Home » Old Game Forums » Rabid Weasels II-A » RWIAB IIa Game Review
| Re: RWIAB IIa Game Review |
Thu, 18 March 2004 10:58   |
|
| Orca |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
|
RWIAB Series II (Galaxy A): Game Comments from the Loranians
I took over the Loran/Loranians at year 2415 at OWK's (overworked) request. I have a hard time turning down a request from friends. 
The race is for the most part viable but suffers from a number of defects, many of these exacerbated by the early play. One glaring defect wasn't in the race, but in the password. Never EVER use a password that's the same as your race name or nick! I immediately changed the password to something you'd have to seriously work at to get - in this case, "iyaamaft". Should have some alphanumeric characters in there, and mixed cases, but...I got lazy this time. And Stars! turn protection is weak in any case.
Anyway.
The Loranians appeared to be designed around long term high value worlds, with some concessions for a rapid start (ISB, RS, 42 points to...surface minerals??). The problems with the race were the following:
1) No movement strategy. With no IFE, CE, and prop expensive, the only way this race would be moving would be slowly - with warp 7 drives. ISB isn't completely redundant for an IT, given the small galaxy, but IFE or prop cheap would have been far more useful. As such, its empire was tightly knit and close-bound - the very antithises of what an IT wants. And without NRSE and prop expensive, I never managed to achieve safe warp 10 engines by 2500.
2) CE. CE will KILL you in warfighting. It's more managable with an IT, but CE *hurts* when you're skirmishing.
3) Grav and Rad bands were slammed up against the right edge. This doesn't give up too many points - but it's still annoying. I also would have preferred to narrow the hab some and center it a bit more. And offset one of the habs off the right side in an effort to make intersettling easy (though I have on many an occasion just taken the all-rightshifted theory and hammered away at people with conflicting hab, it doesn't work as well when your economy will generally be matched by your opponents).
4) 41 points to surface minerals. Worthless. Min cons would have been more beneficial. More mines would have worked (though 10 mines generally enough for an NF, once you get past the initial movement stages). A cheap tech. More hab. Something...
5) TT + bio cheap. Given the parameters of this game (game end at 2500), bio cheap is a luxery you cannot afford. TT can make sense - take it for the reduced terra costs, if you're going to take it. But you'll need to focus on war tech, not bio tech. In the end, I researched some bio, but only when it was clear I couldn't do justice to any further war tech due to massive resource deficiency. Energy or prop cheap would have proven much more useful.
--
Overall comments:
Some of these may be a bit harsh. Don't take them too personally - I'm comparing what happened with what most likely would have happened had I been facing players at the advanced+ level.
The Polanies, through a combination of luck, good sense, diplomacy, and hair-raising risk-taking, happened across about 3 to 4 times their fair share of territory. Their effort to claim this very well could have broken them however, had the Big Furry Thing been more than a busted race. Their own space, plus an early alliance with the Desquis, a hefty section of the Watcher's space (which the BFT were in no position to exploit - and the Armagons were a bit too far away), and much of the BFT space.
This largely set the tone for the rest of the game for me.
By the midgame I was facing down 3 to 4 times my resources, and more technology. My own antics had the feel of a man with a pistol facing down 50 guys with swords or something...after 2450 or so, if the Desquis and Polanies had simply stopped researching, built their ships, and attacked, my empire would have fallen. Sooner, if they'd gotten their act together.
Ultimately, I played a galactic tar baby for the Desquis and Polanies, tying down far more resources than my size and capabilities deserved, and kingmaker to the OKs and Armagons. While it's quite possible they could have won without me, I don't doubt that I made it a lot easier for them.
My own coordination with the OKs/Armagons was rather limited with a very few exceptions. Time-zone-wise it just didn't work out - I really should have seen about dragging them on IRC or something - or even just emailing more to keep things moving. With tighter coordination, more would have been possible. The OKs and Armagons looked like they were able to maintain much closer coordination however - which is highly, highly useful (the Armagons it would appear, learned a fair bit). Desquis/Polanie coordination seemed at times loose and tight - probably depending on time commitments and desire. I could be wrong. Anybody from the other four races want to weigh in here?
--
Armagon comments:
You got VERY lucky. The BFT were in no position to take them out. My own scouting left me years behind in even identifying that there was an AR on my flank. The Pick-pockets looked like they ended up a busted race due to OK/Armagon attacks (and possibly their own play?). The Polanies and Desquis were tied down with me. The Zurgs would hit a wall by 2430, if not sooner - NF HE is just a BAD idea folks. Plus they were tied down with attacks on the BFT. Basically this gave the Armagons the room they needed to live while the OKs colonized their space (and vice versa). In the future, I would strongly suggest against playing an AR in anything smaller than a medium...though I suppose these would be about the best conditions for an AR in a small (your end resources nearly 3x everybody else's on a planet for planet basis) - even if you are just as vulnerable early on.
Certainly if I hadn't been tied down by the Polanies, I would have been ramming my ships straight down the Armagon throats instead - never suffer to live an AR you can kill early, unless you're going to ally with them permanently.
The Armagon mineral fountain was slow in building up - and ended up smaller than I expected. I'm guessing this was due to warfighting needs.
--
Big Furry Thing:
XDude was stuck with a slow slow race. IF he could live, *maybe* he could pull something out via the IS overpop trick...but 15% is just unworkably slow. And Xdude, you know better than anybody you need the mobility...next time get those gates up! Or don't join 293874 games at once ya crazy bastid!
--
[edit - added these in because I forgot them when I posted this]
Desquis comments:
I should have tried to clarify the Desquis position before I made my moves early on I suppose. The earlier player wasn't aggressive enough with colonization and his resources suffered for quite awhile. Given the advantages, he shouldn't have had around my resources for much of the game. I'm going to guess he was at around the Polanies level early on, maybe a little lower (or simply even less aggressive, given the low planet and resource counts for much of the game).
The earlier player should have also made heavier use of allied gates. On the other hand, the Desquis were faster to get defenses and minefields up - this helps quite a bit with slowing down the opposition.
Mid-game I didn't see much of the Desquis fleets other than a rather diminuitive fleet of jihad battleships. Some of that was due to the cloaked raider battleships, but like the Polanies, the Desquis simply didn't build out enough - waiting for better tech. Gotta be aggressive! You guys could have completely flanked the OK/Armagon alliance by rapidly gutting me, the BFT and the Zurgs - and none of us were in a position to stop a full effort thrust.
Lategame, the replacement Desquis player got the Desquis empire's resources moving once more, as well as building a fleet that was reasonably deadly (of course my own fleet was far from deadly by this point).
--
OK comments:
Your ship design was ok, though early on you pulled the sort of thing I was pulling at the intermediate level - weapons 10 destroyers and such. They can work, but try to balance your research a bit more early. Once battleships and SBCs are out, it certainly makes sense to make a run for Arms.
Your ship-handling seemed pretty decent. Sort of hard to tell since I wasn't monitoring what you were doing on a year to year basis, but what I did see looked fine.
--
Pick-Pocket comments:
I don't really have much to say here. By the time I knew what was going on and started some sort of alliance (to secure my eastern flank and possibly get some help), your empire was almost falling.
--
Polanie comments:
Based on your play, I'm guessing you're a low to mid-intermediate level player - or were at the start of the game. By the end you were considerably better than low intermediate. While annoying to see some of my schemes foiled as you caught on to what was going on, it was also gratifying to see you learning and improving.
The Polanie expansion in the 20's was unescorted, and across a distance far too large to hold onto if you met any real resistance. Such as the type I provided. What you pulled was a high risk manuever against better skilled opponents. It paid off here, but if you're going to be playing against other players of similar caliber, expect to get shot down. As it was, without Desquis assistance, I'd have had your HW by 2440.
Your ship design suffered throughout the game. Armored destroyers can make sense...if they're organic armored. Maybe. Beyond that, they're too heavy and it's a total waste. Too easy to go lighter and range 1 or 0, and be cheaper. Be aware of your battle orders. Often you can change the tide of battle with a few small modifications to either battle order or fleet mix. Testbed battles - they can help you know when to retreat and when to press the attack.
As a JoAT, you're nearly as effective as an IS in detecting cloaked ships operating within your space. You'll never have an IS's effectiveness at detecting them at long range, but you *can* easily clean your own space out. Just get an ever-expanding circle of chaff (or similar scouts) moving out from one corner of your empire, set so that you have a 100 to 200ly deep 2% normal scan. Combine it with stationing scouts on every world you don't own, and you can easily discover who's floating around where they shouldn't be. You really should have done this, considering how many spy ships I had floating around. With them, I could easily get year to year reports on your resources and ship counts (until the MT parts made ship counts innaccurate). In retrospect, I should have been sending off yearly fleet and planet reports to the Armagons and OKs. Be it as it may.
--
Zurg comments:
NF HE. 550 max res worlds. 180 res at ~33%. An incredible need for expansion...this race was doomed from the start. Held on for quite awhile, was a second-class empire by the 30's.
--
Other comments:
Later ship designs were better, but still suffered. This is the only game I've ever seen where I was the only one building armored missile ships...and I had RS! You should *never* deploy unarmored 20 missile battleships. They're too valuable to leave that undefended. 1000kt won't make it through a 300/500 any more safely than 1400kt. Just a little less damaged. You need to think about durability per weapon/resource as well as firepower per resource. The endgame OK MT-toy battleships were fine vessels. Almost as good a missile ship as you can build without dreadnaughts. MPS, Langston shell...they could shoot with the best of them, jam their opponents to heck, and were hard to see to boot. Nasty little buggers. Wish I had a few dozen of 'em.
Mobility is king. Cherish your mobility. Use it. abuse it. Do not be afraid to ram your ships in at warp 10, even if they're not rated for it (I noticed that you started doing this. Very good.). Overgate. Try not to go over 2x weight overgating, but don't hesitate to overgate range. You can repair those ships later - it's more important you get them where they're needed. If you have to, overgate missile ships through your 300/500's if it'll let you destroy an important fleet. The new Desquis player obviously learned this lesson well somewhere...
Fork enemy planets. Then randomly choose a planet among those you've forked to attack. If YOU don't know where you'll be attacking next, your opponent won't know either.
Chaff sweep. It can be damned effective...if you don't forget to account for CE's 10% failure rate (DOH! This cost me a pile of bombers at one point).
At the same time, you want to deny your enemies mobility. Get those minefields up, and keep them small if you can. You noticed how easily I rammed to the center of those minefields? Your job when I deployed those cloaked minelayers was a fair bit harder...
If you have an IT ally, USE THEM. The Desquis should have been on every red planet the Polanies couldn't use. And I wanted to get more planets along the front with the OK/Armagon alliance - damned annoying to have to fly for 5 years to get your fleet back to a gate that can handle them. You want *options* for slamming those heavy missiles ships around on the front - and around your back areas.
The OKs and Armagons quite probably didn't trust me enough to allow me to establish myself in their rear areas. Certainly I saw a number of planets that must have been reds for them that were inhabited by only a handful of people. I suppose I can understand that - if I had gone over to the Polanies, that would have been devastating (though by that time I was determined that if I wasn't going to win, neither were the Polanies).
Be careful when armoring your beamers. It can pay off, but be aware that you are ceding the movement phase to an opponent who goes with a lighter design - witness the early destroyers (and cruisers) for example.
Be aggressive! In a small, you don't have the luxery of waiting for max tech nubs before building. I saw only a trifling of w16 BB's on the Polanie/Desquis side - a goodly number of them would have steamrolled my empire and given a possibly fatal advantage to their side. Instead I saw that time wasted with researching for the tech - which, while useful, was no more effective in wiping me out than 100 w16 BBs would have been.
I also saw a lot of indecisive ship movements, telegraphing (which I was famously guilty of myself when the Desquis wiped out my fleet of Doom BBs), and predictableness. Try to avoid these.
On the other hand, I saw steadily increasing skill with skirmishing on both sides. By the end, with a largely exhausted force I could only sit back and watch, but what I did see was a large and ongoing skirmish war being executed with some fair skill. Well done to both sides in this.
--
What happened:
At the year I took over, there was severe overcrowding on several planets (including the HW almost at 50%), and my secondary over 33% - and several other smaller planets virtually untouched. Even worse, the initial 4 scouts had been deployed...ONLY the initial 4. I had no .h file, and what scouting there was was harshly limited. I could see some Polanie movement, and one of their colonies, but beyond that, I was completely blind. Worse yet, a fair amount of resources had been wasted on con 8 and bio 6. Yet I had *zero* warfighting tech otherwise.
I immediately stalled for time with the Polanies while I constructed 20 scouts and began redeploying my freighters to bring those crowded planets down to where they should have been from 2408 on. The Polanies had some kind of tech exchange agreement with the previous player, and some agreements regarding colonies, which I immediately voided. The Polanies were gettin nothing from me until I knew what sort of beast I was faced with.
Almost immediately I located a colony within a stone's throw of my HW and incoming reinforcements. Not a good start. I queued some destroyers and prepared an invasion fleet, should it become necessary.
The Desquis contacted me fairly early regarding a planet I had taken, which they wanted. I was forced to turn them down due to the value of it. At this point I wasn't sure if they were actively allied with the Polanies or not, and was hoping they would stay neutral...
By 2420, I had at least some of the intelligence I needed, and it wasn't good. The Polanies HW was very nearly a 100% world for me, and were settled on too many worlds that were too good for me. Plainly, we could never intersettle. And to make matters worse, I could see a mass of colonization ships streaming out from his core worlds. If I didn't do anything to stop that exodus, I'd be swarmed under. At the same time, my own scouting was not yet far enough along for me to do more than fire off an unaimed colonization fleet in the hopes of getting lucky.
I immediately attacked of course, after firing off a vaguely worded message breaking off negotiations (I was perhaps a bit too subtle - the Polanie player seemed to think it was the start to a read agreement).
I could (and perhaps should) have used SFXs to speed my expansion...but the lack of scouting neatly nixed the point of that. Frustrating. At the same time I didn't know who I could contact to see about kicking the Polanies down to size. The Desquis stayed out of these initial battles, and I largely left them alone - hoping they'd keep out of this budding conflict.
The Polanie exodus meant that they had only a handful of core worlds to fall back on for production and research - this left them with a very vulnerable time. The only thing to do would be to take advantage of it as rapidly as possible and cut them off at the knees.
By 2430 I had built up a small fleet of bazooka cruisers and related minibombers, plus a decent invasion force. The Polanies meanwhile had begun constructing some rather inefficient armored destroyers - most of which were haring off in the wrong direction. They had also kindly neglected to build defenses on their planets...
Only too aware of my own ships vulnerabilities to counterdesign, and how soon they'd be obsolete, I immediately dispatched them without waiting for further reinforcements of cruisers and minibombers.
Rather than giving them warning about what was coming, I jumped at warp 10 to Corner (from Dark Planet, about 91 ly due south of the target). Surprise was total, and I wiped out a small fleet of carbonic destroyers, and bombed the planet half-flat.
A small side fleet simultaniously attacked Myopus, lightly damaging it.
2432 everything was looking good. Corner was mine, and while the Desquis were feeding the Polanies tech, *maybe* they would stay neutral in an actual fighting war...? At the same time, my fleet sat at Corner (I don't recall precisely why - I have a feeling I was pressed for time in real life around here. My .x doesn't indicate enough suicide scouting being done either - suicide ships should have been sent to Ball Bearing and Mountbatten at minimum. And certainly I should have deployed the fleet for Zahir or Mountbatten. And the missed turn one year later is rather indicitive of that.)
2433 the wheels started coming off and I didn't know what was happening because I missed this turn...and because of it...
2434 the Desquis rammed a counterfleet of wolverine bazooka cruisers down my throat, destroying the fleet anchored at Corner.
I salvaged what few fuelers I could - the only survivors of the battle - and began construction of minelayers and research for wolverines, which I would need to beat the Desquis cruisers. It would take entirely too long to build up a fleet comparable to the Desquis ships unless I took some chances, so I hoped they didn't know too much about battle orders...
2435 I was facing down nearly 50 Desquis cruisers and attendant bombers. Unless I acted quickly, my empire would be destroyed. My most vulnerable planets (Skloot and Dark Planet in particular) immediately began crash building defenses. Those further back began constructing Mass Firing range 0 destroyers. Extremely cheap, and only an advantage of a bit over 2 to 1 in numbers would allow me to destroy those cruisers - so long as they didn't think about using retreat firing orders.
I noticed that the bomber fleets were wholly inadequate to rapidly reduce worlds, and determined I would have the time I needed to lift the seige. And if worst came to worst, I could sacrifice a few worlds if it meant breaking the attack - certainly rebuilding them wouldn't take long.
2438 I had massed enough destroyers to smash both fleets. Dark Planet would last another turn at most. Skloot would die soon - lots of population, but had run out of germanium to build new defenses.
Once again, I took a chance, and sent both fleets warping in at warp 10 to relieve the two planets. 54 and 53 range 0 destroyers in the respective fleets - enough, I had calculated, to gut what I knew they had.
2439 Both fleets arrived and easily destroyed their opponents. They were too slow however to knock down those bombers, so both worlds sustained another year of bombing.
The Desquis were beginning to setup minefields. Perplexingly, the Polanies were not. Additionally, they were not exploiting the wedge they had in my flank at Myopus. Nor were they moving to eliminate the colonies I had finally established up in Puma and Custer (near Watcher space)
From there, the battle see-sawed back and forth with no real progress made by either side. My own resources unfortunately were stagnating, while I knew the Polanies and Desquis had to be increasing...somewhere in the 50's, the Zurgs made an abortive effort to establish colonies through the wormhole. I stomped a few, then let the last one sit. What ships the Zurgs deployed to cover it were hopelessly obsolescent and I wasn't going to use that planet anyway. So why not let them waste their time there? Most importantly, the Zurgs, being HE, couldn't possibly get a gate up there, which would be the only reason to fear them.
During this time I was also attempting to open up another front to the war with the Big Furry Thing by feeding them tech. I was hoping that eventually I could get some 300/500's up there and then begin sending colonization and raiding fleets through. Unfortunately, Xdude was overcommitted and unable to give it his full attention, and as a consequence, by the time he managed to get the gates up, my own empire lacked the strength to exploit them - and the BFT were under heavier fire than I could counter.
Perplexingly, both Polanies and Desquis seemed to be waiting for Godot rather than building out and crushing my own forces.
In the mid to late 2450's or thereabouts, the Armagons and OKs contacted me. They were plainly worried about the extent of the Polanie empire and began feeding me tech. At this time I was getting desperate. I *knew* how little it would take to knock me over - and by golly I didn't want an empire as sloppily run as the Polanies to win!
By 2460 I had begun a campaign to mimic the Watcher's view of the universe - I began building and deploying Sensor Swarm MK IVs - dolphin scanner equipped, 97% cloaked galleons. In addition, I had obtained a pair of MT Lifeboats from a recent MT. Instead of using them as short-lived raiders, I elected to use them for intelligence and sent them on a zig-zagging course deep into Polanie/Desquis space.
Around 2465, the wheels started coming off again - this time almost for good. The Polanies had finally committed a decent fleet of Mega Disruptor equipped warships - that were further bolstered by no less than 6 capacitors. Massive overkill. Light on the defenses, but I had no way to counter that sort of force with only weapons 16.
Fortunately, the OKs and Armagons launched their own offensive. We were down on tech, but they had the advantage of surprise, and much of the Polanie fleet was still mired in my space. With a bit of luck, they managed to buy the time we'd need to counter them.
I began preparations for a full scale retreat - intending to begin a migration into the old Zurg space as it was readily apparent I could not hope to hold onto my space if they decided to throw a straight fleet down my throat. As it was I was being slowly pushed back off to my HW. Apparently I don't know when to give up...
Through 2480 I suffered steady losses, but indecision at Polanie and Desquis High Command kept their forces from completely grinding my empire away. At the same time I continued to siphon strength away from the more important Armagon and OK fleet actions.
Around 2485 the inevitable occurred. My HW was taken. Fortunately I knew it was coming and evacuated all of the minerals and most of the population. And also fortunately, this semi-pointless excursion was tying down fully 1/3 of the Polany/Desquis fleet at the time, according to my scans (which were virtually complete at this point).
The evacuation was going in full swing. I had established a number of gates in the old Zurg space and colonized 7 planets with more on the way, as soon as I diverted the population.
With enemy fleets practically touching the southern end of my old space, I began frantically evacuating all the minerals from the depots I had been storing them at on previous retreats.
The remaining 15 years watched my slide to irrelevance as I lost most of my remaining fleet to an unexpectedly effective replacement Desquis player and lacked the forces to truly counter them. With the MT toys, my ability to track enemy fleet concentrations was dropping steadily. Even at that, I still managed to keep a small side fleet tied down attacking me rather than going after the OK planets that could have materially influenced the end results. Not much of an accomplishment, but I'll take what I can.
2500 the OKs won, and I eked out a meager 5th place as the last still functioning secondary empire, with 12K resources and 20 planets - around the same level I'd been at since 2450 (in terms of planets, since 2430).
Edit: added Desquis comments (which I overlooked when originally writing this).
[Updated on: Thu, 18 March 2004 11:22]
Jesus saves.
Allah forgives.
Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich.Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Current Time: Fri Apr 26 03:11:52 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
