Just for the sake of being different...

I find that AR is the only PRT with which i'll consider using GR.
Since its usually worth concentrating on energy res. the other fields lag behind somewhat.

By taking GR your energy ramp-up will be slower than normal, but you won't lag so much in the other areas, & you get a nice liitle bonus to boot!

Just my quirky little preference

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Sober Council wrote on Fri, 04 February 2005 12:22

Just for the sake of being different... I find that AR is the only PRT with which i'll consider using GR. Since its usually worth concentrating on energy res. the other fields lag behind somewhat. By taking GR your energy ramp-up will be slower than normal, but you won't lag so much in the other areas, & you get a nice liitle bonus to boot! Just my quirky little preference

That suprises me, AR would be the last race i would use GR with.

You need con12 asap, better in 2427 than in 2435 and such a difference you will get using GR. Also GR weakens your early weapon race and that is the most critical part for AR.

The first i consider using GR with is SD, it needs bio12-13 anyway, so there is nearly all that side research going to other fields is useful and exploding mine fields will give you the few extraturns you need to get an equal we tech level.

Carn

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Sober Council wrote on Fri, 04 February 2005 13:22

By taking GR your energy ramp-up will be slower than normal, but you won't lag so much in the other areas, & you get a nice liitle bonus to boot!

I agree with Carn here, AR seems to be pretty much the last race to take GR. With GR it seems is most important what you get as result but do not want, and most of the things you dont want with AR.

First, getting another LRT to boot with. AR is often heavy with LRT-s. Have seen suggested here ISB, IFE, ARM, NRSE, LSP, NAS, RS and CE? Even if you take half of them just one more and its wasting lot of RW points. Even worse, i see no point to take GR without TT, (otherwise what you need that 15% investment into bio for?) So that adds 2.
Second, slower getting what you need whole game. 0.5 speed in primary research target ... it hurts at start and it hurts later. I already posted few posts above that i testbed AR for tech targets instead of resources. Energy i care no much about after getting 6 or so levels right away, i take a level once every 5 years there after that, no concentration. Now ... slow construction hurts bad and if attacked, then slow weapons hurt. Got weapons and construction to 26? Again trouble! You get only 95% of your effort invested from then on. Once energy is maxed as well you get only 80% of your effort returned, rest is wasted into maxed up fields. If you didnt need that bio since you took no TT then substract another uselessly invested 15% from these figures. All the game you are slower.
Third, crap tech trade whole game. With GR its hard to be the delivering side, also you get less as receiving side. Getting along with neighbours is most important for AR and being crap trader does not help there.

Actually GR is quite junk LRT in general. GR i would consider only with TT CA or SD (especially for "no tech trade" games) and for jump start games. For rest of the cases... GR sucks.

[Updated on: Mon, 07 February 2005 08:59]

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Hehe...
I did say it was a quirky preference.

Yes, GR is mostly a waste of time for a truly competetive race, but for some reason i still like it...

Does this make me an oddball?
Probably.

I'm off to sit in my corner now.

[Updated on: Tue, 08 February 2005 06:02]

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Hi!

freakyboy wrote on Sat, 14 June 2003 21:55

OK so I'll kick this one off with my current best....

I still don't have the best one, but I pretty much know what it will look like, when I'll get it.

LRTs
- IFE: do I need to explain that one? A bonus for ARs is they don't need to reseach early prop, that would make other fields more expensive;
- ISb: cheap Dock for early growth and fuell, excellent US later;
- LSP: nice points, 2 years more to research and not export pop, 10% less resources initially. Crowding avoided more easily, and with that less lost growth lately.
- NAS: excellent points, and I'm used to play without pen-scanners (that can be bought anyway). Better early scannig helps too.
- RS: since energy tech is high shields are good too. And I don't use much of expensive armor anyway. Weaker early and mid-game orbitals though.
- NO ARM : it is too expensive with all those LRTs aready taken. Normal miners are twice as expensive, but I'll pay for them much later in the game, when my econ will (hopefully )be better because of those saved points.

Hab
Grav-immune, other two about 40 wide and shifted: temp about 20 clicks from the edge, rad 16.
- about 1_in_6 hab, what looks like an overkill with 1-immune, but gives good chance of finding greens. Having bad luck with hab in quite some games I'm inclined to rather sacrify other things and keep good hab.
- those greens will also terraform quite fast because of two narrow fields. With max terra about 50% of planets will be habitable, all initiall greens will be over 85%.
- grav immune and IFE enables me to concentrate on really important early energy and con techs and not "waste" research in prop.

PGR
15%-17%. More of that and I'm asking for troubles with crowding. Less and it will not grow fast enough to stay competitive.

Pop eff divisor
10-12. Nice points that don't hit AR so badly, as divisor is in square root of res production. With 11 I got 40 RW points for 4.6% less pop eff. Divisor 25 looks excellent on a paper, but t

[Updated on: Wed, 24 August 2005 05:34]

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Haha, not sure I want to try prove you wrong as I seem to agree with almost everything.

I think ARM is very powerful - the midgit miners are great for a long time, and much easier to gate to those high-conc worlds. Plus having 2 miners from day 1 helps a lot with growth.

I disagree with your choice of LSP as it effecively puts your pop growth a couple of years behind for the entire game. I suppose if you are expecting problems exporting pop then it might seem like a good choice, but I beg to suggest that it is better to address whatever is causing your problems exporting...

I would consider a PGR of 17% as an absolute minimum - in the all-AR game I played before this I took 17% and it was a major constraint on my growth, I think most of my opponents took 18% or 19%. That said my growth was hindered somewhat because I didn't take ISB...

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Hi!

Dogthinkers wrote on Wed, 17 August 2005 12:40

I think ARM is very powerful - the midgit miners are great for a long time, and much easier to gate to those high-conc worlds.

The midget miner is weak. It's effective about as much as the second "normal" robot at tech con4/elec2. It can be gated though, and that's IMO its only advanatage. The ultra robot is a completely different story, but it is far away, and I usually need better miner much earler.

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Plus having 2 miners from day 1 helps a lot with growth.

Yeah, 20 additional mines helps. Not much though.

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I disagree with your choice of LSP as it effecively puts your pop growth a couple of years behind for the entire game. I suppose if you are expecting problems exporting pop then it might seem like a good choice, but I beg to suggest that it is better to address whatever is causing your problems exporting...

Lack of iron for ships in my testbeds with (intentionally) poor iron on HW. ARs can not "create" iron like other races by just building more planetary mines. With high pop growth you need more iron for ships to export that pop. If you don't export it you lose new pop that would growth from it. That's exactly what I did with LSP, but I got points back, while you paid for higher growth.
Fine tuning growth with (expected) avaliable iron is IMO very important for every AR to be successfull. I got a tuning with my PGR and iron-poor HW. It would probably turn to slight disadvantage with a rich HW. But as only few games are advertized with assured mineral concentrations I'm satisfied with it.

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... in the all-AR game I played before this I took 17% and it was a major constraint on my growth, I think most of my opponents took 18% or 19%. That said my growth was hindered somewhat because I didn't take ISB...

Not 17% PGR, but lack of UltraStation hull was the reason. You grew for about 40 turns from starbases producing only half of pop and 70% of resources others did from Ultras.
BR, Iztok

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Quote:

The midget miner is weak. It's effective about as much as the second "normal" robot at tech con4/elec2. It can be gated though, and that's IMO its only advanatage. The ultra robot is a completely different story, but it is far away, and I usually need better miner much earler.

Don't forget the midget hull too - it provides a significant saving in resources over all the regular hulls and that's where the real benefit for me was found. In the AR game I mentioned I never felt a mineral crunch, unlike my non-ARM ally.

Quote:

Not 17% PGR, but lack of UltraStation hull was the reason. You grew for about 40 turns from starbases producing only half of pop and 70% of resources others did from Ultras.

To a certain extent that's true, but I was well behind my ally on population before Ultras came out. I only felt the lack of ISB for about 15 years (between when I hit 30% cap and when I got DS tech.) Caught up pretty quick once I got there though - I remember building about 20 DS the year after I got the tech


To be honest though, the real reason my race did so well in that particular game was that I took a gamble with my LRTs and won - I took CE and didn't take ISB/TT and used the extra points to be able to afford 1in6 habs, 1-immune, efficiency 10, and still get cheap tech. Quantity of planets is so important with AR (that sqrt thing...) and since the discussion beforehand focussed on the comparison of high-eff-low-count vs. low-eff-high-count I decided to design a race to show you don't need to make that compromise I still wonder if my opponents noticed that my ships stopped at strange moments though

[edit: corrected comment about LRTs at end...]

[Updated on: Wed, 17 August 2005 09:27]

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I just realized somthing... I've been testing AR for non-ABBS games, so the growth rate was much more important to get ahead early for me.

I see, said the blind man.

Cutting your hab to 1 in 8 could pay for ISB. Might be planet crunched, but space docks let you go farther in the early stages, so it might help make up for it.

One more click off the hab and minor shifting can pay to switch from CE to LSP, another switch I might make. It does look like a very good race, though.

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[Updated on: Fri, 19 August 2005 08:24] by Moderator

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Hi!

ForceUser wrote on Fri, 19 August 2005 14:00

The problem with that is that you have to remember you are AR, a race that can be demolished in 5 years by a small but determined number of armed SCOUTS!

Don't judge AR by the brain-dead Macinti AI. If you'd come after my Starter colony with armed scout (even if beta scout) I'd just put 2-4 beta torps and a comp on my starter colony and your scout would turn into nice salvage. The real PITA for an AR are beta DDs with its average FP, but lots of armor. With early weapons (and minerals avalable to the defending AR) it is almost impossible to kill them before they destroy the fort.
That's the reason why I include expert Turnindrones (SS) as opponents when I want to test the AR race in challenging uni.

Quote:

Another thing is that the mx number of resources per planet is very low, even with 10 efficiency and even with deathstars.

I don't agree. From full Deathstar on 100% planet, en-26 and divisor 10 you get 2793 res. That's about the same as from an OBRM 1/1000 race with 12/x/13 fac's. In early stages is the AR's output from 1M pop at en-16 (1265) still comparable to output from other's race breeder held at 50% (1280). But in both cases it is almost double to a -f planet. If ARs could build planetary mines no one would play -f anymore.

BR, Iztok

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iztok wrote on Fri, 19 August 2005 15:00

Hi! ForceUser wrote on Fri, 19 August 2005 14:00 The problem with that is that you have to remember you are AR, a race that can be demolished in 5 years by a small but determined number of armed SCOUTS! Don't judge AR by the brain-dead Macinti AI. If you'd come after my Starter colony with armed scout (even if beta scout) I'd just put 2-4 beta torps and a comp on my starter colony and your scout would turn into nice salvage. The real PITA for an AR are beta DDs with its average FP, but lots of armor. With early weapons (and minerals avalable to the defending AR) it is almost impossible to kill them before they destroy the fort. That's the reason why I include expert Turnindrones (SS) as opponents when I want to test the AR race in challenging uni.

Oh, I agree that an expert ar player can hold off an attack, even an attack from a WM (an inexperianced WM ofcourse) but your colonies that far away from your HW an reinfocrements stands no chance without decent gates, and I rarely research prop enough to get gates that early.

Quote:

Quote: Another thing is that the mx number of resources per planet is very low, even with 10 efficiency and even with deathstars. I don't agree. From full Deathstar on 100% planet, en-26 and divisor 10 you get 2793 res. That's about the same as from an OBRM 1/1000 race with 12/x/13 fac's. In early stages is the AR's output from 1M pop at en-16 (1265) still comparable to output from other's race breeder held at 50% (1280). But in both cases it is almost double to a -f planet. If ARs could build planetary mines no one would play -f anymore. BR, Iztok

Is that with ef 10 or 25? To pay for hab 1/4, pop growth 18%, all the yummy LRT and 3.5 cheap tech I usually take ef 25. Shure I can just take hab 1/8 and ef 10, but then I'll still be in the red with RW points. Also, I rarely have full anythings that early in the game and as long as I can expand, ever Also, no matter how many planets you DO have, you'll always be behind in resou

[Updated on: Fri, 19 August 2005 09:53]

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ForceUser wrote on Fri, 19 August 2005 15:00

The problem with that is that you have to remember you are AR, a race that can be demolished in 5 years by a small but determined number of armed SCOUTS!

You are right of course that one run into neighbours if it want to colonize over 250 ly from HW. Limiting AR to such territory in testbed show that habs worse than 1 in 6 do get 25k by 2450 only in packed universes with lucky hab draw. Armed scouts can block expansion and scouting ... however it cant be scouts that utterly "demolish" AR. Scouts are too slow and 4 lasers on fort cost only 8 resources.

Btw ... if you take pop efficency divisor 25 then even 1 in 4 hab dont let you get 25k by 2450 if you limit yourself into territory 250 ly around your HW.

[Updated on: Fri, 19 August 2005 10:03]

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Just for difference and to keep it in topic I post one race here that i have had usually about 30k resources by 2450 in solo tiny packed testbeds. Basically i colonize anything that is going to be green at 2450 as soon i only see it. By 2430 i usually have all colonized and construction 12. After that i continue to spread the pop until mid fourties and it gets about 40 green planets and 30K resources by 2450.

AR
ISB, NAS, LSP, RS
0.21g to 1.32g / -140C to 36C / Immune
16% growth (1 in 4)
Resource divisor 10
energy, weapons and propulsion standard cost
construction cost 50% less
electronics and biotech cost 75% extra
48 leftover points put into mineral concentrations.

Plusses are: It is quite stable AR race in packed. It depends not much about luck with planets and starting iron concentrations. No real need to upgrade from docks or to build remote miners before ultrastation tech. It usually has 300/500 gates quite soon after ultrastations. Race is easy to modify if you really want some other goodies than it has.

Minuses are: Early fuel management assumes decent playing skill so it does not probably work as first try with AR. Even in good hands it is behaving much worse in normal or sparse universes. With NAS it has serious security hole against planet-hopping opponent. Tech settings are low ... it is not for some "all enemies" game. Lower growth is also dangerous to get.

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Rad immune? and energy Normal? No ARM? No IFE and NRS combo? RS? LSP? That's bold. This is certainly not how I'd design an AR race, but then, how boring would it be if we all designed the same races

I'd modify it to this to fit my personal tastes

......

ok, I admit defeat. I can't find the bloody points far all my goodies...

Granted, Normal Energy is feasable with ef 10, but I'd like to have both. Also, 16% growth and LSP is a nasty combo, but is lessened by 10 ef. Also, the no feul mizer is also lessened by the 1 in 4 habs and ISB.

with 25 ef I can buy 18% growth, 3 1/2 cheap tech, IFE+NRS, ARM and some other goodies.

tho, what's your reasoning behinf making Rad immune instead of grav? Esp with Prop Exp.

ForceUser

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Main reason why such race is good ... is because it works in not so large games where AR usually gets nowhere.

ForceUser wrote on Tue, 23 August 2005 19:28

Rad immune?

Rad immune gives better intersettling options. Fits with ram scoops. Its possible but no burning need to research weapons and weapons are often for sale.

Quote:

and energy Normal?

I have always felt that i get about 15% more levels for same investment at cheap. So its noticable of course but it also costs 80 RW points.

Quote:

No ARM?

This race has only one remote miner design. Mini miner with QJ5 and one robo-super. Race has OK resources so can build these plenty from year 2435 on (since when it has ultras up everywhere). ARM is easy to buy there. Hab keeps being 1 in 4. Only that early minerals may be no enough for tens of pintas.

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No IFE and NRS combo?

IFE-less is doable with ISB and 1 in 4. At least in dense universes i feel that i am often more limited by minerals for more pintas than fuel. NRSE has engines that cost lot of iron/resources and weight a lot. My defense concept includes having light gateable defense forces. 300/500 gates before 2440.

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RS?

It also fits with light, gateable defense forces theme.

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LSP?

I colonize with pintas early anyway. About 6 medium freighters may be needed before LF tech. Pintaed world can defend itself against few skirmishers. Later pop starts to grow 800kT per year in Ultras anyway.

Quote:

tho, what's your reasoning behinf making Rad immune instead of grav? Esp with Prop Exp.

Prop is btw normal, not expensive.

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iztok wrote on Fri, 26 August 2005 16:12

Joseph Oberlander would be very happy, if he'd see that design.

Oblanders dream was to get 2 immune AR working. So despite he didnt make his 2-immunes to work better than 1 immunes ... trying it he discovered all that is affordable to drop from ARs.

Quote:

BTW how do you move first pop if there aren't green planets close to HW? MF with QJ-5 engine goes nowhere, ...

Med freighter with QJ5 sucks, but somewhere it can sure get. If we test it then ... 2 such freighters with 400kT pop on board take distances up to 98ly without boosters. There are 10-12 planets within 98ly around HW in packed so probability of 0 greens among them is 3-6%. Even for 1 in 5 it is less than 10%. How to improve karma against such rare misfortune? Duh. Dalai-lama probably knows. If i had less than 3 i temporarily populated some yellow. LF is usual from turn 11 or 12 and about 6 med freighters keep HW at 250k pop before that. Rad rams i had later.

Note, that QJ5 scout booster costs 13 iron while FM engine itself costs 8 iron.

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SinicalIdealist wrote on Thu, 08 September 2005 22:30

I look at forgoing IFE w/ AR to be roughly comparable to shooting yourself in the foot for running too slow. Think of it this way. With a race that looses pop with each year in transit that you actually spend moving through space, do you really want to spend more years travelling at an agonizingly slow rate. Also, consider the fact that in order to stay ahead, you really have to get the planets first. When's the last time you could afford a bomber fleet along w/ warships to take down possible docks as an iron-strapped AR early in the game? IMO, IFE always. ISB, Almost always. ARM, sometimes. I personally use all 3 ALWAYS. IMO, choose IFE if you want to have planets. Choose ISB if you want to have growth on those planets. Choose ARM if you really want to keep your investments intact (ie. remote miners). Consider the ultimate cost of having your remote miners anihilated.

This post and the following about if AR should or should not take IFE has been split off into a new thread. Please continue the discussion there,

mch,
modaw

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