From: macko@pilot.njin.net (Peter C. Macko)
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb
Subject: Re: Stale socks.
Date: 15 Aug 92 10:24:36 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


  jwoolsey@gfx.engga.uwo.ca (John J. Woolsey) writes:

>The real players know that squadrons are USELESS. The best attack force is
>really small. One tanker with an Xtal, and a Battle ship with Lasers, and a
>strength 2 CEW and lots of armour. No guns, and enough fuel to fire a full
>strength laser shot. This combination works great. Stay online when you jump.
>Then laser every defensive system in the solar system to death once the tanker
>jumps. You can dismount the Xtal, and move it over to the battle ship, and thus
>only use one Xtal for both. Just after laser tech 5000 fuel is usually enough
>to take out a complete systems defenses. about 5000 takes out an @ if you want
>to bother. I chalked up something like seven @s, and quite a few dead players
>last game with that kind of strategy. I lost almost nothing until I stopped
>being able to log on during updates all the time. The CEW is for anti-missile
>fire. Upgrade the CEW on the spot to the correct range, and then take the
>missile out with one shot every time. 

  Preventing attacks like this is why jump points must be monitored and protected.
A dozen specially modified one shot throw away fighters serve admirably when placed 
at key jump points.   At near point blank range one or two of these can take out a B.
I know some other players that use mines, but these can do severe damage to your own 
ships.  So I'd use mines in such a manner only if none of my own ships were likely to 
be in the blast radius.

>CEWs are useless for attacking since any player with brains lands every ship
>in the system since it is harder to hit landed ships.

  Agreed.

>Killing experienced players is possible, but it has to be done really early
>in the game, and you have to really be ready to do it. It is also fairly easy
>to kick an experienced player out of a non-home system without terribly high
>losses if you know what you are doing. You can also kill a newbie at his home
>world without too much difficulty early in the game. You usually lose the home
>world, but you can often take over most of the other planets in the system.

  Warring with a very good active player early on will cost you resources that 
could be better invested in the colonization race.  So while a player with 10 
planets early in the game may be easier to defeat then one with 100 later on, you 
could colonize 25 new virgin planets with the resources necessary to kick him 
off of 5 and to repel his repeated attempts to retake them. 

>I fully agree on this I am either going to write an auto-client that really
>works or never start a serious game again. I don't believe you need many real
>allies to live in a game. I have seen so many players with 10 to 15 allies fall
>to my forces because the allies couldn't do a thing in time. (The planet was

  I agree.

>already wasted, and defended by the time they got there.) The other famous
>one is a player saying why did you kill my cargo ship that I sent into someone
>else's home system that you were attacking. I wasn't involved in the war I was
>just there to look at the system. Honest. Really. It is only way into the game,
>and almost everyone has full explore, but still.... You need to know how to play
>to survive. Allies usually amount more to a pact of non-agression or a tech
>builder then real co-ordinated offensives or defensives. Actually I let someone

  It depends on the alliance.  I've been in a number of alliances where, as
Trib likes to say, we'd "dogpile" the opposition wiping them out one at a 
time.  But under most circumstances it is difficult to coordinate joint
actions because of differences in priorities and playing schedules.



					-Aesir
-- 

  Peter C. Macko                      Internet: macko@pilot.njin.net
  LCSR/Network Research                         macko@cs.rutgers.edu
  Telecommunications/Network Services     UUCP: {backbone}!rutgers!cs!macko
  Rutgers Computing Services,  Rutgers University (Piscataway, NJ)   
Newsgroups: alt.games.gb