Alternate Reality

Alternate Reality
One of the primary racial traits. Alternate Reality races live on starbases rather than planets, and so are radically different in a number of ways to other PRTs. Foremost among the advantages of ARs is the ability to create a mineral fountain, producing potentially unlimited minerals.
Starting Advantages
nil
Exclusive Hulls
The Death Star is the largest starbase hull ever known
Exclusive Components
Orbital Construction Module that contains viral weapons capable of killing 2000 enemy colonists per year and that colonizes worlds by transforming into an Orbital Fort
Exclusive Abilities
Lives on starbases only, not planets Starbases are 20% cheaper to build (non-cumulative with Improved Starbases) Population acts as natural miners and scanners Remote mine own planets (since they live in orbit). Maximum population is determined by the size of the starbase, not the planet Planetary resources grow as Energy Tech Level increases
Limitations
Cannot build planetary installations Interstellar travel kills 3% of any colonists in the fleet per year

Due to living in Starbases and their weak intrinsic mining ability AR is considered weaker in the early-mid game until they can get remote mining going. AR benefits more than most PRTs from strong diplomacy.

Mineral Fountain

AR players can take advantage of two aspects of the Stars! game to produce an essentially unlimited amount of minerals.

First, ARs can remote mine their own planets. Unlike planetary mines, there is no limit to the number of mining ships that can mine a single planet.

Second, the homeworld of each race never drops below 30% mineral concentrations as long as it is inhabited.

Combining these two, an AR can have an enormous number of remote miners (limited only by their ability to build them) mining their homeworld, and the minerals will never run out.

Other PRTs cannot do this because either they occupy the planet, in which case they can only use planetary mines, or it is unoccupied in which case the 30% minimum concentrations don't apply.

Note that there is a limit of 4000 mines-equivalent per mining fleet, beyond which additional miners don't produce any minerals. For this reason, the ships in a mineral fountain must be split into a number of fleets, each below that limit.

Exactly how many mining ships can you have in a fleet?

• For ARM races, a typical (gatable) miner design is: midget-miner with two robo-ultra-miners. 80 of these form one 4000-mine fleet.
• For non-ARM races the typical design is: maxi-miner with ten robo-super-miners. 14 of these form a fleet of 3780 mines, while 15 would reach 4050 mines and thus be capped out at 4000.

Library articles

• AR Guide by Leonard Dickens - Revised: 21st September 2000
• Article Library#Remore Mining
• "Fighting AR Deathstars" by Nate Burgess 1997 v2.6/7
• Article Library#Alternate Reality