Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[ixnay]

Well, looks like I went from having 6M food at my home colony to having 10M. Still not sure how that works, since my population still hasn't stockpiled their requisite 4 turns worth yet. I will take advantage, to be sure, but I will need to check the rules to find out what I'm missing here.

All 12 of my scouts are now stocked with food. I will send them out this turn on their original missions.

My mining tech is now 4, and I have a big factory group producing them -- 5.5M of them. This is only slightly short of the 6M I need to fully upgrade my home mines. Cool.

So my balanced approach of economic development is starting to pay off. Instead of spending all of my initial research on Factory-5 (as the tutorials suggested) or Laboratory-5 (as another player suggested), I went with level 4 each. I am producing 6M research a turn on that bump AND I have a large number of Lab-5 under construction AND an almost full upgrade of Mines underway. I have my Consumer Good pipeline under control, and apparently food is no longer an emergency.

My weak spots:
- very little scouting done
- not nearly enough ship-building materials in stock
- no investment in sensors or probes
- no real military development (which will be necessary to take over the alien colony in the next system)

I will try to take Vern's advice and craft a good set of orders EARLY this turn, instead of a last-minute rush. I have over 20M unskilled workers sitting idle who should be in training classes right now, thanks to shoddy planning.

[Darth Pedro]

If you look at the turn sequence you will see that Farm production is before Food consumption. If you look at the Population page:

STOCKPILES

The Population of each Colony maintains a Stockpile of Food and of Consumer Goods separate from the Player's Storage Inventory. The Population will try to accumulate 1 Year's (4 Turns) supply of each. The full rationed amount of Food and the total paid amount of Consumer Goods are added to these Stockpiles. The Population will consume up to 25% of the Consumer Goods and Food each Turn. Food consumption will be more than 25% of the stockpile if needed to prevent Starvation; also no more than 0.25 x Food per Turn will be consumed per Population.

So...the people actually consume from the stockpile AFTER the new production is added to it at the ration rate. Since the population grows AFTER the consumption of the Food, you will appear to have less than three turns worth of food in the stockpile assuming the population is growing.

Now to test this logic with reality...

My home OPC on Turn 7 shows a total population of 243,490,521 which is rationed at 100%. This should yield a consumption of 60,872,630.25 Food. My current Food Consumption stat is 53,946,386 which multiplied x 4 comes to 215,785,544 Population at the 100% rate of 1/4 Food per Population. Something just doesn't add up here does it? My population did grow by about 2,000,000 but that doesn't account for the under-consumption does it?

My Food Produced stat is 62,500,000 which equates to my 2,500,000 Farms-1 production.

Conclusion: it appears that the 100% Ration Rate (supposedly 1/4 Food per Pop) is actually 1 food per 4.48 population or about .2232 Food per Pop instead of the anticipated .25 Food per Pop. Sound like ticket time.

Ticket Filed: 9R46BDDZT4

[Darth Pedro]

If you look at the turn sequence you will see that Farm production is before Food consumption. If you look at the Population page:

STOCKPILES

The Population of each Colony maintains a Stockpile of Food and of Consumer Goods separate from the Player's Storage Inventory. The Population will try to accumulate 1 Year's (4 Turns) supply of each. The full rationed amount of Food and the total paid amount of Consumer Goods are added to these Stockpiles. The Population will consume up to 25% of the Consumer Goods and Food each Turn. Food consumption will be more than 25% of the stockpile if needed to prevent Starvation; also no more than 0.25 x Food per Turn will be consumed per Population.

So...the people actually consume from the stockpile AFTER the new production is added to it at the ration rate. Since the population grows AFTER the consumption of the Food, you will appear to have less than three turns worth of food in the stockpile assuming the population is growing.

Now to test this logic with reality...

My home OPC on Turn 7 shows a total population of 243,490,521 which is rationed at 100%. This should yield a consumption of 60,872,630.25 Food. My current Food Consumption stat is 53,946,386 which multiplied x 4 comes to 215,785,544 Population at the 100% rate of 1/4 Food per Population. Something just doesn't add up here does it? My population did grow by about 2,000,000 but that doesn't account for the under-consumption does it?

My Food Produced stat is 62,500,000 which equates to my 2,500,000 Farms-1 production.

Conclusion: it appears that the 100% Ration Rate (supposedly 1/4 Food per Pop) is actually 1 food per 4.48 population or about .2232 Food per Pop instead of the anticipated .25 Food per Pop. Sound like ticket time.

Ticket Filed: 9R46BDDZT4

Response to my ticket:

Our staff has just replied to your ticket "Food Consumption Algorithm"

The food algorithm is complex. If the people's stockpile of food plus the food paid that turn divided by four is less than the total population divided by 4 then they will consume 1/4 of the food stock pile. They never consume more than 0.25 per pop unit or less the 0.0625 per pop unit. Unless the total stockpile is less than 0.0625 per pop unit. In that case they will consume it all.

Your case I would guess that the total food was 215,785,544 before consumtion.

[ixnay]

So when we set the food ration rates, we are really setting the food PAY rates. The people actually EAT 1/4 of their stockpile (with .25 and .0625 as ceiling and floor). This raises questions:

- My people must be consuming less food, right? If I have 200m people and they have 100m food in the stockpile, than even if I "pay" them a full ration (which would add up to 50m food), they will only actually EAT (100m + 50m) / 4 = 37.5m food? Since that is below full normal rations, are they building rebels now?

- What happens if I "pay" them food when their stockpile is already full? Or does that never happen because they only take .25 food per turn max? Can I pay them more than .25 food per turn, in order to pad their stockpile?

I have to suggest, at this point, that maybe the concept of a "food stockpile" and "consumer good stockpile" ought to go away like the "market" did. It's a shadow economy, those items are now "off the radar" so they don't take up space on a ship or anything, though perhaps they should. I remember one of the main problems with the market function was that players were selling inventory items to the market in order to protect them from bombardment, since the computer no longer considered those items part of a ship/colony. As such it was an exploit.

This food/consumer good thing isn't an exploit, but it is perhaps an unnecessary complication. Since we are managing our own production supply chains, we players could just as easily handle food/consumer good supply chains without this abstraction. If you have a ship with no food, everybody dies, period. If you have no consumer goods, your rebel numbers shoot up accordingly. If you ration stuff, fine, accept the consequences. This would remove the problem where your food production goes into the stockpiles BEFORE you can allocate it elsewhere.

[Darth Pedro]

In light of the ticket response and explanation, I see that all of your questions are valid. Questions like yours and my own are what got me started in the editing of the manual. I actually started writing my own copy from the C&P'd html of an older website version. It sure does seem like a lot of mundane complexity for whatever game flavor it adds to the mix?

I won't even begin to attempt to embed this information into the manual without some serious back and forth with Vern in order to boil it down to the essential, which I thought I had already done...

[jwsosus]

I have to suggest, at this point, that maybe the concept of a "food stockpile" and "consumer good stockpile" ought to go away like the "market" did...
This food/consumer good thing isn't an exploit, but it is perhaps an unnecessary complication. Since we are managing our own production supply chains, we players could just as easily handle food/consumer good supply chains without this abstraction. If you have a ship with no food, everybody dies, period. If you have no consumer goods, your rebel numbers shoot up accordingly. If you ration stuff, fine, accept the consequences. This would remove the problem where your food production goes into the stockpiles BEFORE you can allocate it elsewhere.

Agreed. See my previous post #21 in the suggestion box.

[Chirpsithtra]

Thanks for passing on your experiences! I am also playing CWT2. I had some of the same problems, particularly food. I sent out a bunch of scout ships without food; in fact, it was just a couple of turns back I finally got the food situation under control. I noticed however it doesn't seem to be such a disaster to send out your scout ships without food. I kept sending them farther out with not a crumb to eat, and the death rate is only about 2% per turn (maybe they eat the poor souls who starve?). The malcontents are increasing as well, now I know why I have police and agents on scout ships (I too followed the tutorial). I have the impression now that I am probably behind on development, but I have done a fair amount of exploring (knowledge is power?) and have even stumbled into another player's HW system. But I guess it's time to recall some of those first scouts, not because of food, but because they are running out of fuel!

[ixnay]

I just submitted my next set of orders, just under the wire (deadline was in 1 hour!)

This was a comprehensive building and survey turn.

First, I sent out my re-provisioned scouts to all local planetary orbits to conduct Surveys. (This assesses potential mining deposits.) I have one scout stationed in orbit-11 -- the "outer ring" around every system in which incoming ships always appear first. He might be needed here in case aliens get nosy. And I send 2 scouts out into the alien system nearby. I figured they might try to survey the uninhabited planets there and maybe avoid getting shot by aliens. Finally, I remembered to do one thing that I've forgotten for at least 3 turns -- doing a system-wide probe of my home system. Chirpsithtra has already discovered another player system, and for all I know it could me mine!

Next, I ordered a large expansion of the orbiting colony around my home planet. I am basically quintupling the population there, adding a huge increase of factories and automation, and otherwise buffing it up. I was way behind in getting this done, and I'm glad I took the time to analyze what I could do up there. I more than doubled production of light-structural units, and added a range of ship-building goods, including a batch of the new robot-probes. Should be fun to test out.

I shut down a couple of old factory groups on my homeworld -- they were producing outdated goods, they were low-tech factories, and I had finished emptying out their build-queues. While I spent a lot of time calculating my personnel needs in the orbiter, I didn't for the home world. Between the factory shut-downs and the automation-adds, I think I've still got enough to run everything even after sending more than a million professionals up to orbit.

Finally, I upgraded my Lab tech to level 6. I debated building PowerPlant tech up to level 4 and starting a batch of those, but I still have time. Power plants are like hydro and solar stations on open colonies. They create power to run almost everything, so you save fuel for what you really need it for -- moving ships and firing blasters. I was surprised to discover that my home colony has only 1m of these set up, but there is room for 2.5m. Saving 1m fuel or 2.5m fuel a turn didn't seem to matter much, though, when I'm burning more than 20m. But Power Plant tech goes up exponentially -- a Power Plant-4 unit saves you 16 fuel a turn! So a full planet-wide batch of 2.5m PowerPlant-4 would completely meet all my fuel needs. But I still have a billion fuel in storage, and thought I could coast another couple turns if need be. And I have a suspicion that I'm going to need to keep advancing Lab tech as aggressively as I dare at least through mid-game.

[Darth Pedro]

Look at ultimately having 30,000,000 LAB-TL# of the highest TL you can manufacture. Disassemble and scrap enough lower TL Labs as you add higher TL Labs in order to maintain 30,000,000 working LABS. Yes, it takes 90,000,000 PRO's and some AUT to keep them running and in the OBC=NO FUEL COST (Solar Power).

As I have advocated, upgrade your LAB TL every 4 turns or so and keep a large Factory Group building LABS=200 so they will always be making the top notch stuff.

You don't need to disassemble lower TL factory Groups. Simply disassemble the factories and the same turn Assemble higher TL Factories (in a smaller quantity if desired) to keep the stream flowing. Remember to set all Factory Groups to TL-200 of whatever they are manufacturing.

Ultimately you want EVERYTHING to be manufactured in your OBC to save FUEL costs. It will also be the main orbital defense platform and shipyard.

[ixnay]

30m labs??? wow... Might need to start shanghai-ing some aliens!

I am wary of putting so many people up on the orbiter -- it's birth-rate is far lower than my home planet. I understand wanting to save fuel, but you're paying with people! My god, man! ;-)

OKAY, this turn had some self-inflicted misfortune...

First, I accidentally shut down my Energy Shield production line. It was small, and I was only keeping it open to have a few on hand in case of emergency. But still embarassing.

Second, after all my careful calculations on building out my orbiter, I made one teensy tiny error. I planned out how many Professionals I needed to run all the new factories, and I added that same amount of automation capacity. But of course, factories require triple that, so most of them sat idle. That will be fixed next turn. I did manage to notice and remedy a big consumer-goods gap in the orbiter, so that's good.

I sent scouts throughout the system to conduct surveys. Alas, "survey" happens before "movement" I guess, so they just parked in their respective orbits. I need to check -- they might need to move within one distance-unit of the planet to conduct a survey. The one survey I DID complete was for that alien outpost I captured. And that answered a big question I had -- "do all worlds have "infinite yield" deposits?" The answer is no. Planet one has 6 mining deposits, but they are all of limited yield. Personally I find that unrealistic. I suggest that every planet have unlimited yield deposits, but that their extraction percentages be low. Perhaps vanishingly low.

I now have "Laboratory 6" technology. I have a turn or two to finish my current production run of Lab-5, and will start Lab-6 when those are done. OR I might expend to Lab-7 this turn and do a 2-level jump. I haven't made up my mind -- putting such a focus on labs seems risky, but I have balanced out most other elements of my economy. The only big question mark is when I'm going to start needing weapons. I don't want to be caught with tech-level-1 armaments when things heat up, and that's a 5-turn lag at least (4 to build, 1 to assemble).