it will never pays out, the platform and ship need upkeep, also, the resources bonus is too low.



it would need to be at least 5% per ship and probably cap at 30% to made it useful.

if u have a science focused playstyle why playing automatons anyway play sophons

Around turn 120-150, I always find that I have far too much Dust to use (unless I go really crazy with buyouts) so I still think that Orbital Platforms are great because, at that point, the only thing you really care about is your Science and, to a lesser extent, your Industry (only because you can convert 25% of it to Science). And no other faction has to ability to, basically, convert some of their excess Dust to Science.



Another, possibly unintended, consequence of using Orbital Platforms with 15 ships each is that it will artificially increase your score (which is heavily influence by ships but I'm not sure if it's from command points or military power) which may influence your diplomatic relationships with the other factions.

to see your ship upkeep and your Fleet upkeep

go with your mouse cursor over the Dust Symbol left hand side of your tax rate button in the economy menue.



Edit: well if u mean to determine how many Dust every single Ships cost...well then...i dont know too...

Well, I was trying to do a calculation to determine if Orbital Platform was worth it, but I couldn't figure out how my ship and fleet upkeep was calculated.



Because in the fleet management screen there's no per-ship upkeep indication, no per-fleet upkeep indication, no totals row indicating total ships of all fleets, total number of fleets, etc.



I'm also not sure why ship upkeep is based on CPs and not say... (some percentage) * (industry required to build the ship).



Orbital Platforms is almost always never worth the cost of maintaining a shell fleet in orbit. Which is maybe done on purpose. Orbital platforms are only useful on systems you'll have a defending fleet orbiting already for military reasons. So the platforms are useful on military fronts or key geographic systems that you have fleets on.

Nice math ravi Lord_s yes you are correct it depends on the tactic of the players what faction traits are strongest i agree. I used my own tactics as basis for my judgment on the strenght of the races. (my tactics has worked well for me so far. basically it is summed up in two principles. Return on investment and snowballing (gaining turn advantages) I think sophons is suprisingly strong in colonization/expansion if you use the cheap colony ships to its full power. But again you are correct, if the tactic of the player is otherwise the traits will have different strenght.

It's pretty easy to determine when the Orbital Platforms can pay for their own dust upkeep. I'll use "OrP" to mean Orbital Platforms from now on.

A ship has an upkeep cost of (0.4 * max CP per fleet) per CP. So you're obviously going to use ships with only 1 CP. Therefore, the total dust cost for maintaining an OrP will changed depending on the max CP of your fleets. Also keep in mind that OrP has its own upkeep of 7 dust and that the +1% is applied only to the dust gained from planets, before any other modifiers such as improvement, hero, faction trait, tax rate etc. (actually, I think the Planetary Institute is the only exception but I'll be ignoring it since the bonus is very small).



At 11 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 11 * 100 + 7 = 447 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 13 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 13 * 100 + 7 = 527 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 15 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 15 * 100 + 7 = 607 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 16 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 16 * 100 + 7 = 647 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 17 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 17 * 100 + 7 = 687 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 18 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 18 * 100 + 7 = 727 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.

At 20 max CP per fleet, your system has to gain 0.4 * 20 * 100 + 7 = 807 dust from planets in order for OrP to pay for its own dust upkeep.



And so on. While those dust values may be rather high, I would consider even 75% of their value to be worth the +15% bonus to food, industry and science. And this will obviously depend on whether you're low on dust and want to save it to retrofit some of your ships or if you have far too much dust and don't really know what to do with it.

@Eysteinh

I think it depends on the tactics of a player which affinity is the strongest. For example, Sophon's science is unbeatable. Up to 50% additional science for low taxes is great since you have to make your taxes low even on easy.

And Redundant Infrastructures harmonys perfectly with that. +20% science when the system is ecstatic and additional 2% for each one if empire is fervent.

Sophons get their power from the fast research and are especially strong in the mid and the late game, while Cravers get their power from early expansion and build their empire in the early game to kill everyone else in the late game.

I will play automations no problem. I have never been anything other than nr.1 in any game in mp and at that point usually the rest ally against me and its me vs everyone. You just have to learn to use theyre strenght. The bonus is 15 or 20% i know it is not more since when i added more ships after 20 ships the FIDS did not change.



What are the strenght of automatons? Stored production with interest. This is quite powerfull once you know how to use it correctly. Then you have the mid game boost of orbits 15% bonus to fids is realy a 60% total bonus so this is not bad. And it really adds up to all the other food bonuses and combines well with terran upgrade. The terran upgrade is basically an auto win for automation in any game that goes on to the mid/late game.



As of now (no beta) I would rank (with custom traits not base races) cravers nr 1. Sophons nr 2. Automation nr 3. The amoeba (spelling) nr 4 to 1 depending on map settings. Then it is so close between pilgrims ue and horratio or hisso. The cloning of horratio is so strong on small map so they are situational and can be nr 1. Also hisso obviously can be very strong and nr1 but it is again situational and depends on your opponent. If i know I am up against a hisso I play much differently than else, and hisso is only good if your opponent lets it be good. I forgot sowers, i think sowers is situational, if map has many young planets perhaps sowers is very good in those games. They have some nice buildings due to racial techs too so they are quite strong. But not stronger than cravers and sophons i think. Perhaps in same space as amoba (nr4.) Pilgrims are also funny because most think they are crap but they get gas planets extremly quick and the evacuate can be used to make new colonies very fast productive so they can be situational very good on some maps. Sophons are not nr 2 because of tech bonus but because of extremly cheap colony ships and this allows many tricks with sophons. Cravers are nr 1 because nothing beats a 100% bonus in starting turns. (25% each category so total 100%) If amoba have a map where close by they can use the all seeing to advantage they can be faster than for example cravers. They also have exellent trade bonuses so again they are situational, they can be nr1 in a game where you know you will play vs people as good as yourself and you will need to ally to win. Only problem is your opponent also knows this if he knows the game so he will not let you ally.



I hope they introduce team games into the settings. This way the ally races will have more use, since as of now it is all about who is nr 1 and ganging up against him. Or if you know you will be nr 1 later ganging up on the rest of the players or allying with the current nr1. I hope to introduce ladder rules of cton or ffa. (cton means no tech trading or trade at all) ffa is fight for all where trading is allowed. You will gain rank depending on your positon so it will be rewarded to be nr 2 3 etc. This will allow games where everything is not about beeing nr 1.

The Cap is to dam low!....(is it 15?). PLs Devs raise the Cap or make the research technology for that bulding cheaper.

in Multiplayer NO ONE is playing automatons cause ther affinity is pure late game and even then its not very impressiv.

Hi guys, sorry if this has already been asked before but I couldn't find the answer anywhere on the forum. Also, I play the game in another language (French, as a matter of fact) so I don't get to know the precise vocabulary. Anyway, let me explain.



Playing automatons, you unlock this technology - the name should be something like 'orbital platforms' - which is a construction for systems. On the system it's built on, each ship waiting around the system supposedly provides you 1% more production, for every resource. Know what I'm talking about?



So I checked this out - sounded nice to me - but it never worked. I tried many different kind of ships, many systems, many ways to seperate them within the fleets, I've waited several turns... But it never gave me the single production bonus. Would anyone please know how it really works?

Yeah it is also a free fleet sort of with the dust bonus in most systems. I agree automaton is a mid game powerhouse. Especially if you know what your doing growth wise during the terraforming period. In fact if a craver would let an automaton survive to mid game with 2/3 the planets of the craver I think automaton would win hands down.

15 ships per system (More like 1 fleet really) with the early automations terran terraformer tech makes then one hell of a power house by mid game.



fully populate some of your systems and you could eaisly go for the win there, and with you needing fleets at the worlds with this upgrade your empire will also be hevily protected.

So basically, from what I've read in the OP: you have to build the system improvement, then build a ship which will provide 1% bonus to FIDS, building includes taking them out of the hanger. I haven't played Automatons much because I dont like them using Craver ships but the improvements usually aren't too complicated... Try what eys said.

Hi you have to have them outside the ship. The oribtal is capped at 15% (15 ships) it seems. Nice if they included this in the tooltip. Dont put in hangar you will not have bonus.

I've tried it out and it works quite fine. But it only shows you x/// for improvement.

That's weird. I will maybe try out myself. But this could take some time

Lord_S wrote:
I've never played the Automatons but have you tried to put the ships in the hangar?

Of course I've tried everything that came to my mind.

I've never played the Automatons but have you tried to put the ships in the hangar?