help with Zenith trader

[TheMachineIsSentient]

I'm having trouble posting...

I bought this zenith power generator from a zenith trader on my home planet, but it is stuck at 1% building time. What am I doing wrong? I am using the latest prerelease patch.

[keith.lamothe]

In the screenshot it looks like your metal has bottomed out, so it doesn't have enough resources to build.

Does that make sense?

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Yes. I'm an idiot, thanks.

[keith.lamothe]

We've all done it

The ZPG has a huge cost, and we had to decrease the build time (and thus increase the cost/second) quite a lot due to some precision bugs from the longer build time, so it takes quite an economy just to keep the thing building at 100%.  You can pause and resume as necessary if you don't quite have the inflow.

The other problem is that it makes waves against that planet a lot bigger, so gotta be real careful where you put it.

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Yes, I'm playing right now and I thought I would be really clever and try to build it right off the bat at my home planet, since the Zenith trader was so kind to stop by early. I realize I have totally put a giant target on my back at an early stage of the game with no economy to support this.


Uh..reset button..much better.

[keith.lamothe]

It can be a great early gambit if you can clear your homeworld borders quickly while AI progress is low (though not if you have a Backdoor hacker, that would be excruciating), but I'd definitely call it "for advanced players" in that case

[snrub_guy]

I usually skip the ZPG until later on, for if I start cranking out high energy cost ships, but pick up (and pause until I have resources) an ion cannon and/or counterspy. The increased waves of the ZPG make this a bit too much of a hassle in comparison.

[Animal]

In my first game, which was also an 8-starting-planet game, I planted all 8 available ZPG in one of my frontline homeworlds.

8-fold wave size! Huzzah! 

[Voodoomancer]

In my first game, which was also an 8-starting-planet game, I planted all 8 available ZPG in one of my frontline homeworlds.

8-fold wave size! Huzzah! 

Stacking wave multipliers whee!
_{(this I realized after building a Spacetime manip on a planet with a captured grav drill, and getting a 1000 ship wave shortly thereafter)}