Early defense... Moo1

[robsypes]

Hi there.

About a month ago, I loaded up Moo2 and started playing it again after about a 4 year break. Loved the game. Got right back into it no problem.

I decided to go threw my disks and found my Moo1 and installed it. I LOVE this game. I can’t believe how good a game this orginal is.

I love the game… but I suck at it.

I play the game at average, and I’m getting my butt handed to me almost every game. I’ve only beaten it once on average, and with that I got lucky and they didn’t attack me early so I had the time to build up.

Here’s what I do.

- Start a new game, Usually Huge, but I recently switched to Large.
- send out my scout and colony ships
- put my resources on factories except for a click or two on research
- research fuels, drives, robotics, missiles in that order
- when production is around 170 or so, I build as many colony ships as planets that can be colonized.
- When the production is maxed out, I put all resources in research, unless I smell a war, then build missles.

Anyway, that’s what I do.

What happens is. The ememy attacks me, and if I’m lucky I have 20 or so missile bases up. The first or second attack is usually stopped. Then they come at me with a couple hundred fighters, a couple large ships and a couple huge ships. My defenses are overrun and the planet is destoryed or captured.

I usually can’t come back from this, as then I go hard core on the defense, and that puts me so far behind in tech and when I finally have a breath, they are coming at me with thousands of ships.

My basic question is… How do you guys set up your primary early defense? How many bases do you use? How many is too much? How early do you build them? Do you build them even if you don’t think you’ll need them for a while? Do you use ships to help in the defense? Just ships? Ships and bases?

I play a defense style. Ideally, I like to build up my planets, get these planets defenses built up. And then build up an attack fleet, attack a planet. Build up that planet, get it’s defenses up, and then move on to next planet. I like the slow crawl. I’m not aggressive.

Also, what are good ship designs for the early game? With my games, in my weapons research, I tend to go with missile research to make my defenses better. Then I get attacked before I can research a good beam weapon, so usually all I have are lasers or maybe pellet gun.

Anyway, I’m going to get off here before I start to repeat myself.

Anyhelp would be appreaciated. I LOVE this game, just wish I could be better at it.

[vmxa1]

Funny I was just doing a game on Med map at impossible and was thinking does the AI cheat?
Mrrsshans had 4 planet 55/55/100/95 pop, I had 9. They are last or next to last in all stats and I am first in all but ships and hence total power.
They sent two fleets at me with 102 med, 10 huge, 64 small in one and one 63/4/140. I had no ships at the time I saw the attack.
How in the heck could they built all of that with 4 planets in the year 2404? I was able to stop them, with these tactics and you can use them as well.
I presume you have a missile tech at the level they have for weapons. I meant that if they have pellet gun, you may have Hyper-x or Mercs. Not them showing up with HEF using Auto Blaster and you have Hyper-X.
IOW you can bust a ship with one round of missiles.
If so, then I see how many stacks they are coming with. If they have 4 stacks, I want to have 2 missile boats (MB). If they have 5 stacks, or more I want 3 MB types or more.
Only one ship for each design in the fleet at the planet under attack.
I put mercs in 5 shot racks if I have them, nothing better. I do not want Pulson or Stingers or better on these ships as they are intended to drive the fleet back not do damage. They will not retreat form Pulson as there is no way to avoided them.
So I make the ship with 1 slot of mercs, 5 shots. My best engine, ships armor and then movement points. If any room left add ecm and then shields. Reverse the ecm/shields if they are using beams rather than missiles.
I am not all that concerned if they bust these ships, but it is nice if I can save them.

[vmxa1]

I will seldom use more than 20 missile bases on a planet, only if really pressed.
Once they attack let the fleet get within range of the missile boats that are either beside the planet or behind it. I prefer beside it as I can then move any ship that is targeted by missiles back and out of range as I will attempt to drive that ship back.
I fire each ship at a stack that is in range and will not be targeted by my bases. I will not target any stack that is going to be destroyed by me. Hopefully the stack will back up to get out of range of the missiles from my ships. I do not fire more than one ship at a stack unless it does not back up, sometimes 2 ships firing does the job. Usually I can bust their stacks this way.
Once a ship has expended its missiles I reteat it. I may leave one to get them not to retreat thier remaining ships, if I think I can bust up some more. I will sacrifice a ship for a stack.
I forgot to say these missile boats are on a medium hull.
This makes them cheap enough for most planes to build one when needed.

[robsypes]

Thanks for the tip.

That is something I never thought of.

I'd built missile ships, but I never thought of using them solely to make the enemy back up, giving my missile bases the extra shots they need.

Thank again

Do you have any good ship design's?

I've read some suggestions.. but they've all been pretty silly.

"Build a large ship and put lots of good beams on it"

Doesn't really tell me much.

What is a good early to mid combo to shoot for?

[vmxa1]

Re: Early defense... Moo1

Originally posted by robsypes
"- Start a new game, Usually Huge, but I recently switched to Large.
- send out my scout and colony ships
- put my resources on factories except for a click or two on research
- research fuels, drives, robotics, missiles in that order
- when production is around 170 or so, I build as many colony ships as planets that can be colonized.
- When the production is maxed out, I put all resources in research, unless I smell a war, then build missles."

In a Huge or Large map you must colonize like crazy.
I would say built the HW up with pop and factories and then strickly make colony ships to grab all the planets in range. You must have more planets than they do, especially at higher levels, due to the research cost.

"I play a defense style. Ideally, I like to build up my planets, get these planets defenses built up. And then build up an attack fleet, attack a planet. Build up that planet, get it’s defenses up, and then move on to next planet. I like the slow crawl. I’m not aggressive."

I tend to do that as well, but at impossible level, it is best to get more aggressive. At hard this works fine.

"Also, what are good ship designs for the early game? With my games, in my weapons research, I tend to go with missile research to make my defenses better. Then I get attacked before I can research a good beam weapon, so usually all I have are lasers or maybe pellet gun."

I do not put any resources into ships until I am ready to go to war and take planets, other than missile boats.
I will sometimes make a large laser or NPG ship or three to hold a contested planet I have colonized, but I hate to do it.
I prefer to hold off until I can get HEF and maybe auto blasters. I make no attack ships using missiles, only beams.
In missile boats, I will use the second upgraded armor. say Duralloy II, but in large ships, I would not.
So it is Engine, Armor, movement, battle scanner, best battle computer. Then if I have HEF it will be used and then shields and then ecm. Now my best beam. I may have to reduce the level of ecm tofix and extra gun.
I may stick in a special either stabilizer or ARU.I depends.

[vmxa1]

What race are you using? How you mite proceed will be largely dependant upon that choice.
But in general, I would put all into factories at the start, unless Klac. If Klacs put it mostly in pop. I set research to extra for plane/computer/const. Reduce Force and Weapons. Propulsion is dependant upon the location of the nearest planets and the map size. In a huge map, I would be tempted to reduce it as I will have lots of close planets.
After two discoveries in Plane tech, I put all to the same level.
Once I get my HW up in a map other than small (my normal one), crank out CS's.
If you want to have a parallel run, just post a save from the start and one from 100 turns.

[robsypes]

So you like large ships with Hef and auto-blasters then? That is a good combo.

When you build up your attack fleet, do you use different types of ships, or do you just use alot of one type?

[robsypes]

I was using the Psions but changed over to the Meklars to make my production the best it could be, as I was having trouble keeping my planets.

What race do you suggest?

Since we seem to have similiar playing styles. What race do you use or find easiest?

[Zed-F]

Klackons are pretty much universally considered to be the easiest race in the game to play and win with. They are substantially better than Meklars in the early part of the game because their production bonus does not create pollution (and pollution is one of your biggest problems early on) as well as because their production bonus is inherent in the pop so your new colonies have a substantial boost right off the bat relative to other races, and you don't have to spend extra turns building factories to max your planet out and get your full bonus. Moreover, while their production bonus initialy starts off less strong in terms of total production when everything is maxed out than the Meklars, the Klackon bonus improves as you gain planetology tech whereas the Meks doesn't. All this adds up to making the Klacks much easier to play.

Rules for the early game in MOO:
- Expand, expand, expand! Grab everything you can that's worth grabbing, as soon as possible. Even if it looks sucky, it's often useful to grab it anyway as (a) a jumping off point so you can grab other stuff further away, (b) to give you a place you can siphon off pop from so you don't have to do it from "real" colonies and slow their buildup, and (c) give you a bit of extra research. My home planet usually build up all factories first, ignoring research, then puts a pixel in missile bases, and the rest either in research if nothing colonizable in range, or else mostly in colony ships and a little bit in research otherwise. This usually means I start off with a significant tech disadvantage but a production/population advantage relative to my neighbors.
- Personally, I will only build factories on colonies I think I can build adequate defenses on; that way, if I get attacked at some ultra-poor or very small planet that has no chance to defend itself, all I will lose is some pop, I won't give up any tech. At some point when I think I can defend the planet, I'll switch over to factory and missile base production (usually this takes a long time because the planet was small and/or poor to begin with.) For the planets that I colonize that do have the potential to defend themselves, I'll first build up all their factories and terraform, build a couple missile bases so it's not completely undefended, then switch to mostly research with a little bit of ongoing missile base building for more bases and to ensure that they always get the appropriate refits.
- It's very important to have some tech in each of the fields; they are all important. At the very start of the game I will focus entirely on propulsion/planetology/construction with the intent of getting better range tech and pollution reduction tech, but once I've gotten my first advances in each of these I equalize my tech spending across all areas with the exception of a slight preference for planetology. For defensive purposes, you can't just rely on missile tech alone; you need some battle computer tech and some shield tech (especially planetary shields!) as well for your bases to be effective. Jammers can help too but are less critical.
- The most important techs in the game are those that boost your production. These include robotic controls, construction techs to reduce factory cost and reduce pollution, and various planetology techs to improve planet size, let you colonize more planets, and reduce pollution. Planetology is probably the single most important tree in the game, for its ability to help you get up to the magic 1/3 galactic pop needed to stop the vote, as well as boost your empire's overall production, but you can't concentrate on it too hard as you need the other areas too.
- Diplomacy and/or spying is very useful to get a tech you don't otherwise have access to, so don't forget to use that resource. Personally, I try never to trade away a production-oriented tech if I'm not absolutely desperate for something, unless of course my trading partner already has a better version of the same thing.
- Ship construction: There are 3 phases to my aproach to ship construction -- early game, mid game, and late game. In the early game, the only ships I build are scouts to picket every start I can reach that doesn't have an enemy colony. Without any decent drive tech, range tech, or missile tech, it's useless to build anything else. Defenders have an overwhelming advantage against attackers (providing you have built enough missile bases and have got at least some of the technologies needed for them to be effective) because attackers move very slowly, giving the defender ample time to pound away. You are still in the early stages of building your empire so you can't afford to divert any more production to ships than is absolutely needed anyway. Mid-game, when you have most or all of your inital colonies set up, maxed out, and doing research, is the era of the missile boat. When you have picked up a semi-decent drive tech as well as a reasonable missile tech, and you have enough planets doing research that you can spare one for shipbuilding, you can start building 2-shot missle boats with the biggest missile you have. The idea here is to harrass the enemy; build up a small fleet, run over to one of his planets, fire a couple missile salvos, kill some stuff, and retreat without getting hit in return. You can alter your retreat destination to be one of his other planets or even the same planet if you like. If you can pick on an empire that's substantially smaller than you you can even take some planets this way (although you will probably also need a small number of beam ships to hold what you've taken) but if the enemy is not small this is just to force him to keep building more ships and bases and keep him off-balance and defend himself more and attack you less. The end game comes when you have started to get some good beam tech, usually around TL30 or so in weapons, you're getting close to being able to research HEF, you have some good drive tech and good battle computers, etc. Here you start needing bombs rather than missiles to bust bases and your ships move fast enough that bombs and beams are more viable weapons, and missiles start to lose their edge, though they are still useful on small ships in an anti-ship role to augment your initial punch rather than in an anti-base role. At this point you should be able to start making real headway against just about anyone.
- A key note on ship production: If you're spending more than 10% of your empire's GDP on ships, you probably have too many ships, so scale back on your shipbuilding and/or scrap some older ships. Similarly with bases; if you are spending more than 10% of your GDP on bases you have too many, use the 'b' key to scrap some unneeded ones. It's much more important to have a tech advantage and have quality ships than to just have a lot of them.

There is a thread in here about MOO1 tips and tricks. Take a look at that for more ideas. For what it's worth, I always play on Impossible/Small/3-5 opponents.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by robsypes
So you like large ships with Hef and auto-blasters then? That is a good combo.

When you build up your attack fleet, do you use different types of ships, or do you just use alot of one type?

Sorry it was late. I should have mentioned that I like to use large and make new designs after a certain number, even if the design is exactly the same. This is done to keep the amount of a given desing to a number that I can scrap without pain.
The number is dependant upon the map size. The larger the map the bigger the number.
In small maps it is 10 or less, in big maps I will run up to 20 and in huge maps it can get to 100. It has to be enough todeal with the fleets I will fight.
It is painful to scrap a design withlots of ships.
As the gam emoves along, I will gradually do away with missile boats (defensive ones) as the attackers move to fast and will just bust them. As soon as they are able to kill the boat without me getting in a shot, they are no longer useful.
Map size is pivitol is designs and tactics. At impossible they tend to have a lot of ships with top tech in mid game. In big maps they can show up with massive fleets and you may need to use specials like black hole gens, porters and the like. I am fond of Pulse Phasors for ship to ships witht he 4x shots.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by robsypes
I was using the Psions but changed over to the Meklars to make my production the best it could be, as I was having trouble keeping my planets.

What race do you suggest?

Since we seem to have similiar playing styles. What race do you use or find easiest?

I am a big fan of Klacs as you can see by my avatar.
Meks and Pslions are very good as well.
Maybe even Saks, but after that it is very hard to win at impossible with other races.

Zed is a very knowledgeable player and has an aggressive style, which is preferable at impossible level.
Defensive builders can find themselfs buried in a flash at impossible, if they are not careful. Look at the game I was mentioning, I had more planets and better ones, but the AI had cranked out massive fleets.
I was able to smash them, but often it is overwhelming, if you do not keep those fleets in check.
Keep an eye out for them gathering large armadas.
Last battle last night was a case in point. I started a new colony on Rad ultra rich planet. I had time to get the thing nearly build and they sent a fleet with 33 large, 1 huge and 2 stacks of over 500 med bombers.
I had 5 turns before they get to me. I had 3 large weak ships and 3 tpes of missile boats. I sent them and nextturn started the planetary shields class X. Since I had Atmos and Soil plus RC5 I had about 600 factories and pumped in cash. I got 18-20 missile base up and had planets crank out a new large ships and got 11 there whenthey hit. I only had Hyper-X rocket. I am a few turns from getting Hercs.
I was able to bust that fleet with no losses. I was harder because as I said you want to have missile tech at the level of the ships and I did not. The hercs would have made it easy. I am waiting to design my HEF ship until I colonize the next planet (now) and use the CS design for the new ships slot. It will them be time to go on attack (a few planets are still out as they do not have Rad tech or even Toxic.

[vmxa1]

robsypes I should not have relied on my recollection of the game last night, It was just a normal planet, the ultra rich is the one I was going for next. Here is the save before the battle.

[vmxa1]

I found out that soon after that battle they had a vote and I was not watching close and I won the vote. I was not ready to quit, so I went to total war.

[robsypes]

Thanks for the tips man.

I just played the game again, and beat it. I survived the early attack with three types of missle ships. The ships kept the attacks at bay for most of the game.

I guess it's time to go up the hard now and see how that goes.

Thanks again

[vmxa1]

Cool