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Game Over - Remarks Fri, 20 February 2004 02:50 Go to next message
zoid is currently offline zoid

 
Ensign

Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002
Location: Murray, KY - USA
Alright, with the last turn generated I'm willing to concede.

Stardazer has pretty much decimated my battlefleets and is gaining momentum, while I'm losing ground and will have a hard time recovering with Stardazer on the offensive with a respectable fleet, and me pretty much starting over, fleet-wise.

Good game, you guys. For a while there (and not long ago), I thought we were gonna take this one. The emergence of Stardazers nubians set me back on my heels but I still figured I would take back the initiative soon. Then he got the battle nexus, and it was all downhill from there.

Many thanks to my (mostly unseen) ally quietly supporting me through the whole game - I'd have never even had a moment of glory in this game without the Han's contributions of tech and pen-scanners - the first Sivxi-Turkey buildup at and around King probably would have got me before I could respond without his gifts. Thanks again, Wayne, for putting up with all my mistakes along the way. (You all have NO IDEA how patient he's been with me!)

So now tell me if I've been guessing right...

Sivxi is -F IT and it was his job to provide the early muscle for the team, while the slower Turkeys matured. Obviously later he dropped into a completely supportive role as chaff-builder and probably a significant role in tech research. The Turkeys are HP IT, designed to take the reins of power later in the game (in the once-thought unlikely event that the game lasted to a "late-game" stage). That's what I've been thinking.

As for me, once again I didn't take into consideration all of game parameters when I designed my race, but it might not have made any difference in my choice anyways. Fortunately I pretty much had my heart set on trying the SD race, and I generally play HG because I can't do anything else (except 3I-HE). So that's what I did. The race has outstanding economy settings, but I found the lack of pen scanners almost crippling. Despite very nice mine settings I've been struggling with short mineral supplies from early building of minelayers, which I gave a very high priority to almost from the beginning (turn 10 at the latest, IIRC), and mineral poor planets in my area. As you know I resisted all diplomatic efforts and attempted to reserve (by virtue of my minefields) as much of the crowded map for myself and my ally as possible with the suspicion that EVERYONE else was playing a -F model. The early minelaying and unwillingness to be a reasonable neighbor may be responsible for both my early survival and an exacerbated mineral shortfall, and was certainly a huge contributing factor to an unusually slow maturity considering the powerful economy settings of this race. All things considered I'm not sure the early concentration on minelayers was the right thing, but I think it was and I'd do it again under the same situations, probably.

I have to say I think I'd have done better and the game may (or may not) have turned out differently if not for my recent lack of interest and laziness. I lost all my fleets in the last few turns rather carelessly against Stardazers well-applied tactics making the best use of his designs. I couldn't figure out how to counter them:
1) minesweepers I could hardly find, and if I could then my ship either couldn't catch the darn things or couldn't kill them.
2) Shorter range torp ships stayed out of firing range of my chaff, shooting only the faster moving (and chaff-dependent) beamers.
3) Simple tech advantage. He made wonderfully good use of the battle nexus to break me in the few turns he had it and I didn't. I would have had it next turn thanks to my ally, but too late as my entire fleet has been decimated by my ill-considered, hurried (and futile) deployments to counter his 15-point attack, and the mineral scrap needed to rebuild a fleet lost. First time I ever had electronics be the death of me. I survived the "first-nubians" advantage, but the "first-nexus" advantage I couldn't counter.

Once, I had intended to pull everything out of harms way and scrap the old ships for badly needed minerals to build the next fleet when tech was available, but the pressure of Stardazers advances was too much - he was doing too much damage too fast and I couldn't sit back and take it. I wanted to slow him. His fleets looked possible to kill, so I tried them, but I became too lazy and lacked the interest in the end to battletest first. Even if I had he was becoming quite creative in the end tactically, and it may not have made a difference for me.

And he made my minefields absolutely useless. Evil or Very Mad I may have been able to counter that, but damn if it he didn't make it difficult. Too difficult to be bothered with the never-ending assault on them and the always-changing tactics employed by him.

Well fought, Stardazer. It looked like to me that you learned a lot between the beginning of the game, and the end. As for me, I learned nothing from all of this because I'm an old fart whose tired of learning. Rolling Eyes There sure was a lot I COULD have learned.



I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Confused Ummm, sure! Nod I do FREESTYLE math.

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Re: Game Over - Remarks Fri, 20 February 2004 13:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
FurFuznel is currently offline FurFuznel

 
Lt. Junior Grade
Stars! Nova developer
Stars! Nova developer

Messages: 437
Registered: November 2002
Location: New Brunswick, Canada
Well, as it seems that the game is officially over, I will let Ron know that he can shut down the game page. Thank you one and all for playing in this game. My apologies that I was not more active as a host.

I look forward to playing against some of you in the future.

FurFuznel



Shadallark <==> FurFuznel
Mental anguish is for those who choose to think - FurFuznel
running Mac OS X 10.6.7

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Re: Game Over - Remarks Fri, 20 February 2004 16:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Star Daze is currently offline Star Daze

 
Senior Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 86
Registered: November 2002
Location: Seattle, WA or thereabout...
Thanks to all who stayed with the game. As Zoid has pointed out, I sure did learn a lot during this game. New idea

Thoughts:
- Working with my partner to take out the Trader's secondary HW early. This decision wasn't easy. We had to sacrifice econ, research, and minerals on what could have easily backfired. I think this was the first on that teams decision to resign. I also believe we couldn't have stood against them without the Zoid/Han/Turkey/Sivxi alliance (short though it was).

- Relief that the partnerships in the SE resigned so I had room to expand without having to go West into the Zoid minefields.

- I was really pleased with how even our two partnerships were. And yes, about mid-game I thought I was doing pretty good. Then in quick sucession, we lost Yank, Walla Walla, Hoof & Mouth, McCarren... and then came the battle at Moonbeam. I testbedded and figured by stripping the shields off Zoid's beamers they would become more attractive and my missle ships would eat them up. But to my chagrin, I learned a hard lesson about collodial chaff and attractiveness (I had testbedded with regular chaff). My fleet was decimated. It was at this point I really thought it was the beginning of the end. I poured almost everything into research to get W26/C26 with just a little shipbuilding to provide a holding action.

- The SMLs were really tough to counter. I finally used a combination of three strategies: 1) sneak up close with a cloaked ship then engage, 2) send about 20 individual ships at them and hope at least one gets thru the minefield, and 3) try to anticipate where an SML would move to, pre-position a ship, then have it intercept (hoping the SML moved that year).

- The Zoid Martyr and B52s Banned ship designs: Hated them. Too many times I was left with a big fleet orbiting, but with all my bombers destroyed. I tried developing a first shot ARM BB to destroy them before they fired, but if he brought chaff also, they were no good. After seeing one thread on SAH, I almost started making freightor chaff. Hmmm? Maybe next time.

- As far as race designs, you pretty much nailed it except for one thing. I consider my race a hybrid. 1/1000 resources like an HG, but sacrificed hab for pretty good factory settings. Towards the end, my partner had too much real life stuff going on to really participate and asked me if I wanted a replacement. Instead we put the Sivxi into a total support role making chaff, mine layers, pen scanning ships, and mining ships. It wasn't great, but it was good.

- I never saw too much of the Han, but was always worried about their cloaked ships attacking lonely outposts. I was just about to build some Peerless nubians (at a huge G cost) just because of them.

- The pen scan ships from my partner were a **huge** help in making decisions on fleet movements, battle order settings, etc.

- Pop-drop tech trading with my partner was helpful, but mid-game I started pulling away in weapons & construction. Finally, I realized what was happening and started building scrappers, but I should have started doing it earlier.

- I agree with Zoid. He made some bad fleet movements these last couple of years. Some of the battles I should have won, but some of them I shouldn't have. But it was getting tough to do my turns; 2-3 hours on average.

- I've also learned more about the statement I saw "never be enemies with an SD". So frustating to make advances into your territory and then when I get there, getting cut off from my nearest starbase so no reinforcements or retreat. Minefields in my territory were hardly worth bothering about since I was IT.

- Minerals were also a big problem for me the last 10 years. I was constantly shifting them around. I just started a new line of ships in the last few years to make the most of the my mineral distribution. They aren't the best ships and they never saw combat, but like I've seen before "quantity has a quality all of its own".

Once again, thanks to all of you who stuck with it. It was a blast.

-Star Daze

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Re: Game Over - Remarks Wed, 25 February 2004 11:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
freakyboy is currently offline freakyboy

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 583
Registered: November 2002
Location: Where the clowns can't re...

The first major decision in the game was what to do about the neighbours.

The assault on the X secondary world was both the best and worst decision we made. It helped the defenses by removing a major transport node into the heart of what did become our empire - on the other hand it also invoked the wrath of a beast.

Without the hinderance caused by the Zoid, no doubt the game would have been lost to all.

The drop outs did seem to ruin the game for a while - the fighting over the deserted scraps was more even than I thought, the traders land was easily Zoids, but the time it took to conquer the lands gave our alliance time to expand south virtually unopposed. By the end of the pickings section 2 sides had been firmly set - the East and the West.

The war itself wasn't as spread as it should have been. To me that was the biggest mistake made by the Han/Zoid alliance. The Zoid were attacking strongly in a single point (once they'd picked off the edges where we were weakest), the Han should have been hunting deep inside our territory - I guess they mave have been, but I never saw anything.

I'd be interested in getting a look at your game files (Han and Zoid), maybe even a look at that monster CA that was so quickly out of the starting gates.

The infinity stargate proved to be a wonderful little piece of technology for us - it gave an insight into the Zoid territory that we couldn't get with those minefields of yours.

I was disappointed our little cloaked effort never quite made it through the zoid death trap and was picked off before it reached it's destination.

4 out of 5 for the race profiling of us Zoid. My goal was to get out the blocks and take space, then to provide late game minerals thanks to -F. Time became a major problem for me, which was a real shame. Didn't want to drop out since so much had already gone into the game.

There was a time when I was confident we'd win... then the Zoid BB's came en masse and I changed my mind somewhat... a decision was made to shift to a defensive posture while nubians were researched - a BB battle was pointless as Zoid already had the numerical advantage, as well as a better resource output. Technology seemed to be the answer along with careful battles, the details of those last few turns I missed out on.

Full congratulations to the Zoid/Han. A solid defensive game and a fantastic job of holding back the beast - god only knows you made it difficult for them... I had a hard enough time holding onto what little ground we gained against them before those bear neutrino cruisers came rolling along. of course... biggest thanks to Stardaze for his obvious skill.

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Re: Game Over - Remarks Mon, 01 March 2004 03:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
zoid is currently offline zoid

 
Ensign

Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002
Location: Murray, KY - USA
freakyboy wrote on Wed, 25 February 2004 08:33

I'd be interested in getting a look at your game files (Han and Zoid)....


Password for my race is "holden". Be my guest.



I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math? Confused Ummm, sure! Nod I do FREESTYLE math.

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Re: Game Over - Remarks Sat, 06 March 2004 15:43 Go to previous message
Wayne is currently offline Wayne

 
Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 74
Registered: November 2002
Location: New Zealand
Pass word also holden, see you in some other game.


Wayne

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