Ringworlds.....kinda suck?

[SaintD]

Initially, like everyone, I was all starry eyed looking at the new ringworlds; they're ridiculous, you can have almost two thousand people on them.

But after playing for a good while now, I've started thinking that they're really just a colossal trap. It's easy to start obsessing over having a ruined ringworld available or being able to take them, or beelining to building them, and that's exactly what I did.

When I started rebuilding and building them, I realised the colossal problems - first, it arrives late enough to make it kind of useless. By the time you can do anything with a ringworld, even just rebuilding a smashed one (so the earliest you could be using it), it will still take WAY too long to grow enough pops to meaningfully fill it up. There's four sections, so only four population growth counters. Yeah, it would cost me crazy amounts of influence, but I can spend the alloys throwing down as many habitats as possible so my pop count explodes - and I can build them so much earlier that that they'll be fully functional and useful at a point where it matters to me.

Second....they're HUGELY limited. Food, research, or energy. While they can provide absolutely silly amounts of each, that only comes after you fill it up with pops, and usually late enough that you don't care anyway. I can just build a specific resource megastructure instead and it'll be more immediately useful. If I go nuts with habitats, I can still fart out piles of raw resources, and have building slots out the butt with which to actually process those resources as well. AND my habitats can, in the right place, give me minerals as well. And I usually play hive minds, normal civs can build Ecumenopoli and make ringworlds even more 'meh'.

True, like I said, habitats will need a ludicrous influence expenditure, but I'd rather do that and get pops growing and producing sooner, rather than ever bothering at all with ringworlds. Later I'll build other megastructures to get huge piles of whatever resource I want.

What do you guys think? Are ringworlds ultimately a basically useless boondoggle?

[ctcc42]

Ringworlds are not just for tall empires. Also they are the most efficent research world option now.

A fully upgraded lab on a standard planet provides +8 researchers at the cost of -2 gas.
A Research district on a ringworld provides +20 researchers at the same cost of -2 gas.

Ringworlds are also a viable option to produce consumer goods. Their Commercial Segments provide +5 Artisans, +10 clerks and + 5 Merchants, at the cost of -2 crystal. This option has to compete with the Industrial Arcology which also consumes -2 crystals but for +10 Artisan Jobs so to make this district the better option you want to make sure your running the trade policy that turns trade value into consumer goods.

The generator and agriculture districts are no longer that apealing now that they consume special resorces, bettter to keep your farmers and technitions on standard worlds.

Ringworlds should not be used without the resettlement policy. When you aquire one of these monsters it becomes a pop dump, and like everything in stellaris, you dont want it (and its acompanying costs) unless your going to use it, so think about going to war.

Do you play on huge galaxies? Have you managed to secure the perfect choke points for your empire? Would taking over your naighbours empire give you a dozen worlds and a horendus number of new chokes to support? Ringworlds are the answer.

Take down you naighbour. Then transplant all his pops off his crappy worlds and onto your newly constructed ringworld. Once the planets he had are depopulated they cease to be a potential source of warscore for your enemies, so no need to bother securing the new space with bastions. You can always re-colonize them later if you need basic resorce districts.

Yes you do typicaly get them too late to need their output. But thats not the real point of them, they are there to allow you to skip fixing the many worlds your going to aquire as you use your end game resorces to clean up the galaxy... or if your a pacafist you can play shuffle pop from your own worlds rather then enabling pop controls.... but i usualy fill them with newly aquired xeno scum.

[mk11]

Playing with Nihilistic Acquisition I was able to quickly fill each segment with one war each as the pops mostly went to the latest completed segment.

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Hopefully they'll eventually introduce more reasons to play the game beyond the year 2350 or so, but right now, that's around when I usually end the game and start a new one.

Agree. They should add some stuff to remedy this. What I can think of:

1)Galactic council. That convenes after the "bigwar" of awakened Stagnant Ascendancies come to a draw (100/100). All races in galaxy divided for lesser and higher and now their survival and wellbeing depends on arbitrary elder races court decisions...
I suspect it could be modded in using the latest artifact system, yet not sure yet.

2)More political trumoil in larger empires at latestage. Like as your empire grows, you should feel like its not your WILL that makes you release sectors as vassals and such, yet NECESSITY. Like with European powers and their colonies in our timeline.
So far too many techs/trads give governing ethics attraction...it shouldn't be that easy to control your empire free populace.
And also Corruption should be a thing, strange thing that its not in game yet

[Azor]

In my ringworlds pops were growing +12/month from immigration from 4 planets and 4 habitats.

[Cylian]

Essentially your arguments are the following:
1: Ringworld needs many pops to produce resources.
2: Habitats are cheaper, accessible earlier, yet also provides many resources.
3: One can build other megastructures (that doesn’t require pops) to produce resources instead of Ringworld.

Let me debunk each of your argument one by one.
1) Ringworld does need many pops, but a normal planet/habitat also need the same amount of pops to produce the same amount of resources. However, a normal planet/habitat adds a ton of empire sprawl, while a ringworld segment that costs 8 admin sprawls can easily outproduce several specialized planets combined in research or credit.
2) It’s not a choice. One can build both habitats and ringworlds. It’s not like building a habitat early game locks you out from constructing a ringworld later. There’s no problem with constructing habitats in the early game and building a Ringworld a bit later. Also, from a research point of view, a ringworld segment, which takes less time to build, produces 4K research. That’s 6 habitats combined. However, 6 habitats take 18k alloys in total, 1200 influence and 30 years to build without perks/edicts, while a ringworld segment takes far less time, influence and alloys to construct.
3) Your argument is correct for most of the resources in the game, but not research. A science nexus provides a total of 900 research with 15% empire-wide percentage bonus for research; while a ringworld segment that takes less time, influence, and alloys to build generates 4K research, which is much more than what a science nexus can generate. Also, from the calculation I did in 2), Ringworld is far superior to habitats too in terms of generating research once players have the perk and technology to build it.

[Nightmyre]

Again - it's a classic "win-more" argument.

By the time you get around to having ringworlds, the game is already over. You're the supreme overlord of the galaxy, everyone is pathetic in comparison, you're pulling in 2k+ per month in resources, and you're on the 10th iteration of your repeatable techs.

The problem with ringworlds are that they are so obscenely powerful that they require it to be gated behind a pile of walls - end-game research, ridiculously high initial costs, etc...

So sure - once you get the ringworld, you're going to dominate. But you weren't going to get that ringworld without already being dominant anyway.

It's the same problem all of the late-game stuff has. By the time you get it, the game's already over. Same applies to all the other megastructures. Same applies to the ecumenopolis.

The reason why habitats see more play, is that they take a small amount of resources to get running. If you were to change the ringworld model to operate the same way, it would probably be far more appreciated.

IE - something like, making the initial cost *way* lower. Have the first segment cost something like 5000, maybe even make it start off as a habitat. Make four connecting habitats, and then have a project to combine them into a ringworld, or something like that.

[Ihateeverybody]

I always used Ring Worlds for the Contraction phase of Empire. Some point Mid game I pick out a nice defenseble location that possess all my necessary resources and start the Ringworld. When I reach the point where I have no new research and several large fleets and max resources I abandon my empire so to speak and lock myself behind 2 or three entry points (yeah I know Jump Drives) and move all my people to the ringworld(s).

Who wants to rule the Universe? Not me.


It's called planning for your retirement. Then I just live life Baby!

If any endgame crisis jumps into my space they won't survive entry (at least that's the plan, never actually had an EGC land in my lap).

[SaintD]

Originally posted by Cylian's:

1) Ringworld does need many pops, but a normal planet/habitat also need the same amount of pops to produce the same amount of resources. However, a normal planet/habitat adds a ton of empire sprawl, while a ringworld segment that costs 8 admin sprawls can easily outproduce several specialized planets combined in research or credit.

The argument isn't efficiency, it's the actual need for it at the moment it becomes available. Habitats will add to your empire at a time in the game when it matters. Ringworlds don't.

2) It’s not a choice. One can build both habitats and ringworlds. It’s not like building a habitat early game locks you out from constructing a ringworld later. There’s no problem with constructing habitats in the early game and building a Ringworld a bit later. Also, from a research point of view, a ringworld segment, which takes less time to build, produces 4K research. That’s 6 habitats combined. However, 6 habitats take 18k alloys in total, 1200 influence and 30 years to build without perks/edicts, while a ringworld segment takes far less time, influence and alloys to construct.

And I used the habitats to get the research to pretty much completely finish all the research by the time I can start dumping into a ringworld.

3) Your argument is correct for most of the resources in the game, but not research. A science nexus provides a total of 900 research with 15% empire-wide percentage bonus for research; while a ringworld segment that takes less time, influence, and alloys to build generates 4K research, which is much more than what a science nexus can generate. Also, from the calculation I did in 2), Ringworld is far superior to habitats too in terms of generating research once players have the perk and technology to build it.

In #1 you argued that ringworlds are better because they're highly efficient with negligible empire sprawl. In #3 you've switched to "ringworld makes more, so it's better" when comparing to the Science Nexus, ignoring the almighty efficiency of the Science Nexus in that regard.

Your entire post is a strawman. You wrote a set of mischaracterizations of my argument, which ACTUALLY centres around all the power of the ringworld being useless because you get it so late that you don't need it (thus making it just a prestige project....in a single player game), and attacked that instead. And then didn't even do it consistently. Like.....wut.

[Shinzor]

with habitats vs ringworlds it comes down to how many planets are in a system for me, if the star system is low on planet/resource count I put a ringworld in the system if they have a large amount of planets/resources then I build habitats around them, Also I go heavy into research and unity so I get them early(at least for a megastructure) normaly unless I am unlucky and the tech does not show up for it

[Xaphnir]

On my current game I'm in the middle of the war in heaven, and I'm taking a ton of habitats that AI empires built. I don't like habitats, and they're also all running a deficit of motes. So I'm dumping all the pops from the habitats to ringworlds that have tons of housing and jobs

They're also a nice alloy dump late game.

[Cryten]

TBH even habitats seem like over investment for such a small gain. Gaining new planets, even the smallest, tend to be better. As such habs and ring world tend to only come into play after the first 70 years. In which case I prefer the ring world as it lets me do better repeatable technology without pushing up the sprawl costs on those repeatables.

Habs only seem useful for me personally when you refuse to go over admin cap levels of tall. Then only when you get quite a few of the admin cap repeatables since a hab can only offer 35-56 housing from 6-8 districts.

In the end my conclusion is I would build a ring world for preparing for the 2300 and 2400 crisis' and habs when I have nothing else to spend influence on. But my way doesnt have to be your way. Thats all cool.

[SaintD]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

On my current game I'm in the middle of the war in heaven, and I'm taking a ton of habitats that AI empires built. I don't like habitats, and they're also all running a deficit of motes. So I'm dumping all the pops from the habitats to ringworlds that have tons of housing and jobs

They're also a nice alloy dump late game.

Thematically I can't argue with the image of an empire undertaking such a ridiculous project as a ringworld entirely to use it as a prison dumping ground for an almost infinite number of slaves and undesirables. I'd watch that movie.

[Schanez]

One important point is, Ringworlds are capable of gathering from the L-Cluster.

If you are going super wide and just push through Empires like candy, there is little point for Ringworlds. They are useful, but you will already have enough planets under your belt to not really need to bother. They are still useful and I would seriously consider building one just to vacate some of the conquered planets. Such a Ring World jumpstart can have massive benefits.

But for every Empire there comes a moment after the early midgame, where you stagnate in terms of population growth and planet development. Conquered worlds have already their own pops and while you can purge them, it is a net loss. Ring Worlds and Habitats are the answer, with Ring Worlds being the superior choice to all the other possible.

[iamoutofnames]

Originally posted by SaintD:

Thematically I can't argue with the image of an empire undertaking such a ridiculous project as a ringworld entirely to use it as a prison dumping ground for an almost infinite number of slaves and undesirables. I'd watch that movie.

Ultimate Battle Royale. I want movie and a game based on that.

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Schanez:

Conquered worlds have already their own pops

Never had such a problem. I wonder why? ....