Warmonger - Strategy, by Alex Hall

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Warmonger - Strategy

By Alex Hall, aka Morpheus on Starlink IRC (alex@kyote.demon.co.uk)

The WM PRT is an interesting and very powerful race, race design however is very important to make the most of this PRT. It excels in a galaxy where first contact occurs early, i.e. where the starting positions are quite close. Its advantage in weaponry and movement allows it to be superior in battle immediaitely, with enemies having to field twice as many ships to be able to win a battle. The WM is also excellent at killing Alternate Reality starter colonies, and if one is nearby it is highly likely that the AR will not survive or prosper.

With this PRT you can either hold off building warships as per most monster designs and build up a strong economy before mass producing fleets, or you can create strong fleets early in the game without totally wrecking your economy.

Race-Design

War-Mongers are by their nature aggressive races and can be seen as being similar to the Klingons on Star Trek. If you are playing this PRT defensively then you are not making full use of its abilities.

Starting Advantages & Abilities

The WM has a number of starting advantages and abilities that ensure you have a head start in the battle fleet field.

  • Tech 5 in Weapons

This immediatley gives you the beta torpedo and Yakimora Light Phaser when everyone else has the alpha torpedo and laser/x-ray laser. Therefore your initial destroyers and probes are twice as powerful as any others you'll find at the beginning of the game. This can be very useful if you find your Home World near to someone elses or want to start an early war.

  • 1/2 square movement bonus in battle

This allows your ships to be more maneuverable than your enemies without having to fit Maneuvering Jets and therefore you can either use the spare slot for extra weapons or fir Maneuvering Jets and gain even more mobility.

  • Colonists attack better

Very useful when you need to take over a planet owned by someone else and don't have any bombers nearby.

  • All weapons cost 25% less

Obviously useful in keeping costs down.

  • Learn enery ship designs from scanning

This ability, especially combined with long range scanners gives you an excellent advantage in determining how powerful your enemy ships are before you meet them in battle, ensuring that you should always have plenty of time to prepare superior battle fleets.

  • Battle Cruiser and Dreadnought Hulls

These two hulls have more built in armour and weapon slots than the Cruiser and Battleship hulls that are available to the other races. The Battle Cruiser can give you quite a good advantage in the mid game and is an excellent weapons platform that can be mass produced without too much expense. For games that last a long time the Dreadnought is an excellent hull, though is expensive once fully fitted out with weapons and armour.

  • Blunderbuss and Gattling Neutrino Cannon

The Blunderbuss is the most powerful beam weapon, in fact doing even more damage than the Armegeddon missile, although it is limited to range 0. Mounted on a space station, where it gains extra range, it can be a useful tool to surprise close attacks by enemy fleets. The Gattling Neutrino Cannon is an excellent mine sweeping tool and its multiple targetting feature can be very advantagous when fighting numerous fleets simultaneously, for example in three sided battles.

  • Limitations

Your planetary defenses are limited to Missile Batteries and you are unable to build any types of mine fields, this means that your planets are quite vulnerable and you cannot build barriers of mines in space. Therefore you need to leave ships around your primary planets or be able to gate them in quickly.

The choice of LRT will determine the style of play that you use, and vice-versa. It is important to know the weaknesses of your design and ensure that no-one can easily exploit these.

LRTs

  • Improved Fuel Efficiency

This LRT provides the fuel mizer which is a must for quick and rapid colonisations in the early game, the engine is not very good for the larger warships, but is fine for early probes, scouts, destroyers and frigates. The 15% less fuel that engines use is useful if No Ram Scoop Engines is also chosen.

  • Total Terraforming

This LRT doesn't give any direct advantages to the War Monger that can be used for attack and it is expensive, but if your design has spare advantage points it can be useful in aiding the settling and growth of planets.

  • Advanced Remote Mining

This LRT doesn't give any direct advantages to the War Monger that can be used for attack and it is expensive, but if your design has spare advantage points it can be useful in aiding the settling and growth of planets by ensuring you have plenty of minerals.

  • Improved Starbases

The Space Dock and the 20% reduction in starbase costs is useful for early expansion and the Ultra Station can help defend your planets, making up for the absence of mine fields.

  • Generalized Research

This LRT doesn't give any direct advantages to the War Monger that can be used for attack, and generally should not be selected.

  • Ultimate Recycling

Although this LRT gives a big advantage for scrapping ships the WM should never need to scrap any ships, any ships that would normally be scrapped should be formed into fleets and sent to die valiantly and honourably in battle against the enemy !

  • Mineral Alchemy

This LRT gives a big advantage if minerals are in short supply, but is generally not necessary due to non-depleting homeworlds and there are more necessary LRTs to spend points on.

  • No Ramscoop Engines

This LRT gives a Warp 10 engine at propulsion tech 11, this can make your battle ships very manoevable. Ramscoop engines are very useful tho, so only select this LRT if you desperately need the points that it will provide or need Warp 10 very early in the game.

  • Cheap Engines

If you are playing a Barbarian Hoarde style of play then this LRT can be useful, as engines cost 50% less, thereby allowing you to produce even more ships, however it does cause problems when travelling above Warp 6.

  • Only Basic Remote Mining

If you don't particularly like managing remote mining fleets then the points this LRT provides and the extra 10% population you can have on a planet are very useful.

  • No Advanced Scanners

This LRT causes your scanners to have twice the range, when combined with the fact that the WM can tell the design of a ship by scanning it provides a very useful early warning system. The downside is that you have no penetrating scanners so ships in planetary orbit cannot be seen, this drawback can be circumvented by placing probes throughout the galaxy.

  • Low Starting Population

With Acc BBS then this can be an ok LRT to choose if points are required, however there are generally better ways of gaining extra points and so generally this LRT should not be chosen.

  • Bleeding Edge Technology

This LRT can be useful if you are producing Barbarian Hoardes, but generally should not be chosen if you want to continually use the latest technologies in your ship designs.

  • Regenerating Shields

This is an excellent LRT to choose for Barabarian Hoardes as it allows you to produce light, quick ships. If you then have large numbers of identical ships in a fleet then the defense power of the shields is very impressive, particularly at the higher tech levels. The ships are also more likely to be gateable.

Research Costs

Weaponary - 50% is an absolute must, since you will be going to war.

The other Research Costs depend upon your LRTs chosen, your style of play and how many points you need to spend elsewhere. If you choose Regenerating shields then standard or cheap energy is very useful. Biotechnology should generally be taken as standard or expensive.

Example Race Design

PRT - WM LRT - IFE, NRSE, CE, OBRM, NAS, LSP, RS

Gravity - 0.12 -> 1.48g Temperature - -40 -> 200 degrees C Radiation - 40 -> 100mR Habitat - 1 in 4 Growth - 18 %

1 res per 1000 colonists Factories - 1/8/20/G Mines - 0.8/3/21

Energy - Standard, Weapons - -50%, Propulsion - +75%, Construction - +75%, Electronics - +75%, Biotechnology - +75%, Cost 75% start at 3

This design includes many of the features discussed in this document and if played correctly can do well, it is by no means the only WM design and there are ways it can be enhanced.

Play Style

There are a number of different ways to play the WM you can create vast hoardes of light, fast ships and try to overrun the enemy by sheer weight of numbers, or you can create very powerful and destructive ships. The WM PRT is also able to handle the 'Monster' design races that are the all the rage at the moment, and can even be played as a monster itself. The style you play with will depend on the actual race design and LRTs chosen. But to remember that while you are destroying those victims nearest to you, there could be a monster on the other side of the galaxy growing very quickly.

If you are playing a Barbarian Hoarde strategy then produce large numbers of shielded, beam weaponed ships. With 25% cheaper Weapons and 50% cheaper Engines (with Cheap Engines LRT) and light weight shielded ships (with Regenerating Shields LRT) and your movement bonus you can create impressive fleets. The destroyer and Battle Cruiser hulls are excellent for this. And with the ships being lighter many of them will be gateable where with Armour they would not be.

With Research the following are useful levels to meet if playing Barabarian Hoarde with Cheap Engines and No Ram Scoop Engines.

Energy - Weap - Prop - Const - Elec - Bio 10 15 12 8 3 3

This provides ships with: Bear Neutrino Barrier, Overthruster, Interspace 10, Bludgeon, Mark IV Blaster, Epsilon Torpedo, Jihad Torpedo, Phased Sapper.

Energy - Weap - Prop - Const - Elec - Bio 14 16 12 10 3 3

This provides ships with: Gorilla Delagator, Juggernaut Missile, Heavy Blaster

Energy - Weap - Prop - Const - Elec - Bio 18 22 12 10 11 3

This provides ships with: Elephant Hide Fortress, Upsilon Torpedo, Doomsday Missile, Gattling Neutrino Cannon, Synchro Sapper, Battle Super Computer.

Strategy

Explore with armed and unarmed probes as soon as possible to find out where the other players are positioned in the galaxy and to find habiatal planets as soon as possible. If necessary form an alliance quite quickly and use this to produce some mine fields to help protect your space. Expand your empire as quickly as possible, remember that your race is designed for battle so if you need a planet and it is occupied, win it by force. Be careful not to alienate yourself too much as you may find yourself fighting a big alliance.

When preparing to enter battle use your scanning abilities to find out the technology and power of the enemy fleets before you meet them, if your fleet is weaker then damn your warrior's code and honour and retreat until you can prepare a superior fleet.

A useful stratgey early in the game is to put one destoyer around each planet that you want, and if you have spare destroyers place these around planets you don't want others to have, even if they are not economically viable to you. If you have NAS then this also serves to create a scanning net that is harder to penetrate.

One trick that you can use is to produce large numbers of weak ships but based on good hulls such as Dreadnoughts and Battle Cruisers, since the enemy will only see the large number of Dreadnought or Battle Cruiser hulls coming towards them, and not know the technology they carry, it can sometimes be used to force the enemy into an alliance or make them rethink their battle plans. Note that this strategy cannot be used on you since you can see the design of enemy ships before you battle them. Also note that this 'trick' is not recommended as it can often backfire.

At the end of the day a War Monger makes a powerful ally and a formidable enemy.

For more information on Barbarian Hordes see the documents written by other Stars! players that are available on many Stars! websites.

Thanks