10-29-2013, 02:43 PM
Good news and bad news this turn!
The good news:
- My upgrades to the orbiter went almost flawlessly. Only one of my factory groups is short of labor, and only by 2%.
- My scouts completed their surveys of every planet in the home system.
- Most other orders seem to have run without problems.
The bad news:
- I think I miscalculated the research needed to exploit those Automation-10 units captured on the alien outpost -- by maybe 20k research! Argh! It will be another turn before I can start that Aut-10 production line!!
- I forgot to add food with all the new people in the orbiter, so there is a starvation/rebel problem now. (At least this is easy to fix.)
- I am out of consumer goods at the alien outpost, and I may not have fueled/fooded my scouts as much as I really needed.
There aren't too many random elements in this game. My biggest problem is forgetting about one detail or another in each of these little ventures I embark on. I would probably do better by (ahem) not waiting until the last minute to do my turn. I am happy to report that the significant number of bugs/errors/etc from the old days of Empyrean Challenge are pretty much gone! The errors I am dealing with are all self-inflicted. I imagine this can largely be attributed to the order-entry client tool, but perhaps also to Vern's comprehensive rewrite of the code.
I started a batch of 500k military robots (level 1) to effectively replace 1m soldiers (or add to them). My Farm-1s will finish out the 1m I'll need for planet 2. And a batch of Farm-3 (hydroponics) is in production now, to disperse among my empire as needed. I will never go hungry again. Add to that a batch of robot probes and enough Mines to complete my home-world upgrade. Incidentally, the long-awaited survey reports brought delightful news -- each planet has a different array of mineral deposits. They don't all have 6 deposits, they aren't all predictable arrays of limited-vs-unlimited deposits, and the yields vary wildly, so mining has become a bit of a discovery process that will make stellar geography fun!
I boosted my Life Support tech to level 4, and added a bunch of factories to build them. When this batch is complete, I should have more than enough to shuttle tens of millions of colonists AND invade the alien base in the next system. I might just leave the production line going through another cycle and have enough Life Support to last through the rest of the game. I expect the same will be true once I get my Automation-10s going. One big production run of them will have me automated out into the forseeable future.
I am doubling down on my gambit of inward development, here, by focusing on economic techs and staying in-system. But I am at last making a nod toward expansion by having the tools ready for settling planet 2, and by scouting the next system. I am feeling some heat on this, because I checked a report this turn that tells you have many Habitable-world-points the "winning" players have settled, and the top 3 are all at 35. This means at least 3 other players have successfully colonized their in-system hab worlds, and I am behind.
The good news:
- My upgrades to the orbiter went almost flawlessly. Only one of my factory groups is short of labor, and only by 2%.
- My scouts completed their surveys of every planet in the home system.
- Most other orders seem to have run without problems.
The bad news:
- I think I miscalculated the research needed to exploit those Automation-10 units captured on the alien outpost -- by maybe 20k research! Argh! It will be another turn before I can start that Aut-10 production line!!
- I forgot to add food with all the new people in the orbiter, so there is a starvation/rebel problem now. (At least this is easy to fix.)
- I am out of consumer goods at the alien outpost, and I may not have fueled/fooded my scouts as much as I really needed.
There aren't too many random elements in this game. My biggest problem is forgetting about one detail or another in each of these little ventures I embark on. I would probably do better by (ahem) not waiting until the last minute to do my turn. I am happy to report that the significant number of bugs/errors/etc from the old days of Empyrean Challenge are pretty much gone! The errors I am dealing with are all self-inflicted. I imagine this can largely be attributed to the order-entry client tool, but perhaps also to Vern's comprehensive rewrite of the code.
I started a batch of 500k military robots (level 1) to effectively replace 1m soldiers (or add to them). My Farm-1s will finish out the 1m I'll need for planet 2. And a batch of Farm-3 (hydroponics) is in production now, to disperse among my empire as needed. I will never go hungry again. Add to that a batch of robot probes and enough Mines to complete my home-world upgrade. Incidentally, the long-awaited survey reports brought delightful news -- each planet has a different array of mineral deposits. They don't all have 6 deposits, they aren't all predictable arrays of limited-vs-unlimited deposits, and the yields vary wildly, so mining has become a bit of a discovery process that will make stellar geography fun!
I boosted my Life Support tech to level 4, and added a bunch of factories to build them. When this batch is complete, I should have more than enough to shuttle tens of millions of colonists AND invade the alien base in the next system. I might just leave the production line going through another cycle and have enough Life Support to last through the rest of the game. I expect the same will be true once I get my Automation-10s going. One big production run of them will have me automated out into the forseeable future.
I am doubling down on my gambit of inward development, here, by focusing on economic techs and staying in-system. But I am at last making a nod toward expansion by having the tools ready for settling planet 2, and by scouting the next system. I am feeling some heat on this, because I checked a report this turn that tells you have many Habitable-world-points the "winning" players have settled, and the top 3 are all at 35. This means at least 3 other players have successfully colonized their in-system hab worlds, and I am behind.