| AR - Avoiding Iron Crunch |
Thu, 05 June 2008 07:00  |
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 joseph |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 440
Registered: May 2003
Location: Bristol | |
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Someone mentioned Iron crunch with AR and if having an iron crunch at 2411 was a bad thing.
Firstly AR is nothing but iron crunch for the first 30 years
- unless you luck out with a 80+ iron conc on your homeworld and another big green nearby you will hurt for iron.
There are several things you can do to mitigate this.
1. Dont waste iron. Move your pop by medium freighters, then by large freighters, dont use PVT.
2. Recyle iron. Your biggest iron cost early on will be colonisers.
When you colonise a world the MF that drops off some extra pop to it should take all the iron back to your homeworld/nearest building planet.
3. Dont over arm your bases. A simple Obital Fort with a red laser and a shield will deal with any casual attack.
Better to race to W10 (and the range 3 beams) and lose a couple of planets rather than use the iron that could have launched a few more colonies in a futile attempt to stop attacks.
4. Exploit opportunities - in normal circumstances you dont build remote miners until higher tech, but if you find a 90+ iron conc world near your homeworld a few will pay for themselves fairly quickly.
Joseph
"Can burn the land and boil the sea. You cant take the Stars from me"Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR - Avoiding Iron Crunch |
Tue, 10 June 2008 08:44  |
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| Soobie |
 | Officer Cadet 3rd Year |
Messages: 270
Registered: May 2007
Location: Australia | |
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| Quote: |
2. Recyle iron. Your biggest iron cost early on will be colonisers ...
4. Exploit opportunities ...
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Do find trading partners ... do trade for their colonisers ...
[Updated on: Tue, 10 June 2008 08:46] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR - Avoiding Iron Crunch |
Sat, 12 July 2008 01:55 |
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PVT is often too expensive for AR, yeah.
Micromange your logistics. Build exactly the boosters you need. Build designs that will go the distances you need them too. Don't be afraid to waste a design slot on an extra 'short range' freighter that you only build 2 or 3 ships of, for mineral moving in your core.
Colonising and building a dock on a key red might be cheaper than building lots of boosters. You ships don't necessarily even need to stop at the red, it could just be a fuel stop for a set of boosters.
I've even been known to use coloniser hulls as micro freighters - long range, and a good way to move small amounts of population without travel deaths and to recover tiny quantities of minerals at the same time. Great range. Sounds insane I know, but 5 or 10 of these worked WONDERS in a game where I had unusually large distances between my worlds. Not always a good idea that one - specific conditions made it very worthwhile in that particular case.
Recovering minerals from new worlds = vital!
Colonise high iron reds with small populations. Sqrt formulas for both mining and resources means this can pay off nicely if you have a few years iron buffer.
Agreed about avoiding using torps *if you can*. They can be a nice surprise though. It's better to use some beamer ships though - mobile and iron cheaper way to engage ranged ships, but this isn't always possible. Retreat is a valid choice if you think you can recover the ground when you tech up.
Regarding early miners... Can anyone say 'ARM'. 2 free potato bugs, moved very quickly to a nearby high-iron planet... Very tasty. If you want more miners, build them in position if possible, using a dock, so you aren't wasting time and logistics-resource shipping the minerals away to be turned into miners then have to wait for the miners to get back.
[Updated on: Sat, 12 July 2008 01:57] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: AR - Avoiding Iron Crunch |
Sun, 13 July 2008 00:04 |
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| iztok wrote on Sat, 12 July 2008 19:33 |
Hi!
| Dogthinkers wrote on Sat, 12 July 2008 07:55 |
potato bugs...
If you want more miners, build them in position if possible, using a dock
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That's about the only advantage ARM gives until ultra miner far away in the tech tree: 100/250-gateable and dock-buildable robo miner, that's also very crappy (price/performace ratio ~20% worse as the "standard" con-4/elec-2 miner). 
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Which weighs 564+ kt and is a nightmare to get anywhere, unless you only put one miner on it, in which case it becomes less efficient.
I think the advantages of ARM are...
1) 20 free, mobile, mines on year 2400. In one game I took ARM primarily for this reason.
2) The ability to build miners at 2400 (not that you would build that early... But you might want to before c4/el2), that will still be reasonably competitive until con7/el4 (~20% worse build cost efficiency at c4/el2, but getting where you need them several turns faster? To me that means more efficient.)
3) More efficient miners throughout the game (midget-miner hull is the best mining hull, imo. It's cheaper than the mini-miner, and anything bigger than that is not gateable.)
4) Late game miner cost is far more efficient. If you want to go down the mineral fountain route, this makes a huge difference. Even with ARM, I've found muyself dedicating several turns building miners with <2 res cost per mine, to be able to build enough minerals to support my fleetbuilding. Without ARM this would've taken close to twice as long (comparing gateable supers with ultrabugs)
So I see 3 advantages prior to ultras 
Worth the RW points? Depends on the game
Definately helps soften the iron crunch.
...
[Updated on: Sun, 13 July 2008 00:06] Report message to a moderator
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