Thread: Game Tactics
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Unread 24 Feb 2009, 07:43   #96
Monroe
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Re: Game Tactics

I've noticed people using a new tactic, so I wanted to post it here for comment. Some may not like it being posted, but I think it's an interesting tactic so I thought I'd get it out there for everyone to discuss.

Working Title: Graduated ship building defense
Difficulty: Advanced
Description:
With the introduction of production units coupled with a scan (planet scan) that shows resources in production people have gotten sloppy attacking planets with stored resources. Typically attackers will scan a target before launch, and perhaps a tick after launch but not again until right before landing to see what they have in production. The basic premise is that if the defender does not quickly put resources into production he cannot get them out in time for defense. This is not in fact true. The explanation of why is complex, and I will refer readers to the section of the manual on production for the complete explanation, but the short story is because factories add cost to an order, a player can put just one ship into production using all of his factories, and the order still takes 3 ticks to complete. However, after the first two ticks the costs of the factories are mostly paid off, so if at this point the user adds a bunch of ships to the order, the ships will not take as long to complete as calculators would tell you because the calculators factor in the factory costs, which are basically 0 at this point. If the defender gradually adds ships to the order he can time it so that a large number of ships come out of production at that last minute, even though for the first 4 or 5 ticks it appeared that the defender only had a very small amount of resources in production. This is especially useful for zik players who can pump out a large number of stealing ships unexpectedly in this way.
Counter: The counter is very simple, always plan for the defender's stockpile when planning the attack. If you have enough attack ships to overwhelm the defender, in most cases he won't bother to try and build out of the attack. Additionally if the attackers planet scan each tick they should see a gradual buildup of ships in production, indicating that this tactic is being used.

For the record, in case anyone asks, this is NOT a bug. This is in fact a clever use of how factories are designed. So the tactic is perfectly legal, and frankly quite clever.
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