Unorthodox Strategies?

[LoBlo]

My strategy for most races entail a bum rush to grab as many planets and as much research stations as possible at the beginning. Then I pay off bigger opponents to leave me alone. Then grab up independents grab to get variety in my races to be able to get even more planets.

That's about it. Rinse and repeat

Does anyone have any unorthodox strategies that may work and make the game interesting.

LB

[AKicebear]

I'm interested in this.

I'm also interested in: what strategies only work for a specific race? One of the biggest problems with this game is that as far as I can tell all strategies work for all races.

[hurkle]

Are you really sure that you want different strategies than the rookie variants you are all using? Once you see these you cant unsee them and they will break the game for you.

[AKicebear]

Are you really sure that you want different strategies than the rookie variants you are all using? Once you see these you cant unsee them and they will break the game for you.

I think we're referring to strategies, rather than exploits (eg multiple mining components per station).

[LoBlo]

Are you really sure that you want different strategies than the rookie variants you are all using? Once you see these you cant unsee them and they will break the game for you.

I think we're referring to strategies, rather than exploits (eg multiple mining components per station).

Stations can mine? What's the advantage?

Sure, I'd like to know all types of tatics. If it looks like an exploit, I just won't use it.

lb

[Nightskies]

Spaceports and Bastions can effectively increase the speed of the colony's gathering of its resources with a mining engine(s).

Monitoring Stations can also mine resources, most notably when serving as a distant manual refuel depot, and can function alongside a Mining Station, somewhat bypassing the rule that only one Mining Station can be built over a location. While freighters will make deliveries to and from Monitoring Stations with manual handling of stock levels, they won't draw resources from them in the same way that they do Mining Stations, making them impractical for anything aside from a manual refuel depot- because ships won't automatically refuel from a Monitoring Station, either.

A mining station using multiple mining engines can harvest resources a multiple faster than the AI's mining stations that always only have a single large mining engine. Same with Fuel Tankers and Mining Ships.

Other ships can be manually designed with mining engines, though that's also strictly a manual use case.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Mining stations mining faster is only advantage when you have a single low-quality deposit. In majority if cases, the primary job of a mining station is to store the resource: you don't need a steady supply of pretty much anything; demand simply spikes from time to time, and you need large enough stockpile to smooth out those demand spikes. And while logistics works hard to make those spikes much worse than they should be (like sending 50 freighters to fill demand for 100 luxuries), as long as there's enough time to fill station storage between those spikes, extra mining engines serve no purpose.

[NightskyPirate]

Makin' it sound like no big deal, but it is.

The price of resources scales inversely with supply.

Many resources *are* normally scarce, especially Aculon, which is widely found but in poor abundance, the 4 very rare strategic resources most notably including Hexodorium, the two (?) super rare and valuable luxury resources (I forget which in this moment), and more luxuries are usually not in such abundance that they are normally able to be sold to other empires.

It especially matters for singularly important logistics locations, like forward Caslon mining stations - or even fuel ships.

So while many resources are normally in abundance, most of the time there will be those that are scarce too.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Because it really is not a big deal: money is in abundance as long as you want it, Aculon "porblem" is solved for the entire game by filling a single asteroid field with mining stations, Hexodorium only starts getting used in mid-game (unless you're unlucky enough not to get a deposit, you'll have some 100k in stockpile by the time it's needed), rare luxurues is not something you should rely on anyway (as it it easy enough to fill development to its tax soft cap with regular ones), while fast-mining Caslon forward stations are only a thing early on (and even then they are optional, even if you want to rush AI before getting Gerax drive).

[Nightskies]

So sue me for not being draconian with spelling on a phone ... these days, poking about spelling is the same level of irritating as a Grammar Nazi.

Until mid-late game, excessive money isn't a potential issue- unless using other exploitive means (mass scuttling of freighters for extra bonus income) ... sometimes sooner, depending on play style and galaxy setup. Many empires should be concerned about the efficiency of their credit use through early-mid game at least. If you never do, there surely is something(s) particular about your play style that makes it a non-concern.

Most Aculon sources are very small- an asteroid field with more than 20% combined is a lucky find, and its usually combined with Steel and Mebnar. Let's unrealistically say you get 4 mines in that field all with 20% abundance of Aculon alongside the other two usual asteroid resources. A Large Mining Engine V2 has a base Mining Rate of 16/sec. Each mine, with a single mining engine, is harvesting about ONE Aculon/sec (Mining Rate * Abundance / resourcetypes), for 4.26 total between those four mines. That's *enough* early on, before Advanced Frigates, but remember that this asteroid cluster is a pretty good supply comparatively.

However, finding a single rich source isn't that uncommon. This is where the multi-engines really stands out. The player using multiple engines, let's say x4 small and x1 large, say a moon with 70% Aculon and no other resources, is harvesting 33.6 from that one source, where the single-engine mine would be getting 11.2 Aculon/sec.

A single colony of 3 billion consumes about 1 Aculon/sec. A typically equipped mid-game Advanced Frigate is 99 Aculon, Advanced Destroyer is 143, Cruiser is 400, Battlecruiser is 576- without railguns or later level techs.

So let's assume a mid-game empire with 100 billion citizens, an AI-like number of Aculon mines (26) and a target number of ships- 120 frigates, 75 destroyers, 54 cruisers, 39 battlecruisers.

Assuming the average mine output is good like in the asteroids example, it's getting about 27 Aculon/sec. It's passively consuming about 33 Aculon/sec (roughly). Keep in mind that the average Aculon mine isn't that good.

You might have noticed that the ONE MULTI-MINING ENGINE MINE mines more Aculon than the entire average *STRONG* AI empire.

"WHAAAAAAT? THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE!"
No, it does. Many colonies will experience an Aculon shortage, which doesn't result in a penalty, and the prime colonies will get the bulk of the Aculon, allowing ships to be produced. Mining ships will also help a lot for covering Aculon shortages in particular, with many sources available that the individual ships can take advantage of, albeit slowly (especially if they don't have multiple mining engines).

All those desired ships totals 66,669 Aculon. If the total mining station output of this AI-like empire were solely focused on supplying that, at that given time, it would take about 41 minutes to provide it.

I often experience Aculon as a bottleneck when not using multiple mining engines, and I make it a priority resource. To be fair, I make extensive use of advanced frigates and destroyers, which use a lot of Aculon. To be further fair, I imagine most players also don't rely on the basic frigate hull.

Don't know where you're drawing the idea that luxuries are not a prime means of getting more of income also.

[AKicebear]

I really appreciate your knowledge and attention to detail in this game @Nightskies.

[hurkle]

Are you really sure that you want different strategies than the rookie variants you are all using? Once you see these you cant unsee them and they will break the game for you.

I think we're referring to strategies, rather than exploits (eg multiple mining components per station).

As was I. The four advanced strategies are not linked to the rookie strategy in any way.

Aside, "multiple mining components per station" is not actually an exploit and the base/ship editing is working as intended it seems.

If the game developers want to change ship/base editor to prevent this then it is very easy to do so. They could also prevent a host of strange but effective player designed ships and bases, including multiple construction slot starting space stations for races that dont get these in game generated designs, but they have not done so.