Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[Pool Boy]

I just downloaded my turn. I still have no food.

[GrimFinger]

Man shall not live by bread alone.

[ixnay]

Pool Boy -- your population needs to build up a 4-turn stockpile, which at normal ration rates means 1-food per pop. You have some 200M pop, and they can't possibly have built up that much in their stockpile yet.

Somehow I got the math wrong on this myself, when we were looking over your turn.

Even with doubled farms, it will take at least another 3-4 turns of full production before the stockpile is full.

[Darth Pedro]

Pool Boy -- your population needs to build up a 4-turn stockpile, which at normal ration rates means 1-food per pop. You have some 200M pop, and they can't possibly have built up that much in their stockpile yet.

Somehow I got the math wrong on this myself, when we were looking over your turn.

Even with doubled farms, it will take at least another 3-4 turns of full production before the stockpile is full.

Check out the Ration Order:
http://empyreanchallenge.com/ECWxManual/?page_id=195

The stockpile maxes out at 5 turns worth but remember that the people EAT out of the stockpile, not the inventory. Therefore 5 Turns stockpile ends up with a 4 Turn surplus at the end of the turn. Max ration is 0.25 FOOD per Population Unit. 250,000,000 Population will consume 62,500,000 FOOD per Turn at 100% Ration rate.

[Pool Boy]

Will this increase the death rate though?

[Darth Pedro]

Will this increase the death rate though?

Less than 100% Ration rate is "less good". 100% Ration rate is 1/4 Food per Turn per Population.

[Roy Bean]

Pool Boy -- your population needs to build up a 4-turn stockpile, which at normal ration rates means 1-food per pop. You have some 200M pop, and they can't possibly have built up that much in their stockpile yet.

Somehow I got the math wrong on this myself, when we were looking over your turn.

Even with doubled farms, it will take at least another 3-4 turns of full production before the stockpile is full.

Rationing will reduce the amount of food your people get. They are partly paid in food. They will not eat more than 1/4 of the food they have stocked, unless that would cause starvation. Your Population can eat as little as 1/16 of a food unit and still live (will cause some malcontents). If there is less than 1/16 food per pop some will starve. Starvation causes lots of malcontents. Rationing is not nearly as bad. Rebels are generated from malcontents. Some rationing should fix the inventory situation. The amount of food paid is listed in the activities tab each turn. Hope that helps.

---

This also revealed a user interface problem. (And it might just be my own confusion with the tool.) I can't seem to find a record of my turn-1 orders. Nor can I see a 'shapshot' of my empire on turn 1. I wanted to compare mineral totals between turns 1 and 2 to see if mining had taken place, but I can't see the turn 1 totals anymore -- just the current turn 2 totals. I will dig into the rules and help docs to see if it's just my mistake.

On the Imperial Directory page near the upper right is a pull down that will let you select the turn number. It needs to be labeled.

[ixnay]

I just submitted turn 3 orders (with 10 minutes to spare...) I would ordinarily add to my colorful narratives, but I'm on vacation at the beach and would rather sleep after the exhaustive exercise my kids are putting me through. So here's a quick recap of what I did:

First, I noticed that my "doubled" orbiting colony was short of unskilled labor to run the light-structure factories, or rather it was short of automation. This is because on turn 1 I noticed I had 360,000 Automation-1 units lying around so I assembled them, but they were really intended to be used as part of the tutorial on a later turn (to help double said orbiting colony.) My "doubling" went through except the automation units weren't there. I haven't checked, but I suspect my turn 2 results will show that my "add-on" orders didn't find enough automation.

So I corrected that this turn by adding an equivalent amount in hi-tech automation-3 units (each of which is as good as 9 of the old units!) I also added considerable space to the orbiter, but did not double the factory base. This is because my food situation will soon affect that orbiter as well as my ships. It has a stockpile, but I can't add to it until my home-planet farms catch up on topping off the home-planet stockpiles. So I don't want to add more population to an underfed orbiter.

And what about those ships? I could have committed them to conducting surveys without food, and have 25% of their people die. But I decided it was wholly out of character for me. Besides, they were just surveying my home system planets, which will doubtlessly be surveyed soon enough. I also pulled back the one scout I sent to the one other system within range. Didn't want to kamikaze him on the large alien base out there.

I AM kamikaze-ing the one unfed scout in orbit 1, along with my 2 original well-fed scouts, in that all 3 ships are invading the alien outpost. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I'm excited to see the next turn's results.

I continued with my program of greatly expanding consumer-good production, which had been ignored by the tutorials until now. So I think I'm drifting farther and farther away from the tutorial track to the point that they are serving merely as an example for me. Still enormously helpful. I am leaving all other production the same. I doubled my mines, finally -- I believe I have enough professional labor to run them now.

And I am spending my accumulated research on Laboratory-5 tech. This means that the factory group producing labs will be able to retool and upgrade to lab-5 when the current lab-4 production run is complete in 2 turns. At that point, I will assembled the lab-4 and start making close to 4.5m research points a turn, on top of the 2m my old labs are currently spitting out. I don't know what I'll spend all that on first, though Mines and Farms are pretty high priority.

If all goes well, I'll have another post in a day or two reviewing my results.

[Darth Pedro]

I just submitted turn 3 orders (with 10 minutes to spare...) I would ordinarily add to my colorful narratives, but I'm on vacation at the beach and would rather sleep after the exhaustive exercise my kids are putting me through. So here's a quick recap of what I did:

First, I noticed that my "doubled" orbiting colony was short of unskilled labor to run the light-structure factories, or rather it was short of automation. This is because on turn 1 I noticed I had 360,000 Automation-1 units lying around so I assembled them, but they were really intended to be used as part of the tutorial on a later turn (to help double said orbiting colony.) My "doubling" went through except the automation units weren't there. I haven't checked, but I suspect my turn 2 results will show that my "add-on" orders didn't find enough automation.

So I corrected that this turn by adding an equivalent amount in hi-tech automation-3 units (each of which is as good as 9 of the old units!) I also added considerable space to the orbiter, but did not double the factory base. This is because my food situation will soon affect that orbiter as well as my ships. It has a stockpile, but I can't add to it until my home-planet farms catch up on topping off the home-planet stockpiles. So I don't want to add more population to an underfed orbiter.

And what about those ships? I could have committed them to conducting surveys without food, and have 25% of their people die. But I decided it was wholly out of character for me. Besides, they were just surveying my home system planets, which will doubtlessly be surveyed soon enough. I also pulled back the one scout I sent to the one other system within range. Didn't want to kamikaze him on the large alien base out there.

I AM kamikaze-ing the one unfed scout in orbit 1, along with my 2 original well-fed scouts, in that all 3 ships are invading the alien outpost. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I'm excited to see the next turn's results.

I continued with my program of greatly expanding consumer-good production, which had been ignored by the tutorials until now. So I think I'm drifting farther and farther away from the tutorial track to the point that they are serving merely as an example for me. Still enormously helpful. I am leaving all other production the same. I doubled my mines, finally -- I believe I have enough professional labor to run them now.

And I am spending my accumulated research on Laboratory-5 tech. This means that the factory group producing labs will be able to retool and upgrade to lab-5 when the current lab-4 production run is complete in 2 turns. At that point, I will assembled the lab-4 and start making close to 4.5m research points a turn, on top of the 2m my old labs are currently spitting out. I don't know what I'll spend all that on first, though Mines and Farms are pretty high priority.

If all goes well, I'll have another post in a day or two reviewing my results.

IXNAY,

It sounds like you are getting the HANG of it. Too bad the tutorials were not timely. I had nothing to do with this game setup, other providing an algorithm to generate a more "globular" cluster design. It seems that the initial setup was indeed engineered such that there is only ONE PATH to success in the initial turns. I made a few boo-boo's myself so don't feel bad. Relax and have fun while you can.

[ixnay]

Space Heroes Information Nexus: Special Report

All Corporate Space Hero "Focus"-class Scout Ships Recalled

Another outcome from the calamitous Corporate Food Collapse that came to light last quarter was that all of the newly commissioned Focus-class scout ships were dispatched with minimal quantities of food aboard. The new Chairman issued an executive order to recall all ships immediately to save as many of their respective crews as possible. None of them had yet conducted their assigned survey duties.

Even the first Corporate ship to conduct a hyperjump since the cluster collapsed in civil war -- the CS Junior -- was recalled and has now reached the outermost orbits of our home system. It did manage to collect one important piece of information before returning -- the existence of a large alien colony in that system.

The one exception to the fleet recall was the scout assigned to join CS Mutha and CS Feckless in their invasion of the alien outpost on planet 1. Although the crew of this ship is still vulnerable, they are now docked to the outpost along with the 2 older ships, and some arrangements will be made to pool their resources along with whatever gets pillaged from the outpost itself.

The cause of the food collapse was traced to a rogue trader in the Corporate Commodities and Futures Exchange office, who engaged in unapproved trades on soylent green and pork bellies and lost. With each successive trading week, he compounded his losses by trying to double down on them, and further complicated matters by engaging in an aggressive coverup. As a result, Corporate food supplies have been irrevocably committed to private markets for the next 3 quarters at least, putting all near-term space missions on ice.

The rogue trader in question has been Fired. Since the Company is the only entity still in existence that has the legal capacity to Hire anyone, this is tantamount to a life sentence in debtors prison, with "life" likely to be agonizingly short.

* * *

Tulane smiled at the boarding officer after he concluded his report to the command ship, and switched off the conn. "Congratulations, Captain Jenkins! You are now a real live Space Hero!"

Jenkins shuffled off this praise, but the glint in his eyes betrayed his pride. For the first time since final the final Corporate merger, there had been official non-counter-insurgency combat operations. He had led the 3-ship invasion. He planned out the attack with the full leadership chamber from his military attachment. And he took the risk to withhold all ship battery fire in an effort to preserve what treasures the outpost might hold.

His planning and forbearance had paid off in spades.

This colony had an armed contingent of renegade soldiers present, but in the face of overwhelming odds they immediately surrendered. SURRENDERED! The outpost had been captured intact! Not only did they have a few thousand potential new employees ready to assign, but they had some very advanced technological artifacts to reverse-engineer. These technologies hadn't seen widespread use since before the civil war! Today's action would save Corporate research billions in leveraged investments.

"Two Lane, you are too kind. Thank you for the sentiment, but I am only hoping to do my part for the Company. And since it looks like today was Good for the Company, I am a happy cappie." He sipped from the day's fifth martini. "Don't think I'll forget you come bonus time, either. Daddy's gonna have a little bag of somethin' somethin' to hand out next payday..."

Tulane took the rare step of pouring herself a celebratory martini upon hearing that.

* * *

More Big News this turn! Our invasion of the alien outpost went flawlessly -- we had a very high superiority in combat factors, so the enemy caved in. We have a batch of high-tech items ready to prototype, as outlined in the tutorials, and will likely start with Farm-2 and Transport-5. Then Sensors and Automation can wait, though they are still welcomed.

We're going to retool our Lab production line to Laboratory-5 this turn, so our initial batch of Lab-4s will be assembled and a new 4-turn run of Lab-5s will follow suit. I am basically thinking of splitting research between "Labs" and "everything else", so I'll probably accumulate enough research to bump labs from 5 to 7 (which will cost 11m research), over the next 4 turns, and apply the rest to mines, robot probes, and prototyping these alien goodies.

My orbital factories are back in full production. My earthly farms are fully-engaged. My consumer-good doubling is proceeding on schedule. I will likely end the Automation factory group since sometime soon I'll be leapfrogging to Automation-10 thanks to prototyping.

My space fleets will remain land-locked until my food supplies can catch up. I will start building Farm-2 asap now that I have prototypes -- this turn, probably. But that will take 5 turns to reach fruition, at which point my Farm-1s will have caught up. Still, I am planning a large production run of Farm-2 for my orbiter. I shall Never go Hungry Again.

Not much else to report. I am taking a risky option, here, by not cutting food rations and holding back space expansion. But I am thinking that whatever I will lose in home-planet overpopulation will balance out with the gains from not-starving my ship crews and colonists. I'll take the next few turns to build out a big fat in-system freighter to start shuttling people out to my other hab world -- I just won't begin the shuttling until 3-4 turns from now.

If anyone advises this to be a Dumb Idea, please let me know!