Atmosphere conversion?

[Starhawk]

Well Slick as you stated you don't want to be at war with "everyone" but if you think about it I said I only build Atmohpere converters After I have a stable research and resource base which in short means later in game.

Your theory does have one major flaw it is not he who has the most planets wins it's he who has the most combat power and while your busy building small transports early in game I'd be busy building warships during the same time period, yes I'd have an initial resource crunch but i've survived that in every game I've ever played. And while your busy playing ferry man I'd come in with my fleet and troops and either smash or grab your nicely colonized worlds.

Firepower and fighting ability does not mean planet count, you can have a thousand worlds but if you've been busy building non combat ships while someone has been building warships, your going to lose a LOT of those worlds before you can even fight back.
Now take into account that most people are rarely ever at war with only one person/AI at a time and your adding 2 players or more to the numbers against you, and if BOTH of them are busy building combat craft while your building small trannys then it would get ugly for you very fast.

Now the problem there is that you would not know what kind of ships your enemy is building until you actually encounter his fleet or fleets as the case may be, so you may think your 10 frigates are fine until he comes in with 15 or 20 and maybe a troop ship. And by the fact that you actually HAVE other breathers in your Empire I'd assume you have troops?

I must admit I am not an economist player I am a militaristic player I raid other players to get the resources I want, I land troops on a world and if I can't hold it forever and I know it I scrap the facilities load my troops back onto my ships and move on to the next world, either forcing you to destroy or retake your own worlds and then rebuild them from scratch which will cost you more resources and time.

Now if I ran into one of your transport groups I'd be in pirate heaven, I often build light ships early on designed solely to raid colony ships and transports for population and then scrapping value but let's assume I don't have that technology, I'd just engage and destroy your transports and potentially kill billions of your people in the process.
And trust me if I knew for sure you were using the "other breather" tactic I would send at least some lone warships to hunt for you transport fleets, if just to balance out your population.