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Exactly...

if you put all 3 hab ranges as small as they go and shift them all the way to the right and...

take grav/temp immune you get 1 in 34 planets
take rad immune you get 1 in 29

So rad immune *generally* gives you a better chance of finding good planets.

Another good reason is that the crazy ends of radiation tend to have the higher mineral concentrations... handy for AR.

And the last reason (and my favourite one) is that no-one takes radiation immune!!! (except those 3/4% HE's). As such there is less competion for planets that are good for your race

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freakyboy wrote on Fri, 04 July 2003 02:44

And the last reason (and my favourite one) is that no-one takes radiation immune!!! (except those 3/4% HE's). As such there is less competion for planets that are good for your race

I'm in a game (RWIAB) that has 3 Rad immunes. They all thought they'd avoid competition for good worlds that way. The really interesting thing is that they're all neighbors of each other...

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From the Stars! Manual & (in this particular case) the help file.

Choosing an Extreme Range

Cons: The more extreme your habitability range, the more planets will be out of your habitable and terraformable range.

Pros: You get back advantage points. Also, planets with environments near the ends of the spectrum have a good chance of being super-rich in one or more minerals. For example, a planet with a flesh-searing radiation extreme of 97mR could easily have four times the concentration of each mineral as a mild-mannered vacation world.

Copyright 1998 Mare Crisium, LLC

However, it would seem that the consensus on NG is just the opposite. I did find where a Bryan Williams (no relation) performed a "statistical" test way back in 1997, but he did not make any outright claims as to his conclusions, but his published table doesn't seem to indicate any large concs at high rad values. Considering how old his tests are, however, I would be interested in any retesting of this min conc vs. extreme hab, should anyone choose to be mathematically inclined this year.

I did find a post indicating that min concs are increased for AccBBS games. That one makes sense, although I have simply not been paying attention to that question at all.

For what it's worth ...

The Crusader

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[Updated on: Tue, 05 August 2003 01:30] by Moderator

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There seems to be trouble about good coef10 AR designs...

There was one proposed by Barry Kearns a long time ago with
the following results:

Quote:

2331 in year 2420 Tech 10-5-4-5-3-3 (the first good sign) 3949 in year 2425 Tech 10-10-4-7-3-3 5527 in year 2430 Tech 10-10-4-12-3-3 (Ultra-stations) 10k in year 2435 Tech 14-10-4-12-3-4 16k in year 2440 22k in year 2445 (Death Stars in 2444 IIRC) 31k in year 2450 Tech 18-16-5-17-8-4 53k in year 2460 Tech 22-24-17-11-4 (Armageddons in 2457) 68k in year 2469 Tech 26-26-12-26-12-11 (Omega Nubians!) (Race name ARvids) PRT = AR LRT = IFE, NRSE, ARM, ISB, LSP Grav immune, Temp 4c to 84c, Rad 66 to 86 ( 1 in 21 hab ) Growth rate 19% Coefficient of 10 Energy, Const, and Weaps all -50% Elect, Prop, and Bio all +75% +75% start at level 3 zero points left over

I never got that race to work, 1in21 seems also to be a pure testbed race for me, so I tried a bit around and got a first good result by now: The Vorlons

Results:
2500 in 2420 (10- 5- 2- 5- 0- 3)
6500 in 2430 (12-10- 2-12- 0- 3) Ultras
9200 in 2435 (14-10- 2-12- 3- 4)
in 2443 Death Star
27K in 2450 (17-16- 2-17- 8- 4)
52K in 2460 (18-24-10-18- 8- 5) Arms
72K in 2466 Omega Nubs
93K in 2469 (26-26-12-26-10- 9)

I guess I could have had better results when designing this race for the testbed, but I had a real game in mind.

Settings:

AR
LRT: IFE, NRSE, CE, NAS, ARM, ISB, RS
(CE to start with prop2, and for the points. I will be using the IS10 for most of the time, which is quite expensive and half costs are nice..., could have skipped RS for better testbed results)
Habs: Grav Immune, Temp -128 -> +128, Rad 52->82
(could have moved rad more to the edge to get more points,
but in real games i want to use the planets terraformed by others
when i captured them
Growth Rate is 13%
(Remind: that means on a 33% filled DS i got 130K pop growth a turn)
Coefficient is 10
En, Con and Weap cheap, El normal rest ex

[Updated on: Sun, 15 February 2004 13:30]

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Sorry ... i have won with AR multiple times so cannot say what is best. There are game settings... you see.

I have noticed few common things when playing AR-s so i give you few pointers:
1) Energy is quite safe to take normal. The difference is maximally 10% less econ per investment into energy, but gives nice points so you may have 10% more planets.
2) Dropping IFE is often OK (not in sparse universes), underfilled LF can fly even with QJ5 quite well. Missing fuel someplace then colonize red with pinta and there is dock in 5 years.
3) ARM gives somewhat cheaper and well-gateable miners but it is OK to live without these (especially in testbed but i have won real games without ARM).
4) Taking LSP does not hurt by much resource-wise (12% less initial econ?) and gives nice points.
5) CE and NAS are cool in testbed thanks to points they give but truely suck if we are talking of real game.
6) PGR 19% is certainly not needed but i would not go below 14%
7) Radiation immune design with weapons normal is quite viable variety.
There are piles of playable AR-s posted. The biggest problem with people who cannot make AR to work is wrong MM.

I suggest testbedding AR in tiny dense or tiny packed like rest of races. 20K by 2450 may be considered OK because AR is -f, however it is quite doable to get 25K or more by 2450 in tiny packed.

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Quote:

1) Energy is quite safe to take normal. The difference is maximally 10% less econ per investment into energy, but gives nice points so you may have 10% more planets.

Yep - gives 80 points, not 50 as en is more expensive for AR races. Still I found it useful for _very_ early speed to have it cheap, but I lack experience, so you may be right

Quote:

2) Dropping IFE is often OK (not in sparse universes), underfilled LF can fly even with QJ5 quite well. Missing fuel someplace then colonize red with pinta and there is dock in 5 years.

Uh... tried that. 5 years seems a lot to me, and it is sooo important to grab planets early. In my tests I failed when I tried no IFE (and even worse when trying to use the rad-ram early...). Will have to try harder I guess...

Quote:

3) ARM gives somewhat cheaper and well-gateable miners but it is OK to live without these (especially in testbed but i have won real games without ARM).

Hm.... I have some real problems in the early years without the 2 starting miners. And with higher growth I really run out of minerals early and cant ship my pop... Hurts very early I guess... Tried it, but could not get it to work...

Quote:

4) Taking LSP does not hurt by much resource-wise (12% less initial econ?) and gives nice points.

I will try that, but with my many LRTs it does not bring that many points... but will try to kick CE and take LSP maybe...

Quote:

5) CE and NAS are cool in testbed thanks to points they give but truely suck if we are talking of real game.

CE you are right... oh it hurts... Still I think AR is the one (besides IT) that can live with it... You are in the defense most of the game, and when gating ships CE does not hurt you. Also you never rush to a planet being bombed, cause either there is a gate, or the planet is gone anyway
NAS... I guess whats most dangerous is cloaked fleets. NAS helps a lot to find them, and it is easy to hide ships in orbits against pens... So I really prefere NAS with AR... (and hope for MT )

Quote:

6) PGR 19% is c

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These were just some ideas and some of them may fit with your style while others may not fit but certainly worth to try out.

Energy normal...
OK, lets say playwise as first thing you put about 800 resources into energy and get energy 6 with cheap or energy 5 with normal that is about 9% less econ with normal. Not so huge difference actually even as very_early speed? For comparision CE gives -10% expansion speed and endless russian roulette in tactical combat for very same points (for your race CE was only 50 points).

No ARM...
With and without ARM there may be early problems with minerals. If you carried pop somewhere then take that iron (or germ or both) back to HW. Build ships at every planet, especially pintas, there are always too few pintas in air before every planet possible is colonized. Lack something for pinta ... doublecheck maybe there is enough for fueler, scout or freighter? Use up all your minerals. Get con 8 (large freighter & cheaper docks) + elec 4 lot earlier than your current reports suggest and build couple miners with qj5 and one robo-maxi. You are certainly paying more for non-ARM miners, but see for your race it costs 83 points or whole % of growth.

No IFE...
Taking planets early is very important. If you cannot, take IFE, however it is possible without IFE. Differently from other PRTs (where one maria or spore of pop counts nothing) one pinta of pop builds immediately 5 planetary mines + fort (note that 4 planets pintaed is mining equivalent of 2 potato bugs). The investment to get rid of such thing is lot-lot bigger. OTOH once there is opponents pop on ground you have virtually no way to get rid of them early. Say you need to quicken dockbuilding at some red the pop that needs fuel there can temporary speed its building. Construction tech also miniaturize docks quite quick.

Rest of them LRTS...
LSP gives about 60 points. Depends how its invested. It may be good or bad to give away 12% initial econ for these points.
NAS is matter of taste. I can afford to pla

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Hi!
I'd add some of my thoughts.

Kotk wrote on Mon, 16 February 2004 20:35

Energy normal...

Easy with high growth races, NO with 1/25 resource divisor.

Quote:

No ARM...

NO with high growth races. You need those two Potatos (and some more) to delay the iron crunch. OTOH where to get the points for it, AND the high growth?

Quote:

No IFE...

NO with 1/25 divisor, hard without it and with high growth. Again, where to get the points for it, AND the high growth. A variant would be rad-immune, no IFE (but rad-ram in LF and at about turn 20 TGFS-9), and cheap prop, that gives terra tech.

Quote:

NAS is matter of taste.

I prefer playing without pen-scanners. They can be bought, you don't need a lot of them, and an AR has a lot of things to offer for trade.

Quote:

TT is hard (but possible)

You need it with 1/25 divisor. I'd say no for other designs, because an AR needs to spend resources in other areas but in BIO.

An additional note on resource divisor: you can mine points from it with much less penalty than with other races. If you drop pop eff from 1/1000 to 1/1100 you get 40 points, but lose 9% of resources. If you do it with AR you lose 4.5%. Going to 1/25 gives 600 points, for operating at 63% capacity (a full DS at en-26 will produce 1766 res instead of 2793). In a series of testbeds I put those 600 points into TT, IFE, hab and growth, but the end result was lower speed and the same end resource output. Well, I didn't spent resources in expensive bio, the TT was just for lowering the cost of terra. So here's still a path to grow. A tech from MT may help here.
BR, Iztok

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Something big is going to come!

I discussed a lot with my friend about good AR designs, and we tried a lot of things. Our races became better and better, and now finally he presented a design that made 48K in a normal testbed (small, packed, AccBBs, no max mins).

The AR was 1-immune, 19% growth, 3 cheap tech (incl. en), ISB but no ARM and no TT. I hope to get this kicked a bit more to 50K in 2450, and will present the final design then.

Thanks to Eddi for this brilliant work!

Go on, beat that!

Robert

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Well... your testbed seems to be different from what other usually do. IMO it is not the point to make testbeds "realistic", it is important to have comparable circumstances for the races, to you can compare them with each other.

With small/normal and 4 AI maybe it is difficult to hit the 25K, and I dont know it. If you want to testbed try a wider hab variant (somthing 1 immune 2 others on the edges 1in 6 or better) with coefficient of 10 and growth 16% or so. If you just want to hit the 25K you can also not pick ARM or no IFE, but that is no race you want to play in real games

What I did was testing a real-game-AR in the standard testbed.

There must be a description of the performance above.

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[Updated on: Wed, 26 January 2005 04:58]

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Well, I welcome you to test what you come up with in the new game I just posted - modified to conform with the game settings.

Leave yourself 100 left over points and use a 1 in 25 hab setting and join the Reality Sucks game. I guarantee it will be interesting.

Ptolemy
Emperor of a Thousand Suns

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Ptolemy wrote on Wed, 26 January 2005 11:49

Heck, even with a PP I can hit the 25k/2450 mark consistently in a small normal universe with 3 or 4 expert AI's (obviously not experts - but requires building a few warships and minelayers at least). However, I do not like to use more than 2 AI's since it is too easy to get tech gain from pop drop against the AI's.

3 to 4 expert AI-s that arent obviously any experts? What i think ... what mark is 25k? For AR its important to survive midgame.

I usually play AR without ARM and the test i accept is early tech levels. Perfect is something like:
2430 L6/C12
2435 W12
2440 P9/C13/L7
If its not Acc BBs game then add 7 years to that schedule.

Real AR got minerals, Ultras, gates, penscanners and BB-s. The earlier the better. Its all about being ready for that dangerous midgame timely.

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