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mlaub wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 11:43

I suck at playing AR's, and I can still hit Robo maxi miners at 2425 with cheap con. And that is just limiting myself to 15 planets! All the AR's have grabbed more planets than that initially, as ground pounders can't stop them. Further, I can hit cruisers at 2438, which is Waaaay to early in this game (Xeelee got them in the late 2460's). True, you can't build with much of a weap tech, but that much armor plus obviously good shields AND being able to sling metal willy nilly for a few rounds could be awfully scary combo. I dunno. Seems a bit unbalancing to me. I consider myself a terrible AR player, and if I can hit those set points with 15 planets, I wonder what a real AR expert could do with even more planets! Unless someone one out there can convince me, I am gonna have to say no to the cheap con.

Not much point having cruisers and no minerals. Don't forget those maxi miners cost minerals and resources to build, where other races would already have megatonnes of minerals available for use up by this point (i.e. you described gambling 10mt on the first MT in the last game. Could your AR testbed have even considered that?)

EDIT: hang on what... 'sling metal willy nilly'? You realise Maxi miners are roughly equivalent to 10/6/x mine settings, and cost minerals too. In a universe where the other races probably have settings closer to 15/3/15 or better 'Mineral fountain' is pretty irrelevant (and slow to build) until the universe slips under 30 conc, which isn't until much later.

Not really sure of any way 'fix' them, it's a low-resource total that's really the issue (after they stop expanding, their resource curves are linear, because of resource by sqrt of pop growth.) I suppose getting their targets in con sooner does help that, but that doesn't really seem the right way to fix them.

Maybe give them some extra miners at the game start? Bit of hosting hassle, not sure if it'd help or not.

I'm thinking of trying AR in this game, either way. Largely because I'm iffy about letting myself join a game (I waste so much time on micro...) so maybe shooting myself in the foot by taking a suicidal PRT choice would reduce the 'damage'

[Updated on: Fri, 28 August 2009 02:45]

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Hi!

Dogthinkers wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 07:12

Habs are more important than growth rate to AR, and you can't really afford bi-immunity with 9% without crippling your tech or efficiency settings. I'm not at all sure which is the best option between 6%, 7% and 8% though.

IMO there only smart hab settings for an AR in this game is 3-immune. I did some calcualtion with the bi-immune (grav and rad immune, 46 clicks-wide-centered temp) 8% PGR 10-divisor race and the 3-immune 7% PGR 16-divisor AR.

Since growth and resource output directly depends on the hab, gets the 3-immune BETTER growth than the 8% one, and despite 16-divisior MORE resources than the bi-immune, because it can setle all planets from start (better pop spreading), and those planets are all 100% (no loss due non-optimal hab).

Still the production of minerals is what will kill any AR. Slow tech doubles the tech costs of remotes, and normal con "price" doubles it again. A (weak) "solution" is IMO building Midget miners, but those are horribly inefficient (planetary-mines-cost-10 level, without the price in minerals). If you'd allow ARs to take con cheap, would the game IMO deteriorate in the kill-AR-ASAP game.

Well it seems I got another solution besides "ALL races must be AR ": what if host would require all races must take mines cost 10? That would put all of them in the same regarding production of minerals. OFC the ONLY miner AR could use would also need to be the Midget one (or the con-4 one, if AR would not take ARM).

BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Fri, 28 August 2009 03:14]

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iztok wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 17:05

Still the production of minerals is what will kill any AR. Slow tech doubles the tech costs of remotes, and normal con "price" doubles it again.

And then BET forces you to grab yet another level of con and elec.


Upping mine costs for all races to 10 would solve the problem... But at the cost of making the game setting even slower than they already are... Which is not a good thing IMO, I think I'd rather AR be unplayable than go that route

EDIT: and then another score against AR... If it loses the starting ARM miners and it's coloniser (AR would normally use this immediately) due to the game rules. Really, I think AR just isn't going to fit in this universe, it's a round peg for this square universe.

[Updated on: Fri, 28 August 2009 03:50]

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Dogthinkers wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 17:44

iztok wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 17:05 Still the production of minerals is what will kill any AR. Slow tech doubles the tech costs of remotes, and normal con "price" doubles it again. And then BET forces you to grab yet another level of con and elec. Upping mine costs for all races to 10 would solve the problem... But at the cost of making the game setting even slower than they already are... Which is not a good thing IMO, I think I'd rather AR be unplayable than go that route EDIT: and then another score against AR... If it loses the starting ARM miners and it's coloniser (AR would normally use this immediately) due to the game rules. Really, I think AR just isn't going to fit in this universe, it's a round peg for this square universe.

Not knowledgable enough about AR to know: but does giving them the extra surface minerals so they can automatically build their first x pintas, y remote miners & z transports (together with surface minerals already present) together with the other suggestions make sufficient difference to make them viable?

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Hi!

goober wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 10:07

Not knowledgable enough about AR to know: but does giving them the extra surface minerals so they can automatically build their first x pintas, y remote miners & z transports

It's not the lack of minerals for colony drive what kills AR, esp. not in this low-growth game. It's the lack of minerals for defensive fleets, when colonizing phase of the early game is over. While at turn 50 other races will be mining 500kT of each mineral per turn just on their HWs, will the AR be limited to ~200kT through its whole empire.

For other races it is unfairly easy to build ~50 Beta torp DDs and fling them around killing AR's orbitals. How can the iron-broke AR counter that, without becoming totaly bankrupt?

BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Fri, 28 August 2009 05:28]

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[Updated on: Sun, 30 August 2009 10:29]

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perrindom wrote on Sun, 30 August 2009 14:08

Mark Hewitt wrote on Sun, 30 August 2009 13:13 perrindom wrote on Fri, 28 August 2009 13:01 As a killing-one-neighbour-and-survive-to-end AR in Glacier II Wow, you did that with Const normal and BET?!? I'm impressed. Do tell how. Diplomacy! Agressively winning early skirmishes helped by NAS, and later being lucky to be in a position where others didn't find it worth in the grand scheme to take over my space until late in the game.

Yea, but this can be said for all races. Picking your fights etc, is usually the surest way to win, or lose.

There were several non AR races that died early too. They didn't pick there fights very well, got unlucky, or decided to forgo diplomacy.

Also, you have the rock/paper/scissor effect. A WM destroyed one AR, then got creamed by a SS later for lack of minefields and ungateable ships. Another WM, pushing the early weap advantage and got nuked by a packet slinging IT.

Adversity is part of the game. Per found a way to survive early. I am sure others will too.

Realize tho, it may never be easy to play an AR. Some players fear them, and just want them dead.

-Matt

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[Updated on: Mon, 31 August 2009 18:20]

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