iztok wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 01:57

I completelly agree with you here. The only ships I put armor on them are missile BBs and sweepers. But for the proposed IT with already 4 bad LRTs regen shields costed 37 points, instead giving 10 . BR, Iztok

Mmmm. I prefer a rapid ramp to battleships, relying on cruisers and below for skirmishing and blasting bits off my opponents empire, relying on battleships to go for the kill myself. And even colloidal battleships will shred anything lower tech.

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iztok wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 06:57

In normal universe you can expect 4 planets to be within 81 LY distance from your HW and 16 planets within two W-9 jumps. But an IT starts with two planets, so for your IT race with 1 in 8 hab that means 1 single green planet within 81 LY distance from both planets, 1.5 within 98, 2.6 within 128 and 4.2 within 162. In dense uni you can expect 1.3 greens and in packed 1.7 within 1 W-9 jump. Those numbers look awfully low to me. Adding my usual bad to average luck with planet draw I'd _never_ gamble on them. With using DLL-7 you are.

I must admit I'm thinking more about packed/dense here. Would a QS be a good design choice in other environments ?

Also, if the 3rd pvt transfers its fuel and heads back home after 1 turn then you can get two turns at W9 (162 ly). You can then go another turn at W7 for a total of 211 ly. I've just done a little spreadsheet work and that gives me 14 planets in packed, of which at least 1 and probably 2 are green. Colonise these, get a gate up in 3 turns at one of them and then that gives you another set of planets to go for.

Anyway, it seems to work for me. In a medium or sparse universe, IFE is probably a must though.

Quote:

But for the proposed IT with already 4 bad LRTs regen shields costed 27 points, instead giving 10 .

But I'm treating it as an advantage, so it is worth spending points on. Anyway, as I said, I can take it or leave it.

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[Updated on: Wed, 21 April 2004 08:14]

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Hi!

Orca wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 05:33

ccmaster wrote on Tue, 20 April 2004 21:37 ... what is the best way to counter 100 jihad cruser in 2430... It's hard. Best bet is probably to delay as long as possible (minefields, bogging them down on the front) and rapidly try to build as many battleships as you can, and enough chaff to cover the missiles...

My solution: NAP or alliance.
Seriously, it is really hard to counter such design with earlier generation of weapons or without jammers 20. Those CCs do 11k damage to armor (with shields). That means 15 CCs or 5 BBs destroyed with each shot. With the second shot shields would be probably gone, and that means 44k damage from 400 Jihads .
A 16-colloidal BB costs about 740 res (3.5 times the jihad CC) and has 2.9 times the FP (with 4 sappers, without double damage from Jihads). If I'd manage to build 30 of those BBs I'd have 8.7k sapping power and 11k FP. It would take 1 round to bring down shields on CCs, and 6-7 rounds to kill them all. But without chaff those BBs would be all killed in third round. So I'd need chaff for at least 4 rounds, that means 1600 X-ray scouts. At that time frame one would cost about 6/6/4/15, so (assuming 12k res and plenty minerals) I could produce about 800 each turn. But for the same cost I'd get 16 BBs instead.

I did some testbeds using Battlesim. Both races had RS.
BB design: 16 colloidals, 4 sappers, 8 wolverines, 6 capac, AD-8, man-jet.
CC design: 4 jihads, 4 BC, 2 wolverines, AD-8, 100 of them.
With 40 BBs I lost all of them destroying 51 CCs.
With 50 BBs I won losing 14 BBs.
With 1600 chaff and 20 BBs I lost all chaff and 4 BBs.

Conclusion: with building only BBs I saved minerals for 1 year of chaff production. With Jihads it is really more cost-effective to build BBs instead of chaff.

Regarding costs: I spent 37k (150% of CCs) of resources in BBs, but only 10.6MT (50%) of iron and 6.2MT (60%) of germ. Being on defense IMO I could afford that 1 additional turn of building BBs.
My .
BR, Iztok

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[quote title=iztok wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 14:50]Hi!

Orca wrote on Wed, 21 April 2004 05:33

ccmaster wrote on Tue, 20 April 2004 21:37 ... what is the best way to counter 100 jihad cruser in 2430... I did some testbeds using Battlesim. Both races had RS. BB design: 16 colloidals, 4 sappers, 8 wolverines, 6 capac, AD-8, man-jet. CC design: 4 jihads, 4 BC, 2 wolverines, AD-8, 100 of them. With 40 BBs I lost all of them destroying 51 CCs. With 50 BBs I won losing 14 BBs. With 1600 chaff and 20 BBs I lost all chaff and 4 BBs. Conclusion: with building only BBs I saved minerals for 1 year of chaff production. With Jihads it is really more cost-effective to build BBs instead of chaff. My . BR, Iztok

ok , but what is when the player of the CCs is not bad see that you have set the planet he arrives 50 BBs and change his Battleplan to Armed ships/armed ships retreat then i would say the BBs have a real problem to shoot at the CCs and lose all your BB .

ccmaster

Ignore me i am sleeping

[Updated on: Thu, 22 April 2004 02:01]

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[Updated on: Thu, 22 April 2004 13:06]

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[Updated on: Fri, 23 April 2004 18:19]

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[Updated on: Sat, 31 July 2004 01:38]

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"good factories" and "acceptable mines" are contraindicated for a quick start race.

factories have to be near max, and mines at _LEAST_ 14/3/20, with 1/2 size planets, you have to get the most out of it you possibly can.

As far as growth rate, it can go anywhere from 6 to 8 pretty easy (8 with the 1i version, but you do take some hits elsewhere, and i don't think it's worth it, it's all you can do to keep pop moving outward like you should with 7. Especially when you plan on having at least one race dead by 25, and at least one more by 30.... at least that would be a goal to set playing a race like this.

In anything other than a tiny or small, you'll want to start thinking about having at least 4-6 races and thier territory taken by 60 or so or you're not going to have a chance. It's a specalized qs race for those times you want to be particularly nasty in the very early game, but if you don't grab an overwhelming advantage in planet numbers, you don't stand a chance in mid and late game.

Shrug, i'm sure a lot of this is more just tailoring a race to my prefered playstyle.... I know a lot of you all won't recognize me, but surely some do

I tend to be a bit... uhm... well, a bit of a loner, i guess you could say. I guess it really makes me lose more often than i should, because pissing off the whole rest of the galaxy tends to be bad for your health... But it does make for some REALLY fun games

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asimov wrote on Thu, 05 August 2004 15:34

"good factories" and "acceptable mines" are contraindicated for a quick start race.

Note - with THIS quickstart race. Most you can't afford these sorts of settings.

Quote:

Shrug, i'm sure a lot of this is more just tailoring a race to my prefered playstyle.... I know a lot of you all won't recognize me, but surely some do I tend to be a bit... uhm... well, a bit of a loner, i guess you could say. I guess it really makes me lose more often than i should, because pissing off the whole rest of the galaxy tends to be bad for your health... But it does make for some REALLY fun games

Nothing like attacking all comers to make for an interesting game. Hey, it works for blitz, why don't people like it as much in PBEM?!

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Quote:

Anyway, it seems to work for me. In a medium or sparse universe, IFE is probably a must though.

I agree with that and in fact I find it very hard not to choose IFE in any environment. One thing that doesn't seem to be highlighted in this thread is the cost of the non-scoop engines.
The biggest problem of all is the expense in Germ.
All that Germ is essential for building factories, so if you start building either extra privateers or fuel boosters (of whatever design) to try achieving warp9 with DLL's (or similar) then that's even more germ consumed.

There's also another late game benefit of IFE:
Chaff can utilise it!
Not only does it achieve warp9 without consuming too much fuel, but it's less attractive to missiles than the QJ5.
Admittedly it will still cost a bit more than the QJ5 in the endgame, but it can be quite beneficial when your opponent is trying to counterdesign fleets to target your Nubs first.

The cost of IFE is almost always worth it IMO.

[Updated on: Fri, 27 August 2004 14:04]

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Steve1 wrote on Fri, 27 August 2004 19:59

The cost of IFE is almost always worth it IMO.

For HE or IT it is wasted points. For AR it is kind of 50/50. Since PP is very rarely played and CA is almost always banned... it makes 30% of PRT-s do not use IFE. Considering the economy models we see that NF and 1WW can also use IFE points elsewhere.

That said ... i must admit that for the rest of the pack you are correct.

Putting fuel mizers on chaffs is however ... sometimes good, sometimes bad idea.

If you got CE or BET it is OK idea. If you are going to leave bio at 4 (WM with NAS) until the very end it is OK idea. If you use it as desperate way to buy one germ for 2 iron and 3 resources then there is something wrong with the rest of your race or ship design strategy.

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Quote:

Non IFE can work too, but you have to play different, an alternate means to get same sort of expansion. You end up with different set of advantages for the same cost.<snip>

I take your point there, but you didn't mention how you get around the germ shortage.
My post wasn't only about the starting point cost of IFE or even the fact that you might need to build more ships as fuel boosters, but more to the point that each of these extra ships are also using engines that consume germ, whereas the FM doesn't.
The DLL7 and AD8 engines consuming 3 germ each is a big problem at such an early stage. You can certainly build more mines to compensate, but those resources are better utilised on building factories if you can.
Goes without saying that the more factories you have, the faster you can build mines and therefore more factories.
Then of course there's the whole business of shipping germ to your needy colonies. Exhaust all your early HW stocks and there's not enough to fuel some decent growth in your empire.
Quite a serious compounding effect IMO.

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Steve1 wrote on Fri, 27 August 2004 22:38

The DLL7 and AD8 engines consuming 3 germ each is a big problem at such an early stage.

Didnt you note he suggested taking ISB instead of ife... no go and compare dock and station germ costs and then tell us about 3 germ again.

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