Snathi.. cute but good?

I admittedly am still learning them. but they are pretty powerful.  get scavenge up high & camp out by enemy planets, send their own transports against them.  Play them more like the yor 

I haven't played them in sandbox, but scavenging is pretty powerful. It allows you to keep your manufacturing and research focused on developing your infrastructure, and stealing transports and colony ships is especially useful.

As Tetrasodium said, scavenge their transports.  They come with troops and all.  Use info warfare to keep the starting pop high and quickly build farms before they die off.  

The scavenge ability can keep your economy from going bust.  You just need to use it a lot.  Small and tiny ships give some bcs, but later, you'll be getting medium and large ships.  I have to admit that once you're scavenging every attack, it gets old.  

Don't build the solar power plant.  It's pretty useless.  There's another structure I build in its place, but I can't remember what it is.  I haven't gotten back to GalCiv3 in a while.

They're very slow to reproduce.  In my current game, most of my planets can handle over 100 pop each and some go up to the 160s.  The pop isn't anywhere near that and might not get there before the end of the game. 

I only have 2 planets with labs and both of those only have a few.  They came with high research bonuses.  If they have +50% bonus or less, I ignore it and build it out as if it were any other planet.  I've traded for most of my techs, so labs are kind of redundant for me.

Everyone loves me in my most recent game.  It just comes down to power.  Even the Altarians are close.

 

You get Credits from selling ships ? I never noticed that, I had hoped they did but thought they didnt. Ill have to check it out. Is that when you decommission them?


One suggestion I would make for the scavenger ability, which is kinda off topic from the Snathi, would for Stardock to make the upgraded scavenger techs independent of the Snathi tree. Either just tied to auto upgrade based on tech age or something else.

I was all excited to make a Synthetic and scavenger race AKA the Borg, but then because that forces me to take the Yor tree its kinda sad :'(

I know Stardock have been working at separating specific techs from the tech trees and tying them to the abilities you choose. So hopefully that gets done soon. They want to also separate some of the Yor techs such as synthetic growth projects.

If they end up doing this they could easily, or we could easily mod in some unique techs based off all abilities. I think that would be kinda cool to add variety.

 

Yes, you get credits, and yes, it's when you decommission them. It's not that much money, usually, however.

I wouldn't bother getting population caps anywhere near this without modding the game, certainly not now that Birthing Subsidies is capped to +100% growth; the base population growth rate is only 0.1 per turn, and even with all the bonuses you can toss on it you're only looking at a growth rate of perhaps 0.5 per turn at best. You'd need ~200-1000 turns to fill the planet; such large population caps simply aren't worthwhile. Bit difficult to justify going over perhaps 30 food per planet, really; you're looking at ~60-300 turns to fill the planet. It just takes way too long for populations to grow to the point that all those food structures are useful. Only factions with access to one or more of the assembly projects can reasonably bother with such high population caps; they're the only ones who can get the populations up quickly enough for that not to be just so much wasted space for the entire game.

You get a base synthetic population cap of 15 on every world and you get the basic Assembly project when you pick the Synthetic faction trait. A synthetic faction that isn't using the Yor tree is therefore workable, though the inability to increase the population cap is somewhat problematic and having access to only the basic Assembly project isn't great (and yet still greatly superior to natural population growth on any planet that can put out more than 101 manufacturing per turn, as that translates to a population growth rate of 2 per turn).

You can also make a custom tree by modifing a  base tech tree in the appropriate spots to get synthetic or scavenger flavor.  It's a PITA  to do major changes to a tree (as I am finding out as I work on  the project I am close to finishing) right now without the editor that will hopefully  come down the pike.  But it is doable.  Especially if one isn't insane like I am and adds only one or two branches to a tree.

NO NO NO do not decommission sell them in a trade to the AI

They didn't take birthing subsidies out completely?  It's not even an option in my current game.  I assumed it was removed for everyone.  My pop is only growing at 0.3 per turn.  Maybe it's just the Snathi.  I've been going with the influence projects.

I might have to overbuild those extra farms with factories. Then again, at this point in the game, (mop-up), planet buildout doesn't mean a lot.  Unfortunately, I've only wiped out two races.  Krynn and Yor.  Mop-up will take a while.

I'll eventually get back to that game.  I'm just doing other things ATM.  

 

 

DOH,  Musta had a brain fart, can't believe i never thought of that

They didn't take Birthing Subsidies out completely, they just didn't give the Snathi the tech that unlocks it (Xeno Biology). Why, I don't know, but that's what they did.

And also especially if those branches can simply be copied over from an existing tree with only slight modification.

Probably because birthing subsidies, growth enhancing improvements, growth enhancing planetary doodads & various traded growth enhancing techs stacking together give the even the thalan ridiculously better growth than you can get from assembly & yor.  By not including it, they can gather data on how tweaking it can/should be done without hitting all the other races like the yor got hit in 1.3

No, it really cannot. Birthing Subsidies is capped to +100% growth in the unmodded game as of the current version. Taking the Terran tech tree as an example, there are 4 techs giving +10% growth and 1 tech giving +20% growth for another +60% growth, and two one-per-planet improvements giving growth bonuses, one of which (the Food Distribution Center and upgrades) gives +10% growth per level and the other of which gives up to +150% growth base plus another 5% growth per level. Being generous, we might be able to get both of these things to about level 10. That gives +(100 + 60 + 150 + 100 + 50)% = +460% growth, or a real population growth of 0.1 * (1 + 4.6) = 0.56 per turn. You might be able to get a few more +5% bonuses in there if you find or trade for a bunch of Artocarpus Viriles. Any planet with access to the Assembly project can attain an average population growth rate of 1 per turn (roughly double the reasonably attainable natural growth rate) with merely 50.5 manufacturing output or 2 per turn with 101 manufacturing output, and even if you don't have that manufacturing output you can still rush the project for ~1000 credits, whereas in order to get a +100% growth rate from Birthing Subsidies you need to have a manufacturing output greater than 90 and cannot substitute credits.

The only part about the Assembly line of projects that is worse than natural population growth is that you have to decide whether to build an improvement or grow population, you cannot do both at once. Of course, given that I can nearly max out the planet's base population with just a few rush-purchases of Assembly (~1000 credits) or Fast Assembly (~2000 credits) to significantly boost the planet's initial output, and since my significantly higher attainable time average population growth rate on developed worlds allows me to push out colony ships (or transports) which carry a greater number of people than I'd normally have on such a vessel, I'm not seeing this as much of an issue. Heck, even a planet that has a manufacturing output of only 10 has a time average population growth of 0.2 per turn if it can afford to build Assembly projects instead of improvements, and that's already equivalent to a world with +100% growth working off of natural population growth.

On smaller sized maps, couldn't one start as Snathi, rush weapon tech's first thing, and then proceed to put a gun and tons of engines on starting ships and intercept the early colony spam? This way, you'd end up with a solid military, and a massive number of planets right from the get go.

It'd be even more terrifying on a custom Snathi race. Intuitive so that you can have a gun and better engines on turn 1. Refit your starting scout, rush buy the ships as fast as you can, and continue to do the same. You could have the Adventurous/Fast traits maxed to minimize the need for life support, and could easily throw a constructor or two in to the mix to build starbases for the sake of extending fleet range.

Hell, even if you don't restrict yourself to smaller sized maps, I'm sure this could be made to work regardless as long as you avoid the enemy sensor ship until you can combat it with a combination of yours and some high-speed escorts.

I might have to buy the DLC now...

 

EDIT: Wouldn't having lots of pirates benefit them as well? Don't have to build as many crappy ships if you can just take them from Captain Jack. He never could hold on to his ship very long any way.

 

+25% food breadbasket world +25%growth
+50% food Thin atmosphere world -25% growth
+1 pop floodplain
+1 pop grassland
+2 pop wetland
+3 pop wildgrain
+1 food +2 pop to neighbors MonsatiumDeposit
+5% growth global ArtocarpusViriles_Dec
BreadBasketWorld +25% growthMysteriousNatives neutral choice +10% growth
FoodDistribution +10% growth
XenoIrrigation +25% food, 10% growth
BiomassResequencer +50% food, +10% growth
ColonialHospital +25% growth
XenoMedicalCenter +50% growth
FertilityCenter +100% growth
ReplicationCenter 150% growth
InfiniteShadesOfInfraredEvent +50% growth

 

a lot of those can compound each other, but all of them can stack/compound with these techtreee bonuses. food/pop is included becaiuse I had the list made previously

 

ThalanPlanetarySpecialization2 +10% growth

ThalanAgriculturalMastery2 +20% growth

ThalanXenoBiology +10% growth

ThalanPopulationEnhancement +10% growth

ThalanBioReplication +10% growth

 

Yea they will have a hard time comparing with a fully built industrial world, but with the governor changes, new colonies are no contest to who will have a population & accompanying structures first.

 

 

 

yes significantly since you can put off researching weapons techs while researching other stuff while your fleet of pirate ships bluffs your military power up

a 2/0/0   0/0/0 with only 2 movement and no life is not much of a buff to military power.

Can you retrofit those ships with some basic thrusters?

Yes BUT

1) you would need the tech researched

2) only tiny and some small hulls are out there to capture .... no room to add much & i assume you meant engines not thrusters (big difference)

3) Upgrades cost $$$ and you do not have much of it

You can only have one of these per planet, and in my post I counted the Replication Center (+150% base, +5% per level, assumed level 10 => +200% growth).

You can only have one of these per planet, and it's +10% growth per level, not a flat +10% growth; I assumed level 10, so +100% growth.

You only get one of these, and the second is actually a growth penalty; why you brought it up in a discussion of whose growth is faster I have no idea, as it penalizes natural growth and does nothing to artificial growth.

1. Good luck getting it.

2. Whoop dee doo, I get a whole extra 0.01 population per turn. +10% population growth is not worth taking; the +10% research is better for a research or mixed world, and the +10% influence at least has a real effect.

Adds up to exactly the same +60% growth from techs that I came up with from the Terran tech tree.

None of them compound with one another, as not one single one of these bonuses can multiply any of the others. It's straight additive stacking, and you end up with something around +500% population growth at best, which works out to 0.6 population per turn. This is laughably small by comparison to the attainable population growth rates using even the basic Assembly project; I need merely ~33 manufacturing output to match this.

I will further point out that assuming a level 10 Food Distribution Center (or upgrade thereof) and a level 10 Replication Center incorporates the tile bonuses you've listed. I can get at most 6 adjacent tiles (6 levels if filled with farms, 7 levels if the FDC and RC are adjacent and the other tiles are filled with farms, 8 levels if one of the tiles that is adjacent to both the FDC and RC is filled with Artocarpus Viriles or a Monsatium Deposit and the FDC and RC are adjacent to one another). Given that this requires that I build ~10 farms and have at least a Food Distribution Center on the planet, I'm looking at a minimum of about +50 food on the planet (4 food per farm, 2 from the base value and 2 from being level 4, +25% from having a Food Distribution Center) unless I'm on a planet with a food penalty. At 0.6 population growth per turn, it is going to take ~83 turns for the population to use this food. This is not likely to be worthwhile.

no but it's enough to be better than the guy who has 0/0/0, with a couple tiers of scavenge & you can get a bunch pretty easily too & guard all your planets without wasting time building warships instead of colony ships/constructors.  the first two tiers of scavenge gives you +35%.  For example, I just did a ship graveyard & got a 2.5mil loaded colony . ship & a 4/0/0/  a couple turns later it was repaired & going up against some pirates with my starting survey ship plus a pitrate ship & the two scavenged ships camping the pirate base

the list was mosytly made because I noted it a while back when I was working on ILO (as noted in the post).  while it's true that it would take a long time for a population to use massive food bonuses the thing that makes synthetic pop tough after 1.3 is not being able to stick a colony to 100% industry while building some ,fg yor/assembly meaning the time it takes to build it is quite a bit longer than the ~15-20 turns nonsynthetic races would need for that first 2mil bump in pop

What are you talking about? The wheel is still in the current game version, and fully within the player's control. I don't know about the opt-in, but the patch notes don't mention removing the wheel there, either.