At what point does your ability to manage your planets deteriorate?

Ever have a system spanning empire in a PA game with many planets? How many have you successfully managed at a given time? At what point do you feel you are most limited by your ability to pay attention to any 1 spot more than any other limiting factor? At what point does it start to break down and what are your tricks for being able to manage it all?

For me, I like to have 1 Teleporter on each planet I contest control of and number them (0-7 or 6). At around 4-5 planets though I feel thin and stretched. If 3 of those are hotly contested I am constantly occupied.

I suspect the people who voted 4-5 have a difference idea of "effectively" to me.

To me, effectively means winning against at least 1 other opponent who is vying for it's control (or locking it down and keeping it that way if you are alone there)

I went with 4-5 since I can specifically recall doing it. Usually that means:
* Orbital fabber to planet
* Teleporter on planet
* Send through fabrication bots
* Make T1 air
* Make T2 air
* Spam bombers on global patrol
* Use ground army if necessary

That usually is enough to lock down a planet. The only problem is if someone got there 5 minutes ahead of me and did the same thing, in which case I might never get a teleporter down.

Basically managing new planets is usually easy because, at the moment, orbital is so weak, T2 bombers are so strong and it's just so very easy to lock the place down. The only real threat is someone landing on a moon and nuking the planet or vice versa.

There is no option for "0"

Ive tried bringing this point up before... typical response is "you're doing it wrong" and "dont play on that many planets"...... the user interface will need to be a good one so the player can easily execute region/area commands that are also effective.. i personaly dont think that you can as a single human brain manage that many planets without some higher level of automattion exceeding the current capacity of area commands...hopefully we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg for these command types..

I can effectively manage three hotly contested planets and one dormant eco world. I say this because I have actually done it before, on a regular basis. That said: I voted 3.

Sounds pretty standard procedure Slamz, although sometimes I even skip the T2 air stage since T1 is enough to deny a new teleporter usually. The problems start to arise when you have say 4 planets under your control, and you claim a new 1 but that new 1 has say 3 moons, 1 of which you know is occupied. You need to prioritize anti-nukes as well as the above and scout the moons too! All while dealing with your other planets lol

Really depends on planet size. I can manage between 0.2-1 planet(s). Any more than that and I start losing pretty badly.
Still can't get saving camera positions or unit selection to work consistently, not sure why, so I've never really used it.

This poll has a problem in that the topic and the poll itself are asking different questions.

I think no matter how good the UI (and I have faith that something fairly user friendly will in the finished product), it will ALWAYS be mentally taxing to try and effectively run 3+ planets at the same time. I would imagine this would be balanced by the fact that everyone is trying to do the same thing. Thankfully, if you can't handle it, there will be options for single planet systems etc.
I look forward to pushing my multi tasking to the limit in future

How so? If your ability to manage your planets has deteriorated you can no longer effectively manage them

I can just about manage seeding 2 new planets whilst babysitting the main planet (which typically involves careful expansion, not trying to destroy an opponent, eco is required). The goal is to totally control at least one planet, preferably more.

Because someone can manage n, but deteriorates at (n+1).

Fair enough, the question of the poll is the question you should answer in the poll. Where it deteriorates

I agree, it makes it tough to answer the question because I don't know which one to answer by.

Take drink driving for example, your driving deteriorates from the second alcohol enters your system, but the law defines a level whereby you are no longer effectively safe to drive.

If I may ask a follow-up question; how many planets can spectators handle?

Because while I might start fumbling at 3 planets, in a 2v2 or 3v3 that number can double or triple - unless, of course, the distribution of attention gives each of us leeway to heavily micromanage one or two planets at a time. However, I don't know how well spectators/esports casters could handle that.

I think the poll needs adjusting. If the planets are uncontested all you need do is set some fabbers up to take the metal spots, get some air defence up on area patrol and put a some orbital fighters on patrol in orbit. Setting that up doesn't take long so on that basis I can manage loads of planets.

If the planets have active battle fronts on them however its a completely different story. I would personally not attempt to manage active battles on more than 2 planets simultaneously at the moment.

I've never had to fight on more than two, so I wouldn't know.

Generally speaking, the first person to get to a planet gets it in its entirety. Not always, but generally.

I'm a one-planet dude, which is proving to be a problem whenever John decides to run away from me to a moon.