sbach2o
Posts: 378
Joined: 3/26/2010
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Hi,
I tried one thing and want to provide some updates about empire policy and the new patch. I am playing at a rather slow pace with lots of micromanagement and not too much time for the game. This is why I am a bit late. Also keep in mind that this game was started somewhere around version 1.7.0.3 and saw all intervening patches.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Speedy2511
in the empire policy screnn is a button called "trade with other empire". Maybe uncheck zhis option help?
I found this option and flipped it off. Unfortunately this was at about the same time as installing the update to 1.7.0.6 (1.7.0.7 beta was also installed later). This means that changes cannot clearly be attributed to one or the other. But the changes were rather profound.
It took a couple of game years for it to become obvious, but in the end trade with other empires ceased alltogether. I think that old orders still were carried out, those were not affected by the change in policy (or patch, but let's assume it is the policy which seems sensible). By now there are hardly any ships of mine with cargo for other empires. The trade revenue has dropped year by year, finally reaching zero and the trade related relations bonus with all AI empires has vanished.
It is a bit unfortunate that the 'trade with other empires' option is an all or nothing (assuming it is the option having this effect). Many other options have a priorization which I'd wish for first and foremost here. But I can imagine how difficult it could be to implement such a priorization in the game. Maybe something for the wish list.
One could try to adapt to this by periodically switching between 'trade' and 'no trade'. I wonder what a good fraction and time frame for the switches would be?
While trade revenues were decreasing, the civil sector ordered wave after wave of transportation, so much of it that my main producing worlds were constantly running dry of fuel. A very worrying feature (new with patch 1.7.0.6?) regarding fuel distribution crept up during this, more about that below. The civil sector was so focused on building freighters, I was about to file a bug report that it had forgotten about passenger ships. But finally, after building up from ~300 to a fleet of 2000 freighters, there was a wave of passenger transport ordered (from 20 to 250).
Now the fuel issue: I made the mistake of not clearly dividing the civil and state sectors between caslon and hydrogen reactors. I used to let the civil sector run on caslon, giving the more efficient fusion reactors to the military arm (for the sake of comfort). Before the Legends expansion this division worked well, but in a 15 by 15 galaxy like I am playing now, too many transport ships were running out of fuel, so when I managed to trade the ultra efficient Quameno reactor, I made a about-turn and refitted both, the freighter and my military designs, to use that reactor.
The increasing discrepancy between hydrogen supply and demand I tried to meet by building more gas mining stations. When I realized that my manually controlled fleets were running out of refueling points ('refuel at neareast...' sending them to some Arms Supply Depot across the galaxy), I took a closer look which turned out extremely worrying:
All gas mining stations had practically all their fuel stocks reserved. I mean, really each and every one of them with some 90 to 95 percent of the resources reserved. It looked like all must be the target of refueling ships, or freighters picking up the goods for shipment. Except, not only the fuels were reserved this way, all other gas types, too. This included helium, of which my construction sites were only needing traces (helium finds little use in low to mid tech components). Imagine 10K of helium reserved times 30 to 40 gas mining stations when my total demand is on the order of 1K or such? Looking further, the same situation applied to all goods on all mining stations.
Fine, so I have lots of freighters, let's turn on the civil ship vectors overlay and look who comes to this or that gas mining station, having the stuff reserved. Result (typically, there were some exceptions): no one that I could see. This leaves three possibilties:
- Other empires' freighters are coming for my goods. I just don't see them for lack of LRS coverage.
- Goods are reserved for transportation before a freighter is assigned the job.
- There's a bug tying up resources as reserved. And those resources aren't ferried anywhere any time soon or in a worst case scenario, out of the game for good.
The first option is unlikely. As I stated above, trade with other empires has all but ceased, and my transportation sector must make up about half of the global capacity in the game in question (I should restart with harder settings, or micromanage less, but that is another matter). So let's hope and assume it is the middle option.
I can only speculate about this, but this 'reserving' everything on mining stations may have been introduced with path 1.7.0.6 as a way to create the demand for the transportation capacity that the civil sector is then so eager to build up. Or it is a change in the focus of the transport sector, that goods should be ferried with some priority to colonies to make them available there.
When it comes to fleet management, this hurts quite a bit. Before, we could count on lots of fuel being available on this or that gas ming station, regardless of what Expansion Planner says. And our fleets always had a point where the sometimes significant amounts needed to fill their fuel tanks were free. Now, almost everthing on mining stations is tied up, the (typically) just 5% to 10% of unreserved fuel are just enough for a couple of ships. My fleets have to wait for the reserves being transported to a colony and that transport is as inefficient as ever. With all those masses of freighters it will still take ages between a gas mining station becoming available and freighters appearing to ferry off the goods.
Right now I try to live off the scraps which are left, and intervene when a refuel order sends a particular fleet to the other end of the galaxy.
Another worrying tidbit about transportation: A high fraction of freighters are going empty. In RotS I once compiled some statistics: of all freighters with transport orders (so all going for repairs or refueling are out in the first place) a full two thirds were empty. I did not perform a full count this time, but my impression from going over a somewhat big sample of (a couple of hundred) ships recently suggests that this hasn't changed. Again, a few explanations come to mind, the most obvious for me being:
- The transport routes for cargo are somewhat optimized for proximity between source and point of delivery, while picking a freighter to do the job isn't. So freighters may have on average longer trips to pick up cargo than delivering it.
- Freighters may go to pick up cargo, often finding there's nothing there. I've often seen lots of freighters queue up on a space port or mining station for a resource that is in high demand. I observed this mainly in RotS and it could take on extreme forms (imagine 200 freighters queueing up for a couple of hundred units of Yarras Marble). In such a case it may be possible that many freighters will find nothing when it is their turn to load cargo. This may actually explain quite well why there are often ships underway with tiny amounts goods, like 10 units of steel on a large freighter.
< Message edited by sbach2o -- 12/27/2011 4:26:53 PM >
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Construction bottleneck - 
Then it is no wonder why some orders take years to fulfill.
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