OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[rho21]

As I understand it, the most efficient way to research is to pour a lot of BCs into a field at the start, then dial back to the point where the LED is just barely lit.

That's the ideal for trickle research, yeah. You can spend a lot of time micromanaging this, I personally only find it worthwhile in the early game.

I thought giving that field a big boost was worth throwing away a little compound interest in the other fields.

It's worth noting that if you drop spending to zero in a field, you're doing more than throwing away compound interest: it actually removes some (10%?) of the beakers you already have invested, each turn. This is a pretty harsh penalty; it's almost never worth dropping a field to zero once it's been started. Handily one click is sufficient to preserve your investment.

[Mardoc]

Oh, and if I'm reading the formula right, Hostile/Fertile applies both to natural growth and to ECO slider growth, so that will affect both the cost and the benefit equally, which should net out to breakeven again. Buying pop on a Fertile planet to ship to a Hostile one, on the other hand, will almost certainly come out ahead, as long as transit time isn't ridiculous.

What else...buying pop on a Rich world doubles the benefit while keeping the cost the same, so that's definitely worth doing.

[rho21]

What else...buying pop on a Rich world doubles the benefit while keeping the cost the same, so that's definitely worth doing.

Arguable. The cost per citizen remains the same number of BCs, but you could be getting a multiplier on those BCs if you used them on a different slider.

The ideal is to have something like a Poor Fertile planet somewhere centrally located. Keep it permanently between 1/3 and 1/2 population (for maximum natural growth), sink everything into the eco slider and ship all the population off to other worlds.

[Mardoc]

What else...buying pop on a Rich world doubles the benefit while keeping the cost the same, so that's definitely worth doing.

Arguable. The cost per citizen remains the same number of BCs, but you could be getting a multiplier on those BCs if you used them on a different slider.

The ideal is to have something like a Poor Fertile planet somewhere centrally located. Keep it permanently between 1/3 and 1/2 population (for maximum natural growth), sink everything into the eco slider and ship all the population off to other worlds.

Wait, Rich/Poor doesn't help the Eco slider? I thought it doubled everything but research.

I guess if the 20 BC on a citizen is really 40 BC of opportunity cost, to get 40 BC of production later, then Rich becomes a wash as well.

[haphazard1]

Interesting and useful info -- thanks, Mardoc and Rho21!

Hmmm, if the cost and benefit are essentially equal in many cases, then it is slightly better to not spend to grow pop as BCs now are less valuable than BCs later (on the assumption your economy will be larger later). But the other factors such as availability of factories and other planets where pop can be grown/shipped still apply. However, I note that Mardoc's examples were calculated with 2 factories per pop; with improve IRC tech available the potential factories worked per pop increase. So maybe this shifts the balance of cost/benefit again?

[Mardoc]

Yes, anything that boosts production per population will shift the balance toward paying for pop.  Which is IRC tech and waste cleanup tech and any planetology tech.  My example also assumed round numbers; I think we might have enough planetology for somewhat more than 2 prod/pop already.

[haphazard1]

Playing... IRC4 popped in 2424. Factories, lots and lots more factories, coming right up.

Hmmm, the rocks are making another try for Crypto, and this time they are serious about it: a colony ship and 5 'Mako' ships, a big design. No idea what is on those, but given their tech I assume 5 of them will have no trouble dealing with some popgun laser fighters. 7 turns to arrive, due to crawling along with the warp 1 colony ship. Not sure if we have any response to this, but pausing for a while and hoping for input from the team before I continue. Would hate to divert from factory building just as we get the new controls, but with 7 turns to respond we could get ships to Crypto in time if we wanted to. Just not sure we could get enough of anything that would matter with our current tech.

Maybe worth designing an intel ship with a battle scanner and sending one quickly to Crypto to get info on the rocks' design?

[Mardoc]

I would be inclined to give up on protecting it, and plan to just bomb it to oblivion whenever we actually go to war. I'm pretty sure Ianus would disagree, given that he spent the effort to defend it the first time. So maybe wait for more votes. No rush from me to get the turn, I can't play til tomorrow evening at best.

I guess we could probably defend the world if we used Hyper-X missile boats. Need probably 80 hits to wipe out 600 hp worth of Large ships; not sure how many missiles that actually is, but maybe 30 missile launchers would give us enough shots to have a good chance? Not sure whether we can fit those on Smalls yet, so I don't have a feel for how expensive this fleet would be.

[Ianus]

I'm fine given that we can certainly glass it as needed. I just don't like giving the rocks such a strong world right in the heart of our empire. Really all we need to do is destroy the colony ship as I described before. Maybe build a bunch of missile boats to target the colship and retreat? It isn't war over a neutral world after all...

[haphazard1]

My leaning is to let the rocks have Crypto. Our resistance there delayed them settling the plpanet by 15 turns or so, which has some value; if we had Controlled Radiated in our tree it would have let us claim the planet first. But we do not have the tech, and depending on other races' trees we may never get the tech. So spending heavily on fleet to defend a world we can not use ourselves seems unproductive.

But I would like to hear more from the rest of the team before finishing the rest of the turnset.

Hmmm, the Meklar are piling on the tech. Ion drives, advanced soil enrichment, IIT4, reduced waste 40%...getting rather scary.