Matrix Games Forums

Hello

So i just got my ass handed to me, and it pretty much frustrates the living daylight out of me on ancient galaxy.

Why when i begin, i start with major shortages in all resources? Like why?
Also why when i first load the map, in the first second, every starport is building civilian ships by default. Like i cannot make the designs obsolete fast enough so they dont build. Everything is built using Krypton because of all the shields, I cannot stop the builds and lower tech for the civilian ships before the game starts.

Also how many mining bases should i have per colony? All my freighters are scrambling all over the place and if its not Krypton then its something else that has a shortage on. I was building mining bases all over the place and then my construction ships were lacking gold and other basic resources. As far as i can see, the private sector only builds a set of freighters once a new colony gets established and thats it, it doesnt increase the freighter ammount based on the new mining bases. I wasnt building anything other than spamming mining bases all over the place and i always had shortages of everything. I had 50 caslon gas mines and i still had caslon shortages on my main stairports. So its a freighter issue? or too many mines issue? Whats a good rule of thumb to have freighter payloads at? I keep the light ones at like 7 cargo bays, mediums at 11, and heavys at 15.


Also why are there only like 3-4 sources of chromnium and a few of carbon fiber? Like do i have to go invade someone to take their capital and a few colonies so i can get those?

I tried going full missles, and missles kinda pretty much sucked for damage, i dont want to ask which weapon system is the most OP, but in my age of shadows start, lasers were always better than everything else as far as i saw, then again which weapon system is the most reliable.

As a side note why are the mortallan such bastards, like they never want to ally, and always kickstart all sorts of trouble down south.

Seems that if you manage to delay the construction of world destroyers the shaktur are more or less peaceful and dont really bother you that much. Assuming the akarians and kladians are keeping their own, and you make some treaties with the ungar and a few other races, you should be pretty much golden.

My last game i managed to ally with the entire map vs the bugs, but then the Shaktur completed one of their world destroyers and well things went pretty much downhill from there.

Sorry for the wall of text but while i have no problem crushing heads in age of shadows custom games, this ancient theme one really rips me a new one, mostly because its frustrating as hell because nothing gets done due to all the shortages.

any information is appreciated

Strategy to Handle resource Shortages In Beginning

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With some of the other questions you have they may be answered in the Distant Worlds Guide to Guides Mk II
however I have not gone through the different sections but what I have seen suggests this is a good place to start.

tm.asp?m=3497284

Thank you but I've read all the guides and however my questions are more related to the ancient galaxy theme rather than a normal start

I don't play the Ancient Galaxy scenario often; I tend to prefer custom games. However:

Why when i begin, i start with major shortages in all resources? Like why?

My experience differs from yours. The only resources I find myself short of at the start of the game in the Ancient Galaxy scenario are Krypton and maybe Aculon and Gold, and I find that the freighter fleet tends to fix the shortages reasonably quickly. Maybe you're trying to build up your fleet too quickly? The starting fleet is adequate, though perhaps not great, and is sufficient for your immediate needs even if you go to war with the Dhayut or something like that. Let the private sector build its freighters and give the game time to move resources around; you'll have time to build up your fleet later.

I tried going full missles, and missles kinda pretty much sucked for damage, i dont want to ask which weapon system is the most OP, but in my age of shadows start, lasers were always better than everything else as far as i saw, then again which weapon system is the most reliable.

Missiles are standoff weapons. Missiles will not win a DPS race against blasters within blaster range or against torpedoes at anything short of standoff ranges, and moreover do not gain anything from getting close to the target. Ships which are armed exclusively with missiles must take advantage of their range if they are to defeat similarly large, similarly advanced ships armed with blasters or torpedoes, and in order to take advantage of range, you need some way of keeping away from enemy ships. Give your missile designs a high speed and a high turn rate so that they are better able to control the engagement range, give them tractor beams and area graviton weapons to allow them to force enemy ships to stay back at least a little, set their engagement stances to standoff or maybe evade regardless of the relative strength of the target (note that evade chooses the engagement range based off of the range of the target's weapons, which can cause some issues - namely, closing with shorter-ranged opponents and sitting too far from the target to engage it against opponents with similar or greater range), maybe give them a railgun or two to try to scare off anything that gets too close, have them work with ships that can hold enemy vessels in position, etc.

Also why are there only like 3-4 sources of chromnium and a few of carbon fiber?

For the size of empire you start with in the Ancient Galaxy scenario, 3 or 4 sources of chromium and "a few" sources of carbon fiber are probably plenty, even with a decent amount of expansion.

Also how many mining bases should i have per colony?

Depends. How many active shipyards of any significant size do you have per colony (or how many colonies do you have per major shipyard, if you'd prefer to express the ratio that way)? About 1 decent, nearby source of each strategic resource per active major shipyard is good in general, though you will preferably have an additional source or three for any resources for which there is a particularly high demand during ship construction - large quantities of steel, for example, tend to be necessary for ship construction, so having a few additional nearby sources of steel is good. If you find yourself running short of any given resource at the shipyard, try adding another nearby mine or two for that resource, if you can. Note that more active shipyards and clusters of shipyards may need more mines than would otherwise be necessary.

I will add that if you really wanted to do so, you can calculate the time-average resource production you need in order to maintain a given rate of ship construction at your shipyards, which will allow you to determine how many mines you require. However, I personally would not do this; you'd need to figure out about how many ships you can build at your shipyard in a given period of time and then figure out how many resources you need to build those ships, which gives you a time-average resource consumption rate, which you can then compare to resource production rates of the mines you have or can build in the area. It's not hard, but it's tedious and more involved than I'd be willing to bother doing for a game, especially since it'd change whenever you upgrade your construction yards or alter the designs of the ships you're building.

I wasnt building anything other than spamming mining bases all over the place and i always had shortages of everything. I had 50 caslon gas mines and i still had caslon shortages on my main stairports. So its a freighter issue? or too many mines issue?

Unless you're running into issues with the private sector running out of money, you probably haven't hit a point where you have too many mines.

A greater concern, however, is the proximity of the mines you have to the points of use for the resources the mines collect. Even with a fully-powered and fully-upgraded Torrent Drive, it takes 55 seconds of real time at normal game speed for a ship to cover a distance of just 1 sector; with an unupgraded Equinox Jumpdrive, it takes 107 seconds to cover that distance. That's before adding in jump initiation time, time taken for docking and departure maneuvers, and any time spent waiting for a docking bay to become available. An in-game year lasts only 10 minutes of real time at normal game speed. You do not want your freighters to have to go very far to get resources if you can avoid it.

I would further suggest that if you're running into fuel issues with 50 caslon mines, it may very well be time to get the state and private sector onto different fuel types, or at least take a good look at your ship and base designs and at what you're doing with your ships to see if there are any places where you could increase fuel efficiency without it costing you too much. Putting the space navy on hydrogen while the private sector's freighters and mining ships stay on caslon or vice versa roughly doubles the available fuel supply. Ensuring that all ships and stations have enough energy collection to cover idle power requirements and giving ships and fleets "move to" rather than "patrol" orders reduces fuel consumption, potentially by a significant amount, without costing you much of anything.

Also consider whether or not the fuel capacities of your ships are overly-large. Every time a ship goes to refuel, it will reserve an amount of fuel equal to its maximum fuel capacity whether or not it actually needs that much fuel, and all of that reserved fuel is unavailable until the ship finishes refueling. Time-average fuel production across the empire may very well meet or exceed your time-average fuel demands, but it takes time for that to get distributed throughout the empire, and local demand, especially when large numbers of ships with high fuel capacities all try to refuel at once, can easily exceed local stockpiles. There's not really any hard rule for how much fuel capacity is "enough" or how much is "too much," but take some time and think about how much fuel you actually need to have on your ships to get them to the intended area of operations, how much you need to allow your ships to stay in the area of operations long enough for whatever you want your ships to do, and how much fuel you need for them to make the return trip. There's an enormous difference in the instantaneous stress placed on the local fuel supply by a ship which has a fuel capacity of 300 that refuels after two minutes of combat and a ship with a fuel capacity of 3000 that refuels after 20 minutes of combat, even though the time-average stress is roughly the same.

Wow, thank you for that wall of text. Very informative.

I have another question. I set all my missle ships to standoff/standoff but they all close in on their oponents when they should be staying at like 800 range or so. Why?
Point blank means get as close as you can
All weapons means fire all weapons as soon as you get in range of them.
Standoff should mean standoff.

Also why are ships when placed in a system take so much time to actually go hunt things in the system by themselves. I have them set to Engagement stance "Engage system targets".

The trick i found is to scrap all shipwards in the beginning and build custom barebone ones so the private sector aint building things and causing shortages out of the bat, i have customized the freighters to use lower end components so i dont have a krypton shortage anymore, but then i get into an acculon and argon shortage, problem with this is I lose about 5months of ingame time why my planets are building things.

Oh and i have anothjer question.

Can your planet recruit troops, build a facility and build a construction ship all together at the same time with maximum speed? or it get split between those 3 things

ORIGINAL: Ashdrake

Oh and i have anothjer question.

Can your planet recruit troops, build a facility and build a construction ship all together at the same time with maximum speed? or it get split between those 3 things

Yes, those things are in 3 separated queues.

I have another question. I set all my missle ships to standoff/standoff but they all close in on their oponents when they should be staying at like 800 range or so. Why?
Point blank means get as close as you can
All weapons means fire all weapons as soon as you get in range of them.
Standoff should mean standoff.

As far as I can tell, ships set their engagement range relative to something which I will refer to as the "primary target." If a specific attack order is issued (e.g. "attack Star Empire," where Star Empire is the name of a ship or station which your ships can attack), then the primary target will be the subject of the attack order. If no specific attack order is issued, then ships will pick primary targets according to whatever the computer uses to determine that. So far as I can tell, the primary target can change only when the current primary target becomes invalid (typically meaning that the target has been destroyed, but possibly also that the target escaped into hyperspace and could not be pursued for some reason), when new orders are issued to your ship, or when your ship returns to an engagement after a flee condition triggered. Furthermore, if you bring a fleet of ships which includes ship A and your enemy brings a fleet which includes ship B, ship B is not guaranteed to choose ship A as its primary target when ship A chooses ship B as its primary target. As a result of the above, the primary target of any given ship will not necessarily be the closest hostile target for the duration of the engagement. If ship A is at standoff range relative to ship B and has chosen ship B as its primary target, it will not maneuver to standoff range relative to some hostile ship C whether or not ship C is closer to ship A than standoff range would generally permit.

Where exactly a ship should sit to be at "standoff" range is, unfortunately, a rather complex problem when there are multiple mobile things from which you could measure standoff range. The developer went for the relatively simple solution of "pick one thing and measure range to that thing until it becomes an invalid reference," rather than a more complex and computationally-expensive solution which measures range to the currently-closest target or to the mass of nearby hostile ships as a whole or something like that. This does cause issues for ships attempting to engage at standoff range in fleet actions and sometimes even against stationary targets (order a ship set to engage at standoff range to attack a defensive base on the far side of an enemy space port and watch the ship run over the space port to get into standoff range of the defensive base, for example), but given that there can easily be dozens of ships involved in a single fleet action even very early in the game, and later on potentially hundreds or even thousands of ships, and there's no guarantee that only one fleet action will be ongoing at any given time, it's probably for the best that a relatively inexpensive solution was chosen. Even very simple collision bubbles become computationally expensive when you have to compute significant numbers of them every update tick.

If you would like to prove to yourself that standoff range works, I would suggest using the editor to set up a simple test duel. Create two designs - e.g. "Standoff Test," which is armed with the longest-ranged weapon you currently have and has its engagement stances set to standoff regardless of relative power, and "Test Aggressor," which is armed with some shorter-ranged weapon. Test Aggressor should not include a hyperdrive, and it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea for Standoff Test to not have a hyperdrive, either. Give a pirate faction all the technology necessary to operate Test Aggressor at the performance level that your empire could get out of the ship (i.e. if you have fully-upgraded HyperFusion Reactors on the design, make sure that there is at least one pirate faction which has fully-upgraded HyperFusion Reactors), and take note of the pirate faction to which you've given the technologies. Using the game editor, spawn in one Test Aggressor and one Standoff Test, change the faction which controls Test Aggressor to the pirate faction to which you've given the necessary technologies, and retain control of Standoff Test. Close the editor, order Standoff Test to attack Test Aggressor, and watch the engagement for a while. If Standoff Test is not within range of Test Aggressor when it receives the order, then it will begin closing with Test Aggressor; Test Aggressor will start closing with Standoff Test as soon as Test Aggressor becomes aware of Standoff Test (usually, shortly after the pirate faction offers you a protection agreement, which for the purposes of the test you should decline). This stage, aside perhaps from the pirate-controlled Test Aggressor not reacting until after the controlling faction has offered Once Standoff Test has closed to within standoff range of Test Aggressor, it will begin to turn away from Test Aggressor. Unless there is a very significant difference in weapon range between Standoff Test and Test Aggressor or unless Standoff Test has a fairly high turn rate and Test Aggressor's sprint speed is relatively low, it's reasonably likely that Test Aggressor will be able to close to within weapons range of Standoff Test before Standoff Test completes its turn (in part because Standoff Test will still be moving towards Test Aggressor for much of the turn if it started out having to close with Test Aggressor), at which point it becomes a pursuit scenario and Standoff Test will attempt to open the range back up to standoff range. If Standoff Test can return to standoff range, then Standoff Test will match speed with Test Aggressor after regaining standoff range and Test Aggressor will be stuck in a futile chase until its flee condition is triggered or until Standoff Test destroys Test Aggressor.

Also why are ships when placed in a system take so much time to actually go hunt things in the system by themselves. I have them set to Engagement stance "Engage system targets".

I don't know, but I suspect that the check for hostile targets within the system only happens every so often rather than more or less continuously. Many of the other things in the game update once every 10 seconds at normal game speed; possibly this is the interval at which the game makes this check, as well, and so ships which finish their orders shortly after the check occurs will have a relatively long wait before they react to valid targets within the system. Possibly the check is run at a longer interval since combats will not typically be resolved within only 10 seconds unless one side is at a significant disadvantage.