Spiralus PBW discussion thread.

[BeeDee10]

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Originally posted by Dragonlord:
OK, I guess it will be a no ruins game, though I kinda like racing with others towards ruins planets.

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Especially considering that you're an ancient race, eh?

Personally, I rarely use the unique ruin tech. The only one I really lust after is the planetary shielding now that it's been souped up in the latest patch.

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I am glad you like my suggested map. The map will have several clusters of systems which are only connected by one line.

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Choke points good.

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As for ancient quadrant type: I never use it, so remind me , how does that affect things? I seem to recall someone saying it gives you way too many black holes and asteroid fields...

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"Way too much" is in the eye of the beholder. It completely screws up the AIs, they are extremely stupid when it comes to handling long distances between resupply depots and travel through black holes/damaging warp points. However, I think that features like this can be positively dreamy when you're up against a whole bunch of humans. It requires a lot more preparation before and during invasions.

As for timing considerations, I don't mind only having one or maybe two turns per day; once we're past the initial slowness of the first year or two I'm sure things will be complicated enough to keep me interested.

[Dragonlord]

Beedee, I understand what you mean about the ancient galaxy, though I'm not entirely convinced yet. Let's see what the others have to say about it.

Newsflash: there *are* ruins in the Spiralus game, even though I pre-generated the map.
There are about 20 planets with ruins, although for some reason almost all of them are scattered around the southern half of the galaxy.
I don't go for the unique tech in ruins, I never us it. But I do like the occasional find, if you are real lucky you'll get colonisation tech or something else that's both expensive and useful. Although I usually get tech that is medium-expensive but that I would not normally research, such as Satellites II. Still, it's nice to have slightly better sats, or troops, or resource extraction.

[Rollo]

I like ancient maps. Makes the exploration stage so much fun. (Maybe you should turn off your ancient trait to fully enjoy them ). BeeDee is right about the AI not able to handle them. But since it's a humans only game that doesn't matter.

[Rollo]

Heh, I just saw that everybody but one has their turn done already. Maybe I should stay up half an hour longer before going to bed and see if I can send in another one.

[BeeDee10]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dragonlord:
Newsflash: there *are* ruins in the Spiralus game, even though I pre-generated the map.

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Interesting. I never actually confirmed that bug myself, since I tend not to pre-generate maps when playing single-player. Wonder if it's sporadic and we just got lucky...

[Dragonlord]

I just generated a map with the ancient galaxy setting, and it looked horrible ! Fully 50 to 60% of the systems are either black holes, nebulae, or asteroid fields.
Please explain this to me again: why is that good?

[BeeDee10]

It's good because it adds a lot of interesting buffer space between your valuable systems. Nebulas and black holes have strategic value for attack and defence, and the distances involved force you to think about supply lines and things like that when you send your fleets out. Since systems with useable planets are rarer, they become a lot more valuable; this changes the strategy too (you can't have "throwaway" colonies out on the border to slow down an enemy advance, for example). Remote mining can become actually significant to your economy, and then you have to defend all those remote mining satellites strewn about in the asteroid systems too.

With standard mid-life maps, for example, you can almost always avoid the black hole systems. But what if you _had_ to transit one in order to reach enemy territory?

Of course, this isn't necessarily a "better" way to play, just different.