Re: More NRD: Las Planchas

>PRT:  Inner-Strength
>1 resource generated per 2500 colonists

Hmmm.  This leads to:

The Sockmuppets
"Inner-Strength"
48 pts. left over on mineral concentrations

LRT's:  NRSE, CE, OBRM, NAS, LSP, RS

Grav     0.24 g to 4.16 g
Temp     -136 C to 136 C
Rad     16 mR to 84 mR

10% growth rate [5% in-transit]
1 in 3 hab to start, all planets eventually colonizable with +/- 15%
terraforming.

1 resource generated per 2500 colonists

Factories     15/5/25
1 less kt germanium box checked

Mines     15/3/21

Technology all expensive
Start at Tech 3 box not checked

Notes:
No total terraforming means get to Bio 4 for minelayers and terraforming +/-
15%, Bio 6 for the DNA Scanner and then leave Biotech alone [effectively only 5
areas to research].
No ramscoops or fuel mizer means using the normal engines including the Warp 5
cheapee at the start, which with fuel transports doesn't work out all that
different from the fuel mizer, plus heavy use of the Interspace Engine for war,
luckily all engines are half the listed cost in resources and minerals with
cheap engines LRT.
Only basic remote mining means that during exigencies that require mining
fleets for the Sockmuppets, the mining fleet built will be inefficient; luckily
you will have plenty of resources and minerals to spend building such a fleet,
don't rule it out.  Plus ten percent to max population limit per planet is
mostly for the 100% home green planet and its maximal mines and factories
settings; combination of effect means the extra 16% bonus concentrations for
the home planet really make a huge difference in germanium production.
No advanced scanners for the combination of effect with tachyon detectors.
No space docks means not too much with a minerals and resources heavy design,
it's an extra amount of planning to build a full starbase on a colony planet
early, but with lots of resources and minerals at home you can gate in newly
built ships from the home starbase.  The Sockmuppets are really designed to
colonize very closely in to home, including red planets early, having a very
tight defined border [as opposed to many Interstellar Traveller designs or
designs with scanty hab].
Low starting population does make a difference with this design; one might
sacrifice one or two mines built per ten thousand colonists in order to get the
+3/7 population bonus at the start, or if you are sure that the germ mineral
concentration of the home planets of the universe is greater than 50 or so, you
can reduce the 48 points left over spent on mineral concentrations.  The idea
is to generate all the expansion phase minerals from the home planet itself
with this design.
Regenerating shields for battle, still looks like a very good idea.
No recycling or alchemy, bummer, a design for better details-oriented players. 
The population model for Inner-Strength should work for excess resource
production, if you get that far with your Sockmuppet empire.
Habitability, with planets typically rated less than 35% if green to start, is
fine fine fine, more than enough greens to choose from for early colonization,
and if the planet is lowly rated the Sockmuppet design has enough factories and
mines operated per 10,000 colonists to still be useful even if you have to cart
in population to make the low-rated green grow, and if there are only 50 or 100
thousand there to operate mines and factories.
Growth rate at 10% is the lowest probably you might ever want to try with even
a hyper-producer of any PRT, though with diplomacy I am confident of at least
survival at a growth rate setting of 6% [having tested with a tri-immune hab IS
design, though I moved to growth at 10% as more playable or more optimal], and
having a low growth rate actually subtracts in combination of effect of
in-transit growth for the Inner-Strength PRT.  That's not necessarily too bad
as the in-transit breeding effect is really distinctive for the player -- what
occurs is that only when the population in your freighters is significantly
large will a low-growth rated design be able to take advantage of in-transit
breeding.  That is, only after the empire is really established [yr 2450] and
the player can turn to marine invasion and breeding for pop drops as a war
strategy.  During the early game, the in-transit breeding is so low as to be
ignorable, no in-head calculations and less micromanagement therefore; merely
set your cargo hold to have any amount of empty space.  A ploos, as the french
might say.  I found myself taking the 27,500 colonists generated with my home
planet obrm-nitized every turn and putting them on two medium freighters rated
at 420 kt or 42,000 colonist capacity for export to new vistas.  No MM there,
yes!  Put it on the board!  Coo!  At 6% growth the colonists number 16,000 per
turn from the 275,000 colonists on the home planet, but at 6% growth a design
takes a few _decades_ longer to reach than with 10% growth.
1 in 3 hab is huge.
Factories cost 5 to build is fabulous!  With a 1 resource per 2500 colonist
ratio, this setting acts to mitigate, and then when factory compound takes off,
there's then no real difference over a 100 year ramp period of 1 resource per
700 colonists setting with factories costing 9 or 10 [or no factories at all]
to 1 per 2500 and factories cost 5.  But I'm forced also to make mine cost
inexpensive, as inexpensive as possible in fact, and I'd very seriously
considered mines cost 2.  When you take a planet, either by colonization or
capture, you really first build new mines on et, according to my own Stars!
experience, and with 1 resource per 2500 setting you need mines to be
inexpensive if you are to fight a lot.
Tech 3 box not checked because even all expensive tech is so cheap with hyper
producer designs, especially to get to tech three in all six fields.  In the
testbed, I'd grow resource production until the home planet itself was over
1100 per turn and then raise tech from zero levels to by the end of 2420 [the
game starts at 2400] where I'd have met all my expansion tech needs [about tech
6 or 4 depending on each field].
The important quirk to remember is to colonize one planet at a time, building
or adding population to 50,000 residents or so and thus getting quicker maximum
mines and factories before really looking to augment another planet as another
colony project.  One can then at the same time lay seeds of santa marias which
start a colony at population 2500, and which have all of one resource to build
a mine in three years or a factory in 4 or 5 years, but which aren't
inefficient as having a ton of colonies all started at 12,000 or 13,000
colonistas.  These seeded planets then become available for real colony
build-up.  Other designs, especially the HE designs work differently, where the
seed colonies can be unkempt, either augmenting by adding population or leaving
alone, doesn't matter because of comparative vectors of development in other
population centers.  Notable about the Sockmuppets is that it is better to have
one colony of 50,000 colonists to start than 20 colonies of 2,500 colonists
because of the 1 per 2500 ratio in combination with factories cost 5 and cheap
mines.

Where does the in-transit quirk come into play?  The Sockmuppets grab 20 or
thirty planets in all of their *space*, within their borders, colonize each one
and develop the greens, *then* look to build excess population in breeder
freighters.  Because their space is so small, the IS micromanagement problem as
a player is reduced, and because they're so quick and tight, like Adrianna Lima
posing in a VS catalog, the game development of the Sockmuppets plays as cute
as Lima looks in her portfolio show-off-big-tits.

hth




Mark Tiangco '/~'