I played as the Phhths, a -F WM variant. I have written about my adventures in detail in a blog that I have tried to keep up to date. I'm currently about 20 years behind at the completion of the game in 2552. I will be putting those final years up on the blog in the coming weeks, but I don't see any reason to not post a link to it before I'm finished.

I absolutely love your blog! Do you keep it private / password protected until the game ends? I might so something like this as well, it'll help me keep my thoughts organized. I wrote a message to my ally each turn last game, but I guess I might as well write it up properly.

I didn't read through the whole blog yet (frankly, mostly the first and last couple posts so far...), but one quick Q: did you never run into mineral problems with these factories? I guess it gives another 50-100 RW points to dump into hab...

The Phhths were a factoryless WM with NAS. To compensate for no minefields, no pen scanners, no factories, and expensive tech, they would need to have a lot of planets to keep up in technology and maintain a superior military. It's a very difficult race to pull off, but the Phhth were wildly successful in achieving this goal, taking over the centre completely. It didn't matter much that they didn't have pen scanners if they controlled every planet in the centre and the ring is fairly narrow making planet hoping against them less effective. They had more minerals than any other race, the WM edge in battle, and the skill to win. On year 2493, I voted for Phhth's victory and continued to vote for them regularly for the next 60 turns.

My biggest regret is not giving the Phhth's a better game.

Shortly before the game ended, I lost a fleet of over 200 Nubians in a lapse of judgment as I carelessly gated in a half finished fleet to 'defend' against a large fleet of dreadnaughts. There was no battle simulation. I had no idea how the battle would go, though I was hoping for a pyrrhic victory. I don't know what I was thinking. Against my better judgment and my original plan to have a larger fleet first before revealing it, I simply gated it in. It was a real waste of ships and embarrassing to say the least. Unfortunately, a mistake like that was not one that I could recover from. The Mega Disrupter Nubs were specifically designed to catch Phhth's Armegeddon dreadnaughts using retreat fire (movement speed 2.5), but it would have limited effectiveness long term since the Phhths could have easily countered with AMP Nubs and tear my fleet to pieces.

It was an enjoyable game, but it seemed to drag out a bit. Considering I conceded in year 2493, it was about 60 turns too long. I'm not sure if it was because other players were not voting? I think requiring 100% of votes for victory is okay for small universes, but for a huge universe, the requirement for victory should be less strict. To give you an idea, it would take about 2300 ly of travel around the ring for me to reach Phhths HW from my own HW. Perhaps 80% of votes is more than enough, where voting power is proportional to the player's game score and must own a minimum number of planets to be eligible to vote. I'm not sure what other players think, but I'm of the opinion that at higher levels of play, it's not necessary to play to checkmate, but this may simply be due my habit of applying chess etiquette to Stars!.

Hank

...but in 2423, the Weaklings pop-dropped and captured my planet in the north, Wilbury (a 74% world with good minerals). Although it was a very bad start for the Hobbits, it was a thrill to be on the receiving end of such a well planned surprise attack. The Weaklings were not weak at all, but controlled by a skilled player, and I think if it wasn't for their northern neighbor, The Jedi, who was SD and cramping Weakling's expansion, they would have been fine. Being in a two front war, I was at risk of losing my HW to the Weaklings.

Do you mean, with these mine settings?

The answer is no. It was tight there for a few years because my initial close greens were all poor in iron as was my HW and I complain about this quite a bit in the early years. But even so I was never really bottle necked by it, but it did limit some of my fuel ship production until I was spread out enough the iron concentrations started to average out and I actually had surface stores to speak of. After this point it was never an issue - even during my multi-decade destroyer production runs.

In all my testing and play, the biggest early or growth related mineral crunches occur for a few reasons. You're building factories, or you're building full starbases, or you're using privs which are mineral hungry. A -F with ISB can get away with 8/10k mines easily. 7/10k might be workable too, but that can get iffy with poor mineral concentrations. Those few ticks help you pay for ISB IMHO.

Cool, thanks for sharing. I'm still figuring a lot of these intuitions out, and indeed 80 points in the RW is nothing to sneeze at. Another thing I really need to work on is when to take risks and when to play safe (=slow)...

Just for fun, I had a look at previous game's designs, and it seems that beamer ships take about twice as many resources as bora, and missile ships take about as much iron as resources. Thus, to keep up ship production you need a mining rate of around half your resources, right? If mineral concs are about 50 that would suggest you would need 10/10k mines, so I guess 8/10 means that you are devoting a structural 20% to research or terra - which sounds reasonable. It does sound like that would be very constraining later on when concs drop further, but I suppose a -f WM doesn't assume there will be a 'later on'...

So, an actual design I used @ 2442

DD, Rad Ram, 2x Bazooka, and Wolverine Shield.

Cost 18I, 16B, 16G, 60R.

BackBlast wrote on Fri, 12 October 2018 16:52

So, an actual design I used @ 2442

DD, Rad Ram, 2x Bazooka, and Wolverine Shield.

Cost 18I, 16B, 16G, 60R.

Aaah, looks familiar somehow.
I remember talking with ccmaster about the game and him wondering about the horde-DD-design and how I had to admit: Uups, that's my fault.
So you took the design which conquered your HW in the previous game and improved it: much better in the hands of a WM and with -NRSE scoops offer interesting engine options without raising the price too much... although specifically the Rad Ram I'd judge as inferiour to the fuel mizer.

Analyzing lost battles/games, getting inspirated rather than frustrated and improving it... so I was right with my assessment in our last game that you were the most dangerous player in the field and needed to be defeated first and asap before getting too strong.

Congrats to your victory.
Winning a 152 turn game of Stars is a major achievement and a great show of discipline.

The blog starts here and you can read it chronologically from there.

...the Communists, was an IS on my south. So much for my peace loving Hobbits because it seemed that both neighbours were dead set on killing the Hobbits from the very beginning of the game.

In year 2421, the Communists pop-dropped and captured my planet, Salsa (a 75% world with good minerals). I scrambled ships to defend my southern border, but in 2423, the Weaklings pop-dropped and captured my planet in the north, Wilbury (a 74% world with good minerals). Although it was a very bad start for the Hobbits, it was a thrill to be on the receiving end of such a well planned surprise attack. The Weaklings were not weak at all, but controlled by a skilled player, and I think if it wasn't for their northern neighbor, The Jedi, who was SD and cramping Weakling's expansion, they would have been fine. Being in a two front war, I was at risk of losing my HW to the Weaklings.

I managed to retake Salsa in 2424 and...

...desperately defended it against the Communists for the next 20 years.

2437. In the meantime, I was barely hanging on in the south, with the Communists putting a lot of military pressure on Salsa. I was willing to sacrifice all my southern planets if necessary to capture the Weakling HW. What's interesting was that the Communists had opposite hab range compared with the Hobbits so virtually all their worlds, including their HW was negative. They would have made a great ally, but an unfruitful race to attack.

Between my HW and yours there were 7 greens for me. 5 on 'my side', but between myself and the Dearie in the south we had Venus (30%) 136ly from me. That's it. Every other planet was red with some smidgens of yellow. The other significant one was 59%, and was <47ly from their HW.