Energy Management

[UesugiKenshin]

Some infrastructure requires considerable energy to operate. It's confusing and counter-intuitive but this is how to do it.

In most cases with advanced tech levels, you can have special planet-wide projects to create vast amounts of energy using wind, charge collectors, geothermal, ocean, etc. You want to build those first but may lack the tech level to take advantage of them.

So in the Omega Alliance's case, you create plasma reactors at various levels of efficiency. Like all projects, multiple resource routes are needed IF the sector lacks local resources. Hundreds of hours are spent doing just that and or terraforming, colonizing, and build mines to exploit those resources.

Click on the sector page, then the manager tab. You will see "energy consumers" and "exceptions".

In most cases, you only need 4 plasma reactors or similar, but will upgrade these and or use planet-wide special energy projects.

Now this is confusing, but the energy units available has a design flaw in calculating how much has been created. Go to the energy page and click on infrastructure like continuum scanners, level 1 shipyards, shield generators, bunkers, communucation grids, etc. With only 4, but always creating higher levels of efficiency, you can just about always generate sufficient energy, it just reports incorrectly as it doesn't properly update when you have more efficient units or ppanet-wide energy projects.

Now go to the manager tab and double click those under energy consumers to the exceptions. Then click on the energy tab and ensure that they are all selected. Generally as you increase in levels of infrastructure, like a continuum scanner to an isolinear scanner, then it automatically does this for you.

Obviously you want everything constantly powered up and not power up a "bunker" only when attacked. It would be ruinous to have expensive shield generators, mines, orbital batteries, and not have them powered up, right?

This ensures that you have adequate energy without overbuilding plasma reactors. It's ruinously expensive to build say 10+ plasma reactors on level 7. It's shockingly EXPENSIVE but no where is this explained well.

Save your money and time.

[UesugiKenshin]

99% of the time, BotE is counter-intuitive when it says enable or disable as compared to software games in the USA. Know that ahead of time as it's the opposite of how it's programmed here.

For the majority of the time, you want to run the manager to allocate labor of the population of the sector. There already is too much micromanaging in BotE. After turn 630+, you likely have totally researched all 14 levels completely. Then you will be modulating labor.

What happens is mining has an arbitrary storage of 125,000 per type (like titanium or deuterium or duranium etc). You no longer require more research,though a mod might have higher levels. (I certainly plan far more)

The BotE manager will prioritize whatever mining is needed as long as food storage is adequate. Food storage is arbitrarily 25,000.

Then you have industry for creating units and starships too. In the manager, you can modulate what percentage is for industry.

That is why some turns to complete a project vary so GREATLY as sometimes the manager tries to allocate labor with entirely different priorities than a human being.

You want to have plenty of energy for long range scans, defenses and SHIPYARDS. When under attack, it's too little too late to manage all this. You want a good 100 energy units extra or MORE just in case. A good military strategist spends the time and effort to more than defend their sectors under their control.

You cannot wage war offensively unless you can protect your own territory first.

You cannot win by only defending in chess. And BotE is exponentially more tactics and strategy than chess.

[UesugiKenshin]

BotE, being primarily a German science fiction software game, is little know to American audiences. So an American player has to overcome that hurdle.

Then what documentation exists is not well organized.

Then much of the game is a mysterious puzzle box.

So only after some thousand hours of play does it make sense.

I way way way overbuilt infrastructure initially as I'm beta testing on a fully maxed out galaxy. The purpose was to prove that BotE is in fact the very best Android strategy game bar none.

How many people would willingly spend 1000 hours doing so? Almost no Americans actually.

In my opinion, millions of Americans and more would play if BotE were not so difficult to fathom.

[UesugiKenshin]

Your typical wargame is about creating infrastructure for thousands and then millions of inhabitants. BotE is about infrastruture for ultimately trillions of inhabitants.

The typical player has no guidelines about how much infrastructure and at what level will service 50 billion people in a single sector.

A galaxy has an array that might be 40 x 40 or 1600 sectors.

Energy not only confounds the process already muddled by resource routing plus terraforming, but also there are additional factors too in a dynamic process.

[UesugiKenshin]

I believe what occurs is a calculation error regarding updating the total energy units generated after higher level plasma reactors and or planet-wide special energy projects. This makes the player presume insufficient energy has been generated with less than six plasma reactors based upon normal increases in infrastructure and largely caused by large requirements with defenses and special race projects and high level research accelerators like long term simulators.

Frankly after acquiring all 14 levels of research, the latter no longer need to be powered up. A modded version would likely have far more levels of research beyond 14 like plausibly 28.

So for the standard player, there is no valid use to keep using hundreds of energy units per sectors needlessly. It is possible higher values keep getting generated for "score calculations" though.

Toggling the energy requiring infrastucture after adding them as "exceptions" in the manager then generally increases the total energy reserve by quite a bit in most cases. After turn 630+ and fully maxed out on tech and with considerable planet-wide special projects, most defenses...even considerable ones, need no more than six plasma reactors and rarely at level 7. Level six and 4 plasma reactors will work 90% of the time. An "ocean" energy project produces a vast reserve of energy.

[UesugiKenshin]

In extensive testing, even at the advanced level, you probably don't ever need more that 6 plasma reactors even if you have the best defenses as long as you do the upgrades and take advantage of whatever planet-wide energy projects exist. 4 works but for crucial sectors, you might need more under full scale withering attacks. You know where they will be. If you were the enemy, which sectors would you attack? Your main starship generators. Loss to plasma reactors during bombardment, might then leave you defenseless. Don't let that occur.

In some cases, I have 2000 extra energy units. Doing so consistently shows a lack of understanding and wasting time or money on construction.

You don't need to build that much surplus. Money is way too tight at first, and BotE should have more money available at the easy and normal level as I am sure lots are using the starbase scrap exploit instead.

Prebuilt save games is so much easy and smarter than trying to struggle through all those hundreds of turns building infrastructure.

[UesugiKenshin]

After continuing to test the energy system, I really don't think you can justfy the Level 7 plasma reactors as the Level 6 more than suffice. Otherwise you might have 1700 extra energy units.

See, some minor alien races are EXTREMELY efficient or it's a function of an energy boost on a sector or it's because you have planet-wide special energy projects.

So why spend 40 turns making Level 7 upgrades? Some take 2 turns so why not have surplus energy? It didn't cost anything but a little time. There isn't any rationale for rushing Level 7 energy producers as it's tremendous expensive.

It looks like it is placeholder in case of a new BotE version that would have higher than Level 14 tech and so far better advanced defenses or very energy dependent deritium transfers. I'm hoping other modders notice this. It would be natural to make much better defenses for turn #800-1200 games where massive fleets come in to try to take out an extremely high level shipyard that poses a threat to the quadrant.

So such mammoth energy would power an advanced device that would have tremendous defenses and offensive abilities. There actually are some minor alien races who have a super starbase technology so that would be something to emulate. Or an extremely powerful offensive/defensive ground based protector like the proverbial Skynet.

Similarly it might confer some extremely powerful empire wide benefit. In GalCiv 2, you had "information war" ie a form of uberpowerful propaganda that caused a mammoth rise in diplomatic power making other races fear you as you seemed godlike. It was called "majesty" and those starbases had a heavy diplomatic influence in the quadrant and used that as a weapon. Such a device would probaby make minor alien races "bend the knee" regarding membership.

[UesugiKenshin]

When you are building an empire from scratch, you don't need to power up everything. You want to power up what most benefits a peace time operation and based on risk assessment. That is based on raiders nearby and near the boundaries and if you have escorts out helping colony ships do terraforming and colonization.

So it's riskier, but you don't need to spend the money and raw materials in resources as maybe you have a project that needs to be completed first.

It's different for me as I have spent nearly two months making turnkey empires. That means I overbuild with redundencies and have everything possible powered up. That is to benefit whomever downloads the advanced save games. Then they don't have to set up the manager functions to stay "powered up" and make sure that there is excess energy and everything has power.

I build even overbuild extremely strong defenses so the sector is "hypervigilant" almost paranoid about the inevitable battle. Redundant long range scanning is powered up as if a system goes "dark" due to bombardment, I don't want them unable to scan and listen. It's overkill, but I end up with millions extra.

[UesugiKenshin]

In my advanced save games, I create as much infrastructure, energy, sector defenses, ships, troops, mining development, and money as possible within 400 to 700 turns. I do this so the game is turnkey so it's much easier for players.

One of the things I do is power that all up. And this requires more energy cells than necessary as they are not as efficient in lower levels. And powering them up so they stay powered up, you enter the manager screen, you double click on the device and it goes to the exception side. Then you look at the energy screen, tap on the infrastructure, and contingent upon sufficient energy available, then it goes from off and colored "red to on and colored green.

But when playing yourself, you are not preparing everything for another player, but trying to be efficient with money, workers, and resources. You build infrastructure as needed based on risk based upon your relationship with hostile foes and proximity to them.

If you power them early, you will make more cells than needed and they are of low efficiency and so it will take too many workers. So instead of them mining, doing scientific research, building intelligence points for internal security, harvesting crops in some manner and or running replicators, powering up infrastructure inefficiently and uselessly as it's early in the game, you have not met any major alien races and there is no risk...yet.

I typically am in the #1 slot in games in sandbox mode so no opponent then also up to 5 opponent with 150 minor races as well. I have played for over 2000 hours while doing documentation during beta testing. But I could actually play better and more efficiently if I wasn't also doing documentation, creating advance save games, writing posts on the forum, and creating a mod for BotE.

[UesugiKenshin]

It sounds like more work, but if you can, your goal is to build a strong outer perimeter of colonial sectors with sector defenses (orbital batteries, shields, and minefields) plus ships and troops, then not as much within as the enemy has to get past that first.

Eventually your interior will be strong too. You will have many ships to deploy and interdict probes from your opponents. You even will attack first to make them fear you based on the level of difficulty.

So every aspect of that affects energy production and the need for the biggest users of energy are probably sector defenses and long range scanning and deritium production, etc. You have standard food production infrastructure that requires power. You have all manner of minor alien race special buildings that requires power too.

What would be great would be learning research coupled with membership of minor races and or conquering them, would allow special buildings across the empire to maximize efficiency as other major and minornraces have better advantages like energy production efficiency. Or special planet projects would always be available like solar, wind, charge collectors, whatever.

I've thought about all of this so much that I'm thinking like a modder and not just enjoying BotE as a player which is a shame as it's an exceptionally well done space strategy 4x off-line turn based game.

[UesugiKenshin]

See I build shields for sectors before any threat even exists as I don't want to be in reaction mode to enemy threats. I respond from turn #1 by building shields for other players in advanced save games so they don't have to. My goals are not the same as your goals.

Your goals are to build shields and and power them up based on risk assessment.

As you terraform, and as you gain in research, then terraforming improves. And if you terraform all planets in a sector at once, then colonize, then maximal infrastructure as presets occur. That's a trick and saves the player money. And as hundreds of turns go by, those require less energy as efficiency improves.

Eventually you build less and have more workers assigned to other tasks and don't have to micromanage in areas like energy creation. Your earliest colonies are likely to be overbuilt with rendundant infrastructure as they were built in earlier turns at lower research levels.

In some cases, you will scrap excessive infrastructure, as if you do not, too many workers are making more than they need to...like energy production. You probably will have too many mines too. At turn #700+, I usually have completed all level 14 research so why do any research anymore? So I scrap them or otherwise that is wastefully inefficient. I don't need research points but might be having them build ships or troops or doing internal security because of crazy levels of sabotage by enemy opponents.

[UesugiKenshin]

When the enemy attacks a sector, they perform bombardment and based on ships in orbit and sector defenses, then may inflict damage on that sector. Thus efficiency lowers and is damaged and I want some levels of redundant infrastructure to deal with that contigency of bombardment loss.

[UesugiKenshin]

"Why is it that when you set the manager to have exceptions and be powered up, in the energy screen it shows far less energy that I have actually made with energy cells and with special planetary energy source and special projects?"

The manager tries to be a human resources manager allocating the division of labor to your citizens in your sector and also doing agriculture, food replications, ocean harvesting, and hunting, then also manages energy production, industrial output, intelligence gathering, research, and mining.

This means it will adjust how many energy cells are applied, or else it produces more energy output than is required.

So when the manager sees you making exceptions, and powering up infrastructure, it then brings more energy cells online by shifting citizens to operate them. That is why suddenly the energy amounts RISE and shows far more energy output.

Be careful as you can build more infrastructure than you need, and the manager will prioritize based on the setting, and on sectors with small total population maximums, you may have more ambition plans that cannot be operated even on the highest, most efficient levels.

That is why I am adding in six levels of tech in the Balancer 2.0 mod as technologically advanced species would develop much higher power output even when the total population maximum is say 8.0 billion. The present 2020 population of just the Earth is an estimated 7.7 billion and it's not a notably large M class planet.

[UesugiKenshin]

Without many new levels of new energy cells with much higher efficiency, then it would be implausible to fully protect a 9 billion populated colonial sector with multiple minefields, shields, and many types of energy weaponry to act in a coordinated offensive and defensive capacity as it would take every citizen solely doing this. As currently configured, it doesn't seem logical.

[UesugiKenshin]

It would require alterations in the source code which generate new galactic maps, but given there are 80 star systems within 20 light years of the Earth, and sectors are 20 light years, then in my opinion, the median population should probably be 90 billion not 30 billion.

Consider the average age of workers and that folks subsequently retire and others are children or being elected, then the actual number of workers is a fraction of 90 billion approaching 30 billion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employm ... tion_ratio

Consider what we have today with automation and robotics. Then consider a future with starships. We wouldn't have billions working for a utility company, right? That is absurd.