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Re: Too time consuming?

Tue, 22 August 2006 11:37

Marduk

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Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dayton, OH

I've quit Stars! twice now for time reasons and each time took over a year to come back to it, so I understand how you feel.

A lot of it depends on how you play, and what kind of race you use. Diplomacy of any sort is a tremendous time-waster, if you do it right. Alliances take time to coordinate moves. Play in no-diplomacy or at least no-alliance games. Games that gen a turn every two days or on a regular three or four turn per week schedule are a lot easier to find time for than the one-a-day variety.

The kind of micromanagement you do is a major factor (the biggest for me). But the PRT you choose can go a long way towards reducing the workload. The PRT list reads like a 'most powerful' list, but the reason they are powerful is because they reward effort while requiring little.

For instance, there are two ways to play SD (as far as MM goes). On the one hand, you can invest huge amounts of time optimizing your minefields, laying them out just so for maximum effect and using them for all kinds of offensive activities. Or you can lean on SD's minelaying advantage - build more minelayers than normal and just set most of them up to run around in complicated repeat patterns, laying as they go. Once they're set up, forget about them and concentrate your MM efforts only on the fields at the front(s). As your space grows you occasionally need to add a few more minelayers, but again just set them up and let them run. Sometimes "good enough" is good enough. With your minefield speed advantage, settle for staying at safe speeds or one warp over on the attack and forget about sweeping entirely.

CA (no terraforming to worry about), IT (gates let you ignore a lot of things and putting excess pop into place faster reduces the pain of letting it overcrowd some), and JoaT (save a ton of scout management and cherry-pick your worlds) all let you get away with much less MM.

-f races in general are simpler. Research, build, attack, repeat until finished. One World Wonders are also very good for minimizing the time you spend on a game - with so few systems to worry about, even 'intense micromanagement' is relatively trivial.

Some races need a lot of fine control, at least during their growth stages, to be competitive. Other races benefit from more work but don't really need it. Stick to race designs that do okay without. Any spare time you end up having will help and if you don't have any it's no big deal. Plan your tech advancement order as part of your race design, and try to stick to it during play. That saves time agonizing over (for instance) whether to switch research fields to energy to take advantage of a couple of levels you got in battles, or sticking with con tech to get those BBs out on schedule. Even if they will only have the shields you originally planned on instead of the next model up, just think of it as taking advantage of miniaturization.

Read up on the repeatable orders and route orders. Automate as much as you can. Keeping a bunch of red worlds? Set one transport to automatically top off each set of four or five, and then manually fill that ship from another every 20 or 30 years. Not perfect pop management but you stay pretty close so who cares?

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[Message index]

		Too time consuming? By: PricklyPea on Tue, 22 August 2006 07:17
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Micha on Tue, 22 August 2006 09:39
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Kotk on Tue, 22 August 2006 10:21
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Marduk on Tue, 22 August 2006 11:37
		Re: Too time consuming? By: PricklyPea on Tue, 22 August 2006 12:26
		Re: Too time consuming? By: iztok on Tue, 22 August 2006 13:33
		Re: Too time consuming? By: m.a@stars on Wed, 23 August 2006 04:36
		Re: Too time consuming? By: multilis on Wed, 23 August 2006 06:06
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Kotk on Wed, 23 August 2006 07:12
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Talporr on Thu, 28 September 2006 18:02
		Re: Too time consuming? By: multilis on Fri, 29 September 2006 00:26
		Re: Too time consuming? By: m.a@stars on Sat, 30 September 2006 06:31
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Taka Tuka on Mon, 02 October 2006 08:04
		Re: Too time consuming? By: tgellan on Mon, 02 October 2006 08:41
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Taka Tuka on Tue, 03 October 2006 08:59
		Re: Too time consuming? By: lord_of_chaos on Tue, 03 October 2006 08:15
		Re: Too time consuming? By: ravanrooke on Fri, 06 October 2006 06:47
		Re: Too time consuming? By: wizard on Sat, 07 October 2006 13:40
		Re: Too time consuming? By: mlaub on Sat, 07 October 2006 21:09
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Micha on Mon, 09 October 2006 10:40
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Taka Tuka on Wed, 01 November 2006 19:51
		Re: Too time consuming? By: Coyote on Sun, 08 October 2006 16:57
		Re: Too time consuming? By: wizard on Mon, 09 October 2006 04:21

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