Re: Galaxy-shipping materials

From: cebra@ids2.idsonline.com (Jonathan Cebra)

Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000

>I've won three games of Galaxy, all running over 75+ turns each and never
>having built MAT in any of them except at my homeworld. Didn't effect
>me long-term?

I'm going to respond to a variety of threads, not all of them Steve's:

First,  when I suggested that building MAT was crucial to long term economic
development, I didn't mean to suggest that you want to build it on every high
resource planet you colonize.  Building MAT for one turn on the homeworld may
be all the MAT you need for 40-50 turns.  That said, I prefer to do it early
rather than late.

Second, I too devote many low resource planets to technology development, but
MAT is useful when industrializing (building CAP which is more resource
intensive than ship building), when building orbital defences (for those of us
that do); and it's nice to have some MAT stockpiled to turn these planets over
to ship production in times of need.  How much will that increase total
shipbuilding capacity? As a rough guess perhaps 10-15%. Maybe that's not
earthshattering, but I'd rather have the 10% than not have it.

Third, yeah it is hard to ship all that MAT around.  I build a lot of 100 mass
freighters and research CARGO tech (although to a lesser extent than other
techs, but a lot of players NEVER research CARGO tech.)  So there are a lot of
upfront costs.  As, I said it's part of an overall strategy of long term
economic development.  I don't claim that that's the only strategy, or even
necessarily the most successful.  That's what we play the games to find out!
(I've had enough success not to change, but then so have others with very
different strategies.)

On a different note: for those of you who scoff at orbital defenses.  You are
correct that (except perhaps on a homeworld) orbital defenses will rarely a
major invasion; but they can stop raiders and their presence keeps your
"allies" out of temptation.
Second, the time to build orbital defences is before you need them; once you
are under attack you usually are better served building a fleet which can
come together to stop the invasion. At least that's my opinion.

References

Re: Galaxy-shipping materials
Sam Craig <samcraig@io.com>
Wed, 02 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Galaxy player: Any new games starting out there?
welostr2@concentric.net
Sat, 21 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Galaxy-shipping materials
Stig Hemmer <stig@voldsboks.pvv.ntnu.no>
Wed, 09 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Galaxy-shipping materials
Sam Craig <samcraig@io.com>
Wed, 02 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Galaxy player: Any new games starting out there?
welostr2@concentric.net
Sat, 21 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Galaxy-shipping materials
Stig Hemmer <stig@voldsboks.pvv.ntnu.no>
Wed, 09 Oct 1996 00:00:00 +0000