The v.1.11 factory mystery...

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

... after playing a while with v.1.11 installed and having conquered various races' planets in battle (without destryoing the planetary improvements) it struck me:

How on earth do those guys actualy build their ships? One factory per planet near and far? How does that account for those gigantic fleets that keep attacking my home systems? No matter which race a planet I conquer- its always only half way urbanized (i.e. lots of planetary tiles remain empty) and there is a profound lack of everything that would allow some sort of production... Seems the AI buys its ships (or what?)...



ps. by the way: the Torians suck even at "intelligent" since they keep sending masses of unescorted transports into contested space, while the Drengin send all sorts of vessels except sufficient transports While this lets the player feel differences in the races' strategies it sometomes makes me think those poor AI puppets don't seem to have a clue what strategy actualy to follow for victory.

 

[Arathorn]

They buy them. Same as you can. If I decide the game's worth investing the time, one of my first planned variants is to set my military spending at 0% and lock it there all game. I think the game would be quite do-able that way. With all their pop and taxation centers, they can probably afford to buy a ship every couple turns.

My best guess,
Arathorn

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

hmm, interesting thought there- yet that makes production rather... hmm useless- and that would mean the graphical stats in-game are just plain wrong

 

[joelwest]

... after playing a while with v.1.11 installed and having conquered various races' planets in battle (without destryoing the planetary improvements) it struck me:

How on earth do those guys actualy build their ships? One factory per planet near and far? How does that account for those gigantic fleets that keep attacking my home systems? No matter which race a planet I conquer- its always only half way urbanized (i.e. lots of planetary tiles remain empty) and there is a profound lack of everything that would allow some sort of production... Seems the AI buys its ships (or what?)...

if the AI is buying ships instead of producing them they must have a cheat code artifically increasing their economy

I only purchase a ship when it is almost done and even then only in an emergency.
it is far more cost effective to just wait for it to be built.