Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » How to play a -f race?
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| Re: How to play a -f race? |
Tue, 11 February 2003 15:58   |
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 Verker |
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Messages: 99
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| FurFuznel wrote on Tue, 11 February 2003 20:25 |
Any suggestions for someone who has never tried one before?
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Can't resist 
I'll assume you really play disabled factories (5/25/5/4g). There's some approaches I'd call hybrid but others call -f: you play them like -f, but they still can build a few or expensive factories. But that is a special case I will not address here.
Obviously, you'll keep an eye on popgrowth since you can't maximize resources by building factories (no you *really* don't build any). Other than design issues (19% growth, 1/1000 RPC, 1imm or TT, 3.5 cheap tech), it is vital to maximize popgrowth *everywhere* - not only on the HW and breeders - throughout the game. You do not maximize resources (that would mean all your pop is on the ground), you are maximizing popgrowth.
That will often mean you keep a lot of colonists orbiting, especially so when playing IS. A -f IS is a special case per se, I'll try and stick to general -f rules for the moment.
You have to attack ASAP, don't hesitate. A -f looking for an ally for 20-30 turns has alrady lost. Go after everything (world) you can get and shoot for your weakest neighbour. Your advantage is, that you can build ships flat out, while that will not hurt your growth. Your enemy, when attacked early, will have to hurt his own economy, if he wants to compete. He will hesitate. You'll kill him only if you don't.
Ofc that isn't too popular, diplomacy wise. That is why a -f has to keep goodies for trade (PRT specific or penscanners being the most popular choices, since mining robots are too costly to build and renouncing OBRM hurts your popgrowth too much) in order to buy himself an ally at the right time.
Popular or not, you have to get at least twice the worlds the average HG will get. Ofc that will mean you'll also sit on a lot of minerals. In my personal opinion, most -f races take too little mines: 10/3/10 is most popular, but that's slow. I prefer 13-15, while the latter is more like for ITs missile heavy fleet mix (or IS increased costs), 13 being more WM like. Mineral distribution is another important issue. You'll want to assure, every little world with a dock can build DDs or FFs or whatever you're using flat out. Don't "waste" resources by letting them go without having enough minerals to turn them into shipbuilding.
I tend to use an automatic queue of up to 10 mines, 1 max TF or sumsuch. That way, I'll get the minerals I need and worlds improove slowly, while enough resources are available for early research and shipbuilding.
Another advantage of being -f is flexibility. For a HG/HP race, planets (and its factories) cannot run away when attacked That is why they tend to build defenses and massive stations. You don't, not at all. You spare these resources and minerals to keep up in shipbuilding. Your stations only serve as stargates and you always have enough (fast) freighters ready to evacuate your pop, if packets or bombers get too close (playing scorched earth). Since good intelligence comes handy here, keeping penscanners fits with the diplomatic ideas above.
From time to time, when you are making an effort to overwhelm someones ship production, you may consider to ground all your pop, renouncing growth for a few turns, but maximizing your production in that time. Especially for IS, you should choose that points wisely, since in freighter growth is also lost. OTOH, IS can easily get a maximum planetary production which is HG like, by overpopulating its production centers. Browse google archives about how many colonists procuce additional resources (I remember something like 2.5 times of your max pop, but that could be wrong).
On the ship design side, you'll rely on a beam heavy fleet mix. Ramscoops, RS and eventually CE help a lot here, as does ISB for building light shielded CCs everywhere over your empire. Ofc, your first neighbour eating attack force will rather consist of DDs and FFs, than of CCs. Don't worry too much about tech: especially in the early game, where others have to build factories, you won'
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| Re: How to play a -f race? |
Tue, 11 February 2003 17:01 |
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must say that -F has a huge research advantage, that is my favorite advantage (over fast rabid wombat hordes) Playing in a duel with Dooms against not so Doomy ships. If only I could build more of the blasted things. I think I will be out economized, its too late in the game for -F to continue having a competitive economy.
Email me as ----jeffimix@----yahoo.com----
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| Re: How to play a -f race? |
Sat, 15 February 2003 11:10 |
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When I play -F i play IT - this is only cuz i'm tired of MM.
Basic rules I stick to that have allowed me to get the BB benchmark by 2461....
1. Never let the pop over 25% - as soon as you get to 25% keep it there by each year exporting the orbiting population.
2. Build gates before ANYTHING. A space dock (or orbital fort if you're cheap) with a stargate is primary goal, once in place transporting colonists is easy - don't waste time building mines, just take the population from (insert name of a 25% full planet here) and colonise a planet with enough minerals to build what you need. The reason for this is that mineral concentration means nothing now... since you can gate what you need or build mines later.
3. NEVER build a factory - I mean 4 factorys with a -F is equivalent to 1% terraform... which gives the better return?
4. Terraform like crazy - the closer to 100% the better.
Just a little point here about -F races vs other races.....
Everyone points out -F gets outproduced dead easy... true. But consider that if an average planet is say 40% value and your race grows at 20% you're got an 8% increase in your resources every year until you run out of room. This is assuming both a low average value AND a low amount of room.
A factory using race can grow it's economy quick when established... I mean I've had 25k turn to 27k at peak growth in the late 2440's no probs. But if you take your average 25k by 2450 race and see how quickly the resources peak and low low they do so it's quite worrying. A properly managed -F will have 4x the resources at LEAST when peaked out population - and at 25% capacity across your entire empire and an empire with lets say for arguments sake 50k of resources... a growth of between 5% and 20% aint half bad.
-F peak lower than +F races.... but consider for a moement that -F don't need as much support to grow, they have no need for geranium.
I think the BIGGEST advantage of -F is lack of dependancy.
They need no Geranium
They don't rely on small numbers of high producers
They are less dependant on 1 or 2 planets early on
They don't NEED an ally.
But then I'm fairly new to -F......
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Jason Cawley has some great articles on the newsgroup about fleet size and make up for an -f. His approach was 3 fleets of 50-60 CCs (65-80 frigates) and two bomber/pop drop fleets. This should be doable by 2435 or at least the 1st fleet done and the second close to completion. little planets that can't complete ships in a year add to your research pool. Bigger planets top off the little guys and start pouring out your horde. If at all possible even as early as 2415-20 your destroyers should be tying up someones space lanes and trying to take out their starbase. A normal race can't build factories and warships that early on. You slow them down, cripple their ramp and beat them to death with your horde. Not, of course, that I would, Ever, find such an approach attractive (look of sweet, utter and angelic innocence) 
.
