10-11-2001 17:54									#1
	Actual # of SATs you built in a pbem Put an end to popups!

OK, referring to a discussion about the effectiveness of orbitals and ICS, I'm having in Sprayber's started thread about base spacing, I was just wondering...

Those concepts are nice theory, and suitable for single player.
But in a real PBEM, I mean one where you didn't just procrastineate a readily avaiable victory just to push the envelope...
(because I believe, no, wait, I BELIEVE that pbem is REAL play, where you test if a strategy is really significant in practice. It's just that a thread about a gaming concept would probably go unnoticed in Multiplaying foprum, and sink rapidly. After all it's a question relating to strategy, and it belongs here despite it's a SinglePlayers den...)

How many satellites have you been able to build in a single pbem?

I hardly had the time to build more than a dozen.
I think once I had 7 nuts, 5 energy and 2 minerals.
Remember that a satellite costs 12 mineral rows.
Even if you have 24 *developed* bases (you can have more, but I can't say it has been usual in the pbems I played), it would take 4-5 turn to just repay the investment in a Mining SAT. Or double the time for an Energy SAT. A Food SAT's returns are indirect thus harder to quantify, but you got what I mean.
In real play conditions, often you can't afford to bring on an optimal investment plan yielding albeit huge returns in a distant future...

Of course, I would not count the satellites you bring up in the last 2-3 turns before your transcendence because you didn't have anything else you needed to produce in most of your bases at that point.....

	10-11-2001 21:39									#2
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IIRC, I had 5 energy and 5 food sats in my victory in Axt 042 as the Drones. The food sats aided in my PTS growth as I went from about 40 to 60 bases in the face of a massive conflict with the sole remaining player. each base had enough food to grow and eventually went to size 5 when enginners could come into play.

I stopped building sats when the war intensified but with 60 build queues in bases that had at least 10 crawled minerals each. My gaian opponent was being out-produced and resigned when a combination of the solar shade and formers raised enough terrain that his fleet of elite sea probes (MCC-aided with 9 tile range) became ineffective.


As for the Sats. . . they are expensive but as the Drones i had bases that could put them up without rushing in just a few turns. the food sats were key in keeping my new PTS bases alive at size 3 while a few crawlers were rushed to get the base to 10+ minerals. As for the energy sats, they just seemed a worthwhile investment at the time.

	12-11-2001 00:23									#3
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In one of the tourney games Misotu had, IIRC, around 25 or 30 hydroponic satellites. We had a great last ten turns or so (before she transcended) as I threw up ODPs and took on her ODP force - I had about ten, and lost four or five every turn, but took out five or six of hers every turn (she had some 20 or so) but she could outbuild me. (I was clearing the way for a PB to take out her science base)

G.

	12-11-2001 03:38									#4
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I think I've had 2 out of about 6 games make it that far. The others finished before then, so I wouldn't really recommend banking on satellites when using ICS strategies. It's of my humble opinion that taking advantage of satellities when running a ICS strategy is more of a latent effect as I believe the intention of running an ICS strategy is to finish the game before it gets that far. If the game isn't finished by then it most likely means that somone else is running the same strategy and the preceived advantage of ICS satellities is then negated as in all likelyhood your opponent(s?) are doing the same thing.

When the games did get that far most people got up at least 14 energy sats, a few food, and a few mineral. I can only speak for myself, but the cost of the sats were nearly irrelevent when I was pulling in 600+ energy per turn. I can't quite remember, but I thought it was only about 200 energy credits to rush a satellite after the first 10 minerals and given that some of my bases were churning out 30 some minerals the price was reduced a further 40 or 50 credits.

As I'm sure you already know, having the Cloudbase Academy is nice since even your smaller bases are bringing in energy in proportion to their population.

	12-11-2001 22:36									#5
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Just another comment on my game-- I agree with WE that counting on satellites as a strat is foolish since most games never get there

In Axt042 I faced a 3 player alliance determined to bring me down. War brought the base total from 25 to about 40 as two opponents disappeared. meanwhile my lone remaining opponent wiped out an AI or two to get to a similar base total. With lots of empty space and some available formers I did a "late ICS" with the PTS. Most of my core was more perfectionist (size 14 bases)as there were two superscience cities and a couple of bases optimized for units.

With terraforming available, the CBA and 5 nut satellites, it took very little to bring the bases from size 3 to size 5 at which time they became very productive parts of the empire.