first turn and building orders

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

Hiya!

I am very new in playing vp4 ( first game / turn 2 ) .


But what structures to build first.

I tried :

+ 10 Factories = got + 10.
+ 60 Farms = got + 4.
+ 5 Cities = got + 2.
+ 1 Gover = got none.


In which order is build?
Factories first?


What to do?
Only building farms in the first turn?


Sorry I am a newbie and a little bit confused about what was build and
what not :-(


Greetings
Joerg

 

[nameless]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

KlingonKommand wrote:
>
> Factories and farms first. I'm surprised you got 2 cities too.
> --
> Paul Honigmann

How about you scripting a game with a HW, and then give orders to build
structures. And then look the next turn into the log file of the base(I
am pretty sure that you did not do that lately in such cases). And you
will notice that the building order is differently.
It is factory, cities, farms, (smelter, mines, Training Centers)...
(eventhough about all not above mentioned buildings are build in the
order displayed in the overview screen of a base).
Eventhough there are a few more amusing facts concerning structure
building then just the order of building structures.

ps. If you see some buildings mentioned twice in the log files, that is
quiet normal and you can deduce a few things from that(especially if
you are also performing transfer via ship (etc.) from and to the base
the same turn).
ie. You can with a little thought prevent the enemy from destroying new
build structures the same turn they are build.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

Ok, here goes

First, unload your starting ships. You didn´t say what race you are, but
most races start with many resources aboard the starting ships.
Then order a GovCenter, so you can transfer money to the galactic bank for
tech increases.
Build as many farms as your planet supports (as many farms in total as the
soil rating of your HW).
If you have increased planet tech to level 2 at the last turn (which you
should have done), build a pod launcher, so you can colonize nearby planets
using pods instead of ships.
I usually build a second Training Center to generate some more crew, that
will later serve for my trainings world(s) to train HGs
If there is a priv in your game, build at least 1 Raid Shelter (planet tech
2 needed) per 1 mio colos you have, to prevent his assault gondolas from
killing them.
Depending on the race you are, there should be several hundred supplies
left. Use them to build about 250 to 350 factories, or supplies will be
forever your bottleneck.
Use the remaining supplies for city building (keep a few supplies left over,
so your ord plant can start churning out some ammo for your warships)

All the above assumes, supplies are the limiting factor. With most game
setups, this is true. If, however, money is the limiting factor, build a lot
less factories and an additional city or two instead.



PS: There is a Newbee - Step by Step guide at
http://www.vgap4-info.org.uk/VGAP4-Int/english/index.htm

Lots of usefull info is available at
http://www.furfur.demon.co.uk/geop/vgap4.htm

And of course, there is Tim´s (creator of the game, but I guess you knew
that) page http://www.planets4.com/

I know, it is a lot to read, but if you get over the initial difficulties
this game offers an abount of depth and complexity, I haven´t seen anywhere
(hey, I am playing planets 4 for what, 5 years or so now. No game off the
shelf has kept my interrest for more than half a year.

Feel free to ask additional questions. As the saying goes, there are no
stupid questions, only stupid answers.


See you around, somewhere in the galaxy

Ralph Hoenig, Germany



"joerg k" <snuggel2@blackcats.de> schrieb
> Hiya!
>
> I am very new in playing vp4 ( first game / turn 2 ) .
>
>
> But what structures to build first.
>
> I tried :
>
> + 10 Factories = got + 10.
> + 60 Farms = got + 4.
> + 5 Cities = got + 2.
> + 1 Gover = got none.
>
>
> In which order is build?
> Factories first?
>
>
> What to do?
> Only building farms in the first turn?
>
>
> Sorry I am a newbie and a little bit confused about what was build and
> what not :-(
>
>
> Greetings
> Joerg

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

joerg k <snuggel2@blackcats.de> writes
>Hiya!
>
>I am very new in playing vp4 ( first game / turn 2 ) .
>
>
>But what structures to build first.
>
>I tried :
>
>+ 10 Factories = got + 10.
>+ 60 Farms = got + 4.
>+ 5 Cities = got + 2.
>+ 1 Gover = got none.
>
>
>In which order is build?
>Factories first?

Factories and farms first. I'm surprised you got 2 cities too.
--
Paul Honigmann

 

[gary]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

joerg k wrote:
> Hiya!
>
> I am very new in playing vp4 ( first game / turn 2 ) .
>
>
> But what structures to build first.
>
> I tried :
>
> + 10 Factories = got + 10.
> + 60 Farms = got + 4.
> + 5 Cities = got + 2.
> + 1 Gover = got none.
>
>
> In which order is build?
> Factories first?
>
>
> What to do?
> Only building farms in the first turn?
>
>
> Sorry I am a newbie and a little bit confused about what was build and
> what not :-(
>
>
> Greetings
> Joerg


Are you sure that you had enough money and supplies to build them all.
The game will let you order things that you can't afford. It put them in
a queue and builds them when you have the required money and supplies.
It will also let you order things that you don't have the Tech Level to
build, and only build them when you finally get the Tech. Since it
removes the money and supplies when you order and not when you build it
is important when you have limited amounts of either to not order more
than you can afford. Especially since having money sat around 'waiting
to be used' means that you can't transfer it to the Galactic Bank or use
it to build ships or launch pods.

The lack of farms could be due to a lack of colonists, you require 1000
cols per farm and it won't let you build them if you can't run them
(though they don't disappear if you remove cols below what you need).

For the rest, as the others said. Plus things are built in two stages.
First it builds a small number of things (I can't remember what exactly
but it's something like 5 factories, 5 farms, 1 city, etc) then later it
goes back and builds everything else that you can afford. And I don't
know the order for either set of builds or whether it uses the same
order for each.

 

[Magik]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

Something important to note is that all bases that go through
Master.exe (to create a game) will have their factory setting to 100
instead of 10,000, which means that even if you have build 500
factories the first turn then the 2nd turn you will have only produced
100 supplies. So if you are in a game that was generated using the
standard Master settings then all homeworlds will start like this and
if it is scripted using multiple starting bases then each base will
have this limitation.

BTW, any new bases that you colonize will be set to 10,000 to start.
The only time that you want to change this is when you want to produce
supplies, just not that many (to save money).

Magik

 

[nameless]

Archived from groups: alt.games.vgaplanets4 (More info?)

Well all bases going through master.exe have different default settings
for many structures, including PSP,Gov Centers etc., than other bases.
And it is also worth to notion that bases which get a building
destroyed and then rebuild will have the settings they had at the time
the building got destroyed- ie. an enemy destroys a Drac owned Gov
Center (so it is turned on), but fails to destroy the base, and the
Drac rebuilds it thereafter means that he does not have to switch the
Gov Center on as it already is...
Or if you build a PSP on your HW it is switched 'on' as it would be if
you had one on turn one (on your HW), all other bases (the ones not
going through master.exe) build thereafter have it as default set on
'off'.

And IMO that is something that should be changed, either have all bases
have the same default values or have the players set the default values
even if the buildings are not yet build. This behaviour is not
intuitive and especially not if not mentioned exactly in the help
files, which it should be if it is not changed.

Magik wrote:
> Something important to note is that all bases that go through
> Master.exe (to create a game) will have their factory setting to 100
> instead of 10,000, which means that even if you have build 500
> factories the first turn then the 2nd turn you will have only produced
> 100 supplies. So if you are in a game that was generated using the
> standard Master settings then all homeworlds will start like this and
> if it is scripted using multiple starting bases then each base will
> have this limitation.
>
> BTW, any new bases that you colonize will be set to 10,000 to start.
> The only time that you want to change this is when you want to produce
> supplies, just not that many (to save money).
>
> Magik