Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed

From: wws@sunray.att.com (Bill Stoll)

Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1993 19:39:00 +0000

In article <1993Feb1.051227.9295@mondy.uucp> mdm@mondy.uucp (Michael Mondy) writes:
>Personally, it seem odd that the Privateers haven't been snapped up.
>You can't build the biggest battle cruisers, but you can build some nice
>ships before others can (you need a good economy and quite some time to
>build those mongo ships).  The Privateers ships seem to have a longer
>range than a lot of other ships; with better fuel/weight ratios and
>larger tanks, they can boost at high warps for longer periods of time.
>Just the sort of thing to harass the other alliance's shipping routes to
>undercut their economy. Would somebody who's actually played this race
>comment on how well they worked out?
>
>For that matter, I'd like to see discussion on what happened in any
>games that have been finished.
>
>Mike

I've been playing a series of games with a friend using different races
in each game so we can get the feel of the various possibilities.  In
our second "full" game which is just ending, I took Privateers and Robots,
and he took the Evil Empire and Cyborgs.

The blurb in the instructions about the Privateers is accurate.  They
make efficient use of resources, but can't build any monster ships.
Once I got to tech 10 hulls, I started cranking out the Bloodfang
Class Carriers.  3 fighter bays, 80 fighters, 7 beam weapons, and only
need 133 Molybdenum for the hull!  And only 2 engines!  It would take
3-4 of them to make a dent in the evil empire's Gorby Class Battlecruiser,
but I did catch an empty Gorby with one and manage to kill it with minor
damage (and the loss of most of my fighters).

It helped a lot that my Privateers started on a world with abundant
Molybdenum.  In fact, I wrote a note to the author and he says that
all homeworlds will have identical mineral resources in version 3.0
to make things more fair.

I'm still learning strategy.  I try to build as many factories as
possible first thing, and postpone ship building until I can build
a (tech 6) Large Deep Space Freighter with at least tech 7 engines.
I let the Stardrive I and III engines in stock rust away.  I haven't
tried to raise taxes to 100% for a turn or two.  Sounds promising,
but I guess I'm too nice to do that :)

Then I expand as fast as possible, looking for close abundant sources
of all minerals, especially Molybdenum.  I sketch my colonized planets
on a piece of paper with little codes to indicate their features,
and use the sketch to design supply routes so that all the good planets
get developed.  So far I have always gotten the jump on my opponent,
sending capital ships into his territory before he does the same to me.

Once I took an enemy planet and managed to get a base on it.  I saw his
capital ship coming to take it back, but I only had 45 Molybdenum.  I
decided that at least I would take out some of his fighters, so I built
some "space stations" -- low tech ships with six tech 1 beam weapons
and stardrive I engines.  They weren't going anywhere; they were just
sitting in orbit to take out 6-12 fighters apiece.  He never attacked
it so I don't know if that was good strategy.

My favorite tactic is to sweep through enemy territory with a nice
capital ship escorting a Large Freighter loaded with colonists, both
ships in Exploration mode.  If an enemy planet has few colonists, I just
cargo down enough to take over.  If not, I switch the big ship to
Kill mode and take an extra turn.  Saves having to deal with planetary
defenses, and preserves the mines and factories on the planet.  Then
if I suspect he'll be taking it back soon, I load all the mined
resources onto the freighter (if not enough room, try to make the planet
be out of something, or take Molybdenum).

For awhile I thought that building big ships was a better use of resources
than building starbases.  Now I'm not so sure, since starbases do a better
job of defending planets than planetary defenses alone.

I'd like to see more discussion here on VGA planets, too.  My site doesn't
subscribe to alt.games.vga-planets.

Bill Stoll
wws@cblpd.att.com
--
Bill Stoll
wws@cblpd.att.com

References

VGA Planets -- Players needed
mdm@mondy.uucp (Michael Mondy)
Mon, 01 Feb 1993 05:09:42 +0000
Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
mdm@mondy.uucp (Michael Mondy)
Mon, 01 Feb 1993 05:12:27 +0000

Referenced By

VGA Planets -- Players needed
mdm@mondy.uucp (Michael Mondy)
Mon, 01 Feb 1993 05:09:42 +0000
Re: VGA Planets -- Players needed
mdm@mondy.uucp (Michael Mondy)
Mon, 01 Feb 1993 05:12:27 +0000