Starships unlimited AAR

The Starships Unlimited v3 is a fun, addictive and elegant 4X space strategy game.
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Henri
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Apr 26, 2002 7:32 pm

Starships unlimited AAR

Post by Henri »

For those who are contemplating getting the game, I thought a kind of AAR showing some of the game features and capabilities might be informative.Since I hate to lose and the game is fairly complex (there are still things that I don't understand -see my thread "...after 2 days").

This was my third game. I am still playing at beginner level, which is a good thing since I almost had to give up the game a couple of times.

I gave myself a weapons and research advantage, but I made a major mistake in choosing wave weapons. NEVER choose wave weapons as your first weapon, because they are too weak in the beginning, and researching other weapon types after your first choice takes at least 50% longer! Did I get a shock when I found that I couldn't destroy a single enemy freighter during my first war. Bolt weapons or missiles are good first choices.

I had a ring galaxy of 100 stars, and was disappointed that it did not contain a single wormhole (in my two previous games, the galaxy had only one).As in my two previous games, I had only two opponents, both of which were of the opposite philosophy -which means no allies. There should be an option to control the number of wormholes and number of opponents (with a random option).

Based on the two previous games, I knew that the key to victory is to have a large number of star systems to trade with, so I quickly generated to more scouts (total of three) and sent them exploring away. I had explored almost half the ring galaxy before I ran into my first opponent. It turned ot that we were about equally spaced around the ring. Since I had no opponent in the early game, I concentrated on technologies that allowed me to develop rapidly, and I was in the fusion stage by the time conflict began - this is where I found I was no match for my opponents' particle and beam weapons.Since distances were long I colonized a star system halfway between my starting point and one of my opponents.

I had a pretty good lead in technology, but was lacking in the other areas, especially after the opponents attacked and destroyed my second world, then taking over most of my corresponding freight routes. My money went into the red and I was chagrined to see that I had only about a third of the galaxy against two opponents of the opposite philosophy who quickly agreed to an alliance against me.

I almost decided to give up, but realized that if I could keep up my lead in technology, I might eventually be able to attack one or two of their worlds and reversing the odds.

I had another colony directly opposite to my stating point on the ring galaxy, but I had little doubt that it would live very long, since it was so far away with enemies on both sides. At best it served as a distraction before it was gobbled up, but it may have saved my butt by delaying enemy attacks elsewhere.

Here is where the game shines, since it gives the player a choice of strategies, including some versions of maneuver warfare. I figured that my only chance was to use a strategy of the indirect approach, using pirates and unrest to disrupt them while choking some of their systems to death by attacking their trade routes.I researched up to cruisers as fast as I could, and bought as many as I could afford (which was less than half a dozen). I used them to strike as many freight routes as possible, and when I had about four cruisers and better weapons, I decided to strike back at the nearest enemy world system. This was just after my spies had warned me of an impending enemy attack against a planet, which I bushwacked, so I figured that there was little chance of his hitting my home world while I was attacking.

It takes time to organize a coordinated attack, the ships all go to spacedocks to refit and to get the needed attack pods and so on. One is vulnerable during this time, since there are few or no ships available to defend elsewhere during this time.

Finally my ships came out and hit the small system all at once. My force barely survived, but when the smoke cleared, I still had one ship left and the world along with its freight routes belonged to me. This gave me something to build on (not to mention extra money), and I kept hitting his trade routes with as many ships as I could spare from the pesky pirate hunting.

When I reached the singularity age, I finally had weapons that could pulverize the enemy thanks to my technology advance, and except for a couple of tough pirated systems that destroyed about half a dozen of my cruisers in a row when I tried to regain them and before I realized that I was attacking the same system for the fifth time, I gradually wound the noose tighter around by the enemy necks by destroying as many freight routes as I could.

By now one of the enemies had four home worlds and I had three, and when I thought I was strong enough, I would attack the nearest one, sometimes capturing it and sometimes, when there was little chance of holding it for long, destroying it instead, thus freeing up a number of freight routes. I also tried to reduce my travel distances by building a colony on the other side, especially since there were no wormholes and travel to and from my home world took a long time. By the time I got jump gates, I had drives that were fairly fast anyway. Failing an attack on a world can be fatal, given the small number of ships that one can have and their high cost; at no point in the game until almost the end did I have enough money to have more than half a dozen ships, and my money amount went into the negative a few times.

I didn't find mines to be very effective in protecting worlds, although they are probably effective against pirates.The game doesn't allow one to have more than three or four worlds, and early in the game it is impossible to have more than one or two. This means that there will be more demands on production than you can meet. When a world is producing something it cannot do research, and money is always tight. So the idea of producing mines galore on planets is tempered by the fact that while one is doing so, no research is being done and no other production either. Fall behind in research against more than one opponent and you can kiss your butt goodbye. In sum, the optimum strategy is not easy to find, and it depends on the circumstances. If you concentrate too much on defending your planets, the enemy will be blithely expanding and raking in the money to buy research and weapons to kill you with; leave your worlds too weakly defended and you can be wiped out by a single coordinated attack.

Eventually I had more than half of the galaxy, and although there were still a lot of tough fights, I knew that now I could win. My strategy was to keep strangling the opponent by destroying freight routes, then attacking in force when the time seemed right (bolstered by the knowledge of being able to go back to a saved game). At one point,I had destroyed every single freight route of the last powerful enemy stronghold. I knew that this would not allow him to continue research nor to build up a powerful fleet since like me he probably spent the whole game on the brink of bankruptcy. And lack of money would cause his crews to defect and his weapons to degrade.

Finally I launched a final attack against the last world, and overwhelmed its defenses, thus winning the game.

I played most of the game from the galaxy map, leaving everything possible under computer control, including combat. Playing this same game, which took about 6 hours, while controling everything by hand would have taken days. The combat alone, with the multiple maneuvering steps, could take many additional hours if not days.

Speaking of combat, it is almost a game within a game, with ability to maneuver depending on a number of factors, mostly ship size and experience. Experienced crews gain "maneuvers" with experience, so an experienced crew with a small ship can run rings around a big ship with a green crew, that can find themselves unable to get a good shot off with their powerful gun. So I always get a pang of regret when my butt-kicking scout crew from the beginning is destroyed, especially if all their artifacts ar captured by the enemy. There are items to destroy them, but they come rather late in the game.

Henri
Kahn
Posts: 30
Joined: Sat May 11, 2002 8:27 am
Location: Abingdon, MD

Re:AAR

Post by Kahn »

Have to object to your statement about Wave weapons. The problem you are having is because the enemies you are fighting have shileds (Disruptor) that lessen the effects of your weapons. It's best to have at least two (but no more than 3) types of weapons aboard your ships. That way, if the first weapon type is blocked by your shields, then the second weapon type will probably do some pretty good damage.

I have actually found wave weapons to be a good first choice, with beam or plasma (bolts I find underpowered though for some reason) weapons as a good second choice. This is because while the missiles, stand-offs, torpedos and fighters do more damage per hit, but if your opponent has shileds that block one of these, then you've just wasted 2 slots in your starship verses one for an energy weapon.

In single player games, destablization seems to be the key, though it's pretty expensive. It will keep your trade routes from being taken out and keeps the enemy players from ganging up on you by constantly disolving their alliances. Just have to be careful that you don't get any two players of the same eadan adjacent for any length of time, or they will federate making one nasty opponent.
"The one you have to watch out for is the one you don't see comming!"
[font=Stencil]Kahn[/font]
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