Final frontier thoughts

[vicawoo]

Maybe similar things have been posted before, but it's not like this forum is cluttered.

I tried out final frontier, and mucked around a bit for a good opening build. Trying to draw it relative to civ 4, my thoughts:

Considering planets are your only production, maintenance is pretty low for expansion.

Earth class planets are like your high food cities. If you grab some early, they can pump out colony ships for you.

1-1-6 and 0-2-5 planets, those are your commerce cities. All other planets have no need to build universities/libraries.

Universities and banks: they only affect the planet they're on, right? And multiple population working the capital planet doesn't give you the palace commerce, right? Each pop does give you mines, nutrition farms, and mag-lev, right?

Construction ships, in terms of REXing, are not that important early on compared to workers. You only need them to eventually raise your happy/health caps, and you probably only need two +3's to reach your max system size anyway. Considering the low odds of having a lot of good planets in your system, and the increased food cost to grow, you probably get a bigger boost by pumping out colony ships at your happy cap. And incidently, having high commerce planets means REXing costs are easily compensated for.

Production, I've not seen any planets with production output comparable to the commerce planets. Makes the 15% production boosts seem very puny, and perhaps insignificant when rounding is applied.

Warring is probably too strong compared to civ 4. Invasion ships are almost even with planetary defense.

My current early tech path, I need colony ships by the time my homeworld grows to size 2 (possibly later). If my first colony is decent (and I'll aim for one with a 3 food world), I'll go for a beacon, then pump colony ships at size 2. I like monarchy, but destroyers are so much better explorers and can actually deal wit pirates. Then maybe go for construction workers to slowly hook up some resources and tech for universities.

 

[Larklight]

Universities and banks: they only affect the planet they're on, right? And multiple population working the capital planet doesn't give you the palace commerce, right? Each pop does give you mines, nutrition farms, and mag-lev, right?

I think you're wrong-right-right.

 

[Inky]

1 - Maintenance might seem low, but as you expand you can, just as in regular Civ4, expand so much that you have no income. The techs which increase income can be hard to reach without crashing your economy if you expand enough.

2,3,4 - Think of the planets as the workable squares on the map. An earth planet is grassland , commerce like cottages, and production worlds like hills. The production boosting buildings which add directly to production (Nutrition, Mining, Maglev, Comm Sats) are like improvements built on a square. Except that as planets have a population size, they represent more than one square, but it only takes one building to improve all of them (per planet).

Universities, Banks, and other buildings which give a percentage boost apply to the entire star system, not just the planet they are on. A system with several planets can get a tremendous boost.

The capital's production bonus is pretty impressive in FF, because it comes before other multipliers and the capital usually can have more boosting buildings early on than any other system.

For production, multiply each point of population by the production per planet, modified by the mines, etc.

5 - While construction ships don't do that much for your economy, warp lanes connect your systems (trade routes, especially good for Red Syndicate but useful for everyone) and allow you to move units about quickly. Reacting to threats is very important, especially pirates in the early game. But you don't need very many early on, just enough to hook up every colonized system.

6 - The production bonuses add up. That 15% isn't much by itself, but five planets with both is +150%. However, production does cost more to increase than commerce and science.

However, ship costs also go up, and for that reason, even though the boost may not seem like much, if you don't increase production you'll lose out on ship production at higher levels of ship tech. You won't be able to build your new-tech ships as fast as you did your older ones.

7- Invasion ships are decent in early wars but can't win on their own. Planetary defense and squadrons are cheaper, and will smack down a comparable cost invasion force. Just as in Civ4, you need superiority in power, which costs more -- either tech or numbers.

 

[Light-Giver]

i find that jump from ships that have a attack value of 8 to ships with a attack value in the 20s alittle high, then again i was way ahead in tech, mabe i skiped a few modles... anyways its a great mod, just the bombers are useless in maps where the planets are spaced out or even at normal settings. Squads are great at cutting a SOD down to size

 

[Inky]

Warships have four basic ratings for combat. The weakest start at 4 (planetary defense and invasion ships), destroyers 6, cruisers 10, and battleships 24. There definitely is a big jump in power, and battleships rule everything for a time.

But each of the ships has other characteristics other than just power. Defense and invasion ships are specialized at defending/attacking star systems, and are less useful in open space. Destroyers are faster and can intercept. Cruisers can carry missiles, and damage defenses, and missiles can rebase to cruisers in the field.

Battleships, while tougher than anything else, are also slowest of all ships. By the time the first battleships come around, the first upgrades for the others also are possible. Their only special ability is damaging defenses. Early on, this is good enough to win wars on its own, but it doesn't last. Still, you're likely to see early wars dominated by battleships, simply because they are so powerful.

Carriers and squadrons are so powerful, though, as to reduce the dominance of battleships. That lack of speed makes them easy to pick off with squadrons. And both bombers and fighters can be carried, which makes them extremely useful to take down any opposition. The AI, sadly, can't effectively use them.

 

[Nayazu]

Everybody seems to neglect the very powerful Stealth ships.
It's simple. I build four of them ASAP I can get them in 3-4 turns each, dispatch them
around my colonies and destroy roads and mines, get XPs by fighting all the Scouts and other ships (I'm getting two generals in one game just with 4 Stealth! The Ships themselves reach level 5-6). A bit later, I'll build 2-3 more two get all those scouts and sqadrons coming to spy in my colonies.
You know, a power 4 stealth ship at level 6 can easily take down a Delta Destroyer!
I play all game without being at war with anybody so much their production is disrupted. They all have to adopt Slavery to keep producing Construction Ships.
This is all merely exploiting the bad AI of this mod. The other Civs never think of building Stealth ships to look at what's going on in their colonies.
And while this is going on, I don't have to build anything military and concentrate on other building to win a Cultural victory or building the stellar gates.