| Bad Race Designs (Or: races I played and will never play again...) |
Mon, 31 March 2003 12:36  |
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Let me see if you can beat this one (it was a while ago so I will try to remember the details):
A -f -m SD. 
I had wanted to play a -f. I also wanted to play a SD. I figured with all the extra points with a SD, and the -f points, I could afford to take an immunity. Since I was keeping the Ram Scoop engines, and since I figured I would need a lot of minerals to build the big minelayers, I figured that I could take Advanced Remote Mining. And I figured that if I was going to have big mining ships, that I would not need planetary mines, and I could afford Total Terraforming as well. The additional benefits were that ALL planetary resources would go into terraforming and then to research. And of course my enemies would not want my planets, as there would be no factories and mines on them! (Did you follow that twisted logic?)
Note also that due to RL difficulties at the time, I barely had time to create the race, much less test it. 
The flaws:
Remote mining starts out very slow. I did not have enough minerals to build enough remote miners to get started quickly! I was SO short on minerals I was having trouble finding enough minerals to build transports and colonizers. This greatly slowed down my -f expansion.
With the immunity and great habs, a LOT of the planets with better minerals were planets that were green, and that I would need to colonize. And of course, if I colonized them I would not be able to mine them!
What happened:
It was a re-mapped universe, and I happened to be the player with the most real estate, and with other players very far away. This gave me quite a long time to get started without interruption. I also made an alliance with the #1 player, who was near me. He helped me get a few (much needed) tech levels to get the best miner and mining robots.
Getting those helped me turn the corner. I set up a mining world for each colonized world, and was able to build enough miners and transports (over several turns) to get a good mineral rate to my planets. These minerals started to arrive just before my opponents were closing in on my worlds. So I was able to build enough cruisers and minelayers to defend myself, and even grow a little before my ally won the game.
There are quite a few more details. Another reason I survived is that players were required to take at least one of the 'bad' LRTs, and could only take one of the 'good' LRTs, so everyone was having some sort of trouble.
Here is the amazing part: I managed to get to second place before the game ended.
Someone asked my why I did not just play an AR? It probably would have worked better, and with the exception of the minelayers, was prettty much what I was playing!
I will play a -f again someday, and a SD, but never again a -m. Someday I will even try an AR!
Planet Dancer
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