How to play the automations

[Ste4mPunkProgrammer]

I'm getting into the game and I'm trying to figure out how you play the automation race, so far I can gather they are meant to be peaceful, traders that stay isolated in a few systems, getting bonuses from being tightly packed together. Is this correct or am I totally missing the point?

[Sa'kan]

Edit #1: Automatons are best played clustered and have a good livestock, tech within the diplomacy is best too. Just saying it's pointless playing without mods -_-

[Ste4mPunkProgrammer]

Originally posted by The Bureau:

Edit #1: Automatons are best played clustered and have a good livestock, tech within the diplomacy is best too. Just saying it's pointless playing without mods -_-

good livestock? I have no idea what that means, I assume its food production Bonuses?

[MTB-Fritz]

Okay lets take a look at the Automatons.

Their affinity is very nice but not easy to understand. Usually your system has a certain production value available each turn. Lets say it is 200 for this example and you build an improvement worth 150 production and dont queue something else after that. Your regular race will spend the 150 production to build it then wait on orders and the 50 they still have available go to waste for that turn.

Not the Automatons tho. If you keep your systems on "stand-by" meaning you dont select dust or research-convertion you can build up an overproduction value which will increase each turn as long as you dont touch it. What it does is releasing completely on the next work order you give it.

So lets say the same 200 production system stays idle for some time and has an overproduction stack ready. You want to build a ship with a 1000 production value. Normally you d need 5 turns to build it but this system can do it in 2!!!!!

So the affinity acts like a production-charge if you use it correctly (remember...in order to raise the stack you cant select dust or research-convertion)

Having a high population is good for every race but the Automatons are very specialized at it. The whole trait package indicates that this race flrourishes under peace conditions and will skyrocket if its able to make and mantain peace. It is at a disadvantage in war simply because its more limited then other races in the amount of ships it can bind into a fleet.

With this race your priorities should be.....

1. make contact by scouting as fast as possible
2. unlock the diplomacy techs
3. make peace even if it means giving the AI stuff for no return (like "useless" resources)
4. Stabilize your empire and prepare your systems for war (building defenses) because it WILL come

I dont recommend playing the Automatons at higher then easy difficulty if you are not familiar with the game or the race itself. Diplomacy becomes very very hard at higher difficulties.

[Ste4mPunkProgrammer]

Originally posted by MTB-Fritz:

Okay lets take a look at the Automatons.

Their affinity is very nice but not easy to understand. Usually your system has a certain production value available each turn. Lets say it is 200 for this example and you build an improvement worth 150 production and dont queue something else after that. Your regular race will spend the 150 production to build it then wait on orders and the 50 they still have available go to waste for that turn.

Not the Automatons tho. If you keep your systems on "stand-by" meaning you dont select dust or research-convertion you can build up an overproduction value which will increase each turn as long as you dont touch it. What it does is releasing completely on the next work order you give it.

So lets say the same 200 production system stays idle for some time and has an overproduction stack ready. You want to build a ship with a 1000 production value. Normally you d need 5 turns to build it but this system can do it in 2!!!!!

So the affinity acts like a production-charge if you use it correctly (remember...in order to raise the stack you cant select dust or research-convertion)

Having a high population is good for every race but the Automatons are very specialized at it. The whole trait package indicates that this race flrourishes under peace conditions and will skyrocket if its able to make and mantain peace. It is at a disadvantage in war simply because its more limited then other races in the amount of ships it can bind into a fleet.

With this race your priorities should be.....

1. make contact by scouting as fast as possible
2. unlock the diplomacy techs
3. make peace even if it means giving the AI stuff for no return (like "useless" resources)
4. Stabilize your empire and prepare your systems for war (building defenses) because it WILL come

I dont recommend playing the Automatons at higher then easy difficulty if you are not familiar with the game or the race itself. Diplomacy becomes very very hard at higher difficulties.

thanks so much for the info this is very useful information, I dont tend to play without AI so that wont be much of a problem I was about 90% to this on my own so glad to know I was going in the right direction :)

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by MTB-Fritz:

Okay lets take a look at the Automatons.

Their affinity is very nice but not easy to understand. Usually your system has a certain production value available each turn. Lets say it is 200 for this example and you build an improvement worth 150 production and dont queue something else after that. Your regular race will spend the 150 production to build it then wait on orders and the 50 they still have available go to waste for that turn.

Actually, no. Every race gets one turn of "invisible overflow". With the above example, you'd basically have 250 industry the next turn.

Automatons, though, get more turns on top of this; 5 extra turns at first, and an extra 2 later on by unlocking tech[endlessspace.wikia.com]. They also get interest on their stored stacks; 5% at first, and 20% later on with the help of unlocking another tech[endlessspace.wikia.com].

Anybody interested in learning more about Automaton stacks might want to check out this thread[forums.amplitude-studios.com] on the ES forums; specifically, the posts near the end by both super_aardvark and I. Especially super_aardvark's posts - he tested more thoroughly than I did. Caveat lector: it's an old thread, and I don't know if things have changed since then.

Another thing to note about Automatons is that they have some really nice Terran planet-related techs; you get to terraform to terran earlier (though you still need Quadrinix, but the terraform itself is still cheaper) and they get FIDS bonuses to Terran with a faction-specific version of Hydrosequencing[endlessspace.wikia.com].

Limited Teleportation[endlessspace.wikia.com] seems to indicate that you're "supposed to" keep to a small empire, but personally, I'd rather skip it and go for a big one. The bonus can be nice, though, depending on your geo-political situation.

With Orbital Platforms[endlessspace.wikia.com], you can give systems up to +15% bonus to FIDS, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Shield Generator[endlessspace.wikia.com] makes your industry stacks add to a system's defense, can really come in handy.

Overall, Automatons are defensive builders. And though they're more geared towards tall empires (population bonus & bonus for a small empire), they're even better with wide AND tall empires, if the micro doesn't kill you...

[MTB-Fritz]

right then, I wont challenge Elegances explanation and instead gonna hop over to the provided link to educate myself :)

[Elegant Caveman]

Well, you were mostly right, Fritz. Just a small detail off. :)

And about science/dust conversion, super_aardvark has some very interesting things to say:

Originally posted by super_aardvark:

I can confirm that conversion doesn't touch the stack. I was hoping I could stack IP with interest and then convert it all to D/S, but it doesn't work that way. System production gets converted, and the stack gets left alone. This leads to a pretty nice tactic: if you don't have anything you need to build, fill your stack part way (depending on your interest rate and how long you think it'll be until you need to build something). For example, leave production empty for two turns, filling your stack to about half. Then switch to conversion. While you're converting your system output each turn, your stack is earning interest and slowly filling up. This could net you a few turns of free IP by the time you have something to build. I don't know if overproduction gets converted or not.

Note: Further testing has revealed some interaction between the stack and conversion; probably a bug. I'll post my findings later.
EDIT: Here's the post I made in the tech support forum[forums.amplitude-studios.com] (I guess that's where gameplay bugs go too?): . The upshot is that if you're building something in one turn that's going to dip into the stack, you should (if you want to take advantage of this possible exploit) always queue dust or science conversion after it; the turn's industry production seems to get counted twice in this case. If your stack isn't going to be used, or is going to be used up completely, this doesn't take effect.

So stacks don't directly affect conversion, but if your stack isn't full, it'll still accrue interest while you're converting to dust or science. This especially becomes interesting once your interest is up to 20%.

As for the bug he mentions after, no idea if that's been fixed... this is making me tempted to run more tests with post-Disharmony Automatons...

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

I think the automatons are a very interesting race. Micromanagement is key so keeping a small system is quite doable. I like playing in a tiny galaxy (with less systems from map settings) so I will do a one system run. If you get 4 or more planets, you can rock it. Orbital Platform, along with limited teleportation is a great boost to your economy. You can defend with high defense ships and keep out-building the enemy.

It is funny when you have an automaton as enemy as they very often become aggressive.

[MTB-Fritz]

Necro thread :)