What is the scenery bonus of ruins?

[morik]

How should I evaluate ruins vs other things when deciding where to put a resort?

My home system has a metal astroid (37% scenery), and the two planets/moons with ruins on them. Anyone know which will draw the most tourism? (I assume there isn't much point in building resorts at all of them; would probably cost more in upkeep than its worth, right?)

[Hikikomori]

Actually, i have found that resort bases are a rather nice source of income, i got from 2 in my last game about 30k a year or something like that. It takes a while to get going, and i believe the income is like the income from the private sector buying ships from you a summary of the income from the beginning of the year until now.

If the amount is not great at the beginning, it is as far as i know because the tourism takes a while to show up in the financial report and is not fully operational from day one in the first place.

Do not forget to build cargo bays into the design of resort bases, or you won't be able to upgrade them. Also, i have never seen more than around 3-4 million visitors at a station, so my excess capacity was rather great. I probably should design them a little cheaper/smaller next time.

[feygan]

The planets with ruins can be better used depending on their type. If they are barren types then a resort base is your only option, but if you can colonise them then do so. The development bonus the ruins will give the colony will far outweigh the quick cash induction a resort base gives.

However if you know you will not be able to colonise them anytime within the near future then stick a resort base on them as fast as you can. They will cost you nothing to upkeep compared to the income they provide, build em fast and build em as big as you can.

[Emperor0Akim]

Instead of starting a new thread, I necro this one because the initial question was not answered.
And all my searching did not give me an answer.

Also I don't know how the scenery bonus really works.
I guess something like the ressource percentage on planets.

But it would be really nice to know how Ruins range in the order in which to build the resort bases.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: morik

How should I evaluate ruins vs other things when deciding where to put a resort?

My home system has a metal astroid (37% scenery), and the two planets/moons with ruins on them. Anyone know which will draw the most tourism? (I assume there isn't much point in building resorts at all of them; would probably cost more in upkeep than its worth, right?)

A ruin should give no bonus to a resort base unless saying so. So keep your resort bases at scenery bonus sites, preferably somewhat close to "major populations".

It could be that resort bases get visits even with no scenery bonus, but in that case the presence of a ruin should not matter. Use the left hand buttons/filters to quickly see where the scenery bonuses are.

For me, resort bases are sometimes very profitable, and at other times they seem to generate no income at all. I would not build all that any of them. If you have a population center with no scenery location, you could try to build a resort base and see what happens. In that case I would put it under a well defended spaceport, just to add some protection.

[Emperor0Akim]

Well it says so in the Galactopedia


As to Quote :

"From the Galactopedia ( Page Ancient Ruins )

Ruins are also considered to be scenic locations, and thus will attract tourism
to any colony that has them. If ruins are at an uninhabited planet or moon,
then you can build a resort base there to allow tourism to the ruins.

From the Galactopedia ( Page Tourism )

Scenic locations can include the following

- ringed planets
- balck holes
- neutron stars
- unusual gold or crystal asteroids
- planets with unusuasl ruins or ancient monuments
- colonies with wonders

...

Colonies with ancient ruins or wonders will attract tourism without
the need to build a resort base at the colony.

The volume of tourists that a resorts attracts depends on how
scenic the location is, and how close it is to large, wealthy colonies.

Income from Tourism

Income is derived when passenger ships arrive at a resort.
The amount of income depends on how many passengers the ship was
carrying. " End of Quote

So according to this Ruins and Wonders have some kind of Scenic Bonus, which
is either a fixed value or maybe tied into/equal to the Colony Development Bonus

If it is the second, then Ruins would make poor to decent tourist targets indeed.
Since the max Bonus of a Ruin can be 50%.
But it is really hard to pinpoint how much a single Resort makes because it is only shown as one pretty vague value which is also diluted by the timeshift until it is calculated.

So I would be pretty happy if there was an answer in the Distant World Knowledgespace

So long I keep to my habit of spamming them on every scenic location near a population center .. independent of the empire it actuall belongs to

[Hattori Hanzo]

So I would be pretty happy if there was an answer in the Distant World Knowledgespace

where can be found that "Distant Worlds Knowledgespace".. ??? [&:]

[Emperor0Akim]

ORIGINAL: Hattori Hanzo

So I would be pretty happy if there was an answer in the Distant World Knowledgespace

where can be found that "Distant Worlds Knowledgespace".. ??? [&:]

Well .. somewhere between FourtyTwo, Jeeves Brain and the Three Oaks behind the Matrixgames Building where all the Unedited Manuals are buried.

I just hoped something had survived in the Interwebs. I mean honestly .. somebody should know ..

[Aeson]

where can be found that "Distant Worlds Knowledgespace".. ?

A knowledgespace isn't necessarily any specific website (well, sometimes one might use that in a website name) or a physical location but rather the conceptual "space" in which the collective knowledge of a group may be found. One "Distant Worlds Knowledgespace" would be the collective knowledge and experience of the group of players and the developers who use this forum, with this forum being the means by which the knowledgespace is accessed.

[Hattori Hanzo]

well, I'm used to consider this DW:U official forum that "Distant Worlds Knowledgespace".
anyway, some sort of "Distant Worlds" Wiki space on the web it would be extremely useful in my opinion.
something similar to the Paradox grand strategy wargames Wiki.

[Aeson]

anyway, some sort of "Distant Worlds" Wiki space on the web it would be extremely useful in my opinion.

You mean like this one?

I just hoped something had survived in the Interwebs. I mean honestly .. somebody should know ..

It's an old game. That doesn't mean that anyone has ever looked into what the actual scenic bonus of a resort base is, and while the developers may once have known, the game's more than old enough for them to have forgotten. It's possible that the scenery bonus that a ruin provides is variable; most of the other scenic locations have variable scenery bonuses, after all. It's also possible that ruins don't have a scenery bonus if the planet hosting the ruin does not list a scenery bonus.

[Retreat1970]

Aeson is right. It's an old game. Most of the old timers are gone, or just lurk around occasionally.

I'll give my 2 cents though. Ruins give 0 bonus, scenery bonus locations give that bonus, and other locations with a base will not attract tourists. When and how the income is gathered, I don't know, but in all honesty I don't care. Resort bases give some cash sometimes, and that's good enough for me.

[Emperor0Akim]

You all are right about that.

But since its an old game and this forum is still somewhat alive ..
Like I said. And maybe I get a drive-by answer from an old-timer if the question is on the front page

[Bingeling]

You cheated and checked the galactopedia .

I would not trust that 100%. As you point out, resort income is very much obscured. This is a complex game with limited tools to get information, and seeing what contributes to that is really hard even if you try to figure it out.

Even a simple thing like observing exactly who pays (state or civilians), and how much (the value stated?), to build a single mine is difficult. Money ticks up and down all the time, and seeing the exact sum subtracted is hard to do.

As for resort income, that seems rather random to me. I have never seen any pattern as to why one resort base has a lot of income, and another has none. I have easily put that in the drawer of "features that I don't pay attention to". One beautiful thing with this game, is that it can be payed at many different attention levels. It is quite possible to be quite ignorant of what goes on behind some areas of automation, for instance.

[Emperor0Akim]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

You cheated and checked the galactopedia .

I would not trust that 100%. As you point out, resort income is very much obscured. This is a complex game with limited tools to get information, and seeing what contributes to that is really hard even if you try to figure it out.

Even a simple thing like observing exactly who pays (state or civilians), and how much (the value stated?), to build a single mine is difficult. Money ticks up and down all the time, and seeing the exact sum subtracted is hard to do.

As for resort income, that seems rather random to me. I have never seen any pattern as to why one resort base has a lot of income, and another has none. I have easily put that in the drawer of "features that I don't pay attention to". One beautiful thing with this game, is that it can be payed at many different attention levels. It is quite possible to be quite ignorant of what goes on behind some areas of automation, for instance.

I don't know if it's really cheating, I just answered where it says that Ruins give a Bonus. And since we both concur, that it is not the most accurate information I think its fair game. Especially since I could not copy and paste the text

But you are right about the testing. I have pondered the whole morning how to come up with the !!SCIENCE!! to solve this riddle and came up with nothing. There is just to much financial moving and I am to impatient for trial and wait and wait and error.

--- Edit --- Afterthought

But with the sudden activity in this thread I guess its still a question that troubles the mind of some people.


The sad thing is, as I started out playing and searched through the menues by feeling and common 4x-knowledge. And whenever the question
crossed my mind "I wish I could see this and that information" it was followed shortly after with a "aaah there it is .. I should have looked
better the first time " and most of the time it made sense.

And so it really baffles my mind that some information, though not critical for the actual gameplay, but important enough to make informed descisions when not playing on "full auto".

[Aeson]

But you are right about the testing. I have pondered the whole morning how to come up with the !!SCIENCE!! to solve this riddle and came up with nothing. There is just to much financial moving and I am to impatient for trial and wait and wait and error.

A quick test using the in-game editor suggests that resorts generate ~3k credits per batch of 20k tourists delivered to the resort, regardless of the scenery bonus. The test was conducted by spawning in a moon with a ruin, building a resort base over the moon, and watching income generation for a while, then using the editor to remove the ruin and set a scenery bonus for the moon (first 25%, then 100%), scrap and rebuild the existing resort base, and watching the income generation for a while to see if income generated per visit changed. It would therefore appear as though the scenery bonus is an 'attractiveness' modifier for the resort base rather than a direct income modifier, and presumably affects the volume of tourist traffic that the resort base receives. As far as I know, tourists never leave a resort base, either, so you can determine the total income generated by a given resort base since it began operation by looking at the number of tourists currently on board the resort base.

One potential test would be to generate a game and, using the editor, spawn in two resort locations and accompanying bases, one of which is over something with a scenery bonus and one of which is over something with a ruin. I would suggest that you put both resort locations in the same system, preferably somewhat close to one another (e.g. two moons of the same gas giant), over the same type of object, and sufficiently far from any populated location that the distance between one resort base and the point(s) of origin of any tourists who come visit it is negligibly different from the distance between the other resort base and the point(s) of origin of any tourists who com visit it, as this should help isolate the scenery bonus as the primary variable affecting tourist traffic at the two resort bases. Whichever resort gets more business over the course of, say, an in-game year is the more 'attractive' resort. This would allow you to experimentally establish an upper or lower bound for the effective scenery bonus of a ruin (e.g. if the ruin gets less business than a 25% scenery moon, the upper bound on the effective scenery bonus of that ruin is 25%); a sequence of such tests could be used to progressively refine the bounds on the effective scenery bonus.

[Bingeling]

Science test for ruins: Find a system with a ruin. Place one resort base on ruin site and another at another "non ruin" site in the same system. Watch their visitor numbers. Is there a systematic difference?

Repeat a few times. Compare only the bases in the same system, ruin vs non-ruin.

It should be possible to do during normal games, you could even use two systems quite a distance apart. There are some expenses in running extra resort bases, but it should not be too important in any game after the economy "takes off".

[Hattori Hanzo]

quote:anyway, some sort of "Distant Worlds" Wiki space on the web it would be extremely useful in my opinion.

You mean like this one?

thank you Aeson, very useful !!! [X(]

[Emperor0Akim]

Well I started the Science.

I allready wrote a page, then I clicked wrong and it all went away again

I write again later.

[Bingeling]

As an old AAR writer, I would just say: If you are to write a longer essay, write it somewhere else, then paste it to the forum. Notepad works just fine (notepad++ works better).