Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » When to build up defense?
| When to build up defense? |
Wed, 31 March 2004 19:28  |
|
 Carn |
 | Officer Cadet 4th Year |
Messages: 284
Registered: May 2003 | |
|
I`m just a beginner about to start my second PBEM game, so please forgive me, if my questions are stupid.
Since I have little experience in real games, I do not know, when to expect what sort of attacks.
In race designing this is a problem, since just testbedding a race for resources or BBs in 2450 is useless, if someone attacks with cruisers in 2440, so I think its better in testbedding to additionally reach certain techs at certain times and build certain amount of mine layers at certain times. Testbedding against AI is useless, because AI attacks are great help in getting techs (e.g. cruisers with jammers, super BC, tech 12 engines and ALPHAs coming in packs of 3-10 every turn - no human could be that stupid).
In playing my lack of knowledge is a problem, because weapon tech only aids in giving terraform, while prop gives terraform and faster engine and gates(with con),con gives better hulls and gates, bio gives excellent terraform (only with TT) and elec gives at least better scanning, meaning finding greens faster(with pen scans), having better diplomacy through better information and earlier spotting of attack fleets.
I conclude that with peace loving neighbours, one would research little or no weapons, since other techs aid growing.
My insights are further limited by my inability to perform well with a -f race. Since these are just the likely candidates to make early attacks, I cannot testbed what such attacks would look like.
I already think that it is good to start building mine layers early, maybe about 2425, since mines are never out of date. If one has some scouts out, that might give 1-2 years of time to prepare against surprise attacks, while mine fields will give an additional 2-4 years, so one would have 3-6 years to research needed weap, build forts or fleets and move them to keep the enemy from harming important worlds. Since building and moving takes at least 2 years only 1-4 years can be used on developing missing techs - not enough to get blasters from nothing, one should always develop a little weap, even if neighbours swear eternal friendship.
To get further with my thoughts, it would be nice if someone experienced (especially in making early attacks with -f races) could give advice on the following points (consider ~ 300 LY distance between starting position and dense universe):
1. When to expect first pop drop attacks?
2. When to expect attacks to disrupt transportation (no bombers)? Which designs will be used?
3. When to expect full attacks? Which designs?
4. At what time mine laying should start to discourage aggressive neighbours?
5. How long is warning time with good placement of scouts and mine fields, with average scouting and fields, against a good player (bad scouting and mine fields probably gives 0 year warning)?
6. Are there berserker-WMs out there, who start building phaser DDs on turn 2 and toss a dice to determine the neighbour they attack? Is there something to do about it execept being SD?
7. Does it help to shoot down early scouts to show what weapons you have at least and keep information from neighbours to discourage them?
I expect that some or all of these questions might be stupid, since the answer might be very setting,PRT or LRT dependant, to complicated to post or to understand or a matter of personal style, so feel free only to answer those you like to answer.
Thanks for your help,
Carn
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Current Time: Thu May 23 14:03:40 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
