Let me begin by saying the game is a lot of fun. I've had an opportunity to play through the game in ten or so various styles of matches. I usually set a victory condition and try to achieve it. I've done some fun super industry building planets with 3k industry etc. I'm a veteran of 4x games and of RTS's in general.



I was curious what most veterans do for the average system generally. I like to keep things optimal and just forego dust in most instances and balance any dust generation by the conversion improvement. This typically leads me to build most all science improvements and most of the industry improvements for a boosted conversion rate. Ultimately though I'm not sure if this is optimal. My forge worlds tend to be my hero worlds and the remainder of my planets tend hover around 200-500 science/industry depending on the point in the game or planet configuration. My taxes are set between 10-15% for the huge benefits they offer.



I was wondering if it was worth it generally speaking to drop enough food on the system for it to grow then do nothing but dust generating exploitation's. Not building any science or industry improvements and just making it a dust generating system. Ultimately dust is only good for new heroes or buyouts, but this would allow you to build up your forge/hero worlds faster which ultimately are your heavy hitters in terms of science/industry/fleet production.



Is the drop off in science/industry not worth the trade off or conversion loss. If the conversion rate was larger than 25% then it might be a no brainer but with all of the upkeep on a lot of science/industry buildings when you convert on a mediocre planet the gains tend to be minimal.

Planetary explotations are extremely cheap - I recommend that you just switch them around as you need them. If you also need dust - terraform the planets to Arid. Keeping your Taxes between 10-15% is I guess only useful for Sophons. On the other hand the higher your taxes with United Empire the more production bonus you get. If your planets are Estactic you should raise the tax - Usually by late game I'm running 90% taxes.

30 turn challenges offer exactly this type of discussion. Check out some of the discussions on past ones, and join in on the new one! The new one is more geared to custom race crafting, but there is still some basic strategy discussion, and many of the previous ones were entirely about expansion strategies.



In general though it is much more worthwhile to do food exploits and push your pop as high as you can as quickly as you can. Once pop is maxed then retool the system to other exploits. I rarely use dust exploits, but do frequently use production and science ones.

I use dust for two things.



1) Buying out the first two items I always build on new worlds. I do this so I don't have to come back to them for a dozen or so turns. Usually the exploit and the first production improvement. I then schedule up the +1 all skill and a few other research items



2) Paying for retrofits. This is my biggest consumer of dust.





I have never put down a single trade related improvement.

Trade is pretty amazing, you should try a trade-centric game sometime.

Milaha wrote:
30 turn challenges offer exactly this type of discussion. Check out some of the discussions on past ones, and join in on the new one! The new one is more geared to custom race crafting, but there is still some basic strategy discussion, and many of the previous ones were entirely about expansion strategies.



In general though it is much more worthwhile to do food exploits and push your pop as high as you can as quickly as you can. Once pop is maxed then retool the system to other exploits. I rarely use dust exploits, but do frequently use production and science ones.

I would say you are wrong those challenges are for the first 30 turn only by than you can do a lot but there is no long term strategy involved there are certain racial traits that kick in much later in the game especially the % based they scale better. I would like to see someone do 70-90% tax rate to use the UE trait for extra production..



The techs you research are also a bigger benefit everything scales with % bonuses most of the games a rush builds that will either win you a game before the actual mid-game starts or will fail on higher difficulties due to the AI being able to defend against rushing, Impossible and Endless difficulties. Most challenges are done on small maps as well which does not take into account that it might take you more than 30 turns to even meet an AI.



The challenges are fun and worth trying but in my opinion they are not relevant to this topic.



PS. this is mainly regarding the Custom race challenge and the abuse of the custom race creator. The 30 turn challenges for the official races are worth looking into since all of the seem balanced well enough and require different approaches to succeed



PSS. sorry for the off-topic



@rabman



Am playing Impossible, Endless at the moment with various effects I found getting max pop asap on a system and than switching to a specialization gets most things done. As mentioned you should switch around the exploitations as needed in mid-late game you can convert the whole system in a turn. Dust mid-late game rarely is an issue if you managed to get through the fist expansion phase and kept your empire at happy/fervent.



Personally I go Food max out the system if no threat and than specialize, most of the time it is Industry rarely Dust and almost never Science. In case of impending doom I try to balance Ind and Dust always having one planet with Food to keep a steady growth rate.

gamingalife wrote:




@rabman



Am playing Impossible, Endless at the moment with various effects I found getting max pop asap on a system and than switching to a specialization gets most things done. As mentioned you should switch around the exploitations as needed in mid-late game you can convert the whole system in a turn. Dust mid-late game rarely is an issue if you managed to get through the fist expansion phase and kept your empire at happy/fervent.



Personally I go Food max out the system if no threat and than specialize, most of the time it is Industry rarely Dust and almost never Science. In case of impending doom I try to balance Ind and Dust always having one planet with Food to keep a steady growth rate.

Thanks this is helpful. I'll add that I don't think I'm hurting for dust mid-late game but I dont ever have a large amount being generated. A few hundred at most across my whole empire. I end up switching systems around mostly, generating science or dust depending on what I'm after. I typically have two to three forge worlds (heroes) who are the double ship per turn producers, as well they are the true science producers too. I'm using a custom Sophon faction so my tax rate dramatically impacts my research. I might try your setup and forego most science improvements and see if I notice an appreciable difference. I typically make industry exploitation with the exception of enough food to keep the population growing at a steady clip. So many stars systems aren't worth a big investment mid-game when your capturing crappy enemy sectors, so I'd rather they be a boon to my economy than drag me down in upkeep. So I typically strip them and leave only relevant industry or obvious benefits such as population increase improvements.