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AR has no resources? Thu, 11 February 2016 11:14 Go to next message
Question is currently offline Question

 
Petty Officer 3rd Class

Messages: 48
Registered: February 2007
A HP race with 1 resource per 2500 colonists, 15 resources per factory, factories cost 9 resources to build and 10k colonists can operate 25 factories actually have more points left over than a AR with energy/10 for resources.

Yet a 100% hab planet with 1 million pop and energy level 10 ends up with a grand total of 1k resources from the planet...while the HP equivalent produces more than 4k resources.

How are you supposed to get enough resources? If you go 1/10 energy, you dont have the points for wide hab zones (i went with gravity immune and narrow temperature/radiation, 1 in 10 planets habitable) and i simply do not have enough planets to colonize.

What am i missing? Are you supposed to play this like HE and stay at 1/25 energy so that you have the points for wide hab zones and can spam colonies in the early game?

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Re: AR has no resources? Fri, 12 February 2016 10:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
Commander

Messages: 1068
Registered: August 2005
Location: Berlin
First off: I reckon you are a beginner... probably having read all the warnings that beginners shouldn't play AR.

Let me repeat this: Beginners shouldn't play AR. It's a different game. You will NOT learn to play Stars this way. It will be frustrating.

(IT) Interstellar Traveller (my favourite PRT), (WM) Warmonger, (JoaT) Jack of all Trades are strong and fun to play and if you have mastered the basics of them, you are ready to play against humans and join the fun.


But if you insist:
You could read some of the articles about AR-designs...

Here in this forum... well, you already found the right sub-forum, so go ahead and read it!

Additionally:
AR Guide by Leonard Dickens
The "Monster" Pantheon by Barry Kearns

Another 2 very interesting articles can be found here:
Stars!wiki
Search for "Alternate Reality"

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Re: AR has no resources? Fri, 12 February 2016 11:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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Petty Officer 3rd Class

Messages: 48
Registered: February 2007
Ive read a couple of articles, but they only seem to imply that ARs tend to be stronger if it can spam starbases in larger maps (i tend to play on small, packed and 4 players total). Hence my question if the race is supposed to be played like HE.

On a per world basis, the number of resources is just really really poor, even if you max out the energy formulae which takes a ridiculous number of points (which then means that you wont have enough points for wide habs, which means you dont have enough worlds).

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Re: AR has no resources? Sat, 13 February 2016 11:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Altruist is currently offline Altruist

 
Commander

Messages: 1068
Registered: August 2005
Location: Berlin
Question wrote on Fri, 12 February 2016 17:48
Ive read a couple of articles, but they only seem to imply that ARs tend to be stronger if it can spam starbases in larger maps (i tend to play on small, packed and 4 players total). Hence my question if the race is supposed to be played like HE.


Well, depends on the HE-design, I'd say. There is not 1 way how to play HE. At the moment the 2 most used HE designs are the exect opposite of each other: one a tri-immune low-pop-growth hyper production, the other a factoryless hyper-breeder. Trust me, you do play those 2 designs differently.

Read those articles to get some very goood hints how to play AR.

About playing ARs on small maps... a game of Stars starts with the race creation and design dependent on the settings of the game and set victory settings. If you choose AR for a small map that's like bringing tanks to a fight in the swamps. It is very seldom that AR is played alone, usually an AR needs an ally.

Quote:
On a per world basis, the number of resources is just really really poor, even if you max out the energy formulae which takes a ridiculous number of points (which then means that you wont have enough points for wide habs, which means you dont have enough worlds).


You cannot compare resources per planet when it comes to an AR.
An AR does NOT need to build mines nor factories, but surely remote miners.
An AR has an excellent resource return ratio with only a small amount of pop on a red exemple.
The maxium an AR population can reach depends entirely on the type of base: fort, dock, starbase, ultra, death star.

Hint: Do not pay any attention to people telling you that ARs are difficult and not recommended for playing but instead complain about ARs being difficult to play.


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Re: AR has no resources? Sun, 14 February 2016 13:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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Petty Officer 3rd Class

Messages: 48
Registered: February 2007
But if AR cant compete based on resources per planet it has to compete based on total resources, which means having more planets right? Seems like building a fleet would be a huge pain with AR since you would need to spread it out over a lot of planets due to the low resources per planet...

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Re: AR has no resources? Mon, 15 February 2016 07:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
XAPBob is currently offline XAPBob

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012
You're probably missing the sqrt in the formulae.

And the fact that red planets are useable - your pop limits are based on the base, not the planet. a -1% red kills few colonists, but can be as powerful as a green planet...

Your strengths are in the very early game (where the spreading out is easy and gives you massive instant boosts to economy) and in the very late game (where you have more minerals than everyone else combined).

You can be building Colloidal cruisers by a scarily early date - but you are vulnerable to attack at that stage (somewhat like a haemophiliac berserker)

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Re: AR has no resources? Wed, 17 February 2016 16:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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Petty Officer 3rd Class

Messages: 48
Registered: February 2007
But the square root part is the part that actually LOWERs the AR's resources per planet though? Square root of 1 million is 1000, and thats assuming you have 1:1 energy;resources ratio (which is WAY more expensive than factories with 15/9/25 settings).

And if your colonists are dying every year, how are they supposed to grow?

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Re: AR has no resources? Thu, 18 February 2016 17:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
skoormit is currently offline skoormit

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008
Location: Alabama
Question wrote on Wed, 17 February 2016 15:55
And if your colonists are dying every year, how are they supposed to grow?


They grow on your breeder planets.

Overpopping red planets is a tactic used by all races (other than tri-immunes or 1/1 hab, obv).



What we need's a few good taters.

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Re: AR has no resources? Fri, 19 February 2016 11:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
XAPBob is currently offline XAPBob

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012
Question wrote on Wed, 17 February 2016 21:55
But the square root part is the part that actually LOWERs the AR's resources per planet though? Square root of 1 million is 1000, and thats assuming you have 1:1 energy;resources ratio (which is WAY more expensive than factories with 15/9/25 settings).

And if your colonists are dying every year, how are they supposed to grow?



The sqrt of 400 is 20
But if you put those 400 people on 4 planets then you get sqrt 100 = 10 resources per planet - or twice as many resources.

A low growth AR (this is particularly applicable to low growth, but it's true elsewhere) wants to occupy every planet, and have their population evenly spread between them.

If you are a high growth AR then after the first few years you just swallow the deaths in transit, if you are low growth then you use individual tiny freighters (colo ships with a fuel tank) filled with 2100 souls. They don't die.... If you have an HE friend then their fuel tankers (minicolo+fuel) are a good ship to get.

AR max pop is not affected by the planet hab - but their resources are, so TF and N research are key (don't take temp immune - you'll be doing that research fast anyway) consider TT (for the 70 point TF, not the high biotech levels) (Note that the resources formula uses max(hab,25) IIRC, so small greens and reds are better than they look.

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Re: AR has no resources? Tue, 24 May 2016 19:43 Go to previous message
magic9mushroom is currently offline magic9mushroom

 
Commander

Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008
Question wrote on Fri, 12 February 2016 03:14
A HP race with 1 resource per 2500 colonists, 15 resources per factory, factories cost 9 resources to build and 10k colonists can operate 25 factories actually have more points left over than a AR with energy/10 for resources.

Yet a 100% hab planet with 1 million pop and energy level 10 ends up with a grand total of 1k resources from the planet...while the HP equivalent produces more than 4k resources.

How are you supposed to get enough resources? If you go 1/10 energy, you dont have the points for wide hab zones (i went with gravity immune and narrow temperature/radiation, 1 in 10 planets habitable) and i simply do not have enough planets to colonize.

What am i missing? Are you supposed to play this like HE and stay at 1/25 energy so that you have the points for wide hab zones and can spam colonies in the early game?


Okay, there are a few things going on here.

1) Don't compare AR resource count directly to resource count of factoried races. 100% of AR resources go into building "real" things (except whatever you spend on remote miners and to some extent terraforming). An HP, especially, won't get over 50% empire-wide until fairly late in the game; I've played one in a real game and the factories on my homeworld only finished at 2440 or so. AR resources can be compared fairly to those of other factoryless races, but those have even bigger capacity issues (except -f IS). Laughing

2) In the midgame, where you seem to be talking about, planets aren't fully loaded. This is a big deal, because of that square root. With Energy tech 10 and 250k on the world (25%, breeder hold) an AR still gets 500 resources from a 100% world, whereas anybody else is knocked down from ~3k to 750 or so. Later on, when planets DO get fully loaded, the AR has higher Energy tech and Death Stars (which hold 3 million pop); at Energy 16 (for 15% temp terra), the AR is getting 2190 resources from a full world. So it's not as bad as you make out.

3) AR, like HP, plays the l
...

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