impact
Posts: 88
Joined: 2/18/2010 From: Germany Status: offline
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Hm, let's see... As far as my experience goes, it appears that luxury goods have "trends". I sometimes notice how the demands for certain goods change rather rapidly, but it could be that I just got a shipment in or something, I am not entirely sure about that. The effect it has on your colonies is that if you cannot fulfill that demand, the development level of more established colonies might drop over time. As they all seem to share their goods, they all start balancing out at a certain level (mine are mostly around 50% at the moment). Less development level = less tax money, so depending on your development so far, your homeworld will probably give you less and less taxes, while your younger colonies will start generating more. As for exploration ships: the first thing I do in a new game before doing anything else is building three additional exploration ships. So right from the start you have 4 of those going, which should be enough until you have about 10 or more colonies. If a luxury good is in high demand and it is so rare that you just can't get access to it (which just happened to me, and my empire is rather vast), then sometimes you just have to swallow the bitter pill. Your colonies don't depend on a single luxury good however, so as long as the other demands can be filled, it shouldn't hit you that hard. Transportation of any kind of goods is usually done by civilian ships. If you build a lot of ships in your space port and there are rarely free building slots, civilian ships won't be produced and your logistics and civilian economy will start to shrink or just stop growing. So if you just have to build so many ships over a long time that you know you won't have free production slots at your space port, the time may have come to build another one. Also, when a resource is mined, it will usually be transported and stored in the next spaceport as I understand it. Thus the lines on the galaxy map: they are the supply routes your civilian ships take most of the time. You will notice that they all lead from outlying colonies to your spaceports (especially noticeable if you have only one spaceport). If your empire is stretched somewhat, you might want to consider building additional spaceports at the far away colonies. This will result in nearby civilian transports dropping off their cargo there instead of going all the way back to your homeplanet, resulting in less travel time, resulting in faster throughput if that's your problem. As I said: at least that's how I understand it right now. As for building mines: at the moment I only build them if absolutely necessary. Mines cost maintenance and maintenance is evil :) Colonies are much better, as they will generate revenue for you at some point instead of costing you money all the time. Most planets with luxury goods have a few strategic resources you will need as well, so if you stick to colonies on planets with luxury goods (and later on ruins too), you should be fine. Keep an eye on the gases you need though. You won't find them on normal planets, so you will have to build mines for those. But don't overdo it. Except for materials with a very high demand, one or two sources for strategic resources will fill your needs. You mostly use them when constructing ships, and you can't do that all the time anyway because the upkeep would kill your economy. If you give construction orders and the ships take incredibly long to finish, take a look at the construction yard to see if it has been halted. If that is so, you are short on resources and might want to tap an additional source somewhere near the construction yard (if available).
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