11F. The Empire of the Birds

5. Starbase Information Sub-Menu

11. Strategy and Strategy Guides

11G. The Fascist Empire

6. Ship Information Sub-Menu

12. Add-on Information

11H. The Privateer Bands

11I. The Cyborg

11J. The Crystal Confederation

THE EMPIRE OF THE BIRDS (RACE3) STRATEGY GUIDE(S):

A Bird in the Hand Is Worth…

By Conrad Lesnewski

clesnew@tribeca.ios.com

In this, the third installment of "The Races of VGAP," we'll examine those masters of cloaking, The Birdmen. If you're

hoping to find playing tips that will turn the Birds into a powerhouse race capable of running roughshod over your

opponents, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. The Birdmen, in my humble opinion, have a firm hold on the title,

Weakest Race in VGAP. That's not to say that you can't have fun with the Birds and perhaps even annihilate an opponent or

two with them. However, in a contest of competent rulers for ultimate control of the Echo Cluster, the Birdman leader will

usually find that he's playing at a disadvantage throughout the game.

The problem with the Birds, is that they have neither the military power of the fighter races nor the economic power of the

other torpedo races. In addition, their primary native advantage, stealth through cloaking, is now easily defeated by a number

of methods (e.g., Lokis, Glory Devices, Ion Storms, and Web Mines). Once their cloaking is negated, their other race

specialty, Superspying, goes with it. This leaves the Birds as a torp race with no significant special advantages to offset the

inherent weakness of their fleet as a whole.

While the Birds have a great number of cloakers, most are not very combat worthy. A Lizard Cruiser or Fed Nebula, for

example, can handle the bulk of the Bird cloakers, up to and including the Resolute. The Swiftheart is an effective long-range

scout but its tiny cargo capacity limits its effectiveness as a colonizer. The White Falcon is used mainly as a cloaking fuel

carrier. The Fearless can be used to capture freighters and non-Borg planets as well as serve as a cloaking Medium Deep Space

Freighter, but it will get toasted by most mid-level ships if it engages them. The Redwind is fairly useless to the Birds but

may have some value as a trading ship to the Colonies and/or Feds. The Brightheart is also usually not worth building unless

the RacePlus add-on is being used and even then, the Egg mission is among the weakest of the RacePlus abilities.

This leaves the Deth Specula and Resolute to serve as the mid-level combat ships of the Birds. The Deth Specula packs a nice

punch against planets and mid-level ships but don't expect to recloak it after combat. Its light weight means it will usually

take some significant damage in the battle. The Deth Specula also suffers from limited fuel and cargo capacities so it's usually

only good for a couple of strikes before needing to be resupplied by a supporting cloaker (e.g., a White Falcon or Fearless).

Given the choice (i.e., a base with tech level 7 hulls), the Resolute is a better choice than the Deth Specula.

The Resolute costs just slightly more than the Deth Specula in terms of cash and minerals, but gets rid of the Deth Specula's

limitations. With the largest fuel capacity in the Bird's cloaking fleet, ample cargo room, and the ability to remained cloaked

without burning fuel, the Resolute is a well-rounded ship that can handle a variety of roles in the Bird empire. It can fight

planets and mid-level ships, resupply and refuel other ships, colonize, lay large mine fields in enemy territory, take a mine hit

itself, stay cloaked in Ion Storms, and spy. The Resolute is also desired by every other race, so if you're willing to trade one,

they usually command a premium price. About the only thing it can't do is handle large ships and/or bases. For that you

need the ultimate cloaker, The Darkwing.

While the Darkwing is the ultimate in cloaking technology, it has one major flaw which keeps it from reaching its full

potential. It, along with the Victorious, has the smallest fuel tank of any heavy warship. This seriously hampers the

Darkwing's ability to launch surprise attacks deep in enemy territory. While the Darkwing no longer burns fuel to cloak

(previously, cloaking a Darkwing was the equivalent to sitting one in a web field), it still burns enough fuel while moving to

limit its range to 4-5 turns before needing to be refueled. Against an inexperienced opponent, this may be enough to strike at

the heart of his territory, but a competent player will usually have the borders of his territory extending 5 or more turns

from his homeworld. This means that either the Darkwings have to strike outlying planets in the hopes of refueling, thereby

warning the prey of Bird presence, or a large support fleet (White Falcons or Resolutes) has to accompany the strike force to

refuel the Darkwings in transit. If the strike force fails in its mission, the support fleet is often also sacrificed because it

doesn't have enough fuel left (having fed the Darkwings) to successfully retreat from the area. Not only do fuel logistics hurt

the Birds stealth potential, but often they find that their "stealthy" mission, Superspy, also works against them by revealing

their presence to a potential target race.

The Superspy mission comes in two parts, one that gives detailed information about an enemy planet and one that attempts

to change the planet's friendly code. The difficulty for the Birds lies with the second part, namely, that there is no way to

turn it off. Each Superspying ship over a planet has a 20% chance of changing the planet's friendly code to match that of the

ship. Unfortunately, if the change is successful, it generates a message to the enemy announcing the Bird's arrival in the area.

To make matters worse, if the planet has 10 or more defense posts there is a subsequent 20% chance that an ion burst will

occur and all ships orbiting the planet will decloak. This means that a ship set to Superspy has a 4% chance of decloaking

every time it passes over an enemy planet with more than 10 defenses. This is in addition to the normal cloak fail rate set in

the Hconfig (default = 1%). Since most experienced players will have at least 20 defenses on the bulk of their planets, to avoid

sensor sweep/bioscanning as well as adding a point to their ground defense ratio, this gives the Birds an almost 5% cloak fail

rate when planet hopping with a mission of Superspy. The result is that while a Lizard Cruiser sneaking in for a cloaked

ground attack has a 1% chance of decloaking and alerting the enemy prematurely, a Superspying ship is twenty times more

likely to alert the enemy and five times more likely to decloak. This is hardly conducive to a "stealthy" race. A special

friendly code (e.g., nfc) that would prevent the ship from attempting to change the friendly code of the planet below would

go a long way to restoring the Bird's sneakiness.

The other reason for a "No Friendly Change" code is that there really aren't that many situations in which the Birds actually

want to change an enemy's friendly code. The most popular changes to make are "bum" -- to have the enemy planet beam up

it's cash to the Birds as well as any other foreign ship in orbit and "dmp" -- to cause an enemy Starbase to recycle its stored

components thereby wasting the enemy's money and a percentage of the minerals used to build the components. This is

always good for laughs against new players, but against real competition it's usually a one-trick pony. After being burned

once (if at all) the enemy will simply start storing his cash on ships (preferably his own cloakers or heavy warships) where

bum can't reach it and stop building components in advance rather than simply waiting and building the entire ship at once.

bum can work once or twice for some quick cash, but when compared to the Fed's taxing, Lizard's Hiss, or Fascist's Pillage

it's way down on the list of economic advantages.

Some Birds use the code change ability in an attempt to control their enemy's mine fields and grant safe passage to their ships.

This is easier said than done. To ensure that the ships will not hit a mine, the Birds have to dedicate 5 ships to each

controlling planet. Once that is done and the Bird strike fleet starts navigating the field, an ion burst decloaking the

Superspying ships (with subsequent attack by orbiting enemy ships) has the potential to strand the fleet in the field. It's

usually far more efficient to simply sweep the fields (possible exception Robots and/or Crystals). The Birds could instead

attempt to control all enemy fields through the use of the "mf*" code. For this to work, however, the Birds must find and

change the codes on the enemy planet with the highest ID number. If they enemy later takes a planet with a higher ID, the

Birds lose their control and must start the search for the new controlling planet.

Another use of friendly code changes is to steal minerals and/or supplies from an enemy planet. Five Superspying ships

change the code while the 6th matches and set's its mission to beam up the desired item. Again, it sounds better than it works.

No bird ship has a big enough cargo capacity to make this worth while as either a source of minerals for the Birds or as more

than a mere annoyance to the enemy. If you bring more ships to do it with, it begs the question of, "Why not just shoot the

planet and take it all, rather than tie up so many ships stealing small quantities?" If the answer is, "Because it's a fortified

Starbase," the Birds are faced with a new problem. While a ship set to Superspy will not surrender to a base by matching

friendly codes, a Bird ship with any other mission will. If you attempt to rob minerals from an enemy base and that base has

its Primary Objective set to "Force Surrender," The Bird ships set to beam up minerals will be owned by the enemy on the

following turn.

Finally, there is a Bird tactic that is still being bandied about in the newsgroups and on BBSes. This is offered as a devastating

attack on a well-guarded and fortified enemy Starbase. The tactic is to have five Superspying ships set the Base's code to

NUK while two Darkwings arrive without fuel (either through careful planning or being towed in by sacrifice ships). The

Base will then attack the Darkwings and be destroyed while the enemy ships guarding the base ignore the Darkwings because

they're out of fuel. The problem with this tactic is that it doesn't work. Any Bird capital ship that is out of fuel is immune to

the "NUK" code and therefore will not be attacked by the planet/base. What will work, however, is giving the two

Darkwings to an ally (other than Fascists or Rebels) and having them arrive empty. Note that the Darkwings, or any other

heavy warships being used, have to arrive at the base empty the same turn that the five Superspying ships change the code to

NUK. If instead, the Darkwings arrive early and drop their fuel, and the enemy has the Base set to "Force Surrender," the

enemy will take control of the empty ships before they can attack the base.

The difficulties faced by the Bird commander can either be lesser or greater than detailed here, depending on who the

immediate enemy is. The Birds are in for a nightmare ride when faced with the Feds, Lizards, or Fascists. All three of those

races have the ability to decloak Bird ships as well as economic advantages that will let them build fleets both more numerous

and more powerful than the Birds. The Crystals and Empire are probably the next level of difficulty faced by the Birds.

Crystal webs can shut down the birds as easily as they do any other race, so Bird cloaking is of no particular advantage when

dealing with them. The Empire has a better fleet than the Birds and can use Darksense to locate the Birds territory and bring

the fight to them. Robots, Rebels, and Colonies are fairly neutral, The Birds have no more significant advantages or

disadvantages when confronting them than do any other torp race. Surprisingly, the two best targets for Bird aggression are

the two races with the most fearsome reputation in the cluster: The Privateers and The Borg.

The first Hconfig setting to check when considering leading the Birds is "Cloaked Ships may be Robbed." If it's set to yes,

don't play the Birds. Should you ignore this advice, don't be surprised when your ships enter orbit with a Lady Royal and

never come back out. If, however, it's set to no (which is default), the Birds have the opportunity to reign destruction on the

Privateers. The Birds are probably the race best suited to going on the offensive and taking the fight to the Privateers. While

Lokis and Glory Devices are good defensive weapons against the Privateers, they're much harder to use on the offensive. The

Privateers can use feints, mines, cloaked intercepts, etc. to destroy an invading Loki/Saber and then steal the

Missouri/Nova/Victorious it was protecting. The Privateers should find it almost impossible to steal a Bird combat ship. If

Cloaked Ships can Attack is set to yes, the Birds can take out most Privateer ships without decloaking. The Birds can decloak,

hit a planet, and recloak before the Privateers have an opportunity to rob them. The Darkwing/Resolute team can strike and

vanish and there's little the Privateers can do to stop them because cloaking now occurs before robbing.

The Borg are a slightly different story. The Birds, like most other races, have to wipe out a nearby Borg infestation quickly

and ruthlessly. Once the Borg get a toehold in an area, the Birds are in trouble. One of the main advantages of the Birds is

the ability to turn a Borg advantage against them. Since the Darkwing and Resolute no longer burn fuel to cloak, they can

afford to sit quietly in orbit with a Firecloud and wait for it to chunnel home. When it does, the Birds will go for the ride

and the Borg will have no knowledge of it until the Bird ships decloak and start destroying Borg holdings deep behind his

front lines. Once the Cubes arrive on the scene, the Birds simply recloak and wait for them to go away.

By now, you're probably wondering "Why would I want to play the Birds?" Well, that's a good question. One suggestion is

to use them as a handicap for a good player in a game with weaker or less-experienced players. The Birds have problems, but

they are by no means an unplayable race. A good player who can manage his economy well would be on an even footing

with a weaker player playing a stronger race. They can also be an asset in team games when their weaknesses can be overcome

by other members of the team. Finally, there is one situation that changes everything for the Birds. If the game contains an

add-on with the "GPn" code, the Birds become a fearsome threat! "GPn" stands for Give Planet to race n. It is the equivalent

of the Host code "GSn" (Give Ship). With this code in the game, five Swiftheart Scouts can capture an enemy homeworld

intact simply by showing up there and changing the code to GP3. This one code alone changes the Birds from one the

weakest of the VGAP Races to a threat to be feared by all.

T h e B I R D M E N G U I D E t o t h e G A L A X Y

by Timo Kreike

=============================================================

(version 1.0 - March 1997)

<============================================================================>

0. Introduction

1. The Birdmen: an Analysis

1.1 Strong points

1.2 Weak Points

1.3 How to overcome your weak points

1.4 Birdmen DOs

1.5 Birdmen DON'Ts

2. Playing the Birdmen

2.1 Your game

2.2 Your ships

2.3 More on Scouts

3. About Super Spy

3.1 The ship mission

3.2 Notes about the spy info

3.3 Advanced Super Spy

3.4 Using (Advanced) Super Spy

4. Useful host settings

4.1 Cloaked ships attack

4.2 Cloak Prevent Damage

4.3 Odds of cloak failure

4.4 Privateer rob cloaked ships

4.5 Cloak fuel burn per 100 kT

4.6 Cloaked mine odds

4.7 Ground attack ratio

4.8 Free fighters

5. Interacting with races

5.1 Useful Allies

5.2 Useful Ships

5.3 Trading your ships

6. Eliminating other races

6.1 Dealing with Lokis

6.2 Dealing with Glory Devices

6.3 Notes on the Federation

6.4 Dealing with the Lizards

6.5 Dealing with the Privateers

6.6 Dealing with the Cyborg

6.7 Dealing with the Crystal People

6.8 Dealing with the Empire

6.9 Dealing with the Robots

7. Sneaky Combat Tactics

8. More than host alone

8.1 PHost

8.2 RacePlus

8.3 Borders

8.4 FHost

8.5 Nemesis

8.6 Starbase+

8.7 Tachyon

8.8 Jumpgate

8.9 Portal

8.10 Tantalus Machine

8.11 Alternative Shiplists

9. More information

10. About this guide

10.1 Credits

10.2 Questions

10.3 Additions

10.4 Updates

10.5 Complaints

10.6 Distribution

11. Famous last words

Chapter 0

INTRODUCTION

<==

The Guide and its History

The idea of compiling a Birdmen FAQ was developed in the high-days of the

Galactic Guilds. The initial idea was to create a file that should be the

first help for newbie Birdmen players and that should answer their first

questions, and by doing so removing some of the workload from the feathered

shoulders of the Birdmen Guild Master.

However it was not until six months after the sudden extermination of the

immortal Guilds by evil forces in the Battle of Krell that I, Alistair

MacBird, started writing this guide to help the early Birds through the first

stages of their existence.

The opinions about the Birdmen are quite in contradiction. Some will say it's

a perfect race to start with while others will tell you it's a race for

experienced players. The truth is always simple: you can play any race you

want as long as you know how. That's where the Guide comes in.

The Quest through the Galaxy

At 35% of the current size of the Guide I realised that the Galaxy was too

large - there were just too many dimensions I didn't know (enough) about to

get all important information covered. Messages were sent on several

bandwidths, reaching out to the edges of the Galaxy searching for those

Birdmen Admirals operating in the outer (unknown) dimensions.

The High Council

And thus the Council of Ten was formed. Ten of the most experienced Admirals

became Member of the High Council of the Birdmen and contributed their

knowledge of the outer dimensions and their experience in Birdmen strategy to

this evident act of Birdmen superiority: The Birdmen Guide to the Galaxy.

The Guide and Beyond

The Guide and the formal existence of the Council of Ten will probably live

forever in this Galaxy. The ten Counsellors will return to their own

dimensions to continue doing whatever they did before they founded the High

Council - increasing their knowledge, improving their strategy, enlarging the

Birdmen Empire and spreading the Birdmen Doctrine among the worlds.

The Counsellors may or may not be reached again using the spaceways I used to

contact them - it all depends on the interstellar rifts, but then, maybe

another experienced Birdmen Admiral may decloak his/her flagship near your

residence.

One thing for sure: the Counsellors might get lost in the outer dimensions,

the Guide may get obsolete by the invention of newer technology, but the

race of the Birdmen will never get exterminated.

Sailing off to the edge of our Empire,

Alistair MacBird of the clan MacBird,

Founder of the Council of Ten

Chapter 1

THE BIRDMEN: AN ANALYSIS

<============================================================================>

What exactly are these Birdmen guys anyway?

<====== 1.1 Strong points ===============================================>

<============================================================================>

* Cloaking ships.

Most of the ship types you can build are able to cloak. You've even got a

cloaking battleship!

* Mineral Balance.

The minerals you need to build ships are pretty good balanced, maybe more than

any other race. You won't get stuck with this enormous pile of surplus mineral

of type x.

* Small ships

Your ships are relatively small. This gives you an advantage early in the game

where other players are struggling to put out a decent ship using the

resources on their homebase and nearby planets.

<============================================================================>

<====== 1.2 Weak Points =================================================>

<============================================================================>

* Big ships.

You don't have any *big* battleships. You're missing decent fighter carriers.

* Fuel usage

As most of your ships you have can cloak and cloaking costs fuel, it is very

likely that you will end up with large fuel shortages. The fuel a ship needs

to cloak is dependent of the host settings. Default is 5 kT fuel per 100 kT

hull. Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13a the Resolute and the Dark Wing

don't need any more fuel to cloak.

* Cash

You're not that heavy on cash as many other races. The Federation have their

double tax profit and the Lizards can use HISS to increase the %% tax till

over 50%. The Fascists can occasionally Pillage a native population for MC or

set off an Glory Device to turn an entire Amorphous population into supplies.

The Cyborg can assimilate natives and they will have almost an unlimited

supply of colonists (tax!), cash and supplies (Bovinoids!). The Empire, the

Robots and the Rebels have HYP ships they will use to expand their empire (and

economy) very, very fast.

The Privateers and the Colonies have their Lady Royale pleasure ship, although

the maximum of 160 MC per turn per ship they get is almost nothing when

compared to the income of the Federation and the Lizards.

The Fascists, the Robots and the Rebels have climate advantages to withstand

barren climates. Other races (Federation, Lizards, Crystals) can change the

climate to their liking. Those six races will use their planets to a higher

rate than you!

And the Privateers don't need that much money: they will only build MBRs, they

won't fight but ROB, so they don't need to spend their money on the

techlevels of starbases.

You've got none of it all: you're basically screwed. So believe me when I say

that you will have to pay much attention to your economy!

<============================================================================>

<====== 1.3 How to overcome your weak points ============================>

<============================================================================>

* Big ships

You don't have any real big battleships, the biggest ship you can build is the

Dark Wing. The Dark Wing needs about three times less minerals than such a big

ship. However you'll need three Dark Wings to be sure to destroy a big

battleship.

(Take these three Dark Wings as an average; you'll need to find the right

combination of Resolutes and Dark Wings for each large enemy battleship. You

will certainly need a battle simulator like BSIM by Sean Martens.)

* Fuel usage

Use your Super Spy abilities, get the FC of an enemy planet and beam up the

fuel from the planet. Serves two purposes: you will have fuel, and your enemy

will have less.

This, however, is nearly impossible if your opponent uses a tool like RandMax

to change the FCs every turn. You must rely on your Resolutes to transport

fuel : their cloaking is free (in newer hosts) and they have a much larger

fuel capacity than the Dark Wing. Supplies can only be refilled in enemy

territory by capturing an unprotected or weakly protected planet, or from an

uncolonised planet (read: amorphous). Note that Resolutes to support the

fuel-hungry Dark Wings are truly critical.[8]

Use freighters and Neutronic Fuel Carriers inside your territory - where your

opponents can't see them.

* Cash

a. Use your Super Spy abilities and set the FC of an enemy planet to 'bum'.

This will cause the planet to beam up its megacredits to all ships in orbit -

including own and enemy ships. It's a pretty a ship can't carry more than

10,000 MC....

(Watch out for ion pulses! Only use Swifties for this!)

b. You'll need to put extra attention to your economy. Try to squeeze the most

tax out of your natives, maximise the number of factories on your planets etc.

In Eden Tans Infolist you can find formulas to make optimal use of your

planets. Use them.

Use the Growth method (high/low tax) to make your colonists grow quicker while

getting the same or more tax.. Keep colonists HP over 70 at all times!

RandMax can do that for you - it sure is a valuable tool.

<============================================================================>

<====== 1.4 Birdmen DOs =================================================>

<============================================================================>

* Try to have at least one starbase operative early in a game (near turn 15 -

20) on a Ghipsoidal planet. This starbase will be operative from the first

turn: on this base you will be able to build Swift Heart Scouts with

Transwarp drives and x-ray lasers. These ships with only an engine will be

capable of capturing freighters and spying in the enemy worlds. [1]

* Two words: freighter hunting!

* Attack, attack, attack! Think and be aggressive from turn one, never ever be

put on the defence. This holds true for all cloaking races, and extremely so

for the birds. Because you don't have big ships you shouldn't wait until your

opponent can build his large carriers. Move in, capture planets before they

are productive and kill supply lines. This is where you're good at, you can

move into enemy territory and snipe freighters with dirt cheap scouts. The

cloaked intercept makes this even more fun, even if your opponent escorts his

large freighters you can take them out first. If it's empty follow a LDSF or

a stf to a planet and intercept it the next turn when it's full. Make a good

estimate of the odds you can fly it into your own territory (use x-rays) or

whether your enemy will capture the freighter back (deep in enemy territory.

Use something that destroys the ship).

* Don't be afraid of building Starbases, they can always be used to build

scouts (warp 6 or higher engines, or only to take up shipslots/gain PBPs).

Also good for defence later (if needed...) [6]

<============================================================================>

<====== 1.5 Birdmen DON'Ts ==============================================>

<============================================================================>

* Don't use any non-cloaking ships. You've got the most different types of

cloaking ships of all races so use them. [It is however hard to run a

productive economy without large freighters.] And if you do want to use

non-cloaking ships, like LDSF, make sure they planet hop, and NEVER show your

heading!

* Don't trade your large capital ships. The Dark Wing is so terrible that it

is a big threat for you. One of the best combos I have found it's a Meteor

towing a Dark Wing. Be sure that the Privateer never gets one. Don't trade

Resolutes either!! In privateer, Robotic or Crystalline hands, they're much

more lethal than a Dark Wing...

* Don't play in games where Privs robbed cloaked = ON, cloak failure >5% or

games where cost of cloaking is high (>5N/turn) Birdmen are also favoured by

low mineral settings. Some hosts give Birdmen 5x ground att/def bonus, which

is fine! [6]

* Don't build anything but Resolutes, Dark Wings and Swifties after 20-30

turns.. They can accomplish everything you want!

Chapter 2

PLAYING THE BIRDMEN

<============================================================================>

What should a 'typical' Birdmen game look like?

<============================================================================>

<====== 2.2 Your game ===================================================>

<============================================================================>

* You'll try to stay cloaked/hidden for at least the first 10 - 20 turns. If

you get the two free ships, fill the Swift Heart Class Scout (tech 6 engines,

X-rays) with 20 clans and send it away to drop a clan on every planet. The

Small Deep Space Freighter... if you can't planet-hop to keep the ship hidden

you won't use it. (Maybe you could tow it to get 70 kT extra cargo hold.)

Increase your engine tech to 10 and send out 2 - 4 Swift Hearts filled with 20

clans. When you find a good planet, build a Fearless Wing Cruiser as a

cloaking transporter and start expanding your economy.

* Check if you can move between a couple of planets that are < 81 LY's away

from each other, then use a LDSF, much quicker expansion in the beginning -

IMPORTANT for Birdmen!

* Your money will be gone soon - your cloaking ships (except the Scout) need 2

engines and that is very expensive in the first 10 - 15 turns. Don't buy

fighters or starbase defence for the same reason. You'd better find a nice

planet with a large native population. Tax!

Just like in any other game, start thinking about your second starbase at turn

10-15 and build it between turn 15-20. A tech 10 hull or tech 10 engines base

is useful - you really don't need tech 10 beams/torps yet. Depending on your

neighbour you'll have to start thinking about some defence. Think about the

Deth Specula, the Resolute and the Dark Wing.

* Find that Bovinoid planet fast. As you search for it put the SB to build

mainly Swift Hearts. When you find the Bovinoid planet put all resources into

building 1 Merlin to place lots of clans on the Bovinoid planet. Build a SB

there and with the initial Merlin build another 2. This way you'll have

hundreds of each mineral each turn. Don't forget to place enough clans to

receive all those supplies. (Divide no of Bovinoids with 10000 to find out

how many clans you need!)

With this you will have lots of minerals and so distribute them to all the

nearby planets and build SB on all of them. Start building ships as fast as

you can. Mainly Resolutes, Dark Wings, White Falcons, Fearless Wings, Swift

Hearts and Freighters. [2]

* Early on the game, players don't have the resources to lay enormous

minefields, or to build Lokis or Glory Devices so take advantage of that and

scout their territory looking for valuable planets and ships. Use Swift

Hearts for scouting and White Falcons for smaller ships.

* About starbases: Generally, unless its a long game, don't build them. They

use an incredible amount of resources which could be shipped to your

HomeWorld to make Dark Wings. I do think there is one great point about

starbases in a short-medium game and that is on a Ghipsoidal planet. You

have an instant Swift heart factory! New starbases are also hard to defend

and you generally won't find that perfect planet in which there are a lot of

natives, a lot of minerals, and a nice temperature. [7]

* You should be building Swift Hearts throughout the entire game, sending

them off into your opponent's territory. As the Birdmen, you should know

where every planet of every opponent is located.[8]

* Remember to use scouts when exploring ANY new territory, remember the movie

Aliens - what kind of bozo sends civilians to examine unexplored territory?

Hopefully not you. Moral: Resist the urge to "get there first". It's very

rare that you will discover a tropical 15 million Bovinoid unity planet.

Don't use large freighters to explore new clusters.[9]

* This race is possibly the most "human" when it comes to advantages, no tax

or mining help, just good old fashioned "crazy-like-a-fox" strategy and

planning.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 2.2 Your ships ==================================================>

<============================================================================>

This is the standard shiplist. Alternate shiplists will be described in Chapter 8.11.

Small Deep Space Freighter Too small for most of your needs. Use it at your

own risk.

Swift Heart Class Scout The ultimate scout. Equip it with 2 X-ray lasers

to capture freighters and unprotected planets.

Build lots of them: 20% of your fleet may not be

enough, because you will lose lots of them

performing their dangerous spy mission in

minefields finding Glory Devices and Loki's.

It may seem silly to use Heavy Phasers on Scouts,

but as your Scouts will in most cases operate in

teams, such a team could need heavy beams to

sweep an enemy minefield when trapped inside.

When equipped with Transwarp drives it will never

get obsolete in a game.

It's low mass and relatively large fuel tank will

let you take the Scout deep into enemy territory.

Neutronic Fuel Carrier A dilemma...

You will certainly need ships to carry fuel, but

this one doesn't cloak. When you use this Fuel

Carrier you will expose the location of your

starbases, important planets and your ships.

You'd better not.

Use White Falcons (430 kT), Fearless Wings (360

kT) or Resolutes (480 kT) to transport fuel.

Those ships are heavier and their cloaking

devices will need fuel. :-(

(Except for the Resolute of course.)

Medium Deep Space Freighter They won't cloak. Believe me, I've tried it very,

Large Deep Space Freighter very hard, but those damn bastard ships won't

Super Transport Freighter cloak. So only use these freighters when you can

planet-hop.

If not, you'd better use the White Falcon (140

kT), Fearless Wing (240 kT) or Resolute (280 kT).

[1200 kT (LDSF) vs. 280 kT (Resolute) = 4.2 times

worse economy!]

White Falcon Class Cruiser Needs just one large tube to lay large

minefields.

Cheap ship to tow enemy battleships.

Bright Heart Cls Destroyer Cheapest ship to tow enemy ships. Has a very,

very small fuel tank which makes its use very

limited.

Cheap mineral cost and four tubes make this a

good defender

Small Transport Worthless.

Fearless Wing Cruiser Needs just one large tube to lay large

minefields.

Perfect minesweeper. Use it as a freighter.

Skyfire Class Cruiser Doesn't cloak. Don't build it.

Valiant Wind Class Carrier Doesn't cloak. Don't build it. Maybe for

defending starbases? Excellent for trading.

Deth Specula Class Frigate Nice ship, nice ship indeed.

Multi-purpose: excellent minesweeper with high

tech beams, prefect mid-size destroyer. It's only

large (!) disadvantage is it's small fuel tank. A

fully loaded Deth flying cloaked will run dry

within 5 turns. Use it as a short-range defender/

attacker/patrol ship.

Use it to soften up large torp ships for your

Dark Wing.

Some Birdmen players won't use the Deth: it's

mass is to low to be of any good use, and the

fuel tank is too small.

Resolute Cls Battlecruiser One of your best ships. Perfect minesweeper,

great minelayer. A Resolute can take out a medium

starbase stocked with 30 fighters without taking

any damage.

Large cargo hold, large fuel tank. Perfect for long

range missions in enemy territory.

Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13a it's cloaking

device doesn't need any fuel any more. Resolutes

and Dark Wings also stay cloaked inside Ion-storms!

Very good once you have a huge storm over your

territory!

Use it to soften up large fighter carriers for

your Dark Wing.

Red Wind Class Carrier Right. Two beams and two fighterbays doesn't make

it a very useful ship.

But... with access to free fighters it is a

perfect fighter transporter. Exactly 60 fighters

fit in the cargohold: a complete starbase fighter

(re)fill.

Very useful in teamgames!

Dark Wing Class Battleship Remember you'll loose two good ships to a large

fightercarrier - only the third ship (a Dark

Wing) will kill it.

The Dark Wing is cheap - build lots of it.

Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13a it's cloaking

device doesn't need any fuel any more. But

remember, every 3 or 4 turns will need a full

cargo of fuel.

It's probably the most hungry ship of the game.

Resolutes and Dark Wings also stay cloaked inside

Ion-storms! Very good once you have a huge storm

over your territory!

Neutronic Refinery Ship/ In a mineral rich game you probably won't need

Merlin Class Alchemy Ship any: build one when you need one. (Simple eh?)

* The White Falcon makes a real good towing ship (warp 9)! Build a LDSF with

low-level engines (5), fill it up with for example 1150 colonists, 50

supplies and enough money (600 MC), tow it to a star-cluster and start

colonising. Use the LDSF to colonise the nearer planets (planet to planet -

moves). Use the White Falcon (cloaked) to colonise the planets more far away.

Don't waste your colonists! 100 clans on a normal planet is sufficient. Build

up one planet (having a temp near 50/Temperate-Warm) as "breeding"-planet.

Advantages:

Towing will burn less!!!! fuel than the LDSF would have burned! Its a way to

spread out quickly and it's not that expensive. It's a real quick way to build

up a couple of stars. [3]

* If you've got freighters, set their missions to Mine Sweep, or Sensor Sweep.

Your capital ships will be cloaked most of the time and can't perform

Mine/Sensor sweeps at the same time, your freighters can't sweep mines but

they can detect them and keep you up-to-date of the current status of your

minefields and the enemy minefields near your empire. [1]

This way you can update the datafiles of your EchoView and/or Informer game

aids. It gives you valuable information.

This is particular useful when you capture an enemy freighter in enemy

territory: your raider can cloak again whilst the captured freighter will

update your enemy minefield info.

Same to any non-cloaking ship you might possess: the Merlins and Neutronic

Refinery Ships in orbit of your starbases make great minesweepers.

* About freighters:

Nonetheless you'll need those ships, 280 kT cargo space is way too little,

large populations of natives can be taxed so much sooner when you drop large

loads of clans, making expanding so much easier. Plus, you'll need clans in

the front-line, because one of the hardest parts of playing planets is still

how to occupy newly conquered territory. If you moved out lots of clans early

in the game, you'll have huge stocks next to the places where you need them.

Too bad enemies may guess where you are, once you are the one that's doing

the attacking all this knowledge is nothing compared to the advantages you

have with a good freighter fleet. And where you can use the freighters in a

safe zone this frees up the cloakers for spying and sniping at your

neighbours. [4]

<============================================================================>

<====== 2.3 More on Scouts ==============================================>

<============================================================================>

I am constantly amazed at the attitude of players regarding scouts. Sure, they

are great in the beginning when you can't build anything else, but let's take

another look at these wonderful little vermin.

Scouts are light, cheap and have a long range. Combine a cloaking device

with that and you have a great intelligence ship.

My experience comes with working with the Archaeopterix class scout, a

single-engine 3-beam PList ship, but the standard Swift Heart works just as

well.

Things to do with your scouts:

SCOUTS IN EXPANSION:

Exploration:

a full fuel tank and a few colonists to use as markers. Put Transwarps on

them and Heavy Blasters (Birdmen scouts have more beams and mass than other

scouts ships, i.e. Borg or Rebel hyper-warp ships) Set a waypoint, and as

Picard says, "engage!". Vital in games with Exploremap.

Couriers:

A cloaking cash vault. Send one to that far away insectoid unity planet,

and shuttle your cash home with peace of mind.

Minefields:

Found a minefield? Find the owner's planet closest to the center of the field,

send in 5 ships and change the friendly code, neutralising it and letting

your warships cruise on in. Just set all the f-codes the same value, and set

your fleet all to the same code as well.

Only got a few scouts? Enter orbit and spy anyway and read the code, just

make sure to check it daily. Some players will use RandMax to change their

codes after each turn. note that NUK, ATT etc. will not work - you will need

to change the planet code with 5 ships if that's the case.

SCOUTS IN COMBAT:

Too often a game will proceed as follows:

turns 1 - 20 expand, colonise, establish starbases and supply routes.

turns 21 - ?? pump out Resolutes and Dark Wings and prepare to invade

others.

You will almost never see a scout from any race ever again. This is bad.

Why? read on...

Scouts as advance warning for the fleet:

Planning to invade enemy space? Build 3 scouts and send them out 2 turns

before your main fleet is ready to go. This is _essential_ to a successful

invasion. Not only will you get advance notice of enemy fleet movement, but

once your main fleet shows up your scouts will probably already be deep

inside enemy lines, and can snipe away at support vehicles (fuel carriers and

freighters) once the battle gets really heavy.

Scouts as part of the assault:

Dark Wings are great for killing starbases and capital ships, but they can't

be everywhere. And what's the sense in sending a resolute after a freighter?

Kind of like sandblasting a soup cracker... Mop them up with those little

guys!

** Host 3.22.05 allows Dark Wings and Resolutes to cloak without extra fuel,

so disregard the following advice if you're playing in a newer host game. **

It is not always necessary to cloak every ship leaving your HomeWorld. There

is a 200 LY scan range for ships and planets, so if you can guarantee the

safety of your immediate space, don't cloak your main ships until your scouts

make contact with the enemy (either via seeing enemy ships, entering orbit

over an enemy planet, or driving through 81 LY of mines :))

Decoys:

In one game I played in the Privateers managed to sneak two Blockade Runners

behind the Colonial minefield lines, and managed to wreak havoc just by

decloaking in full view and then hiding and running all over the place.

It threw my ally into a state of panic because he assumed there must be more,

and stopped an invasion in progress to mop up these little ships.

The same can work for you - 3 or 4 small ships appearing at once in a pack or

apart can cause a player to split up a defensive fleet to take care of you,

or at least lay a minefield to try and slow you down. The minefield laid is

that many torps less that will hit your warships (just make sure to sweep as

you go!) And the ship that breaks off of the main group to intercept you is

one less your ships will have to fight that turn - these things can make or

break a battle.

Note:

Scouts typically have small crew - if at all possible, try to avoid capture

(drive through a minefield at warp 9, cloak and stay still, run like hell if

you can). [9]

Chapter 3

ABOUT SUPER SPY

<============================================================================>

(What to do with your special mission.)

<============================================================================>

<====== 3.1 The ship mission ============================================>

<============================================================================>

* All your ships can perform a Super Spy. This is a special ship mission, just

like other missions like Lay Mines and Sensor Sweep.

* Every ship that can cloak, will cloak when its mission is set to Super Spy.

A ship that needs fuel to cloak, will use fuel.

* The Super Spy mission will give you certain information of enemy planet. You

will get this information in two messages. The first message is exactly the

same as you would get when your ship has the Exploration mission:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-z0180)<<<Sub Space Message >>> |

| |

| From: BSC Cyborg Tracker |

| At:Tera 9 |

| Temp: 57 ( Temperate - warm ) |

| There are enemy colonists |

| living on this planet. |

| The colonists are part of the |

| Colonial race. |

| Sensors show that there are |

| 283 enemy clans. |

| They have a starbase. |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

Needless to say the last line only appears when your ship (in this example the

BSC Cyborg Tracker) is orbiting a planet (in this example Tera 9, ID #180)

with a starbase.

The second message includes the extra spy info:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-z0180)<<<Sub Space Message >>> |

| |

| From: BSC Cyborg Tracker |

| At:Tera 9 |

| The planet has 0 megacredits |

| 68 mineral mines |

| 114 factories |

| 65 defence outposts |

| The planetary friendly code is : D12 |

| Minerals on/in the planet |

| N: 1415 M: 1214 T: 1422 D: 1239 |

| Supplies : 0 |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

<============================================================================>

<====== 3.2 Notes about the spy info ====================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Friendly Code you get is the FC of this turn, and there is no guarantee

it will be the same next turn. Your opponent might change it. Scouting an

enemy territory to make a collection of his Friendly Codes is rather

senseless.

* You can't scan enemy planets for natives, but you can be pretty sure that

when you've found this planet with a large amount of MC you've found yourself

a planet with natives. Selling all supplies on a regular planet having about

100 factories for four turns results in 400 MC. When you find a planet with

2000 MC or more you can be for almost 100% sure it will have natives. (Or a

starbase: your enemy might accumulate money for new ships. Easy to check: the

starbase should be mentioned in the first message.)

* When you see a planet that has a far lower number of factories and/or

defence units than the maximum number that would be allowed by the number of

clans, you've found an enemy planet that is still in development. Decide

whether it is an outpost at the edge of your enemies territory of an minor,

unimportant planet. In any case: if it has megacredits it has natives.

* Planets with an extreme amount of supplies will have a Bovinoid population.

Same could apply to planets with orbiting Merlins/Refinery ships.

* You will get some info about the minerals on and in the planet. You can't be

sure how much minerals of type X there are on the surface ready to be beamed

up by you. It will however give you the odds: the more kT mineral of type X

there are, the more kT mineral there will probably be on the surface. Don't

forget to look how many mines there are to make an estimation of your future

bait.

To state clearly: the 1415 kT Neutronium of the example above means that the

combined amounts of Neutronium on the surface and the Neutronium buried deep

in the core equal 1415 kT.

* Since host v3.22.010 the last line mentions the number of supplies. For host

v3.22.009 and earlier (v3.14!) this line shows the number of megacredits (for

the second time.)

<============================================================================>

<====== 3.3 Advanced Super Spy ==========================================>

<============================================================================>

* Since host version 3.22 the Super Spy mission is slightly enhanced. Next to

the functionality described above, a Birdmen ship with its mission set to

Super Spy has 20% chance to change the FC of an enemy planet to match its own

ship FC. This can't be turned of.

* This FC change only applies to enemy planets, not to unowned or own planets.

* Advanced Super Spy happens before all other missions and after all other

missions. So you have a chance to change the FC of a planet just before you

leave its orbit (i.e. before movement), and just after you've entered its

orbit (i.e. after movement). However you will get the regular Super Spy info

only after movement.

* If you change the FC you will get a message like this:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-p0180)<<< Spy Report >>> |

| |

| From: BSC Cyborg Tracker |

| Our spy team has |

| changed the planetary |

| friendly code on: |

| Tera 9 ID #180 |

| to: bum |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

In the same turn your enemy will also get a message:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-p0180)<<< Planetary Message >>> |

| |

| Distress CALL! |

| From: Tera 9 |

| We have found Birdmen |

| spies on the planet. |

| They have CHANGED the planet's |

| friendly code! |

| The code is now: bum |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

* Every ship has 20% chance of changing the FC, so if you've got more ships

with the same FC in orbit, you've got more chance. Five ships will have 100%

chance of changing the planetary FC.

* If you succeeded in changing the FC of a planet/starbase, this

planet/starbase has 20% chance to strike back if it has more than 30 defence

units. If so, the planet will destroy 10 defence units. The blast of those 10

exploding defence units will decloak all ships in orbit. You will get a

message like:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-p0180)<<< Spy Report >>> |

| |

| From: BSC Cyborg Tracker |

| Our spy team has |

| changed the planetary |

| friendly code on: |

| Tera 9 ID #180 |

| to: bum |

| Enemy defence outposts |

| are using an ion |

| discharge overload |

| to decloak all ships in orbit! |

| They sacrificed ten outposts. |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

In the same turn your enemy will also get a message:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-p0180)<<< Planetary Message >>> |

| |

| Distress CALL! |

| From: Tera 9 |

| We have found Birdmen |

| spies on the planet. |

| They have CHANGED the planet's |

| friendly code! |

| The code is now: bum |

| Defence outposts using an |

| ion discharge overload to |

| decloak all ships in orbit. |

| Ten outposts sacrificed. |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

This is not cumulative: no matter how many ships you've used to change the FC,

the chance of a counter-attack is always 20%. * When you succeeded changing

the FC of an enemy planet/starbase to 'mfX' to manipulate his minefields (see

below) and that planet has more than 30 defence units, the chance of such an

ion discharge is not 20% but 100%! You'd better know what you're doing.

Remember that if you decloak for the ion discharge the planet will not attack

you because you both have the same FCode. But enemy ships in orbit will.

Your ship will not surrender to the Starbase even if it has been set to Force

Surrender, because your mission is still Super Spy.

<============================================================================>

<====== 3.4 Using (Advanced) Super Spy ==================================>

<============================================================================>

* Few people know that SS and SSD are separate missions, and occur at

different times in the host processing. As always, information is power. If

you are in deep space and end your turn in orbit over an enemy planet with

your mission set to "super spy" you will only get the Super Spy part of the

mission. The Deluxe part doesn't occur until next turn BEFORE movement. So,

if you don't want to risk having an ionic pulse short out your cloaking

device, set your mission to "cloak" instead of super spy.

If you WANT to try changing the code, just leave it on super spy. This is

particularly useful if you want to steal everything and leave in one turn,

just bring in 5 ships with the same code with mission CLOAK, next turn set

fcode to 'bum' (or, if using AHost: BMM, BUT, BUD, etc) and set a waypoint

for a few LY away. You change the code, beam it up, AND leave all in the same

turn. Now make a run for it.[9]

1. Beaming up minerals from a starbase can be risky: when you set your ship FC

to the FC of the enemy planet and the starbase has its mission set to Force

Surrender you'll lose the your ship the moment you'll change the ship mission

from Super Spy to another mission! Planets however can't force a ship to

surrender...

2. Use a couple of Scouts to lock the FC and use Fearless Wings and Resolutes

to beam everything off the surface: fuel and minerals! You could combine this

with tip 3.

Don't bother to return the minerals to your planets when you're deep in enemy

territory. Use the minerals to build new torpedoes, and jettison the remaining

minerals in space.

3. You could use 'battle'groups of 5 Swift Hearts be sure to lock a FC..[7]

4. Keep a couple of your ships in orbit of an enemy starbase/planet with their

mission set to Super Spy and their FC set to 'bum'. This will force the enemy

starbase/planet to beam up its megacredits to _all_ ships in orbit. Every ship

will get an equal share of MC... Success guaranteed!

5. Of course you're not messing around with enemy planet at random: your spy

info will guide you to the key planets of the enemy. Scout for starbases. Look

for possible starbase locations and rob them blind before they get built.

Search for natives (see 3.2 notes above) and milk the cash cows of your enemy.

Remember which enemy planets have an high concentration of minerals and a lot

of mines, and use that planet to refuel your ships. Use his supplies to repair

your ships.

6. Annoy your enemy.. Same as 3 but with another FC: 'dmp'. The starbase will

now dump all its unused ship parts. You never know what the damage is you've

done, but some players do build lots of ship parts they won't use immediately.

Works perfectly for the Federation: their Refit mission tends to stock lots of

ship parts on starbases.

7. Remember that lowercase FCs like 'bum' and 'dmp' only work for registered

players. If your enemy is not registered, you'd better find yourself a better

cash cow (i.e. a registered player).

8. When fighting an enemy that makes heavy use of his minefields you will can

change the universal minefield code. if you put a "mfX" being x a number of

your choice in a planet that is own for his race, all the minefields will not

attack to your ships that have this code. A universal mf code will be

overridden when a planet with highest ID have a different mf code. The best

way to make use of this feature is to find a planet with no starbase and

recently colonised. If you send five ships to change the fcode to a mfcode the

automatic ion discharge will not affect you. Also if the planet have defence

posts but there is not a ship to attack you in the nearly planets you will can

change the fcode of the planet during several turns. Also, if this planet is

the planet with the highest ID of this player he will can do nothing to evite

your control over his minefields.

* A dangerous toy, but may be a serious option. It has been tried and proven

worthful in special circumstances. If you have many ships that have to move

through many different minefields (webs!!) owned by the same race you can try

and lock the FC of a planet with five ships, but make sure they are either

cheap (scouts) or can win a battle (Dark Wing with lowest ID# plus 4 others).

It all depends on the question if the fast progression you can make by free

movement through the minefields outweighs the cost.

Remember if there are more planets with mfX as a friendly code the planet with

the lowest ID# will determine the universal minefield friendly code. Your

enemy may know this too, so try to pull off this trick at the planet with the

lowest ID# within reach. [4]

9. This advanced Super Spy mission makes it more risky to spy on your allies

and friendly neighbours...:-( If you SuperSpy and set the first letter in

your FC to x or X (Example "xF1") your ships will NOT try to change FC, and

therefore will NOT be decloaked if unlucky! This will work for the latest

versions of host (v3.22.10) and phost.

Chapter 4

USEFUL HOST SETTINGS

<============================================================================>

What to check if you're looking for a new game.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.1 Cloaked ships attack ========================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: YES

This will let you attack enemy ships while you're cloaked. You simply fly in

with your mission set to 'Super Spy' or 'Cloak' and your Primary Enemy set to

race XXX. If there is a ship of that race your ship will engage combat. If

there are more ships of race XXX, you will engage them all.

If your ship has survived combat and it didn't get too much damage to prevent

cloak, your ship will cloak again. If it has too much damage, it might also

attack the planet if the FC of the planet is set to ATT or NUK.

A cloaked ship with the Primary Enemy set will only attack the ships of your

primary enemy but not their planets.

It is easy to imagine that the default setting YES gives you some great combat

tactics - more than any other cloaking race. You've got the largest cloaking

ships in the game!

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.2 Cloak Prevent Damage ========================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 1

This number is the maximum percentage of damage you ship can have before its

cloak fails. For example when the cloak prevents damage % is 15, you'll

decloak when your damage is 15; you will still be able to cloak when your

damage is 14 %.

So the higher this percentage the better!

Note: if your ship carries supplies they will immediately be used to repair

the combat/minehit/glory device damage.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.3 Odds of cloak failure =======================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 0%

Title says it all.

Don't play in a game where this %% is too high, or you'll get screwed. Your

strong points make use of the cloak option. If this fails, your only

advantages are gone.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.4 Privateer rob cloaked ships =================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: NO

If this option is YES than this means that the Privateers can rob your ships

from fuel and cargo even if he can't see them. This can make it very hard to

beat the Privateers. See $6.4 (Dealing with the Privateers).

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.5 Cloak fuel burn per 100 kT ==================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 5

This means that your ships need fuel to cloak. The amount of fuel that is used

for cloaking is depending on the mass of the ship. Lucky for you your ships

have a low mass. The Deth Specula, the Swift Heart and the Red Wind all use 5

kT fuel in the default host settings.

The lower this value is the better!

Since host v3.22.005 and phost v2.13a the Resolute and Dark Wing don't apply

to this setting any more: their advanced cloaking devices won't use fuel.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.6 Cloaked mine odds ===========================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 0.5 %

This means you've got less change to hit an enemy mine when you're flying

cloaked. Nice eh? The setting could vary between 0.2 and 0.9.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.7 Ground attack ratio =========================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 1 : 1

You're a cloaking race, and you have cloaking ships with usable large

cargoholds - it would be very welcome to play in a game where you get a

ground attack advantage of say 5 : 1 to 10 : 1. (Using default game settings

the Lizards get a ground attack advantage of 20 : 1, the Fascists get

10 : 1.) Use this advantage to conquer low-populated enemy starbases without

having to destroy them.

<============================================================================>

<====== 4.8 Free fighters ===============================================>

<============================================================================>

Default: 0

Your economy is quite bad, so 1 or 2 free fighters per starbase per turn

wouldn't hurt you. In fact it would save you lots of MC you can use to buy

the techlevels for your Dark Wings. The number of free fighters doesn't have

to be high, 2 free fighters is OK because you will only use those fighters as

defence on your starbases. (The Evil Empire get 5 free fighter by default,

but they need the fighters in their assault vessels.)

Chapter 5

INTERACTING WITH RACES

<============================================================================>

About alliances, trading and getting what you need most from your allies.

<============================================================================>

<====== 5.1 Useful Allies ===============================================>

<============================================================================>

* Every player would like to make some kind of agreement with you. Your

cloaking capabilities together with the information you will gather about your

enemies will be regarded formidable. When you're attacking you are a fearsome

opponent. Every player would like to have spy info about their enemies. Every

player would like to have the cloaking minelayers, minesweepers,

battlecruisers and battleships you have. So _you_ will be the one to choose

your ally. Pick the one you like most.

* Remember: you don't have to ally. You could always sell or trade spy

information. Other players may hire your ships - the ships will still be in

your possession.

* You don't need ships of other players to fight: fighting is not your special

ability. Choose your ally wisely, and try to fix one or more of your major

problems.

* A free-fighter race would be a nice ally. Hammering again on your bad

economy, your free-fighter ally could provide you with fighters that are at

least 95% cheaper. You will have to buy your fighters, but the Robots, the

Rebels and the Colonies can make a fighter from 3 Tritatium, 2 Molybdenum and

5 supply units where you will need the same minerals and 100 MC. Filling a

starbase will cost you 60 x 100 MC == 6000 MC. With a little help from your

ally it will cost you 300 supplies.... Very good deal: trade info for

fighters.

Use cloaking Red Winds to carry the fighters to your starbases, they can hold

exactly 60 fighters. Why tell your ally where your starbases are?

Example: Drop your minerals on a Rebel planet. The orbiting Gemini will use

the minerals to make fighters. The FC of the Gemini is set to 'btf' - your Red

Wind will fly by cloaking and will be loaded with fighters on the fly.

(Transfer Fighters happens before Movement.)

* Ally to the Empire or the Cyborg to overcome your lack of big carriers. Get

him to send you some decent carriers to defend your empire.

* Ally to the Federation or the Lizards to solve your economy problem. Borrow

some climate changers and extract some cash from your ally.

* Ally to the Privateers to provide you with meteors. A meteor will tow

a Dark Wing without fuel problems.

<============================================================================>

<====== 5.2 Useful Ships ================================================>

<============================================================================>

* HYP ships. Very useful to expand your economy fast. HYP ships are easy to

capture but hard to find. In decreasing order of usefulness: Rebel Falcon,

Empire Probe, Cyborg Probe.

* MBRs. For their speed. MBRs can serve you in two ways: the first being a

very, very fast Super Spy ship, the second a way to tow large freighters 162

LY a turn. (for planet-hopping large distances.) Are also very easy to capture

but you'll be lucky to hit one.

* Aries. To solve your fuel problem. The Aries needs minerals to make fuel but

it functions cheaper than a Neutronic Refinery Ship. You can put the ship on a

starbase to keep it hidden.

* Cobol. To solve your fuel problem. The Cobol makes fuel dirt cheap but it

will reveal the position of your planets. A cloned Cobol with Transwarp drives

and low tech arms will repay its total costs within 5 turns use. (Compared to

the standard supply/mineral conversions of the Merlin and the Refinery Ship.)

Can't be captured in combat.

* Fireclouds. This solves your fuel problem like no other ship can, and makes

you more versatile. Only 50 kT of fuel and many ships can be ported to

anywhere in your empire. Remember, the turn you chunnel you won't have

shields, so make sure you won't be attacked that turn. A detailed course on

chunneling is out of the scope of this manual, but it can serve many purposes,

transferring whole battlegroups, large stocks of minerals and clans at

relatively low cost, so if you can get your hands on one of these babies do

your most to get them.

<============================================================================>

<====== 5.3 Trading your ships ==========================================>

<============================================================================>

* [More than everything else written down here: this is my opinion. Take it as

you want it.]

Every player would like to get one of your cloaking ships. Cloaking

minelayers, minesweepers etc. You'll have to think twice before trading a ship

with a cloaking device to a race that doesn't cloak. You'll give him something

he/she doesn't have: Invisibility.

Trading a cloaking ship can have devastating effects: other than non-cloaking

ships you won't see it coming when it comes your way again.... Imagine your

former ally, now your backstabbing opponent will use your ex-cloakers as the

first strike fleet.

* You can build a few ships that are 'safe' to trade: the Skyfire Class

Cruiser and the Valiant Wind Class Carrier. Why anybody should want a Skyfire

I don't know, but the Valiant with its 7 beams and 3 bays can be very useful.

There are a couple of races that lack a decent mid-size carrier. The Lizards

for example only have their Madonzilla with 4 beams and 5 bays. They can

afford the fighters and their 150 % damage will turn the carrier into a

dangerous weapon.

Same to the Cyborg: they have a lot of money but they've got no carriers...

Just their Biocides.

You can even sell your Valiant to the Rebels and/or the Colonies. Yeah, right!

Next to their tech 10 battleships (Rush and Virgo) they only have their

single-use Patriot Class Light Carrier. The Patriot has 2 beams, a mass of 90

and a cargohold for 30 fighters. It will explode when entering any minefield,

it's beams won't do nothing and after one combat the number of fighters will

have to be replenished. Your Valiant on the contrary weights 180 kT, has 7

beams and it will hold 80 fighters! I'm sure you will be able to convince your

ally the Valiant is the one ship he/she is missing!

* There are ships that you NEVER must trade. The first one is the Swift Heart.

This ship is very cheap to clone and you, with your strategy of not build

freighters, will have many planets without enough defences to defend from a

cloaked attack. Never let the Privateer get his hands on a White Falcon - with

its fuel capacity of 430 it will rob almost any ship making him too strong.

Neither a Dark Wing. Think on what you would do against a Privateer Dark Wing

towed by a MBR.... [1]

Chapter 6

ELIMINATING OTHER RACES

<============================================================================>

Some of them just won't cooperate!

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.1 Dealing with Lokis ==========================================>

<============================================================================>

* Loki's aren't that heavy, they're just annoying. A Loki can carry 4 tubes

and two beams, but the hull weighs only 101 kT. Use a Deth Specula or a

Resolute with high tech torps to intercept and destroy a Loki in mid-space.

Because your ships have cloaking devices they will attack before all other

ships without cloaking device. This is the so called 'Cloaked Intercept'. Take

note: the word is very misleading, because you're not cloaked at all.

* The trick is to spot Loki's before you start spying on a planet. If you do

fly to a planet protected by the 20 LY radius Tachyon wave of a Loki you will

be decloaked. If you decloak orbiting a planet the results can be devastating

for you...

So don't fly to the planet directly, but warp to a location 5 - 19 LY from a

planet. If you don't get decloaked it's safe to fly to the planet. (Beware of

planet-hopping Loki's.) If you do get decloaked it's time to move on. By

careful probing you'll know how many Loki's there are, and where they are...

* If you find a Loki in this way, be almost sure that the mission for this

ship in the next turn will be Lay Mines. If you flee you will be decloaked

and more vulnerable. Remember that Decloaking happens before and after

Movement. [1]

* If you receive a Loki from an other player remember that this ship will

decloak all your cloaking ships. The tachyon device can not be deactivated.

The only way to deactivate is to leave the Loki without fuel.

[However, in older host versions even Loki's without fuel will decloak you.

This is a very annoying bug, but it will be fixed. A player can tow a fuelless

Loki with a battleship. The Loki will always decloak you, and when you try to

destroy it by Cloaked Intercept, your interceptor will be fried by the

battleship.]

* An example of the message you'll receive when one of your ships gets

decloaked by a Loki:

+---------------------------------------+

| (-s0025)<<< Cloak Failure Report >>> |

| |

| From: BSC Cyborg Tracker |

| ID # 25 |

| We have been detected |

| by a Loki class ship. |

| They found us with a |

| tachyon field. Our cloaking |

| device has failed |

| Loki Ship ID# 136 |

| Name: V'Karr |

| Race: Lizard |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.2 Dealing with Glory Devices ==================================>

<============================================================================>

* When you're flying in Fascist territory (or any other race with Glory

Devices) you will lose ships. So it goes without saying that the ships you

will use to scout such an secured empire are cheap ships: the Swift Heart

Class Scout.

Each exploding Scout will send you its last greeting by sending this message:

+---------------------------------------+

| (e0296)<<< DISTRESS CALL! >>> |

| |

| BSC Fascists Spy |

| SWIFT HEART CLASS SCOUT |

| ID # 296 |

| Glory Device! |

| We have been hit by |

| Level 6 shockwave! |

| At: ( 2595 , 1527 ) |

| Damage is at 100% |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

* A Swift Heart with 2 X-ray lasers and a Transwarp Drive costs

22 Duranium, 25 Tritanium, 40 Molybdenum and 364 MegaCredits.

The cheapest ship with a Glory Device - the D19 with X-ray lasers and 2

Transwarp drives costs

64 Duranium, 66 Tritanium, 135 Molybdenum and 794 MegaCredits.

Or the Fascist player could cut the costs by using low tech engines and thus

decreasing the mobility of their Glory Devices. With no weapons and Warp-1 drives:

34 Duranium, 63 Tritanium, 65 Molybdenum and 182 MegaCredits

This is still more costly than the Swift Heart, but you will need an adequate

money supply.

The Fascist player will continue to build Glory Devices to protect his empire.

You will be sending him new Scouts to spy on his planets. It's a match, but

you're winning because your costs are lower. In many cases the Fascist player

doesn't have enough Glory Devices to cover all his planets, so you won't have

to sacrifice one ship for every planet.

The Fascist player has just one advantage: his supply lines are shorter. This

is easy to overcome: make sure you've got enough new Scouts on their way to

his territory.

* The shockwave of a Glory Device will also damage the ships of your enemy.

His cloaking ships will be forced out of cloak... nice target eh?

* Supplies will repair your ships (at 5 units per % damage) so take some extra

with you to repair between glory-device explosion and combat, just in case he

had two of them present (or a new one just flew in). Another good tactic is to

load a Dark Wing with supplies and move in cloaked. The glory device will

trigger and damage your hull, but the damage will be repaired, you will stay

cloaked and the glory device is gone.

* Now, we can use these basic elements to make a one-two punch. For example,

move in a Dark Wing with 110 supplies (enough for 40 torps, and enough to

repair the Glory Device Damage). With Glory Device will explode, but you'll

repair yourself. His other ships will be damaged (10% or 20% of normal mine

damage, and he may have supplies too). Now your ship will attack.

Alternatively, throwing Swifties at his starbases will usually set off a

glory device, and frequently take out a Neutronic carrier or SDSF. Finally,

if you ever do get a good ship in to his starbases, simply sit there with

primary enemy set : he may build glory ships, but you'll take them out before

he can set their FC.

* If you are more cautious, you can throw Swifties at him, then follow with

cruisers. After blowing up two GD ships, he'll probably build something else,

giving you a chance to slip in.

* There are certain problems : glory devices do not damage his planets, but

they do damage yours. Keep him away! Be offensive, as always. Glory

Devices will knock your shields out even if you do use supplies to repair.[8]

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.3 Notes on the Federation =====================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Feds tend to stock large amounts of unarmed battleship hulls on their

starbases to be refitted later. Nevertheless their default 70% mining rate

they will build twice or three times the number of hulls as you. If you don't

destroy those empty hulls the Feds will outnumber you soon! So you'd better

find those hull before they find you. Needless to say those unarmed hulls

without beams, tubes, torps and fighters are easy to destroy.

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.4 Dealing with the Lizards ====================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Lizard Ground Attack is unstoppable, even by you. Once his cloakers are

there, the only defence you've got is laying minefields. You could of course

try to get some Glory Devices from the Fascists - the ships won't bite you.

* The Lizards have a great economy: huge income of minerals and megacredits.

You'd better don't rely on T-Rex's having low tech beams/torps... he has

enough cash and minerals to equip every ship with high tech ship parts.

* Your Dark Wing has more tubes, but the Lizard ships take 150 % damage by

default before exploding. You'd better use a battle simulator to check out

the best configuration, your ship ratio might be 1:1, you'll need one Dark

Wing for every T-Rex. :-(

* The best defence is the counter-attack. Keep his ships in his own territory.

Keep his Lokis bound to his own planets. Don't let him even try to get to

your planets. Instead, try to mess up his economy. You can't stop him, but he

can't stop you.

* Don't try to hunt down those Reptile and Saurian scouts - unless they

conquer a planet, they can't refuel on an enemy planet as you can. Protect

your freighters, or use them as bait.

* You can do the Lizards great harm if you can destroy all HISSing ships

orbiting his cash planets. When all the HISSing ships are gone, the high tax

will immediately cause the natives to riot. This makes the planet worthless

for at least a couple of turns: no income. Such a planet will likely be

protected by a Loki to decloak all evil-minded ships - time for a suicide

attack by some Deth Specula's. You could of course try to destroy the planet

with Resolutes/Dark Wings, but it may be a starbase. If the 'Cloaked ships

attack PE' setting is YES, fly in with your mission set to Super Spy, your PE

to Lizard, and your FC set to 'bum'....

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.5 Dealing with the Privateers ==================================>

<============================================================================>

* Most important is the host setting 'Rob Cloaked Ships'. If it is yes you're

situation is far worse than when it was 'no'.

If the Privateer can't rob cloaked ships, you will be able to attack his

planets and recloak the next turn - he can't rob your ships.

If the Privateer can rob cloaked ships, they will set their ships on your

planets to rob at random. If you try to scout their territory, you will

encounter decloaked ships on Privateer starbases that will rob you when you

try to fly away - when the starbase is set to Force Surrender you will lose

the scout in the same turn. An HomeWorld can be very dangerous: it will have

Lady Royale's and Alchemy ships in orbit, and they will rob you blind. When

you're departing from your planets, set your waypoint in mid-space and your

mission to beam up fuel. (Of course you've dropped your fuel on the planet.)

Have your ship FCs to match your planetary FCs when beaming up fuel.

* You ships are superior to their ships. You're probably the best race to

terminate the Privateers. Use Deth Specula's, Resolutes and Dark Wings and

kill everything in sight.

* When fighting the Privs, do what you always do: stay cloaked. If you've

build any freighters (for planet-hopping) they will be an easy target for the

Privs. Get rid of your freighters and use Fearless Wings/Resolutes as

transports.

* Lay moving minefields. Lay huge minefields, scoop the mines up again (with

another ship) and lay the minefields again on another place.

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.6 Dealing with the Cyborg =====================================>

<============================================================================>

* While Biocides and Annihilations are the backbone of the empire of the

Cyborg, the Fireclouds are the veins. To set up a stable connection between

two Starbases the Cyborg need three Fireclouds: One on every starbase and one

doing the chunneling.

It's easy to take out his transport system. Use Resolutes and eliminate all

Fireclouds. An attacking Cyborg player will in most cases try to chunnel his

fleet to you. When you've destroyed any incoming Firecloud, he has to fly to

you just like any other player. (And his heavy Cubes will need huge amounts of

fuel..:-)

This holds true for any player opposing the Cyborg. A FireCloud is bad news

and should be shot on first sight. If you leave it alone, next turn there may

be several brothers which can spread around and beam in cubes all across your

empire. Next thing you're dead.

* The Cyborg tend to spread our over the entire cluster - their empire doesn't

have to be aligned. Such an empire is hard to exterminate: finding all his

planets and starbases can be a real pain. Try to get some ships (Resolutes)

chunneled to the other end of the galaxy, to his outposts. Then cut off his

means of communication (i.e. destroy all FireClouds) and mess up his economy/

planets.

* Be aware of the Chunnel facilities of the Cyborg! A Cyborg player can fly

one single FireCloud to your territory by flying it > 300 LY outside the map,

i.e. the ship will remain outside your range and you will not detect it until

it is to late. When the FireCloud runs out of fuel, a second Firecloud is

simply chunneled in to refuel the first one... When the Cyborg player sets

his foot on your less heavily defended backyard planets/starbases you won't

be able to kick him out again. He will just chunnel in more reinforcements.

To prevent such a disaster, just put a picket ship outside the map, say at a

150 LY distance. A Resolute will do great: it cloaks so the Cyborg won't see

it coming and won't chunnel in a fleet to destroy it, the ship doesn't use

fuel to cloak so it doesn't need to be refuelled and the ship itself is

capable enough of dealing with one single FireCloud.

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.7 Dealing with the Crystal People =============================>

<============================================================================>

* Most often someone will have taken out the crystal people early in the game,

since they are a relatively weak race. But once they've become established

they can mean bad news. Their webmines make great anti-cloak weapons, if they

can afford them.

* This holds true especially in PHost where they can form minefield alliances

with other races and lay overlapping minefields in different race-identities,

so the draining of fuel goes way faster.

* Use high tech beams to sweep away his fields before he can tow\capture your

cloakers.

* They rely heavily on molybdenum, so you could try to beam up that mineral if

you want to annoy them and have nothing better to do after a SuperSpy.

* Never ever let them get a cloaking ship!

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.8 Dealing with the Empire =====================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Empire is a fighter-race, and has only one type of torpedo ship: The

Super Star Frigate. Once you've eliminated all SSFs your ships won't get hit

by mines any more.

Use Deth Specula's or Resolutes with Mark 4 torps or higher and Heavy Blasters

or higher: you will easily capture the SSF.

* Those Empire starbases tend to build 5 free fighters every turn. (Host

configurable). The bases will get stronger every turn they exist, so you'd

better take them out soon, before they've got the full 60 fighters. Use a

Resolute or a Dark Wing.

* When you see a H-Ross Class Light Carrier or a Moscow Class Star Escort

flying around, don't forget they're worthless in a battle. The Empire player

will use them to transport fighters from his stocked starbases to his ships in

the front-line.

So if you see such a fully loaded light carrier departing from a starbase,

take out the starbase because it's low on fighters and don't forget to

destroy the carrier and the fighters it is carrying before the fighters are

used in a much more dangerous ship like a Super Star Cruiser or a Gorbie.

* When you're beaming up minerals from Empire planets, beam up Molybdenum. The

mineral balance of the Empire is not as good as yours, and they tend to use

far more Molybdenum (for ships and fighters!) than Tritanium or Duranium.

<============================================================================>

<====== 6.9 Dealing with the Robots =====================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Robots are a fighter-race, and they only have one type of torpedo ship:

the Cat's Paw. Those Cat's Paws are extremely dangerous as they tend to lay

*huge* minefields. Save your ships and take them out with your Dark Wings and

Resolutes.

* Use Resolutes with high tech beams as minesweepers.

* The Robots will keep a couple of Q-Tankers on starbases to build fighters.

Eliminate the source of his fighters by capturing those Q-tankers. The

fighters of those capture Q-tankers make a perfect use to you as starbase

fighters!

* When you're beaming up minerals from Robotic planets, beam up Duranium. The

mineral balance of the Robots is the worst in the whole game, and they tend to

use far more Duranium than Tritanium or Duranium.

* Be careful not to surrender one of your ships to a Robotic starbase - when

it will get back to you it will do enormous damage by laying *huge* minefields

in your territory.

* Read carefully the section about the Minefield Universal Code. It will help

you a lot against their minefields.

* Never ever let them get a cloaking ship!

Chapter 7

SNEAKY COMBAT TACTICS

<============================================================================>

About doing what you're designed to do: attack!

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.1 Towing ships ================================================>

<============================================================================>

Destroy large enemy fleets ship by ship. Wait till a fleet arrives at a

planet, or predict their course and tow the ships to your waiting fleets of

Dark Wings and Resolutes.

Perfect way to remove defending ships from planets/starbases.

1b. If your opponent is already used to you towing ships from planets and

starbases into midspace and intercepts his ships with large battleships,

change your tactic: try to get a MBR and tow an enemy > 81 LY. It will keep

your enemy busy for a couple of turns adjusting to your new strategy and

rearranging his ships and tactics...

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.2 Creative use of the NUK FC ==================================>

<============================================================================>

Imagine an enemy starbase defended by a large number of heavily armed

battleships....

You use your scouts and lock the FC to 'NUK'. Your fleet of Dark Wings are

waiting just outside the warpwel, they transfer their fuel to another

cloaking ship and move without fuel to the enemy starbase.

Your ships will be ignored by the enemy battleships because they don't have

fuel, but the starbase is set to NUK and will be destroyed by your fleet.

(Use the cloaking fueltank to refuel and repair (supplies) your Dark Wings.

Note:

a. This won't work for the newer versions of phost, i.e. the Birdmen are

immune to the planetary NUK friendly code.

b. It is reported that this also won't work for the newer versions of host.

Let it be clear that this is an undocumented feature - it can't be found in

the docs. [8]

2b. When two enemy players are playing in co-operation, try to set the FC of

the planet/starbase of enemy A to ATT or NUK the turn a battleship/fleet of

enemy B arrives on that planet/starbase. Watch the fleet destroy the

starbase/planet or vice versa - it doesn't matter: any which way you win!

[Obviously this won't work for host 3.22.007 allies and PHost allies.]

* Don't forget to leave orbit in case if your ships get decloaked by an Ion

Discharge, or else they might get fried.

* If the planet/starbase gets toasted, return to the planet (cloaked) and

perform a Ground Attack with the 5 - 20 clans you always carry in your

cargohold...

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.3 Ambush ======================================================>

<============================================================================>

If a large unstoppable fleet is coming your way, setup an ambush on your own

planet/starbase. When an enemy fleet arrives, break up the fleet into smaller

pieces and smash them at your will.

(For the desperate only. You don't want any enemy in your place, go play in

their territory.)

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.4 Carriers and your Starbases =================================>

<============================================================================>

A fully stocked starbase and a Dark Wing can take care of most of those

monster carriers. Starbases are the best defence for a Birdmen player,

especially when the ship limit is reached. And if the enemy battleship won't

come near your base, tow it to the base using a White Falcon.

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.5 Glory Devices ===============================================>

<============================================================================>

When dealing with the Fascists or any race that uses Glory Devices, send in a

Scout. If it blows, go in and look for damaged cloak capable ships, they are

an easy target now. Tow them from his starbase and destroy them in mid-space.

(Easier than waiting for those cloaking ships to intercept attack your own

ships or to get hit in a minefield.)

There is a great chance that the player would use the starbase FIX mission to

repair one ship a turn, so if there are multiple cloak capable ships on that

base they will be an easy target.

Note:

An expert player would probably carry supplies in his ships to repair the GD

damage instantly, or keep a second non-triggered GD as backup in case the

first one blows...

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.6 Ignoring surrendering =======================================>

<============================================================================>

When allied to the Privs, it doesn't matter if your ships surrender to an

enemy starbase. Lock the FC, let your Fearless Wings and Resolutes (having 1

kT fuel and a matching FC) beam up *everything* from an enemy starbase. The

Fearless Wings and Resolutes will all surrender to the enemy starbase, but as

you know this, you'll tow them away at the same turn to the waiting Privateer

wolfpack. The Priv ships will rob the Fearless Wings and Resolutes of their 1

kT fuel, and your ships will be yours again. No change of losing your ships:

with 1 kT fuel they won't fly very far. Maybe your opponent dumps the

minerals in space, but what the heck: the fun was that HE didn't have them.

(A large drawback is that you do need a lot of ships to do this.)

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.7 Freighter Hunting ===========================================>

<============================================================================>

This should be a standard thing to do for every Birdmen player: disrupt your

enemies economy by capturing/destroying all his freighters. Use Swift Hearts

to intercept freighters in mid-space or use White Falcons to tow those

freighters out of orbit into mid-space. Arm them with X-ray lasers.

* Beware of traps when intercepting, your enemy might intercept his own

freighters too.

* Swift Hearts are cheaper, but the 140 kT cargohold of the White Falcons

opens more possibilities:

if you capture a freighter with clans, you might perform a ground attack on

a planet/starbase with a low population.

if you capture a freighter with minerals (and MC), you could restock your

torp supply in mid-space and lay this minefield in the enemies shipping

routes.

* What to do with a captured freighter?

You could set it's mission to Sensor Sweep or Mine Sweep, and thus giving

you the opportunity to gather information while you can cloak again.

You could do this for instance for one turn by giving the freighter 1 kT of

fuel and to set the waypoint so that the freighter will run out of fuel at

the end of the turn.

You could move it a few LY and put your cloaked ship at the same

coordinates. If the freighter has fuel and the enemy intercepts the it, you

will see the armament of the new enemy ship. If your ship is a good match,

tow the new ship and capture/destroy it. (The freighter is even more

damaged, or destroyed, and won't get very far. Get it later.)

If the freighter doesn't have fuel and the enemy intercepts it, it won't

fight. You will then decide what to do: 1. tow/attack the new ship, 2. let

the freighter be towed away to surrender, 3. transfer 1 kT of fuel to the

freighter and let it get captured/destroyed by the new ship/another ship/

an enemy starbase.

If you let the freighter be captured again/let the fuelless freighter

surrender at a starbase you will be able to recapture it later when it's

filled again...

When the enemy doesn't have that much freighters he will have to re-use the

ship instead of recycling it. This gives you the change to recapture it

when it's cargohold is full.

Anyway, your opponent will have to waste several turns with a 2-engine ship

to recapture the freighter and then repair it at a starbase...

That ship won't be used against you!

Be aware if you let the freighter be captured again by the enemy, or even

destroyed, the enemy will get Priority Build Points. (1 PBP for capturing -

host 3.22.007 and older)

If you don't want to let the enemy get his hands on the freighter again,

there are two very effective destructive methods: 1. colonise the freighter

on an uninhabited (amorphous?) planet or a planet that you've conquered on

your enemy. This will give you 1 PBP but on the other hand when the enemy

colonises the planet he will be able to use/beam up the minerals. 2. Smash

the freighter into an enemy minefield. It will explode even if it doesn't

have fuel. You won't get anything, but neither will he. Perfect, fast and

deadly.

* Often a player will make a mistake of killing anything with the name

freighter in it's name just because it's an easy kill. Don't be too

trigger happy, Look at the ship first. Is it full or empty? An empty

freighter is a useless catch, follow it to a planet, it will be full and

worth much more. A favourite tactic of mine is to jettison all the cargo and

then drive it at full speed towards the nearest minefield with it's mission

to "mine sweep". This does a few things: 1. up to date minefield info. 2.

destroys freighter 3. freaks out opponent if he manages to capture it

("where'd all the Moly on board go? aaargh!!!") [9]

* Advanced Freighter Killing

This tactic takes a bit of practice to perfect, but is devastating in the

right hands. First off, what are things that can go wrong with freighter

killing? Right, escorts and minefields. You forgot one, though: the

freighter itself.

1. Freighter: an experienced player will usually never set a waypoint over 3

months in a straight line. What that means is that if a planet is 120 LY

away and the freighter is doing warp 7, he will not travel in a straight line

towards the planet. He will probably move his target up or down a few LYs.

This is called "zigging" and it makes life hell for the privateers who try to

land on top of ships and rob them, but that's another story. What we want to

do is get in the way of the ship and "zig" in front of it. How we do that

is, sit about 100 LY away of the planet, between where the freighter is and

where it's going. Turn 1, you are cloaked and see it moving towards you,

heading for a base or something. Look at it. Does it have an escort? No? Is

it full or empty? If you suspect that it's carrying cash, hit it anyway. Set

mission for Intercept freighter, and set warp speed to 4. Now what that does

is give you a 16 LY radius to intercept the freighter in.

** You can do this in a minefield with a very small chance of getting hit.**

Since the intercept attack will decloak you at the time of attack, you move

at .5% through the minefield, with a maximum of 16 LY to travel. Some people

forget the warp 4 part and leave their speed at warp 9. Then they are

surprised when the freighter heads in a completely different direction and

they ram a mine after travelling 81 LY through the field. Leave the brakes

on, if you miss you will not go zooming after it (and probably not catch it).

2. Escort: So, your enemy is getting desperate, is he? Escorts are the best

devote a capital ship to secure a load of minerals in his own space is

getting desperate. So cheer up, the war is going well. Run a few sims and

see if you can take the escort, second, run the sim and see what happens if

you intercept the freighter, then get blown up, then HE fights his own

freighter. If he doesn't blow it up, don't bother - all you'll have done is

damaged his freighter, which he can fix at the next stop or starbase.

3. Minefields: as the intercept mission in point 1 described, using a low-

speed intercept (even warp 3 will work) will lessen your chances of a mine

hit, while still letting you capture the freighter. This merits repeating:

When you perform the XA intercept attack, you are CLOAKED. You get 1/2 the

chance to hit a minefield, so you can feel confident driving around at warp 8

inside a minefield if you need to(just don't make it a regular thing).[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.8 Conquering planets ==========================================>

<============================================================================>

* An Resolute with Heavy Blasters or higher and Mark 4 torps or higher can

take out every non-starbase planet. It can even destroy a starbase with less

30 starbase fighters without taking damage. (Depending on the shield, host

configurable)

* White Falcons, Fearless Wings and Deth Specula's aren't afraid of planets

too. Use high tech torps on the 1 torp ships, and Heavy Blasters when there

are a lot of planetary defence units.

* If the planet is deep in enemy territory, or on a location where the enemy

can reconquer it quickly, completely _waste_ the planet:

If there are natives, set the native tax to 100% for two or three turns -

it will make the planet useless for at least 10 turns. No tax income, and

the rioting natives will destroy planetary structures, and eventually will

begin to kill colonists! (They will kill your clan, and when the planet

becomes inhibited the native happiness will remain the same. When the

planet is recolonised, a percentage of the first colonists will be killed

immediately.)

If there are enough minerals and cash for a starbase, build the starbase

and remove your clan. Next turn the starbase will be build and crash. This

way you will destroy 420 kT Tritanium, 120 kT Duranium, 340 Molybdenum and

900 MC at the same time!

* You might follow another approach: if the enemy is a fighter-race, he might

use the minerals on the planet to restock his fighter supply when he

reconquers the planet. Simply remove all Tritanium or Molubdemum from the

planet - whichever is less. If the enemy is a torp race, choose one of the

minerals and dump it in space. If there are enough minerals on the planet for

a starbase and you want that planet and the starbase, just temporarily remove

one critical mineral from the surface. (Wait for your backup: a load of clans

and/or lots of cash and/or a captured carrier (or cloaked Red Wind) with

fighters for the future starbase.)

Keep an eye on the minerals in the core and the number of mines!

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.9 Cloaked ships attack ========================================>

<============================================================================>

Use the 'Cloaked ships attack' host setting to your benefit: If you stay

cloaked with several warships over a enemy starbase you will be capable to

attack his newly built ships if the starbase orders are set to Refuel. Then

you will attack his ships that will have not torps or fighters on board. This

will surely work early in the game when the enemy HomeWorld has plenty of

fuel.

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.10 Cloak Prevent Damage =======================================>

<============================================================================>

Use the 'Cloak Prevent Damage' host setting!

Try to carry a cargo of supplies inside your cargo bays. It will repair some

damage after combat and your ship might be cloaked again at the end of the

turn.

Note that the supply-repair is scattered around the battle order:

repair

move (minehits!)

repair

glory device

repair

ship vs. ship combat

repair

ship vs. planet combat

repair

However, cloak-checking is only done at the beginning and end of the turn, so

if you take a mine-hit or glory device explosion during the turn, you will

repair prior to combat, but will not be cloaked.[8]

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.11 Steal minerals from a planet with a Starbase ===============>

<============================================================================>

[Use with caution and read carefully!]

For this to work you need 5 cheap ships to do SuperSpy and to change the FC.

For the beam up you will gather as many ships as you want. But you will need

the same number of ships to tow them.

Here's the deal: Move the entire fleet to the target starbase. Put the 5 cheap

ships in orbit with a common FC and all on SuperSpy. Transfer all fuel from

the gather ships to the towers, set their FC to the common FC and the mission

to Gather Anything. Let the towers set their FC to something different than

the common FC and let each tow one of your now fuelless gather ships out of

orbit.

Result: The ships gather minerals since even without fuel they gather with

matching FCs. The towers will tow the now stocked transporters out of orbit.

Transfer fuel to the transporters and carry the minerals to your own bases.

If the SB is set on 'Force a surrender' the fuelless ships (transporters)

will get to the enemy. Then the transporters are towed to one of your nearby

Starbase to surrender. The enemy will surely dump the minerals into space

since they are his ships now. You will lose the minerals, but heck - he

doesn't have them and that's what you wanted eh? [2]

Notes:

* Don't beam up fuel! Tritanium, Duranium and Molybdenum only! And supplies -

if you really need them :-)

* Think of this strategy when you're allied to the Privs or the Crystals. Let

them tow/capture the fuelless transporters. Success guaranteed!

* If your ships surrendered to the enemy starbase, and the enemy already got

his hands on a cloaker, he might anticipate to which starbase you will bring

his new cloakers to surrender. Using this cloaker he will wait in orbit for

his fuelless cloakers to come: he will transfer fuel to all fuelless cloakers

and they won't surrender, they will even fly away or engage combat.

* If your starbase is just one turn away from his, your enemy doesn't have to

change to drop the minerals. It might even be worth to build that temporary

starbase... Try using Gravitronic Accelerated ships to shorten the distance.

* This tactic will cost you a lot of resources: time, fuel and ships. On the

other hand you will be able to completely strip an enemy starbase of minerals.

The more transporters you use, the more effective and economical it will be.

Say if you would use 5 Fearless Wings to beam up minerals, you will need 5

other 2-engine ships and the ships to set the FC, 15 in total!

* Set the FC to 'bum' and you'll get his money too!

* This tactic uses a lot of resources. Use it wisely and not to often - you'd

spend your time better using those 15 ships for freighter hunting!

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.12 Using (Moving) Minefields ==================================>

<============================================================================>

* Minefields are a very effective defence against cloakers. Even when you play

the Birdmen you occasionally might want to lay some when you have cloaking

neighbours/ enemies. When laid from a cloaking ship this effectiveness gets

multiplied by a unexpectedness factor: such a minefield can be really

devastating. To increase the unexpectedness, the mines of a newly laid

minefield can be scooped up again next turn to be used again later as another

minefield. This is what is called 'Moving Minefields'. (Of course Moving

Minefields can also be created by non-cloaking ships.)

* The ideal situation is to have two cloaking vessels with a large cargohold.

(Resolutes or else Fearless Wings). The two ships fly together all the time.

The first vessel having its cargohold stocked with torps will decloak and lay

this _enourmous_ minefield. The next turn the first vessel will cloak again

and the second vessel will scoop the mines up again.

* Very clear until now eh? Let's continue and refine this scheme a bit: To be

able to continue laying this moving minefield you will have to take some

action to preserve your mines/torpedo's as your opponent will try to sweep

it, and if he succeeds you will have to return to your base/planets and spend

more cash on torps :-(

This can easily be prevented when you know the order of actions: minesweeping

happens by ship ID, the ship having a lower ID sweeping first. So the only

thing you will have to do is to arrange one low ID Resolute (or Fearless Wing)

with high tech torps. (A Resolute ID#1 would be ultimate, and a ship with an

ID between 1 and 25 would do allright.)

First turn, let the Resolute with the higher ID convert all its torps into

mines. Next, transfer all cargo from the low ID Resolute to the high ID

Resolute (another set of 280 torps!) and scoop the minefield up in the

cargohold of the low ID Resolute.

* This way your minefield can only be destroyed by an enemy minefield (if the

'mines destroy enemy mines' host setting is on), or by an enemy vessel

sweeping it by pure luck.

* Two remarks: if the enemy sets all his ships to Mine Sweep, he can't cloak

or do anything else, and if he used his ships in pairs to sweep/cloak on a

turn he will bind a lot of resources (ships) to your waiting Resolutes.

280 Mark 8 will make 10 x 10 x 280 = 28000 mines. A MBR, or LCC, or Saurian

with 4 Heavy Phasers will sweep 10 x 10 x 4 x 4 = 1600 mines at a time (host

default settings). Your enemy will sure need a lot of those ships (working in

pairs) to try to sweep your minefield!)

Second, if your enemy decides to destroy the minefield by laying another

minefield that is as large as yours, it will cost him as much as you, with

this respect that his reaction is provoked by you and that he will be

withdrawing resources from other projects. Until then, you will be able to

harass him with your minefield.

* And what the hell, if he destroys your minefield you will still have the

other set of torps, don't you? :-)

* How to get a low ID Resolute? Well, he turn you know for sure you're going

to get a lot of PBPs, try building Resolutes only on all your starbases.

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.13 Using good baits ===========================================>

<============================================================================>

You can use baits (A resolute without fuel in mid space) to get enemy ships,

just keep a Dark Wing or two cloaked at the same place with PE set to your

enemy... A Resolute is a NICE bait to many races.. Also keep a Swift Heart

without PE set, so you can transfer fuel if all Dark Wings are killed!

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.14 Cloaking your entire empire ================================>

<============================================================================>

Everyone laughs when they read that the Birdmen would cloak a planet if they

could, but few know that we CAN and DO cloak entire empires (sorta).

TimHost and PHost both have ranges for planet and sensor sweep settings. These

are default 200 LY, meaning that each planet and each ship can see a maximum

distance of 200 LY. Now, what if you have 50 Dark Wings uncloaked 201 LY

away? That's right, they're invisible. Now wouldn't it be nice to know

where that 200 LY "border" is? The answer is simple: put cloaking scouts at

your borders, or 100 LY beyond your borders, and leave them there. Any ships

you see approaching can be dealt with as you see fit.

Hyper-probes will continue to be a problem, my only advice is get your defence

posts to "un-scannable" size as soon as possible (15 in TimHost, PHost is

configurable).[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.15 Enemy starbases ============================================>

<============================================================================>

Starbases can't move. Warships can. Take out Starbases whenever possible.

True, you will for sure lose it, but the economic damage is significant. For

the one turn you hold it, make sure to:

Convert all the supplies into money and beam it up.

Set native tax rate to 100% and watch them tear down whatever is still

standing. Plus, he won't be able to build that many factories with the

natives still running around with axes, and cash will be scarce.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 7.16 Cloaking all your ships ====================================>

<============================================================================>

Someone suggested staying hidden no matter what the cost, and recommended

using Fearless Wings as cloaking freighters. I'm not too sure about that

advice, I mean, is 200 moly worth the extra 10 fuel it takes to cloak it? On

a large scale, you would need 5 Fearless Wings for every large freighter.

That's expensive and time consuming, both production and material-wise.

When the above tactic is useful:

Let's say that you live next to a lazy player. He has expanded to a certain

size but never got around to colonising that cluster up near the edge of the

map. Your scouts have been through there and report some decent mineral

planets and a few natives. You decide that you want that sector.

1 Fearless Wing will be enough for this "mission". Basically you want to be

able to set up shop in one or two turns, and not be caught with your "pants

down". You may want 1 or 2 Dark Wings along for protection just in case of

cloak failure, etc.

Depending on the range of the target, you may wish to add another Fearless

Wing solely as a cloaked fuel reserve. Your range with a fully loaded

Fearless Wing will be about 3-4 months depending on engines used.

Your Fearless Wing should be hold:

100 colonists 140 supplies 2200 credits.

Once you are in orbit, beam down everything. Build 15 defence posts and 100

factories. You will have 400 credits left over, next turn take that and the

100 supplies you just made and build 100 mines.

There you have it - you're weak, poor, but undetected.

I did the calculations for a fully-built starbase in one turn but deemed it

too expensive (5 Fearless Wings, all of them fully loaded, plus about 15,000

credits) and you'd still only have 15 defence posts and a tech 1 starbase.[9]

Chapter 8

MORE THAN HOST ALONE

<============================================================================>

Make sure you READ the manual all the way through, make sure you know the

ORDER of events in the add-on, and possibly which order they are run by the

host, and by all means get the correct CONFIG SETTINGS. Most add-ons have a

'con' code of some sort to send the variables back to you.

One add-on adds flavour to gameplay, but if your host goes ballistic and loads

every add-on he can find into the game, you may have 3 pages of friendly

codes to get used to. Go through all the doc files and paste together as

much quick-reference info as you can. The last thing you want to do is

accidentally self-destruct one of your ships by using the wrong friendly

code.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1 PHost =======================================================>

<============================================================================>

Assuming you're going to play a PHost game, you'll probably also play with

PList (see below) or another shiplist that takes advantage of Phosts capacity

for up to 20 beams/launchers or fighterbays in a single ship. Otherwise

planetary defence is just way too tough to deal with.

But there's much more to PHost than the increased planetary defence and the

large battleships. Most of that goes beyond the scope of this manual,

therefore it is highly recommendable to read the documentation before you

start.

But a lot of things are much the same, you still have a neat array of cloakers,

including your battleship the D'deridex (the fed nova can also cloak in

plist). You still have the powerful superspy mission. You still need to snipe

and cut supply lines before your enemies get a chance to grow big. You will

find yourself stealing fuel and megacredits as these remain your strongholds.

As for know, you'll only miss advanced cloaking.

Note: with PHost special friendly codes never match, so if you for example set

a planetary FC to 'bum' the ships locking the FC can still hit the minefield

around that planet.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1.1 PHost Configuration ========================================>

<============================================================================>

Make sure the settings that affect you as Romulans are somewhat decent, cloak

failure should be kept low, rob cloaked should be disabled, the fuel cost of

cloaking reasonable, cloaked mine odds approx. half of uncloaked etc.

In the default settings everything is OK for you, you will even get a free

fighter every turn on every starbase (as all other non-fighter races will).

Towing cloaked ships is a configurable option in PHost as well, and the

default is no! This is good news, because it means you can escape an

established tow beam just by cloaking. Wow! Even though I personally don't

think this is a good thing for the game in general, I don't care if I'm

playing the Romulans, and will abuse it whenever appropriate.

Combat parameters are not a toy, fooling around with them will heavily affect

combat in play, so make sure the host either uses default settings for these,

or he should be damn sure of what he's doing. You'll need a copy of the

pconfig.src anyway for use with battlesimulators anyway (Thomas Voigt's Bsim

2.2). Fool around with the simulator, especially if you haven't played PHost

before.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1.2 PHost Alliances ===========================================>

<============================================================================>

This is a real advantage over host.exe. The ability to establish alliances and

dropping them. In practice this means that you don't have to worry that your

ships will fight your allies, strike a mine laid by one of your friends and

will have info on both his ships and the ones visible to him, and his planets

(all depending on the status of the alliance established).

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1.3 Planetary and starbase defence ============================>

<============================================================================>

To overcome the problem in host.exe that planets are too easily conquered

PHost defence features planets (and bases) with torplaunchers. This increases

their strength enormously, so you can forget about having a cheap B'rell in

deep enemy territory and taking freighters and planets with it. Just taking

out freighters and SuperSpying is all you can do with a lowly armed ship.

On the other hand, once driven on the defence you will benefit. Especially

once you know that you could stock up on torps in a starbase which will be

used when that base is attacked. And that a base is capable of fighting prior

to the ships orbiting it. The effects of this can be enormous, make sure you

test this at home.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1.4 PHost Armament ============================================>

<============================================================================>

One of the features in PHost-plist is that high tech stuff tends to pay off.

High tech torps and beams do way much more damage than in host.exe, and they

discharge at a higher rate. Tech one beams don't perform the same way against

fighters as tech 10's do. So you've got to invest.

Less known is that against a carrier you're better off with either ion cannons

(tech 7) or electron rams (tech 6) but against bases you have a better outcome

with tech 10 Multitrafs. This is because in ship to ship combat your

Multitrafs discharge so fast that they take out the fighters which are on

their way back to the carrier, whereas Ioncannons due to their slowness only

take on the incoming fighters.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.1.5 PHost Combat ==============================================>

<============================================================================>

Although it looks different, combat is as different for Romulans as for all

other races. Simply get used to PHost, use Bsim a lot, and you will manage.

As mentioned above you will not fight anyone that has a combatlevel alliance

with you. This enables you and your allies to attack a mixed fleet of enemies

with mission set to KILL, whilst saving your friendly codes to make up the

best possible battle order.

I simply cannot stress enough the importance of high tech stuff. Invest in it,

it pays off. Of course this means that you need a well established economy to

pay for all these goodies and you'll have to steal the rest.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.2 RacePlus ====================================================>

<============================================================================>

* The Birds gain the ability to plant eggs (mines) aboard enemy ships with their

Bright Hearts. You need a full cargo of supplies and at least 41 crew aboard

to attempt the mission. You risk losing some crew and getting uncloaked by the

mission if unsuccessful. Multiple eggs can be planted by a flock of Bright

Hearts aboard a single ship resulting in instantaneous destruction. You could

also plant one or more eggs on a ship to weaken it for easier destruction by

other waiting birds. Mating a Resolute - or Fearless, to a flock of 2-4

Bright Hearts will allow you to refuel and resupply the flock for additional

strikes without having to return to a friendly planet.[5]

* The new EGG bomb ability is just what the Birdmen needed to stop those huge

battleships. The bomb is perfect for crippling large battlefleets. Keep small

groups of Bright Hearts near the front-line filled up with 40 supplies and let

them operate in pairs or groups. The effective radius of the Bright Heart is

not that large (90 kT fuel tank), so you'll have to operate on front-line

planets. Or send in a Resolute stocked with 280 supplies for refuelling when

operating in enemy territory.

* Know the RPCONFIG settings of RacePlus: there might be a limit of the number

of EGG bombs, and there will be a fixed percentage of failure.

* Of course there are dangers of losing crew and the ship, but this shouldn't

withhold you of using the bomb, right?

* Keep your mission on Super Spy when using the EGG bomb orbiting an enemy

starbase: it might have its FC set to EGG and its mission to Force Surrender.

* If you do happen to find a Crystal starbase with a FC of 'MKn', you'll know

the planet has Siliconoid natives. Don't neglect to try to reset the FC to

something senseless - if only it was for one turn.

* You can also try to 'HUD' Federation planets. If the Federation player does

find the Government Upgrade useful, you'll only be doing his work. But maybe

he doesn't find it useful on that particular planet, or maybe it isn't the

right time and does he need the supplies and megacredits for another job.

Anyway just beaming up the megacredits will also do. :-)

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.3 Borders =====================================================>

<============================================================================>

This very simply allows players to setup a tripwire early warning line between

upto 4 planets. A cloaker crossing the line has a chance of setting off a

warning. All the owner receives is a note stating a cloaker passed between

planet x and y. No specific ship info, location, race nor heading are relayed.

As the Bird you can play games with this by moving a single ship back and

forth across a suspected line and possibly cause all kinds of panic. You

could also disable or reset these lines using your SuperSpy abilities.[5]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.4 FHost =======================================================>

<============================================================================>

* FHost brings a lot of new combat thinking and tactics to Planets, as with

all new add-ons (especially this one) read the manual thoroughly. Study the

order of events, paste in FHost events into where they'll occur in Tim-or-P

HOST. Combat before movement takes some getting used to. Also the variables

can radically alter the way a game is played.

FHost comes with a program called FHUTIL.EXE make sure you get this from your

host or go get it yourself off the net - it will provide hit probabilities

based on tech and range modifiers. Don't play without it.[9]

* FHost dramatically changes the nature of VGA Planets as you can now "reach

out and touch someone" at a distance with fighters and missiles. This addon

is very configurable so my comments will be limited to some general

observations based on default settings. I'm also presuming FHost to run in

AUXHOST1.INI - which is before most other host activities. If FHost is run

later, it drastically alters the tactics you will want to employ.[5]

Fighters:

* The big carrier races can really zap you now so wandering about uncloaked -

or sitting uncloaked over a planet, within fighter range is asking for some

serious trouble. The Valiant doesn't have much cargo capacity so not the most

exciting weapon under FHost. The Red Wind, on the other hand, becomes a lot

more intriguing as a build since it can cloak and only carries 20 less

fighters. It's limited fuel capacity means you'll need to have a Resolute or

other high capacity ship around to refuel. If you use a "shoot'n'scoot"

approach - alternate fighter strikes with cloaking and moving some distance,

you can avoid getting tagged by enemy fighters or missiles.[5]

* I found fighter missions to be largely useless, I launched four fully loaded

Redwing carriers against a Klingon Ever-victorious and only managed to take

down the shields. Three Dark Wings launching tech 10 torps at close range

were able to rip the ship in half. Once again, host settings make all the

difference.[9]

Missiles:

* The Dark Wing gets even nastier as a surprise strike weapon. With its eight

tubes, it can fairly easily dispatch small and medium-sized targets at a

distance. A flock of Dark Wings can pickoff bigger ships at minimal risk to

themselves. Ships with limited tubes aren't going to be as useful for ranged

combat as you only get 1 shot per tube per turn. Better TL tubes means better

accuracy, so don't skimp on your tubes - especially for those ships with only

a few tubes. If the switch, "cloaked ships may fire missiles" is ON, you can

really run wild. Even if this is OFF, you can still use the tactic of

shoot'n'scoot outlined earlier to stay safe from fighters and missiles.[5]

* Cruise missiles are the greatest thing to ever happen to the Birdmen. You

can easily demolish an entire fleet without taking any damage. FHost has a

config switch for 'cloaked ships fire' if this is ON, (default off) your

troubles are over. Load your Dark Wings with tech 10 tubes and spray

everything that comes near you. Decloak to finish off crippled ships. Also

starbases will really have to fear you, since you can bombard them from

orbit, and they can't even send ships to take you out. Combine this with Host

3.22.05's no-fuel cloaking Dark Wing, and you're REALLY laughing...

If you have to decloak to fire, it's not too bad. FHost happens before regular

movement/combat so you can move in close on someone, fire a full spread, and

if you miss, big deal, they've already moved away. You will be uncloaked for

one turn, but can not be attacked, unless you are in orbit over a planet or

unless someone move right on top of you.

Also, since FHOST battles take place before regular combat, you can soften up

a target considerably before you actually fight it.

Picture this: 2 Dark Wings uncloak 15 LY away from the enemy HomeWorld, and

unload a full salvo of torpedo tubes into the starbase, crippling it. During

the same turn, a Resolute drives in set to "kill" and smashes up the few

freighters and alchemy ships in orbit, then easily destroys the starbase.

Or: Gorbie-killing 101. The unstoppable death star has punched through your

minefields and is headed directly for your HomeWorld. Your warships are

pulling back from the front lines, but even at maximum warp they will be 1

month too late. What to do? Get as close as possible, then fire like crazy.

Then pile in your ships, make sure your combat takes place ALL AT ONCE.

Maybe you'll only drop his shields, that in itself is an achievement against

a death star (considering you are in no danger while doing it).[9]

Build Free Torps:

* By default, you can build torpedoes aboard ships in space using 5 supplies

instead of MC. The torps cost 5 MC regardless of the techlevel, so you might

as well go with Mk VIII's instead of the more commonly selected Mk VII's.

This means you'll want to build more ships with good cargo bays as torp

builders. You may even just park them over bases for this purpose - build

them with cheap drives and beams. Also, this means you have some awesome

mine-laying power - effectively equalling the Robots if you use MK VIII's.

Sunbusters:

* These special missiles are very expensive and tricky to use, but very

deadly. These missiles can totally wipe-out everything on a planet and can

damage - or even destroy, ships which are within shockwave range the

following turn. The key to success with these is timing. If any enemy ships

are in orbit around the target planet, the missile will be shot down - even

by freighters! Tow away defending ships with other cloakers and use cheap

Swift Hearts as sacrificial forward observers to insure the target area is

clear. You can even use these against ships if your opponent is unaware of

your presence - or careless, and moves in predictable fashion. Targeting a

planet ships will arrive at will result in the fleet getting nailed by the

shockwave. Due to the cost - default is 8000 MC, you definitely want to chose

your targets carefully and maximise your effectiveness of these.[5]

* This is an expensive party trick. Don't even think of ever using this in

real combat, unless you are vaporising a Bovinoid tropical planet that you

cannot take over yourself. It IS a good bargaining item - sell it to the

Borg or the Lizards if you dare, they are better suited to handle it's

ridiculous cost. Default says it can be shot down by 100 defence posts, so

super spy first if you just HAVE to see it go off.

Pardon me, there is *one* real use for this weapon. If you're playing an

'ashes of the empire' scenario, whacking the empire's only Neutronium

planet will end the game real quick, if you manage to pull it off.

Also, all ships in orbit will be damaged by the shockwave, including yours,

so be prepared to write off your ship as it will probably decloak after

successfully causing the sun to go nova.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.5 Nemesis =====================================================>

<============================================================================>

* This is a very scary host addition. Why? Because it gives some of the races

abilities that are still being debated as "fair" or "unfair". Like, it's not

bad enough the Evil Empire has Imperial Assault, Nemesis gives the Borg a

strip planet mission which does practically the same thing, except it

demolishes all the mines and factories. In any case, it is too soon to tell

whether Nemesis unbalances a game or not. Only lots of playtesting and

feedback will reveal it's impact.[9]

* Nemesis is a double-edged sword if running at defaults. Each race gains some

very nasty abilities but - like all add-on's - some are definitely better than

others. Like FHost, the order this runs in the AUXHOST1 and AUXHOST2.INI in

relation to other add-on's can have a major impact on tactics. I will not

attempt to analyse all the implications all these new abilities these have

on the birds, but will look at the benefits the Birds themselves gain, a few

universal ones, and the Robot Viral Field.[5]

Birdmen abilities under Nemesis:

Planetary Cloaking Shields - As long as you have sufficient fuel, you can make

your planets invulnerable to a single race by setting a FC. Naturally, if

you're facing attack by several races in a joint fleet, you'll not be able to

screen all of them. However, you can chose which one you don't want to fight

and cause the alliance some discomfort as they attempt to plan their

attacks. You can also install this on other races worlds - and are

unaffected by these shields yourself.[5]

Cloaking planets - neat idea - jam any race's combat computer, they can't beam

down troops, attack, etc. Finally we can rest at ease even if there are a

dozen Imperial Assault ships in orbit. Definitely a good thing to build. Note

that it can't be used against you, so feel free to trade this ability for

other goodies, like The Klingon Galactic Missile System, or the Feds' Genesis

Device.[9]

LDSF/NFC Fuel Bonus - Your LDSFs and NFCs can move now at half the fuel cost.

This will make expansion and fuel support for your cloakers a lot easier.

New Beamup Codes - Everyone can now selectively beam up stuff from planets via

FC. Useful in conjunction with SuperSpy as you don't have to uncloak to rob

enemy planets of resources.

Give planet FC - Players can now exchange planets via FC, with your super spy

you could steal enemy planets if this option is enabled. (I personally turn

it off in games I host.)

Orbital Defence Satellites - All races can build these devices which can be set

to attack enemy ships which enter orbit. If the maximum number has been built,

these can all be exploded to damage cloaked ships. Otherwise, your cloakers

aren't affected by them.

Viral Field (Robots) - This is a very very nasty one. A Cybernaut can generate

a field of upto 100 LY which will disable and decloak ALL ships! Ships within

the field are adrift, unable to move or fight. You want to stay well clear of

these guys if this is in play. Check the config so you know exactly what the

radius of this is. Also, it won't work if another Cybernaut is within 100

LY.[5]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.6 Starbase+ ===================================================>

<============================================================================>

No race-specific abilities - in fact, this add-on seems to have been

written to allow unregistered players to get all tech 10 ships put together.

Hmmm. I wonder why Wisseman hasn't yelled at D&D for this.

The starbase minelaying and sweeping is a nice thing to have, though.

Mental note: 1 Mark 8 torp costs 55 credits and costs 1 of each mineral. It

makes 100 mine units. 1 Mark 4 torp costs 13 credits and costs 1 of each

mineral. It makes 36 mine units. If you scoop a minefield made of 1 mark 8

torp with a ship with mark 4 tubes, you will get a 3:1 return. This will

save you a little bit of cash and a LOT of minerals.

Just remember that "msc" is a registered only friendly code.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.7 Tachyon =====================================================>

<============================================================================>

True this add-on is a hassle to cloakers, but two things work in your favour:

1. They can only build 2 devices. Destroy those two ships and you will

never need to deal with them again - unlike Lokis.

2. If you are struck by a tachyon pulse, you will receive a message telling

you the X,Y coordinates and ship ID# that originated the pulse. Write this

down, and steer clear until you have a convenient time to destroy it. Tachyon

pulses have a maximum range of 100 LY.

3. It is very fuel-costly to fire a tachyon burst at maximum range. With a bit

of planning you can use this to your advantage, draining his fuel while in

deep space. Most players who use this like to keep you uncloaked at all

times. That tends to suck their planets dry, maybe just driving around being

obnoxious will do more damage economically than attacking him. Once again,

planets is not about combat so much as domination. There are many ways to

win.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.8 Jumpgate ====================================================>

<============================================================================>

Instantaneous travel from one jumpgate to another. Good idea, but remember

that you decloak (unless otherwise config'd) when you jump through.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.9 Portal =======================================================>

<============================================================================>

Better than Jumpgate, IMHO. Allows alliance portals, configuring certain gates

for private or for allied use. Also allows temporary jump portals to be

created by ships (big fuel cost) that link back to portal stations. Still in

beta at time of writing.[9]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.10 Tantalus Machine ============================================>

<============================================================================>

Destroying a race happens by the FC of a central planet with the Tantalus

machine. You could try to lock that FC so that the race that owns that planet

gets destroyed, and then conquer the central planet yourself. [4]

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.11 Alternative Shiplists ======================================>

<============================================================================>

When you play in a game using an alternative shiplist, use the descriptions of

the ships below and fit them to the standard ships described above.

<============================================================================>

<====== 8.11.1 PList (in combination with PHost) =========================>

<============================================================================>

Sparrow bird of prey Somewhat OK

It's two beams and one tube limit fighting

to small opponents. Fuel tank just enough

for short range operations, near safe

territory.

Cargo combined with a good tube could turn

it into a very useful cloaking minelayer

though.

2 beams, 1 tube, 100 kT, cloaks

Archeoptrix scout Great

Cheap scout with three beams. Huge fuel

tank makes it a good ship for SuperSpying

deep in enemy territory. To hunt for

freighters too.

3 beams, cloaks

Dead parrot fuel carrier Holds 900 kT of Neutronium, for supplying

where ever you need it. A decent engine

and 1 kT of fuel in the tank make it great

for moving money.

Sirius cybernetics (250 kT cargo) No substitution for these babies if you

Foundation freighter ( 600 kT) want to make it big. Your economy depends

Talarian merchantman (1000 kT) on them, build as big as you can, and

Hansa large transport (1500 kT) build up a good transport system.

Ferengi tradinger (2600 kT)

B'rell bird of prey Good

Less useful than the death specula, but

still a killer. Well equipped it can take

out planets.

Large fuel tank makes it a good ship for

long range operations. Towing away targets

from bases.

6 beams, 3 tubes, cloaks

K'tinga B-cruiser Not so good

Despite less beams and equal amount of

tubes stronger than a B'rell due to it's

mass.

Maybe it may come in handy to capture weak

planets, but don't build your empire on

them.

3 beams, 3 tubes

C7 qapla battlecarrier Useful if you have enough bases which

supply you with free fighters or if you're

allied with a free-fighterrace. (Or trade

with the Cylons or Rebels, who miss a

mid-size carrier with many beams.) In that

case it makes it the ship of choice to

conquer planets with a good defence. And

it is so cheap!

8 beams, 5 bays

Phoenix destroyer Not one of your best, but a decent mid-class

ship.

3 beams, 7 tubes, cloaks

Black bird light cruiser Worthless. Sparrows make far better

minelayers.

9 beams, 1 tube

King condor battleship Yes!!! This is a very good choice,

relatively well armed, great in combat. On

the downside, it takes quite some

Tritanium, but it still isn't expensive if

compared to what other races have.

8 beams, 9 tubes, cloaks

Superhawk assaultcarrier (cloaks)

If you have access to fighters it makes a

hell of a ship. Otherwise use for

transport of fighters or for trade. As it

is the only cloaking carrier, make sure you

will receive something special.

2 beams, 7 bays, cloaks

D'deridex warbird Well, this is it. Aim to build them in

huge quantities, as the 12 beams and 10

tubes don't stand up to what some other

races have.

But as is cloaks, it's your call whether

to fight or not. And their ships are far

more expensive. On a comparative basis,

this ship gives you much more for your

resources than what most other races have

access to. Use wisely.

12 beams, 10 tubes, cloaks

Miraculix refinery/ Lots of supplies? Short on minerals or

Merlin alchemy fuel? These may be what you need.

Chapter 9

MORE INFORMATION

<============================================================================>

* The latest issue of the free VGAP magazine 'The Planeteer' (issue 9)

included an article about the Birdmen. Not as large as this guide, but you

might as well read it too.

* There are not many WWW sites that have VGAP tactics and that are frequently

updated. If you're desperately looking for new ideas, I would recommend my

site and/or Ted York's site. The current URLs are:

Ted's : http://www.teds-universe.com/~goldman

Timo's : http://www.chem.vu.nl/Studenten/kreike/vgap.html

Other options include posting a question to the alt.games.vga-planets Usenet

newsgroup, and/or sending a message to an expert Birdmen player listed below.

* I've heard there is a Birdmen Homepage being created... The author will be

Dave Howard (Duckster2u@aol.com) and the URL will be:

Check it out!

Chapter 10

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

<============================================================================>

142,280 characters, 20902 words and 2636 lines!

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.1 Credits ====================================================>

<============================================================================>

*Thanks to all the co-authors - without their help this guide wouldn't be this

complete! In random order:

[1]

Josep Lluis Aguilo <hiper@dinky.bitel.es>

[2] Ricardo Carvalho <cometa@cc.fc.ul.pt>

[3]

Georg Heyder <106027.30@compuserve.com>

[4] jw <jacqg@dds.nl>

[5] Mark Wilmot <mwilmot@gol.com> <markrendl@aol.com>

[6] MaGs <andersson@geocities.com> <mags@wineasy.se>

[7] Adam Lloyd <address@deleted>

[8] Charles Bloom <cbloom@mail.utexas.edu>

[9] Travis Schneider <tschneider@sword.lightspeed.bc.ca>

For me as the editor it was an impossible job to edit this guide: to include

all submissions in their original state, to include all references to the

authors of the submissions. Be sure that every one of them has written two or

three times as mush as you might expect when browsing through this guide and

looking at the references.

Thanks guys!

* Thanks to Kai-Uwe Clauswitz (clauswik@Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE) for providing

the ASCII art pict of the Romulan Logo.

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.2 Questions ==================================================>

<============================================================================>

If you have any questions about his guide, please send them to me. My current

e-mail adress is kreike@chem.vu.nl. If you have questions about playing the

Birdmen, you can try any of the expert player listed at the 'Credits' section

above.

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.3 Additions ===================================================>

<============================================================================>

Additions to this guide are welcome, if not very welcome. We are aware this

guide isn't complete, it won't be completed and it can't ever be completed

simply because both host.exe and phost.exe will keep changing, and new addons

will be created. Please send all additions and bugfixes to me at my current

e-mail address: kreike@chem.vu.nl. I'll gladly update the guide.

Right now the guide could use information about eliminating the Rebels and the

Colonies. Altlist 3 and 6 are also frequently used but not discussed in this

guide. Maybe some info about different game setups: custom races (Where to

spend your credits on), custom starmaps (in general), and different game

scenario's (Disunited Kingdoms, Ashes of the Empire, Capture the Flag etc.)

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.4 Updates ====================================================>

<============================================================================>

You can always find the latest version of this Guide at my homepage: the Elite

Site. The current URL of the site is:

http://www.chem.vu.nl/Studenten/kreike/vgap.html

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.5 Complaints ==================================================>

<============================================================================>

I would like to redirect all complaints and annoying messages concerning this

Birdmen Guide and the Birdmen in general to the 'Lenin BrotherHood', a group

of VGAP players that love the Evil Empire. You can find their official

homepage at the time of writing at URL: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3524.

Why? They just shouldn't have put that 'infamous recipe for the Cooked

Birdman' on their site - it did hurt my feathered soul very deeply! :-)

<============================================================================>

<====== 10.6 Distribution ================================================>

<============================================================================>

* This Guide will be available on the NET free of charge. The ten of us we

created the guide and we should get the bucks. Since we're not charging

anything, neither should someone else.

* You may distibute, copy and publish (parts of) this guide by every means you

can imagine as long as the contents of the guide remain unmodified and our

names remain included.

Chapter 11

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

<============================================================================>

* This guide has been written on my fabulous, fantastic and famous Power

Macintosh 6100/60. If you do like this guide, you'll probably be infected by

a Macintosh virus, i.e. the I-like-Macintosh virus :-)

(I guess these words truely will be my last...:-)

Amsterdam - March 1997,

Timo Kreike

kreike@chem.vu.nl

http://www.chem.vu.nl/Studenten/kreike/vgap.html