Building starports (Full Version)

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ThunderDuke -> Building starports (8/9/2010 1:00:17 PM)

Hi! I'm quite new to DW and I have problems with building starports at other planets than my capitol. I now have 2 other colonies but on both the building of new medium starports have stopped 10 units short of being finished. Do I need some other resources to complete those starports?? [&:]

T'Duke



Igard -> RE: Building starports (8/9/2010 1:34:35 PM)

Hi ThunderDuke,

Most likely you are correct. Any construction work that halts comes down to a lack of resources. If you have a starting empire, you should try to keep building spaceports to a minimum until you have a slightly larger population on the planet, say about 50m at least. Building medium size spaceports so early on is not recommended either.



Geroj -> RE: Building starports (8/9/2010 1:45:58 PM)

Dont build medium... start with small space ports. You will just loose a lot of resources in the begining and time for construction is also longer (not mentioning that maintenance is also more costly).

I think you are missing some type of resource... check resource sumary for medium space port and then check if you have all the resources

Example: you start a new game and you also have better shield technology... tassalos shields. But at the start you have no acces to argon (resouce needed to build that shield component). Lest say you have some argon stored but you already depleated it on another constructions. Planets will start building that ports but unless they aquire that argon via freighter from some kind of source they will be never finished.
Also check your empire demands via expansion planer.

Anyway in my example station can operate normaly (build ships, transfer cargo etc.) but is without shields :)

This hapens to me often before 1.0.6 but now it seems that everything is ok.



ThunderDuke -> RE: Building starports (8/9/2010 5:07:19 PM)

Thanks guys. In the first (and quite easy) games I've managed to start up right away with medium star ports on all my colonies. But I will check the requirements for the medium star ports and see if all I need is present. And if necessary downgrade them to small star ports.

T'Duke



Baleur -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 12:54:53 AM)

Honestly all you need are small space ports, basically the reason you build them (only need 1 in a starsystem, two or more in the same system is kinda pointless unless you really need the extra ship factories) is to give the civilian freighters somewhere to unload / load cargo and buy new ships. For instance, a small starport will do just fine for alot of ships, since rarely more than 2-3 dock there at a time.

What i do is build 1 small space port at each solar system, and sometimes not even that, if 2 systems are really close, i only build in one of them (the biggest planet of the two).
Then later on, if i desperatly need a far outpost for refueling / repairing a big fleet thats at war near the frontline, i upgrade one of the nearby spaceports to a medium one (or a large one if my income is crazy).
And of course, upgrade your homeplanet to a large one as soon as you can afford it / have enough new components to make it worthwile (high tech, industry techs, long range sensor etc).



Roller -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 3:13:37 AM)

The income of new, low population colonies it zero. Small spaceports cost 2000-ish per year. Every colony comes with a built-in spaceport with 3 docking points. So there is no use to build a spaceport for traffic/trade reasons at all unless there are constantly more than 3 ships who want to dock there. Which doesn't really happen with low pop colonies. (btw, if someone read the post i made about always building a port everywhere and immediately, disregard please. It can irreversibly tank your whole economy if you do it too early).

The question is of course, where do you build them? In my current game I have 65 systems and only 5 ports. One large at my homeworld for fleet support and shipbuilding, one small port with upgrade docking capability (10 points), and 3 small ports with regular docks (6 points).  The result is that there are dotted lines between the ports and a dozen or more dotted lines radiating out to systems which don't have one. The colony with the port does not have more population than the others, but there are stockpiles of literally all kinds of materials there. The colonies without ports have a much lower variety of goods in stock. In other games I built many more ports, and there wasn't much traffic at each one. Now I have to upgrade.

So there is a logistics effect present. Resource gathering operations (mining ships, stations and planets via freighters) only drop their stuff into ports, not on planets. There is no freighter going from a mining station directly to a colony that does not have a port, for instance. Ports then send out the stuff to other colonies, which might have ports or not.

--------------------------------


Is it true that every delvery a freighter makes is taxed and puts money into your account? And if so, is the amount dependent on the taxes of the port colony?



adecoy95 -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 3:23:22 AM)

the recreation and medical centers can help improve the growth rate and happyness of colonys, so it is important to have a space port at every planet, but all you need is a small token port... what i did was take the base small space port, and remove all but one shield, removed the research centers, and added a long range sensor



Roller -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 3:35:47 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

the recreation and medical centers can help improve the growth rate and happyness of colonys, so it is important to have a space port at every planet, but all you need is a small token port... what i did was take the base small space port, and remove all but one shield, removed the research centers, and added a long range sensor


That's what I did too. Now I think it's better in the beginning to only have medical/recreation/docking/commerce center on there, no ship yards and industry either[edit: which is not possible if you want it to function as a port at all]. Then it costs below 1000k. I think it needs a commercial center for freighters and mining ships to actually ackowledge the existence of the station for direct delivery from a resource gathering operation[edit: It isn't. But rather the role you set for it. They will refuel it though, but don't dock to drop other stuff].

I think it works this way:

Ships transport resources from RGOs to the closest port.

-> When some colony or port builds something but has not enough resources to do so, they 'reserve' it locally, essentially order it.

-> The system looks for the closest port that has enough to fill a single or more items of the order. They seem to transport more than is reserved. Say 6 units of gold is reserved, but they transport 300. So it looks for a port that has 300 units of gold in stock. The source port doesn't have to be connected with a dotted line.

-> A ship is dispatched to transport it from the port to the target. Whether the ship has to be present at the source already or moves there from elsewhere is hard to say at this moment.


What does this mean for us and our question of where to place a port? For one, it doesn't look like as if ports directly 'equalize' their stocks with one another. Certain resources are only present if there is a gathering site close to the port, or if building projects at the port colony or the port itself caused overdelivery. In my game, one port is connected to 22 systems that don't have one, so basically everything is in stock there. As far as I can see there is no traffic between these ports when nothing is building in them.

With few ports, every port acts as a central collecting station. All deliveries then originate in one of few places. Of course they can also come from neighboring empires.

I cannot figure out what the dotted lines mean, in mechanical terms. I can't see that ships especially care about them at all. All they do is look important.



Baleur -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 3:32:37 PM)

You disregard the entire civilian aspect of the game when you do the "colony has low pop = 0 income, spaceport over 1000k expense = not worth it" math.
In my game i have a small space port in every solar system, and they MORE than pay for themselves by almost constantly building civilian freighters and mining ships that the civilians order. I get so much space port income that i could upgrade all of them to medium ports (over 30) and still be fine.

Population growth is extremely slow in this game (too slow even, you can colonize the entire galaxy before you get any notable income from any other colonies than your homeworld (not counting independants).
The reason to build space ports is to give the private sector more incentive to buy new ships and mine more. If they only have to travel 1 light year (or whatever) to drop off their mined goods, as opposed to 10 light years, thats 10 times faster yeild for your empire (not counting travel time).
And if your nearest spaceport is a small one at the fringes of your empire, they will go out and mine the outlaying systems. If your nearest spaceport is one near your core, they wont go that far.



Roller -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 4:43:15 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Baleur

You disregard the entire civilian aspect of the game when you do the "colony has low pop = 0 income, spaceport over 1000k expense = not worth it" math.
In my game i have a small space port in every solar system, and they MORE than pay for themselves by almost constantly building civilian freighters and mining ships that the civilians order. I get so much space port income that i could upgrade all of them to medium ports (over 30) and still be fine.

Population growth is extremely slow in this game (too slow even, you can colonize the entire galaxy before you get any notable income from any other colonies than your homeworld (not counting independants).
The reason to build space ports is to give the private sector more incentive to buy new ships and mine more. If they only have to travel 1 light year (or whatever) to drop off their mined goods, as opposed to 10 light years, thats 10 times faster yeild for your empire (not counting travel time).
And if your nearest spaceport is a small one at the fringes of your empire, they will go out and mine the outlaying systems. If your nearest spaceport is one near your core, they wont go that far.


But the building of new ships in new ports doesn't last, and then you sit on the expenses, don't you? And there are never more than 40 mining ships and 40 gas mining ships in your empire, so if they build new ones, others must vanish.

In my game I built a new port in the furthest colony and scrapped the others. The effect was astounding: The port started to build 100+ mining ships and freighters, the port income skyrocketed. The number of mining ships stayed at a solid 40 while this was going on, but the overall freighter population did only rise in a miniscule amount.

So with every new port new ships are built, while they get "scrapped" elsewhere. Another detail is that the system transports all types of strategic resources to a port colony, but when you scrap a port, most strategics just vanish and only a few remain (Aculos, Chromium, Iridium, Hydrogen, Caslon, Nekros Stone + whatever is mined locally). This happens everywhere to the same effect, with little or no variation.


quote:

The reason to build space ports is to give the private sector more incentive to buy new ships and mine more. If they only have to travel 1 light year (or whatever) to drop off their mined goods, as opposed to 10 light years, thats 10 times faster yeild for your empire (not counting travel time).
And if your nearest spaceport is a small one at the fringes of your empire, they will go out and mine the outlaying systems. If your nearest spaceport is one near your core, they wont go that far.


It looks like mining ships only drop stuff at ports. Freighters seem to often move strategic materials in bulk from colonies to the nearest(?) port, even without being reserved there, and even if there is already 300000 of the stuff there. They do not seem to do that from mining stations, but they do pick up reserved luxury materials from mining stations and transport them to portless colonies.



Gertjan -> RE: Building starports (8/10/2010 6:06:19 PM)

I agree that population growth should be faster.



shinobu -> RE: Building starports (8/11/2010 4:21:22 AM)

Along the lines of starport construction... If you are flushed with money and want to build a mega-military complex, you can build more than one starport at a planet. Place a copy of your large starport (or whatever size you want) on the screen where you design/edit ships. Go to the upper left-hand corner and change the "role" of the structure to "star base". Rename the base, maybe give it a new picture, then save. Go to your planet and now you can build it- the planet's second starport. It may not make economic sense, but it is fun (if you have the cash to pull it off). Also, you can now cluster defensive installations and a protective fleet to safeguard your huge military shipyard complex...



torrenal -> RE: Building starports (8/11/2010 4:28:55 AM)

Related note, Construction Ships double as ports.  When they build something they don't have enough goods for, ships will be sent with the required materials.  This however works both ways, When they have spare left over (say, a canceled build order after you send it off to repair a fleet of ships...), freighters will be sent off to fetch the supplies from the construction ship.  (You may have noticed freighters coming to the Devastation Moon project site... they are delivering supplies needed for the build, they can also pop in to pick up stuff that the ships had selected for stations before they were redirected to repair efforts...)

The disappearance of strategic resources is not an occurrence unique with scrapping a port.  Building a port will also cause the resources for the planet to be reset.  Another note, if you are building a port at a Loros Fruit/Zenotabia/etc planet, you will want to start with a small port: During construction, while resources may be delivered to the planet (noteably Caslon/Hydrogen), no ships will come to pick up materials (as noted by the 10k+ stockpile of Loros Fruit that built up during construction of my LSP, that vanished inside of about 5 minutes of the port becoming operational).

Something else to consider: Your ports are not in a vacuum.  You can setup trade agreements with other nations, get ports near their planets and let their planets/mining stations 'support' yours.  One good reason to press early for some extra colonization tech -- lets you have a chance at landing a planet in the middle of another empire.
//Torrenal
Edit: Minor correction to construction ships & supplies. Some spelling fixes to boot.



shinobu -> RE: Building starports (8/14/2010 7:35:06 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: shinobu

Along the lines of starport construction... If you are flushed with money and want to build a mega-military complex, you can build more than one starport at a planet. Place a copy of your large starport (or whatever size you want) on the screen where you design/edit ships. Go to the upper left-hand corner and change the "role" of the structure to "star base". Rename the base, maybe give it a new picture, then save. Go to your planet and now you can build it- the planet's second starport. It may not make economic sense, but it is fun (if you have the cash to pull it off). Also, you can now cluster defensive installations and a protective fleet to safeguard your huge military shipyard complex...


After further experimentation with this, a word of caution...
I noticed that my planestside production kept getting stalled with "two spaceports" in orbit. The production of colony ships, construction ships, etc. would just stop and hang. It finally occurred to me that materials that would otherwise be going to the planet were now being sold to the extra spaceport, thus really screwing up my planetside production. Once I got rid of my starbase (the "second" spaceport), things on the planet's surface picked up again...



Shark7 -> RE: Building starports (8/14/2010 8:04:13 PM)

Everyone has basically covered it. Two things might fix it...finding a planet with the resource you are short of and mining it, or perhaps forming a free trade agreement with neighbor empires.

And even then...hurry up and wait. Kinda like dealing with the government....oh yeah, you are. [:D]




the1sean -> RE: Building starports (8/15/2010 8:39:39 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: shinobu


quote:

ORIGINAL: shinobu

Along the lines of starport construction... If you are flushed with money and want to build a mega-military complex, you can build more than one starport at a planet. Place a copy of your large starport (or whatever size you want) on the screen where you design/edit ships. Go to the upper left-hand corner and change the "role" of the structure to "star base". Rename the base, maybe give it a new picture, then save. Go to your planet and now you can build it- the planet's second starport. It may not make economic sense, but it is fun (if you have the cash to pull it off). Also, you can now cluster defensive installations and a protective fleet to safeguard your huge military shipyard complex...


After further experimentation with this, a word of caution...
I noticed that my planestside production kept getting stalled with "two spaceports" in orbit. The production of colony ships, construction ships, etc. would just stop and hang. It finally occurred to me that materials that would otherwise be going to the planet were now being sold to the extra spaceport, thus really screwing up my planetside production. Once I got rid of my starbase (the "second" spaceport), things on the planet's surface picked up again...


I agree shinobu, thats why I just build one megaport at my home planet. They're fun to design, too [:D] The only time I have extra stations at one planet is when I build defensive starbases in addition to the main starport.



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