Leapfrog - Starting Strategies Part 1
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*** I play Gigantic at Crippling - you judge how much of this is relevent to you ***
(This is the first of three or four threads I will spawn over the next few days with some radical ideas I am trying out - comments very welcome!)
Major inefficiency in how I was expanding previously - Earth would send out colony ship after colony ship, while the new planets did other stuff. Instead, try this: say 2 promising lines of expansion - send half of earths population off in each of the first three ships, leaving only a few people. Then let earth build other stuff. As each ship arrives, have the planet build a new colony ship, and ship off all but a few population. Repeat.
Gains: all the time ships spent covering parsecs (sic) from earth that other ships had already covered are now saved - the wave front moves out MUCH faster. Instead of Earth to first planet (3 turns); Earth to second planet (3 more turns) we get earth to first planet (3), first to second (1), etc
Disadvantage: pop doesn't grow while you are inside a transport, and this strat leaves most of the pop inside transports for quite awhile. I don't care about this at the moment, since I don't find pop a limiting factor in the early game.
Expansion: Colonise straight out, ignoring side systems. Later, those planets you did settle can build colony ships to grab the planets you skipped during the rush.
Tech Note: for PQ15 planets, I leave 1 pop. For PQ 16-21 I leave 110 pop. (Get one more credit on those planets for the 110 million taxpayers.) Keep taxes down and approval over 90, cause this strat is vulnerable to shrinkage.
Remember: you build colony ships (and generate cash) mainly for the PQ at the start, not for pop...
~SDC~
(This is the first of three or four threads I will spawn over the next few days with some radical ideas I am trying out - comments very welcome!)
Major inefficiency in how I was expanding previously - Earth would send out colony ship after colony ship, while the new planets did other stuff. Instead, try this: say 2 promising lines of expansion - send half of earths population off in each of the first three ships, leaving only a few people. Then let earth build other stuff. As each ship arrives, have the planet build a new colony ship, and ship off all but a few population. Repeat.
Gains: all the time ships spent covering parsecs (sic) from earth that other ships had already covered are now saved - the wave front moves out MUCH faster. Instead of Earth to first planet (3 turns); Earth to second planet (3 more turns) we get earth to first planet (3), first to second (1), etc
Disadvantage: pop doesn't grow while you are inside a transport, and this strat leaves most of the pop inside transports for quite awhile. I don't care about this at the moment, since I don't find pop a limiting factor in the early game.
Expansion: Colonise straight out, ignoring side systems. Later, those planets you did settle can build colony ships to grab the planets you skipped during the rush.
Tech Note: for PQ15 planets, I leave 1 pop. For PQ 16-21 I leave 110 pop. (Get one more credit on those planets for the 110 million taxpayers.) Keep taxes down and approval over 90, cause this strat is vulnerable to shrinkage.
Remember: you build colony ships (and generate cash) mainly for the PQ at the start, not for pop...
~SDC~
