Switching Capital Planets - a possible strategy

from Sins Forums

Hi guys, I'm totally new to Sins, just picked it up a few days ago so I'm a total noob. However, I'd still like to ask some questions about a possible viable strategy that I haven't seen mentioned on here.

Okay, the basic premise is this. Imagine you have a solar system in which you own a bunch of planets. Your homeworld is amongst these planets. Now, your homeworld may not be in the best place relative to all these other planets. It might be at the end of a line, for example, so you probably have a lower credit income than you could have in a different area. So you decide to change your homeworld to a more central location, probably to a central Terran planet to maximise credit income. You also happen to have a few Broadcast Centres/Temples of Communion/Media Hubs about the place.

Now, if you look at a graph of your credit income after the game, you'll notice that it starts at a plateau, begins to climb, peaks and then returns to a plateau which is lower or higher than the original (depending on whether the new location is better than the old). This peak is what we want to make use of. Because of the culture spreading structures, the new homeworld and surrounding planets will get culture faster on the way up to max allegiance faster than the old homeworld and surrounding planets will lose culture on their way down to max allegiance. This is what causes the peak. Eventually the income plateaus out as everything stabilises. (in fact, metal and crystal will peak as well, just not as much)

I haven't worked out the exact numbers on this because there are quite a number of factors to take into account such as number of planets, number of broadcast centres, race (this strat is especially viable for the Advent with Unity,etc). So I'm not sure when the benefits of jumping your Capital Planet back and forth for that peak outweigh the costs of doing so. But I'm pretty sure there's a stage where they do. However, even carrying out this technique at the most optimal stage you won't make too much more than the cost of changing Capital Planets. Still, a profit's a profit.

Apologies for the long-winded post, further apologies if the strategy is completely non-viable and even futher apologies if the topic has come up before!

strategy
4,631 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

First of all I doubt Capital ships effects will do anything to slow the loss of culture on your planets when it is do to a homeworld change. They only help repel enemy culture. Otherwise it could work in theory. It might not be worth the time to macro though if you're heavily engaged in combat though.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Ah, you are suggesting that you keep changing the capital planet back and forth.  Interesting.

The bottom line is, it's viable if you can profit from it, and it isn't if you can't.  You'd have to make more in income from the new peak than you pay to switch.  Do some tests and report back.

TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

The problem with doing this is that the upgrade to change capital location is extremely expensive.  While it can pay off (less for tax income, more for extractor income) it sounds extremely unlikely that you'd get much money's worth out of changing capitals repeatedly.  Later on when you can actually afford to do something like this, you should be moving to a trade-driven economy (which is not affected by loyalty) so I'd strongly suspect you'll get much better value from just building some extra trade ports.

Capital ships will not slow the rate of loyalty loss.  They halt enemy culture, but that's an entirely different effect.  Moreover, caps cost 3000 a piece (not counting that expensive crew research upgrade).  You're much better off putting that kind of cash into trade ports, which is income with no strings attached.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I'm not sure where you guys got the idea that Capital ships are relevant here. They're not, so don't worry about them.

I think you're probably right Darvin, trade ports are a better investment. Perhaps if you have no available logistics slots and aren't going to be able to expand your empire any time soon, you could use this strategy for a little extra boost. I'll see if I can run some numbers on this to come to a conclusive result.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Moving your capital once or twice on a large map may help a bit, but as said the upgrade is very expensive.  You'd have to have a really large empire before the alligence shifts would work out in your favour.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I've found it is a good idea to make sure that the capital planet is as close to equidistant to the rest of the planets as possible and, on a map with multiple stars, try to have your capital planet as close to the star as possible so as to optimize culture allegences in colonies of other solar systems. Any change of location of capital planet should keep these items in mind.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I've a quick question.  When you change your capitol, does the old capitol reatain the extra population?  (At least, I think the capitol gets extra population.)  Or does it revert to a regular Terran world?  I've never checked it, as I usually only change it when I intend to abandon it.

If you do keep it, however, then wouldn't it be a good strat to at some point, have every planet be a capitol, one at a time, to get peak population status?

-Twilight Storm

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Twilight_Storm, reply 7
I've a quick question.  When you change your capitol, does the old capitol reatain the extra population?  (At least, I think the capitol gets extra population.)  Or does it revert to a regular Terran world?  I've never checked it, as I usually only change it when I intend to abandon it.

If you do keep it, however, then wouldn't it be a good strat to at some point, have every planet be a capitol, one at a time, to get peak population status?

-Twilight Storm
End of Twilight_Storm's quote

Capital planets get extra credit income, not population. The only difference between the TerranHome planet and a Terran planet is that the Home planet never has planet bonuses and always has two metal and one craytal asteroids.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Hmm...Guess they forsaw this little strat...clever game designers.

I'd have just checked myself, but my laptop is kaput right now, and that's where I have Sins installed.

-Twilight Storm