Strategy Articles!

[Slick]

I use them on a few designs:

My planet maker Battleship, because I need repair capability any way, it has a huge maintenance cost due to its Matter Gravity Sphere component so I don't want to spend excess turns in transit to asteroid fields. Each turn I use the pod and the on board spaceyard repairs it making it ready for the next turn. Note that you don't need a spaceyard to repair the Matter Gravity Sphere (only a repair bay), but you do need a spaceyard to repair the EPP.

My Ambulance Destroyer (which has a Medical Bay, speedy engines, solar sail and lots of supplies) because I want to get any plagues cured as fast as possible. I don't have a spaceyard on the DD obviously. I build, then mothball usually 3 or 4 of these Ambulances strategically placed in the empire so that I can get it to any plagued planet in a few turns.

Slick.

[teal]

Last time I tried to use a Matter Gravity Sphere nothing would repair it after it was used. A repair bay wouldn't repair it and taking the ship back to a shipyard wouldn't repair it. I was quite confused and decided to give up on the whole making planet idea entirely. Any rampant speculation as to what I was doing wrong... ?

[Slick]

Originally posted by teal:
Last time I tried to use a Matter Gravity Sphere nothing would repair it after it was used. A repair bay wouldn't repair it and taking the ship back to a shipyard wouldn't repair it. I was quite confused and decided to give up on the whole making planet idea entirely. Any rampant speculation as to what I was doing wrong... ?

I sure can't think of what it might be. I have never had such a problem. Try it again and if you can replicate the problem, we can help troubleshoot. If we can't figure it out, you can email the saved game to MM.

Slick.

[teal]

Tested it again by starting up a high tech game and making a planet maker very quickly. No problems. My repair bay III repaired the ship the next turn. No idea what happened that first time...

[teal]

After doing some further testing (and reloading the original saved game). I think that the problem was that I just won the game on the turn that I made the planet (or else well before making the planet I was playing vs. the AI and wanted to mess around some more). Once one player declares victory certain things seem to stop happening...

[Fyron]

Actually, repairs do not stop happening after victory is met. I often start games with no AI to test some things, and building planets is sometimes used in such tests (esp. testing what can be built ).

[Pablo]

teal,
maybe you captured a planet maker ship with a Matter Gravity Sphere component being higher level than you have researched. In this case you cannot (IIRC) repair the component until you research the appropriate tech. level.
This is the only idea I can think of...

[teal]

Eeek! Didn't mean for a simple (that's strange) question to be so prominently displayed in a popular thread for all to see!

Quick Stone Mill, post another strategy article so my silliness can be buried in the sands of wisdom.

For those of you who like trying to figure out strange bugs here is the complete situation:

1) I was playing a game using the TDM modpack (Version 3.00). I won the game (400% of second place) a few turns before getting Matter Gravity Sphere II. Since I had never made a planet before I wanted to keep playing and see how making planets worked. I built my planet maker and used it and ever since then the Matter Gravity Sphere II has not been repaired either by the repair bay I on the ship or by taking it back to a shipyard. I have reloaded this saved game and the situation is still the same. That particular component never gets repaired.

2) Started a normal 1.84 game with high tech and built a planet maker quickly and tested it. The component gets repaired fine by the onboard repair bay.

3) Started a TDM (Version 3.00) game with high tech and simultaneus movement and repeated experiment. Component gets repaired by on board repair bay.

4) concluded that it must have been my "Victor" status which prevented the repair bay from functioning in 1). But Fyron is right, this doesn't seem to match with other experiments I have done where I started a game with just one empire to test something out.

So I'm completely puzzled by this bug. But its not important!!!! Back to the wonderful strategy articles...

[Stone Mill]

teal,

Don't sweat it, sir. While it is true that your findings probably deserve their own thread, any comments are welcome... and your original question was strategy-based. Hope we find out more about it.

As for the next article, The 'ol Stone Mill has somethin' brewing... hope to make some progress today.

[Atrocities]

Regarding the issue of the first 10 turns of a PBW game, I recall reading somewhere where the TOP players deny building half BSY and half Colony ships in the first 10 turns of the game.

What strategy works best, half and half, or all or one?