Report message to a moderator

overworked wrote on Sun, 04 April 2004 00:54

I think most of the PRTs get something in this set-up actually: HE, SS, and WM benefit from having a hull beyond cruisers that is normally superceded by BBs. So their warfighting ability is probably improved. CA, IS, IT, JOAT. The economic races are cruiser limited. And the normal CA instaforming advantage is partially negated by the Transformer ships. Good for the economy raises other than CA, but the warfighting races get this benefit as well. PP - Well, possibly out of luck. AR - Might be in the same boat. The OA/mining option does afford an AR the means to get minerals a bit easier than their normal start. Combined with the terraforming an AR will have an easier start - but probably is still vulnerable. SD - Their detonating fields are slightly more effective verses smaller hulls (DD, FF, CA). And a heavy mine hit is downright devastating.

Sorry, I think you missed several effects of setting:

- SS: cloaking to 98% and overcloaking are nearly as easy as in normal game, no other race can do that with this setting(except for HE with meta but they pay more). Combine that with no 500 LY scanner and no nubs, so maximum scanning with NAS is ~1000 LY, so SS can always sneak to planets close enough to reach them through mines without warning and its nearly impossible to know about SS ship movement. Exceptions are HE(metas) and of course IS. Without IS in game SS will be very dangerous in addition to rogue hull, SS and IS in game will make IS most wanted ally. Said short SS love midgame and here midgame never ends.
- SD profit more, since against nubs mine detonating is useless(at least 14 turn survival), against cruisers helpful(8 turn survival with 2 armor, 13 turns with 4 armor), so being SD forces enemy to put armor on hulls(without armor cruisers survives 3 dets). This also means RS, that you called strong, might make attacks against SD impossible(one would have to put heavy, expensive and relative useless armor on hulls and still would survive less than 9 turns at best). Of course against non-SD RS is useful and BC survive longer than Cruiser, so WM could fight SD even with RS. Furthermore the Energy Damper might be even more useful since speed above 2 will not occur often.
- HE can turn meta in good cloak or good scan
- AR: The AR-experts in AR-Forum tend to make races that need little or no terraforming to find high hab value planets and for good reason: value not only influences growth but also productivity and investing a lot in early terraforming would cripple early research, which is crucial to AR success. Three things weaken AR in the early game:
1. Need to both terraform new planets and conduct a lot of research.
2. No need for bombers to kill them, so undefended colonies are lost quickly(sometimes to scouts!).
3. Little mining, even 333000 colonist operate only ~ 60 mines new colonies(~50000) only have ~25 mines and remote miners are expensive(con7 ~ 7 per mine), so cannot be build in numbers, since resource are needed for research. ARs have barely enough minerals to ship colonist around and AR starting with iron concentration of 30 loses 20-40% resources in the long run, since
growth will suffer heavily. And so ARs have problems to build even minimal defensive fleets or to ship minerals to new colonies so the station can be armed effectively.
Now in this setting following changes occur:
3. 500 Mines! From turn 1! Thats easily twice what ARs normally have in turn 20! And those mines start operating immediatly, so when HW starts sending of colonist there will be something like 1000kT+ Minerals with concentration 30. ARs could have 10 times more minerals and therefor can wait building new remote miners longer and so research better miners before starting and that way reduce resources invested in remote miners greatly(con12 ~ 5 per mine, con15 ~ 3 per mine). Though more important HW can start producing defensive fleets any time they are needed and send minerals to new colonies. But most important every new colony, thats terraformed, will get lots of minarls as side effect. So with this setting ARs will have enough minerals in early game. That will make a huge difference, you can ask any AR player.
2. Bad luck, early AR stations will be armed heavily or have stargates(prop5 and con5 could be reached in turn 8 - 12). Remember in early game killing armed stations is difficult and the AR stations will adjust in two turns to your ship design, so one can take out 2 stations, but the third will be a counterdesign. It might be possible that in this setting killing AR early is only little or no easier than killing any other PRT, since in every orbit there will be a heavy fight.
1. Less resource for terraforming means more research and that will shorten the time till AR gets dangerous(tech 26 AR is -f race with HG production - nothing to top that).

WRONG(As a last point, since there are no Battle Nexus and allowed hulls cannot equip many comps, station killers with missles will be less effective and speed problems make beam station killers less effective. Taking out death stars with nubs or battleships is easy, but how will cruisers perform. So even the late game disadvantage of AR is lesser in this setting.)WRONG
about Nexus, see LEits posts.

I conclude that, if AR can make it somewhere, it`ll be in this setting. If anyone ever thought about playing AR, do it here, its far easier than in standard game!

Just something about an LRT, thats useless in standard game:
BET could be a total game winner. In normal game BET hurts heavily in early game, in mid game and a little less in late game. WRONG(In this game BET hurts heavily in early game, in mid game and will give a great, incredible, crazy, fantastic boost to endgame by reducing cost of anything build by at least 20%. )WRONG, late game war ship reduction is 8-10%, see next post.
Only problem is surviving till that time, but we know who is good at surviving: SD. So SD players should consider taking BET seriously(cost of mine layers is reduced additionally up to 40% by BET, but think carefully which mine layers you use, since with BET some second best mine layers might be cheaper).

So those of you who read all this and don`t think I`m nuts, play AR or SD + BET for a challenge.

[Updated on: Sun, 04 April 2004 19:36]

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Sat, 03 April 2004 23:04]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Sat, 03 April 2004 22:57]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Sun, 04 April 2004 19:32]

Report message to a moderator

Carn wrote on Sun, 04 April 2004 03:14

- SD profit more, since against nubs mine detonating is useless(at least 14 turn survival), against cruisers helpful(8 turn survival with 2 armor, 13 turns with 4 armor), so being SD forces enemy to put armor on hulls(without armor cruisers survives 3 dets). This also means RS, that you called strong, might make attacks against SD impossible(one would have to put heavy, expensive and relative useless armor on hulls and still would survive less than 9 turns at best). Of course against non-SD RS is useful and BC survive longer than Cruiser, so WM could fight SD even with RS. Furthermore the Energy Damper might be even more useful since speed above 2 will not occur often.

Just make sure you don't send your main line ships into (detonating) minefields, just as in any other game you would use specialized sweepers for that, problem solved.

I'm surely not designing my CC's, BB's, nubs, ... in such a way that they can take as many minehits as possible. The only design where I check the number of minehits are my dedicated sweepers, they need to take at least 2 times mine damage per turn (first for the hit, second for the detonation). Possibly taking into account using fleets of 5 ships, and putting shields on them to absorb half the damage!
After those two (or more) hits they head back to a base to repair.

mch

Report message to a moderator

I agree with Micha, use dedicated sweepers (I'm playing SD in 4 games atm, me likey ). Only problem is, is they are a bit weak in fighting other vessels (the anti-sweepbrigade). Solution: make them as cheap as possible or be an SS and cloak those things. Anyhoot, I wanted to make a point about stuffing your ships with armor. That makes them nongateable (except IT ofc), but also you're forgetting one important thing about minefields... Shields take half the damage of the minefield hit (or hits when playing against SD )! And try not to use ramscoops ofcourse (also a thing people tend to forget).

I would like to play in this one and try the BET SD, but that would really be too much (what, playing in 4 games with an SD being too much? in my defense: those 4 games are all in different phases: start, mid, end-mid and end...)



Edit: hmm, I should have read Micha's post a bit more carefully...

[Updated on: Sun, 04 April 2004 20:17]

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Sun, 04 April 2004 22:59]

Report message to a moderator

[Updated on: Sun, 04 April 2004 21:57]

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Hi!

overworked wrote on Mon, 05 April 2004 03:51

On the subject of dedicated sweepers; this is one area where I think the DD hull is an excellent choice. Single engine, decent inherent armor, easy ability to add a shield, augment the armor, and carry two beams for the actual sweeping work.

IS can field a nice DD sweeper: one crobby, 2 miniguns, cheap engine. Dirt cheap, meant for mass production. Basically a throwaway design, so you can crash-sweep those heavy minefields. In group of 5 survives 5 mine hits and clears 2k mines, more then enough to sweep those small overlapping minefields SDs like to lay. When deployed in numbers adds an additional amount of MM to already MM intense PRT - could be more then he can bear.
My .
BR, Iztok.

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Hi!

multilis wrote on Mon, 05 April 2004 16:02

If you are IS, you may have some frigates with croby and miniguns left over from a previous era...

None existent. Not everyone starts a war at 2430 . 've been peacefully growing in my corner, building factories and orgy, researching weapons and trading them for every other tech.
So why not crobby FF? Uni was large normal, so I need a ship with more fuel and armor. A pack of 5 FFs should be sent back to repair at the third minehit, and would be chronically underfuelled. Besides, my HP race was in constant germ deficit, and DD costed 4 or 5kt less germ . I newer regretted building that design. Even in late game it was useful to crash-sweep his large heavy minefields around his core worlds. IIRC I produced about 400 and lost 300 of them.
BR, Iztok

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator

overworked wrote on Tue, 06 April 2004 08:51

Nine races in. Game being closed. Players should get an email from me some time today about some final settings, initial orders, and whether or not to make the game a "ranking" game. Any final race tweaks are due by tomorrow by 9pm EST. I hope to get the game files ready for AH and submitted by Friday. Hopefully that means the game be set up by the middle of next week. - Kurt

<Update>

Thanks to everyone for the prompt survey answers. I worked on the set-up last night and should get it finished up this evening. I'll mail the files in to Autohost and hopefully we'll be set up next week.

I will also see about getting everyone their preliminary .h files. Otherwise, any initial 2400 and 2401 scouting is not going to do anyone any good.

- Kurt

Report message to a moderator

Game files submitted to Autohost via email. I'll be in touch with everyone once the game page is set-up. I can distribute the preliminary .h files as well at that time.

Schedule will not go active until everyone has their first turn submitted. (which will be for 2402.) I'll also deal with any reported irregularities then (if there are any.)

Also, topic locked after this message.

I'll see about getting a game forum set-up for discussion of specifics as we go.

- Kurt

P.S. - if you don't like the ship names, tough.

Report message to a moderator

Report message to a moderator