Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Some whackier race designs
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Wed, 02 August 2006 21:07   |
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I have been trying to play prt themes that I have never played before
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I realise this is off topic, but suggest you also try alternative game situations for fun. I am having great fun with having non-accbbs game, as well as no diplomacy when others (intermediates) can talk. We may reach nub era with 2 ARs each part of competing faction, and 6+ players with shot at winning, in medium normal universe..., I expect this to be best game I have ever been part of.
More on topic, alternative LRT combos can be fun, eg BET, or UR, or TT or not taking RS.
[Updated on: Wed, 02 August 2006 21:20] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Wed, 02 August 2006 21:39 |
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With all the comment about slash and burn -f IS designs, I'll pipe in with the race I used to win "Who Needs Super Stealth". The game rules were slightly quirky as it was played without scanners (except the HW planetary scanner and battle scanner.) I figured I had to assume I would lose a lot of planets unpexpectedly... -f IS seemed obvious as it meant lost planets were cheap, and effectively invisible flying orgies gave me the opportunity to return the favour. This turned to be very true, in practice I lost around 10 stars to bombing (a nasty -f CA...) including my HW to a sneak strike, but throughout all of that the race continued to grow FAST and recovered to win the game. That nasty -f CA dropping helped a little, but I had already decisively turned the tides when it happened (sniper designs were eliminating his bombers to remove the teeth from his warfleets, border worlds had awesome starbases, Jugg BBs and sappers were slaughtering his Jihad and w14 beam cruisers...)
IS
0 pts left
IFE (I wanted expand far and early)
NRSE (cheap IS fuel transports makes scoops a luxury)
CE (without the scanners people wouldn't even notice, and with growth in freighters it's not so terrible... I'd probably trade this option for NAS in a normal game (which was banned in this one.))
OBRM (obvious for -f)
ISB (obvious for -f, FF croby horde planned)
RS (croby croby croby)
Grav immune (didn't plan to research much prop)
Temp -100 to 132 wide
Rad 54 to 84 (only 15 clicks wide... nice for terra)
1 in 5 in race wizard
19% PGR
1/1000
5/25/5
10/3/15 (high for a -f, but I was mineral poor in the previous game I'd played so I wanted a surplus. With IS overpop I figured I'd also want more minerals than usual in late game anyway. I only bothered to build the last 5 of the 15 per 10000 in mid-late game when I needed more minerals to support my BB building.)
en/con/weaps cheap
prop normal
el/bio exp
(I made a mistake here, as race was starting with FM I would've been better off going el normal and prop exp)
EDIT: I wouldn't exactly call this a wacky design, except the 'I don't care if I lose my HW' approach, mainly just posted it up to compare against the IS -f races getting posted, to show a viable design.
[Updated on: Wed, 02 August 2006 21:41] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Thu, 03 August 2006 14:31 |
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 Marduk |
 | Ensign |
Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dayton, OH | |
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| mlaub wrote on Wed, 02 August 2006 15:43 |
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bump propulsion tech to expensive. Let's see... make the mines 9/3/25
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The whole ruiner concept seems...pointless. You are paying way to much to ruin the mining eff, when you could be building warships. If you are winning, you are only ruining your own mines! Seems like you are planning on losing, with a design like that.
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Oh, I'd never play one like this myself. But it's interesting to try to figure out how to use this race. I'm guessing you'd do best by colonizing at long distances to start, and try to pen your opponents in early. Then fill in back towards your homeworld, shipping minerals back as you go. You'd end up with a ton of minerals available at and around your home system, and ideally several of your enemies will be mineral starved in the mid and end game.
I think you'd find it very hard going if you were up against extremely aggressive players, but a diplomatic genius might get away with it long enough for the tactic to have an effect. My preference for an IS is 16% growth, but I don't think you could go lower than 18% and have a hope of pulling this off.
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(tens of millions and up, which no one ever seems to use in a game)
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I have seen it quite a bit, and used it quite a bit.
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The biggest I've seen used by others so far was about 12 million, and the biggest I've used was around 30 million. Still on the smallish side. With an IT in a large and lengthy game, I had my reserve population fleet to almost 20 million, with another 10 million scattered in smaller regional pop supply fleets. I kept a cluster of breeder systems feeding the main fleet at close to a million pop per year. Even in smaller games with an IT I usually kept a couple of million sitting around somewhere.
And ITs can produce a variant of the breeder fleet idea. Have a large fleet with 30 LFs full of population and minerals (or 10 LFs if you're a 1/2500 +f race and it isn't worth bothering with the overpopulation). Lots of scouts and colonizers, mine sweepers and layers to go ahead of it, and enough warships to make it a major effort to kill the fleet. Colonize a system, max out it's pop and build a gate. The turn after the gate goes up, build only factories and ship more supplies to the fleet (replacement population and minerals, another colonizer, possibly more scouts, sweepers or fighters). Move to the next system, repeat. You can either pull most of the pop back up and feed the system from home, or just be ready to send them as reinforcements to the fleet. Circumstances can limit or prevent the use of something like this, but if you can put one together relatively early you'll grow like cancer.
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Think early game, Y2401-2430 when bomber fleets are fairly worthless. You can gain lots of territory and hold it, because of your defence.
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Okay, granted. But you can only have so much pop by the time good bombers roll around, and the enemy is probably going to be closer to your colony than you are given how I think you'd have to play this race (and so in a decent position to overwhelm starter colonies anyway).
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The self-replenishing invasion force is useful, but IT can get population from breeder systems to the front in no time. That's nearly as good.
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I've played both extensively, and you are correct...until the IS gets a orgy operating. Further on in the game, being able to take planets whole without bombing makes comparisons an apple to oranges thing.
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Still, to take the planet in one turn takes nearly 50 million pop in the fleet, and those fleets are fairly vulnerable. The 30 million that I used was housed in nubians with super cargo pods. I put on a slot of the big gatlings for sweeping and to avoid being targeted as 'unarmed'. Jammed, of course, and designed to be the least attractive ship I built for both beam and missile. I kept them in a seperate fleet with chicken orders to make sure they didn't wander into enemy fire.
Prior to that, I'd lost a lot of Super Freighters to suicide attacks, and after that I didn't need to take any
...
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Thu, 03 August 2006 15:55 |
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| mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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| Marduk wrote on Thu, 03 August 2006 13:31 |
I'm guessing you'd do best by colonizing at long distances to start, and try to pen your opponents in early. Then fill in back towards your homeworld, shipping minerals back as you go. You'd end up with a ton of minerals available at and around your home system, and ideally several of your enemies will be mineral starved in the mid and end game.
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This happened to me in one of my games in '97 or possibly '98. I think that person actually might have used poor mine settings to get more race points, but you never know. Either that, or he was uploading mins while I was crushing him... I kept thinking, were the hell are all the mins!?!?! Anyway, you are right, if I had not had the good fortune of allying with an AR, who was willing to setup a fountain on my HW, I'd have died horribly later on in the game. The point is, tho, he still lost, and that was before allying with the AR. So it is a setup for failure, IMO.
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The biggest I've seen used by others so far was about 12 million, and the biggest I've used was around 30 million.
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In my last game playing IS, I had +140 million in 2 orgies, and was spawning smaller orgies as fast as I could to overpop planets. I was also sending out fleets of 6 million to pop drop and take enemy planets. My fleets couldn't keep up, and I was taking out at least a 1 planet a turn.
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Still on the smallish side. With an IT in a large and lengthy game, I had my reserve population fleet to almost 20 million
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As I said, apples to oranges. I believe I was getting ~13 million in extra pop a turn.
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Okay, granted. But you can only have so much pop by the time good bombers roll around, and the enemy is probably going to be closer to your colony than you are given how I think you'd have to play this race (and so in a decent position to overwhelm starter colonies anyway).
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You might be surprised at how big one of these races can get early in the game. Cherry picking multiplies the normal growth, and if you are taking planets from your neighbor, they won't be as big. This is the main concept that makes an -f so strong, they not only get big fast, but aslo stunt their neighbors growth. By actively denying a certain amount from all their neighbors, the -f is that much bigger, and the neighbor is smaller. Defending is faily easy in the midgame, as you will probably have a gate within 1 or 2 jumps of the target. It only gets tough if several race co-odinate their attacks. They start losing power after about Weap16 era, if they haven't been able to gain alot of territory.
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Still, to take the planet in one turn takes nearly 50 million pop in the fleet, and those fleets are fairly vulnerable.
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Errr...maybe, if the IS is sloppy. Although...you'd really have to be lax, even against a SS. We are talking about the race with tachyons, right?  There is never a need to bring the orgies to the edge of the front anyway. You can send 20 superfreighters ahead at a time with freighter chaff, and escorts. Keep the Orgy +101 ly away from the front and in speed trap minefields.
-Matt
...
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Wed, 23 August 2006 10:01 |
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This one is a peculiar thing.....
Its borderline playable as. the smarter AI, and you'd get flattened in no time vs. a real player.
Anyways, here they are: The Xxr
IS
TT, GR, NRSE, CE, OBRM, LSP, RS (whew... thats a lot of LRTs)
Grav: 0.73 - 1.92
Temp: -92 - 36
Rad: 41 - 73
1/24 hab
7% growth (!) 
1 res = 700 pop (arg..... the cost  )
Fact: 15,7,25 (+Gbox)
Mine: 12,5,20
All science +75%
0 points left over (spent on penny sweets)
What a shambles eh?
With such an outrageously low growth rate things go VERY slowly indeed, which is why they are IS: so they can at least get thier growth up somewhere near 10% with transports.
Getting started is the hard part & keeping enough momentum to stay alive is the other hard part
IF you do make it past the starting hurdles, with those great factories and overpop you can get over 6k from a 100% world.
(Just because I could  )
Definately a whacky one
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Thu, 24 August 2006 02:32 |
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| JasonC |
 | Petty Officer 2nd Class
Stars! V.I.P |
Messages: 58
Registered: July 2006
Location: Arlington, MA | |
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The Hive (narrow TT HP IS)
IS
TT, OBRM, RS
NRSE and/or NAS added (options)
grav and temp 40 wide and centered
rad 40 or 50 wide and centered (or off 1-2 clicks)
gives 1/10 or 1/12 hab
18%, 19%, or 20% pop growth
1/2500 pop efficiency
15/7/21 3G or 15/8/21 3G factories
10/3/18 mines - variant 12/3/18 mines (needs cost 8 or NAS)
weapons, construction, bio cheap
prop normal
energy and elec expensive
no start at 3 box
leaves 16 to 36 points for higher mineral concentrations
The HW goes all the way to 50% initially. Scout with QJ5 fuel scouts. factories until around 30% pop. Then buy con 4 tech first, and build "scows" - privateers with QJ5 to hold orbital pop (with a cargo pod) and make very close runs to nearest stars.
Then push prop to 5 for warp 7 engines in a couple of years of hard research from the HW only. Make privateers with cargo pod, DDL7 and colonize with those. You don't much care about travel time since you grow on the way - in fact, your pop growth takes place from HW to colonies rather than on colonies. You still want to hit any greens first, with 90,000 pop on arrival. And the better yellows - -4 or so - which will become useful with 10 TT.
All the good yellows and then the reds get 60k pop.
When the HW gets a green factory line at the 50% hold, buy con 8 and prop 7 for warp 8 large freighters. Seed your HW orbit with a LF over 2 years, and keep that orbital pop investment separate from other pop. Next hit every world there is with 60k pop. Export G from the HW. Worlds that hit 350 resources put in max terra 5%.
Buy bio 9 for TT10, then hit essential side fields for a couple of turns each. As worlds turn green you want a full LF waiting for it and topping them off as fast as the factories can compound. Have a few others tour the reds topping them back to 60k as pop dies. (Not 55, leave some room for deaths etc).
Try the options to see which works better for you. Cost 7 factories are much more forgiving and are readily affordable with either NAS or with NRSE and the narrower hab setting. Even 20% PGR is quite cheap with hab this narrow.
Eventually you can live everywhere, your space pop compounds 9-10% to fill the stuff that didn't grow while the planets were red, and anyplace fed G reaches 195 resources and terras 2-3% per year, soon enough.
Sleep and defend. As worlds mature you can afford BB hulls and reasonable weapons. Then hit bio hard for TT15-20.
Most IS races like RS for crobies, but these can consider skipping it, particularly if you take NRSE (since that makes horde fighting hard). Use BBs with good armor instead. Organic get very cheap and you also get full strength fielded kelarium that way.
[Updated on: Thu, 24 August 2006 02:34] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Some whackier race designs |
Fri, 25 August 2006 06:51 |
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I played an IS similar to this about 2 years ago - A strategy I used was a little unusual in that I colonized virtually everything. I played the IS like an HE. My idea was to be getting the max out of all the reds by keeping them at 120% pop levels - i.e. 66,000 population. That whole mess of planets provided a lot of research resources since they built the factories quickly and a privateer in orbit automatically kept the population stable. Each red planet easily put up a space dock and could build small light ships. They were great for minelayer construction and re-fueling. In the first 50 years the race had ~30k resources but only around a dozen greens. All those tiny worlds also added up the minerals since they didn't use much at all and most everything they mined over 20 years just piled up.
All was going well until the alliance on the eastern front cancelled their non-agression treaty about a decade before I wanted them to...... Ahh well - such is the nature of diplomacy...
The best thing was that the loss of any given planet was quite insignificant - a couple hundred and some odd resources (around 250-260). They certainly ate up a lot of the enemies time and a great deal of invasion troops since they all had their max defenses.
Ptolemy
Though we often ask how and why, we must also do to get the answers to the questions.Report message to a moderator
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