Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Plain Vanilla 2018 stories (PV2018 is over, post your stories here)
| Plain Vanilla 2018 stories |
Fri, 13 December 2019 08:29  |
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 vmanuel |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 3 |
Messages: 187
Registered: October 2004
Location: Dallas, TX USA | |
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This was a fairly basic game in that it had no post-setup changes. How your race was designed is how they played.
One thing that stood out for me as host is that Random Events played a HUGE factor in early game, because a wormhole appeared during the first turn less than 200ly from the HE homeworld. It definitely made the early game more interesting...
Editor in Chief of the Kaynan Space News.
All Space, All The Time - Kaynan!
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| Re: Plain Vanilla 2018 stories |
Sun, 15 December 2019 15:08  |
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| mrvan |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 220
Registered: May 2014 | |
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A big thanks to Victor for hosting this, and to Altruist for his advice and listening ear during the game! It took just over a year and 137 turns, but I'm very happy to have won my first 'real' stars! game together with the Badgers.
Race
The Vintner - "always looking for new terroir"
PRT: IS
LRT: ISb, OBRM, NAS, RS
Grav wide (.2- 3.44), temp immune, rad narrow right (49-89), 19% PGR
Econ: 1/1000, -f (5/25/5), mines 10/3/8
Science: W cheap; En, Con, Prop standard; elec, bio expensive
My thinking was
* IS -f since it has all -f advantages while it can still get more resources per planet with overpopping.
* Make do with bad mine settings and relatively expensive research (2.5 cheap) and pour all into hab: 32% green initially, growing to 66% with full terra, of which the majority are >75%. This synergizes with good growth (19% plus IS) and partly compensates for bad mines by having more rocks.
* LRTs: RS always good, but esp for IS; forsake IFE and avoid NRSE, relying on cheap docks for early mobility. I would colonize red planets just for the dock so I can get W9 travel without too much trouble. NAS for points as always, and sine JOAT could not have NAS I was hoping for ally or trade.
General game plan was to expand quickly and work towards croby FFs asap for the first serious push; and never stop fighting afterwards.
Short history
Animation of planet ownership: https://youtu.be/0yLPwGnD4bA
Short history from my perspective:
- 2400 - 2420: Early game. In early game struck an alliance with the N neighbour the Badgers: a JOAT with somewhat comparable hab. This limited intersettling but at least we could get tech trading setup quickly and it would mean penscans in the future. First big surprise was to encounter the Traders between us and the center in 2412, quite surprising because everyone starts at the rim. Turns out he used worm holes to start a second 'hub' in the center. They were -f HE and expanded very quickly with a strong force.
- 2420 - 2470: First Trader war. As he encroached on our space very quickly we had to push back and start a war earlier than I anticipated. Fortunately we were able to secure a truce with our other neighbours. First real victory was the reconquest of Zeppelin in 2427 with croby FFs (although putting bazookas on them instead of phasers might have been a mistake). After this is went back and forth a long time, with use having to consolidate a little after seeing jihad BBs but then managing to gain momentum again after catching up in tech. Ultimately the Traders were overstretched and we were able to conquer most of the center, the war ending around 2470
- 2470 - 2480: Interlude - After the first Trader war we scouted nubs on the other end of the universe, which scared us a little as we were still on BBs and pretty far from nubs. However we decided to attack our S neighbours asap (the WM Iroquois and IT Protoss) while teching to avoid stalling.
- 2480 - 2500: Southern War - After building a W26 BB fleet we attacked around 2480. This war went relatively easy as we managed to kill their main fleet after which it was easy going.
- 2500 - 2510: Second Trader war. Towards the end of that war we re-encountered to Trader/Duergar team, who were having a difficult time against their neighbours the Myth/Cookies, in our view our strongest opponents but with whom we had a 5-year NAP. When trader/duergar started 'stealing' planets that we fancied we got into a war again, ending with their unavoidable demise - but I really have to express my respect for how long and strong they kept resisting, where other players sometimes drop out when their loss is clear.
- [b]2515 - 2520: The Short Northern War[/b[. As said, we mostly feared the Myth/Cookies, but the NAP was still active and we figured it would be better to expand to our N first before dealing with them. So we attacked our neighbour to the north, the Banana/Phenom, who were skirmishing with the Myth/Cookies with their main fleet quite close to our border. This war went incredibly quickly, with a main fleet battle were we completely eliminated their fleet with few losses, after which they dropped out and it was a matter of capturing planets as quickly as we could.
- 2520 - 2537: End Game. In the north we started skirmishing with the last unmentioned team, the Arachnids/Druids, with a front emerging in the middle of the old territory of the Banana/Phenom. At this moment the Myth/Cookies canceled the NAP. We knew that this had to happen (and it took a lot longer than expected), turning it basically into us vs the remaining two other teams. I tried to engage the A/D force while the NAP notice period was in force, but he avoided battle. It was only 20 turns or so to the end by then, so we decided to play it safe, concentrate on defending aginst the Myth/Cookies while skirmishing with the Druids/Arachnids and trading territory for time. After a couple rounds of cat and mouse, due to an unexpected mine field hit and (unfortunately) a missed turn we were finally able to engage into a main fleet battle with the big fleet of the Myth/Cookies, from memory about 3k nubs vs 2k nubs, which we won with light losses (as these things go in stars). This allowed me to gate about 1.5k nubs to the N front, where they joined the Badgers main for of ~2k nubs to fight about 2k enemy nubs of the arachnid/druids. I lost my 1.5k nubs but they also lost their entire force. At this moment both opposing teams lost their main fleets (as far as we could see), so it was pretty clear that they would not be able to overcome the score difference in the remaining turns (and we were actually on the offensive against the myth/cookies by that time), so game was declared over.
I think the main reason for our victory was that while the Traders had to fight on a lot of fronts, we never fought more than one opponent at a time. This allowed us to steadily expand, first with the center, then the bottom half, and then a chunk of the north, eventually giving me ~200 planets (out of 512) and Badger another 50.
Ships:
- In the end I had 3.2k beamer nubs left out of 5.2k built, with 2 slots AMPs, 3 cap, 4 deflector, 2 shield, 1 jammer, and enigma pulsar engines (I used 2 slots of AMPs because of IS expensive weapons)
- I had way fewer mineral boats due to mineral shortages, about 320/400 omega nubs (2 slots omegas, 2 nexus, 2 jammer, 4 deflector, 2 shield, P16 ramscoop) and 120 arm nubs (5 arms and P23 engine to keep weight to 318kt).
- I had 230 super freighters, but only had 8.5M people in orbit in the last turn.
- I built a jack-of-all trades 98% cloaked tachyon scanner + mine layer which I paired up with Badger-built elephant scanners. Pairs of these were stationed to detect cloaked enemies and do general skirmishing, especially against the Myth/Cookies which did not have tachyons.
- I kept my original speed trap scout and normal mine FF with about 150 of each left at the end. Maybe I should have scrapped there and replaced with a nub design, but I never needed to slots that badly.
Graph of warship mass per team according to my scanners: https://i.imgur.com/Y2kTa0E.png. Note: this is total fleet mass of any fleet containing at least one warship or utility (nubs and metamorphs are utility), and as seen by my scanners, so underrepresenting opponent forces, especially of Arachnid/Druid as I didn't have full penscan due to losing cloaked scanners and they used cloaking quite a bit.
Planets
Graph of my resources and #planets: https://i.imgur.com/c3Vw5st.png; #planet grow with every war. Resources is mostly linear but show some steep declines as I put a lot of pop in freighters to start local orgies for overpopping; and a peak where I landed a lot of freighter pop to get a crucial tech in time. Resources decline near the end as we lose some planets while defending very conservatively.
Screenshot of final map: https://i.imgur.com/H4p7iv5.png - note the nice see of big green planets 
Note that overpopping worked to some extent, with a number of core planets at a steady 2M people at some point, but I drew pop from them again to populate newly conquered areas so in the end this didn't really contribute that much. I never started a real orgy, there always seemed to be somewhere new to send my pop. This might have been a mistake from my side as the exponential nature of orgies would have given me a lot of pop in the end, but of course you always want/need the resources now, not in 20+ turns...
I was afraid initially that 8 mines per 10k pop would not be enough, but I didn't run into mineral problems until quite near the end. Getting the Alien Miner helped some, but in the end it was mostly owning a lot of planets and of course with smaller planets the # minerals needed per planet is less. If the game would have continued I would have been in trouble, especially if I would have overpopped more. Then again, early growth is always better than late growth, so I'm still quite happy with the race design.
Note that I'm not sure I'll play a largish map like this again. Especially the mineral balancing and fleet limit were very annoying, and going over 150 productive planets to set check orders or change priorities is a lot of MM work that I'd rather avoid. I routed all planets to a fairly central planet, but of course that only works for gateable ships, so I had to manually re-order new missile ships every turn (I used 'almost gatable' designs with 6 omegas or 5 arms, so had to change warp and set to merge for repair).
[Updated on: Sun, 15 December 2019 19:03] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Plain Vanilla 2018 stories |
Tue, 17 December 2019 12:31 |
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mrvan wrote on Sun, 15 December 2019 21:08A big thanks to Victor for hosting this, and to Altruist for his advice and listening ear during the game! It took just over a year and 137 turns, but I'm very happy to have won my first 'real' stars! game together with the Badgers.
Congrats!
Well done!
We always talk about the long and steep learning curve to really master Stars. But recently there were several former Fledgling Admiral players (which to me always seem to have joined just so recent), who, I fear, would give me quite a beating if I met them in a Stars-game today. Yes, makes one proud (also a disturbing feeling *grin).
So, thanks a lot for keeping me updated during the game. We all know that it is not advice what can be given from the sideline in such a long and big game but rather disorienting comments that never really fit the true picture. Not only since I had no access to m-files but also, to be honest, because I don't think that I ever played a game in which I threw around Nubians numbered in the thousands. All the more I am quite grateful if old FA-players send me situation reports from time to time. It's not like playing but it's a fine substitute.
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| Re: Plain Vanilla 2018 stories |
Tue, 31 December 2019 14:43 |
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| Raythe |
 | Crewman 1st Class |
Messages: 38
Registered: February 2016
Location: Nebraska | |
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Echoing Vintner, I'd also like to thank Victor for hosting. Victor was fantastic, always responsive, fair and helpful. I'd also like to thank the players. Without each other, we don't have a game to play.
Race: Druids
PRT: IS
LRTs: IFE, OBRM
Habs all relatively narrow. Rad was VERY high with a midrange at 85. Growth rate 15%. 1 in 8 planets.
Econ: 1/1000, +f (15/10/20), mines 10/5/15.
Science: W, prop, const, bio standard; all others expensive.
My race intentions: VERY high rad range, with a mid at 85, specifically to allow the rad scoop with no penalties. With a low hab percentage, my plan was to colonize relatively few planets, but build them big with lots of factories and mines. With OBRM I wanted to mine my own planets. Build slow and build big was my basic strategy.
This was my very first true multiplayer game in SAH. Prior to this game, I'd played extensively with the one guy that got me into stars, 25 years ago, then didn't touch it for well over a decade. Much more recently, in 2016, through SAH, I managed to get into a duel using a predecessor to the Druids. My opponent was Fabrice; I haven't seen him post here since that time, but some of his posts are still here. I was basically completely unprepared for that duel. I lost VERY badly. In 70 turns, he had 10 times my score. When that game ended, I tweaked the Druids somewhat, based on what I'd learned. I then tried and failed to get into a game here, then set the Druids aside until PV2018 came up. When this game started, I literally picked up the druids and threw them into this game. All of this is to say that I was a true beginner coming into this game, and I had a very badly designed race.
I started at the 1:00 position on the map, clock-face style. In the early game, I encountered my neighbors quickly (as was intended). I don't remember which was actually first - it might have been Myth, to my south, clockwise around our circle. I do recall reaching out to him first. I was concerned about early aggression - my race was built to NOT engage early, and build big for late game. His reply was satisfactory - "now is not the time for attack, now is the time for growth". I believe even then, he was rightly concerned about the HE expansion into the center of the universe. It was roughly at this point that I hit my big break. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that meeting Silky (SAH Raindancer) as my northern neighbor has completely transformed my Stars experience, during this game and WAY beyond. We were honest with each other early - he knew I was a beginner, and I could immediately tell he was an advanced player. Myth did not seem keen to be an ally, but Silky was, and he was much more responsive. He had the same thing to say about me, and I can honestly say that our communication was one of our major strengths. He quickly determined that my race had MAJOR problems, but we worked with what we had and he taught me a LOT about how to manage an IS race.
Midgame was not memorable for me. From the beginning, Silky and I had NAPs with our neighbors - Myth had allied with the Cookies to his south, and Phenom was allied with Banana to our west. We had the northeast "corner" virtually to ourselves. Throughout the game, all our neighbors had bigger enemies than us - first the Traders, and then the Vintners. I never once had to build a DD, a CC, or a BB. Silky built a few DDs but I'm not aware of him ever building any CCs or BBs either. We went straight to nubs. Throughout, we were using IS abilities as best we could, though admittedly Silky did better than I did. We had extensive pop-in-space fleets. At the end, I had 69 million pop, 40 million of that parked in freighters. During the late game, Phenom/Bananas suffered a significant loss and dropped out. Silky and I were able to move immediately to take half/most of their space before settling on a front line with Vintner. As Vintner mentioned, some skirmishing was happening along that border. Vintner describes the rest of that conflict quite well. I was unable to join that final fight - it was all Arachnid nubs against that combined Vintner/Badger fleet. Had I managed to join, I would have been defeated as well - it still wasn't enough. I still had 500 beam nubs, which was about all I had managed to build, and 50-100 missile nubs, when we conceded victory. This was perhaps the largest fleet belonging to anyone not Vintner or Badger, and it wasn't enough to compete.
Right before we conceded, all four players agreed to play one more turn, to tie up loose ends. I used that to drop all my pop back on planets, to allow the final score to (hopefully) more acurately reflect my efforts throughout the game. The result was that I was ranked third, and I believe Silky was second. We know Vintner was first; I do not know any other player's final score or rank.
I was definitely a beginner coming into this game, and I'm definitely not as green now. This has left me hungry for more, and I'm joining Altruist's Fledgling Admirals game starting soon. It'll be a short game, as I understand, and after that I'm hoping to get into another long-term game.
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