Player Questions for the Far Horizons Game Moderator

[prozenfeld]

"remote production colonies" = colonies with IUs and IAs that have a positive manufacturing capacity. If you don't issue orders for them to produce anything, they will produce EUs, right? Which can then be spent anywhere, right?

That is incorrect. If you have imbalanced planet, you will either have idle production capacity or unprocessed RMs.

Alternatively, if you have a planet where it is easy to run mines, but not to run production, you can set up NO manufacturing and make them "mining colonies" which convert the RMs they produce into EUs -- at a significant penalty.

Actually, mining colony is more effective than normal colony in terms of EU output, but at a cost of increasing mining difficulty.

[ixnay]

Re "production colonies" - of course an imbalanced planet would be less efficient. But if your colony is in balance, it produces in accordance with mining/manufacturing, right? And if you don't spend that production on that planet on a given turn, it's output goes into EU, right?

Re "mining colonies" - I had not actually done the math. A single unit of mining capacity takes 10 colonists and ten colonial mining units, which is then modified by mining difficulty. Likewise for manufacturing. So on an earthlike colony with no difficulty, you could commit 10 colonists/mines for each unit of RM output (times MN tech), and convert that to EUs with the penalty. OR, you could commit a further 10 colonists and 10 manufacturing units for each unit of manufacturing capacity, which would let you do the production right there on the colony, and then let it come out as EU.

So you are saying that it is easier to mine and sell the RM off to EU (with penalty) than to commit the resources to do manufacturing as well? I guess then that the only efficient way to do "manufacturing" on a colony is if the mining difficulties are particularly high and manufacturing is particularly easy on a given planet.

Does that mean that most players set up mining colonies, with no remote manufacturing?

[prozenfeld]

Re "production colonies" - of course an imbalanced planet would be less efficient. But if your colony is in balance, it produces in accordance with mining/manufacturing, right? And if you don't spend that production on that planet on a given turn, it's output goes into EU, right?

No. EUs are cummulative, unused production capacity is simply wasted.

Re "mining colonies" - I had not actually done the math. A single unit of mining capacity takes 10 colonists and ten colonial mining units, which is then modified by mining difficulty. Likewise for manufacturing. So on an earthlike colony with no difficulty, you could commit 10 colonists/mines for each unit of RM output (times MN tech), and convert that to EUs with the penalty. OR, you could commit a further 10 colonists and 10 manufacturing units for each unit of manufacturing capacity, which would let you do the production right there on the colony, and then let it come out as EU.

So you are saying that it is easier to mine and sell the RM off to EU (with penalty) than to commit the resources to do manufacturing as well? I guess then that the only efficient way to do "manufacturing" on a colony is if the mining difficulties are particularly high and manufacturing is particularly easy on a given planet.

Does that mean that most players set up mining colonies, with no remote manufacturing?

Normal colony (assuming MD=1.00 and balanced MI/MA) produces (100*tech level) when fully developed. Mining colony would start prodution at (133*tech level) and deteriorate from there. For colonies with MD < 1 the difference is higher.

From my overall experience normal colonies are most common.

[ixnay]

So on your homeworld, if you don't spend all your production, the excess goes into EU, but on your colonies your excess production disappears?

[prozenfeld]

So on your homeworld, if you don't spend all your production, the excess goes into EU, but on your colonies your excess production disappears?

You are confusing production (EU) with manufacturing capacity.
EUs that are generated (by having RMs from MI base and manufacturing capacity from MA base) but not spent are put into the global pool. Excess manufacturing capacity (that is not used to convert RMs into EUs) is lost.

All "normal" planets (not mining/resort) are subject to the same mechanics. Your homeworld does not have a spending limit, though.

[ixnay]

Okay, I think I had it right, but was using the wrong terms. I was using "production" as the output of a balanced colony -- mining and manufacturing together. That balanced pairing produces points that can either be spent locally or go into the EU pool.

[Ramblurr]

To clarify the confusion of the past page or so:

There are three distinct terms here:

• Production Capacity
  
• Raw Material Units (RMs)
  
• Economic Units
  

Production capacity represents factories, robots, workplaces, warehouses, etc. That is, it represents your planet's ability to produce things.

Raw Material Units represents the materials that are put through your factories. It is the substance from which everything is assembled.

So, to build you need both production capacity (factories to build in) and raw material units (material to assemble things out of).

From the game manual (section 5):

Any items that you may wish to build, such as ships, planetary defenses, etc. will have a “cost” of equal amounts of raw material units and production capacity. Thus, if you wish to build a spaceship with a cost of 200, then a total of 200 raw material units will be used in its construction, and a total production capacity of 200 will be needed to actually build it.

Economic Units are the in-game currency. The are produced automatically out of: 1 raw material unit and 1 production capacity. So, at the end of your turn if a planet has 10 RMs and 10 production capacity remaining, then 10 EUs will be produced. (this only applies to regular colonies, not resort or mining). The reason for the automatic conversion, is that it doesn't make sense to be able to stockpile production capacity.

NOTE: Economic units can be substituted for production capacity if necessary. From the game manual: "During production on a planet, economic units owned by the species will be used automatically (if available) if orders are given which require more than the available production capacity of the planet." (section 5.8) The tradeoff to this of course is that 1 EU is not equivalent to 1 production capacity, because 1 EU is made up of 1 RM and one production capacity.

[GrimFinger]

My confusion is such, that this most recent turn, I only opted to do three things - increase planetary defenses and increase research in a couple of areas.

The temptation is strong to just allocate all points (if I can ever figure out what I am allowed to spend during any given turn) to planetary defense. I'm not so sure that this is what the game 's experience is supposed to be for the player, but it is the direction that I am currently heading.

The explanations by the other players have only increased the level of confusion, not mitigated it.

[GrimFinger]

Q. In a previous version/running of the game, there was an apparent bug in the game's code associated with instances where players tried to Teach a tech level to zero. Do you know if this bug still exists, in the code used for the current game, Far Horizons: The Awakening?