Player Questions for the Far Horizons Game Moderator

[ixnay]

Is there a chart available that lists what it costs to build every type of component? For example, if I want to build a colony, I need to build "colonists", "IUs" and "AUs". How much do these things cost?

[prozenfeld]

Is there a chart available that lists what it costs to build every type of component? For example, if I want to build a colony, I need to build "colonists", "IUs" and "AUs". How much do these things cost?

AFAIK there is no compehensive list / chart. For those mentioned please look at section 7.3 in the rules.

[GrimFinger]

Q. For spending and construction purposes, what is the difference between Economic Units and Raw Material Units, and what can each one be spent on that the other cannot be spent on?

[prozenfeld]

Q. For spending and construction purposes, what is the difference between Economic Units and Raw Material Units, and what can each one be spent on that the other cannot be spent on?

Those are completely different. There are no scenarios when RMs are interchangeable with EUs.

Using a snippet from an old game as example:

Code:

Mining base = 112.0 (MI = 20, MD = 2.09)
   1071 raw material units will be produced this turn.
Manufacturing base = 53.6 (MA = 20)
   Production capacity this turn will be 1072.

Total available for spending this turn = 1071 - 0 = 1071

RM is an intermediate product. It is then converted to EU, which is final product, given available production capacity.

EU is ingame currency, used to pay all the costs and transferrable between species
RM is a commodity created when you have tech imbalance (MI level > MA level) or planet imbalance (MI base / MI difficulty > MA base). You can either recycle it (to get EUs at 1:5 ratio) or store for the use in the future when you have extra manufacturing capacity to process it in the usual way.

[GrimFinger]

All the costs of what?

[Wolvar]

Everything you make (for example IU's, AU's, CU's), everything you research, and everything you build (for example ships) are all deducted from the amount of EU you have at the beginning of your turn.

The example that Prozenfeld used indicates that he has 1071 EU in total to spend during his turn. I also believe his example is from a single planet. The rules get more complex when dealing with multiple planets within multiple systems

[GrimFinger]

So, I can spend Economic Units to do research or to build things, but not raw materials? i think that I have been trying to spend both.

[ixnay]

My understanding of the rules is that when you build or research things, FIRST it draws from the production capacity on that planet. THEN if necessary it will draw down your EU reserve, which is global to your empire.

EU is apparently produced 1 for 1 when you have unused production capacity on a planet. So if your homeworld can produce 600 and you only spend 500 on a given turn, 100 gets added to your EU reserve.

That EU reserve can be spent anywhere, so you can have one planet build "nothing" and hence add to your reserve with it's production capacity that turn, and then have some other planet spend EU out of the pool to build things locally. The only limit is that colonies can ONLY spend an amount of EU on any given turn equal to their existing production capacity. (Except the home world, which can spend at any rate.)

I have two mild criticisms of this:
- There is no penalty for stockpiling EU. You could conceivably build a large stockpile of it, 1 for 1, wait to spend it (say on a big ship), and then take no hit in terms of lost efficiency.
- Also, you don't need to ship EU anywhere - it's a global pool. So you could have colonies churning out EU and have your home world spend it the next turn with no limit. There's no reason to transport RM to your industrialized worlds.

I understand it is simpler to keep this abstract, both for playability and to keep the code simpler. But if I were the esteemed developer, I would set, say, a 20% loss when converting production to EU, as well as a distance penalty (to account for shipping costs) unless you transport it yourself.

I may have this wrong, so please correct me if I do! As it stands, I think I will set up as many remote production colonies as I can, and just keep spending the EU on the home planet. We shall see...

[prozenfeld]

While most of the discussion so far was correct, I feel you beginning to blend RMs and EUs again.

EUs are put into the global pool, as previously described. You control how this happens by choosing the order in which planets are processed in production phase.

I am not sure what do you mean by "remote production colonies" - can you explain your idea in detail?

[ixnay]

"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?

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.