Anacreon Beta II Discussion Thread

General discussion for the game Anacreon
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Militia Captain
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Wayward Device wrote:Trade clusters work by having a trade hub and foundation next to each other and importing/exporting with maximum efficiency. You need luxuries for your TL10 production worlds, so you raise you consumer goods autofacs to TL8 which gives the best ratio of luxuries produced, as a TL10 CGA world need more luxuries so they can export less even with the higher production. You can raise your CGAs to TL 8 in a meshnet, but then you need to start using archives to avoid having 5-15% of a world's production spent on tech improvements and if you are using archives you may as well learn how hubs work and make clusters.
Wayward is underselling the risks of clusters a little here. If you are going to trade a lot of goods through a single hub, you have to be sure that you can protect that hub from attack. Archives (foundations) are not directly analogous- If an enemy knocks out a foundation while you're AFK, a few worlds will lose a few TLs before you log back in, since it takes a while for planets to regress in TL. On the other hand if you lose a hub that's supplying everything to everything you will have really serious issues on every high-TL planet that the hub supplies since they can't adjust their economies fast enough; you're likely to see resource shortages which can cause deaths and civil wars. That's why Wayward likes to put hundreds of thousands of Gorgos on every hub, which may not be an option for you if you're pursuing a strategy that's not starship-centered.

One more quick warning about trade hubs- they don't seem to export trillum if they're being supplied by only one extractor. Connecting a second trillum extractor resolves the problem. I have also seen this happen with luxury goods and jumpship components.
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Image

As of cycle 4067, the galaxy was in a period of general stagnation. No major wars were observed in the preceding 4 cycles.

Some notes:
  • Last update had some graphs showing incorrect planet and space forces growth, these have been corrected.
  • bugzzzzzzz's pace of expansion has slowed considerably and their economy has been partially consolidated into clusters, although these are not yet highly productive
  • The Telarin Combine continues to rapidly expand in the Northeast
  • Autocracy continues to retreat from the unorganized worlds that they captured from Sanzu as these planets fall either to civil war or other empires. Autocracy's core clusters are still producing more starships than the rest of the galaxy put together.
  • No word out of Hexacarbide Brotherhood or asdf, both of which are run by veteran players and are stable but apparently inactive. Agraria's growth in space forces is the result of three starship yards coming online in the far west.
  • Human Imperium is beginning to develop space straddling the nebular corridor north of Autocracy's oldest western clusters. This region is vacant but rich in naturally high-population worlds and is the only way for starships to pass from galactic north to south or vice versa (via hoa0004's territory) without exiting the map.
  • Hoa0004 is colonizing territory southeast of the Hexacarbide Brotherhood.
  • The minor Savage Chaos empire, which I had written off as abandoned, seems to have restructured its economy after a period when it ran out of jumpships. Whether they can pull back from the brink remains to be seen. These barbarians eschew all resource-producing worlds except hexacarbide refineries; most of their planets are devoted exclusively to building weapons.
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Ok, before everyone buys into this trade cluster propaganda.
In theory, a perfectly optimized mesh clearly beats a perfectly optimized trade cluster, because every planet in a mesh is producing with no planets sitting idle just redistributing resources. Of course the hard part is the perfect optimization, but even there meshes have certain advantages.
Connecting worlds in a mesh only involves local calculations: does producer X have enough resources for consumer Y? If yes, import. If no, import everything available, and look for another producer Z, repeat if necessary. Trade clusters, on the other hand, are global. I need to look at the total production and total consumption in the entire cluster to get an idea if I have enough. Since the game has no way of providing these values automatically, it means pulling out a calculator.
The most annoying thing, though, is that trade hubs divide import percentages equally, but to balance supply with demand the percentages have to be proportional to production capacity, which, again, the game doesn't provide a easy way to calculate. So if a planet is producing below this average, it won't be able to meet its export quota, whereas an above average producer will have idle resources. So to guard against shortages one has to either painstakingly calculate the correct percentage for every planet, hoping that changing conditions (like habitation structures) won't alter it, or have a slight surplus to absorb the minor difference, so there is waste as well.
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Trade Hubs sound like a little too much work; I like the sort of organic mess that is created by the mesh method. It feels like an empire and it's good to look at, except when it becomes a real mess. I didn't keep track of my conquests in the north and I took almost every planet with resources; I can't support all the planets efficiently. It's a huge mess and I sort of regret it, now it's just a neglected sector of the Combine. I made it to 134 planets last night.
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gc2, I was planning on making a guide about how to build a more resilant empire, but your post forces me to go ahead and post a bit about how I run my trade hubs. Please forgive me if I missed the point of you post.

When you click on a trade route, you can adjust the percentages that a world imports. For example:

Suppose that I have a trade hub that imports trillium from 2 worlds. The hub will import 50% of its trillium from each world. If you set one trade route at 75%, the other will automatically adjust the 25%. If your have 4 trillum worlds, then the game sets it at 25% from each. For 10 worlds its 10% from each and so on.

But, if you set a trade route to import more than 100%, all the the other trade routes go to 0%. You can then set them to above 100% and they will stay there. Here is an example.

Suppose I have a trade hub with 4 trillium worlds. The hub automatically imports 25% of its demand from each world. Click on the trade route for one of the worlds, and set it at 999%. The other trade routes will change to 0%. Click on each one at set it at 999%, all the other routes will stay at 999%.

Now the hub is trying to import 999% of its need from each of the 4 worlds. This is ok because each of the trill worlds will take care of itself first then attempt to export 999% of what the hub wants. The result of this is as follows.

ALL of the trill is sent to the hub, where it stockpiles, with none left unused on the trill world. You can click on the hub and see how much trill it importing and exporting. Now with a glance you can see all the trill being produced in the hub area, because its all being sent to the hub. You see exactly how much is coming in and going out, so you can plan what to do next, no need to micomanage, no need to adjust because some worlds produce more then others. Every world is simply sending all it has to the hub.

The other result is that trill is stockpiled at the hub. If an enemy takes your trill worlds, the hub will be ok for a while.

This works for all resources. For example, consumer goods worlds. They will take care of themselves first, they won't starve, then send all production to the hub.

One side note. Once a huge amount of resources stockpiles at the hub, it will stop importing until the stockpile goes down. If you have 20million trill at a hub, then 999% of what it needs to import is 0.
Also, for consumer goods worlds, don't to this until they are at least at level 7. You must set all of its products equally. If you set the hub to import 200%, 500%, 999%, or whatever of durable goods from a Consumer world, organic food and luxurys must be set at the same amount.
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What happens for complex autofacs like jumpship or starship autofacs? A starship autofac at tl10 can produce 8 different resources but likely I only want it to produce 2 if I only build Gorgos (Basilisk cannon and R50) . Once a certain number of these are stockpiled on the hub won't I see the autofac default to building everything in equal proportions, wasting a bunch of labor and resources in useless Defiance and starcruiser components?
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No, the autofacs only produce what the hub needs. For example, if only a gorgos staryard is connected to the hub, the autofacs will only produce componets for that, even after the hub becomes saturated with parts. If the hub is wanting to import 999% of its balisk cannon demand, the autofac will try to build that always. If the hub is saturated, those parts will stockpile on the autofac world. Because of attrition this is only an issue for stuff like hex and trill. In any case you can keep the hub from becoming too saturated. Doing it my way, if you click on the hub and see that you are importing 8 balisk cannons but only exporting 4, you know that you can safely designate another gorgos staryard since you have plenty of capacity.

Now, concerning a hub that has many different worlds, you can set the percentages. For example, suppose I have a hub that has high tech jumpyards making eldritches, as well as low tech yards making adamants. I may not want my high tech jumpship autofacs wasting production making low tech parts. I would designate low tech autofacs to supply the low tech jumpship yards, and set the hub to import 999% of light jumpdrives from those worlds. Then I would click on the trade route for the high tech autofacs, and set the hub to import 0% of low tech parts.


Remember, the game will automatically try to balance the percentages to 100%. If you have 2 worlds making advanced jumpdrives, the hub will import 50% of need from each. If you set one the 75%, the other automatically goes to 25%. To break this, set the % above 100%. Set one world above 100%, to say, 999%. The others go to 0. Now you can set the other worlds to a value above 100%. Any trade route set above 100% will stay there
Last edited by WorldsStrongestNerd on Wed Jul 20, 2016 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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That makes sense and also ties in with the observation that the graviton launcher bug can be controlled by manually setting a hub or jumpyard of import 0% graviton launchers.
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When I tried this with hexacarbide it did not have the expected result. For 3 hubs, each connected to two hexacarbide worlds, I set every hex world to export 999%. Result is that after a few turns, one hex world exports double its production and the other only exports a token amount (1-4/turn). None of these planets, including the hubs, have particularly large stockpiles on them already.
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Also, if the hub wants to import more than one thing, your resource worlds will balance production. For example.

A hub is set to import 999% of its demand of food, goods, and luxuries from a CGA.

It just so happens that 999% of organic need is 10 million, 999% of durable goods need is 10 million, and 999% of luxeries need is 1 million. The CGA will devote 10 times more industry to organic food then to luxeries. The CGA might produce 40000 food, 40000 goods, and 4000 lux (just and example), after satisfing its own needs (or importing them fro the hub) the world will then export everything it has.

Suppose I have a CGA sitting by itself. It might have millions of goods on it. After connecting to hub, and setting import at 999% (which is the max you can do) that CGA will export million every cycle to the hub untll it runs out, then it will export what it has.


Suppose a hub is importing 999% of balisk cannons and r50 reactors from a starship autofac. Now suppose the hub already has plenty of r5o reactors. The autofac will switch all industry to the balisk cannons until the hub goes thru its stockpile of r5o reactors. The autofac won't suddenly start producing componets the hub doesn't want.


Some notes. An autofac will produce every part it can if no ship yards are connected, ie the hub has no demand.
For CGA worlds, luxuries , goods, and food must be equal.

Suppose you have a TL5 CGA, and you set the hub to import 999% of food and durable goods. When that world hits TL7, luxuries will apear on the trade route, and it will be set to 0. (After you set the hub to import more than 100% of a resource from a world, the % import of that resource from all the other worlds goes to 0 until you manually change it.)
The hub will be demanding goods and food form the CGA, but no luxuries, so the world will not produce any and go into civil war.
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How much the hub imports is still dependant on demand.

If the hub needs to export 100 hex per watch, and you set it to import 999% of demand from a world, that's only a thousand. Once a few thousand accumilates at the hub, if demand is still only 100, then it will import less and less even tho importing is still set at 999%. Basically demand goes down as the stockpile gets bigger in reguard to demand. If the hub is exporting 100 for example, and there is a few thousand at the hub, then 999% of what the hub needs to import would only be 1 or 4.

A caveat, this shines best on large hubs with mature resource demand. In your current situation, it looks like one hex world is exporting much more then the hub needs even at 999%, so not much is coming for the other hex worlds (this is done in order the worlds were connected.) Looking at your hub production would show you have too many hex worlds. (Just an example, I know you must have at least 2 for importing to work sometimes.

Also, check on the world exporting a token amount. Under my system, each world exports all it can until the hub has giant stockpiles. It could be the world exporting a small amount has a problem. Resources are alloted in the order a world is connected to the hub. If your hub suddenly has a trillium shortage for example, where it had enough for 2 worlds but now only has enough for 1, the first world to connect to the hub will get what it needs, while the second world gets nothing. In other words, if you have a shortfall of something, the last world brought into the network gets hit first.
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Each hub's hex demand was only slightly less than the combined output of the two hex planets. My impression was that the hex planets' stockpiles would be gradually transferred to the hub under this method, but instead one hex planet's stockpile is being depleted while the other's stockpile is growing and the hub's stockpile isn't growing any faster than it did at a 50/50 split (i.e. very slowly). None of my planets have resource problems.
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Double check of course that each hex is exporting 999%, since after you set the first one at 999% all the others went to 0 until you change it.
What is the hex import and demand numbers on one of your hubs? As well as the current stockpile.

As an example, I have a hub that exports 2500 hex every watch, but has a stockpile on the hub of 20 million. Its not currently importing any, so hex is stockpiling on the the hex worlds now too.

The main purpose of me doing this is to sqeeze out all of the autofac parts and chromium I can, as well as see what I have. For hex and trill I don't cut production very tight. Each hub probably have one or two more hex and trill worlds than it needs so the stuff piles up.


Let me use chromium as an example. I have a hub that imports 2550, exports 2440, and has a stockpile of 28,000.
After the stockpile builds to max size, it stays there thanks to attriton.
2550 is the sum total of all my chome worlds in the hub. Since Im exporting 2440 I know I have 90 unused every watch. It doesn't stockpile on the chrome worlds, since the hub stockpile never gets very big, because I'm using almost all that I take in. If there was a huge chrome stockpile on the hub, so that the hub wasn't importing very much, I would click on a chrome world and see the stockpiles building there. This would tell me that I had a very large unused chrome capacity.
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As an example, one hub imports 3711, consumes 1591 (building hypersonics), exports 2111. Both hex planets produces ~1900/turn. Hub stockpile is around 46,000. Planet stockpiles are around a million each. Both claim to be exporting 999% to the hub but one is actually exporting 3707 and the other is exporting 4.

I am in T&E but I am not selling hexacarbide out of that hub.
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Update: I performed a hard reset of the system by putting in a standing order to sell 10,000,000 hexacarbide for a few watches (only a T&E empire could do this). That removed all hexacarbide from the foundry-hub system. The result after a few watches of recovery is that both foundries now export equally to the hub and both foundries export their entire output to the hub. I will follow up in a day or so to see if this continues.
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