How do you do that, Dragonlord?

Shoujo · #1 August 18th, 2001, 08:34 AM

You've brought up an interesting point... In one game both my neighbors have rock/none

I wouldn't be willing to give up the moon advantage, so no gas for me. I've been considering going ice/none. Only problem is I'm not sure how common ice planets/moons are. In every game I play I have the odd feeling that for whatever reason there aren't enough planets of my type

In case you're reading this Deathstalker, how lucky have you been finding ice/none planets or moons?

If only I could find that one tabe (which I foolishly did not link) which had a full listing of the ratios of get rock/gas/ice planets and the various atmospheres you would be likely to see in a game...

BeeDee10 · #2 August 18th, 2001, 09:32 AM

Hrmph. I chose rock/none and advanced storage for very good roleplaying reasons; my race were a race of self-replicating industrial robots that had originally created to do space exploration and development for an organic species. I was rock/none+adv. storage _before_ it was cool!

I think that ultimately the best atmosphere/planet type to choose for your race is "the one that nobody else is using in that particular game." Good luck guessing.

Deathstalker · #3 August 18th, 2001, 05:15 PM

Planet finding is almost luck...One game I chose Ice/None, there were three huge Ice/None in my home system, all with moons, a few of them even Ice!!. I honestly don't know if if depends on the system chosen though, I usually go for spiral, and my other (rare) choice is cluster. I've been playing Rock/None on average almost every game since I started playing back in October, but lately I have been picking other combos just to see what it is like.

And yes, sometimes having the atmosphere/planet type no-one has is THE edge in the game, like Pukes Junkyard game, I believe everyone mostly chose rock, a few chose Ice but I think only one chose gas. It is set on only colonize own planet/atmosphere, That 'gas guy' has a huge advantage, esp since EVERY planet has tech left behind to discover, and NO research is allowed.....but as usual, I digress....

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"And what the hell would you know about sanity?" demanded Beatrice. "There are depressed lemmings on the edge of cliffs who've got a better grasp on reality than you have. And more common sense."--Simon R. Green 'Deathstalker Rebellion'.

"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

Phoenix-D · #4 August 18th, 2001, 07:23 PM

Not quite Beedee..in newbie 2, I went Co2, rock; I figured no one picked it. Aside from the AI races, that is, since 3 of em used it.

Anyway, it was a pain to find any Co2/Rock planets. Not very common at all. So choosing the type no one else uses can bite you in the butt, since if your type isn't common.. your expansion is quite limited.

Phoenix-D

dumbluck · #5 August 18th, 2001, 09:04 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Deathstalker:

And yes, sometimes having the atmosphere/planet type no-one has is THE edge in the game, like Pukes Junkyard game, I believe everyone mostly chose rock, a few chose Ice but I think only one chose gas. It is set on only colonize own planet/atmosphere, That 'gas guy' has a huge advantage, esp since EVERY planet has tech left behind to discover, and NO research is allowed.....but as usual, I digress....

Yea, you don't know _HOW_ many times I've kicked myself for not being gassy in that game; I normally roleplay that race as gassy anyway. (beings of pure energy evolving on a solid planet just didn't feel right to me...) But no, I had to be greedy and try for all those moons....

To quote a now famous phrase, "D'oh!"

[This message has been edited by dumbluck (edited 18 August 2001).]

Quikngruvn · #6 August 19th, 2001, 03:58 AM

Finally found the table Shoujo was talking about (I think).... Daynarr posted a spreadsheet here that lists the relative occurrence of each planet type.

If I'm interpreting it correctly, it means:

--you'll have more available planets being rock/any air (though rock/CH4 seems to have a slight advantage, for some reason). But, 75% will be medium or smaller.

--you'll have more large and huge planets being gas/any. But, you'll have half as many available planets as a rocky type.

--if you're ice/any air, you'll have just over half as many ice planets available as there are rocks, and a little more than half are small or tiny (oxygen has a slight advantage, methane a slight disadvantage).

--if you choose airless, you'll have a little more than half as many rock planets or about three-quarters as many ice planets to choose from than if you had picked an air to breathe. Presumably moons are not figured into these figures as they are not considered planets.

From my own limited PBW experience (eight human empires encountered), I've seen two ice and six rocks; and five O2, two none, and a single H2. The majority is rock/O2. This is why I never pick oxygen.

So why pick Ice? Simple: more than likely you will find someone willing to trade colonization tech. More than likely they'll be rock. More than likely you'll more than double your available planets.

So, let's get some more variety out there! (Speaking of which, how about some more atmospheres, like nitrogen, sulfur dioxide, chlorine, or radon?)

Quikngruvn

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Stay alert. Trust no one. Keep your laser handy.
--from the RPG Paranoia, now my PBW mantra

Shoujo · #7 August 19th, 2001, 07:30 AM

While that spreadsheet wasn't what I had in mind (though the stuff I read was probably based on that spreadsheet), it does give me the data I was looking for. Thank you Quikngruvn

I do wish the spreadsheet included moons though...

I think I'm going to try ice, but I'm going to have a really hard time thinking of a way to justify how my physically weak, soft-bodied insectoids can live on an ice planet with freezing temperatures... Insects and freezing weather just don't go together.