Spaceship travel times

I did some tests concerning the travel time for spaceships (SS), since BtS requires the SS to land successfully (instead of just launching it)

All SS must contain at least 1 part of each part to be able to launch, I call this the "basic" SS. Build costs (normal speed) are in parenthesis.
-Cockpit (1000)
-Life support (1000)
-Stasis chamber (1200)
-Docking bay (2000)
-Engine (1600)
-Casing (1200)
-Thrusters (1200)

If you add a 2nd engine or an additional thruster (up to 5), the travel time is reduced.
If you add an additional casing (up to 5), the success% goes up.

All game speeds:
"Basic" success%: 20%
Each additional casing adds 20% success% (up to 100%)

Normal game speed:
"Basic" travel time/cost: 21 turns, 9200
each additional thruster and/or 2nd engine: travel time -2 turns
Fastest possible travel time/cost: 11 turns, 15600

Epic game speed: (build costs x1.5)
"Basic" travel time/cost: 31 turns, 13800
each additional thruster and/or 2nd engine: travel time -3 turns
Fastest possible travel time/cost: 16 turns, 23400

Marathon game speed: (build costs x3.0)
"Basic" travel time/cost: 62 turns, 27600
each additional thruster and/or 2nd engine: travel time -6 turns
Fastest possible travel time/cost: 32 turns, 46800


Personal comments/ideas:
I would like the system changed a bit since it seems that my success% will always be 100% since the casing parts are easily researched (need Composites) and built 5 times before the Fusion tech (required for the engine) is even researched.

Also it makes no sense to build a second engine if the completion takes more than 2-6 (depending on game speed) turns after the completion of the first engine (You gain only 2-6 turns for the 2nd engine). I would recommend that the 2nd engine brings a major speed boost (not just the same as a thruster), maybe 25% or even 50%.

I recommend also that additional casing parts cause a longer travel time. So I would have to decide if I want to have high success% or a fast spaceship. The current system gives me no real choice: 5 casings are always best.
Note: The success% will be resolved in the turn when the SS arrives at Alpha Centauri. If you fail, you get a message and you have to rebuild your SS from scratch.

All other parts are obligatory, this is good because they make the whole SS construction a major project that needs a lot of resources. But they also don't offer a choice for me, maybe they should also influence the success% or travel time (ideas anyone?)

Good Work. Nice to know how this works.

I agree they could improve this system with some of the suggestions you made.

If they really wanted to they could make it quite a bit more complex, possibly having a quota on the number of colonists that must survive to start the colony, having diffent quality of stasis, docking and life support, possibly requiring multiple missions if the first one is not successful and so on, but then it would probably too hard to do

I agree with casing effects to make the flight longer would be good, but too random. There should be an incentive to put on additional parts and some tradeoffs. Civ I/II gave you more score if you built more modules, but I'm not sure many people care much about the score.
I also wholeheartedly agree with the fact the 2nd engine should give much more of a boost. When I built mine in 2 turns on normal and saw a net gain of zero, this was quite underwhelming.
I'd rather need less techs to build the various parts so you don't build everything in a single super production city while the rest do research, but can use some other cities contribute production. And maybe need or could use more casings/thrusters (component/structurals)

This new space ship thing is pointless and irrelevant. You can even change the look of the parts. Is this Sims2 or Barbie or what? I think it's silly.

IronCrown said:

This new space ship thing is pointless and irrelevant. You can even change the look of the parts. Is this Sims2 or Barbie or what? I think it's silly.

Click to expand...

Pointless that you can change the look of the parts and especially silly that you can do it once the parts are already built.

Thanks! This will definitely be useful for the HOF!