TG Contest and upgrading designs in queues

alasyr · #1 February 19th, 2001, 01:54 PM

Is upgrading designs in queues or changing items in queues when new tech that could improve those design becomes available considered a cheat.For example I could have let say 6 turns to complete the baseship or base with RW component, but that component will became available after 5 turns.On turn 5 I create new or upgrade (edit) existing design replacing it in the queue resulting in new RW component ship available a turn after tech is aquired.Of course this can be done also with retrofit but this might be a cheaper solution.

Drake · #2 February 19th, 2001, 05:05 PM

Raynor, what you mention can be abusive, especially when building ringworlds and arranging things so that you only pay organics instead of all 3 resources. In general though, the consensus has been that it's not something which will really matter overall. Since it's something that people could do without realizing it's a bug and not intended, disqualifying someone for occasional use seems extreme. I'm inclined to agree.

raynor · #3 February 19th, 2001, 07:37 PM

Drake,

How many turn did it take you to build your ringworlds?

Oh, and I agree with you. I guess I was a bit negligent in posting just the question asked by Nyx (the TG rep) without posting any of the replies. ...I did post the link to the TG forum where those replies were posted though.

Nyx · #4 February 19th, 2001, 08:43 PM

Alasyr, upgrading a design while it is in the queue is fine by me.

------------------
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Drake · #5 February 19th, 2001, 09:08 PM

quote:
Originally posted by raynor:
How many turn did it take you to build your ringworlds?

The first set of 5 were done by turn 84. I had 35 up by turn 90, and the remaining 13 followed over the next 6 years or so.

geoschmo · #6 February 19th, 2001, 09:24 PM

Drake,

I am doing better in my current (read Last) contest game. I used your map. I was not able to beat your time for conquering the quadrant. I only was able to get it done in 2.1 years instead of 2, and that was using the Population Expert racial trait, and my game ended up with only 15 ai instead of 16.

I tried several times to get a game with 16 ai, and it only came up once, and that without a gas giant race (I use an ice race myself).

I did considerably better your time to get my first ringworld up as I did my first one in turn 45 and my second in turn 47. Don't feel too bad about your score though because I just can't seem to be able to work on more than 2 or 3 at a time. I keep running out of resources. These babies are expensive to build! I expect it to pick up some later as I start getting some resources back from the first few, but at my current rate I won't be breaking your 278 Mil.

I am thinking I may have concentrated more on research facilities, which cut the time to the stallar manip and baseship tech, but it is hurting my ability to actually produce the bases.

Anyway, we will see.

Geo

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 19 February 2001).]

Daynarr · #7 February 19th, 2001, 10:36 PM

Here is a quote from 1.22 Version changes:

quote:
17. Fixed - Added a new restriction that you cannot edit a prototype
design if it has been added to one of your construction
queues.

I think that makes this whole question a non-issue once the patch is out.

raynor · #8 February 20th, 2001, 12:33 AM

How are you building your RingWorlds?

This is how I would build them:

First, design a StarBase with the Maximum Amount of Hyper Plasma Bolt V's. This Starbase will cost you:

6.5Kt, 50Kt, 1Kt

A turn before it finishes, alter the queue to build instead the Plating, Cabling or RingWorld Generator Starbases. It looks like this method should save quite a few resources. A very rough estimate might place the savings between 400,000 to 450,000 minerals and radioactives. Of course, this assumes that you have organic production to spare.

Oh, and Geoschmo, I assume you mean propulsion expert?

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 19 February 2001).]

geoschmo · #9 February 20th, 2001, 12:51 AM

Raynor, That would work, however IMHO it would be crossing the line a bit. That has been discussed and decided that it would not be disallowed, but I won't do it myself for the purposes of the contest.

I get 11 space yards built in the sector with a star. I start one space yard building a starbase with a plating or cable component. Two turns later I start the other 10 space yards building five each plating and cable bases. When the first yard is done, I retrofit it to a Starbase with a Generator component. This takes two turns becasue of the 50% retrofit limit. I have a starbase design that is roughly 150% of the value of a cable base, and from there I can retrofit to the generator base. Cost more but I can knock about a year of the construction time that way.

Plus if I undestand things correctly your way will not work after the patch, while the technique I laid out will still be valid.

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 19 February 2001).]

Drake · #10 February 20th, 2001, 12:52 AM

That's how I tested building them to see if the game was really that stupid with the queue swapping.

Definitely abusive...

In my actual game, I just built the plating and cables from scratch. With the core piece, I built a plating component 2 years ahead of the other pieces, and retrofitted twice to get up to the core.

I probably waited a little too long getting the ringworlds up, but in the earlier turns (40 or so) I'd just learned that the value improvement stuff stacked, so I was busy trying to get those built all over the place, and dealing with the shift to using more organics and radioactives than I'd been used to.

I've thought about playing another game, to see how I'd do knowing what I need to do from the start. After about 10 turns I remember how much effort it was, regain my senses and decide to do something else.