Quickguide [by Sorbent]
This is a post I've been meaning to make for a while, it's little details of ev that may take a while to notice. Some of this is quite detailed, and most of it is very opinionated by my style of playing ev (which I like to think is effective). A lot of it is simply facts for people who haven't given something any thought before. A lot of this is simply standards of play that I force me and my family members to live up to, and which most players dont.
Warning: This post is in no particular order, and the brainstorm of ideas from which I'm writing was written while a lecturer tried to teach me the finer details of collagen structure in Dense Fibrous Connective Tissue.
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Section 1: Basic and miscellaneous stuff
How OB works: a planet with size 250 will have an OB cost of 300% when 500 buildings are built on it, 800% when 750 buildings are on it, 1500% when 1000 buildings are built on it.
In other words, at 500 buildings, the cost is 4 times normal, at 750 buildings, the cost is 9 times normal, at 1000 buildings the cost is 16 times normal.
In other words, when you've built twice the number of buildings as the size of a planet, the cost is 4 times, three times te size of a planet, 9 times, 4 times the size is 16 times.
Ie. It's an exponential.
2^2=4 3^3=9 4^4=16
If any of you are too lazy to do the math then for a planet of size 250
250: no OB cost : 1^2=1 * base cost
500: 300% OB cost : 2^2=4 * base cost
750: 800% OB cost : 3^2=9 * base cost
1000: 1500% OB cost : 4^2=16 * base cost
1250: 2400% OB cost : 5^2=25 * base cost
1500: 3500% OB cost : 6^2=36 * base cost
1750: 4800% OB cost : 7^2=49 * base cost
2000: 6300% OB cost : 8^2=64 * base cost
2250: 8000% OB cost : 9^2=81 * base cost
2500: 9900% OB cost : 10^2=100 * base cost
2750: 12000% OB cost : 11^2=121 * base cost
3000: 14300% OB cost : 12^2=144 * base cost
3250: 16800% OB cost : 13^2=169 * base cost
3500: 19500% OB cost : 14^2=196 * base cost
3750: 22400% OB cost : 15^2=225 * base cost
4000: 25500% OB cost : 16^2=256 * base cost
4250: 28800% OB cost : 17^2=289 * base cost
4500: 32300% OB cost : 18^2=324 * base cost
4750: 36000% OB cost : 19^2=361 * base cost
5000: 39900% OB cost : 20^2=400 * base cost
5250: ... stop OBing now foo !
For resourcers and manti solar bankers and as SS my goal is to increase my OB by one level each day. By day 5 my planets are 2400% OB
By day 10 9900% OB
After day ten my OB speed slows down, but I go up at least one level every two days.
Usually in the first 4 days you can get one or two levels ahead, but this is usually lost when I take a day or two to catch my research up in mili/op/culture. More on that later.
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Random Fact:
0.5% of your energy will decay each tick.
2% of your crystal will decay each tick.
Ectrolium will not decay.
Mineral will not decay.
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Random Fact:
For some reason when sending an exploration ship, it seems to move faster than a normal fleet (as Foohon/manti/Dreamweaver). If you change it's order from fleet page it will take longer to get where it's going.
As a Spaceborne however, going to the fleets menu and telling an exp ship to go somewhere will make it go faster, often saving you time. (Example: You've sent an exploration ship to a planet 12 ticks away, go to fleets, click "details" for the exp ship. Click change order (it will already be set to the right planet) and it will change the time to 10 ticks)
I've no idea whether exp ships naturally move faster or slower than a harks speed.
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Random Fact:
Spacebornes move very fast, their instants are huge, this is how huge their instants are.
from system 90,90 a spaceborne is instant at 87,89 87,90 87,91 88,92 89,93 90,93 91,93 92,92, 93,91 93,90 93,89 92,88 91,87 90,87 89,87 88,88 and everything closer, (corrected), sometimes they get an extra few systems in a direct line from the portal. If 90,90 was the home system, the player would have instants on 86,90 94,90, 90,86 and 90,94 as well, but not always, just usually. I hate EV sometimes.
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Random Fact:
Research centers make 5 research points per tick plus race bonus. That means they effectively fund 50 energy every tick. For Foohons they will make 7.5 research points every tick. For mantis they will produce 4.5 research points every tick.
If a manti funds 50 energy they will get 4.5 research points.
If a Foohon funds 50 energy they will get 7.5 research points.
Let there never be confusion about this again
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Guideline:
When deciding what you need to build more of (for resourcers and SS players mainly), I usually aim to have a production of 2 minerals to 1 ectrolium.
And of 3 ectrolium to 2 crystal.
In a family where a manti is the primary energy source, the amount of mineral could be up to 3:1 compared to ectrolium.
With a fission E banker, a 1:1 production of ectrolium:crystal is more useful.
At times this will leave you with extra crystal, incandesce it and/or build ghost ships or psychics. Always have enough tech research to build ghost ships.
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Random Fact:
If you have 0 crystal, and make 10000 crystal per tick. In 6 ticks you will have made 60000 crystal. If you haven't used it as it is built, you will only have 57078 left (almost exactly). That means that just under 5% of your crystal production has decayed. If you leave it two hours, 10.3% of your crystal will have decayed.
Moral of the story: Use your crystal every tick if you need it for anything, crystal is not good for storing.
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Random Fact:
Back in the day when Xxit was storing 100 exp ships then landing them all at once, Mal decided to make hovering exp ships add to the cost of sending exp ships. Whether or not your exp ship has landed, it will add to the cost of sending more exp ships out.
Unless the cost has been changed fr loss when exploring is:
0 planets: 10%
1 planet : 10.25%
2 planets: 10.5%
3 planets: 10.75%
4 planets: 11%
etc. etc.
40 planets: 20%
x planets: 10% + 0.25*x
If you have any hovering exp ships, add the number of hovering exp ships to x to get the fr cost of sending your next exp ship.
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Random Fact:
For Foohons who want energy, cities are good. Not having enough cities as a Foohon, is stupid.
Fission reactor for Foohon: 36 energy - 18 for upkeep= 18 energy net.
At 150% energy research:18*2.5=45 energy.
At 150% culture research a city will reduce upkeep by 25000/350= 71.42 A city will increase upkeep by 4. A city at 150% culture research will make net 67.42 energy per tick if there is upkeep for it to reduce.
This applies to everyone so far.
In addition for a Foohon a city at 150% culture research will produce 25000/6000 = 41.66666 energy of research per tick. A city at 150% culture research produces net 109 energy for a Foohon per tick. No other building will ever make that much energy per tick effectively. All foohons should have enough cities so that they don't get building upkeep. Let it be so.
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Random Fact:
Population for Foohons makes 1 research point per tick per 6000 population. This is then subject to the race bonus for research. You will get 1 research point per tick for every 4000 population you have.
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Guideline:
When buying on the market reasonable guidelines for prices are 20-50 for mineral and 40-70 for ectrolium.
Crystal that you buy and use instantly can be worth up to 100 energy each if you really need it.
If you're leaving a buy bid on the market, the crystal you buy will most likely decay, so it's not worth more than 60 energy each.
If you're selling mineral for less than 20 you are either making a mistake, or are desperate.
If you buy mineral at 15 you are incredible lucky. If you buy mineral for more than 50 you are making a mistake.
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Random Fact:
You can build ghost ships at maximum penalty with 95% tech research. No penalty at 160% research.
Fission at maximum penalty 35% tech research. No penalty at 100% tech research.
High Infiltration max penalty 95% research. No penalty 160% research.
If you want to know when something is possible, it becomes possible at 65% less research than when it has no penalty. Check Starfurys guide to see when operations/buildings will have no penalty.
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Random Fact:
When building defense satellites and shield networks (and portals) you do not get charged OB cost if you build on an individual planet. However if you use the massbuild function (even if you only massbuild on one planet) then you will be charged OB for the buildings.
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Section 2 Information gathering:
Observe planet: Use of observe planet early in a round is to check planet size, bonus and whether a planet is an artifact.
Later in a round it can be used to discover the buildings on a planet, whether or not a portal is built on the planet (or if it's building) and the exact portal coverage. This is useful to figure out which planet to take to remove portal coverage. You can also figure out a players culture research from the max population.
A planet has a max population of 200 * size of planet + 10000* number of cities on the planet.
That number is then multiplied by the culture research to get maximum population.
Example:
size 300 planet, no cities
Max population is 90000. 300*200=60000 90000/60000 = 1.5
1.5-1= 0.5 This player has 50% culture research
Example 2: size 300 planet, 10 cities, max population 400,000.
300*200 + 10*10000 = 160000 400000/160000 = 2.5
2.5-1 = 1.5
This player has 150% culture research
This can also be used to check whether the persons family has an arti which affects pop growth when one is around.
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Spy Target: Shows you a players resources and readinesses.
The resources it shows include those on the market.
The resources shown when you do infiltration do include those on the market.
The resources shown when you do High Infiltration do not include those on the market.
I previously lied about infiltration showing resources on the market, it was slander against infiltration and I will hang my head in shame.
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Irradiate ectrolium:
If it works perfectly you will destroy one fifth of the targets ectrolium. If you are caught and barely succeed you may destroy less.
This can be used to work out how much ectrolium a player has left. 4 times your last fully successful Irradiate is how much that player has left.
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Military sabotage:
It destroys 10% of the enemies units, but it destroys them randomly across all the units.
What I mean is that if a player has 1 million droids and 100k cruisers, then 110k units will be lost, but it might be 105k droids and 5k cruisers, or 12k cruisers and 98k droids.
If estimating fleet from a military sabotage make sure to take that into account.
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Unexplored Planets:
Observing unexplored planets requires a minimum of about 30 agents. With 30 agents sometimes you will get the info and sometimes you wont. With 50 agents you will almost always get the size, but not necessarily find out whether the planet has a bonus. 70+ agents has never caused me a problem.
Surveying unexplored planets requires a minimum of about 300 ghost ships when you have 0% culture research. I haven't tested the lower end of the range, but less than 250 with no penalty and you may find you've wasted your psychic readiness.
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Infil/High Infil:
As a Foohon if you send all your agents to infiltration an enemy and aren't caught, then doing a High Infiltration (with no penalty and the same number of agents) will guarantee you the planets list but not the targets fleet.
If you are caught doing an infiltration by your target, jump more agents before attempting a High Infiltration.
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Running agents:
This is something that players are paranoid about but that is incredibly rarely done.
The basic idea is to do an operation like observe planet 30-50 times against a target in one turn, then to follow that by another player doing either High Infiltration or Network virus. If done properly this will require less ectrolium than merely jumping one player to HI or NV a player.
At best the losses from running a player with observe agent are likely to be between 2.5 - 3 times the defenders losses (in terms of agent value). If you have 150% operations research and your target has 0% operations research, you should expect the number of agents lost to be about equal or in your favour most of the time. Ideally you lose twice as much as your target for each observe, however the randomness means that fairly often you will lose 3-4 times the agents that your enemy loses.
Over 50 observes, expect to be able to kill 50% of the enemies agents.
If you have caught less than 10 operations from a player, you have not had your agents "run down". Stop complaining about being run down every time you catch someone doing spy target or observe planet.
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Section 3 Fleet stuff:
The little known role of units to "shelter" other units.
In different phases certain units preferentially attack certain other units and some units preferentially take the hits.
Example: 4th phase if a defender has an equal amount of droids and goliaths, more droids will die, more goliaths will survive. The droids take the hit that the goliath may survive.
In third phase if an attacker has no bombers, the defending goliaths will target transports at a much higher rate than the attackers cruisers.
If there are bombers they will be targeted at a much higher rate than transports or cruisers.
Cruisers preferentially target fighters in second phase.
Fighters preferentially target cruisers in second phase. (Massed fighters in defense will destroy cruisers almost exclusively instead of other fighters, this makes them more effective than they are often given credit for, as they are targeting the more expensive enemy ship, whereas cruisers devote energy to destroying the cheaper fighters)
Cruisers act as a shield for carriers. Fighters act as a shield for transports. Bombers act as a shield for transports. Droids act as a shield for goliaths. I suspect soldiers act as a shield for droids and goliaths, but I don't know for sure.
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Ratios of units:
The units are all perfectly balanced by NW, except soldiers and goliaths. When deciding whether you are winning a fight, 4 fighters are worth one cruiser. 3 goliaths are worth one cruiser, 4 bombers are worth 3 goliaths. 2 droids are worth 3 soldiers.
Goliaths are tricky last phase, they have the same defense as 4 droids, but the offense of only 3. They make up for this in third phase ideally. (haven't checked exact stats for a while, sorry if I'm wrong).
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Goliaths:
My favourite unit for defense, ahhhh sweet goliaths
First of all, when attacking someone with goliaths, you must have some bombers. If you have 300k cruisers 50k transports but no bombers, and attack a player with 150k goliaths (cruiser power effectively six times the power of the goliaths), the goliaths will flee from battle, but still kill off a ridiculous amount of your transports (probably half or more of them). If you attacked with 50k cruisers and 200k bombers with your 50k transports (effectively only double the power of the goliaths) , then the goliaths would (probably) flee and kill almost none of your transports.
Bombers are vital, as an attacker always have at least as many bombers as transports when attacking a manti, and two to three times the bombers as transports when attacking a player who might have goliaths.
It's cheaper than losing a million ground because you forgot.
For defense goliaths will stop the first wave of an enemies attack. But the second wave will break through. Once it's broken, rebuild a different fleet, it's cheaper and has a chance of stopping the enemy.
Always have at least as many droids as goliaths so that the droids will preferentially die in 4th phase.
The two ways to destroy goliaths are in third phase and 4th phase. Most common is to destroy them in third phase. It is actually cheaper and more effective to do it in 4th phase. I'll leave the details up to you to sort out, cos I still like to use gollies
Finally, Goliaths effectively cost at least ten times as much as a droid because of the crystal and tech research required. If you use them to attack, they only fight as 3 droids in 4th phase. As well as losing them in the first three phases, you put them at a disadvantage in terms of resources in the final phase. Goliaths should never be used to attack, it is much much cheaper to build a temporary droid fleet than to attack with goliaths. The exception is when attacking an enemy that is already broken, has no portal coverage, or that you so massively outnumber that your losses are negligible.
When my 300k goliaths shot down 800k enemy goliaths in third phase one time... well.. that battlereport belongs a hall of fame somewhere.
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Random Fact:
When you take over a planet the portal coverage shown in your planets list for the rest of that tick is the actual portal coverage on that planet. The % portal coverage it tells you when you attack is only an estimate, so if you want to know the exact portal coverage on a planet, take it over and check your planets list before the end of the tick
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Manti phantoms:
Mantis are arrogant, they all are. Defcon was arrogant. Eagle was Arrogant. Appel was arrogant. Isthai is VERY arrogant. That's because most of the time they are blunt instruments, they have faith in their phantoms.
One extra trick that every manti should have is to cast phantoms and change them to only fight in 4th phase. An attacker will overbuild cruisers when attacking a manti in case the manti casts phantoms. Cruisers are the best units for killing phantoms. But ONLY if the phantoms fight in the first three phases. Using phantoms to only defend 4th phase is something unexpected and highly effective, try it out if you're online and being attacked sometime
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Operations Lengths:
High Infiltration lasts 104 ticks
Dark web lasts 52 ticks
Network Virus lasts 32 ticks
War Illusions lasts 52 ticks (haven't checked this myself, blame Hannes if that's wrong)
Black Mist lasts 32 ticks
Planetary shielding lasts between 12 and 40ish ticks
Portal Force Field .. I don't know. If someone knows, let me know, and I will let you know. Then, we will all know.
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Planetary Shielding:
This op is becoming increasingly more used, although Appeltje and I were the first to use it on a truly grand scale (that I know of).
The best use is combined with goliaths or for 4th phase.
Goliaths are typically built in small numbers to catch the attackers who forget to build bombers, planetary shielding gives you a better chance to encouter (and thus destroy) enemy transports in third phase with much fewer losses.
In 4th phase the battle is decided, you either keep the planet or you don't. If you're shielded you might kill 10 million droids and lose only 3. Destroy 4 million phantoms and take no losses. Shielding makes the most hilarious attacks that you will ever see. If you are attacking a player with shielding and you know you have a bigger fleet, set fleet settings to 9999% and you will get the planet anyway. Be warned, expect to lose a lot of fleet, and not kill a single unit of the defenders. If it's a portal or artifact, it might be worth it though.
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Section 4 Research:
Research is the most important aspect of this game, and the biggest gap between the top families and the bottom families.
What's my percent in a field?
A simple rule to figure out what percent research you will have in a field is this:
If you have 1 million NW and 7 million research points, you will have 100% research in that field!
If you have 1 million NW and 14 million research points in a field, you will have 150% research in that field.
1 mill NW, 21 mill research points, 175% research in that field
1 mill NW, 28 mill research points, 187.5% in that field.
This is a near perfect approximation of how research works (for fields of maximum 200%).
If your maximum in a field is 250%, then 7*NW in research points will give 125% in that field, each additional 7*NW in that field will take you half way to maximum from that point.
Example, you have 160% research in construction, but want 180%. You have 1.5 million NW. You will need 7*1.5 million= 10.5 million more research points to get to 180% construction research!
need I say more?
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Guideline for starting research:
Spaceborne fission banker: 30/30/40 con/tech/energy prod. Start slow, jump when construction reaches 151% (more on the importance of certain percentages of con research later).
Manti Solar banker: 50/50 con/energy
Foohon Resourcer: 40/20/40 con/tech/energy or 66/34 con/tech depending how much energy you need to make early on..
Others: I don't know, I'm a banker silleh
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Guidelines for research percentages:
150% constrcution
100% tech
160%+ military research
150%+ energy research (170%+ for E-bankers)
100% culture for everyone, more for mantis/dreamweavers/foohons (for cities)
100% operations for every player (160%+ for Spaceborne, Foohon)
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Portal efficiency doesn't increase instant range. End of Story. It is useful, but not very. Something should probably be done about it's near complete uselessness.
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Construction research:
This has obvious effects, and some not so obvious.
Everything in this game is calculated from base cost. Base costis set by your construction research %. This is most obvious for units, but few people give thought to the effect on buildings.
A research center has a base cost of 5 mineral/ectrolium/crystal.
At 25% construction research this will drop to 4 of each resource. 24% con research no reduction in resource cost. 25% con research you save 20% on resources spent on research centers.
Base cost drops from 4 to 3 at 66% con research. 67% con research saves 25% on resources compared to 65% con research when building research centers.
The next point to save resources is 150%.
151% con research, base cost is 2 of each resource per research center. 149% it is 3 of each resource.
That difference in construction research, will save you 33% on resources spent making research centers!!! Dropping from 151% to 149% will increase the cost of research centers by 50% (for resources)!!!
Similar numbers apply to other buildings.
36 mineral per refinement station at base cost.
18 mineral each at 101% con research.
15 mineral each at 141% construction research.
14 mineral each at 158% consrtuction research.
If you're building refinement stations at 142% or 157% you will pay the same amount in mineral. Increase to 158% and you will save 6.6666% in mineral.
In short: Certain research points are more important for construction research, as the improvement to your faction isn't completely linear, like it is for military research or operations research. By far the most important number is 150%. Beyond 150% you get agents for 4 ect each (and in two ticks to build)
For mantis it represents a drop in 20% for the cost (in mineral) of building solar collectors.
I could go on and on about the magic of 150% construction research. Instead, take my word for it and get that much research.
Other useful points for construction research. the difference between 99% and 101% when building mineral plants is that you halve your ectrolium cost.
For solar collectors you can never ever reduce the cost of ectrolium when building them because the base cost in ectrolium is 1, and that can never be reduced.
Get the picture? Good, well that's all I have to say today, I've been here for about two hours and want dinner. If you have any specific questions about how I play I will probably ignore you. If you have a different opinion to me about any of the above, I will definately ignore you. Hopefully you'll learn something anyway, ask general questions and I will answer them with my opinion, but would everyone else please remember this is a thread about my opinions and my thinking? Please don't clutter it with any of your own nonsense
Edit: Minesweeper, expert, 198 seconds. Beat that
Warning: This post is in no particular order, and the brainstorm of ideas from which I'm writing was written while a lecturer tried to teach me the finer details of collagen structure in Dense Fibrous Connective Tissue.
...
Section 1: Basic and miscellaneous stuff
How OB works: a planet with size 250 will have an OB cost of 300% when 500 buildings are built on it, 800% when 750 buildings are on it, 1500% when 1000 buildings are built on it.
In other words, at 500 buildings, the cost is 4 times normal, at 750 buildings, the cost is 9 times normal, at 1000 buildings the cost is 16 times normal.
In other words, when you've built twice the number of buildings as the size of a planet, the cost is 4 times, three times te size of a planet, 9 times, 4 times the size is 16 times.
Ie. It's an exponential.
2^2=4 3^3=9 4^4=16
If any of you are too lazy to do the math then for a planet of size 250
250: no OB cost : 1^2=1 * base cost
500: 300% OB cost : 2^2=4 * base cost
750: 800% OB cost : 3^2=9 * base cost
1000: 1500% OB cost : 4^2=16 * base cost
1250: 2400% OB cost : 5^2=25 * base cost
1500: 3500% OB cost : 6^2=36 * base cost
1750: 4800% OB cost : 7^2=49 * base cost
2000: 6300% OB cost : 8^2=64 * base cost
2250: 8000% OB cost : 9^2=81 * base cost
2500: 9900% OB cost : 10^2=100 * base cost
2750: 12000% OB cost : 11^2=121 * base cost
3000: 14300% OB cost : 12^2=144 * base cost
3250: 16800% OB cost : 13^2=169 * base cost
3500: 19500% OB cost : 14^2=196 * base cost
3750: 22400% OB cost : 15^2=225 * base cost
4000: 25500% OB cost : 16^2=256 * base cost
4250: 28800% OB cost : 17^2=289 * base cost
4500: 32300% OB cost : 18^2=324 * base cost
4750: 36000% OB cost : 19^2=361 * base cost
5000: 39900% OB cost : 20^2=400 * base cost
5250: ... stop OBing now foo !
For resourcers and manti solar bankers and as SS my goal is to increase my OB by one level each day. By day 5 my planets are 2400% OB
By day 10 9900% OB
After day ten my OB speed slows down, but I go up at least one level every two days.
Usually in the first 4 days you can get one or two levels ahead, but this is usually lost when I take a day or two to catch my research up in mili/op/culture. More on that later.
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Random Fact:
0.5% of your energy will decay each tick.
2% of your crystal will decay each tick.
Ectrolium will not decay.
Mineral will not decay.
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Random Fact:
For some reason when sending an exploration ship, it seems to move faster than a normal fleet (as Foohon/manti/Dreamweaver). If you change it's order from fleet page it will take longer to get where it's going.
As a Spaceborne however, going to the fleets menu and telling an exp ship to go somewhere will make it go faster, often saving you time. (Example: You've sent an exploration ship to a planet 12 ticks away, go to fleets, click "details" for the exp ship. Click change order (it will already be set to the right planet) and it will change the time to 10 ticks)
I've no idea whether exp ships naturally move faster or slower than a harks speed.
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Random Fact:
Spacebornes move very fast, their instants are huge, this is how huge their instants are.
from system 90,90 a spaceborne is instant at 87,89 87,90 87,91 88,92 89,93 90,93 91,93 92,92, 93,91 93,90 93,89 92,88 91,87 90,87 89,87 88,88 and everything closer, (corrected), sometimes they get an extra few systems in a direct line from the portal. If 90,90 was the home system, the player would have instants on 86,90 94,90, 90,86 and 90,94 as well, but not always, just usually. I hate EV sometimes.
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Random Fact:
Research centers make 5 research points per tick plus race bonus. That means they effectively fund 50 energy every tick. For Foohons they will make 7.5 research points every tick. For mantis they will produce 4.5 research points every tick.
If a manti funds 50 energy they will get 4.5 research points.
If a Foohon funds 50 energy they will get 7.5 research points.
Let there never be confusion about this again
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Guideline:
When deciding what you need to build more of (for resourcers and SS players mainly), I usually aim to have a production of 2 minerals to 1 ectrolium.
And of 3 ectrolium to 2 crystal.
In a family where a manti is the primary energy source, the amount of mineral could be up to 3:1 compared to ectrolium.
With a fission E banker, a 1:1 production of ectrolium:crystal is more useful.
At times this will leave you with extra crystal, incandesce it and/or build ghost ships or psychics. Always have enough tech research to build ghost ships.
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Random Fact:
If you have 0 crystal, and make 10000 crystal per tick. In 6 ticks you will have made 60000 crystal. If you haven't used it as it is built, you will only have 57078 left (almost exactly). That means that just under 5% of your crystal production has decayed. If you leave it two hours, 10.3% of your crystal will have decayed.
Moral of the story: Use your crystal every tick if you need it for anything, crystal is not good for storing.
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Random Fact:
Back in the day when Xxit was storing 100 exp ships then landing them all at once, Mal decided to make hovering exp ships add to the cost of sending exp ships. Whether or not your exp ship has landed, it will add to the cost of sending more exp ships out.
Unless the cost has been changed fr loss when exploring is:
0 planets: 10%
1 planet : 10.25%
2 planets: 10.5%
3 planets: 10.75%
4 planets: 11%
etc. etc.
40 planets: 20%
x planets: 10% + 0.25*x
If you have any hovering exp ships, add the number of hovering exp ships to x to get the fr cost of sending your next exp ship.
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Random Fact:
For Foohons who want energy, cities are good. Not having enough cities as a Foohon, is stupid.
Fission reactor for Foohon: 36 energy - 18 for upkeep= 18 energy net.
At 150% energy research:18*2.5=45 energy.
At 150% culture research a city will reduce upkeep by 25000/350= 71.42 A city will increase upkeep by 4. A city at 150% culture research will make net 67.42 energy per tick if there is upkeep for it to reduce.
This applies to everyone so far.
In addition for a Foohon a city at 150% culture research will produce 25000/6000 = 41.66666 energy of research per tick. A city at 150% culture research produces net 109 energy for a Foohon per tick. No other building will ever make that much energy per tick effectively. All foohons should have enough cities so that they don't get building upkeep. Let it be so.
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Random Fact:
Population for Foohons makes 1 research point per tick per 6000 population. This is then subject to the race bonus for research. You will get 1 research point per tick for every 4000 population you have.
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Guideline:
When buying on the market reasonable guidelines for prices are 20-50 for mineral and 40-70 for ectrolium.
Crystal that you buy and use instantly can be worth up to 100 energy each if you really need it.
If you're leaving a buy bid on the market, the crystal you buy will most likely decay, so it's not worth more than 60 energy each.
If you're selling mineral for less than 20 you are either making a mistake, or are desperate.
If you buy mineral at 15 you are incredible lucky. If you buy mineral for more than 50 you are making a mistake.
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Random Fact:
You can build ghost ships at maximum penalty with 95% tech research. No penalty at 160% research.
Fission at maximum penalty 35% tech research. No penalty at 100% tech research.
High Infiltration max penalty 95% research. No penalty 160% research.
If you want to know when something is possible, it becomes possible at 65% less research than when it has no penalty. Check Starfurys guide to see when operations/buildings will have no penalty.
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Random Fact:
When building defense satellites and shield networks (and portals) you do not get charged OB cost if you build on an individual planet. However if you use the massbuild function (even if you only massbuild on one planet) then you will be charged OB for the buildings.
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Section 2 Information gathering:
Observe planet: Use of observe planet early in a round is to check planet size, bonus and whether a planet is an artifact.
Later in a round it can be used to discover the buildings on a planet, whether or not a portal is built on the planet (or if it's building) and the exact portal coverage. This is useful to figure out which planet to take to remove portal coverage. You can also figure out a players culture research from the max population.
A planet has a max population of 200 * size of planet + 10000* number of cities on the planet.
That number is then multiplied by the culture research to get maximum population.
Example:
size 300 planet, no cities
Max population is 90000. 300*200=60000 90000/60000 = 1.5
1.5-1= 0.5 This player has 50% culture research
Example 2: size 300 planet, 10 cities, max population 400,000.
300*200 + 10*10000 = 160000 400000/160000 = 2.5
2.5-1 = 1.5
This player has 150% culture research
This can also be used to check whether the persons family has an arti which affects pop growth when one is around.
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Spy Target: Shows you a players resources and readinesses.
The resources it shows include those on the market.
The resources shown when you do infiltration do include those on the market.
The resources shown when you do High Infiltration do not include those on the market.
I previously lied about infiltration showing resources on the market, it was slander against infiltration and I will hang my head in shame.
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Irradiate ectrolium:
If it works perfectly you will destroy one fifth of the targets ectrolium. If you are caught and barely succeed you may destroy less.
This can be used to work out how much ectrolium a player has left. 4 times your last fully successful Irradiate is how much that player has left.
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Military sabotage:
It destroys 10% of the enemies units, but it destroys them randomly across all the units.
What I mean is that if a player has 1 million droids and 100k cruisers, then 110k units will be lost, but it might be 105k droids and 5k cruisers, or 12k cruisers and 98k droids.
If estimating fleet from a military sabotage make sure to take that into account.
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Unexplored Planets:
Observing unexplored planets requires a minimum of about 30 agents. With 30 agents sometimes you will get the info and sometimes you wont. With 50 agents you will almost always get the size, but not necessarily find out whether the planet has a bonus. 70+ agents has never caused me a problem.
Surveying unexplored planets requires a minimum of about 300 ghost ships when you have 0% culture research. I haven't tested the lower end of the range, but less than 250 with no penalty and you may find you've wasted your psychic readiness.
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Infil/High Infil:
As a Foohon if you send all your agents to infiltration an enemy and aren't caught, then doing a High Infiltration (with no penalty and the same number of agents) will guarantee you the planets list but not the targets fleet.
If you are caught doing an infiltration by your target, jump more agents before attempting a High Infiltration.
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Running agents:
This is something that players are paranoid about but that is incredibly rarely done.
The basic idea is to do an operation like observe planet 30-50 times against a target in one turn, then to follow that by another player doing either High Infiltration or Network virus. If done properly this will require less ectrolium than merely jumping one player to HI or NV a player.
At best the losses from running a player with observe agent are likely to be between 2.5 - 3 times the defenders losses (in terms of agent value). If you have 150% operations research and your target has 0% operations research, you should expect the number of agents lost to be about equal or in your favour most of the time. Ideally you lose twice as much as your target for each observe, however the randomness means that fairly often you will lose 3-4 times the agents that your enemy loses.
Over 50 observes, expect to be able to kill 50% of the enemies agents.
If you have caught less than 10 operations from a player, you have not had your agents "run down". Stop complaining about being run down every time you catch someone doing spy target or observe planet.
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Section 3 Fleet stuff:
The little known role of units to "shelter" other units.
In different phases certain units preferentially attack certain other units and some units preferentially take the hits.
Example: 4th phase if a defender has an equal amount of droids and goliaths, more droids will die, more goliaths will survive. The droids take the hit that the goliath may survive.
In third phase if an attacker has no bombers, the defending goliaths will target transports at a much higher rate than the attackers cruisers.
If there are bombers they will be targeted at a much higher rate than transports or cruisers.
Cruisers preferentially target fighters in second phase.
Fighters preferentially target cruisers in second phase. (Massed fighters in defense will destroy cruisers almost exclusively instead of other fighters, this makes them more effective than they are often given credit for, as they are targeting the more expensive enemy ship, whereas cruisers devote energy to destroying the cheaper fighters)
Cruisers act as a shield for carriers. Fighters act as a shield for transports. Bombers act as a shield for transports. Droids act as a shield for goliaths. I suspect soldiers act as a shield for droids and goliaths, but I don't know for sure.
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Ratios of units:
The units are all perfectly balanced by NW, except soldiers and goliaths. When deciding whether you are winning a fight, 4 fighters are worth one cruiser. 3 goliaths are worth one cruiser, 4 bombers are worth 3 goliaths. 2 droids are worth 3 soldiers.
Goliaths are tricky last phase, they have the same defense as 4 droids, but the offense of only 3. They make up for this in third phase ideally. (haven't checked exact stats for a while, sorry if I'm wrong).
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Goliaths:
My favourite unit for defense, ahhhh sweet goliaths
First of all, when attacking someone with goliaths, you must have some bombers. If you have 300k cruisers 50k transports but no bombers, and attack a player with 150k goliaths (cruiser power effectively six times the power of the goliaths), the goliaths will flee from battle, but still kill off a ridiculous amount of your transports (probably half or more of them). If you attacked with 50k cruisers and 200k bombers with your 50k transports (effectively only double the power of the goliaths) , then the goliaths would (probably) flee and kill almost none of your transports.
Bombers are vital, as an attacker always have at least as many bombers as transports when attacking a manti, and two to three times the bombers as transports when attacking a player who might have goliaths.
It's cheaper than losing a million ground because you forgot.
For defense goliaths will stop the first wave of an enemies attack. But the second wave will break through. Once it's broken, rebuild a different fleet, it's cheaper and has a chance of stopping the enemy.
Always have at least as many droids as goliaths so that the droids will preferentially die in 4th phase.
The two ways to destroy goliaths are in third phase and 4th phase. Most common is to destroy them in third phase. It is actually cheaper and more effective to do it in 4th phase. I'll leave the details up to you to sort out, cos I still like to use gollies
Finally, Goliaths effectively cost at least ten times as much as a droid because of the crystal and tech research required. If you use them to attack, they only fight as 3 droids in 4th phase. As well as losing them in the first three phases, you put them at a disadvantage in terms of resources in the final phase. Goliaths should never be used to attack, it is much much cheaper to build a temporary droid fleet than to attack with goliaths. The exception is when attacking an enemy that is already broken, has no portal coverage, or that you so massively outnumber that your losses are negligible.
When my 300k goliaths shot down 800k enemy goliaths in third phase one time... well.. that battlereport belongs a hall of fame somewhere.
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Random Fact:
When you take over a planet the portal coverage shown in your planets list for the rest of that tick is the actual portal coverage on that planet. The % portal coverage it tells you when you attack is only an estimate, so if you want to know the exact portal coverage on a planet, take it over and check your planets list before the end of the tick
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Manti phantoms:
Mantis are arrogant, they all are. Defcon was arrogant. Eagle was Arrogant. Appel was arrogant. Isthai is VERY arrogant. That's because most of the time they are blunt instruments, they have faith in their phantoms.
One extra trick that every manti should have is to cast phantoms and change them to only fight in 4th phase. An attacker will overbuild cruisers when attacking a manti in case the manti casts phantoms. Cruisers are the best units for killing phantoms. But ONLY if the phantoms fight in the first three phases. Using phantoms to only defend 4th phase is something unexpected and highly effective, try it out if you're online and being attacked sometime
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Operations Lengths:
High Infiltration lasts 104 ticks
Dark web lasts 52 ticks
Network Virus lasts 32 ticks
War Illusions lasts 52 ticks (haven't checked this myself, blame Hannes if that's wrong)
Black Mist lasts 32 ticks
Planetary shielding lasts between 12 and 40ish ticks
Portal Force Field .. I don't know. If someone knows, let me know, and I will let you know. Then, we will all know.
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Planetary Shielding:
This op is becoming increasingly more used, although Appeltje and I were the first to use it on a truly grand scale (that I know of).
The best use is combined with goliaths or for 4th phase.
Goliaths are typically built in small numbers to catch the attackers who forget to build bombers, planetary shielding gives you a better chance to encouter (and thus destroy) enemy transports in third phase with much fewer losses.
In 4th phase the battle is decided, you either keep the planet or you don't. If you're shielded you might kill 10 million droids and lose only 3. Destroy 4 million phantoms and take no losses. Shielding makes the most hilarious attacks that you will ever see. If you are attacking a player with shielding and you know you have a bigger fleet, set fleet settings to 9999% and you will get the planet anyway. Be warned, expect to lose a lot of fleet, and not kill a single unit of the defenders. If it's a portal or artifact, it might be worth it though.
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Section 4 Research:
Research is the most important aspect of this game, and the biggest gap between the top families and the bottom families.
What's my percent in a field?
A simple rule to figure out what percent research you will have in a field is this:
If you have 1 million NW and 7 million research points, you will have 100% research in that field!
If you have 1 million NW and 14 million research points in a field, you will have 150% research in that field.
1 mill NW, 21 mill research points, 175% research in that field
1 mill NW, 28 mill research points, 187.5% in that field.
This is a near perfect approximation of how research works (for fields of maximum 200%).
If your maximum in a field is 250%, then 7*NW in research points will give 125% in that field, each additional 7*NW in that field will take you half way to maximum from that point.
Example, you have 160% research in construction, but want 180%. You have 1.5 million NW. You will need 7*1.5 million= 10.5 million more research points to get to 180% construction research!
need I say more?
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Guideline for starting research:
Spaceborne fission banker: 30/30/40 con/tech/energy prod. Start slow, jump when construction reaches 151% (more on the importance of certain percentages of con research later).
Manti Solar banker: 50/50 con/energy
Foohon Resourcer: 40/20/40 con/tech/energy or 66/34 con/tech depending how much energy you need to make early on..
Others: I don't know, I'm a banker silleh
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Guidelines for research percentages:
150% constrcution
100% tech
160%+ military research
150%+ energy research (170%+ for E-bankers)
100% culture for everyone, more for mantis/dreamweavers/foohons (for cities)
100% operations for every player (160%+ for Spaceborne, Foohon)
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Portal efficiency doesn't increase instant range. End of Story. It is useful, but not very. Something should probably be done about it's near complete uselessness.
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Construction research:
This has obvious effects, and some not so obvious.
Everything in this game is calculated from base cost. Base costis set by your construction research %. This is most obvious for units, but few people give thought to the effect on buildings.
A research center has a base cost of 5 mineral/ectrolium/crystal.
At 25% construction research this will drop to 4 of each resource. 24% con research no reduction in resource cost. 25% con research you save 20% on resources spent on research centers.
Base cost drops from 4 to 3 at 66% con research. 67% con research saves 25% on resources compared to 65% con research when building research centers.
The next point to save resources is 150%.
151% con research, base cost is 2 of each resource per research center. 149% it is 3 of each resource.
That difference in construction research, will save you 33% on resources spent making research centers!!! Dropping from 151% to 149% will increase the cost of research centers by 50% (for resources)!!!
Similar numbers apply to other buildings.
36 mineral per refinement station at base cost.
18 mineral each at 101% con research.
15 mineral each at 141% construction research.
14 mineral each at 158% consrtuction research.
If you're building refinement stations at 142% or 157% you will pay the same amount in mineral. Increase to 158% and you will save 6.6666% in mineral.
In short: Certain research points are more important for construction research, as the improvement to your faction isn't completely linear, like it is for military research or operations research. By far the most important number is 150%. Beyond 150% you get agents for 4 ect each (and in two ticks to build)
For mantis it represents a drop in 20% for the cost (in mineral) of building solar collectors.
I could go on and on about the magic of 150% construction research. Instead, take my word for it and get that much research.
Other useful points for construction research. the difference between 99% and 101% when building mineral plants is that you halve your ectrolium cost.
For solar collectors you can never ever reduce the cost of ectrolium when building them because the base cost in ectrolium is 1, and that can never be reduced.
Get the picture? Good, well that's all I have to say today, I've been here for about two hours and want dinner. If you have any specific questions about how I play I will probably ignore you. If you have a different opinion to me about any of the above, I will definately ignore you. Hopefully you'll learn something anyway, ask general questions and I will answer them with my opinion, but would everyone else please remember this is a thread about my opinions and my thinking? Please don't clutter it with any of your own nonsense
Edit: Minesweeper, expert, 198 seconds. Beat that