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| Re: Game idea: Sparse City |
Sat, 01 June 2013 22:01   |
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Ban OWWs?
it could basically mean a slow res totals game where a lot of tactical decisions need to be made and a lot of importance to gates.
I like the idea..
I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Game idea: Sparse City |
Tue, 04 June 2013 18:47 |
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 skoormit |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama | |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Tue, 04 June 2013 00:03skoormit wrote on Tue, 04 June 2013 05:06My thought was that IFE would be an absolute necessity in a stretched uni. How else are you going to send off those far-flung colony missions?
Past 3 years at Warp 9, the Fuel Mizer starts getting increasingly hard to fuel. The Trans-Galactic Fuel Scoop without IFE uses half as much as the Mizer with the saving - IFE's used for the relative ease of getting Prop 2 compared to Prop 9, not for actually good engines.
Certainly the TGFS is much better than the FM. And it should be, since it is 7 tech levels later. Are you going to research to prop 9 before sending colony fleets more than a year or two away? If not, then you are going to use *some* early game engine on those fleets. The FM is the best early game engine (with the possible exception of the HE's SD) because it makes warp 9 possible without extraordinary amounts of fuel. With IFE, your early fleets use 1/3 as much fuel going warp 9 with the FM compared to non-IFEs using QJ5/LH6 engines.
My thinking is that the advantages of IFE are even more important in a stretched uni than in a normal one, since there are only going to be a few available planets less than 162ly away.
Of course, one could argue perhaps that the points spent on IFE could instead be spent on reducing prop tech cost by one click, and then plan to just suck it up in game and push to prop 9 as fast as possible before sending out distant colony fleets. That approach commits a lot of early resources to prop tech (at the expense of infrastructure) and probably sacrifices a good bit of early pop growth as your HW gets crowded several years before you finish your research. But you'll have those nice pretty prop9 engines very early, and will probably not have to build boosters.
What we need's a few good taters.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Game idea: Sparse City |
Tue, 04 June 2013 20:34 |
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| magic9mushroom |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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It's IMO a better idea to suck it up and throw a bazillion boosters on your RHRS ships for a few turns than to have to throw a bazillion boosters on your FM ships forever. In a normally-spaced uni, you don't generally have to ship pop for the distances that require lots of boosters on the FM, so you can get away without the good scoops.
[Updated on: Tue, 04 June 2013 20:44] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Game idea: Sparse City |
Wed, 05 June 2013 11:01 |
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| skoormit |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama | |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Tue, 04 June 2013 19:34It's IMO a better idea to suck it up and throw a bazillion boosters on your RHRS ships for a few turns than to have to throw a bazillion boosters on your FM ships forever. In a normally-spaced uni, you don't generally have to ship pop for the distances that require lots of boosters on the FM, so you can get away without the good scoops.
Hmm...I'm trying to follow your reasoning but perhaps I'm lost in the rut of my habitual thinking based on normal settings.
I don't think you are saying that FM fleets would need *as many* boosters as RHRS fleets, right? You are saying that in a stretched uni, even FM fleets will need boosters, and if you are going to have to build boosters anyway, the race wizard cost of IFE perhaps outweighs it's usefulness. And I can see your point. When it comes to building boosters early in the game, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound. In my experience the difficult booster-building crunch only lasts a few years, until your first boosters start returning to the HW. As you start recycling boosters each year, you need to build fewer and fewer new ones, until finally you have all the boosters you need in service. With the FM, maybe the most boosters you would build in the early game is 20, while with the RHRS maybe it's 60. So you've bought an expensive LRT to save you from building at most 40 boosters.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by needing to build boosters for FM "forever" but only needing to build them for RHRS "for a few years." My guess is that you are assuming that IFE implies OBRM, and therefore you need FM boosters until you have the TGD at prop9. And with IFE/OBRM one usually waits quite a while before researching prop9. Without IFE or OBRM, you prioritize prop research a bit more since those early engines are really terrible. You get to prop6 quickly so you can start building RHRS ships, and then you don't wait too long before pushing to prop9 for the TGFS (am I the only one who calls that the "Thank God for Fuel Scoops" engine?). Therefore you are only using boosters for a short time span.
But I'm not actually saying that IFE/OBRM seems like a must-have in a stretched uni. I was making that claim about IFE by itself. I'm on the fence about taking OBRM with it. I like the race wizard points and the +10% population capacity, but living without scoops in a stretched uni might be too much of a nuisance.
At any rate, given that there's a reasonable argument to be made that IFE is not a slam-dunk given in a stretched uni, there's no reason to ban it.
Sidenote: I like playing in games that fiddle with some aspect of the usual setup in such a way that you have to re-examine quite a bit of the orthodoxy of race design and play style. It seems like a stretched uni accomplishes that. The Homeless game that is going on is enjoyable in that way as well. Another is the game "Hard Rocks" from several years ago in which all races were "mineless".
What we need's a few good taters.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Game idea: Sparse City |
Wed, 05 June 2013 16:18 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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You will have to build boosters "only for a few years" with the RHRS because a few years later you will have the TGFS, which doesn't need boosters. The TGD and IS-10 are too expensive to mass-produce for freighter fleets.
[Updated on: Wed, 05 June 2013 16:20] Report message to a moderator
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Game idea: Sparse City
