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alexdstewart wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 01:41

... a -m race of conventional design doesn't stand a chance.

Huh? Conventional -m race?

Quote:

You won't BELIVE how many RC pts I had to play with.

It's 775 points. For that you can have an immunity and 1 click in race growth and 17 factories per pop.

If your race has i in 3 hab with an immunity then forget remote mining. Your race will live almost everywhere at the max terra. Get OBRM and 10/3/10 mines. A -f has usually more than enough minerals to play with, as it has not enough resouces to convert those minerals into ships. Also, -f race usualy requires +MM, so why taking another burden with RM?

A -m designs just don't work. I know that. I've been in a game where every race had to chose mine eff of 5 (check RGCS for "Well's Bottom"). Do I need to tell you that most races that have decided to relay on RM exclusively never had a chance? When I've been conquering their planets they had 5-10 levels higher tech then my race, but not enough minerals to even build defensive ships. They have fielded remote miners in numbers in the late mid game, when I stopped my attacks on them to fight the big monster in the lead. My race was WM with 5/3/20 mines AND with standard remote miners. When those -m players were collecting tech and minerals for remotes I already had a fleet of 180 maxi miner robots. The nett impact on the game was I had almost the same amount of minerals available as the lead monster with twice the number of planets and almost three times my economy. He started building Doom and Disruptor BBs much earlier so I had the chance to counterdesign his both designs with heavily jammed 1st shoot Mark4 Dreadnought and a lot of chaff. After I've killed most of his flet and with one ally destroyed half of his planets we agreed the game's over. To be completelly honest I have to add that "monster" player at the end didn't had enough time to play the game properly.

BR, Iztok

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Coyote wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 00:13

The only problem I can see is that your resource curve will have peaked long before your mineral curve kicks in. Yeah, a -m WM is a pain in the rear Too much damn effort to reach con 8 and elec 4 in the very beginning... So I came up with the following:

RPT: SS
LRP: IFE, ARM, ISB, LSP
Hab:
grav 0.52-1.92g
temp -88 to 88*C
rad immune
1 in 3.5ish planets
pop 10res/10000p
fac 10/25/16
mine 5/15/5
Energy, Con, Weapons, Elec cheap, rest exp.
Race type: MK (monster killer )

Reasoning behind it:
With most people taking con, energy, elec exp, the effective spy bonus for this babe is not nice, it is AWESOME. You'll get to prop 2 and con 8 before you HW reaches 25% ( ). Meaning you'll be able to build reasonable miners AND save huge on minerals for Freighters. Because you need to spend 3.5 time less on reseach than an average race, even being an -f race will not hinder your reseach. In fact I would expect you to remain a leader in tech field for the rest of the game. IFE+ISD=HE expansion (my only regret is that space dock can't make remote miners- oh well you can't have everything... ).
I maxed out the no. of fac to make you about as res dence as the neighbour you are conquering.

Note I was playing in Medium/Normal when i got to cruisers in 2424 with WM and bunch of other AI...

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Oh yeah, the pop growth is 18%( I kinda thought that 1% less is worth the energy cheap...)

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iztok wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 03:03

alexdstewart wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 01:41 ... a -m race of conventional design doesn't stand a chance. Huh? Conventional -m race? If your race has i in 3 hab with an immunity then forget remote mining. Your race will live almost everywhere at the max terra. Get OBRM and 10/3/10 mines. A -f has usually more than enough minerals to play with, as it has not enough resouces to convert those minerals into ships. Also, -f race usualy requires +MM, so why taking another burden with RM? A -m designs just don't work. I know that. I've been in a game where every race had to chose mine eff of 5 (check RGCS for "Well's Bottom"). Do I need to tell you that most races that have decided to relay on RM exclusively never had a chance? When I've been conquering their planets they had 5-10 levels higher tech then my race, but not enough minerals to even build defensive ships. They have fielded remote miners in numbers in the late mid game, when I stopped my attacks on them to fight the big monster in the lead. My race was WM with 5/3/20 mines AND with standard remote miners. When those -m players were collecting tech and minerals for remotes I already had a fleet of 180 maxi miner robots. The nett impact on the game was I had almost the same amount of minerals available as the lead monster with twice the number of planets and almost three times my economy. He started building Doom and Disruptor BBs much earlier so I had the chance to counterdesign his both designs with heavily jammed 1st shoot Mark4 Dreadnought and a lot of chaff. After I've killed most of his flet and with one ally destroyed half of his planets we agreed the game's over.

With all due respect, I think that those RM players played conventional tactics in a different situation, and hence they lost. Those guys did't have enough minerals to build their ships, but I assure you, then I destroyed all of my neighbour AI's, I didn't do it using conjured battleships. They all were very real nasty 80+% cloaked BC with beams and delta torpedoes. (+100 shields, etc)
This is not about extracting minerals. It is about building remote miners early and using the RC ps to bolster your hab and tech settings to make your -f race faster reseacher, quicker to expand, more efficient and enduring. You do not colonize all the yellow worlds unless they provide the shortcut to your greener worlds, and since you have a lot of them, you'll grow exponentially for longer than a conventional -f race. When you suck all the minerals out of your yellow worlds, you depopulate your Green worlds and start sucking them out
You use your next level quality ships to disrupt opposition's supply lines, bomb them with your LBU, cripple them with pick pocket and robber baron. Your worlds don't worth conquering for the opposition, since they only ocassionally have defences and no mines or factories, while when you conquer them, you get to operate all those mines and factories. Sure MM is a problem, but is you play properly, there won't be half as many fleets and worlds to worry about, cause chaos would reign in the universe.
All I can say is that you'll need to develop locust psychology and not get too attached to your worlds. And use torpedoes not missiles! (also get used to paying 6res/mine untill U get to better miners)

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I'll take on that -f -m race as described above anyday.

Perhaps afon start too? remapped with a cluster in each corner so we'll both have plenty of planets to use?


Xdude

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xdude wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 20:34

I'll take on that -f -m race as described above anyday. Perhaps afon start too? remapped with a cluster in each corner so we'll both have plenty of planets to use? Xdude

That would't be fair to me,- I'll need to get across the void to get to yea. Kinda hard with prop 2 even with a fuel mizzer.
Hell, it wouldn't be fair to any -f race. I need to conquer palnets early, remember? What about a small universe where you start about 300 ly away? I kinda of wonder who's going to eat whom then...

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[Updated on: Wed, 06 August 2003 21:16]

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alexdstewart wrote on Tue, 05 August 2003 19:41

Yes, Yes I am testing the race now... I am NOT STUPID and know perfectly well that a -m race of conventional design doesn't stand a chance. But who said that I designed a conventional -m race? I designed an -f mineless race!

Micha suggested that I read this thread, and respond to it. I had a few opinions that I was going to post. But after reading these last few posts, I HAVE to post my comments to these first.

In my younger days of folly I did something similar to the game listed above...

Here is a clip from my message to the other players at the end of the game...


"To begin with, I decided that I wanted to play a Space Demolotion, as I had never played that before. I decided that I would play a very isolationist race, and not let anyone share my space, even allies.

My biggest mistake was not testing my race design. I would guess I was busy with work or something, but I did not have much time. So I threw together a race, tested it one quick time, and sent in the race file.

I built a -f -m race. (no Factories, no Mines). And I took all the advanced mining options. I figured that the remote miners would provide me with enough minerals to expand. This was a major problem actually. My lack of minerals in the early years really hampered my growth.

One of the better points was that all my extra resources went either into terraforming or research, as I never needed to build the mines or factories. This is why I started out in the lead in tech.

I have another Stars! friend, in Belgium actually, that accused me
of liking to torture myself after he looked at my files. First of all SD takes a lot of MM (Micro Management). And then of course so does remote mining. So I had basically built a broken race that was MM Hell.

And my friend laughed at me, and casually mentioned that you should NEVER combine an SD with a mining race. Both require extra design slots. So again, I had to do extra management, this time to keep my number of designs down. The one GOOD point related to this was that as my 'bad' LRT (one of from the list was required) I had taken BET (Bleeding Edge Tech) which further reduced the cost of older designs. Toward the end my chaff were costing me 9 resources each and my Jihad cruisers were less than 150 if I remember.

So I was very protective of my minerals and mining ships and mining planets.

[cutting out game specific details...]

Given the race I was playing I was very happy to get to second place. I never expected to be able to do that. I give credit in two places: 1) help from the XXXXXXXXX especially in the tech that helped me get the best mining robot and 2) positioning. In the end I may have the largest area of any race in the game. If someone had run into me earlier, I could easily have have been taken out. I achieved one VC, and could have achieved a second
in another 1-2 turns. And if I had wanted a third VC, I could have colonized all my mining planets, but I really did not want to do this as then I would have no mineral sources.

Playing SD was fun. I like the minefields and learned a lot about how to do it fairly well, though I never really took the time to do an 'expert' job. One thing that was VERY nice was the ability to go through other minefields at a much higher speed. Enemy minefields seldom slowed me down, as my sweepers could go in to sweep the fields at high speeds (warp 7 or with very little
chance of getting hit. And a cloaked pen-scanning super minelayer was fun too.

I would recommend against anyone ever playing a race with remote miners and no mining capability on your main planets, unless maybe you play AR."

You can stop laughing now. It is over.

To add in a few more comments: a race like this MUST spend all of it's starting minerals on remote miners and a few transports. Otherwise you are just plain dead, as you will not have enough minerals even to get started. And you need to stay focused on building transports and remote miners, otherwise t

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I am not going to aswer obvious questions from the last few posts. But I am going to ask one of my own:
HOW THE HELL WILL YOU MANAGE TO COLONIZE MORE THAN A FEW WORLDS IF MOST OR ALL OF YOUR SCOUTS WILL BE DESTROYED BY MY ARMED PROBES AND YOUR COLONIZERS HARRASSED BY BLACKJACK DESTROYERS?
And how well will your -f IT manage its pop is your stargates are not build for the simple reason that they'd be taken down as soon as they are build? You will start exporting pop in 2414.
Me too. You'll have to spend 2-3 turns to get to a world. I need only 1-2. You'll loose pop growth in transit, I won't. No matter how hard you try I will be ahead of you in tech qualitively (Ever tried to destroy a faster basooka destroyer/cruiser with slower ship Yakamoras?). I do admit that this particular race is not much better against -f races than usual in one on one. But I do claim that it will decimate HG/HP filled universe. You simply can't buy as many advantages with any other -f, HG, HP races. All of my disadvantages become advantages quickly and I will play max on my advantages:
better hab, tech, conquering bonus, cheap FM + Space Docks on every planet, 1-2 turn transit time between colonies, inherit 75% cloak, better scanners+ penetrating scanners, early LBU's, pick pockets, nasty early weapons and hulls.
If you are itching to taste all of that on you, be my guest and join the next 'list' game.
(Yes, I shall enjoy those factories he built...)

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alexdstewart wrote on Wed, 06 August 2003 21:53

I am not going to aswer obvious questions from the last few posts. But I am going to ask one of my own: HOW THE HELL WILL YOU MANAGE TO COLONIZE MORE THAN A FEW WORLDS IF MOST OR ALL OF YOUR SCOUTS WILL BE DESTROYED BY MY ARMED PROBES AND YOUR COLONIZERS HARRASSED BY BLACKJACK DESTROYERS?

By defending myself. If we start 300 LY away, you are *not* going to be able to stop me.

Quote:

And how well will your -f IT manage its pop is your stargates are not build for the simple reason that they'd be taken down as soon as they are build? You will start exporting pop in 2414.

Wrong. I'll start exporting pop in 2407 or 2408. I'll have to to keep under 33% on my HW.

Quote:

Me too. You'll have to spend 2-3 turns to get to a world. I need only 1-2. You'll loose pop growth in transit, I won't. No matter how hard you try I will be ahead of you in tech qualitively (Ever tried to destroy a faster basooka destroyer/cruiser with slower ship Yakamoras?). I do admit that

Cruisers by 2415. Bazookas by 2420. You so sure you'll be ahead?
Don't forget that the moment I touch down on a world I'll be reinforcing with no growth loss.

Quote:

this particular race is not much better against -f races than usual in one on one. But I do claim that it will decimate HG/HP filled universe. You simply can't buy as many advantages with any other -f, HG, HP races. All of my disadvantages become advantages quickly and I will play max on my advantages: better hab, tech, conquering bonus, cheap FM + Space Docks on every planet, 1-2 turn transit time between colonies, inherit 75% cloak, better scanners+ penetrating scanners, early LBU's, pick pockets, nasty early weapons and hulls. If you are itching to taste all of that on you, be my guest and join the next 'list' game. (Yes, I shall enjoy those factories he built...)

Your advantages simply won't come into play in a real game.
You won't have the minerals.
You will not have the miners as fast as you think.
Try playing an empty testbed and seeing how fast you get your miners.
That'll still be faster than realistic, because people won't be doing research, they'll be building.

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Hi!

alexdstewart wrote on Thu, 07 August 2003 01:52

With all due respect, I think that those RM players played conventional tactics in a different situation, and hence they lost.

Yes, it was really different situation as in your testbeds against AIs. They started close to a competent and aggressive WM player with much bigger mineral output than they had.

Quote:

when I destroyed all of my neighbour AI's, I didn't do it using conjured battleships

IIRC I used about 300 Bazooka FFs with FM, tech 6 shields and 250 minbombers with single M-70 bomb (to keep them safely gateable).

Quote:

Those guys did't have enough minerals to build their ships...

That's exactly my point. You will also not have enough minerals to field your warships in numbers. Even if you'll have a tech advantage you'll soon realize that the quantity has a quality of its own.

Quote:

This is not about extracting minerals. It is about building remote miners early

... that will use all minerals on your HW. Let's assume you start with 500k iron on HW. With that you can build 7 midget miners with maxi robots. That gives you about 250 mines mining at MC 70 each turn 175 kt of minerals. So they pay for them-self in 3 years. But where are minerals for building freighters to move your growing pop around? From turn 5 you will need each turn 40k iron and 40k germ just to move pop from your HW. Since you'll have a lot of greens you'll soon need a lot of freighters. Where are minerals for freighters that will move back your remotely mined minerals? Where are minerals to build your warships in 2420 when your opponents will start fielding bazooka CCs in dozens to calm you down?

Quote:

HOW THE HELL WILL YOU MANAGE TO COLONIZE MORE THAN A FEW WORLDS IF MOST OR ALL OF YOUR SCOUTS WILL BE DESTROYED BY MY ARMED PROBES AND YOUR COLONIZERS HARRASSED BY BLACKJACK DESTROYERS?

You can not catch a FM scout with an Armed probe if you are not a WM. Your BJ destroyers will not catch colonizers and will be destroyed by a bunch of red laser scouts, that will probably get your better weap tech as a bonus.

Your main problem seems to be lack of living opponents. Forget ultra stupid AI, start thinking in terms of what would YOU do in such a situation, as your opponent will do that for sure. Finish some games, come back and read your posts again and I believe you'll realize that ideas you've posted are c... ekhm ... not usable, if you want to win a game with living opponents.
BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Thu, 07 August 2003 05:22]

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Hear, hear

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Hi!

Quote:

Once the alien miner is in game... and in most games that last over 2500 it is there ... the guys who did not take OBRM just have their points thrown away.

I never count on getting Alien miner. It never shows when you need it. But in the game I'm currently in it was in the very first MT, and it appeared in "my" space, and my race had OBRM. Yum!
I've built enough mini-miners to get 8000 mines and I've already emptied one planet. RM really helps if you are a bit short of one mineral.
BR, Iztok

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iztok wrote on Wed, 13 August 2003 02:04

I never count on getting Alien miner. It never shows when you need it

Yes, that is a sad fact. The alien miner seems to be one of the more elusive MT gifts and it is very frustrating to have the MT give you useless gifts when you need minerals . However when you get the little miner, stop, it's mining time! "Can't touch this..." Sorry, but I just couldn't resist saying that.

Oh, now that I think of it I have a quick question on the MT. I know it's been answered before but I can't remeber where. Does the MT give the same gift to all parties it comes in contact with?

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Hi guys...
I came back from a looong break and I did some extensive testing in the meanwhile... I am ready to face the world with the results
But first I'd like to clear up some misunderstandings:
*It appears that people think that I testbed in accelerated univerce. This is seldom true, cause I need some time to scout and accomulate minerals for free... so when I say 2420 it could be transferred into 2412 in accelerated.
*Some people seem to insist that I did only some quick testing before I put these ideas on forum. This is simply false, I have at least 20+ race files before me, most of them were rewritten several times as I developed the -fm concept (thanks to some "constructive" critisism this process is ongoing )
*The poll is evenly split between supporters of Remote Mining and those who'd rather not do it (there is a slight lean towards supporters though - makes me proud ) .
*So people it seems, do not read the posts carefully and keep rising the same issues that I thought were settled. I am not going to go through them again!

After several weeks of testing I came to following conclusions:
* -fm race type is sertainly THE most unforgiving economic model there is. The difference between a good race and a broken one was more often than not dimply laughable and that gave me a lot of headache as the only way to tell whether the race was going to perform or not could only be determined after a lenghty play testing.
*When playing an -fm you simply do not have the room for a single mistake.
* -fm races are playable and if only in my hands the are very competitive. In hands of a novice the -fm is simply dead unfortunately...
* MM workload was less than I expected and in some ways more friendly than conventional MM. Cause I didn't have to keep track of mine and factory production, only mineral supply.
* -fm performs exectly like a -f race in terms of res growth and slightly less in mining terms in the beggining when alone.

Below I will explain in detail how I came to these conclusions, as well as explain the theory and practice behind them.
I would also like to thank the people that contributed their constructive critisism- without them my progress would have been much slower...

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