Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder

Playing in a game with lots of players (say 30) on a big map as
privateers you can easily come close to your ressource point limit.
But on the other hand if playing these kind of games you'll have much
more problems with micromanagement...

Jochen
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Yep! When I played Rebels in Endurance. Big game, lots of objects. The
problem was that Lordfire as the Rats had a huge population of the
little things, talking like a billion, and thus soaked up the Rp's. I
was exploding mines and pods left right and centre and still couldnt
get some leeway.
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Ok, I stand corrected. This brings up another thought though. Has anyone
here ever had a resource point problem, except when you were getting your
behind handed to you?



<drayath.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1146326065.237727.143960@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> You are assuming a 100% hit rate.
>
>>From shipcalc a speed 60 pod (i.e. fast enough to not be affected by
> reduced minefield hit chance) travelling completly through a 5000 ord
> minefield (60 ly of mines) has a hit chance of 23.1%
>
> So you would actully need 87 pods (2175 mc & 87 resource points).
>
> Now the pod sender becomes more efficent if there are is a large number
> of overlapped minefields (as waste less pods), the minefield layer
> becomes more efficient if layer smaller minefields (i.e. 500 ord
> minefields still take 20 pod hits but use a 1/10 of the ord to lay)
>
> Now finally there is an easy defence to this, have a few small 10 man
> wings of cheap ships with a couple of small phasors mounted ner the
> edges of the minefields with autointercept soft and target soft orders,
> will anialate every pod they intercept for no cost to you.
>
> Drayath
>
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Eric writes
> Cost of a 5000 ord minefield with a power of 20:
>
>50 Supplies
>500MC
>
>Cost to destroy the same minefield with fodder (pod as example):
>500 MC
>
>Does anyone else here have a problem with this?

No. Minefields are too powerful and slow the game down, particularly
since the introduction of the "minefield recharge" command codes.

I suspect you are of the opposite opinion as you laid impressive
quantities during the game we're just finishing. Would you class
yourself as a mainly defensive player?
--
Paul Honigmann
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Eric ponders

>This brings up another thought though. Has anyone
>here ever had a resource point problem, except when you were getting your
>behind handed to you?

Yeah. CivMil. It got solved by exterminating the Crystals, and
Stonetrooll simultaneously zapped the CoM. That's with a relatively high
growth race. When playing EE you often get resource point problems.
--
Paul Honigmann
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

> No. Minefields are too powerful and slow the game down, particularly since
> the introduction of the "minefield recharge" command codes.

I of course disagree. And I have never once made use of that command. From
my perspective if I already have to have a ship out there I may as well lay
a new one rather than recharge an old one.

> I suspect you are of the opposite opinion as you laid impressive
> quantities during the game we're just finishing. Would you class yourself
> as a mainly defensive player?

Depends on the game of course whether I'm offensive or defensive. In Civ/Mil
I was very agressive for the first half the game, mostly in a diplomatic way
out of neccessity given my game circumstances. I didn't have the tools early
on to go head to head with my chosen enemies (not once in that game did I
have an enemy I didn't choose to have). Once the winning condition was
effectively achieved by around turn 50 and I couldn't convince others that
the game was over I did what little needed to be done to preserve the
victory for another 30 turns. I think I squeezed it out perfect, and in the
process proved that defense is a viable option in this game. Sorry if that
upsets those who don't think it should be and are more of the instant
gratification types.

I did always love playing defense in hockey and soccer though. It was always
far more fun imo to thwart the offense and say: 'yeah, like you really were
going to score there. NOT!!! hahahahahahah!' and then take the ball/puck to
the other end and score. Taking the initiative away from the offense is an
art, and once you do those who are only offensively minded are usually left
looking around dumbfounded and/or pissed off. Always depends on the game
though and your opponent as to what your tactics should be of course. Play
your opponent. Obviously....
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Perhaps then, given what you guys are saving, the formula that calculates
and distributes RPs is in need of a tweak.

My thoughts are this:

If you take all 21 races and start them off with 100,000 col pop bases, give
them an absolute ton of food so that isn't a factor in the growth, and then
let these races just grow and grow at their rates: on turns 1, 10, 20......
100 the RPs given to each of these races should be somewhat the same. This
would be a generic test of course not taking all into consideration (ie the
Sols) but in a nutshell I think that's what we should be achieving as far as
RPs go.



"soxee" <crooksy9 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1146348401.687342.235530@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
> Yep! When I played Rebels in Endurance. Big game, lots of objects. The
> problem was that Lordfire as the Rats had a huge population of the
> little things, talking like a billion, and thus soaked up the Rp's. I
> was exploding mines and pods left right and centre and still couldnt
> get some leeway.
>
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Not yet mostly because I have only played on small maps Echo or smaller
so far but in a new game expect RP to be the biggest limiting factor on
food production on a 1000 star map. spiral galaxey 4000 * 4000 as COM.
assuming late game 80% control 12 ships per planet average 800 star
bases 8000 for 10 aquellas per base 800 celestas 800 cobals (fuel
production/transportation) 80 aries (alc) already at 10480 just for
base maint. will not leave much for fleet. Now if a map gets bigger
than that such as privateer II real problems can arise when stars and
bases alone can account for more than 1/4th total resource points.
Point is the larger the map the more that RP is a factor.
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

A few more thoughts on mines:

Laser minefields are neccessary for some races to have a chance vs certain
other races, in the same way gravs are neccessary for some races to be able
to have a chance vs certain other races. Too powerful? Not at all when up
against what they're designed to fight against.

I think one of the more powerful aspects of mines in VGAP4 is the
intimidation factor. Mines are relatively easily destroyed by most races.
You can also sail a ship through a single minefield with relative ease.

To furthur address Civ/Mi, the abundance of mines that I had laid were done
largely because I just turned some ships on repeat minelaying and issued the
command code BUO, every single mindfield over planet ID #1 is the result of
this and my desire to not spend a number of minutes turning my ships off. I
have far more ord than I needed. My enemies could easily have sailed at 12
ly through my fields to fight me, which you eventually did. I even let you
get close enough to build a jumpgate and lay your own fields. In the end, in
the ship vs ship battle the Feds prevailed, relatively overwhelmingly. (I
still don't understand why a joint operation wasn't done). Those minefields
caused very few casualties. I think the only minefield casualties that were
in abundance were from the EE fighters who sacrificed themselves on them.


"KlingonKommand" <Paul.DeleteThis@nurk.fnord> wrote in message
news:q1IbbiBXD8UEFws5@furfur.demon.co.uk...
> Eric writes
>> Cost of a 5000 ord minefield with a power of 20:
>>
>>50 Supplies
>>500MC
>>
>>Cost to destroy the same minefield with fodder (pod as example):
>>500 MC
>>
>>Does anyone else here have a problem with this?
>
> No. Minefields are too powerful and slow the game down, particularly since
> the introduction of the "minefield recharge" command codes.
>
> I suspect you are of the opposite opinion as you laid impressive
> quantities during the game we're just finishing. Would you class yourself
> as a mainly defensive player?
> --
> Paul Honigmann
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Eric writes

> instant gratification

an excellent description of my motivations!

>My enemies could easily have sailed at 12
>ly through my fields to fight me, which you eventually did. I even let you
>get close enough to build a jumpgate and lay your own fields.
...."let you"... interesting interpretation...
>(I
>still don't understand why a joint operation wasn't done).

There's a point here which may be of interest to the newsgroup. We did
in fact attempt a joint attack but the different fleets arrived at
slightly different times, largely because some came late via a jumpgate
and were maybe 25LY behind the vanguard. We were retty desperate to get
you because we figured every turn counted, it was possible Stonetroll
could knock you off the top VP spot if we nobbled you right then. Also
we could see reinforcements rapidly approaching.

So we stretched things to the max and tried to use the "chain effect",
whereby if the vanguard attacked you and the other fleets were within
5LY, they would all fight at once. Theoretically this effect can stretch
across 15 LY if there are enough links in the chain. We carefully moved
the vanguard SLOWLY to within 5LY of your HW and other ships slipped
into place behind it to give a continual chain reaching to the other
fleets, which could not go too quickly due to your minefields, but could
get to within 15LY of your homeworld. This would have resulted on one
megafleet attacking your homeworld at once.

Well, something went wrong. I think it was because the vanguard probably
met one of your ships coming out from your HW (to lay more mines) and
the battle triggered before we were all in place. It was always going to
be touch and go whether we won anyway. Good fun trying, though.
--
Paul Honigmann
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

What went wrong with the chain from my understanding your ship can
initiate combat from 5 ly away when this occures it draws all friendly
units from the initiating ship. likewise the enemy draws all of his
friendly units from up to 5 light years away so although the total
chain is 15 ly you only have control of at most 10 of those 15 ly to
chain your ships the enemy has the same with 5 of it overlapping the
same area hence the 15 ly total.

Hope this helps...

Morningstar
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Ok, ok. I first didn't want to post this because it might still be
war relevant for me, but what the hell, here it is.

You can't really sweep minefields with pods (or other ways to reduce
the fields power).

At least not if the enemy knows what he is doing. If there are
minelayers with recharge orders inside range (200 ly respectively), the
minefield gets recharged before it's cleared. A simple matter of host
order. Ta-da.

Eric, remembering our league game, you might regret now your previous
stand on not using REC .
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder 

Yup, this is my understanding how chaining work, too.
 >> Stay informed about: Minefields being destroyed by pods and other fodder