Favourite MOO 1 tips/tricks

[Zed-F]

Some background:

I've played several hundred games of MOO, usually on Impossible/Small and with 3+ opponents. I find the Klackons, Psilons, and Humans to be easiest, Meks, Silis, Sakkra, and Alkari in the middle, and Darloks, Bulrathi, and Mrrshan the hardest.

Like vxma, I try to maintain a defensive posture focussing on tech and production, with only a minimal fleet and relying primarily on bases for defense, until I'm ready to "breakout". Usually by the time Stinger missles are on the scene (if not before) I'm ready to go on the offensive. I primarily use shoot-and-scoot medium missle ships at this point in the game to expand my territory one planet at a time. I still don't have a big defensive fleet at this point and what I do have follows my offensive fleet to protect my conquests while I consolidate; my own systems are still relying mostly on missle bases for defense. By the time megabolt cannons, high energy focus, and the like show up, I'm usually in a pretty commanding position and am ready to press for the endgame, and tend to switch to beam weapons, with either swarms of small fast ships built for punch & dodging or large/huge ships built for durability (or a combination of the above) depending on the game & what my opponents have. The game almost never lasts into the final third of the tech tree, as I find working with the limited tech available in the earlier parts of the game more interesting, so I'd rather just finish the game and start a new one. I do run the occasional zoo experiment where I leave someone alive while I finish off the tech tree but I generally don't bother.

I thought some sharing of ideas might be useful. For instance, I generally don't find that significant fleets are worthwhile before at minimum sublight engines as ships can't be refitted (whereas bases automatically upgrade and are cheaper to maintain) but perhaps someone else has a different experience.

Here's some tricks that I often use when playing:

- At the beginning of the game, I send out a small unarmed scout to every star in reach, and leave it there. If the enemy sends an unarmed colony ship and no escort, it will retreat from the scout. This delays their settlement and gives you a better chance to grab more planets.

- When I have a rich or ultra-rich planet that is done building factories and pop, if I'm not building ships there I will let it pump up my cash reserves by leaving it on industry, rather than setting it to research. This money can help development of new planets, speed up research elsewhere, or whatever. If it's ultra-rich, I can inject some of my reserves on that planet and the ultra-rich bonus will compound them to be more than what I spent in the first place. (If it's just rich, IIRC it comes out about even, so this is usually not worthwhile in that instance.)

- If I have a poor world, it's usually still productive enough that it's possible to defend primarily with bases, providing it's a decent size. However, ultra-poor worlds are very difficult to defend without a significant fleet (built elsewhere of course.) They are still worthwhile to colonize, however, as pop farms. I usually leave these guys pretty much strictly on terraforming and research, with some on bases in case I can eventually get enough permanent defenses in place for it to be secure. I don't build factories until I can successfully defend the place with my fleet; in this way, if an opponent does manage to capture it, I don't lose any technology (the chance of technology gain on capturing a planet is dependent on the level of industrialization.) Also, because the planet is ultra-poor, I know the AI will not be able to build up a significant defense on the planet and it will be easy to retake when the time comes.

Anyone else care to post some tips & tricks?

[AIL]

I also send scouts to every system I can get to.

I also never research on rich/ulra-rich worlds since that's a waste of resources. Poor's are never used to build ships...

As I switched to playing Large Maps I can only Add some things that help to keep a better overview, what I find quite important.

F2 and F9 are used very often to cycle through colonies. F9 will only work with advanced space scanners. I use F2 to emphasize the building of shields and such only on planets that are ready with it's industry.

In wars i always use Fleets to see what my fleets are doing. I try them to never come to stop on a Planet were they are not needed. The fleets in orbit are always on top of the list.

Planets to build ships are chosen via Planets. Rich and Ultra-Rich are always the first who get to do this. Poor, Ultra Poor and Artificials are only chosen for this task, when there's no other possibility.

Well, these tips allow a fast gameplay even in large ore huge maps, since they help you to not get lost in your widely spread empire, they are very low on use in small maps, since you'll be able to remember the most things.

[vmxa1]

You may want to consider that all the money pumped into reserves are going to be 50% lost. This does not seem to be a good idea to me, except in special circumstances.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
"By the time megabolt cannons, high energy focus, and the like show up, I'm usually in a pretty commanding position and am ready to press for the endgame, and tend to switch to beam weapons, with either swarms of small fast ships built for punch & dodging or large/huge ships built for durability (or a combination of the above) depending on the game & what my opponents have. "

I rarely go into end game before HEF, I use only large ships for off/def. Missile boats are keep at my planets, one of each design, to drive off attackers.

"- When I have a rich or ultra-rich planet that is done building factories and pop, if I'm not building ships there I will let it pump up my cash reserves by leaving it on industry, rather than setting it to research. This money can help development of new planets, speed up research elsewhere, or whatever. If it's ultra-rich, I can inject some of my reserves on that planet and the ultra-rich bonus will compound them to be more than what I spent in the first place. (If it's just rich, IIRC it comes out about even, so this is usually not worthwhile in that instance.)"
Unless you are a Sillicoid, Ultra Rich planets will be down the road a bit. They tend to be at least Inferno, and more often Toxic. They will be Hostile, so pop is halved, this means getting them productive requires terraforming.
Anyway in a small map, I do not need to pile up reserves artifically as the normal accumulation is usually enough. Anyway all money that foes into the reserve is tax 50%, that is a lot of lost BC's.

Poor and UP planet are no different to me than any other in that I will not take any planet unless I feel I can hold it. That means build fac/pop until maxed and then bases until it can stand alone (or as much so as any other planet).
If I can not hold it I will destroy the colony and leave.
To me research is the focal point. To use you term, I will "zoo" at all times, it is rare for me to end agame without all tech and all planets (but the slave).

[Zed-F]

vxma, most of your comments seem to reflect playstyle, rather than tips/tricks. Overall, I have found that small ships are about the same effectiveness as large ones, depending on what technologies you have. Each has some minor advantages in general over the other (small tends to lose at least a few ships to attrition but tends to cost less in maintenance) but overall they are pretty balanced. Do you find that large ships have a particular advantage that makes you select them all the time, or is that just your preference?

"Unless you are a Sillicoid, Ultra Rich planets will be down the road a bit. They tend to be at least Inferno, and more often Toxic. They will be Hostile, so pop is halved, this means getting them productive requires terraforming."

While this is true, that only impacts in what order I will colonize/conquer planets, not whether they get colonized/conquered (unless I never get the tech to land there.) If there is a rich planet in the game, I will probably own it at some point, early or late.

"Anyway in a small map, I do not need to pile up reserves artifically as the normal accumulation is usually enough. Anyway all money that foes into the reserve is tax 50%, that is a lot of lost BC's."

I will accumulate some reserves from normal planets until such time as I get a rich or ultrarich planet that is fully built up and has nothing else to do. Of course if I'm shipbuilding the rich planet will do that in preference to my normal planets doing it, but if I'm not shipbuilding then it makes more sense to accumulate reserves from a planet that can do it more efficiently. In this situation I can turn off my collection of reserves normally and just go strictly with collection of reserves from the rich planet. The fact that it's rich cancels out the 50% penalty, and if it's ultrarich then the situation is even better.

As an example, if I have an empire production of 1000 spread over a number of planets, 100 of which is on a rich planet, a 10% allocation of funds to reserves (arbitrary number) globally would generate (900*.1*.5 + 100*.1*.5*2) = 55BC in reserves, whereas if I did it all from the rich planet it would still cost the same 100 production but I'd get 100BC in reserves rather than 55. That 100BC reserves could be applied to speed up colony development, or research elsewhere, for instance. As an example, if I have an artifact planet somewhere, I can take the rich planet's entire production and send it through reserves at a 1:1 rate to the artifact planet to boost research there (up to the amount of production the artifact planet has), meaning that the rich planet is now effectively an artifacts planet. Similarly, the ability to build up industry and defenses quickly at a colony by doubling its production rate through use of reserves is quite powerful in helping to both consolidate planets more quickly and to boost your overall economy.

Of course, money sitting in your reserves that never gets used is not helping you (though you do want something there in case of emergency in case you get attacked unexpectedly.) The idea is to transfer production from a fully developed rich planet to another planet that can make better use of it (providing you don't need the rich planet for shipbuilding.)

"Poor and UP planet are no different to me than any other in that I will not take any planet unless I feel I can hold it. That means build fac/pop until maxed and then bases until it can stand alone (or as much so as any other planet). If I can not hold it I will destroy the colony and leave."

As you prefer. I'd argue that the cost of a colony ship and some minor population from one of your other planets is more than paid for by the benefits of having an extra pop growth and minor research center, that can subsequently help populate other worlds you colonize later, even if the planet is exposed to attack but you can't really afford to defend it yet. If the planet does get waxed before you can defend it, you haven't really lost anything, at least if you wait to build factories until you CAN defend it. Moreover, staking a claim to the planet to extend your range and deny the colony to the AI for at least a while doesn't hurt either.

This is really more useful at the beginning of the game while you are still researching environment techs and before you have the means to rapidly generate a lot of pop at your industrialized worlds through cloning and so forth.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
"vxma, most of your comments seem to reflect playstyle, rather than tips/tricks. Overall, I have found that small ships are about the same effectiveness as large ones, depending on what technologies you have. "

Yup, never said it was anything other than how I do it as many tactics are viable.

No matter how you slice it putting money into reserves is taxed 50%, that is a loss of revenue. I will only do that in a real pinch.

"As you prefer. I'd argue that the cost of a colony ship and some minor population from one of your other planets is more than paid for by the benefits of having an extra pop growth and minor research center, that can subsequently help populate other worlds you colonize later, even if the planet is exposed to attack but you can't really afford to defend it yet. If the planet does get waxed before you can defend it, you haven't really lost anything, at least if you wait to build factories until you CAN defend it. Moreover, staking a claim to the planet to extend your range and deny the colony to the AI for at least a while doesn't hurt either."

I have denied it to them, I bombed it to zero pop. They will keep sending colony ship and pop an maybe a defender here and there that I will wax. This cost them.
I am talking about a planet that I am not going to be able to hold, so any thing I spend on it is resources that should be going into research or more ships, so I can hold it. Where is the benefit of sending pop to the planet and 4-6 turns later they take it back? In fact if I get a few factories up and have some tech they do not, they may gain that knowledge.

[vmxa1]

My point on the Rich and UR is that they are not going to be in my hands early in the game (excluding a rare non hostile one). By the time I have the tech to grab that toxic ultra rich planet, I am just playing with them. The game is in the bag, so it does not matter what I do.
In a small map, I would expect to have 5 or more normal environment planets and maybe a few hostiles (non wealth), by the time I have the tech to get that toxic. At that stage I have the game in hand. I often will have more than 5 good planets as I will grab the 2 races that have managed to only have their homeworld. It depends on if they are located cloes enough to me. In that case I probably have 4 or 5 Terrans and maybe a few Oceans and Jungles.

[Zed-F]

Re: reserves, it's only a loss of revenue if you would otherwise be shipbuilding constantly from your rich/ultrarich planets. Sooner or later you will have your planet fully built up and well-defended, and your only options will be shipbuilding, research, and reserves. Of these, shipbuilding will be performed the most efficiently and should be the priority if more ships are needed, but research on a rich planet is exactly as efficient as sending to the reserves, and research on an ultrarich planet is LESS efficient than sending it to the reserves. Since reserves are more flexible to begin with and can be used to boost research if desired, it's preferable to boost reserves from a rich/ultrarich planet than it is to do research there.

Anyway, that's my tip for reserves. On to the playstyle comments.

It sounds like you usually only get around to colonizing these places pretty late in the game, and if so, then shipbuilding is perfectly reasonable. I often will grab these places earlier in the game than that.

For me, the limiting factor is landing tech. This actually comes pretty early in the game. Toxic and Inferno colony bases are only around TL 12-15 -- you can research them as your 3rd planetology tech if you so desire and get the option. By the same token, sublight engines (move 3) are around the same TL and can also be picked as your 3rd propulsion tech. I usually don't even consider seriously going on the offensive until I have sublight engines or better. I might pick on a weak enemy (e.g. someone stuck on their home planet as you mentioned) with earlier tech but otherwise I'll wait for sublight engines to get started, and will start to really hit my stride when stinger missles show up (a 4th tier weapons tech.)

So, I have to conclude that if you're ready to go into full-blown conquer mode by the time you are ready to colonize hostile environment planets, either you go on the offensive well before you get to sublight engines, or you don't consider landing tech to be the limiting factor. I'm guessing the latter -- that being, you won't grab that planet until you can put a significant fleet in orbit to defend it, which means you need the tech to build a decent fleet and the time to build it up once you have the tech.

As for me, I don't want to wait that long. Rich/ultrarich planets build up quickly enough (especially with use of reserves to give them a jump start) that they can defend themselves in short order, and the AI will almost never attack them if it can't land on them. Since I usually get the landing tech first unless I've gotten a real bum start, I feel safe enough colonizing them even without a defensive fleet orbiting. I very rarely get burned by having my colony wiped out before it can defend itself following this strategy.

---------------

With the ultrapoor colony world, you're envisioning a different scenario than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about colonizing the planet in the expansion part of the game, when the AIs are busy filling in their own back yards and have not started attacking people yet. Certainly if you're only going to get a few turns of production out of the planet before it gets waxed, because you're already at war, then the value of colonizing it is greatly reduced (with one exception which I'll get to in a moment.) But, if you know you're likely to get a good amount of time undisturbed, then the planet can still be useful as a pop growth center to help fill up your other planets and as a minor research center. So long as you don't build factories there until you know you can defend it, the only cost is the colony ship and whatever pop you sent there in the first place -- i.e. the cost/benefit ratio is high because the cost is minimal. To look at it from a tech perspecive, you get many more RPs later due to the research the planet generates and due to its ability to boost other colonies' pop than it costs in lost RP now to colonize the planet.

Once the AI has filled in his back yard and starts thinking about war, you don't care if the planet gets whacked because you haven't put anything into the planet, and because you have no factories so he can't capture tech. If he does whack it, you usually don't replace it until you can defend it. At this point in the game denying the planet to the AI by bombing it when they resettle and send some pop there is a perfectly viable strategy.

There is one scenario where it is worthwhile to try to recapture an ultrapoor planet you can't really defend, though, and that's when you want to use it as a population sink against one of your enemies. If you have a significant advantage in ground combat and/or pop growth relative to your enemy, you can take advantage of the fact that an ultrapoor planet is pretty much indefensible. Even if your fleet is inferior and you can't hold the planet, you know the planet can't effectively build missle bases, so all you have to do is send troops in when you notice the enemy fleet has moved away. The enemy will move its fleet back and send more troops to recapture it, but due to your advantage in growth/ground combat, this is much more expensive for him than for you. Rinse and repeat, and soon the enemy will be running at minimum pop on most of his planets, crippling his production and research efforts. This will improve your ability to catch up in tech or build up your fleet relative to that particular AI. Once the AI is sufficiently weakened and you have caught up, you can absorb their empire as usual. Again, the key to this particular tactic is to ensure there are NO factories on the planet, so that there is no chance for the AI to get tech from you when they recapture the planet. Note that this is more effective as a population sink than just letting the AI colonize the planet and then bombing it for them as the AI will send many more troops to capture a planet than they will send to colonize a new planet.

This same logic can be applied to very small hostile worlds before you get enough terraforming technology to get their size and production up to the point where they can build enough bases to defend themselves, especially if you need to colonize there anyhow to get enough range to colonize something further out. Generally speaking though I don't go out of my way to colonize something very piddly early in the game as the benefits of doing so in terms of ability to generate pop/RP without factories are much smaller than they would be for a more clement but poorer planet.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
Re: reserves, it's only a loss of revenue if you would otherwise be shipbuilding constantly from your rich/ultrarich planets. Sooner or later you will have your planet fully built up and well-defended, and your only options will be shipbuilding, research, and reserves. Of these, shipbuilding will be performed the most efficiently and should be the priority if more ships are needed, but research on a rich planet is exactly as efficient as sending to the reserves, and research on an ultrarich planet is LESS efficient than sending it to the reserves. Since reserves are more flexible to begin with and can be used to boost research if desired, it's preferable to boost reserves from a rich/ultrarich planet than it is to do research there.

Ok here is the test/prove of the loss.
Go to any planet you choose, note the rev going to research for that planet. In my test it was 2033bc. I had 2021bc in reserve at that time. I put all of the planets excess into reserve.
Next turn I now have 3041bc in reserve. Half of the 2033 went down the drain. It was not precisely half, but very very close. I traded 2033 for research to get 1020 more into reserve. This is not a good trade IMO, unless you have a dire situation.
Am I wrong here?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
It sounds like you usually only get around to colonizing these places pretty late in the game, and if so, then shipbuilding is perfectly reasonable. I often will grab these places earlier in the game than that.

For me, the limiting factor is landing tech. This actually comes pretty early in the game. Toxic and Inferno colony bases are only around TL 12-15 -- you can research them as your 3rd planetology tech if you so desire and get the option. By the same token, sublight engines (move 3) are around the same TL and can also be picked as your 3rd propulsion tech. I usually don't even consider seriously going on the offensive until I have sublight engines or better. I might pick on a weak enemy (e.g. someone stuck on their home planet as you mentioned) with earlier tech but otherwise I'll wait for sublight engines to get started, and will start to really hit my stride when stinger missles show up (a 4th tier weapons tech.)

So, I have to conclude that if you're ready to go into full-blown conquer mode by the time you are ready to colonize hostile environment planets, either you go on the offensive well before you get to sublight engines, or you don't consider landing tech to be the limiting factor. I'm guessing the latter -- that being, you won't grab that planet until you can put a significant fleet in orbit to defend it, which means you need the tech to build a decent fleet and the time to build it up once you have the tech.

As for me, I don't want to wait that long. Rich/ultrarich planets build up quickly enough (especially with use of reserves to give them a jump start) that they can defend themselves in short order, and the AI will almost never attack them if it can't land on them. Since I usually get the landing tech first unless I've gotten a real bum start, I feel safe enough colonizing them even without a defensive fleet orbiting. I very rarely get burned by having my colony wiped out before it can defend itself following this strategy.

Let me start with propulsion. I normally play as the Klac, they are poor at research of propulsion. This means I have a hard time getting engines. I could put more emphasize on that tech, but why bother. The only time I push it is if I need to reach a great planet and my draw is range 5 instead of 4. This means it will take longer and if I want to get going sooner, I must add to that research field.
Landing on hostile environments of Inferno or better is tech level 12. You will need to complete at least three advances in planetology to get started on level 12 or better. This presupposes that you will get that tech choice, you may not. I have had games where I could not research anything until radiation.
I am not going to favor one field over another after the first or second break through, I will use = to level it at that time, if not from the start. It depends on how I see the map.
So by the time I have those techs, all AI's will have lots of ships and I will have none. No way am I going to hold any planets from scratch until I get maybe two fleets of 4 or more large ships. This I will start doing with HEF.
Exception is quite early I may make one large laser ship to grab a planet when most AI's will not have anythng to defeat that ship. It depends on if any planets are in range that I can use. I will have scrapped it after that planet is up and running as it will be too slow to go anywhere and too weak to beat anything.
So in other words I will get to them around the same time as the AI, unless Silis are in the game, in that case they will already have them. It is hard to say, I may or may not get to the toxic or inferno first. It also depends on where they are. If they are 14 parsecs away, then I will not be gettign there first. If they are behind my HW, then I will. I shoot to get 4 or more planets and that is enough until I find a chance to grab another much later.
This sometimes occurs before HEF. Agan, I may get hostile planets sooner, if they are not in the front lines and hence do not need much defending as othrs can not reach them.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
With the ultrapoor colony world, you're envisioning a different scenario than what I'm talking about. I'm talking about colonizing the planet in the expansion part of the game, when the AIs are busy filling in their own back yards and have not started attacking people yet. Certainly if you're only going to get a few turns of production out of the planet before it gets waxed, because you're already at war, then the value of colonizing it is greatly reduced (with one exception which I'll get to in a moment.) But, if you know you're likely to get a good amount of time undisturbed, then the planet can still be useful as a pop growth center to help fill up your other planets and as a minor research center.

There is one scenario where it is worthwhile to try to recapture an ultrapoor planet you can't really defend, though, and that's when you want to use it as a population sink against one of your enemies. If you have a significant advantage in ground combat and/or pop growth relative to your enemy, you can take advantage of the fact that an ultrapoor planet is pretty much indefensible. Even if your fleet is inferior and you can't hold the planet, you know the planet can't effectively build missle bases, so all you have to do is send troops in when you notice the enemy fleet has moved away. The enemy will move its fleet back and send more troops to recapture it, but due to your advantage in growth/ground combat, this is much more expensive for him than for you. Rinse and repeat, and soon the enemy will be running at minimum pop on most of his planets, crippling his production and research efforts. This will improve your ability to catch up in tech or build up your fleet relative to that particular AI. Once the AI is sufficiently weakened and you have caught up, you can absorb their empire as usual. Again, the key to this particular tactic is to ensure there are NO factories on the planet, so that there is no chance for the AI to get tech from you when they recapture the planet. Note that this is more effective as a population sink than just letting the AI colonize the planet and then bombing it for them as the AI will send many more troops to capture a planet than they will send to colonize a new planet.

This same logic can be applied to very small hostile worlds before you get enough terraforming technology to get their size and production up to the point where they can build enough bases to defend themselves, especially if you need to colonize there anyhow to get enough range to colonize something further out. Generally speaking though I don't go out of my way to colonize something very piddly early in the game as the benefits of doing so in terms of ability to generate pop/RP without factories are much smaller than they would be for a more clement but poorer planet.

Ok, I may have misunderstood your original flow, as it sounded to me as if you were talking about a point in the game where expansion was contested.
I grab all the habitable planets in range at the start, even those that I may not be able to hold. Once planets are contested, I will either lose it or defend it. I mean that sometimes I land on a planet that is too close to a HW of a strong race. This means that if I can get a large laser ship to it, I may luck out and hold them off until I get missiles up and maybe not. During the start of the game, I do not care about poor or UP, in that I will still grab a large UP planet.
Bombing the planets is for contested ones that I have no chance of holding.

[Zed-F]

Ok here is the test/prove of the loss.
Go to any planet you choose, note the rev going to research for that planet. In my test it was 2033bc. I had 2021bc in reserve at that time. I put all of the planets excess into reserve.
Next turn I now have 3041bc in reserve. Half of the 2033 went down the drain. It was not precisely half, but very very close. I traded 2033 for research to get 1020 more into reserve. This is not a good trade IMO, unless you have a dire situation.
Am I wrong here?

For a normal planet, that's correct. I have never argued that the halving effect does not occur, as I know it does. However, this whole discussion has been about allocating funds to reserves from RICH and ultrarich planets, however. There, the rich/ultrarich bonus at least counters the loss you would otherwise incur. On a rich planet, every production point you allocate to reserves gets first doubled for rich and then halved for going to reserves. If you put it to research, it doesn't get halved, but it doesn't get doubled either. Since reserves are more flexible (and can be applied to research elsewhere if desired, or better yet to build up another planet and get it on research sooner,) reserves are better for rich and ultrarich planets.

I performed my own test on a game I was recently playing (in fact, the game you posted in the "try to save this one" thread.) In that game, I had a rich planet near the end of the game that could generate 1036 RP. I transferred all my reserves to some other planet and put all planets on 100% tech (I had Industrial Waste Elimination) except for the rich planet, which I put 100% on reserves. Next turn I had 1036 BC in reserves.

Looking back at my example, had it been an ultrarich planet it would have produced 2072 in reserves, as compared with the same 1036 RP if left on research. If I had then applied 1036 BC of that reserve back into the ultrarich planet to double its production for one turn, the following turn it would have generated an additional 4144 BC in reserves. So, if the planet had been ultrarich, in one turn I could have 4144 BC (leaving me with 3108 BC more in reserves), or 2072 RPs (leaving me with 1036 BC LESS in reserves.) Tough call there!

Now, if I'm shipbuilding at my ultrarich planet, I can build 4144 BC worth of ships per turn there normally, without drawing down on my reserves, or 8288 BC that if I throw 1036 BC of reserves at the planet, so shipbuilding is still more efficient than putting money in reserves at a rich/ultrarich planet. But the numbers show putting money in reserves at a rich or ultrarich planet pays off more than doing research there does.

The benefits of applying to reserves rather than directly to research are less striking on a rich planet as it's only a 1:1 ratio rather than a 2:1 ratio as with UR planets, but they are still there. The additional flexibility to be able to speed research at specific planets with artifact bonuses, or to speed development of new colonies, or erect emergency defenses against a surprise attack, or rebuild a planet from an attack that was more successful than expected, is very valuable. And, if your reserves are getting large enough that you have more than you feel you need, you always have the option to sink that money into regular colonies doing research, which will give you exactly the same RPs you otherwise would have gotten if you'd concentrated on research at the rich planet to begin with.

I would argue that having some going into reserve anyway is very desirable during the conquest phase so you can consolidate your conquests more quickly. If you're out conquering, odds are you already have all the tech advantage you need, so having one rich planet contributing to reserves is probably not going to slow your tech pace significantly.

[Zed-F]

I am not going to favor one field over another after the first or second break through, I will use = to level it at that time, if not from the start. It depends on how I see the map. So by the time I have those techs, all AI's will have lots of ships and I will have none. No way am I going to hold any planets from scratch until I get maybe two fleets of 4 or more large ships.

Right, I may emphasize one or two fields near the beginning of the game (usually propulsion/planetology) if there seems to be a reason to do so, such as need to reach a good planet. Similarly I will equalize them when that is no longer needed. And yes, by the time I research inferno/toxic colonies, the AI empires will have large fleets around and I will have pretty much no ships. However, there is one key statement you may have missed in my previous post -- the AI generally does not attack planets it doesn't have the tech to land on, even if it's at war with you. Instead, it will pick some other target, if anything else is in range. I find that unless the Silis are in the game, this usually gives me an opportunity to colonize any hostile rich/ultra rich planets that might be around and build them up to the point where they can defend themselves without worry of being counter-attacked, even though I don't have a fleet to defend them. They are often slower than I am to get to this tech level even when I'm not particularily rushing to get there, and even if they are at tech parity with me, they often choose some other planetology tech even though there may be a juicy ultra-rich planet nearby waiting to be colonized.

Anyway, that's my experience. YMMV.

[Zed-F]

Ok, I may have misunderstood your original flow, as it sounded to me as if you were talking about a point in the game where expansion was contested.
I grab all the habitable planets in range at the start, even those that I may not be able to hold. Once planets are contested, I will either lose it or defend it. I mean that sometimes I land on a planet that is too close to a HW of a strong race. This means that if I can get a large laser ship to it, I may luck out and hold them off until I get missiles up and maybe not. During the start of the game, I do not care about poor or UP, in that I will still grab a large UP planet.
Bombing the planets is for contested ones that I have no chance of holding.

So in that instance the only advice my statement would provide for you would be to not build factories on planets where you anticipate you will lose them rather than try to defend them. Get what you can in the way of RPs and pop growth out of them while you can, and skip the factories, so that when the planet does go down it doesn't take your tech with it.

[vmxa1]

I guess my whole concept of putting funds in reserve using a any rich/ur is that on a small universe, when I get those planets, it is time to start making ships and taking down planets. I have my core of planets that I feel are not going to be taken back and I am going to only grab one planet at a time (yes that rule is not absolute). If I have rich and UR they will make ships not reserves. The game ending time for me is when I have all tech researched, so doing things that slow that down is not what I want to do. Let the planet grow at what ever rate it can with whatever bit of help I have to give it. This is usually plenty as I will be scrapping fleets requlary. This is because I will make a new design once I have about 7 in any given one. Those funds and what ever is generated by factory left overs is all I need.
Again this is not about what is best, this just what I do, for what it is worth. maybe that is nothing.
Note that if you want to end a game earlier by conquest, then it may make sense to do what you say. If you are on larger maps, then that changes this as well. Sitting here playing small maps on hard or impossible, this is what I like to do. Change the game and I will likely change my tactics a bit.

[granid]

Originally posted by Zed-F
Rinse and repeat, and soon the enemy will be running at minimum pop on most of his planets, crippling his production and research efforts. This will improve your ability to catch up in tech or build up your fleet relative to that particular AI. Once the AI is sufficiently weakened and you have caught up, you can absorb their empire as usual.

I like rebellions for just that reason. I get about a quarter of my enemy's planets into rebelion, causing them to continuously destroy population. In addition, the rebelled planets don't contribute to their economy. I like to rebel big rich planets, so that they need to burn more transports to recapture them, and to take more away from their economy.

[Zed-F]

I have never really gotten the hang of how to use spies offensively for missions other than tech theft. This is why I have historically found the Darloks to be a bit harder to play, though I know some people consider them to be a very strong race, and I think my recent Civ3 experiences will make it easier to play them in future. Tech theft plays only a minor role of filling in gaps if you are striving to be in the tech lead, which is my usual gameplay style.

I guess the question is, is the money you spend on spying (which is money you're not spending on research/colony development) worth the results you get? Probably the answer is, it depends. I would guess that formenting a lot of rebellion in an enemy empire is useful in the middle game where you're out conquering your first couple opponents, but by the time you've taken them over and got a bit of a tech lead, it's less useful as you can just take over enemy colonies as fast as you can consolidate them anyway.

I was thinking of trying out Darloks again soon anyway to see if they seem better now anyway, so trying that suggestion out is another reason to do so.

[granid]

I agree, once you have the game in a bag, it's not that useful to go rile them up into rebelling. At that time, I am usually hard at work building stacks of huges loaded up with mauler devices However, I found it useful in the middle game, when a single empire grows too much and threatens to win by vote or just outbuild everyone. Rebell a quarter of their planets, get others to declare war (not hard, since the target is the largest empire) and soon things become equalized

[Urban Ranger]

I usually play the Klacs in some kind of ICS-esque strategy. At the beginning, I set my starting planet to build scouts to send out to all the planets within reach. All the production I put in Eco to max out population growth. Any remaining goes into research. Usually there is a decent planet within reach for me to colonise. If not, time to restart.For research, I favour polpusion to compensate for my racial flaw, then computers to keep me from being vulnerable to spies.

After I hog all the closeby planets, I build colony ships if there are any good ones to colonise. Otherwise I max out Eco first, then pump up research.

Now my second planet may give me extra systems to hog, so I do that first. After the population of the first planet is maxed out, I switch it to making colony ships at a reasonable speed (maybe 10 turns or so). I colonise everything: first the ultra-rich and rich planets, then artifacts ones, then normal ones, then poor ones, and lastly the ultrapoor ones.

I will first expand away from my own corner until I run into other races. This limits their growth while maximise my own.

After I get some kind of Robotic Contol, I'll start building factories on my planets. Before then, it's not worthwhile because a Klac population is as good as a factory.

[grinningman]

This is very interesting stuff!

Here are a couple of things I've discovered while playing over the last few weeks. They may or may not be common knowledge, but I haven't seen them mentioned anywhere.

- When you retreat from a battle, your fleet sets course for the nearest planet you control. During the turn after you retreat, you can change the retreating fleet's destination to somewhere else - even back to the planet you are retreating from. This means you can attack and retreat from the same planet with the same fleet every turn. This is especially abusable with ships loaded with lots of the faster 2-shot missiles (merculite and better); pop into the system, launch two loads of missiles and then retreat before the defending ships/missile bases can hurt you. Rinse and repeat until everything at the planet is destroyed. I feel like this is against the spirit of the game, though.

- Each missile base has 3 missile lauchers. Each base has 50 hit points. Missile base hit points are modified depending on what level of armour you've discovered in a similar way to ship hit points. e.g if the best armour you've discovered is duralloy, all your missile bases have 75 hit points. I *think* missiles fired from a missile base have twice the range of and the same speed as a 5-shot launcher (as opposed to a 2-shot).

Grinning man

[vmxa1]

Yes you can send your ships back to the planet they just retreated from.
MB have three tubes and are enhanced by your armor. They also have Deflecor shields, battel computer and ECM. You get a +3 to inititive and +1 to attack level.
If you learn subspace interdictors they are added free to bases. They do not get double range, but do get "enhanced range and speed" , this is not defined.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by grinningman

- When you retreat from a battle, your fleet sets course for the nearest planet you control. During the turn after you retreat, you can change the retreating fleet's destination to somewhere else - even back to the planet you are retreating from. This means you can attack and retreat from the same planet with the same fleet every turn. This is especially abusable with ships loaded with lots of the faster 2-shot missiles (merculite and better); pop into the system, launch two loads of missiles and then retreat before the defending ships/missile bases can hurt you. Rinse and repeat until everything at the planet is destroyed. I feel like this is against the spirit of the game, though.

I wouldn't think it against the spirit. Afterall, if it takes multiple turns to eliminate the defenses the AI has time to deploy fleets to stop you. It also assumes that you can eliminate any aspect of the defenses before retreating. A damaged MB after all is of no use to you whatsoever when its fully operational again the following turn.

If you learn subspace interdictors they are added free to bases. They do not get double range, but do get "enhanced range and speed" , this is not defined.

I've never noticed any enhanced missile velocity - although I must admit I don't tend to rely much on missile bases by the time the interdictor is discovered.
I don't think the range can be enhanced either as it doesn't seem to be limited when firing from a planetary base unless one is using teleporters (a moot point when discussing interdictors anyway)? ...

[Zed-F]

I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

I also noticed and have used the "retreat to the same planet" feature. It could be considered exploitative, as it's a feature the AI never takes advantage of. Possibly the game designers included this to allow you to select which of your planets you want to retreat to, but if so it seems like it ought to have been simple enough to implement a filter to only allow retreat to one of your own planets, so perhaps its inclusion as is was intentional. You can rationalize it if you want as warping a very short distance out-system, then warping back in.

Ravagon, at the point in the game at which this tactic first becomes useful (about TL 12-15 weapons & propulsion tech) there is very little the AI can do to prevent you from taking out his missle bases at minimum using this tactic. Consider:
(a) the enemy missle bases will usually not be sufficiently armoured or have sufficient shielding to withstand a salvo of missles from a reasonably-sized attack force without taking some losses,
(b) your missles have the speed bonus from being 2-shot racks whereas his don't,
(c) you have the ability to move up for your first shot before moving back again to retreat and the planet doesn't,
(d) the enemy fleets are still probably speed 1 or 2 (at most 3), so unless they are armed with equivalent missles to yours they will not get a shot in before you retreat,
(e) the AI likes to move its fleets around, so you can be pretty much guaranteed of having an opportunity to hit the missle bases when there's no or only a minimal fleet there to begin with.

All these add up to mean that you can often do damage without taking any (or very much) in return, and ultimately wear down the planet. Part of the reason why this might be considered exploitative is that, in addition to the AI not knowing how to do it, most of the time the AI doesn't know how to defend against it either. Now, this tactic does have a limited lifespan, in that eventually the AI will research fast enough missles that they will potentially be able to cross the entire screen in 2 moves and reach you before you retreat, but IIRC that requires Pulson or better missles, so there is a significant window of opportunity where there's not a lot the AI can do to prevent you from wiping out the planet's defenses. Holding it is another matter, of course, since shoot-and-scoot missle boats don't do very well in a defensive role, but at minimum you can put a significant dent in the AI's research budget by forcing them to devote more effort to military and rebuilding.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zed-F
I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

It is under sabotage, you get to choose blow up things or incite riots.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by ravagon


I've never noticed any enhanced missile velocity - although I must admit I don't tend to rely much on missile bases by the time the interdictor is discovered.
I don't think the range can be enhanced either as it doesn't seem to be limited when firing from a planetary base unless one is using teleporters (a moot point when discussing interdictors anyway)? ...

Sorry for any confusion. Interdictors do not have anything to do with the missiles themself. I was mearly pointing out that a base provides the device, so teleporters are nullified.
The enhanced distance is notice immediately, because most missiles would not be able to reach the full distance of the screen with out this effect. You can see this when you line up you ships next to the planet and shot say hyper-x missiles, they will not reach a target at the edge of the screen. The bases will using hyper-x or any missile. You will also be able to note that those missile arrive sooner to a target than the ships. This can be seen when you pin a ship to a spot and shoot form a ship and from a base, when the missile is not able to reach the target from the ship in the first round, but the base does.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

When a sabotage mission is sucessful you will get a choice to either destroy missile bases, factories or to incite a riot. The rioting citizens provide a percentage chance to cause a rebellion.

[vmxa1]

My perspective on retreating to the same planet is that is if they wanted to remove it, they had several patches to do it and did not.
As to the defenders, well it all depends. What is the level of armor they have and the weapons you have.
I never use missiles on my attacking fleets, so that is not an issue. The real issue is the bombs. When you retreat to the same planet you are restocked with bombs. This lets me bust shields and bases, if the bombs are up to the task. If they are not strong enought to crack the bases, I will not be retreating to that planet anyway. Well, ok, I may do it to destroy some more of their ships. So at times they are able to send in ships to help and sometimes they can crank out some missile bases to drive me off, other times they can not.
I amnot sure that it makes a huge difference, since if you could not use this trick, you would just use another method. It may take longer before you can attack, but in the end you will get them.
This exploit and the missile boat backup are big edges over the AI. I would say the back is a bigger exploit.

[granid]

Originally posted by vmxa1
The rioting citizens provide a percentage chance to cause a rebellion.

Actually, each planet has associated with it a percentage of citizens which are in revolt. Each time you use the "incite revolt" sabotage button, you increase this percentage by some amount. When the percentage reaches 50%, that is, when the majority of citizens is in revolt, the planet secedes from their empire.

I don't know the equations, but it seems that the more spies you have, the faster you get to 50%.

[vmxa1]

granid, to reply using the term actually implies that the response quoted was incorrect. It was not, you repeated what I said and add the part about the 50%, which I think is not correct. You can have an over thrown with less than 50%.

[grinningman]

Originally posted by Zed-F

All these add up to mean that you can often do damage without taking any (or very much) in return, and ultimately wear down the planet. Part of the reason why this might be considered exploitative is that, in addition to the AI not knowing how to do it, most of the time the AI doesn't know how to defend against it either. Now, this tactic does have a limited lifespan, in that eventually the AI will research fast enough missles that they will potentially be able to cross the entire screen in 2 moves and reach you before you retreat, but IIRC that requires Pulson or better missles, so there is a significant window of opportunity where there's not a lot the AI can do to prevent you from wiping out the planet's defenses. Holding it is another matter, of course, since shoot-and-scoot missle boats don't do very well in a defensive role, but at minimum you can put a significant dent in the AI's research budget by forcing them to devote more effort to military and rebuilding.

One point I'd like to add to Zed-F's analysis:

This tactic can still be used later in the game, when both you and the computer both have the faster missile types (pulson, hercular, etc), but in this case you must move first. So you need to have the highest initiative, which you can usually get by putting a high level battle computer, high manuoeuverability (inertial stabilizer) and battle scanner on your missile boats.

Of course, later game you've normally got High Energy Focus, and I find a stack of HEF beam weapon ships (say with lots and lots of Gauss autocannons), is more effective at destroying other ships and poorly shielded missile bases than missile boats.

Grinning man