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For those of us who get 25k by 50

Fri, 23 March 2007 22:25

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

I was wondering, is the 25k by 50 a benchmark of an average game or a game that just ended up very favorably (several good worlds near a players HW.)

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Sat, 24 March 2007 09:49

velvetthroat57

Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 111
Registered: June 2005

25k by 2450 is a benchmark for when you testbed your race. It is evidence the race is a monster and that you know how to expand properly.

In a real game the same race may or may not attain 25k. It depends a lot on the universe settings and the aggressiveness of your neighbors.

Also the PRT you are playing is significant. The economic PRTs should manage 25k fairly easily even in unfavorable games. The noneconomic ones generally make 25k only if things break their way. (I have made 50k by 2450 several times with IT races and don't think I have ever failed to make the 25k mark with one. On the other hand the last IS race I played only made 23k by 2450 and it had a pretty good draw.)

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Sun, 25 March 2007 02:50

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

How on earth did you manage 50k by 50? I just barely scrapped up 27k, there was potential for more but still.. I'm positive another 23k wasn't in the cards.

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Sun, 25 March 2007 10:33

velvetthroat57

Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 111
Registered: June 2005

I generally play 1 immune HG races. If I am playing IT, I also take radiation as the immunity and then skip IFE/NRSE and rely on the radiating ramscoop to move my people.

The key to the IT resource curve is rapid expansion and pop movement via gates. A frontier colonising mission should consist of 50-60k colonists and enough minerals to make a gate sent at warp 9 with enough booster ships to travel several years at that speed. When they reach their target, they immediately set to work getting up the gate. This should take two years or maybe three.

Once the new gate is queued, your breeder worlds prepare for the new gate by building more colonizers, transports, and boosters. When the gate goes online, you gate in all the new ships along with enough pop and minerals to send new colonizing missions out to continue the expansion. Once those missions are sent, you continue to gate in colonists and fill in the worlds around the new gate and start improving the planets. The result is that most of your people only waste two years in travel. That means you don't lose the resources or pop growth of the colonists in transit for very long compared to space bound races and all of that compounds as they breed and build after being gated.

Eventually, a new gate goes online and the cycle is repeated. If you can make peace with the neighbors long enough to get past them and into the next players territory and you manage your pop well to keep the breeder worlds at 32%, you can end up with 50k by 2450.

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Sun, 25 March 2007 23:39

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

I see... PRG 19%? -T?

That's not too different from what I do.. Gates are top priority. But I think I'll try expanding more first and building up a little later.

Can your race live anywhere? What's it's max resource output?

[Updated on: Sun, 25 March 2007 23:47]

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Mon, 26 March 2007 11:39

velvetthroat57

Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 111
Registered: June 2005

It is certainly easy -T. The first time I played IT, I went with a -T race, grav immune, and 75-95mR radiation band so I could use the ramscoops. (Later it occurred to me that rad immune would allow for more greens plus the IT high starting prop gives good gravity terraforming to begin with.) That race got to 50k in a medium game and I wasn't particularly skilled at the game then. Even so, keeping up in tech was a true pain even with twice the resources.

Since then I tend to play IT with a wide centered temp band, very narrow offset grav band, and rad immune. This will live on 1 in 6 to start and half the worlds with full terraforming.

Beyond that, I generally take weapons and con cheap, rest expensive and spend the rest on minor factory and mine improvements. 10/9/11 and 10/3/12 or thereabouts. That would mean 2300 resources per ideal world.

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Mon, 26 March 2007 15:22

Captain Maim

Lt. Junior Grade

Messages: 492
Registered: March 2003
Location: USA, Mesa, Arizona

Wow. I'll bet tech is hard to keep up with.

I've got one that's got 2 cheap fields, it's got a max resource count of 3080 and 10/3/18 mines, 1 in 7 all centered hab with potential to colonize every world. And after terraforming my worst worlds will come in at ~54% and have an approximate output of 1500.
With 2 cheap tech is fairly hard to keep up with, at least in 4 of the 6 areas.

The only thing I had to settle for was NAS. I'm not a super fan of NAS but as long as I can trade it's hopefully not going to be so bad. NAS should at least help in detecting cloaked ships. At least, I think it should.

I don't think I could stand going back to such low mine settings... Which reminds me, don't you have mineral problems with such low mineral settings? I know last game I played I had problems, something in the range of a 5-10 years of minerals for warships and then I'd be depleted. (I was IT also with very similar mine and factory settings.)

Rule 1: "Pillage, THEN burn!"

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Re: For those of us who get 25k by 50

Mon, 26 March 2007 16:59

velvetthroat57

Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 111
Registered: June 2005

I think you need an immunity to really feel the power of IT and get to 50k by 2450. The key to the whole thing is momentum.

IT has the ability to expand faster than any other race because of the gating ability (and it pays a lot for this). You want to emphasize this not diminish it. Without an immunity though, too many worlds aren't acting as breeders and that kills the compounding effect. The race you are describing can expand just as fast as mine (it is IT) but it is mostly just holding worlds waiting on other worlds to grow pop for them.

The factory/mine settings I have are low for an HG but the habs are broad and with just a little terraforming to grav any small green rapidly becomes a big green and with colonists gating in from elsewhere, it is a breeder in just a few years. This adds to the momentum the IT starts with.

The minerals I get aren't that low since I give up more from the HG factory settings than the mines. Even with only 11 factories operated, I usually stop building even that many on any planet I get after 2440. (Usually by that point my economy is big enough that just playing it in -f style will be more than enough to do all my research and the germ is better used in ship building.) Since I stop building factories and I don't have too much else (mines and terraforming) to do, my momentum in building the economy tranfers rapidly into research momentum.

With decent diplomacy to get NAPs and with luck trading partners, peace can be maintained while this new momentum grinds out the research. Sometimes this fails but many times it works. Before other races have really hit stride, amp nubs are available (even with gorilla shields if necessary).

Then the minerals that have accumulated are turned into warships and battle momentum kicks in. You have unbeatable (intially) armadas and you lay waste to any easy prey you can reach. If you are lucky someone is a slow TT race that has a bunch of small greens he has been diligently improving and you roll over him and get a nice stockpile of minerals. You should be able to conquer at least your nearest neighbors before the momentum dissipates (people farther out get the necessary tech and build armadas of their own) and with the additional worlds your total mines going forward aren't worse than anyone elses -12 mines on 50% more worlds vs 18 mines - and yours deplete slower.

Having said that, in any game I am always on the lookout for an AR to ally with and hope the alien miner comes along. It makes it easier but it isn't necessary.

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