Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Fri, 10 May 2013 02:07   |
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 Mac1 |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 159
Registered: November 2008 | |
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That player was me.
I've found this idea at this forum or at one of my previous game, i'm not sure about it. Anyway i heard that if you choose the right habs (maximum right habs) PP and IT gets a second planet with 100% value.
The strategy was called 2 planets tactic. It seems for me like a normal tactic, used in many games (at least that's what i heard).
So i did my testing and indeed every time i got 100% my semi a 100% planet. So i designed my race like that for this game.
When game was generated and i see my semi is like 30%, i said "W#$^#@$#" to the host, or something like that  , showed him my tests results and we found that game generated on 2,7 gives such results, but on 2,6 does not. As far as i remember the rules for the game stated that version is 2,7 (correct me if im wrong), so i had every right to feel dissapionted.
I don't remember why the game was generated on 2,6 instead of 2,7 , maybe Marduk will explain, but anyway we agreed that I will just make another race (luckily a winning race  ).
Still the question remains, if the game was supposed to be play on 2,7 , then would such race be a bug or a normal thing ?
p.s. I remember now.
This kind of race was played in SAS5 by Joseph (race was Hiders) and noone had problems with that. Actually race was quite good and was close to winning the game. So i actually stealed the idea a little from SAS 5
[Updated on: Fri, 10 May 2013 02:09] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Fri, 10 May 2013 13:20 |
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| Mac1 |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 159
Registered: November 2008 | |
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Ok.
I dont rememeber the details (didnt make backup) but I will try to make a short story of this game from my perspective.
At start i want to mention that there are 2 winners according to rules: Me as Undeads and Rofl as Aiel , but really there was 3 winners, because without Kobold's (played by Mark) help we would most probably lose at earlier stage of the game.
And another thing worth to mention.
This was so far the best stars! game i have played in , mostly because we fought a very long, very even war and we managed to win, beying weaker for a long time.
Story of Undeads:
After the bug was found i had a short time to make another race. So I decided to take my race from SAS5 game, which was unfortunately never finished, due to player leaving a game.
Undeads are IT, with OBRM, NAS, BET(required by rules) and RS.
17% pop growth , 1/7 habitable planets , with wide radi, and others short or short-to medium.
Economy is: 1000 , 12/9/17 , 10/3/16 . Cheap germ checked
Ene, Con, Prop - cheap , rest expensive
For the first time in my life I decided to take ram scoop engines and safe some points on IFE. I think it was a good idea, due to the condition of the game and starting prop bonus for IT. I had to invest in prop much anyway, so i could make use of this engines.
The race was designed to survive at the start and be able to make big enough production later.
I started center north on the edge of the map, with my semi beying positioned to the centre of map.
I had a medium start. I found 3 quite nice planets, which would serve as breeders. But they had quite poor concentrations and I couldnt find any more planets.
One of them was attacked and taken by Navi (south-east border), but after some diplomacy was given back and NAP was taken.
I found myself surronded by 3 SDs (East, SE , S) and aggresive IS (west).
IS was Kobolds, played by Mark and it was my first little enemy, due to his aggresive expansion in my territory. He settles close to my HW, the planet was red to me but dangerous. So I tried some diplomacy, mixed with threating, but didnt work at start.
All other borders were spammed by mines, so my scouting range was higly reduced.
At this point it was obvious for me that I need to ally with one SD and trade with at least one more player. It didnt matter for me much, with who I would ally because none had very similiar habs to mine.
To the east was Sprocket. Diplomacy was hard, he didnt wanted any planet trading, he wanted to isolate a space for himself. His expansion also suggested that he probably is -f (not sure still if he was or not), so the trading would be hard anyway and messing with -f SD was also not a good idea. SO i just secured my borders and tried to avoid conflict and we took a NAP.
2nd possibility was Navi, the one who dropped my planet, but after gave back. So i've seen some chance for diplomacy, but i didnt found any suitable planets for me at this stage and also i had a feeling or hint, that he is already allied to someone else and there is no room for me.
So the last SD was Aiel, who actually found out to be a very friendly race and had few useful planets for me in his area. We made a deal quite easy.
Aiel meantime was talking with Kobolds and probably they signed alliance before, but somehow they didnt want an isolated 2way alliance, maybe they felt they can be not strong enough, and they decided to cooperate with me.
Also Aiel was probably the one who settled down my little conflict with Kobolds and we started to live like a happy family, trading and sharing info
Soon after we heard rumors about NaMa (alliance of Navi(sd) and Manticores(joat)) being very strong and killing other players, so we decided to cooperate against them, but we were not ready yet to hit them.
At this time i was 1st at score and startging to look for opportunities for expansions and that opportunity came to me by attack and drop of my most south planet (near Aiel HW) by Nightbugs (-f SS race started SW). It was about a time for me to make fleet, so few turns later I strike back with greater force.
But unfortunately it occured that Nightbugs was fighting also NaMa at east border (they got there by killing Uberts). I still dont understand why Nightbugs hit me, having so powerful enemy knocking to his door, instead of cooperating with me, but for me it doesnt matter much.
What matter more is that NaMa were advancing very fast and they took biggest part of Nightbugs cake.
We had NAPs with NaMa, but as i remember when we clashed at Nightbugs space we started guerilla war by sweeping, mining etc.
It was obvious that the conflict will occur soon.
At this point I was 2nd in score. NaMa were 1st and 3rd in score and we also have seen quite nice and modern fleet, so we knew they are better in techs.
Aiel was 4th and Kobold 5th.
Soon after NAPs were exited by NaMas and war started.
I held the biggest fleet and put some resistance. Main design was Ghost Dragon, a W10, Ene10 BS with 7EC and 1,25 speed. But then i lost over half of this fleet on some attack and NaMa came with quite big numbers of W10 BBs and some jihad DDs
At this point we were starting to lose ground and hope. I think there was a moment when we almost wanted to declare NaMa winners.
But I was starting production of my new line - called "lich" (remember that name!). It was copy of Ghost Dragon with BSC (as a counter to enemy BB with BC).
Rolf supported my by making jihad CCs (he was ahead with weapon techs a little).
I was hiding Liches for long time, to not reveal it's design and also after enemy showed himself with overcloaker, i was given idea to build my own overcloaker, called "shade". My allies didn't actually believe in overcloaking, but i was stubborn and waited for occasion to set a trap.
And finally the moment came. Few houndred of Liches came out of nowhere deciding the battle and killing almost entire enemy fleet.
After that we started to take our ground back and then even move into enemy teritory.
Aiel was doing good job with sweeping and mining and Kobold was providing Aiel with sweepers.
I was still focusing on building main firepower (improving the stack of Liches). After Liches stack was big enough (713 in total) I stopped production, started to gather minerals and tech weapons, waiting for what will happen.
At this time NaMa designed a new BB, with Ene14, full of w14 weapons, but only 1 move speed. It was called New Q and it was final stand for NaMa.
Our expansion slowed down as we were affraid of unknown stack of New Q. Finally they showed with a number of 300, then 400, then 500.
I did the test, with 713 Liches i could handle 300, maybe 400 of New Q's , but not 500.
Then I saw Aiel has scouts with ED and i run the tests again and it occured that with ED i can take out much bigger number of New Q's, so again I started to force the battle.
And then came the battle at Gaye !:
713 Liches + 124 Samael (jihad CC)
vs
527+18 New Q and 51 New S (BS full of sappers and ECs)
Battle ended with 266 Liches and 107 Samaels left and NaMa decided to conede victory.
What would happen if we didnt win at Gaye ?
Hard to say, I was 2 turns from w17, having already ene16, prop17 and quite some minerals gathered.
I would start production of 2,25 speed range 3 deadly beamer BS and also fast even more deadly jugger BS.
Combining with ED, they would probably eat everything enemy got at this point. The only question is, how much ground we would lose after losing at Gaye and what was the production potential of enemies, because current enemy design would be smashed soon.
Need to mention also sprockets, who didnt ally and didnt fight for the most of the game, to have finally join Nama and take maybe 1 battle ?. I dont understand why they were so passive. They should have joined us when we were losing hardly, then they should have joined NaMas sooner when we started to win
For summary I present now 2 winners of the game. Beware!
And the final threat:
What decided for enemy losing at Gaye in my opinion was 2 factors:
1. Enemy BS were too slow
2. New Q had jammers, losing firepower and New S didnt have jammers, beying more attractive to jihads.
Fix of that made Jihads killing New S before they came into fire range and then Bigger number of Liches with better initiavie did handle New Qs, even though they didnt got free show for range 3.
[Updated on: Fri, 10 May 2013 13:27] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Fri, 10 May 2013 16:10 |
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| Mark Hewitt |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 105
Registered: June 2006
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada | |
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Mac did a real good job summarizing most of the game. Here's some of the details from the Kobold point of view.
At the start, I'd seen one of his Undead ships, either loaded transport or colonizer (due to NAS), and knew his Homeworld was Grape. Mine was Balder. And Chunk was halfway between the two of us, 2 Warp 9 jumps from both HW. And I managed to grab it.
I was staying on Chunk. But Chunk was more connected to the planets around Grape and Mac obviously didn't like this. He wanted a planet in trade and I wasn't sure if I could trust him. Can't remember for sure but I think we shot down some scouts.
But both of us were talking to Aiel (Rolf). Who suggested to me that maybe we should consider a 3-player alliance with Undead. Yes the rules limited victory to only 2 players. But we could figure that out in the future by fighting it out or some other agreeable solution.
In many ways I was effectively the junior partner in the game, although I kept my hand in during discussion. My race design was flawed (more below) and I left off building IS pop fleets until far too late in the game. Aiel and Undead had much larger warfleets. My main contributions were minerals, sweepers, and later popdrop fleets. Without me I think Aiel and Undead could have done almost as well, which is why I think the victory is theirs.
My poor, poor, IS race. Hab was too tight, I should have gone with Grav immune, and I'd given in to the siren lure of -f. And being a -f IS, I left the planet pop fleets to triple up pop to double resources far too late. I went with 1/800 pop efficiency because of some confused analysis that if I was penned in by other players it would be the best use of RW points. And even for a -f 10/3/12 mines is just too few.
IS
28 pts spent on mineral concentration
IFE NRSE OBRM ISB NAS BET RS
Grav 1.32g - 6.08g [58-75-92: 34.7 wide]
Temp 32 - 168 [58-75-92: 34.7 wide]
Rad immune [ 0--100: 99 wide]
(1 in 7, calc 0.149)
20%
1/800 F 5/25/5/4G M 10/3/12
+75% Weap
-50% Const
+75% Energ, Prop, Elect, Bio
+75% start at Tech 3
As it was, I was very lucky to ally with Aiel and Undead as they allowed me to play on despite my bad race design and have a very fun game.
Thanks to all and especially Marduk.
[Updated on: Fri, 10 May 2013 16:11] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Tue, 14 May 2013 17:01 |
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| ManicLurch |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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Here is the Navi story.
SD, habs 1/5, 2 wide narrow rad
IFE, NRSE, OBRM, NAS, BET, RS
14/9/14 factories, g box checked
10/4/15 mines
Cheap EN & Con, rest expensive
My idea with this race was taking relatively wide habs (to help with low planets per player), with one narrow field to help find an ally to intersettle with. The highly efficient factories helps them build faster to make the race a little faster to be ready for war. Not as fast as factoryless, but fast enough for a factory race.
I started in the center of the map, which meant I had a lot of choices for allies and also borders to protect. Most players were letting my scouts in their space. The undead were shooting my scouts down early. Then they settled a planet really close to my HW. The planet was red to me, but I didn't want an unfriendly IT to get up a gate so early so close to my HW. So I pop dropped it just to keep them away.
Right after this I started negotiating NAPs with most neighbors including the Undead, Aiel, Sprockets and Manticorians. My habs were almost a perfect match to intersettle with the Aiel, but the Manticores had many good greens for me in their space while the Aiel had almost none. The Sprockets had some descent greens for me in their space, but they were mostly interested in an NAP and border. They seemed to have too wide of habs to make a good intersettling partner. Plus the Manticores were JOAT, attractive since I didn't have pen scans. So I made an alliance rather early in the game with the Manticores and made short term NAPs with the Aiel, Undead and Sprockets. Part of my NAP with the Undeads is I vacated the property that I pop dropped (which I would have anyway since it was red for me).
The Manticores were factoryless and ready for war early. He basically ran over the Uberts by himself. I was going to contribute to the HW hit, but I wasn't ready soon enough, so I just supplied minelayers and bombers. So I greatly benefited from not only allying with a JOAT for pen scans, but combined with the good greens in his space and the Manticores taking the Ubert space left me with lots of room to grow.
With this room to grow and my good factories, my rank went to first and the Manticores went to 3rd while we assumed the Ubert territory. After taking most of the Ubert territory we started running into the Nightbugs, an SS race in the bottom left of the universe. We kept going back and forth, should we strike up an agreement with the Nightbugs, or attack them. We had just struck a short term agreement with the Nightbugs when they went and attacked the Undeads, lost their main fleet and dropped. So we scrambled to take what Nighbug planets we could. Since we had I think we got more than 1/3 but less than 1/2 of the Nightbug territory.
The Undeads and I had a scuffle over the last Nightbug planet and I realized that war would begin soon against the Undead and Aiel. So I gave my notices to terminate the NAPs.
We had some battles with bazooka CCs and took a few planets. The Aiel and Undeads defeated our main bazooka CC fleet when we were attacking. So I started a W10 CC fleet. We lost a couple of the planets that we took and they were building a lot of beamer CCs, they had more than us. I believe I had the resource and tech lead at the time, so I researched Jihad tech. I had prop expensive, so I was stuck with 100/250 gates, so I built Jihad DDs and just in time. The Undeads were attacking (from the planet I had originally pop dropped I think) with a superior beamer CC fleet. However I had just built the Jihad DDs and gated them in un-stacked and won the battle.
I don't recall all the details, but I think we took a few more planets after that and both teams researched Con for BB tech. I think the Undeads got there first, which gave us the opportunity to put a comp in the nose of our bb to counter their BB with 7 en caps. While the undead had a head start, the Manticores and I quickly overtook them in BB fleet size, or so we thought. It looked like we would have an easy time, marching through their space.
Then one turn, one that I had tested thoroughly and knew they had no shot of winning that battle, they destroyed most of our BBs by sending in an overcloaked BB stack, I think they had overcloaked about 300 BBs. I remember looking at that turn shocked. First I thought, was there a bug? Did Mac find a new bug? Then I got it, he was IT, he could build heavy and more efficient gateable overcloakers and had sprung a great trap.
So I congratulated him on a great trap and went to work on strategy with the Manticorans on how to recover. I had about 40k in resources at this point, but it would take years to build a large enough fleet to stop them. We had options and we still had about 150 BBs that hadn't been stacked yet. We talked about getting Nubs and ran the numbers on how long to get there. But that would need like 15 turns of just research. We could keep building the same BB. While Macs BB stack would shoot first, ours had EN14 shields compared to their EN10 shields. Or we could research W.
W chose to research W and started building a W14 stack while they advanced. We lost a lot of planets, including my HW. We still had a shot of turning it around. My tests were similar to Macs, we were close to having enough W14 BBs to completely defeat his W10 BB stack. Then the Aiel got the ED, which really messed things up. Going with a range 2 beamer is dangerous against an enemy with range 3 beams and the ED. Many of my tests showed the undead would get 2 free shots off in many situations. Those 2 free shots meant I needed a lot more ships to win. But I started finding situations with certain battleboard positions and ship attractiveness that would prevent his 2 free shots and allow my ships to win.
My tests on the last battle showed just that. They were going to attack a Manticore planet. By having him build a very attractive starbase, my tests showed the Undead ship movement would mean no free shots and I would win easy.
Unfortuantely the last battle didn't work out that way. The Undead didn't get their free shots, but they did move way from my ships at first, which meant it took many more turns to close. During this time his Jihad ships killed all my sappers. Our ships also had the same initiative and he got the first shot. I lost all my ships and killed about 2/3rd of his.
During the late stages of our war with the Aiel/Undead/Kobolds we started talking with the Sprockets again. I had thought they would go the whole game without a war. But they seemed interested in joining our war all of the sudden. I think it was because they had no one to ally with, since the Kobold had joined forces with the Aiel and Undead. The Kobolds did give them some nice toys. CS FFs are great cheap sweepers in SD hands. Plus they started supplying pop for pop drops. The Sprockets had built up a nice sized Jihad BB fleet and had the ED to go with it. We were just about to start taking planets back, including my HW with the Sprockets help in the north, while trying to stop the undead BB fleet in the south with our W14 BBs when the final battle happened.
What is interesting about this last battle is Mac's tests showed he would always win and my tests showed I would win most of the time. After talking about it, we had the host regen the last turn about 10 times. I didn't count all the results, but I saw some of the results showed what my tests showed with movements and I won. Some of the results mirrored Macs tests and he won easily. And some of the results were just like the actual result, the Undeads won, but suffered heavy casualties.
Well after this battle I realized they would get the salvage and with an IT on their team they would have it distributed to production centers in just a few turns. Even though we would be unopposed for a few turns in the north, we wouldn't be able to stop them in the south and with the mineral advantage it was only a matter of time for them to win.
If we had won that last battle, I was only a few turns from W17 myself, so the game would have gotten interesting as we could have taken planets in the north and south for a while.
Even though I lost in the end, this was one of the better games that I have played in. Something I realized is instead of researching W tech, we might have been better off building more W10 BBs. Collodials and Jihads seems to be adequate tech to win most SAS games.
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Tue, 14 May 2013 19:53 |
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ManicLurch wrote on Tue, 14 May 2013 23:01Collodials and Jihads seems to be adequate tech to win most SAS games.
In sas6 it was even possible to win with bazooka-cruisers. But sas6 was also much faster, until 2459.
sas3 was won with mostly bazooka-destroyers, plus some later frigates, sappers and bazooka-cruisers. Fastest game I've ever experienced, lasted until 2447.
In both games the winning faction got barely to level 10 technology.
Good reading of the game stories, thanks.
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Wed, 15 May 2013 16:38 |
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| Mac1 |
| Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 159
Registered: November 2008 | |
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Altruist wrote on Tue, 14 May 2013 19:53ManicLurch wrote on Tue, 14 May 2013 23:01Collodials and Jihads seems to be adequate tech to win most SAS games.
In sas6 it was even possible to win with bazooka-cruisers. But sas6 was also much faster, until 2459.
sas3 was won with mostly bazooka-destroyers, plus some later frigates, sappers and bazooka-cruisers. Fastest game I've ever experienced, lasted until 2447.
In both games the winning faction got barely to level 10 technology.
Good reading of the game stories, thanks.
I think we had a longest and more tied SAS game so far.
If last battle went a little more in NaMa favor, I think we would have eneded this game with massive W16 capital ships. Like ManicLurch is saying, we would both start to build them in 2-3 turns and we probably would have similiar resources.
I wonder how much minerals you had left, cause I think you did bigger numbers of fleet than us.
Anyway it would be interresting to see our W16 designs, probably we would stat them at the same time, not knowing about enemy w16 ships
[Updated on: Wed, 15 May 2013 16:42] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Stone Age Slaughter 7 Has ended |
Thu, 16 May 2013 18:00 |
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| ManicLurch |
| Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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Quote:And that was the early mistake, a JOAT/SD/IT alliance would have been hard to beat and the game ended up with 3 way alliances anyways. It was a fast game for me but I did try to make make the alliance before I was gone
Yes, it is hard to really enforce a rule like only 2 in an alliance because if you are threatened, you will take whatever help you can, and thus larger unofficial alliances get started that way.
When we attacked the Uberts it was long before any 3 way alliances were being formed, so we weren't looking for another partner, just more planets. The Uberts just had the unfortunate luck of starting next to the fastest race in the universe (Manticores) and being their first target. That is the risk in any Stars game, you could end up starting next to a quick starting race. You can adjust your race to be faster, but you always have to give something up for that. If you give up too much, you can find yourself in first place for the first half of the game and then get clobbered by a slower but more powerful race on the other end of the universe in the 2nd half of the game.
But in these SAS games where there is such a low planet count per player and thus earlier battles, it is often better to err on the side of having a faster race.
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