Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[ixnay]

Okay, I'm back with more screen-shots from the CenCom tool.



This is a listing of all my "S/Cs" (which stands for ship/colonies). We all start with one "OPC" (open surface colony on our home world), one "OBC" (a stationary orbiting colony above our home world), and 2 small but well-equipped scout ships.

The grid coordinates are relative to your homeworld, so everyone's homeworld will appear at 0,0,0. This will make it entertaining to sync up our navigational efforts when we start meeting each other in deep space...



This shows us the inventory of items in our home colony. We've got a number of farms up and running, a lot of laboratories, etc. There is a basic assortment of military hardware, a bunch of consumer goods (to "pay" your people with), and a pile of "metals", "non-metals", and "fuel" with which to keep your production lines going. This is not nearly enough for the long term, and it is imperative that we get offworld mining colonies set up to boost our supply chain.

Note also we have a large starting population. Among other things, we will want to move a large swath of those "unskilled" workers into "trainee" status, where they will become "professionals" over time. Unskilled workers can be replaced by "AUT" (automation units), but professionals are needed to run just about everything, especially labs. They are probably the ultimate limiting factor in building the economy, so it is wise to boost their numbers asap. (Note also we have a lot of AUT units waiting to be assembled!)



Here is the manufacturing base on our homeworld. We are building an array of important items, with a particular emphasis on consumer good, automation, and factories. We will be assembling new factories asap, and they will most likely focus on building Laboratories or Factories. We'll probably hold off on weapons production for now, because of our dire need for production goods, ship-building goods, and mines.



Speaking of mining, here is our mining display. Home planets get 6 slots for mining -- one set of metals/non-metals/fuel that are high-yield but limited deposits, and another set that are unlimited deposits but lower-yield. I don't know yet if this is the case on other planets. We have a lot of MIN units on each deposit -- I will likely move the low-yield MINs over to the high-yield deposits.



Here is a display of our tech status -- we have AUTomation boosted to level 3, a number of others at level 2, and everything else at 1. Higher tech goods are more capable/efficient. Some, like weapons, increase in power exponentially, so it is critical to boost those tech levels continuously in order to stay competitive. But there are always trade-offs. And every time you set up a production run of, say, Energy-Weapon-12s, you will have to set up a new production run when you boost EWP technology to a higher level. And each production run takes 4 turns to complete!



Finally, here is the built-in order generator. I put in one of my first orders -- "assemble all AUT-3 units in the home colony" (so I can train all those newly-displaced unskilled workers!)

I will probably run through my whole turn tonight. The general outline of my first turn will be along the lines of their recommendations in the tutorial:

- assemble the AUTs
- spend research on production tech
- scan for all start systems within 10 light years
- scan all planets in the home system
- update the mining and factory groups
- build some new ships and perhaps increase the size of the orbiting colony

(Note the OBC is critical -- it's the only place you can build "Light" Structural Units. Without them, ships become extra heavy and require a LOT more drive-power and fuel...)

More tonight -- maybe.