Some quick questions

[LordClownKiller]

Hey,

I have been playing DW for a while now and each time I come back I think I understand it some more (its good like that I do however have some questions :

1) How do you interact or influence the private sector? Other than tax income are there other hidden benifits? Does colony / planet tax rate affect the private sector? In what ways does your decisions influence how the private sector grow?

2) How do you know how many resources a base has or are all of the resources your empire own held across your empire and not at a certain place? Ie is ALL of my empires fuel available at any point, or does it need to be transported around and if it does, how can I tell where what is?

3) Are there any benifits to an extermination policy of other races, other than being awesomely evil or fufilling race goals?

Thanks in advance and apologies if these questions have been answered previously.

[Bingeling]

1: No direct influence of the private sector. They give you money through tax, and tax levels influence population growth. Your main influence is the tax levels, more people is more money, so maximizing population growth (0 tax) is a good idea. But you need money too... I would also think that having the "right" number of private structures (mining bases, mainly) is needed for the best economic output. I have never done a study of civilian economy, though. I do believe a healthy civilian economy helps in them having the newest, fanciest ships in the correct numbers, though.

2: Total levels are seen in the expansion planner, but that is a sum of all your bases and colonies. From the ship list, you can see the cargo of the selected base. A quick access from main game screen is to double click the selection box to see the details of the selected object. You will see two values for an item, the number in store, and the number reserved. Reserved items are not accessible. They are either set away for construction, an incoming freighter, or if fuel, an incoming ship/fleet with a refuel order. And what always counts is having the correct resource where you need it. Which is why a spaceport on a fresh colony takes ages to build - you don't have the resources needed.

3: Being a single race empire could have benefits. You should never be at war with your same race, which gives a significant happiness bonus. Having multiple races has benefits too, though. And doesn't piss off the world as much. Apart from more bodies to tax, a nice selection of races also opens colonization options before you got max colonization tech.

[LordClownKiller]

Thanks for the reply, a subsequent question please:

2) I dont really know what your saying here. Let me explain it this way: is total fuel available at all bases? Ie does each base have its own supply of fuel or is it global?

[Bingeling]

Resources are always in a location. There is no global teleport.

One piece of caslon is mined by your gas mining station, then picked up by a freighter and moved to a spaceport, where your destroyer receives it when refueling.

It is quite easy to see that nothing is global. You will notice local shortages both in construction and refueling as long as you play for a while. Construction not finishing fast (due to lack of resources), happens in every game, and if you wage war with multiple fleets near your borders, you will easily manage to run those parts dry of fuel unless you are careful.

[LordClownKiller]

I agree it is easy to see. How do I tell what resources are where? I need to make tactical / strategic decisions based on where the fuel is and I dont know how?

[Bingeling]

The game lacks a good overview of the resource spread. You can always check individual inventories, though.

As you play, you will get a feel for where you have resources and where not. In general, big colonies around the capital with medium/large spaceports are well supplied, and it is a bad idea to try to build lots of ships on a remote colony whatever spaceport.

[LordClownKiller]

Ok thanks for the answer How do I check individual inventories?

[LordClownKiller]

and supplementary: how do you dictate where things are built? i usually just build at the suggestion of the AI?

[Bingeling]

It is quite quick to build (in legends) by viewing spaceports in the left menu and selecting them from there. You can then build by the buttons below the selection box.

For more control (if you got many designs) it also works well to open the construction yard list. There is a button for it on the top (right-ish), and you can also obtain the same by filtering the ship list. You get the build options in the yard part of the lower section of that screen.

I build single small orders by the first method, and when I want "30 cruisers and 8 carriers", I use the second method sorted on yard type (large spaceports).

[Spacecadet]

#1 - Roughly you're fairly limited to what portion of the Civilian Economy you can influence, but you can influence it.

First, the Private sector is going to build x amount of ships per Colony/Spaceport (initially, may be more late gate).
Obviously the more Colonies/Spaceports the more ships they're going to build.

These ships need something to do, so you need to build Mines for them so that they have jobs.
Essentially, the more Mines the more work, and the better the Economy generally runs.

I try to make sure there is a Mine for each type of Strategic resource as close as possible to each Colony for a number of reasons - supply being the biggest.

There is another big reason for having resources nearby, and that ship range.
They can't get the resources if they don't have the range to reach them.

Another impact on the Private sector is State and Military ships.
For one, keeping these fueled keeps the Private sector busy.
Building these ships keeps them busy as well gathering the resources.

I haven't been able to confirm this, but it seems when you have more Military ships (to a degree) the Economy runs better - not sure if it's a supply, safety, or what type of issue, but it seems to hold.


#2 - You can look at your Colonies screen as well.
Under the "Cargo" tab you can see what is stored at that particular planet, and if you have a Spaceport at that planet, these resources are effectively what's available at the Spaceport as well.

I Mine the heck out of Gas Planets (fuel) in and around Colonies to help insure I have ample fuel supplies at that location.

Don't forget that there are two types of fuel, Caslon and Hydrogen (later).
Personally I put State ships on Hydrogen and Private ships on Caslon, but you need to be manually designing/upgrading your ships designs to do this.

The benefits are many.
You're less likely to run out of fuel since you have two types, since if everything is on one type it's very difficult to keep everyone supplied mid - late game when you have hundreds/thousands of ships.
Also, your Private sector is busier since it needs to keep additional resources stocked.