When to create a new zone?

[Theyoungster]

So I've been playing this game again after a few years and I'm really getting into it (although "refocusing" has been the most resent bane of my logistics and I'm still not totally sure how to mitigate it) and I'm wondering - when do you guys create a new zone/how do you judge when and where to do it?

I've played a couple smaller maps and usually I just take their cities and use those are my new zones, but my most recent game started me surrounded by alien minors, which don't seem to have assets/cities. This has led me to need to start my own zones. Not sure I'm doing this right, I'm trying to use colonists to jump start it but the zones are running up private debt realllll quick.

Any ideas?

[vert]

there are penalties applied to assets that are too far from the city of the zone. I forget the exact numbers but if an asset is more than 10 or 15 hexes away you should consider a new zone

[Slippy]

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

So I've been playing this game again after a few years and I'm really getting into it (although "refocusing" has been the most resent bane of my logistics and I'm still not totally sure how to mitigate it)

The way around refocusing is to use logistic injection. Thats a whole other topic (if you google it you should get some answers as its not in the manual) but generally speaking dont build logistic producing assets too close together unless you use logistics injection.

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

and I'm wondering - when do you guys create a new zone/how do you judge when and where to do it?

Just like in your situation - if I dont have any nearby zones to conqueror I will probably think about building a new zone. Getting a newly built zone to be self sustaining is a bit of a task so its not something you can take lightly (especially early on when you are stretched for resources). In regards where to place it there are few decent general rules:
1) where you want to build production assets (mines/recycling centres mostly) that would be causing the next closest zone admin strain to maintain. A little bit of admin strain is okay but too much is pretty bad.
2) where you would put down a new truck station because your previous public truck station has reached its limit of truck AP. As Vert has said its somewhere in the region of 10-15 depending on if you have dirt/sealed roads. Rail allows you to even further.

There are other reasons (new island zone for the DLC, spamming small zones in order to get the benefits of the 'hidden private economy'/natural pop growth).

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

I've played a couple smaller maps and usually I just take their cities and use those are my new zones, but my most recent game started me surrounded by alien minors, which don't seem to have assets/cities. This has led me to need to start my own zones. Not sure I'm doing this right, I'm trying to use colonists to jump start it but the zones are running up private debt realllll quick.

Some general rules to help set up a new zone:
1. No zone city hex should be reliant on logistic points from an outside source. Build a truck station (or a rail head if its on your rail network and at the end of the line) in it. If you are worried about refocusing then the new zone is too close to another zone in my eyes.
2. Emergency food should be on to start with. This will stop the population running up trader debt buying food. They will probably run up some debt in order to build their first farming asset (some sort of dome/open farmstead) but thats okay. Once you can see the population is self sustaining you can probably turn it off.
3. If you have the funds consider putting into the zones budget as a per turn credit sink. This will speed up the private economy setting themselves up.
4. New zones will have low QOL and workers will probably need a lot of pay to stay reasonably happy. So another credit sink...
5. Dont forget to repaint zone boarders if needed!

New zones do take time to set up correctly and become fully functioning parts of your regime, much in the same way conquered zones can take a while.

[Theyoungster]

I appreciate the help! seems like my general understanding wasn't too far off - basically once the logistical strain of far away assets gets to be too much. Another consideration that I had in the equation however was BPs and IPs, since as far as I can tell (without special assets) you can only increase those with assets built in a city, and obviously only once per city.

Is it worth expanding for that reason, even if the asset strain is tolerable? Or is that a situation where I could be better off expanding so that the asset strain would be less tolerable and make the zone more useful?

Also, regarding refocusing, I was thinking I might be misunderstanding it: Does refocusing affect *all* the logistics coming out of that point? or just the logistics that are coming from another source. I.e., two level 1 truck stations beside each other wouldn't necessarily hinder each other, but they would basically act as a sink for the logistics points that were passing through them.

In short, a truck stop in each city wouldn't be a *bad* idea as long as you're not relying on the logistics points from another truck stop to continue through it?

Either way, thanks so much again for the help, I love these niche games because they bring out the best in those of us who love 'em.

[Slippy]

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

Another consideration that I had in the equation however was BPs and IPs, since as far as I can tell (without special assets) you can only increase those with assets built in a city, and obviously only once per city.

Is it worth expanding for that reason, even if the asset strain is tolerable? Or is that a situation where I could be better off expanding so that the asset strain would be less tolerable and make the zone more useful?

It is true that having lots of small zones does allow you to build lots of level 1 BP offices/industry assets (and maybe even get more private industry assets) but its a bit of a trade off. Firstly, higher level assets (such as level 2 BP offices) are generally more efficient for output vs workers when population is a consideration. Secondly having many small zones will lower your regime civilisation score (due to it being an average of all your zones) which in turn lowers the max level of QOL asset you can build.

It is valid to have lots of small zones to take advantage of 'cheap' level 1 buildings so if you want to try it, go for it!

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

Also, regarding refocusing, I was thinking I might be misunderstanding it: Does refocusing affect *all* the logistics coming out of that point? or just the logistics that are coming from another source. I.e., two level 1 truck stations beside each other wouldn't necessarily hinder each other, but they would basically act as a sink for the logistics points that were passing through them.

Yes - if you had 2 truck stations side by side the truck points going away from each one would be okay but its really inefficient. Example:
Both truck stations produce 800 logistic points. I will call them TSL (left) and TSR (right)
Both truck stations split their logistics points in half to send 400 left and 400 right.
The logistic points that travel through the other truck station are refocused. Refocusing loses you a % of logistic points based on distance already travelled plus a 25% penalty for the first refocus. Lets ignore the first part because maths is hard (and the LP havent moved that far anyway)
This means going left you have 700 (TSL = 400 TSR = 300 (400-25%))
This means going right you have 700 (TSR = 500 TSL= 300 (400-25%))
This isnt great. Instead you could have 1 level 2 truck station that produces 2400 truck points which get split 1200 each way. Much better.

That said....

Originally posted by Theyoungster:

In short, a truck stop in each city wouldn't be a *bad* idea as long as you're not relying on the logistics points from another truck stop to continue through it?

Yes this is the right rule to keep in mind. Once you reach the point where the biggest truck station isnt doing enough its probably time to consider rail (or logistics injection).

Hopefully that was more helpful than not, I know logistics in this game is really hard to learn. At some point it will just 'click' like it did for me.

[OznerpaG]

Bottom display/zone tab, click on the top center city info box (on the capital should say 'regular capital zone')

on the left of the bottom display ('admin: regular capital zone') it shows the admin strain %.

*Admin strain is the balance of all the assets a city has within 6 hexes, in relation to the assets it has outside 6 hexes.* a city zone is never a strict distance of hexes around a city, it's variable

whenever you build new assets outside a city, check admin strain every turn

If admin strain is 1-9% there is no penalty, don't worry about it

Once strain hits 10% your zone Governor will start getting a penalty to all their rolls (-10% penalty @ 10-19% strain)

If your strain is over 10% that means that you need to create a new zone that includes the FURTHEST asset from the old zone. Once you remove that furthest asset, the old zone's strain will go down. You may need to adjust zone size to lower strain to >9%


Where to build new zone? Logistics Oversimplification: dirt roads have a range of 10 road hexes (not 'as the crow flies' hexes) before supply starts to dwindle. 10 road hexes from your truck station you build a supply base*, and 10 road hexes from the *supply base you build another *truck station*, repeat forever
truck station - 10 dirt road hexes - supply base - 10 d-road hexes - truck station


Sealed roads have a range of 15 hexes, so you can either do a truck station every 15 hexes, or:
truck station - 15 sealed road hexes - supply base - 15 s-road hexes - truck station


Railroads have a range of 25 rail hexes, BUT are much simpler to setup: you only build a *Rail Station* at the beginning and a *Rail Head* at the end. If the rail is longer than 25 hexes then you have to build another Rail Station on the 25th rail hex to extend it. You still need truck stations and roads to distribute supply outside of rail hexes since supply doesn't radiate (much) from rail, otherwise anything actually sitting on the rail is fully supplied.
Examples:
Rail Station - up to 25 rail hexes - Rail Head
Rail Station - 25 rail hexes - Rail Station - up to 25 rail hexes - Rail Head
Rail Head - up to 25 rail hexes - Rail Station - up to 25 rail hexes - Rail Head


Build your new zone on one of the new *truck stations* you built while expanding

when you assign a new Governor to a new zone, call them for *zone orders*, rename the city if you like, give it a public budget if you can afford it (75 credits/turn = +3 happiness I believe), make sure emergency food is on (always for all cities), and *Unincorporate the zone*

an *Unincorporated zone* cannot draft recruits or colonists, but it gets a happiness bonus. Once the city is up and running with a steady population and QOL, you can then change it back into a *regular zone*

Nothing is simple in SE, but I did my best to keep this simple lol