ships?
4. How does the constructor behaves when ordered to build a mine and there are not enough materials. I think that currently the constructor loads whatever resources are available, and begins construction. Once it reaches the shortage, it waits over the station until a freighter brings what's needed.

(in reply to henri51)

Post #: 4

RE: General construction shortages - 6/2/2014 5:34:22 PM

eyegore

Posts: 94
Joined: 11/18/2013
From: Houston
Status: offline

It is abstracted but keep in mind every time you colonize or build a base that triggers a large cilvilian ship order on your spaceport. Expanding slow, and waiting to build military long after any new build, is key to keeping the stores full and not getting that "out of resource" spam than can quickly snowball in endlessness that can take decades in game to correct.

Manual designs over automation can help a lot as well. Freighters with faster engines and larger fuel storage will be superior in fullfilling needs over default A.I. designs, as well as the spaceport designs themselves.

(in reply to Pilcrow)

Post #: 5