Home World Forum
Stars! AutoHost web forums

Jump to Stars! AutoHost


 
 
Home » Primary Racial Traits » AR » Viable AR designs: what are the options?
Viable AR designs: what are the options? Mon, 16 June 2014 14:19 Go to previous message
mrvan is currently offline mrvan

 
Officer Cadet 1st Year

Messages: 220
Registered: May 2014
Since the current proposed game is all-AR, it might be fun to have some discussion on viable AR designs.

Observations
----

Since some people have professed unfamiliarity with AR design, some basic observations:
- AR cannot have HP planets, absolute max is [sqrt(26*3M/8)]~3k, but for most races, most of the time it is more around 1.4-1.8k [sqrt(10*2M/10) - sqrt(16*2M/10)]
- The only production factors outside the sqrt are number of planets and planet value
- This means that end-game habitability needs to be reasonable to get enough planets, preferably 1 in 3 or better
- This also means that immunity plus narrow ranges is much better than wide ranges (immunity: much better value; narrow range: much better terraforming)
- Terraforming is a direct investment in economy, since production scales linearly with planet value
- Innate mining sucks, so remote mining is the only way to get enough minerals.
- AR requires a lot of research. Everyone needs W, AR also needs Energy for resources (up to 10 or 16, after that it might not be worth it) and Con for star bases (12=ultra, 17=death star).
- Early game, AR has decent resources but needs to spend a lot of them researching
- Early/middle game, AR has severe iron shortage as it needs to spend iron buying remote miners to get iron.
- Late game, AR is resource limited rather than mineral limited as remote mining of home world gives ~infinite minerals.

Design options
----

In my opinion, AR design allows for a quite limited number of variations since the econ page consist of only a single number. Also, because planet value is so important immunities are a very important determiner in the hab page, as wide ranges are not very desirable. Thus, the basic design templates of AI are 1i, 2i, and 3i. In my experience, both 0i and 3i are not very competitive, but 3i is listed here for completeness:

Design templates:

* 1i: prop immune, one narrow, one wide; growth 15% or better, econ 1:10. Probably the easiest to play as you have enough pop to permit some MM laziness.
* 2i: prop/rad immune, temp narrow; growth 13 or 14%, econ 1:25. Lots of bright green planets, and very effective terraforming; but the relatively slow pop growth and bad divisor make for a slow start. Needs more MM to spread the pop around to enough planets.
* 3i: 3i, growth 6 or 7%, econ 1:8 or 1:10. HE style play but without the cheap colonizers and double growth. Extremely quick early resources due to spread (22 pop, 1/8, tech 5 gives 37 resources for each new colony and no infra needed!), but after the early spread the PGR really hurts.

For all templates:
* LRT: some subset of {IFE,ISB,ARM} and some subset of {NRSE,NAS} to pay for it. IFE for early expansion, ISB for early expansion and for cheap docks (500k pop instead of 250, 1 turn build even for most new colonies with minerals from pinta), ARM for early and very late gateable miners. NRSE and NAS are good point mines as always, but NRSE is extra painful because of the expensive engines with a resource-limited race. The vulnerability of star bases makes NAS slightly less attractive. Some people like RS, especially since energy research is needed anyway, but it does make star bases more vulnerable.
* Tech: Basic choice is En, Con, Weap cheap, rest expensive, no start at three. En or Con can be taken normal since only level 16/17 is really needed and 10/12 is good enough for a long while, but En normal hurts ramp up. En expensive, start at 3 is an interesting niche option, more immediate resources but the advantage does not last long and you don't gain a lot of points for the resource hit.

Apart from picking the number of immunities, the main design questions are which LRT's to pick and how to balance growth and hab. These choices will depend a lot on play style and universe settings.

Comments? Other ideas?

(note: this post does not contain any new ideas per se - I just thought it would be nice to get some discussion about the high-level choices and ideas)



[Updated on: Mon, 16 June 2014 17:18]

Report message to a moderator

 
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Read Message
Previous Topic: AR has no resources?
Next Topic: What is a mineral fountain ?
Goto Forum:
  


Current Time: Thu Mar 28 19:58:13 EDT 2024