planet class 13 14

I don't colonize them. It was discussed a while back that anything lower than 15 is more trouble than its worth. The population is unhappy, and thus produces slowly. It may be easier to keep them happy in 4A, but I don't think many here would recommend bothering with those planets....

If you wish to colonize low class planets, either build low population colony ships early in the game and don't send them anywhere until you have most of the morale techs (and preferably terraforming, as well), or rush-build colony ships on the colonized planet to get people off it.

Generally, they are more trouble than they're worth, but I sometimes colonize planets as low as class 6.

On anything below class 13, you don't want a population above 100M until you have all the morale improvements build if you can avoid it.

soil enhancements is +1 to class as is habitat improvement...so a 13 class planet can become a 15 fairly easily. I do colonize all 14s. Sometimes the 13s.

I usually do not colonize a 13/14 planet unless I need the range or there are better planets in system. I do colonize then with colony ships of 20. When 1st colonized, the 13/14 builds drones until soil and habitat, then constructors.

The purpose of this post is the AI should do the same. Give the 13/14 class low priority but the AI should colonize them. How many games have you seen AI planets with colony ships in orbit and a class 14-14 system in same/nearby sector? In the 18x18 grid galaxy, colonizing a 14 was the only way to get the range on a constructor to build a station 10 sectors away, where a cluster of yellow stars, grid loc (0,0) with 8 class 20 - 26 planets. If the Yor got that 14, only 2 sectors from their nearest planet, I might not have colonized 2 26s.

Think of it as a Thule AFB (in Greenland). Not a very hospitable climate but of stratigic importance. After all, a battleship is repaired faster in orbit around a class 13 than by a starbase.

Brad, In beta 2, the starbase had a ship docking improvement. In beta 3 & 4, they dont. Please include it, 1 ship per spoke. A battleship should be able to dock at a starbase for repairs.

Strategically colonize 13/14s if enough of them in concentration or in a sector with say one good AI system. then enhance and build up as the AI fails to note the 'culture' impact about to happen. Also have to have someplace to put surplus people later in the game.

I used to colonize down to class 12 at the start of a game and down to class 10 after switching to star federation. The extra planets help to increase the tax revenue, but you really have ot watch the morale. In the last several buiklds I have found that the lower class planets are more trouble than they are worth until I can build star bases on morale resources and upgrade them substantially for mining the resources.

'soil enhancements is +1 to class as is habitat improvement...so a 13 class planet can become a 15 fairly easily. I do colonize all 14s. Sometimes the 13s.'

This is only true for planets of class 10-14. At 15, Soil Enhancement and Habitat improvement provide a combined +3. At 20, they're +2 each, and at class 25 a combined +5.

Going in the other direction, at class 9 they provide only a combined +1, and at class 4 they provide no benefit whatsoever until terraforming is also built, and then only down to a class 3 (or 2 with the added benifit of the earthworms event providing an additional +10% or more to planet quality). A class 1 improves only if all three improvements are built and the earthworms event provides the maximum improvement of +40%.

'Brad, In beta 2, the starbase had a ship docking improvement. In beta 3 & 4, they dont. Please include it, 1 ship per spoke. A battleship should be able to dock at a starbase for repairs.'

That docking improvement didn't actually do anything in beta 2. That's probably why it was removed.

Arturus,

The class improvement for terraforming went from +50% in Beta 2 and before to only +20% in beta 3. Even with +40% on earthworms, and the non-cumulative and non-rounded calculations SD has been using, that shoud only give a max total of +80% for all planet class improvement possibilities combined, so it should not be possible to improve class 1 planet at all (1 * 1.8 = 1). Are you sure you have seen a class 1 planet receive any increase in class since build B3 came out?

The concept behind the "limited shipbay" facility was that it would repair ships docked in the star base at a highly accellerated rate, but I guess the Stardock people had difficulties getting it into the code. The replacement appears to be the "repair bay" which accellerates the repair of all ships in the same sector by +1. I have not had one in use on Build 4a yet, but prior to that build the repair bay appeared to work as advertised.

I agreed w/Arturus.
Lucky, I use repair bays and after 3 turns, my HP haven't improved on ships or starbases (the resume game HP bug). I got over 30 ships & transports around a starbase and their HP aint moving. I researched both repair tech and got microbots achievment. Stats show 111% repair. I am not a game programmer (me mainframe) but how hard would it be to implement docking bays?

I also miss the 50% class improvement that terraforming used to give. If it has to stay at 20%, how about 2nd class improvement, +30%, with other late game techs as pre-req? Has anyone played beta4 and ran out of social projects to build?

'Are you sure you have seen a class 1 planet receive any increase in class since build B3 came out?'

In the case of the class 1, it's flawed math on my part. I haven't seen a class 1 improve since the morale resources stopped improving planet quality (which was B3D, or so, IIRC), but I also haven't actually finished a game since about that same time frame. New versions have been popping up too quickly.

The rest of that statement should be accurate as written.

'I have not had one in use on Build 4a yet, but prior to that build the repair bay appeared to work as advertised.'

I haven't been able to discern any difference, even before beta4A (and there is Brad's statement that the Repair Bay doesn't improve other ships in another thread about 20 days back) but that could simply be because +1% isn't much of an improvement anyway. Not very many ships get 100 HP to show an improvement in repair rate until late-game, and as I noted a few minutes ago, I haven't been getting to late-game much recently.

Ted asked "Has anyone played beta4 and ran out of social projects to build?"

I am coming quite close to it and I have my research bous points set to 3. I know they did some tuning but it looks to me like some of the tuning was just a bit too much.