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SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Thu, 20 February 2003 12:27 Go to next message
Crikey is currently offline Crikey

 
Crewman 1st Class

Messages: 21
Registered: February 2003
Location: England
I am new to Stars and so I apologize if I am treading already trodden ground. However, I am having difficulty deciding between an SS race based upon hyper producer or hyper growth.

With hyper producer the race starts out slowly and weakly and so any conflict must be avoided if you want to survive. The main bonuses for SS arrive in the mid game with the highest tech gadget being the Robber Baron Scanner (but is this really a game changing gadget?) Also, SS are an offensive race and need to attack to succeed so this means that they would do better if they start their offensives in the mid game where their advantages are greatest but involves being very weak at the beginning.

For the side of the hyper growth (ie 1/1000 pop efficiency and reasonable factory settings) they start a lot stronger and are able to use their stealth advantage against low electronics tech opponents early on in the game. This hyper growth strength also continues all the way up to the late game (spanning SS strongest period) at which time their advantages are not as useful. (people have higher elec tech, research bonuses not as helpful).

Given these arguements and those of your own is it better to have HP or HG for an SS race?

Thank you for your time.

Crike

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Thu, 20 February 2003 16:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
freakyboy is currently offline freakyboy

 
Lieutenant

Messages: 583
Registered: November 2002
Location: Where the clowns can't re...
I'd say HG. While HP gives the best results when the best tech becomes available (the robber barron isn't game changing but if used right will make your enemies cry lots.)

I say HG though because when your neighbours find out you're SS (and they will - VERY quickly) then chances are they'll want to wipe you out - as such HG gives you the *hopeful* advantage.

ALso HG allows you to play like a true SS and attack before your enemy knows you're there.

Personally I'd play -F and do lots of invading quickly... your enemies wont see those invasion freighters coming... handy huh?

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Fri, 21 February 2003 07:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Crikey is currently offline Crikey

 
Crewman 1st Class

Messages: 21
Registered: February 2003
Location: England
I did think about a -f SS race. However, the advantages that make -f work for races such as IS, CA and IT are not there for SS. I think that with a -f SS race you would have a large number of weak planets spanning a large area which is inherently difficult to defend or use any drop back tactics. I agree that it is probably better to start quicker than a HP race as SS are generally not liked (not sure why - I haven't backstabbed anyone ............yet Laughing ).

With a HG SS race what kind of settings would you put for factory and mines?

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Sat, 22 February 2003 12:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yucaf is currently offline yucaf

 
Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 100
Registered: December 2002
Location: India
Hello,

If you want to play SS, you should know that you can counter your economic weaknesses by diplomacy. SS excels at it!

You have plenty of stuff and information others want to get. In my limited SS experience, I have found neighbours very happy to become friend or even ally. Of course, in a "no diplomacy" game, SS is a bad choice, but if you have enough players in the universe (I would say more than 4), SS is a fun PRT to play. Being sneaky does not mean you are less honest than others.

Being sneaky can also mean "better be friend with that guy"... Your neighbours do not know how good you are and who you are allied to... And it's much harder to verify.

That being said, HP is perfectly playable for SS, economically it makes sense (since HP is very hard to achieve with SS without loosing the specific advantages of the PRT), and you can easily buy time to get on track.

Of course, like in any game, you can be unlucky and all players go gang on you... Risk is part of the excitement, no? Very Happy

FWIW,

YucaF

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Sun, 23 February 2003 02:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Crusader is currently offline Crusader

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 233
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dixie Land
Gentlemen, please, at the risk of sounding like some sort of pompous know-it-all ... Nod

SS is economically weak? Not necessarily. Sure, you can't do the fancy things with the economy like you can with JoAT or CA, but it ain't no 90 pound weakling either.

To wit! and as a public example, please all take a gander at the Morloks, denizens of the dark and evil underworld. Shocked

PRT: SS
LRTs: IFE, OBRM, NAS, LSP
gravity .31 to 3.20
temperature -120 to 120
radiation 20 to 80
1 in 4
19%
1 res per 1200 colonists
factories 12/9/16 4G
mines 10/3/15
weapons cheap, all others expensive, tech 3 checked
5 advantage points applied to surface minerals

What is to dislike here? A 100% world yields 3028 resources. It is fast growing, with a bit of a slower start because of LSP, but 19% growth to help overcome that. You start out with the Fuel Mizer and the medium freighter, so moving pop off the HW is not an issue. If played properly, this race can achieve 20k to 25k resources by 2450 in a testbed, so you can call it a "monster" race if you want. With tech stealing, the expensive tech fields don't hurt as bad as it would some other races.

You play them like any other HG race. Grow for 4 to 8 years (I'm assuming AccBBS), build 10 to 20 scouts for initial expansion scouting, followed by building 100 to 200 mines for minerals and then start building colony ships and freighters. Move pop, keeping the HW from 25% to 33% capacity until about year 20 to 30, allow the HW to grow up to 50% capacity and move pop off to keep it at that point. Offload germ to help the colonies build their factories. Acquire new technology. Oh yeah! These guys can rock, and they are just made for exceling in those middle years when everyone is starting to feel a bit froggy and looking for wars of expansion. Then, all you gotta do is look those big JoATs and CAs in the eye and say, "Bring it on, big boy, but I got capital ships too and YOU don't know where they are! Do ya?! HUH? DO YA!?!"

What? You don'
...

[Updated on: Sun, 23 February 2003 02:13]




Nothing for now.

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Sun, 23 February 2003 19:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yucaf is currently offline yucaf

 
Master Chief Petty Officer

Messages: 100
Registered: December 2002
Location: India
Crusader wrote on Sun, 23 February 2003 02:11

SS is economically weak? Not necessarily. Sure, you can't do the fancy things with the economy like you can with JoAT or CA, but it ain't no 90 pound weakling either.

To wit! and as a public example, please all take a gander at the Morloks, denizens of the dark and evil underworld. Shocked

PRT: SS
LRTs: IFE, OBRM, NAS, LSP
gravity .31 to 3.20
temperature -120 to 120
radiation 20 to 80
1 in 4
19%
1 res per 1200 colonists
factories 12/9/16 4G
mines 10/3/15
weapons cheap, all others expensive, tech 3 checked
5 advantage points applied to surface minerals

What is to dislike here? A 100% world yields 3028 resources. It is fast growing, with a bit of a slower start because of LSP, but 19% growth to help overcome that. You start out with the Fuel Mizer and the medium freighter, so moving pop off the HW is not an issue. If played properly, this race can achieve 20k to 25k resources by 2450 in a testbed, so you can call it a "monster" race if you want. With tech stealing, the expensive tech fields don't hurt as bad as it would some other races.



Thank you for that long and interesting post.

However, I'm sorry but I have to disagree: with 4G per factory, 1/1200 pop efficiency and LSP, you will be behind economic races no matter what. And having all your tech (but weapon) expensive won't be compensated by the spying bonus, because you cannot rely only on that to get the techs. You need to research as well and for what I can see, you will be behind in ressources and therefore in research with that design. Economy is more about speed than planetary capacity (except for HP designs of course)

The point here is not to try to get 25k by 2450. We know SS can do it. But remember that CA can do twice as much (or even better) without difficulty. When you will be trying to get that yellow cloak, he will be pushing his BB's on your worlds if you play SS as an economic race.

There is still a clear weakness for SS: his worlds are not cloaked, therefo
...

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Mon, 24 February 2003 13:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Crikey is currently offline Crikey

 
Crewman 1st Class

Messages: 21
Registered: February 2003
Location: England
Sorry to disagree further with your race designs but I was looking at your -f race design for SS.

With -f races you are always going to be quick out of the gate with the only thing that your resources are going towards being research and ship building. However, -f races are most likely to struggle when they get to the mid and late game stages (especially against big economies) when they find that they are not able to compete economy wise against the biggies. You might say that it is not fair to compare the economies of a -f race with anything because everyone knows that a -f race will have a small ecomony and makes up for it in other areas. However, the problem still remains that they invariably have small economies when fighting larger economies in the mid and end game. To counter this I would personally say that having more planets would be better than having better planets.

I would also say that your mine settings are not sufficient to allow easy moving of pop off the homeworld with either MF or privateers. At about year 10 of abbs game you will need to move pop off. You will be growing around 50000 colonists every year which requires 2 privateers or three MFs every year. If my memory serves me a privateer with fuel tanks and FM engine takes 80kT of ironium and so you must be able to wrench 160kT of ironium every year to keep up. Even with the less mineral hungry MFs I do not think that your mines would keep up. I would put mines closer to 11/3/13. What do you think?

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Fri, 06 June 2003 14:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Crusader is currently offline Crusader

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 233
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dixie Land
I'll try this again. The first copy "disappeared" on me. That is the second time I've managed to make that happen. It is a sequence of keystrokes after placing a smiley in the post that does it, and you would think that I would figure out to stop doing it.

But I'm slow ...

First, allow me to apologize for not responding back when this was all fresh. The new job and a new game of Stars! got me busy. Then, just about the time I managed to get a handle on both of those, I went and had a "serious heart attack", as my doctor put it. Is it possible to have a "not-so-serious heart attack"?

Yucaf: All you say in your response is true, and I would never dream of disputing it. However, in my opinion, the points that I make are also true and, in my opinion, undisputable. Peace_bow

Plus, I like hearing myself talk, or type even. Surely, all those on this forum can relate to that little bit of truth-telling.

Crikey: First, allow me to congratulate you on your handle. I like it! Then, to quote John Wayne, "Never apologize! It's a sign of weakness!" You may disagree with me anytime you wish. It is a free ciber space. Ain't it? Question

The points that you make are well taken too, and quite true. I'm not sure that I understand the remark about needing more planets instead of better planets as a -f, but maybe it's just me. Seems to me that a 1 in 5 hab range with an immunity is just better than a 1 in 3 hab range without an immunity for a race that relys on only pop growth for resources. Although, going 1 in 3 without an immunity would allow for even better research settings, which would be good for SS. Idea

As Yucaf said, FWIW,

Respectfully,
The Crusader Angel
...




Nothing for now.

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icon6.gif  Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Wed, 18 June 2003 10:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dyrham is currently offline Dyrham

 
Petty Officer 2nd Class

Messages: 50
Registered: June 2003
Not sure who I'm agreeing with but here is my opinion ...

I tried -f SS. It does work to a point. Turning up with Jihad BB's 97% cloaked due to Shadow shield and depleted neutronium in the mid 2440's does upset your slow growing CA neighbour !

After that it really depends on game size. This was a large game and he absorbed the losses and came back at me. In a medium or smaller game with a lot of players it might have worked.

My standard SS race is like those mentioned. A mix of pop and factory based resources with poorish mine settings ( as I rely on robbing later ). Basically strategy is expand fast while still invisible. Beat your neighbours to the outlying colonies. Get the RB scanner about 2450 and build cloaked, fast unarmed galleons and send them out to within 25ly of your most unsuspecting neighbour. Then all on one turn 2460 -70 do a big one hit steal. Hoping he hasnt built any missile sentry ships.

Oh, if there is an IS near you, make friends !

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Sun, 28 September 2003 10:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mcvos is currently offline mcvos

 
Crewman 3rd Class

Messages: 7
Registered: September 2003
Location: Netherland
Sorry to jump into this old thread, but I'd like to vent my opinion about this.

Of Crusaders races, I'm not overly impressed with the HG design, because I can reach 20k with my 1/1000 18% growth SS with better tech settings. But HG is worth playing for a SS. You won't be as big as a CA or a JoaT, but you do need some economy to fight them, and a good SS can afford take on much bigger enemies.

What I am impressed by, is the -f race. -f compensates for one of the biggest weaknesses of the SS PRT: the planets. When you're -f, you can just abandon your planets and move those people to your other planets, or keep them in cloaked freighters ready for an invasion. SS is very good at attacking, -f is very good at attacking, and a -f SS can afford not to defend.

I've never been able to design a satisfactory -f SS, though, but those Gypsies look really good. 19%, 1 in 5, 1 immunity, good tech settings, and all the right LRTs. Sure, a CA or JoaT -f will be a lot bigger, but this should be playable. Just remember to attack, and to never stop attacking.


mcv.

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Re: SS - hyper producer or hyper growth Tue, 30 September 2003 15:07 Go to previous message
Crusader is currently offline Crusader

 
Officer Cadet 2nd Year

Messages: 233
Registered: January 2003
Location: Dixie Land
Welcome to the forum. Grin

Your friendly Crusader. Angel



Nothing for now.

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