There is something in particular you should be aware of.

posted on September 2nd, 2009, 1:44 pm

(Yes, that is a modified ST A Final Unity quote)

While playing as the dominion in one match with Mort and Funnystuffpictures, the enevitable poped up. I had too much tri. I could not get rid of it. I did get another moon set though, and I definitly did not need more tritanium. I instead made 4 ketracel white facilities around the moon, and 10 maitenece units. The 2 pictures I have down there were the best example of how fast I got supplies. In the first picture, look at the leftmost blue dot in the right base corner. Then look at the second picture. It is almost by the Tri moon, and is starting see it. That was a constructor. In the time it took that constructor to move that far, I got 299 supplies. I lost the match, (Mort rebuilt a base, I thought he just had 20 norexians ) and ended with 3189 supplies (I have 4 pictures, but these 2 have comparative evidence, and I hit the limit) It took until late game to set up. I just wanted to know if this was meant to happen/ is it ballanced?

( You will also noticed that I only finished one yard, and started another from picture 1 to 2, if you can't see the constructor in the mini map.)

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posted on September 2nd, 2009, 7:08 pm

hmm, indeed, the ketracel synthesizer might be exploitable in some situations, thats why i want to change some stuff on it. but thanks for your posting, just showed my how urgent the situation is i will do something for the next patch

posted on September 2nd, 2009, 8:05 pm

Yikes.

@ Optec

Why change it? After all, the Dominion is the most supply dependent race, and ten Ket-Synthesizers costs a lot.


... But, I could see how that's exploitable in team matches...

posted on September 4th, 2009, 4:06 am

Just put a Max cap of 5  on the Kettra cel white stations.

posted on September 4th, 2009, 11:06 am

Inreally long games I think that chap should rise, per 1 every 20 mins.

posted on September 4th, 2009, 11:08 am

Doesn't each Supply Station effect how fast you can mine other resources?

[DarthThanatos]

posted on September 4th, 2009, 11:34 am

Last edited by DarthThanatos on September 4th, 2009, 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. IIRC, the Dominion Ketracel facility is fed by the miners, and those take turns mining the resource. That means there is always one (and just one) miner collecting while the others wait their turn OR stay in a row, waiting to drop the collected supplies in a facility. It takes time to unload the supplies, too.

Of course, having multiple facilities makes the miners have more unloading points which leads to a huge increase in supplies in a moment but, when the ships have finished unloading, they get back to the mining moon, to collect the supplies one miner at a time. And obviously during that phase, your supply increase may drop to zero, even.

So, if you are willing to do the (huge) investment, you should get the rewards. Same with the Borg and multiple incubation centers. And those are really non-stop refill.

Obviously, you want to put those Ketracel facilities on dedicated moons, or your dilithium/tritanium input WILL suffer.

posted on September 4th, 2009, 4:02 pm

Quite a while ago I mentioned that sticking 4 tet stations on a moon that is dedicated exclusively to that purpose utterly eliminates supply worries.

It costs you mining that moon for it's normal resource, but eliminates one of your biggest problems, and if the game is a long one, saves you a huge amount of di and tri because you never have to buy supplies at the starbase.

posted on September 4th, 2009, 4:42 pm

When playing Dominion, I usually place one Ketracel facility on every moon pair I have, with one supply miner going to the dilithium and one going to the tritanium. With two or three pairs, I usually pile supplies at a decent rythm.

I have yet to test the massive supply extraction on one moon approach.

posted on September 4th, 2009, 5:40 pm

Yeah. IIRC, the Dominion Ketracel facility is fed by the miners, and those take turns mining the resource. That means there is always one (and just one) miner collecting while the others wait their turn OR stay in a row, waiting to drop the collected supplies in a facility. It takes time to unload the supplies, too.

Of course, having multiple facilities makes the miners have more unloading points which leads to a huge increase in supplies in a moment but, when the ships have finished unloading, they get back to the mining moon, to collect the supplies one miner at a time. And obviously during that phase, your supply increase may drop to zero, even.

So, if you are willing to do the (huge) investment, you should get the rewards. Same with the Borg and multiple incubation centers. And those are really non-stop refill.

Obviously, you want to put those Ketracel facilities on dedicated moons, or your dilithium/tritanium input WILL suffer.

Two points I have with that. With the moon sets I had, my Tri never went below 6k once it got there. Hence the being on a Tri moon. Second, miners get 25 supply faster than they mine 25 tri, and mabey even di.  My supply did not stop going up, and went up faster than I usualy see playing even as borg.

Because the 25 mines faster than 25 tri, I even put 2 supply miners on each moon, and never run out of resources on a reasonable level. (That is, what I would have had with 1 per moon)

Considering that it was late game and I had belived both players lost their bases, It was not much of an investment, but true, it would be for early matches, or mabey even any circumstance before that.

In the screenshots, I have lost the upper right corner moons, and so my tri slightly dropped.

The whole thing might even be perfectly ballanced, but I don't know. Thats why I posted it.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 3:23 am

Lol I remember this game. I killed Mrt's base and took a lot of his fleet with me bf I left. You still had base and fleet of ships you built up and yet he still wins somehow. I am tellin ya folks, Mort is like a cockroach, he's relentless and there's no killin him! And he will rebuild and come back to haunt you.  'Nuff said.

[DarthThanatos]

posted on September 8th, 2009, 8:45 am

Last edited by DarthThanatos on September 8th, 2009, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

I tested the mass mining of supplies.

I started as I do normally in Nirvana II map: put a mining colony on every moon and one Ketracel for each pair of dil/tri moons. That gave me two Ketracel facilities providing supplies. I built additional ships (one per facility) so I mined supplies from each moon. Once the basic logistics were established, I concentrated on the base and fleet. I had a steady income of dil, tri and supplies.

Of course, at this stage you consume huge quantities of supplies for research, proto construction and defenses construction, so I hit zero supplies very often and zero either of dil or tri occasionally.

When I had my base fully developed, I started to expand aggressively and wiped out a Borg AI opponent, leaving control of its "square" totally in my hands.

I built four Ketracel facilities on a dil moon, and four more on a tri moon, with no additional miners, just the one ship that comes with the facility. That made a grand total of ten Ketracel facilities providing me supplies.

I observed the Ketracel mining for some time before reaching any conclusions, just watching the supply counter occasionally doesn't provide much information.

Obviously, the increase in supply output was noticeable, but not dramatic. It oscillated (as I expected) depending on the amount of ships unloading supplies. I'd say that it never came to zero, because there always was at least one ship unloading supplies. I'd say my supply input moved between 1 supply per second and 10-12 per second at top speed. Come to think of it, it should be 10, as I had only 10 Ketracel facilities. Keep in mind that with an unloading speed of 1 supply per second, emptying the miner takes 25 seconds, which is a long time in FO.

Another thing I noticed was that the supply gatherers didn't complete a rotation around the moon before becoming full and heading back. It's possible that collecting as low as 25 supplies it's what makes the recollection so fast, and increasing the ships' supply capacity or reducing supply gathering speed might slow down that somewhat. Compared to the harvesting, the unloading of supplies is slow. That is the bottleneck that balances the Ketracel facility.

Besides that, by the time you can build four Ketracel facilities around a moon, your supply demand has drastically reduced, as no research is needed, your defenses only need to be rebuilt when they are destroyed, and basically you build ships and occasionally, a mining facility or two. And if you devote the resources needed for pulling that stunt early in the game, you are weakening yourself in either base or ship construction.

I finished the game with 99999 dil, 99999 tri and about 27k supplies, so, as you can see, the "supply bug" isn't that serious. Oh, obviously, I didn't purchase supplies at the base. Not even one time, even if it would have sped proto construction and research in the early stages of the game.

I see an interesting multiplayer tactic using this, though. The teammates protect the supplies facilities, and the Dominion player provides its allies with huge amounts of supplies in return. Win-win.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 9:09 am

yep, the ketracel synthesizer and its freighters have been designed to be used in addition to normal dilithium and tirtanium harvesting. therefore the mining itself is quite fast (to not delay normal mining operations on that moon to much) but the processing is very slow (that also fits lore-wise to the creation of ketracel). I want to keep it that way, but make mono-cultures a bit less attractive, by changing the way the freighters and the synthesizer are used. Lucky, the changes fit into another feature i was planing for the next patch, so thats perfect

posted on September 8th, 2009, 9:40 am

I don't think that strip mining a moon for supplies needs to be addressed.

As I said, when you are able to do that, usually you have already the enemy on the ropes. And if you do it too early, you are taking a huge gamble that may explode in your face. I'd say the risks and benefits are balanced as it is now.

It's the same with expanding mining operations too much. If you cannot defend them and get caught, you lose big time.

Also, people are not too fond of playing Dominion. Feds, feds, everywhere.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 9:28 pm

Also, people are not too fond of playing Dominion. Feds, feds, everywhere.
[/quote]

In my experience Feds and Dominion are the most popular factions now--if not just for the mixed tech