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Home » Primary Racial Traits » SD » Practicablity of a Bi-Immune SD?
Re: Practicablity of a Bi-Immune SD? Mon, 23 October 2006 11:57 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Marduk is currently offline Marduk

 
Ensign

Messages: 345
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dayton, OH
 I don't believe it can be done, but here's my thinking on how you could try.

Normally you can't allow yourself to fall too far behind in tech, or your position will become hopeless. A delta-jihad gap is bad enough, but a delta-juggernaut gap would be a nightmare. So if you aren't going to be able to research enough of your own tech you'll need to be able to acquire it in battle. (Trading is good, but not something you can guarantee.) With a tech disadvantage you will need a substantially larger economy than your opponents, or have some other way to secure an advantage in your fights.

SD minefields are good for softening up an enemy if you can get them in an exploding field. Depending on their ship designs it might be possible to design your own ships to be much more resistant to mines, and few people seem to expect a SD player to send his own fleets into an exploding minefield. Since this will obliterate all normal chaff, it favors missile ships. That complements the energy dampener, if you can manage to get energy 14 and propulsion 8.

Even without the Energy Dampener, if the opponent is using a significant number of torpedos or missiles fighting from inside an exploding minefield means that some of the weird 'durable chaff' designs could become useful. Durable chaff, the energy dampener, and mine-resistant ships all point to energy tech. So you're going to need to be able to research energy on your own. Regenerating shields are a must-have here.

The biggest downside to this is that your opponent has to follow you into the minefield in the first place. They're going to be reluctant to do that after the first time you spring this surprise on them, so odds are you won't get much use out of this until they are trying to conquer you. Of course you can use that to your advantage - if they are reluctant to attack you, you can expand ruthlessly, leading the way with your minefields.

I agree with Kotk that you need factories, and I'd recommend an HP race. That helps you get the economy you'll need to make up for low tech settings, and gives other races an incentive to come to you.

Since you will be expecting your battles to mostly be happening at your systems, you will have serious transport issues in battle zones. You will have to build armored transports, which are expensive and inefficient; accept that you won't be able to make shipments anywhere you expect to be attacked; or rely on mass drivers to send minerals from place to place. At least you will have energy as a primary tech anyway, so mass drivers won't be an extra tech expense. I suppose you could also mount cargo pods on minelayer hulls for battle zone deliveries.

Eventually your opponents will be able to chaff-sweep your stacked minefields (you should definately end up with all three types to make this as difficult and expensive as possible) and avoid the explosions. The hope is that you will have either narrowed the tech gap or have enough quantity to make up for it by then.

Since you want your ships to be tough early on, I'd say energy cheap, construction normal. Weapons and/or electronics (jamming will be important) normal as well, if you can afford it. If you have weapons expensive, you're basically acknowledging that you won't be doing any weapon research of your own and will rely on trading and battle to advance it. If you have weapon tech cheap, you're going to be slow to develop the racial advantages that have a chance of overcoming the dangers of the slow growth you're going to end up with.

It's going to be a difficult balancing act. With a race like this you'll want to expand very aggressively - space can be traded for time, and an SD can get a lot more time for the space he gives up. Once you meet resistance your expansion will be pretty easy to stop so you'll need to grab as much as you can before that happens.

Hmm, a minelayer hull with a colony module and another with a cargo pod, following a minelayer through it's exploding minefields, could be an expensive colony mission to intercept. More cargo minelayers as transports for supply, and maybe you could keep expanding some against resistance.

I hope you find this useful. I still say it can't be done, but it might be fun to try.

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