| Tips for playing in huge game |
Tue, 16 August 2005 07:08  |
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 iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1206
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
I've been in two huge games with lots of planets (80+) per player. In the recent one (Galactic Awakening II) I've played HE with 110 planets in 600 by 700 LY space and've been hit with a lot of problems I never met before, or were on a much smaller scale. Other players may have different recipies, but here are mine to share.
Tip #1: don't play in huge games. 
They require too much work for the amount of fun they give back. You'll need to deal with additional Stars! limitations, the worst IMO being 512 fleet slots.
Tip #2: don't play in huge games if your race is HE.
Besides "normal" huge MM you'll experience another problem. Lack of gates will hit you twice:
- not being able to respond quickly on the attack and
- gathering fleets will take several turns and several fleet numbers just to get ships where you need them. You'll almost mandatory run out of 512 available fleet slots every turn,
- find an ally with gates and give him some planets in your space to get access to his gate-network.
Tip #3: coping with no free fleet slots 
When new ships are produced each type is put in its own fleet slot. If you run out of flee slots Stars! try to merge them into an existing or just arrived fleet in orbit of the producing planet. If there's no fleet those ships are lost. So:
- don't produce everything on every planet, but "specialize" planets,
- keep in orbit of each planet one fleet. Minelayers are good for that. You'll need to manualy split off newly produced ships, but at least they will not be lost,
- save fleets wherever you can afford: do you really need so many scanner-ships/minelayers/skirmishers out there? If you have advanced scanners try using planetary pen-scanners instead; more minelayers only in orbits of planets; no bickering, but serious battles,
- don't save too much to become predictable. If he's sweeping/minelaying go kill his sweepers/layers. If not all, at least half, or he'll get too much of an initiative.
- Finding cloaked fleets is another nightmare, if you don't have an IS ally. They require lots of scanner ships in area using fleet slots you need for sth. more urgent. I don't have other recipie for that besides ignoring them if they're not a serious threat.
Tip #4: automate ship gathering
- Give a group of your production planets route order to a single planet. New ships will move there by themself, even using gates if safe. You can then filter out messages like "Your starbase at Scott has built 385 new FF chaff ships which are being routed to Foggy Bottom" and just look at messages like "Nub AMP #423 is at Salamander and has been rerouted to Planet X." Those messages indicate you need to merge ships there, to get back free fleet slots.
Tip #5: balancing minerals
You can't automate mineral distribution without using lots of fleet slots (4MT max auto un/load). Use one big fleet of freighters for one cluster of planets. If you don't care using resources for mineral packets instead for ships you can use packets for your internal "shipping".
Tip #6: did I already mention don't play in huge games? 
BR, Iztok
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