Should score be based on firepower?

[Tomgs]

Even without mothballing the tactic would work fast if you build bases (50% maintaince) and took a maintaince boost at start up. You would be able to build up bases and a few scout ships and still require the AI to surrender very fast. This tactic is very boring but it would work. Even without mothballing I very rarely have to slow down or stop building ships because of lack of minerals. The only time that happens is when I build a lot of stellar manipulation ships or bases all at once. That is much later in the game than you are talking about.

You can also adjust the score that the AI's accept surrender on if you think they surrender too easily. I do think that if exploited it is too easy but if you have a fleet occupying their homeworld and all their ships are destroyed, unless they are xenophobes, they should consider surrendering. I do think however if you have "glassed" one or more of their worlds they should fight on a lot longer unless they are an extremely pacificist race. Right now the different races aren't that much different in the way they react (without mods) except the Xenophobes do take a lot longer to surrender.

I guess what I am saying is yes mothballing can be an exploit but it makes the game too easy and so you will become bored easily and so will not do it very often. If you enjoy taking a lot of the risk out of it I say go ahead and do it till you get bored and then do it a different way. For multiplayer this could hurt your opponent if it is abused but it really isn't much faster if you can build ships nonstop in the beginning anyway so I don't see any great harm.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 07 February 2001).]