RETURN TO SWITCHBOARD |
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11A. Dreadlord Battle Manual |
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11K. The Evil Empire |
Return to Strategy Sub-Menu |
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11B.
Colonel's Thoughts |
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11L. The
Robotic Imperium |
1. Introduction to VGA Planets |
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7. Minefields
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11C. Early
Game Strategy |
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11M. The
Rebel Confederation |
2. Race Information Sub-Menu |
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8. Combat
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11D. The
Solar Federation |
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11N. The Missing Colonies of Man |
3. Friendly Codes Sub-Menu |
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9. Ion Storm
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11E. The
Lizard Alliance |
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4. Planet Information Sub-Menu |
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10. Misc.
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11F. The
Empire of the Birds |
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5. Starbase Information Sub-Menu |
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11. Strategy and Strategy Guides |
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11G. The
Fascist Empire |
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6. Ship Information Sub-Menu |
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12. Add-on
Information |
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11H. The
Privateer Bands |
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11I. The
Cyborg |
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11J. The
Crystal Confederation |
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THE MISSING COLONIES OF MAN (RACE 11) STRATEGY GUIDE(S): |
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Guide to The Colonies of
Man |
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By: C. D. Clagett, The
Ultimate Admiral |
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So,
you sent in your race choice in the game a little late, with the result that
all of your top choices were already taken. |
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Uncertain
about which of the remainder you wanted to play, you sort of chose the
Missing Colonies of Man. After looking |
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more
carefully at your ship list, you're not sure you didn't make a mistake. Your
main torpedo carrying combatants are |
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either
a wimpy 2 tube/4 beam Tranquility Class cruiser or your 4 tube/4 beam Cygnus
which is better but has very low hull |
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mass,
small cargo capacity, and a fairly small fuel tank. Weighing in under 100 kt,
a single mine hit splatters the Cygnus into |
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its
component atoms. Your tech 9 Iron Lady Class frigate, with 2 tubes/8 beams is
also relatively low mass and worse, has a |
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glass
jaw in that its crew of only 99 makes it an easy capture for anything firing
a lot of high tech torpedos. Even high |
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population
Cyborg worlds without a starbase can capture it. The Patriot Class light
carrier has a good punch, but has such |
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small
cargo capacity that it generally only punches once against a reasonably
formidable ship that doesn't actually defeat it. |
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The
Scorpius Class light carrier has more mass and more cargo room, but it only
has two bays and so is almost useless against |
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anything
with more than 4 beams. Your premier capital ship, the Virgo Class
battlestar, is formidable enough but it is the |
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Sherman
tank of the heavy carriers; all the other heavy carriers have ten rather than
just eight bays and defeat it rather |
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handily.
Two high tech weapon battleships can take one battlestar out, giving the
enemy an even trade since the second |
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battleship
survives. The Cobol is a neat ship with its bioscanner and fuel scooper, but
nothing to brag about as a combatant. |
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Do you have any reason
for optimism? You better believe it. |
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If
you have made it through all of the above except for the last line your
problem is that you have failed to recognize your |
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strengths
along with your weaknesses. This is not an unreasonable mistake. The
Colonies' strengths and the value of their |
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special
abilities are not as obvious as those of most of the other races. This
article examines the strategic implications of the |
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Colonies'
strengths and weaknesses and makes recommendations with respect to specific
strategies and general campaign |
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directions for the
Colonial player. |
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Handling Your Population |
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In
the beginning... you are weak. But then, so is everybody else. What you do in
the first twenty turns, however, will have |
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significant
impact on how strong you are at turn seventy or one hundred. The game default
in Host version 3.22 has your |
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homeworld
start off with a moderate tax rate of eight percent. This is ruinous. Set the
tax rate to zero immediately ! Your |
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colonist
population growth rate is determined by the planet temperature, modified by
the colonist tax rate. The equation |
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term
governing clan growth with respect to taxes is 5/(5 + T) where T is your %
tax rate. This term is multiplied by the |
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growth
rate potential determined by planetary temperature to yield actual growth
rate. Therefore, if taxes are zero your |
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clans
increase at the maximum potential rate. If taxes are at 5%, growth rate is
halved; if 10%, the growth rate is reduced by |
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2/3.
A 50 degree planet with a zero tax rate grows at 5% per turn; this is the
best possible growth rate. A 27 degree planet |
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with
zero taxes will only grow at about 1.5 % per turn. Now, a 5% exponential
growth rate gives you a doubling time of |
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about
14 turns, provided you are not removing clans for colonization, which of
course you will be. Let's say your |
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colonization
efforts remove clans from the home world such that your doubling time is a
constant 20 turns; by turn 60 you |
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will
have undergone two doublings, your home world will have a population around 4
million, and it will be producing 2000 |
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clans
per turn. Your actual growth performance if you have set taxes to zero early
will be much better than this. Now, |
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setting
your tax rate to zero will make a little bit of a money problem for you in
the beginning. You can make up for this by |
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building
the maximum amount of factories and selling supplies. Your max allowable
factories will grow by up to 3 per turn, |
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but
perhaps not at all on turns in which you remove several hundred clans. Your
object for the home world is to get it to |
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150,000
clans (15 million colonists) as soon as possible. Its main export, along with
ships, will be clans. Resist the temptation |
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to
tax your homeworld until you are at 15 million colonists. This point is more
crucial to you than the other players. The |
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Cyborg's
clans are his tax base, but he gets the vast majority of them from
assimilated natives. Everybody else's tax base are |
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the
native populations on colonized worlds. You alone will have the capability of
exporting many millions of colonists from |
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your
home world. No one else will have the fuel to support the movement of this
much mass, in addition to supporting |
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movement
of warships and freighters loaded with minerals. You alone will be able to
establish multiple multi-million colonist |
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worlds
like the Cyborg, which you will then tax like he does. You will never have as
many large population worlds as the |
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Cyborg,
but in the mid-game when the cyborg worlds are fully assimilated your tax
base of colonists will continue to expand |
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at significant
rates, far faster than anyone else's. |
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As
you enter the mid-game and have several million colonists on the home world,
you will want to begin establishing |
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multiple
worlds with multi-million colonist populations. Put these populations on
uninhabited planets having moderate |
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temperatures, preferably
in the 40-60 range. In that temp range, growth of taxed populations, while
small, is at least non- |
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negligible in absolute
terms provided you have a few million colonists. How you generate these
worlds will be discussed later. |
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Ship Strategy in the Early Game |
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The
very first ship you need to build is your Cobol. Whether you increase your
engine tech to 8 and build hyperdrives is |
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immaterial
for your first cobol since a Quantum 7 driven cobol can travel indefinitely
at warp 8 and still make a small surplus |
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of
fuel even if fully loaded. You will want to install hyperdrives on your early
medium freighters. I do not recommend the |
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small
freighter due to insufficient cargo capacity. Set your cobol's mission to
Sensor Sweep and begin collecting bioscanner |
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reports.
I recommend starting a log of bioscanner reports, since you will lose old
reports if HCONFIG.EXE is set to delete |
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old
messages. If you choose, you may simply make notes on the planets in the
starchart window. When you do this, it is |
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helpful
to note the turn in which the bioscan was done. If you later get another scan
of the same world and the number has |
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increased,
you know that the planet is colonized. If it is decreased, you know it is
either colonized by the Cyborg or the |
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natives
have been induced to fighting and killing each other by whoever else is
there. Send your early ships out with 20% of |
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cargo
devoted to clans and the rest to supplies. On each new planet you arrive at,
set down 1 clan and 4 supplies, and keep |
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going,
beaming up fuel if you need it. Don't head for home until empty. Sell 3
supplies the next turn and build one factory. |
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If
there are natives present, leave the tax rate at zero until you can get
enough clans on the ground to collect non-trivial |
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amounts
of taxes. The growth rates of natives are determined identically to that of
colonists. Several turns of zero taxes will |
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substantially
increase your collectible taxes when you finally arrive with people, and
fifty turns down the road the results of |
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your
restraint are multiplied many fold. Always try to take the long view. In the
larger ship picture for the early game, you |
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will need to build many
Cobols. These are the ships on whose backs your logistical and operational
juggernauts are going to ride. |
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Defense: the First Requirement |
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If your game is set up
so that you are not close enough to see your neighbors immediately (and
hopefully your nearest neighbor isn't a cloaking race
who wants nothing more than to destroy the Colonies) you will enjoy the
luxury of developing your logistical infrastructure. The more you develop
your logisitical infrastructure, the faster you will develop combat power
when the need for it arises, although I wouln't wait until you see the enemy
warship inbound. In that case, you waited a little too long. When you begin
to bump up against other players' races you must figure out who is going to
be an ally and who will be an enemy. More discussion on allies will follow
later. You have ships that are excellent as components of your defensive
infrastructure, ships that will do nothing but stand by and wait for another
race to attempt the invasion of your terrritory. The first that comes to mind
is the Lady Royale class cruiser. With four beams and one tube, it will
defeat few if any of the ships that are likely to be used in offensive
operations against you. But don't worry about that, because that is not what
you want it for. The Lady Royale is light, with a hull mass of 130 kt, and
has a large fuel tank (670 kt). Its cargo |
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capacity
is only 160, but if we're talking about torpedoes, that's a lot of torpedoes.
The Lady Royale is an EXCELLENT |
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interdiction
warship, the more so because it is cheap. For less than 1200 megacredits you
can build Lady Royale with heavy |
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phasers
and Mark 7 torpedoes. I favor Mark 7s at the high tech end of torpedoes
because the cost ratio of megacredits to |
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mines
yielded is better than with Mark 8s. If your limiting factor is money, build
Mark 7s. If your limiting factor is minerals, |
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build
Mark 8s. For the Colonies, megacredits are going to be the limiting factor
more often than minerals. The heavy phasers |
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are
for mine sweeping, not combat. Rather than attempting to intercept and
destroy invading enemy warships, use the Lady |
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Royales
to interdict the enemy's movement within your territory. Make no mistake, you
are exceedingly unlikely to destroy |
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anything
with mines. Your purpose is to prevent him from moving somewhere you don't
want him to, like away from your |
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interception
warships, or if he does so, to damage him and force him to use up any onboard
supplies. Any ship reduced to |
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warp
8 or less because of lack of supplies to repair with should be a sitting duck
for you. In an ideal world, you would like to |
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be
able to converge on any invading warship or squadron of warships with at
least three interdiction warships loaded with |
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high
tech torpedoes. Your second class of interdiction warship is the Cobol. By
turn 50 you will have them everywhere |
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anyway,
supplying fuel to your massive logistical operations. Put a few torpedoes on
a good fraction of them. If you are |
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really
strapped for cash, go with Mark 4s. At 13 megacredits a copy, they are very
inexpensive, and they have the highest |
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mine/megacredit
ratio of all torpedoes. Voila! A standing, always ready movement interdiction
force. The last component of |
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your
defense force will be your carriers. Initially, these will be Patriots unless
you are fortunate enough to develop |
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unmolested,
in which case you will have Virgos. These are your interception warcraft. By
the second half of the first hundred |
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turns,
you should have several starbases. While for logistical reasons it will be
best to build most of your heavy carriers at |
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your
forward starbases, do not be reluctant to build some at your rearward
starbases just because the commute to the battle |
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will
be long. These ships will constitute your interceptor force while they are
moving forward to the front lines, to be ready |
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in
the event that your front lines are penetrated by enemy warships. You will
vastly prefer intercepting an invader from |
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ahead
to chasing him from behind, slogging your way through any minefields he cares
to lay. Once the carriers do arrive at |
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your
front lines, they augment the output of the forward starbases. Take the long
view; a commander occasionally needs to |
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exercise patience. |
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Passive Defense: The
Neutronium Wastelands |
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You
have one other defense which will be absolutely unavailable to other players.
You have the capability of turning your |
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forward
areas--and any other areas you choose, into a fuel wasteland. How rigorously
you pursue this policy is up to you, |
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but
you disadvantage yourself if you omit it altogether. This passive defense,
which only the Colonies are capable of |
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implementing,
renders your territory extraordinarily difficult to penetrate in depth by
warships of heavy mass or limited |
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fuel
capacity, i.e. short fuel tank range. The way you go about this is simple.
Strip planets of fuel beyond what you are |
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actually
going to use for the transport of minerals and megacredits by freighters
arriving no more than half a dozen turns or |
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so
in the future. This requires careful management on your part, but is not as
difficult as it might seem at first glance. Most |
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planets
don't produce that much fuel. For those that produce a lot of neutronium as
well as a lot of the other minerals, well, |
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just
use that to fuel your large freighters. For those that yield a lot of fuel
but little other minerals, you can either have your |
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battlestars
fuel up there, or send a fuel carrier to move it to where it will be used. In
general, you have few potential uses for |
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fuel
carriers but this is one of them. The only way to overcome this defense is to
send fuel carriers with the invading ships. |
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On
seeing this, you should start salivating with anticipation. You have merely
to arrange for those fuel carriers (hull mass 10 |
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kt)
to drive through a few minefields. Can you say "component atoms"?
Now, this defensive tactic can be defeated by the |
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invader
if he decides to tow the fuel carrier behind his larger warship, thus
removing the danger of the fuel carrier hitting a |
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mine.
If he tows, however, he cannot simultaneously lay mines to annoy any warships
which you may have pursuing him |
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from
behind; all options have their downsides. It is essential to remember that
cobols on intercept missions do not make fuel. |
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Therefore
if you plan to use them to refuel ships which are engaged in interception
missions, I recommend cruising through |
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the
area you think the pursuit will go, and then when the fuel tank is reasonably
full set your mission to intercept your |
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intercepting
warship. One turn of no fuel production will not appreciably reduce the fuel
in its tank, especially if the other |
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ship's
movement brings it close to the cobol. All you need do is have a care to
avoid the invading warship, which will almost |
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certainly be able to
swat your cobol like an insect. |
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Deep
Raiders Squadrons: The Bitter Edged Sword of Colonial Wrath |
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Master
this offensive strategy, and your less perceptive opponents will learn entire
new dimensions of the meanings of |
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suffering
and frustration. The concept is exquisitely simple. How you actually
implement it is a little more difficult. In |
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essence,
this involves manuever warfare. Although your ships can be defeated by many
of the top ships possessed by other |
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races,
and you might feel that you have less combat power than the other races, you
must bear in mind that the efficacy of |
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force
is at least as dependent on where and when it is applied as it is on its
magnitude. The big picture of what you are trying |
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to
accomplish here is simple: you have almost unlimited fuel, whereas for
everybody else this is as scarce commodity. |
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Therefore,
you must make it an even scarcer commodity by forcing him to chase you with
his warships. Each 100 kt of ship |
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mass
that you force the enemy to set in motion at warp 9 will result in a cost of
8 kt of neutronium. Big whoop, you think. |
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You
can well believe that it is. An armed and fueled battleship may well tip the
scales over 1000 kt total mass. Since he'll |
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never
catch you with just one (and even if he did, you'd spank it), you will have
caused him to pursue or intercept with two |
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and
probably more battleships. This adds up in a big way, turn after turn. You
have presented your enemy with not just a |
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problem,
but a dilemma. Each of his options contains a major downside for him. If he
chases you fuel becomes even more |
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limited
for him, and unavailable for his large freighters. If he doesn't chase you
his planets will be destroyed. There is no |
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attractive
choice for him here. Do not make the mistake of using these squadrons to
attack the planets along your mutual |
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territorial
borders, for the purpose of pushing back the border. This would resemble the
trench warfare of WWI. If you do |
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this
you have failed to understand the objective here. Your purpose is not to take
some particular piece of ground, but to |
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damage
his economy in general, by tying up and causing him to squander precious
resources, and hitting targets as they |
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become
convenient. At some point you will also have to engage his ships and start
destroying them because eventually they |
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will
become too numerous to maneuver between and induce to giving chase. Your
objective here is to destroy ships faster |
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than
he can replace them. If you have more starbases than he does or can build at
yours more often than he does at his you |
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will
eventually attrit him down and it will be all over except for the
shouting. |
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What you need is a
squadron of ships capable of indefinite movement without replenishment, and
capable of indefinitely re- |
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arming
itself in enemy territory. The most basic combination is a battlestar, a
gemini, and at least one but preferably two |
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cobols.
The battlestar is the muscle, the gemini maintains a full complement of
fighters aboard the battlestar, and the cobols |
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provide
fuel, sniff out targets, and lay mines to deter pursuit. The reason two
cobols are preferred is so that in case pursuit is |
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relatively
close and there are enough ships that some missions may be set to minesweep,
you will be able to lay a minefield |
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that
is just barely too far away from the pursuing ships to be swept. Simply
calculate the number of mines that will produce a |
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minefield
with radius one light year short of that needed to bring it into minesweep
range (set by HCONFIG.EXE) and |
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transfer
torpedoes between ships so that one of them can lay the exact amount of mines
needed for the optimum field. |
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You
need the gemini because in most cases you won't want to have the battlestar
devoid of supplies from having built |
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fighters.
If you have multiple battlestars (by which I mean at least three) in the
group then this is less of an issue. There is one |
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glaring
problem with the basic configuration of the Deep Raider Squadron. Your
torpedo race enemy will promptly reason |
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that
all he has to do is gang up on your lone battlestar with two of his
battleships. In the case of the Fed, even though that |
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second
Nova Class Dreadful is at 85% damage all weapon systems still function and so
it will handily mop up the rest of your |
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squadron
after finishing off the battlestar. The second Dreadful survives the battle,
and you have just traded four ships for |
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one. Needless to say,
this is unacceptable. |
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The Expanded Deep Raider
Squadron |
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There
are two main ways to expand the basic Deep Raider Squadron. First, and most
importantly, you need multiple |
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battlestars.
Three or more is ideal, but even two will give you a favorable trade against
battleships. With three or more, you |
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need
not fear engaging two battleships because you will lose one battlestar and he
will lose both battleships. When you are |
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down
to two battlestars, your next engagement with two battleships will leave you
with only one and your next engagement |
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after
that against two battleships will be your last if the enemy is the Fed.
Against the battleships of a torpedo race other than |
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the Fed, the remnants of
your squadron may be able to finish off the second battleship. |
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The
second way to expand the basic squadron is to add Tranquility Class cruisers
and Cygnus Class destroyers. I always put |
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heavy
phasers, for minesweeping, and usually Mark 7 tubes on them. The Cygnus is a
pretty good little planet buster against |
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anybody
but the mid- or late-game Cyborg, and the Tranquility has great cargo
capacity as well as a good fuel tank. Why is |
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cargo
capacity important? Because you will use it to steal his bloody minerals and
dump them into space; you therefore want |
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a
ship with deep pockets. I preferentially take the molybdenum, since that is
the rarest mineral in the game. That brings us to |
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the
other thing you do with the Deep Raiders, which is scour any planet you hit
clean of fuel, and savor his pain. Whenever |
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possible,
arrive at a planet with plenty of room in your fuel tanks; dump it into space
the turn before you hit the planet if |
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necessary.
You have two options of use with the Cygnus. First, you can keep it with the
rest of the squadron until such time |
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as
the battlestars are destroyed, and possibly take out a batttleship damaged by
the battlestars. This is a viable course against |
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any
enemy but the Fed. With his weapon systems advantage, any dreadnought that
survives the battlestars will eliminate the |
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rest
of the squadron also, unless it runs clean out of torpedos, and maybe even
then. The second use for the Cygnus is to let |
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it
peel off to hit targets of opportunity. Against any but the Cyborg, this ship
will be more than adequate to destroy a |
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planet, assuming no starbase. |
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Scorching the Planets! |
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Whenever
you conquer a planet, you get one clan on that planet. You have a few options
at this point. If the planet is |
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uninhabited,
you may riot your clans by jacking the tax rate and getting happiness below
40 of you're playing version 3.5. |
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This
will cause a loss of four factories and six mines per turn. Rioting by itself
causes loss of three factories and five mines per |
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turn.
This is cumulative with the fact that you don't have enough clans to support
all the structures, so you lose an additional |
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mine
and factory each turn for a total of four and six. It is unlikely that you
will do this for very many turns before he gets |
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around
to taking the planet back. On an uninhabited world, therefore I recommend
removing the clan, making the world |
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unowned.
If the world has natives, get the happiness down close to zero and then set
it to 100%, especially if the world is |
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deep
in enemy territory. If it is a border world and you think you might possibly
develop it by bringing in clans, you might |
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not
do this. In version 3.5, if the happiness of either colonists or natives goes
negative, you lose 30% of both per turn, |
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rounded
up to the next integer in the case of clans. This means that one clan will
only give you one turn in negative happiness |
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before
the planet becomes unowned. Two clans gives your two turns, and three clans
will give you three turns. All the while |
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you
have set tax rate to 100%. You are gutting the enemy like a fish. This is an
exponential decay curve with a coefficient of |
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0.7
raised to the Tth power, where T is the number of turns in negative
happiness. Two turns of 30% loss reduces the native |
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population
by 51%, and every two turns negative will reduce it by an additional 51%, so
that after four turns he has only |
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about
one quarter of the native population he had before you arrived to do your
dirty work on him. To find the percentage |
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of
natives remaining after any number of turns of negative happiness, raise 0.7
to the power of the number of turns; it's |
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positively
awful. After your clans have died off in the melee, and his planet is well
into negative happiness, he will get around |
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to
re-colonizing. The huge roaring sound after a mere two turns of 100% tax rate
will be that of his taxable population going |
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down
the toilet on a rocket sled! His sense of urgency at re-taking any planets
you have attacked will soar. Note that the ship |
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to
planet combat phase in the turn happens before taxes are applied and
happiness recalculated. So, if he re-takes the planet |
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the
turn you leave for other targets (assuming you haven't lingered) you have not
done very much to him except eliminate tax |
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collection
until he re-colonizes. If this is all you are accomplishing, however, don't
fret over it. You have set him back badly |
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on
that world and if he has to re-colonize every planet you attack, and your
bioscanners will lead you to the fat targets, you |
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have seriously degraded
his overall economic efficiency. If you have forgotten to send clans along
with the squadron, pull up |
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the
clans from any uninhabited worlds you conquer and drop them on the inhabited
worlds you take. This will give you a |
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second turn with which
to keep tax rates at 100%. |
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The Colonial Clan
Conduit, or... The Titan Rising |
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Because
of your extraordinary lift capacity, you will want to export clans off of
your homeworld. Once you homeworld |
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begins
to have several million colonists on it, you will be extremely tempted to
begin taxing the clans there. Resist this |
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temptation.
Build yourself a bunch of colonization squadrons consisting of two cobols and
one super transport. Their |
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combined
capacity is 3100 kt, and the output from the two cobols will keep the three
of them going indefinitely. Pick a |
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world
with moderate temperature, preferably within three or four turns movement
from your homeworld, and begin |
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cycling
the colonization squadrons to between the planet you've chosen and the
homeworld. If your homeworld tax rate is |
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zero,
and you have at least 6.2 million colonists there, you can remove 3100 clans
every turn and not have any decrease in the |
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homeworld
population. Not inconceivably, you will eventually have six or eight of these
little squadrons, and your chosen |
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world
population will grow by 3100 clans every turn, or almost every turn, apart
from natural increase. At a 10% tax rate, |
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that's
31 megacredits. Raise several planets like this to several million colonists
each, and your tax base will be rapidly |
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expanding
late in the game, when even the Cyborg may be levelling off. Now, in addition
to taxing your native populations, |
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you
can tax your colonists. Just continue building super transports, with cobols
to fuel them, and while you may never rival |
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the Cyborg in total clan
mass you will begin to approach him, reducing his money advantage over you. |
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Allies and Enemies |
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The
secret to dealing with many of your enemy opponents is analyzing their
strengths and nullifying those strengths if |
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possible.
Some strengths are intrinsic; you can do little about these except adapt to
them. Others are extrinsic. Need for fuel |
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|
is
the most universal extrinsic factor. All potential enemies are vulnerable
with respect to fuel. With fuel they are all |
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potentially
strong; without it they are unquestionably all weak. Another important one is
the tax income advantages of some |
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races.
The Fed, Cyborg, and Lizards fall into this group. The Fed collects double,
the Cyborg converts natives to colonists, |
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who
tolerate a higher tax rate than most natives, especially as population
becomes high. The Lizards have the Hiss mission to |
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quell
dissatisfaction. Because this property is part of the strength of these
races, you need to make it one of your points of |
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attack.
For these races it is important to destroy their tax base, whether natives or
clans. The reason that they have their |
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taxation
advantages is because their fleets are expensive. A battleship loaded with
100 high tech torpedoes can easily cost twice |
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|
as
much as your battlestar, and possibly even more. Cloaking races do not have
much in the way of special vulnerabilities |
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except
that if anything they may be a little more dependent on fuel availability.
Against the cloaker you will want to |
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assiduously
and rigorously pursue the neutronium wastelands policy. You cannot track down
the cloaker's ships to destroy |
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them?
Well, can you find his planets? If you attack his planets is he likely to use
his warships to defend them? Of course he |
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will! All you need to do
is show up loaded for bear, and arrange that the exchange of ships is at
least in your favor. |
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One
thing you should bear in mind is that you are without question the premier
candidate for alliance in the whole game. |
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Your
problem may in some instances be that the other players are not astute enough
to know this. Within twenty turns they |
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will
likely be looking for fuel. Point this out, and explain how the cobol works.
There is absolutely nobody in the game |
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whose
overall effectiveness will not be improved by the fuel that only YOU can
supply, and in abundance. Of course, they |
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could
try to capture one, or in the case of the Privateers, to steal one. The
Privateers, however, cannot clone, so a single cobol |
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or
even a few of them will not have much impact, especially later in the game.
Try to pick your allies by whose ship types |
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will
offer you correction for the defects in your own line of ships. Speaking
strictly of ships, the Lizards have the least to |
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offer
you, since part of what makes them formidable is their ability to take 150%
damage. Consequently, their ships are not |
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that
impressive, especially if owned and operated by you who will not get the
damage tolerance advantage. Don't spurn an |
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offer
of a terraformer without careful consideration. Depending on your planets,
the benefit to you could be huge. Your |
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battlestar,
on the other hand, is a huge improvement over the Madonzilla Class carrier,
and the Lizard player would |
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absolutely
love to have a few. Therefore don't turn your nose up at a Lizard offer of
alliance. Just make sure you understand |
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how
he can help you and, equally importantly, is willing to help you. Except for
terrraformers, and cloaking ships which |
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aren't
that formidable in your hands, the Lizard doesn't have much to offer you in
the way of ships. The Lizard can, on the |
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other
hand, be most helpful with mining and tax collection, and these are not
necessarily trivial. The Lizard is just about the |
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hardest
player to see the benefits of forming an alliance with. Everybody else has a
ship type that you can put to very |
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effective use. |
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One
word of caution when using the Cobol as a bargaining chip. For some races it
may be your only bargaining chip. Be |
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very
sure of who you are giving them to. If you give Cobols to a race with a tax
advantage who will not mind paying double |
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for
the ships, you will eliminate, or at least markedly reduce his fuel
limitations thus improving his efficiency as an enemy |
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|
should
he intend to betray you. This goes double for the Fed, who can upgrade a low
tech Cobol that you give him. He will |
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|
clone
it before Super Refitting, thus keeping his cloning costs down. His end cost
of a Transwarp driven Cobol will then |
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|
only
slightly exceed yours, and with his tax advantage he will be able to afford
as many of them as you have. Now he will |
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|
have
the cash to afford to build his fleet, and the fuel to drive a logistical
engine as powerful as yours. You are basically toast |
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|
for
this game, and hopefully will have learned greater wisdom for the next. If
you are confident that the Fed will be a faithful |
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|
ally,
give him a Cobol with Stardrive 1s, lasers, and Mark 1 tubes. Let him clone
THAT before refitting, and the two of you |
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|
will mop up the cluster
with everybody else. |
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Starbases, Factories, and
Merlins |
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One
of the reasons you need to distribute your clans well and initially let them
grow unimpeded by taxes is so that you will |
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|
have
large numbers of factories on your planets. Be careful not to overburden
inhabited worlds with factories. A small |
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|
number
of excess factories on those worlds can cause you to lose hundreds of
megacredits every turn in taxes because the |
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|
maximal
tax rate that the natives will tolerate will drop. Load up most heavily on
uninhabited worlds, especially those with |
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|
moderate
temps. As you see, this will fit in with your clan policy. Your high
population worlds will also be your high |
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|
factory
worlds. Do not sell your supplies. These supplies are the straw that your
Merlins are going to spin into gold. In the |
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|
game
I am playing as of this writing, I have fourteen starbases and eight Merlins
distributed among about 160 planets. Some |
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|
of
the starbases are sufficiently closely co-located that one Merlin can service
more than one starbase. A Ghipsoldal world is |
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|
your
premier candidate for a starbase, since you know you want it to produce
Transwarps. If you intend to build a logistical |
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|
ship
starbase there and manufacture only large freighters, the base will cost you
only 2500 mc to raise to the necessary tech |
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|
levels.
Starbases that you plan to build freighters and lighter warships at actually
have a relatively low rate of mineral use. |
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|
Amphibian
worlds are good candidates for bases that you plan to build warships at,
since you know you will likely build |
|
|
heavy
phasers. I personally like to cluster starbases (I have only done this in a
couple locations, but it works very well); one |
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|
base
will make battlestars and the nearby bases will make Patriots, Cobols, and
Cygnus class destroyers, etc. The geminis |
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|
hover
over the nearby Bovinoid world. Deep Raider Squadrons assemble very quickly
under these conditions. |
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|
Dedicate
a Cobol to accompany your Merlins. Provided HCONFIG.EXE is set to have Cobols
produce at least 2 kt of |
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|
neutronium
per ly travelled, one Cobol can keep a Merlin, even loaded with 900 kt of
minerals that it has just made, moving |
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|
indefinitely.
If planets are widely separated, other races are not going to want to pay the
fuel costs of moving the fuel the |
|
|
extra
distance. This consideration is, of course, immaterial to you. The only
reason your Merlins should stop is to deal with |
|
|
supply
backlogs accumulating on Bovinoid or other worlds. The Cobol supplying fuel
to the Merlin should keep moving, |
|
|
laying down fuel at your
future stops. |
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|
Summary |
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|
Sure,
you have weaknesses. Big ones. But you have strengths as well, and the key to
victory is recognizing them. Assess your |
|
|
enemies
for what makes them strong. Does he have a tax advantage needed to fund
expensive fleets? Destroy his tax base. |
|
|
Does
he cloak such that you cannot track his ships down? Make his ships come to
you. Does he have many starbases |
|
|
producing
free fighters? Destroy his bases, many of which may be relatively weak and
used mainly for fighter production; |
|
|
without
those fighters he is toothless. I have not explored in this article the
Colonial weaknesses for purposes of developing a |
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|
strategy
against the Colonies. That is for another commander to do. If you as the
Colonial player wish to be maximally |
|
|
thorough,
you will try to see things through the eyes of your enemy, so as to
anticipate his offensive initiatives. Ask yourself |
|
|
on a turn by turn basis,
if you were he, how you would attack the Colonies. Then, it only remains for
you to be prepared. |
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C. D. Clagett, The Ultimate
Admiral |
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