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Home » Primary Racial Traits » JOAT » Joat, the non-boring PRT
icon12.gif  Joat, the non-boring PRT Sun, 09 February 2003 08:17 Go to previous message
Verker is currently offline Verker

 
Master Chief Petty Officer
VML mod guy

Messages: 99
Registered: January 2003
Location: Vienna, AUT
 Not a single Joat posting so far? Sorry, but I had to change that Wink

The Joat are by no means a boring PRT - on the contrary. While being a good place to start and to learn for newbies, they offer a large variety of design approaches for the advanced player. If they lack anything, it is the absence of a PRT specific item or hull, and often that lack feels harder with them common choices of OBRM and NAS. In fact, I do consider the 3 hulls having a buildt in penscanner being PRT specific hulls, but most players don't, especially because that ability is "lost" when a Joat player trades his ships. Apart from cheap early scout based vessels, that have the ability to get better scanning along with increasing electronics tech (BTW, the *only* improving component in Stars!), I especially like building early multi role ships based on DDs for scouting, sweeping, skirmishing.

For beginners I regard it extremely important to learn pop management correctly. Hence, all so called "economic PRTs" (IS, IT, CA, Joat) take most of their advantages from improved pop growth. Joats are rewarding PRT to learn, in two ways: on one hand, as long as a newbies pop management isn't as good as that of another player, Joats 20% pop bonus (that makes a lot of a difference in growth) helps to keep up in popgrowth. OTOH, as soon as you start to get the feeling how to do things the right way, you'll get enourmous popgrowth as a return, where only CA and IS might be able to keep up with.

Let me suggest a pretty much "std" design for newbies making their 1st steps in a pbem:

"Newbies choice"
Joat
IFE, NRSE, OBRM, NAS, LSP
19%, 1/1000
2*68 wide, centered, rad 16-56 (1in4)
12/9/13/4g factories
12/3/13 mines
weap+con cheap, rest exp, doesn't start at 4
6 left (concentrations)

For sure, that doesn't look too spectacular - but the race above gives close to HP capacity at HG speed. The planetary maximum is a decent 3379 resources. Early growth can be impressive. Don't be worried about the LSP, being an OBRM Joat you should make up for that sooner than you might think. Having ISB would be nice for early spreading, but in universes up to medium, one should be able to renounce that (and I'd always prefer the strong mining settings). Newbies shouldn't try anything bigger than medium for their 1st pbem anyway.

There's 3 things about this design I'd like to point out: the hab range is designed in a way that results in a 1in2 using only radiation TF, that comes fast from the cheap weapons tech. The mine settings will help a lot; yes, there's a lot of points in them, but mind you that Joats have an additional demand because of their planet size combined with OBRM. Selecting a higher concentration will result in having more minerals "in the rock", enabling you to get more minerals out of a given planet, than a race using 10/3/15, while your additional number of mines due to being Joat will enable you to pull them out just as fast as your competitor. I advise newbies to stick with these settings for their 1st game. There's no point in gathering vast amounts of resources, if you lack minerals to turn them into ships. The third point being the tech: weap cheap is pretty much std in pbems for a few years now - goes well with the terra approach described above. Joats 3-3-4-3-3-3 tech start (in this case) enables to fight right from turn 2400 if necessary (with PRTs just one cheap tech level away, and mine layers just one expensive tech level to go), while cheap con tech will enable to keep up in the race to BBs and Nubians later.

It is true that this design lacks in diplomacy, since it has nothing to trade besides early information. Yes, don't underestimate that. It will be 20-30 turns until neighboring races might be able to field penscanning ships. During that timeframe, being on the lookout for another races habitable planets might get you an ally. At least, that is a better chance than anything else you might have to offer later.

Diplomacy takes us on to advanced designs. At a level where everybody has a decent design and decent play, having something decent to trade might make a difference. Here's a design that advanced players should be able to have some fun with:

"Adv. players choice"
Joat
IFE, ISB, NRSE, RS
19% 1/1000
2*74 wide, right shifted, rad 16-54 (1in4)
10/9/10/4g factories
10/3/10 mines
weap+con cheap, rest exp, doesn't start at 4
50 left (factories)

The above is a pretty untypical hybrid design, made to play it -f style in the early stages (no factory build, just mines and as many vessels as early as possible, buildt at docks everywhere) to get a kill or two until midgame. Ten extra factories from the start will give you an early resource boost (while Joats in advanced games will have to leave some points unused most of the time). A planetary max of 2400 means doubling a std -fs capacity for little investment. You'll build factories when you have time to. The whole idea is to make up for the weak (for a -f) tech choice by better capacity. Besides, you get a head start in the tech tree, while RS even betters that for your early DD designs. The hab idea works just as with the race given above.

Races that attack early need special diplomatic abilities - thus, this race keeps the "anti-thematic" for Joat: penscanners and remote miners. Both do have advantages for the Joat, too, not only for trade: you will ive on 1in2 in the late game, still leaving enough worlds to make remote mining useful by then. Besides, planetary based penscanners combined with later CCs mounted penscanners will prevent your enemies popular approach to take out a Joats "eyes" by focussing on his hulls with buildt in scanners (that have no means to defend themselves in the later game, as well as lack decent cloaking before overcloakers are out).

Admittedly NRSE isn't too popular for -f style races, but enables this one to be competitive in larger places (at least as long as it grabs enough territory early on). No further playing hints here, since advanced players shouldn't really need any, not even for a hybrid Wink

I for one had fun with both of the above in more than one game, and I'd bet others would have, too. If you do (or did), let us know.

Verker ||¬]

verker@iname.donotspamhere.com remove the obvious for mailing me

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