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Aeson -> RE: First game, have a few questions (10/10/2014 1:55:03 PM)
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1. I have found 10 abandoned capital ships. Should i just repair and claim them right away? I ask, because my economy cant really support more ships at the moment, but it seems a poor idea, to let the AI have the ships.
If you cannot support them on your current economy, remember that you can always retire them, once fully refurbished, for a one-time cash bonus (scrap immediately) or a one-time research bonus (retire at nearest shipyard). Alternatively, retire elements of your existing fleet and replace them with these, as if it's early enough in the game, these derelicts are likely much more powerful than anything you can field. Another alternative is to repair the ships and gift them to your allies, and a further alternative, if you don't want to waste construction ship time, is to have some elements of your fleet use these vessels for target practice.
You can also build e.g. a mining station in the system to keep an eye on the derelict ships. The computer tends not to make a concerted effort to grab all the ships at once, so you can watch and wait to see if and when a foreign construction ship shows up and then rush out several of your own to grab the majority of the derelicts. You could station a ship or a small fleet in the system to keep an eye out for pirate construction ships, as those occasionally like to repair derelicts and this gives you an excellent opportunity to jump on a valuable vessel that pirate empires often have great difficultly replacing.
I will also add that many of the more experienced players will, when looking for a more challenging game, ignore any damaged derelicts they find and immediately scrap any operational derelicts that fall into their hands, as in the opinion of some, obtaining these kinds of vessels can make the game too easy.
Overall, it's up to you. You know your empire's finances better than we do, and you're the best situated to judge which of the options I've listed suits your purposes.
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Also, is it common to find so many capital ships?
The larger debris fields and strategic reserves tend to have something like this, yes.
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2. Should i build small space ports at all my colonies, because i assume its a good idea to have resources transferred, but its a drain on my economy, which is really really bad.
I would say no. Each colonized planet has its own hidden docking and cargo transfer facilities, so it's not necessary to include a spaceport over every colony to ship resources to and from the colony. You do kind of want a base of some kind with medical and recreational facilities, and perhaps a commerce center and a couple docking bays, over your colonies to gain the approval bonuses (medical and recreational facilities) and the bonus income (commerce center), but a spaceport of any size is more of a combined shipyard and port rather than just being a port, not every world needs a shipyard, and medical and recreational facilities will work just as well from aboard a defensive base orbiting the colony as they will from a spaceport. Jeeves's one per sector suggestion is in my opinion reasonable, though early on I would tend to go in for even fewer, based on where the mines are and how many spaceports my economy can support.
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Finally, i have read that the private sector loans your constructors to build bases... since all mine are set at manual control, i assume they cant build anything? Is that a bad idea? I set it manually, because i noticed the AI started queuing bases i wouldent't have.
I have played for a while and have 4 colonies, but only have around 10 non gas mining stations. Does that seem too low? Except for a few luxury resources i am very well covered in resources.
If you have decent sources of all the strategic and most or all of the luxuries, and the cost per unit of each strategic resource is about 0.8 to 1-ish (which can be checked in the expansion planner, accessible as one of the buttons in the top center section of the screen, below and to the left of the news scroll), you're doing acceptably well on resources. It's best to have a decent array of mines for strategic resources around each shipyard you set up so that the freighters don't usually have to go to the other side of your empire to pick up chromium for the latest construction project, if you can appropriate resource sites near each shipyard location, but it's not absolutely necessary. You might be better off picking up some additional mines simply to avoid issues if a pirate gang or a rival empire swoops in and destroys a mine or two, and as long as your private sector is rich and has reasonably positive cashflow, it's not going to hurt to add another mine or two, though you should also remember that more mines are usually more dispersed mines, which makes it more difficult to adequately defend everything.
As for the private sector paying you for the use of your construction ships when building mining stations: it's true, and they'll do it whether the computer automatically assigns the construction project or if you manually order it up. The private sector will transfer an amount of money equal to the purchase cost of the station to the state at the time the construction ship begins construction of the station.
As far as manual or automated control of the construction ships goes, that's more a question of how much micromanagement do you want to do. Early in the game, it's reasonably worthwhile to tell the computer to mine that asteroid that has 60% lead, 34% iridium, and 20% gold on it rather than going for that 90% lead moon, because getting a source of three strategic resources now is more useful than getting a better source of only one strategic resource, and it's also better to keep the computer from wasting time getting an early luxury resource or two, or a strategic resource with little immediate value. Later in the game, when you have a more established empire with at least a decent core infrastructure around your older colonies, it becomes less worthwhile to make certain that the construction ships are assigned efficiently, though naturally there are still advantages to doing so (avoiding overbuilding in one or two areas and efficiently filling holes in the locally developed resource locations being the main advantages that come to mind). Regardless of the stage of the game, personally managing construction assignments generally improves the efficiency of your construction efforts, but the computer will generally do an adequate, though not excellent, job for you, if left to its own devices. It comes down to how much management you want to do with your construction ships, and if this changes as your empire grows, well, you can always turn automation back on for at least some of the ships. There isn't anything explicitly wrong with either the hands-on or the hands-off approach to managing your construction ships; it's all about where your attention is and how many things you need to keep track of, feel comfortable monitoring, and are interested in managing.
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