Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Big Pop Drops
| Big Pop Drops |
Sat, 28 June 2003 21:56  |
|
 zoid |
 | Ensign |
Messages: 348
Registered: December 2002
Location: Murray, KY - USA | |
|
Once upon a time in discussion of a new game, we were discussing the issue of an IS race relying completely on pop-drops, without any bombers whatsoever. My position (perhaps incorrectly) was that the IS needed some kind of bombers, which brought boos and jeers from all my friends here who disputed the fact (perhaps correctly - I'm not sure). Okay, actually there were no boos or jeers; the respondents were quite polite. 
Freakyboy said IIRC that the IS race in question could drop 8,000,000 colonists on a 100% capped planet with full defenses and survive the defenses and the battle with 1,000,000 colonists (roughly) surviving. He gave lots of numbers that impressed me, and nobody disputed what he said, so I assumed that once again, I was wrong. He pointed out that an IS race with 18% growth could quickly amass such an invasion fleet, and extrapolated that with more than one of these fleets the IS could maintain reasonable momentum in planet captures even with no bombers.
Now I am playing an IS and intended to use that technique, but it doesn't seem to be working as expected. Two cases in point:
Planet #1 was is an IT HW that was near 100% capacity and with maximum defenses resulting in a scanner report of about 93% coverage. After several years of bombing by my ally, the planet was reduced to less than 300,000 and the defenses were in the lower 60% range. I moved in with 4.5 million colonists and dropped on the planet. I conquered the planet....with 100 colonists surviving. (ouch) There weren't even any factories or mines remaining. 
Planet #2 was an SS planet that had somewhere between 580,000 and 850,000 (I can't remember) population, but it had no defenses. I felt pretty safe dropping only 1.8 million on this planet since the player had quit long ago. I conquered the planet...with 539,000 colonists surviving.
I'm not sure what is happening here, but it appears possible that anything over 1,000,000 dropped on the planet may just be forfeit instantly without having any effect on the battle. Both cases seem more like the expected result of dropping only 1 million colonists. It does appear in fact, that unless the IS is content to drop 1 million colonists at a time with repeated failed attempts to whittle down the population on a 100% capped and defended world, that he DOES need bombers. Does anyone have more information on pop-drops of such a large scale? It's tough losing all but a single point of population out of 45000+ on what would seem an easy victory. My IT enemy is probably happy as hell that I dropped 4.5 million colonists on his HW since I lost 4.49999999 million colonists in the deal - I would be.
I'M NOT AN EXPERT AND I'M OFTEN PROVEN WRONG. TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU READ MY POSTS.
Math?  Ummm, sure!  I do FREESTYLE math.Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Current Time: Sat Apr 20 07:47:16 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
