RE: Planetary budgets

You are right. I have been a Delta Tao groupie for a long while, and have 
floppy disks for Spaceward Ho! back to version 1 for my Mac. Here is a 
breakdown:

A typical newly colonized planet will cost $7500 a turn for maintenance. If 
you move a planet's bar all the way to the left, it still is costing you 
$7500. The bar controls costs above maintenance for terraforming and mining. 
Everything in the game that costs money (terraforming, mining, research) works 
on a law of diminishing returns. $10 a turn over ten turns will yield more 
benefit then $100 over one turn. It is up to you to balance out what is best 
for you.

My usual strategy is to find a second or third planet early in the game that 
can be profitable fairly quickly, and give it roughly 20% of my income. I also 
like to try and leave my research at 20% as well. I usually will not allocate 
any more than 10% to any planet. Another thing, since metal cannot earned, I 
tend to put most of the bar towards mining on every planet once I have a 
couple of profitable planets to carry me. This maximizes my metal, and leaves 
the planet fairly useless to an invader. Once all metal is gone, the bar 
reverts to 100% terraforming. I also try and put as much into savings as 
possible, as it is amazing the damage you can wreak by having a dreadnought 
early in the game (I regularly wipe out a couple of people by building a 1/1 
or 2/1 dreadnought shortly after the game has begun).

--On Friday, April 2, 2004 10:21 AM -0800 Jesse Donaldson 
<[email protected]> wrote:

>
> But... isn't the money allocated to a planet (for terraforming or mining)
> less effective the more you allocate?
>
> For example, I might get 1 metal per dollar spent on mining a planet...
> but then if I allocate $100 to the planet, I might only get 80 metal.
> If I allocate $200, I might only get 140 metal.
>
> I'd always sort of assumed that that was how it worked, but I guess I don't
> really know... have I just been imagining things? :-)  If true, that sort of
> implies that you get "more bang for the buck" by spreading your investments
> around between many plants, rather than investing very heavily in just one.
> I know the ongoing maintenance costs for an unprofitable planet will counter
> some of the inefficiency you incur when investing heavily, but I'd expect to
> pass the breakeven point before investing enough money to really call it
> "heavily".
>
>
> Jesse
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Rhode [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 9:37 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [ho5palm] Planetary budgets
>
> Let me amplify on what Peter said.  The more money you
> waste on an unprofitable planet, the less you have to
> put into good stuff like technology and ships.  It's
> like a mortgage: you want to pay it off as fast as you
> can, but you also have to save some of your cash flow
> for current investments and expenses.
>
> If I have a metal-rich, gravity-poor planet, sometimes
> I'll give it fully 50% of my income.  This often
> happens early in the game, when I can't afford to
> carry a planet with no prospects for profit.
> Likewise, if I have a terraformable planet that I want
> to become profitable quickly, I'll pour a ton of money
> into it.  This is more likely to happen late in the
> game, when my technologies are way ahead.
>
> I like to play a very high-tech game, so usually I
> line up my savings and all my planets on the first
> expense bar (logarithmic) and put the rest into
> technology.  I'd like to hear how some other players
> allocate their money.
>
>



 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ho5palm/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/