Any one have the math on this please.

You mean how often to grab ore? I worked out the math once down to a neat little summation, not sure what I did with it...

yeah tpw vs dist from terra vs ore to grab to get best colos/turn

I am also interested if anyone knows the golden distance? For the terra farmer script which is now defunct since Ive been away I used grimies calculations. However I'm curious as to what the best Range of warps vs tpw given a 255hold ship?

http://www.grimytrader.com/UnderGroundTools.cfm

Well that part is easy isn't it? The closer you are the less you spend on fuel and the more cols you grab per round. The magic distance would be adj to terra, laff.

Of course from a safety perspective that's rather dumb. A good rule of thumb would be around 5 hops out, if you're moving your planet in for colo. Just be sure you're ready to defend yourself if someone comes looking.

The cols you grab per round is a simple matter too..
cols grabbed = total holds - [(total hops * 6)+padding]

And since cols per turn is simply cols/tpw+2 you get...
cols per turn = [total holds - [(total hops * 6)+padding]]/(2*TPW+2)

Why +2? Because on a standard run you refuel once and grab cols once. Both taking turns.

Of course that's where the refuelling can be varied to save a small number of turns. If instead of refueling every turn you refuel every other turn, and lets say you're 5 hops out from terra... You'd need 30 ore per run. If you grabbed 60 for 2 runs...

first cols = [total holds - [(total hops * 12)+padding]]/(2*TPW+2)

2nd cols = cols per turn = [total holds - [(total hops * 6)+padding]]/(2*TPW+1)

See the savings in the last one? TPW+1 instead of TPW+2. But at the same time you lose capacity on the first run. This is assuming twarp colo, if you're doing bwarp colo it'd be TPW+3 and TPW+2 respectively.

So we sum them...
Total cols = Sum (X=1...N): (total holds - total hops * 6 * ((N+1)-X))

Where X is the loop, N is the max number of runs you want to run.

And we need to figure the turns... which is a lot easier
TWarp total turns = N*(2*TPW+1)+1
Tpad total turns = N*(TPW+2)+1

So we have (twarp, tpad):
Sum (X=1...N): [(total holds - total hops * 6 * ((N+1)-X))] / N*(2*TPW+1)+1
Sum (X=1...N): [(total holds - total hops * 6 * ((N+1)-X))] / N*(TPW+2)+1

Where N is the number of loops. X is the current idx. TPW is your turns per warp, the rest is self explainatory. Obviously for large N's, the cols per turn would be negative. Also for large hop distances, the same, or for very small hold numbers, ditto.

It would be relatively easy to code this, but I'll leave it to the reader for now...

exactly what i was looking for Sing..TY.

My post is slightly off topic.

As others have mentioned, colonizing essentially boils down to colos/turn.
Assuming ore availability, no L4 planet, twarp ship > 1 tpw, cit beamer is the obvious way to go.

There are a few other tasks that can be accomplished for zero extra turns whilst running colos, which might be of interest to those who play low turn games.

For example, moving ore and/or colos from planet to planet in the sector to be colonized.

That is a good point, I usually make a macro to buy down a port as I'm colonizing.
Buy full holds and then drop some ore/eq on each planet, then colo. If you're going to use the turns, might as well get full use from them.

last I checked, those required.. what were they called... oh ya, turns.

Since grabbing anything from a planet costs turns, you can grab cols while grabbing ore from the same planet and not cost you any more turns. However for the newbs watching... if you grab cols from a planet, then ore from a another or from a port... that col grab is costing you a turn. Unless you're in a 250/255 hold ship you are wasting it.

Same goes for grabbing anything, not just cols. Use the right port and you can buydown the cit's requirements as you colonize, or you can move ore from one planet to another as you go (land, grab full ore, lift, land on 2nd planet, drop remainder, go col).

Of course once the planets are going and have what they need there's not much need to move stuff around, so you might as well colonize as efficiently as possible.

Oso gave a good example of a way to buy ore and other product in a sector, while running colos, which would not require any more turns than solely running colos. There are several other in-sector tasks which can also be accomplished running colos without expending extra turns, which would otherwise cost "oh , ya, turns".


"Neffer drink Cherman beer und zen post about Tradevars"
- Admiral Clausewitz, 1-1-2002.

Sing,

It is largely as you posted, however, there is no reduction in efficiency in terms of colos/turn. It might add a few milliseconds to each cycle, thats it though.

In which way?

If you take from a planet that you're not moving stuff from... then you're grabbing an extra load per. Every time you grab a load you incur a 1 turn penalty when you lift or enter the cit, with a max of 1 turn spent (you can pick up, put back, pick up, put back, but it still costs you one turn). So if you're trying to move org, equ, whatever, from a 3rd planet, that's costing you a turn. Except most colo ships don't have 255 holds, so you're spending a turn for less result.

In the 2nd set, once you have stuff going and you don't need to move org or eq or cols around any more you might as well use your turn to buy ore from the port. You can always use ore for that hungry tpad. In that sense, using your turns on anything else that's not immediately neccessary is probably a waste in the long term.

I quite agree that using turns on anything unnecessary is a waste, be it short, medium or long term. My suggestion as posted, wastes zero turns and at worst, might add a few milliseconds to each colo collection cycle.

You are correct in your assertion that "Land, take, lift, land, drop take, land .. beam/twarp" costs 2 turns; that is elementary, but not how to use coloing to move/buy in sector, as Oso first posted as an example.

well the script the team is working on is a replacement for the varied and sundry scripts we are now using..auto ore buy seem to be an issue to explain to some peeps and other have some problems with their macro's. trying to come up with an auto anyalse for the issue to automate the process for maximum colos/turn given the turns and ore available....one doesnt always have the ore or cash for tpad..and moving planet closer to terra then back to hole uses gas too...so max utilazation of availble resourses is not straight foward. very high turn or unlims is more about max colos/unit of gas instead of colos/turn depending on the colo dump etc.