Population Control and Effects
Independent worlds never gain population.
Faction planets randomly gain population so long as their population is less than 150% of their quality OR there are more hab units available. For example, a planet with quality 6 has a natural maximum population of 9. So long as the planet has 9 habitation units (9 hab 1 units, or 2 hab 4 and one hab 1, or any similar combination), the planet’s population will never exceed 9. If the planet has less than 9 habitation units, the planet will still grow to 9 population. However, when the population exceeds the available habitation the planet will rapidly lose morale, to a minimum of 1. If morale remains 1, or morale plummets rapidly on a marginal (that is, quality 6) planet, the planet will go independent.
However, suppose we build 10 habitation units on this quality 6 planet. It now has the POTENTIAL to become population 10, rather than population 9. However, this will not become the new maximum UNTIL it actually grows to population 10. If you demolish the surplus habitation unit so that we have 9 hab units on this planet, and it has 9 population or fewer, it will only grow to 9 population and no more. However, if we wait until the population grows to 10, 10 is the new maximum. If we continue to add additional hab units, the population on the planet can grow indefinitely.
It is indeterminate what happens when the planetary quality is not evenly divisible by 2; is the natural limit of a quality 7 planet 9 (150% of quality 6) 10 (7*3 / 2 in integer division), or 12 (150% of quality 8)? In these cases, the best approach is to assume the next level up (12 population in this case) and build accordingly. Since population always grows to maximum hab units, this is a safe operation and gives the planet more resource capability.
However, there is a point of diminishing returns.
Population growth is most likely on a planet 1) That is newly settled 2) That has a low population 3) That has high morale.
A planet with low morale is often at low morale because of overpopulation, and so low morale compensates by decreasing the likelihood of a planet increasing population.
Planets that are crowded are not attractive to settlers, nor are planets that have been long established; settlers crave new opportunities. So the original starting 3 planets, such as Thulun Prime, will eventually be last in line to receive new population while new colonies will grow rapidly. Consequently, it is unlikely for a high-quality planet to ever gain enough population in a game to reach its maximum, and so it is not a useful strategy to, for example, build 30 habitation units on a quality 6 planet. While the planet does have the theoretical potential to gain 30 population, population migration to the planet will decrease so that it is unlikely to break 20 in the course of a playthrough.
Population grants revenue in and of itself ; just having 1 population grants a base of $15 return per turn. Population is also used to activate factories to gain CP (A planet with 10 population can generate 10 CP per turn if they have sufficient factories) and research facilities to gain RP (a planet with 10 population can generate 10 RP per turn, disregarding faction bonuses, if they have sufficient spice dens, exchanges, or other improvements).
Trade is unaffected by population, as is espionage. Alien invasion of the planet is the only way to decrease population.
Ship Design
In all skills, 3 points gives neither a penalty or a bonus. A skill with less than 3 receives a penalty and will almost never work at a skill level of 0. Skills greater than 3 give a bonus. Skill effects are different for different kinds of ships. For instance, a fast reactor ship repair skill repairs 1 hull point per repair skill per turn, reactor ships repair 1.5, while heavy reactor ships repair 2.
Likewise, the ship type influences the effect of materials such as durability; for instance, a fighter design gains 10 hp per point of durability while a battlecruiser gains 23. Check the ship screen carefully when deciding between ship types.
Fighters are any ship that mounts a fast reactor (fighter, assault fighter, Mesa Hawk fighter). These ships have 3-4MP and 1-2 AP. They are unique in that they mount auto guns ; while some auto guns consume 2 AP, others consume only 1 AP and may therefore be fired twice in a turn. They also mount point defense weapons such as the phalanx defense pod which provide a bonus to defense. While early versions of this ship are very cheap, later versions are as expensive as a cruiser, though they always retain the advantage of being repairable and refuelable from a carrier.
Fighter designs dominate the early game; indeed, your first warship is a 1AP/4MP fighter given as a free design. Their dominance culminates with the discovery of fast reactor 7, the only 2AP/4MP reactor in the game, which allows all fighters both maximum speed and maximum armament. This design is limited, however, in that a fighter can only reach a mass of 3300 units. Fighters become less useful in the mid game as later reactor designs tend to 1AP/3MP, the worst of all possible worlds in the fighter world, and only pick back up to 2 AP/3MP or 1AP/4MP designs at the very end of the tech tree. The user must then decide between ships no faster than a capital ship but able to fire twice in a turn, or fast ships which can only fire a weaker weapon once. 2 / 3 ships are recommended for defensive patrols, while 1 / 4 ships should be offensive and recon ships. Fighters can also carry crew or propulsion upgrades which greatly increase their to-hit, damage, and fuel capacity.
Assault fighters receive only the propulsion upgrade, and thus are the weakest ships in the game from a design point of view.
Only the Mesa Hawk, specific to the Alta Mesa faction, is capable of firing torpedoes or engaging enemies at 2 squares range. This ship is the equivalent of a torpedo cruiser in this configuration with the added benefit of being able to repair or refuel from a carrier. It also receives the same upgrades as a cruiser – propulsion and prow. Since it does not receive the crew upgrade, the standard fighter is superior to it as a close-ranged combatant and therefore the only reason to build a Mesa Hawk is to create a torpedo-armed fighter.
Capital ship designs use the standard reactor, which grants 2 or 3 AP and always 3 MP. All capital ship weapons use a minimum of 2 AP, so the choice is between weaker weapons with less mass at 2 AP, or more powerful weapons with higher mass at 3. However, 3 AP reactors tend to lag behind 2 AP reactors in terms of what mass they can support, so 3 AP ships will frequently mass less and carry less massive weapons than their 2 AP counterparts. This remains true to the end of the tech tree, where the 3 AP reactor 18 and 2 AP reactor 17 support 6100 mass each.
Another reason to choose between 2 AP and 3 reactors is what talents are used. Refuel and repair talents,use 1 AP each, while multi-refuel or multi-repair use 2 AP. If the ship uses a multi- talent, it will probably use a 2 AP reactor because the 3rd AP will be wasted, unless the designer wants a 3 AP weapon on the ship. This is usually a bad choice, since as discussed for the bulk of the game 3 AP reactors support less mass than 2 AP reactors, so the supported weapon will be smaller. However, if the ship uses a 1 AP talent such as refuel, a 3 AP reactor is the better choice since the ship may use the talent three times in a turn, rather than only twice. This can sometimes provide greater tactical flexibility though it is less efficient. A multi-refuel character can refuel up to 5 fighters one time in a turn. However, it can only perform the action one time and the fuel cost is the same regardless of whether it was used to refuel one ship or 5. By contrast, a single ship refuel talent with a three AP reactor can refuel one ship three times, or three ships one time, or any similar combination. So if you are frequently refueling only one ship, a single refuel talent with a three AP reactor is the better choice.
Since sector scan takes only 1 AP, a dedicated scout ship may also benefit from a 3 AP reactor, since it can use sector scan three times in a turn.
Capital ships are: Transport, Cruiser, Carrier, Strike Cruiser, Zenrin War barge, Thulun Cutter.
Transports can be used to colonize worlds or invade enemy systems; they can be equipped with an invasion upgrade such as a mechanized brigade and a colony module. They can carry either invasion weapons such as drop pods or lances which are 1 range weapons. While they can be used to fight, they get no upgrades to support combat and are therefore best kept out of space combat if possible. Despite this, it IS possible to convert a transport to a combat ship by adding a high-level lance weapon and removing all its upgrades. Some captains favor this approach, especially in the early game.
War Barges are specific to the Zenrin faction; they are capable of either space combat or planetary invasion. To support this they can be armed with plasma cannons or invasion weapons. Their upgrades can be either invasion-specific or structural, such as the Combat Architecture upgrade. These ships are better invasion ships than the standard transport because their structural upgrades allow them to mount much heavier armor. Their plasma cannons also allow them to operate as dedicated combat ships in a space combat role but, as with the transport, the lack of space combat upgrades make this a suboptimal choice.
Cruisers are dedicated combat ships which carry railguns or torpedoes ; they receive propulsion and prow upgrades. These are dedicated combat ships. While railgun cruisers have little advantage over fighters, torpedo cruisers can engage targets at range. What’s more, when the torpedo spread talent becomes available they can be used to target up to 5 enemy ships at a time; when a torpedo is fired at a target, adjacent ships in the four cardinal directions surrounding the target can also be hit. Friendly fire, however, is not possible. A friendly ship directly adjacent to a target will not be hit.
Carriers have the same armament as cruisers but different upgrades; they can receive a bridge upgrade and must accept a refuel/repair bay in the second slot. They must also devote their support talent to either repairing or refueling fighters. NOTE: A carrier may either repair OR refuel a fighter BUT NOT BOTH. So the minimum number of carriers needed to provide support to a fighter group is 2: One to perform repair duties and one for refueling. However, 2 refuel carriers, for a total of three ships (1 repair, 2 refuel) is a better choice both because refueling consumes a great deal of water fuel, and because this allows one of each human faction in the game to contribute 1 ship and thereby remain at parity.
So a carrier is a support craft which can be pressed into the role of a cruiser at need, but due to the lack of dedicated combat upgrades it is best not used in this role long-term. It does very well as a “cruiser” in the early game but should be relegated to a support role once dedicated cruisers are available.
Strike Cruisers are a late-game variant of the cruiser which have greater offensive power but lower durability (16 hit points per point of durability versus 20 for the standard cruiser). They can mount either torpedoes or boarding weapons. For upgrades they can receive crews and prows. In the torpedo configuration, the crew upgrade gives massive bonuses to accuracy, damage, and max fuel compared to the standard cruiser. The boarding configuration, while inflicting mediocre damage, also inflicts the ECM debuff on the targeted enemy, which will make the job of other attacking craft much easier. Thus, they are a superior choice to the late-game assault fighter in two respects: First, they receive two upgrades to the assault fighters’ one, one of those being the fantastic crew upgrade. Second, a 3AP reactor allows them to mount a more powerful boarding weapon than the assault fighter. The normal warnings against 3 AP reactors and less mass not being applicable in this case because the strike cruiser doesn’t become available until the point where the final reactors can be researched, obviating those issues. The assault fighter retains only the advantage that it can be refueled or repaired from a carrier.
Cutter is a Thulun-specific faction ship very similar to the strike cruiser. At 19 hp per point of durability, it is stronger than the strike cruiser (16) but weaker than a standard cruiser (20). It also becomes available at the midpoint of the game, while the standard cruiser is available from the early game and the strike cruiser is only available at the end. For weapons it can use the gravity driver, the only ship in the game which can do so, and torpedoes. For upgrades it receives the crew upgrade and the structural upgrade.
As a torpedo ship, it is roughly equivalent to a strike cruiser with the added advantage of being available much earlier; superior in offensive terms to a standard cruiser while being 1 point less durable. This ship’s real selling point, however, is the gravity driver. The gravity driver is the most powerful 1-square range weapon in the game, topping out with the Imperator GD-3 which can inflict a maximum of 114 non-critical damage. This is powerful enough to one-shot almost any enemy in the game. The downside, however, is the incredible mass of these weapons; the Imperator masses 3300 units when the maximum ship size for a cruiser-type is 6100. As a result, a designer of such a cutter will have to make many sacrifices elsewhere in the design to accommodate the weapon. For example, you cannot fit a top-line gravity driver on a class 10 ship regardless of what you try; if you want it to fit you must lower the tech level to 5 (or even 4 if you want additional upgrades) to make room. You must also strip upgrades and armor, converting the gravity driver ship into a “glass cannon” ; it has a very powerful weapon but it has little else going for it; battlecruiser-class weapons in a cruiser hull. Consequently it must be deployed with support ships to protect it. One way to do it is to send in another ship to draw the fire of an enemy. Then, once the enemy is incapable of counterattacking, move in with the cutter and blast it to atoms.
Super-capital ships (Battle Cruiser, Heavy Carrier, Heavy Transport) use the Heavy Reactor. Heavy Reactors support up to 10000 units of mass, almost twice the mass of a capital ship (6100), 2 or 3 AP and 2 or 3 MP. What’s more, all heavy reactors above heavy reactor 15 provide 2 MP only. This makes them slower than their capital brethren and suggests a defensive role for the ships. There is a bridge upgrade (The Titan Bridge system) which provides +1 MP to redress this deficiency, at the cost of an upgrade slot. They are also costly to build, costly to maintain, and take a long time to build. A top-ranked battle cruiser can require 498 CP to complete, which is 20 turns even for a high-population end game planet, and cost $623 in maintenance per turn.
The battlecruiser is a more powerful version of the cruiser. It carries railguns or torpedoes, the bridge upgrade, and a crew upgrade. The crew upgrade gives the usual massive bonuses to accuracy, damage, and fuel capacity. The bridge upgrade, however, must be sacrificed to equip a titan bridge system if the ship is to be viable offensively. There are other powerful upgrades but if they are used the ship will be either relegated to a support role or forced to use a lower-tech reactor which provides 3 MP but only 8000 mass.
The torpedo variant of this ship is outstanding. Mounting the Tiberias Hypersonic 3 AP torpedo, it can inflict 80 max damage before factoring in upgrades or criticals. Used in torpedo spread to strike up to 5 enemy ships at a time, a single torpedo battlecruiser can massacre whole fleets by itself.
The railgun variant is less impressive; the damage of the top-end railgun (62) is subpar compared to gravity drivers (114), boarding (81), or plasma (71). However, it still retains the ability to armour itself with a duranium hull upgrade (32 armour minimum), making it a very tough nut to crack. It is best used more as a shield to absorb damage than as a damage-dealer itself.
The Heavy Carrier is a support design which mounts boarding shuttles – the only ship type capable of using this weapon – or plasma cannons. As with the regular carrier, it forces one of its upgrades to be the refuel or repair bay, while the second can be a structural upgrade which is defensive in nature.
There are those captains who swear by the heavy carrier as an offensive weapon; the boarding shuttles are the second most powerful weapon in the game which also inflict an ECM debug on the target, and the plasma cannons are not much weaker. Couple that with their large fuel capacity, and you have a near-perfect defensive ship suitable for protecting a colony under long-term attack, both supporting fighters and dealing incredible damage itself.
Others, however, point to the 2 MP speed of the vessels which cannot be improved upon since the heavy carrier cannot accept a bridge upgrade. They also point to the lack of offensive upgrades coupled with the forced use of a refuel/repair bay taking up one of the slots as an indication that this is intended for the support role. And in the support role, it has access to no better talents than the regular carrier does. What’s more, the lack of a ranged capability means it must move adjacent to an enemy to attack, something carriers normally aren’t supposed to do. As a final cherry on top, the lack of torpedoes means it cannot use torpedo spread ; it can only attack one enemy at a time.
These captains use ordinary carriers rather than heavy carriers.
There is an argument which can be made for both; experiment and see which fits your play style!
Heavy Transports are a heavy version of the standard transport; they can mount railguns or invasion weapons, they can be upgraded with invasion upgrades or colony modules, and can be armored with duranium hulls just as the battlecruisers can.
The Heavy Transport really has no purpose other than late-game invasions of enemy colonies; as a pure transport it does nothing the regular transport doesn’t already do, at higher expense. In the late game, a regular transport can be built in 4 turns while a heavy transport takes 20; clearly this ship is unsuitable for use in colonization waves or in any role which requires rapid replacement. Heavy Transports must be long-term ships which exist for a long time, and that means use in the invasion role at which they excel. Using the advanced duranium hull armour (41) these ships can be made as near to invulnerable as is possible without cheats; they can also mount superior weapons compared to regular invasion transports. The one downside is that they cannot mount a bridge upgrade and thus must either be restricted to heavy reactor 15 (3 MP, 8000 mass) or the designer must accept a 2MP ship and, therefore, a slower-paced offensive.
Invasion ships do not benefit from gun decks. The drop pods used as weapons on these ships require invasion+pilot, both captain skills. They do not repeat NOT benefit from gun decks, as lances and light guns and rail guns do. Therefore, any dedicated invasion craft should have gun decks 0; the materials may be used for durability instead.
Invasion operations do not consider stealth or evasion, and therefore any skill points in these categories for invasion ships are wasted, unless they are also intended to defend against space attack.
Invasion operations benefit from the invasion skill, from the pilot skill, from durability, shielding, and sensors. A high repair skill is also useful, as xeno planetary defense can inflict heavy damage on invasion transports. A Zenrin war barge, if available, is a superior alternative to a standard transport; the combat architecture upgrade gives it an additional +10 armor, allowing it to have as much as a 23 armor rating; superior to anything except a heavy transport, but it is available much earlier and is far cheaper.
It is unknown if Assault craft using the boarding talent benefit from gundecks. However, the default design uses gun decks, a 0 gun skill, and multiple points in warrior skill. Therefore it is assumed that assault craft benefit from gun deck materials and the warrior captain skill, but not from the gun captain skill.
Fleet Maintenance Tips
Ships pay 100% maintenance when in red space, regardless of damage level. At least, when damage is > 50%. The writer did not test below that.
Maintenance in green space incurs a penalty when <100% fuel (factions charge a chunk of change for fuel).
Maintenance in green space incurs a much more significant penalty when health < 100% (factions are worse than your local auto mechanic, charge through the nose for repairs). With both templar cruisers in need of repair and refuel, saw fleet maintenance of 140%+.
Maintenance in green space at 100% fuel /100 hull integrity is discounted compared to red space.
Refueling/Repair from green or brown squares in deep space does not incur a penalty. In fact, I suspect they give a significant discount; The writer observed three templar ships in an asteroid belt with two transports transiting red space to new colonies: Fleet maintenance is 46%! That’s what happens when you stay away from factions!
Trade Focus
The documentation says “consistent focus; +10 TP; activates on completion”
It costs $11000 to spin up trade focus ($10000 cash + (100 CP * 10 $/CP = 1000 CP) =$11000). However, only the $1000 CP is permanently paid. Since the focus is never completed, you can only end the focus by aborting it, which will refund the $10000. So the total cost is only $1000.
Once spun up, it gives you a consistent +10TP per turn, the equivalent of a second Exchange 5. If you are in trade alliance, this is 35 $/tp * 10TP = $350.
However, the downside is that you aren’t getting idle CP money because it’s all being spent on maintaining trade focus instead. So if you have 15CP on the planet, this means $150 in cost. $350-$150 = $200 profit/turn.
Note that the additional trade points are displayed on the EMPIRE screen, not the detailed colony screen.
Once you build a trade focus, it’s best to keep it up permanently so you don’t have to pay the startup cost again. If you need to build anything else, just put it on the top of the queue but leave the trade focus under it in the queue. It won’t be active, but equally it’ll go back on as soon as the other stuff is built, and you get it immediately, no need to pay another $11000 (even if you get $10K back eventually) and wait X turns for it to kick off.
If you make $200 profit/turn then it will take 5 turns to pay off the initial investment of 100 CP/ $1K (remember, you get the $10K back when you abort the focus). .
It is imperative to keep Javat, the only faction capable of performing trade focus, in a permanent trade alliance to make the most profit. If you can’t do this, you may find yourself losing money every turn compared to simply collecting credits from idle CP.
I hope this was helpful to you!
Be the first to comment