Section 3:
Planets are probably the most
complex part of Quest for Yap. I don’t
suggest you start reading this until you understand the other stuff about ports
and Yap and hydrogen and all that.
Planets serve two purposes. The first is to provide you with an income
source. The second is to protect you
and your ships. Planets are sort of a
way to assemble all of your forces on one front. No matter how many frigates you have, your cogs are just still as
vulnerable. But if you put your cogs
behind a planet, your opponent first has to defeat the defenses. Planets have two types of defenses, shields
and drones. Shields work just like
shields on a ship. You have to pass
them before you can start attacking drones.
Planetary shields regenerate every night. The rate is 1 shield for every 10 shield capacity. So if your planet has room for 10000
shields, 1000 will be generated free every night. This allows you to potentially have massive shields. Drones provide your planet’s firepower. Each drone does 5 damage, and takes 5 to
destroy. Drones do not regenerate, you
must put them on your planet using your ships.
You can use your ships to stock your planet’s shields as well for a
quicker defense.
So how do you get on the planet
behind your defenses? It’s pretty easy.
When you click on a planet that is owned by you or your clan, you will
get to the planet screen with all of the numbers for cash and colonists and
goods. When you see this screen, your
ships are already on the planet (that is, if they were in the fleet of the ship
you used to land on the planet). There
will be a few buttons on the planet screen.
If you click the Planet Surface button, or go to a different page and
then click main, you will find yourself in a sector that looks just like the
main sector, except for there are a couple differences. Instead of saying the sector you are in, it
says “Planet Surface”. This is how you
know you are on the planet. There will
be a link to takeoff from the planet a well.
Taking off costs 1 turn, landing costs 0.
Making money off of planets is
slightly tricky. There are many things
to consider. First I’ll go over
construction.
Construction is VERY
complicated, so pay attention. First,
lets allocate some colonists. Click the
colonist allocation link near the bottom of the planet screen (note I assume
you have a planet). This is where you
can order your colonists to do different things. Unless somebody was already at your planet and moved these
around, all colonists should be set at “Non-Government Employed.” This means they are not employed working in
your mines, foundries, etc. These are
the people you can tax, and these are the people that will build you
buildings. But they aren’t government
employed you say, so why will they build you buildings? Well, some of the colonists will work in the
construction field, and they don’t care if it’s the government or Joe paying
them to build a factory. Now, for every
building you want to build, you’ll need 500 colonists set to Non-Government
Employed. Planets in the game start out
with 500 colonists, and they slowly grow.
But for you to run a sucessful planet, that growth is not enough. You’re
going to need more colonists! Visit the Colonist Pickup in sector #1, fill your
fleet with colonists, and make trips to your planet. The further from #1 your planet is, the longer these trips are, which
is one reason why planets closer to sector #1 are considered more valuable.
Now, once you have your non-gov
employed colonists (I will now be referring to them as “unemployed”) on your planet,
its time to fufill the other two things you need for construction. For one, you need to tell your planet what
to construct. Above the Colonist
Allocation link there will be a link for construction. Click it.
Type how many buildings you want next to the type of building and click
“Add”. Buildings build from the top
down, so if you set up 20 foundries and 25 mines to be built, and you only have
enough colonists for 10 buildings a night, then you’ll have to wait 3 days
until the mines start building. A
better option in this case would be to have 4 foundries and 6 mines, or
something similar.
The final thing you need is
cash. Hey, those unemployed colonists
won’t work for free! Each building you construct requires 5000 cash on the
planet surface. So 10 buildings would
be 50000 cash. The cash MUST BE ON THE
PLANET, it won’t work in your hand.
Once you have all these things set up, construction is ready to
commence! Construction will not take
place until the maint is run, so you have to be patient.
Now, if you want to make money
on planets, you need more than buildings.
But once you have a building, you’re off to a pretty good start. You’ll want to set up your planetary
industry. That is, mines and
foundries(and in the veterans game electronics plants too). All these goods and stuff I mention now are
from the newbie’s game, there are more in vets. Mines produce Iron and Coal.
25 Iron and 20 Coal per mine per maint actually. And foundries make steel, 5 per
foundry. Foundries also require 2 iron
and 1 coal for each steel. Mines and
foundries require colonists to function.
If you’ll remember the colonist allocation, you may recall boxes for “In
Mines” and “In Foundries”. This is
where we’ll be working now. For every
mine, you need 250 colonists set to “In Mines”, and for every foundry, you need
250 colonists set to “In Foundries”.
Colonists working in mines or foundries cannot construct buildings and
cannot be taxed. They also don’t
reproduce (see below). Once you have
your workers allocated, your mines and foundries will produce at the maint
run. The goods will be added to the
planet, and you can take them away if you wish.
Once you have some industry
going, you could try creating armor factories.
They are built the same way as other buildings, and require 250
colonists to operate. Each armor
factory creates 5 armor from 1 steel.
If you have a planet near sector
#1, then you are all set up for making a colonist center capable of making you
100s of millions in a night. It will
take some time to build up, but if your shields and drones hold out, you’re on
your way to having a huge fleet!
How do you do it? Taxes!
You need a LOT of colonists for taxing to be worth a whole lot. 5% tax will pay for your planet’s
construction, but 15% tax will bring you big bucks. The first thing you need is colonists. I suggest you trade early on and get a big fleet of cogs, and
then go to sector #1 to the Colonist Pickup.
Fill your fleet, then go to your planet and click the unload all link
that appears. Not too hard.
Taxing colonists is easy. Simply type in the new tax value you want
next to where the tax is displayed and hit enter or click the button. For every tax % you will make 2 cash per
every colonist. 500 colonists at 15%
tax then is only 15000, which really isnt that much. But 100000 colonists would be 3 million, and 1 million colonists
is 30 million. You need at least a
million colonists to be making big bucks.
Anything less is going to just be chump change because of all the time and
turns you have put into your planet.
Now I’m going to go into a
little strategy mode here and come out of the whole “how-to” thing.. This is how you build up a colonist planet…
Also, the above will be very
hard if the game has been going on a while.. And note that it could possibly be
a week or more before your income passes up a trader’s, and during that time
you’re vulnerable.
Well that’s all I have on planets. I’ll add the vet game numbers here some time..
Planet Levels
Here I will describe the planet
leveling system that indicates the strength of a planet.