Iconian wrote on Sat, 04 August 2007 18:29

THE YEARS BEFORE WARP 10

2400 should be the only year without ships moving at w10 for a race without IFE or NRSE. The cost of IFE is approximately 1% additional MPGR and 1 additional mine operated. Combined, this more than compensates for minerals and colonists lost to exploding engines. Such a race can push QJ5 ships around at w10 cheaper than another moving w9 with the FM.

QJ5 Scouts cost ~2/3 res of those with FM and 1/2 minerals, and if your HW is cursed with a 30% Iron concentration, QJ5 is even more valuable.

By the mid to late 2420s, the FM engine should be of no consequence except to the suckers that paid 74 points for it.

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Sun, 02 October 2011 19:21

Am I reading this well? You are suggesting that every players should risk having their ships blow up at W10 with QJ5 since the very first turn of the game?

I overstate the application. Obviously it is neither necessary nor desirable to have every ship travel at w10 every year, and using boosters is certainly not a tactic for every player (some folks can't deal with Micro). If the game is a blitz (turns generate multiple years and have a 10 minute limit) then MM is to be avoided and IFE is more attractive.

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Also, the fuel usage would stop you from being able to do anything. QJ5 is not fuel efficient above W5!

Every time a FM ship returns to a SB with surplus fuel is a mineral, resource, and fuel inefficiency. Fuel is free and unlimited at SBs. A FM PVT can make 3 full w9 jumps, but a QJ5 PVT with boosters can travel as far as the a player plans ahead. The cost difference between the FM and QJ5 PVT is less than the cost of boosters and the occasional exploding ship. Some maths are hard, but excel helps. IMNVHO IFE, NRSE, and Prop - 50% are all a waste for most games, unless you just really don't like playing Stars!

[Updated on: Mon, 03 October 2011 01:36]

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Mon, 03 October 2011 04:21

You are suggesting that every players should risk having their ships blow up at W10 with QJ5 since the very first turn of the game?

He seems to. Just when a single colonizer traveling slower than warp9 all the way might mean a lost border outpost, he can compensate for having 10-20% of them blown up for no apparent gain.

I'd certainly like to know how can any race compensate for that kind of operating expenses and lost opportunities.

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Also, the fuel usage would stop you from being able to do anything. QJ5 is not fuel efficient above W5!

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neilhoward wrote on Mon, 03 October 2011 05:55

Obviously it is neither necessary nor desirable to have every ship travel at w10 every year, and using boosters is certainly not a tactic for every player

Even with IFE and boosters and plenty of MM, not every pop transport can be coaxed to travel at warp9 or even warp8 in these first critical turns.

I want to know how you regularly get Warp10 jumps without the FM engine. Pretty please?

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Every time a FM ship returns to a SB with surplus fuel is a mineral, resource, and fuel inefficiency.

Which is not often in my early years, but can happen...

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Fuel is free and unlimited at SBs.

Of which you start with just the one, usually at the center of an ever-expanding circle of shipping routes. Unless you mean to add lots of cheap Docks along the way?

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A FM PVT can make 3 full w9 jumps, but a QJ5 PVT with boosters can travel as far as the a player plans ahead.

Assuming these are *very* cheap boosters. What design do you use? Scouts? DDs? Other?

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The cost difference between the FM and QJ5 PVT is

exactly 5I, 1G and 7 Res, with the FM costing 0 of the all-important G. What kind of hull do your boosters use that's cheaper than that?

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less than the cost of boosters and the occasional exploding ship.

It can be argued that the cost of an exploding Colonizer is as high as the value of an average green planet times the years you could have owned it, and that's not including the costs of waging a war for it.

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Some maths are hard, but excel helps.

Forget Excel. I want to start with the costs as stated by Stars! own item catalog, if you'll humour me.

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IMNVHO IFE, NRSE, and Prop - 50% are all a waste for most games

Indeed, Prop cheap seems like overkill for a quite secondary tech, and many players can make do without the killer IFE+NRSE combo. But -IFE-NRSE is not all advantages as you seem to imply.

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m.a@stars wrote on Mon, 03 October 2011 05:00

I want to know how you regularly get Warp10 jumps without the FM engine. Pretty please?

I will let you figure that out for yourself.

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The cost difference between the FM and QJ5 PVT is exactly 5I, 1G and 7 Res, with the FM costing 0 of the all-important G. What kind of hull do your boosters use that's cheaper than that?

You forgot the 75 race wizard points of the FM cost, making quite a few hulls cheaper.

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It can be argued blah blah blah mealy mouthed namby pamby mumbling

tl;dr

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Forget Excel. I want to start with the costs as stated by Stars! own item catalog, if you'll humour me.

Start with the race wizard instead. Non-IFE engines can do the same thing the FM does, with a difference in degree but not class. The RW cost of IFE applied to economic growth however, does something the FM cannot: all else equal, twice the population and resources after 70 turns. (1.01^t)

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But -IFE-NRSE is not all advantages as you seem to imply.

I do not seem to imply it. I directly state it, and I am not the first.

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Hi!

"The only valid test is combat; the only valid result is victory" (SFB designer Steven V Cole)

Gentlebeings, stop arguing, start fighting.

BR, Iztok

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[Updated on: Tue, 04 October 2011 04:17]

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neilhoward wrote on Tue, 04 October 2011 05:37

75 race wizard points of the FM cost, making quite a few hulls cheaper.

Oh ho! So there's a place in the RW that makes hulls cheaper!! How could I have overlooked that!

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Non-IFE engines can do the same thing the FM does, with a difference in degree but not class.

Indeed degree. Same as running is just a degree of the more general class "walking". Heh.

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The RW cost of IFE applied to economic growth however, does something the FM cannot: all else equal

But all else is not equal, because there's the FM making it definitely as non-equal as can be.

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I directly state it, and I am not the first.

Fine, then. Where's your 25k+ by 2450 testbeds backing up your non-empty words?

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neilhoward wrote on Tue, 04 October 2011 05:51

the FM, which does make the early game easier.

... and by a significant degree.

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I like the idea of putting in extra MM for massive returns

I'm already putting lots of MM for decent results. But I'm always open to novel ways to use MM in achieving even better results.

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neilhoward wrote on Tue, 04 October 2011 05:37

Start with the race wizard instead... The RW cost of... I am not the first...

On a not entirely unrelated note, do you realize how many people before have found clever ways to juggle the RaceWizard in building supposedly "super" races that alas have been shown to not work at all in a game?

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[Updated on: Fri, 07 October 2011 21:35]

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Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the art of getting over 25k resources by 2450. It is one of the standard benchmarks for good reasons.

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jools wrote on Thu, 13 October 2011 19:04

it will be a long time before the NRSE player will get to the grav 15% terraforming that the player TGMS player will enjoy.

You are assuming the NRSE player won't have a much bigger econ and hence more than enough Resources to throw into Research.

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the IFE/NRSE combo doesn't look so cheap compared to -IFE/-NRSE prop cheap when you take into account other LRTs you might like. e.g. if you want to take OBRM, RS, NAS and ISB then adding IFE/NRSE starts to hurt in terms of RW points.

Of course. The Race Wizard favors you in that. The Race Wizard favors all kinds of things that aren't necessarily good in-game.

But what about the growth benchmarks? The wartech benchmarks? What is the in-game performance of your choices?

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jools wrote on Tue, 01 November 2011 18:53

in real games (as I'm sure you know) the most carefully crafted plans often have to be scrapped because of unexpected events....

... particularly if you don't testbed your designs beforehand.

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OK, I have been doing my homework and I must admit that the cases I make for both risky w10 and -ife or -ife,-nrse, are much more overstated than I thought. Both risky w10 and eschewing ife can pay off with big dividends, but their applications are deeply dependant on other race parameters, type of game ~(size*density/number of players), and difference of play styles.

I still believe that first: risky w10 (if accommodated by race configuration & whole-game strategy) can help *EVERYONE*, but only on a trip by trip basis.

Likewise, *EVERYONE* can benefit from using boosters (even WITH ife).

And last: depending on game type, playstyle, and other racial considerations, -IFE,-IFE/NRSE is not only viable but should be recommended.

So I have 3 projects to finish:
1 Risk/reward calculator for risky w10
2 Comprehensive guide to boosters
3 ife/nrse/ce matrix

I should have working models by the 6th, if I am diligent.
For #3, I don't have enough maths to know what maths I am missing

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