 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Fri, 13 January 2012 02:13  |
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| neilhoward | 
 | Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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Greetings Commanders,
I have a passel of new tricks, features, exploits, and cheats to unload, and this set seems like the most fun.
1) Ian (Traceroute) showed me that a player can have bombers set to depopulate an enemy planet in the next year, AND have waypoint zero orders to drop colonist without any loss. This saves you a colonising ship, and there are no enemy colonists or defences operated to diminish your occupation force.
2) Ed (LittleEddie) demonstrated how this can be used to confuse the enemy. The last year a defending player controls a planet there are (x)colonist and (y)defences. When trick number 1 is used, Stars! will ignore the fact that the home team was killed by bombing and guess the number (z) of invaders required to take the planet based on PRTs, number of defending colonists (before bombing), and % defence coverage (also before bombing). This leaves the routed player with reports that the planet is held by ±(z) enemy forces. Such can be used to great effect with a few nearly empty transports, such that their capacity is near the spoofed (z).
3) This is not the only scenario where the client will guess the number of enemy colonists on a planet (denoted by the ±). One way to improve your intel in these cases is to create a second folder for your xy and m files, but leave out the h file. YMMV, but it will give you a leg up.
Good Luck,
NH
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Sat, 14 January 2012 17:21  |
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| neilhoward wrote on Fri, 13 January 2012 12:43 |
Greetings Commanders,
I have a passel of new tricks, features, exploits, and cheats to unload, and this set seems like the most fun.
1) Ian (Traceroute) showed me that a player can have bombers set to depopulate an enemy planet in the next year, AND have waypoint zero orders to drop colonist without any loss. This saves you a colonising ship, and there are no enemy colonists or defences operated to diminish your occupation force.
Good Luck,
NH
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You also stand to gain tech this way.
Not quite sure if the 3rd method will work... perhaps I didn't understand it completely.
Method 4 - in team games, double player (team) bombing runs.
Cleans out planets in a single year (without letting the enemy rebuild their defences) even if the higher numbered ally isn't taking advantage of his lower numbered ally's smart bombs or bunker buster bombs.
ps - YMMV? something to do with micro-mgmt?
[Updated on: Sat, 14 January 2012 17:28]
I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Tue, 17 January 2012 12:26 |
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I did in an ongoing game - Reanimation.
I'll post the game files by the weekend as it should be over by then.
edit - I relooked at the game files and found that post bombing, there were colonists left on ground.
I didn't get an ingame message saying "all colonists bombed out", but rather a message saying "xxxx colonists were killed".
My colo-drop troopers did engage in an actual fight.
(So that means that one should aim for a 96-99% bombing run so that some enemies are left for ground combat / tech exchange trigger. Hmmmm. )
I now realise the uniqueness in the method that Ian/traceroute pointed out. I had experienced it a number of times but as it turns out never correctly understood it.
Thanks for the headsup, vonKreedon.
[Updated on: Tue, 17 January 2012 12:27]
I know my minefields.. but I'm a chaff sweeper.
I used to curse when I got stuck in traffic... till I realised I AM traffic.Report message to a moderator
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Thu, 19 January 2012 14:47 |
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| neilhoward wrote on Fri, 13 January 2012 08:13 |
1) Ian (Traceroute) showed me that a player can have bombers set to depopulate an enemy planet in the next year, AND have waypoint zero orders to drop colonist without any loss. This saves you a colonising ship, and there are no enemy colonists or defences operated to diminish your occupation force.
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The reason is in the order of events:
20. Bombing
22. Waypoint 1 unload tasks
24. Planets with 0 pop become uninhabited
As you can see: first comes bombing, then WP1-orders and only then occures the check wether a planet is depopulated. So you can invade a planet even if there is no more enemy pop alive.
Concerning tech gains:
I have never really tested it out wether you gain tech with this method but always assumed you cannot. For this reason I always try to bomb with let's say 99% bombing capacity (after defenses), so a few poor souls are still alive to spill out the tech secrets when my troops land.
The method to bomb with around 99% kill ratio has, of course, one weakness: if the opponent builds defenses in the last turn, more pop survives than calculated.
But if one missed the conquest of the planet due to too many survivors, one can still decide afterwards wether to go for
a) another round of bombing
or
b) additonal pop drop with WP0-order and to move on with the fleet rightaway
Sometimes it is quite interesting to have the choice wether to go for a WP0 or WP1 invasion. So you could first try to gain tech from your opponent with WP0 orders and if that fails you might still gain tech from your ally at WP1 within the same round. Or the other way around if you consider your ally's tech as more important.
[Updated on: Thu, 19 January 2012 16:55] Report message to a moderator
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| Addon |
Thu, 19 January 2012 15:19 |
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Another advantage of leaving some pop alive after bombing: you get a different message in which is listed how many pop you killed, how many buildings razed, and the state of the defenses.
This again is very interesting and helpful for a better assessment of the opponent's race design.
When you kill off all pop on the other hand, you get a plain message with no info but just that: all killed.
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Thu, 12 January 2017 04:59 |
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 magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Quote:Greetings Commanders,
I have a passel of new tricks, features, exploits, and cheats to unload, and this set seems like the most fun.
1) Ian (Traceroute) showed me that a player can have bombers set to depopulate an enemy planet in the next year, AND have waypoint zero orders to drop colonist without any loss. This saves you a colonising ship, and there are no enemy colonists or defences operated to diminish your occupation force.
2) Ed (LittleEddie) demonstrated how this can be used to confuse the enemy. The last year a defending player controls a planet there are (x)colonist and (y)defences. When trick number 1 is used, Stars! will ignore the fact that the home team was killed by bombing and guess the number (z) of invaders required to take the planet based on PRTs, number of defending colonists (before bombing), and % defence coverage (also before bombing). This leaves the routed player with reports that the planet is held by �(z) enemy forces. Such can be used to great effect with a few nearly empty transports, such that their capacity is near the spoofed (z).
3) This is not the only scenario where the client will guess the number of enemy colonists on a planet (denoted by the �). One way to improve your intel in these cases is to create a second folder for your xy and m files, but leave out the h file. YMMV, but it will give you a leg up.
Good Luck,
NH
Interesting result in 2) and 3). 1) I think you made a mistake, you need waypoint 1 drop orders the same turn as you depopulate, not waupoint 0 orders the next turn. Or at least that's my understanding of the trick, which I deduced myself from the published order of events.
Basically, yes, you can popdrop a world rendered sterile on turn X at WP1 on turn X. No tech gain, though; the loss of tech gain possibility is immediate upon depopulation by packet, bombing, or AR starbase destruction.
I was planning a guide to planet-killing as my next substantial essay, although my current test has precedence and is taking an annoyingly long time to complete (doing a 60-planet testbed to 2700 in triplicate while making absolutely no micromanagement errors is tiresome).
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Wed, 26 July 2017 03:48 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Just tested. Can confirm my earlier hypothesis; dropping pop at WP0 and bombing in the same turn does not work, because WP0 ground combat occurs before bombing. As such, Neil's #1 "trick" in the OP does not work as written. To popdrop a bombed-out planet, the drop must be at WP1.
Incidentally, "reply with quote" doesn't work on the OP of this thread. Anybody else having this issue?
[Updated on: Wed, 26 July 2017 03:50] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Mon, 21 August 2017 15:18 |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Wed, 26 July 2017 09:48Just tested. Can confirm my earlier hypothesis; dropping pop at WP0 and bombing in the same turn does not work, because WP0 ground combat occurs before bombing. As such, Neil's #1 "trick" in the OP does not work as written. To popdrop a bombed-out planet, the drop must be at WP1.
Incidentally, "reply with quote" doesn't work on the OP of this thread. Anybody else having this issue?
Nop
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| Re: 3 neat tricks for bombing/invasion and gathering intel |
Mon, 11 September 2017 03:00 |
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| neilhoward |
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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I suspect it is due to server migration or server software change. Also may be reason why ± was changed to �.
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