Ringworlds and such

[BeeDee10]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
BeeDee, do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components? I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true?

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I meant that (if I recall correctly) the Sphereworld Placement Generator starbase will take 5 years (50 turns) to construct using a ship or base mounted Shipyard III. The plates and cables each take only 2.5 years, so start building the placement generator ASAP and worry about getting constructors in to build the remaining components later.

Personally, I like to build 21 BSYs to construct these things rather than using shipyard ships. Less maintenance to support them, and afterward you can use them to quickly pump out the vast number of defensive units the sphereworld can hold while you use the sphereworld's capacity to build facilities (note, filling a sphereworld with monolith facilities will take 6 years at best (assuming you've transported in a large population), so a mix of the specialzed resource facilities may be better.

quote:

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Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.

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Exactly. I kinda wish it was quicker and easier to build these things so that they actually made sense from a practical perspective, but on the other hand the way they are now they're even more "special."

Might be interesting to play a game where the victory condition is to build and fully develop (fill all facility slots) a Sphereworld. You'd have to balance your economy between destroying other players' attempts to build them and building your own. Or take a riskier approach, help someone build a sphereworld and then try to capture it when they're done.

Edit: Aha! Corporal BeeDee is educated about the use of boldface and blockquote on this forum!

[This message has been edited by BeeDee10 (edited 24 July 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Puke:
No, yes, and yes. Someone worked out a cost/benefit analysis a while back and figured out that you can actually make a profit off of ringworlds in a fairly short space of time. I guess organic races would have a good time with replicant centers on one of these, but temporal races would do better in the short run with temporal spaceyards.

Someone mentioned that constructions are immune to planet destroyers, i do not think this is so. I thought that they counted as a huge planet and as such could be destroyed by the highest level of planet destroyer. can anyone confirm?

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Well, the definition of a Ringworld or Sphereworld in the PlanetSize.txt file is stellar size 'huge' so I would guess that a planet destroyer for 'huge' planets would work. What building one of these DOES do is remove the star from the system! So, it effectively makes the star immune to star-destroying weapons. But if someone destroyed the RW/SW you'd have an asteroid field, not a star left behind. Hmm. Not good.

[Puke]

yep, you could then create a star and blow it up. or create a star, and create another sphere, after you made a huge planet out of the asteroids with the high resource bonus.

i actually entertained the idea of blowing up the sphereworld in the furball game, creating a star, and destroying the system as a dooms-day ploy should it look like I had no hope of winning. not only would that have been terribly unsportsmanlike of me, but it would have taken far too long to do, even with temporal yards. although now that i think about it, planet destroyers would not have been a bad idea, they could sit outside the range of those planetary WMGs everyone is packing, and just blown the planet away... to late now i guess.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[BeeDee10]

Hm. I recall actually testing this out myself, and found that planet-destroyers report that ringworlds are too big for them to handle and that you can't create another sun in the system because the ringworld still counts as a sun for stellar creation purposes. I'll redo the test later today and post confirmation.

[CW]

I'm currently in the process of assembling my resources to build a sphere world, just for the fun of it with no real practical purpose, since I'm so far ahead of the two remaining AIs anyway. This is a REALLY large scale project I'm undertaking, because I'm planning to build the super-planet in a blackhole system with 4 damaging warp points which happened to be in the middle of my empire.

So, the first step was to build a warp point opener and a warp point closer, then rebuild the 4 warp points (done). Next I'm building a blackhole destroyer, a star creator and a fleet of 21 construction ships (underway). The Last step will be to build the sphere world itself (to be done).

BeeDee, do you mean this is going to take 5 years plus the construction time for the components? I also gathered that all the starbases containing the components must be built in the same square where the sun is, is that true? Strategically speaking I really don't see a point to build this monster, it is more like a monument than anything else.

[dogscoff]

QUOTE:
What building one of these DOES do is remove the star from the system!
/QUOTE

So solar supply collectors won't work in a SW / RW system?

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"

See Map10a

for a mod that gives planets equivalent to sphereworlds (NexusHuge). Also the other sizes down to NexusTiny which is 1/5 the size of Huge. The planets are randomly generated at map creation about 1/5 of the regular ones. It makes an interesting start since due to an oversight by MM the initial homeworld placement looks only at the size class, not the actual size by name. Some AI get 8x planets rather than regulars. On a ten planet start it varies all the way from all 10 normal up to about four Nexus style, giving a ratio of 40/10 for the most advantaged. On a single planet start they are either 8/1 or 1/1 of course....

The facilities and population fill up to the actual capacity of the world, which is an impressive list indeed! Some AI would be automatic MEE at turn 1 if set at 500k on a ten good planet start...

[capnq]

quote:

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when I load the map and change my atmosphere to one that is not the sphere world's atmosphere the sphere world changes to a huge planet. This has happened every time. (1.35 and 1.41 )

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My mistake, I guess I misinterpreted what was done in the patch that allowed home sphereworlds then. I've never tried that myself, so I bow to actual experience with it.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"