Math not obvious regarding Manufacturing and power plants...

its a modifier against the total of all base production

Total MP= {Initial + N Factores (where N=number of factories)} x P where P = total modifier (1.2, 1.5, etc etc)

 

Remember not to multiply by 0.10, but by 1.10 (10% increase); power plants are still best used on heavy production worlds.  Planets with onyl 1-2 factories dont really get the cost/benefit to justify them.  But since the percent modifier grows as the tech grows (fusion is 10%, antimatter and quantum plants are even higher) coupled with passive bonuses from techs and anomalies, it can get pretty strong,.

Thanks, but what's "all production?"  Is it all production on the colony in question?  All production in my galactic civ?  Is it counted before or after bonus tiles?

You see, my confusion stems from the fact that we have a term that has not been explicitly defined...

each power plant modifies all production produced on that planet that it is placed.

 

There are TWO kinds of bonuses, Civilization Wide, and Planetary Only.  However, in the Details Screen they get added together (so you can't tell what is from where)

 

You can see your PASSIVE bonuses by going to the Stats screen.

For example, my custom race with its starting techs started with a 10% passive social production bonus that will be applied to ALL worlds.  My HW, since it has a Moon, gains another 10% PLANETATY only bonus, giving it a starting 20% bonus.  However, Planet II does not have a Moon so it only has a 10% bonus.

Some improvements give a Civ Wide, but most a Planet Only bonus.  Power Plants are a Per Planet bonus.

I should clarify my question further.

What is "N Factories"?  Is it number of factories on the colony in question?

What is "P"?  How does "P" become 1.2, 1.5, etc.?  How does P apply in the question of "regular factories" at 6MP and Power Supply stations at "10%"?

You replied while I was typing my clarification...

But yeah, I think I'm getting it.

So if I have a choice between a power plant at "10%" of planetary production, or just adding another factory, I'm "probably" better off just building another factory.  Until I reach 10 factories or have some other equivalent bonus (bonus manufacturing tiles, race bonus, etc).

In other words, for the power plant to become beneficial and surpass the "break even point," (the MP value of a factory), I have to be sure that the power plant will add more than 6 MPs (given this discussion, "regular" factories).

I will check the stats screen and see if my hunch is correct.

N= the number of factories on the selected planet

P= Its your modifier.  If you have, on your world, a Factory at 6MP, and your Initial Colony at 16MP, you get a grand total of 22MP.  If you were to build a Power Plant, with its 10% bonus, you would get 22MP multiplied by 1.10, for a total of 24

If you had on your world a bonus tile, at 100%, you would get the Initial Colony 16MP, and the factory would produce 12 (6 times 2.0) for a total of 28.  A power plant (10%) on this world would give you a total production 32

 

yes, on smaller worlds, you are better off just building another factory.  But on your big production worlds (worlds that are almost entirely factories), the gain from one power plant (esp if its a Quantum power plant) very much makes it worth it.

For example- a world with Initial Colony (16) + 9 Factories at 6MP each (54) + 5 from Mining (5) would equal 75.  Add a Power Plant at 10% and you would get a total of 82.

Which is a whopping 1 more than adding another factory.

 

And face it, going from 81 to 82 is really no big deal. Less than 1% in the overall scheme of things.

So how does that make it worth it to any extent, unless the Power Plant is the same or cheaper to build than a single factory?

Basically its not really worth it. I never build any powerplants or the structure that comes after it; fusion reactors?.

I wait until I have the tech for Quantum power plant (i think thats what they're called). Then I will build them anywhere that I'd have at least 4 factory type buildings. Other wise another factory will be built. I know that the planet is getting prdoduction for other sources like moons, but I still use the 4 factory as a rule-of-thumb. Keep ion mind too that the maintenance on a Quantum power plant is less than that of an industrial sector.

And they do get applied after bonus tiles are figured in.

Slightly OT here, but the Korath and to a lesser extent, the Dregin have tons of these % manufacturing buildings which aren't upgrades on each other so can be placed individually.  It gets to the point that I'd place about 4 or 5 Slave Canyons on a planet and then the 6 or so % buildings the Korath get.  Maintenance is lower on almost all fronts too.

For me it's a little about timing (planning). I never build a powerplant before it would add more than an additional factory would, but I will sometimes build "marginal" ones because they come on line faster as the next level up. Those Quantuum thingies are sweet, but they take quite a bit to build.

Sometimes, the computer players seem to love powerplants to a fault. I still don't understand why I regularly see worlds that have a starport, a powerplant, and nothing else.

Okay, couple things.

Silver, manufacturing capital/power plants do not apply to mining.  However, moons do-except when the aforementioned structures are present.  Additionally, economic starbases apply, as well as (obviously enough) racial passives.  I've tested this quite thoroughly and it's the same in DA and TA.  Unless my version is bugado, anyway.

Also, Loupdinour makes an extremely valid point regarding TA-the Drengin and Korath are production monsters.

 

More ontopic:

First level power plants aren't worthwhile.  From a build cost and research cost standpoint, second level power plants might be-250 industry to produce versus 400 for third level (quantum), and 20% as compared to 30% increase in production.  The kicker here is the fact that quantum is 5000 RP/TP by itself, whereas the first two levels of power plants total 2000.

For a quantum with normal factories, you gain a benefit by using a power plant when you have one or more factories (16+6=22, 22>20).  For a quantum with industrial sectors, you gain a benefit by using a power plant when you have three or more industrial sectors (16+48=64, 64>54).  For an antimatter (second level) with normal factories, you gain a benefit when you have three or more factories (two doesn't quite cut it-16+12=28, 28<30, but 16+18=34, 34>30).  For an antimatter with industrial sectors, you gain a benefit when you have four industrial sectors or more (16+64=80, 80=80).

As pointed out by CaptainYar (and potentially others), there is also the issue of maintenance.  Additionally, by the time you reach industrial sectors, which cost 400 industry a piece to produce, 450 for a quantum power plant is quite valuable.

With all of this said.  While it is not advisable to build the first level power plant, and circumstances can decide the usage of the second and third levels for you, it is worth noting that the manufacturing capital, even though it has been reduced to 33% from its former 100% (now 50% in DL, but I remember those days...), it is still useful, both late game to turn an otherwise borderline world into a reliable source of ships, and early game for either the homeworld or something large nearby to increase colony ship build quality or capacity.

As an addendum, a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, if you guys can remember back that far, power plants gave 25%, 50%, and 100% with the varying levels.  At that point in time, they were most definitely useful, but also most definitely overpowered as well.

This is sort of off-topic, but I finally found the vague itch that this thread had in my head: all the abstract talk about optimum this and most efficient that is fine and good, but it should never make you adopt an absolute stance re how & when to use powerplants.

In a tight situation, you might stab yourself in the foot by not sucking up the "cost" when the battlefield value of the increased production in a specific location really matters. This is sort of a game analog to use value vs. exchange value in the real world. So, you definitely gain by understanding powerplant math as well as you can, but you can definitely screw up a war if you insist on "governing by the numbers."

The only serious problem I know of with using powerplants strategically is that there is/was a code thing that meant you'd lose the ability to have one if you upgraded a powerplant to some other structure or demolished it. I think it is/was something about the 1-per-planet parameters, but powerplants seem less common all around in TA (at least on my kind of maps), so I'm not sure whether the code still acts like it did back in mid-DA.

Wow, it seems I opened a can of fireworks here!  This is wonderful; having an active discussion on this matter is a great thing.

I need to do some more playtesting, but even so, having an "actual number" on the colony "Summary  Screen" would help, EVEN IF that number is partially or wholly a product of various ability levels, race benefits, government style, good vs. evil, etc.

Just seeing "+10%" doesn't help me much.  Unless, that is, I take the time to go find the number in another status/report screen (which I haven't yet done, but I will do later this week; just didn't have time yesterday after my playtime was up).

I'm not contesting the notion that power plants might not be beneficial early on.  In fact, that might make sense on a deep-space colony.  Nor am I opposed to the idea that a power plant (or any other improvement tile or asset) might have unequal values from colony-to-colony or from one race to another.

I just want it easy to see the actual, discrete number for my race's colonies in the game that I am currently playing.  Sure, put up the percentage; that helps in a macro-economic way.  But by also easily seeing that discrete number, it eases the burden on me, the game-player, better empowering me to make better decisions for that specific game.

Thanks again, everybody.  Additional observations in this area would be very much welcome.

hum well yeah the drengin get up to 80% production bonus to a planet, but it's spread on 4 tiles with 20% bonus per tile
while other races can get a single tile improvement of 30% (not considering trading and stealing of course)
and yeah the korath can get up to 130% production bonus, but spread on a total of 6 tiles (5 true tiles and 1 more stolen by the -1PQ bonus of aul incinerator)
and drengin and korath both have slave canyon as their best factories which are ... less productive by 16.66%
 
So ... if we still keep trading out of question (both because trading can be forbidden at game creation, and also because for trading the latest and greatest techs you need a computer to buy them from, which depending on the situation is not always an easy thing to find)
For a dedicated factory PQ 15 world (14 open tiles) and for the purpose of this research I'll leave out races bonuses and talk only about the tech trees
Korath : ( 10BaseFactory * 7NumberOfFactories + 14InitialColony ) *(1 + 130%ProductionBonus) = 193 "hammers" for a total of 14 tiles used
Drengin : ( 10BaseFactory * 10NumberOfFactories + 14InitialColony ) *(1 + 80%ProductionBonus) = 205 "hammers" for a total of 14 tiles used
Drath : ( 12BaseFactory * 13NumberOfFactories + 14InitialColony ) *(1 + 30%ProductionBonus) = 221 "hammers" for a total of 14 tiles used
 
The break even point where the bonuses are stronger for a drengin production world than another race (like drath) production world is a PQ22 100% production world where the drengin have 1 more hammer (or any other planet with at least 21 tiles dedicated to production and production bonus buildings)
For the Korath it's a PQ19 100% production world where the korath have 1 more hammer
 
Now for a very high production world like a PQ 30 100% dedicated to production (or any other planet with at least 29 tiles dedicated to production) it gives : 538 hammers for korath, 475 hammers for drengin, 455 hammers for others)
 
Of course I only looked at production and production bonus buildings, things may defer once you take into account tech bonuses but then the end result becomes near impredictable since social and military should be calculated differently and since bonuses to one are not equivalent to the other ...

 

And also the running costs of said buildings.  While the Drath do have a 12 base factory it's maintenance is considerably higher than the slave canyon.  This is offset though by the drath having access to the stock market, while the dregin/korath are playing in the mud still in comparison.

BTW whispermill, you may want to edit your post, the background around the text is white.

Although not native to their tech tree, power plants can be a huge benefit to the Thalans. Even if you are below the break-even point in terms of production, the far lower maintenance costs for a power plant make it a viable alternative to adding another factory building.

yup I hate that forum HTML editing instead of other forums "simple tags" which are easier to read and edit

fortunately I managed to "purify" the look of it by cut/paste to a standard notepad (or else there was like 30 background tags to delete manually )

 

Anyway back on subject, the upkeep is a minor thing as far as I'm concerned, it's an advantage early on only...

Though the realy winning point for drengin/korath factories is their really low production cost ... 120 for a slave canyon Vs 400 for an industrial sector

that means a slave canyon is faster and cheaper to build than having the super hive ability with regular industrial sectors...

Must not forget the influence malus though -3% multiplied by the number of factories becomes quite big for production worlds

(one may want to offset this by building embassies for drengin or the totally overkill "Dark Influence" as the korath)

i'm just going to say that from reading all of the posts in these threads that i think you all should run businesses, lol