game styles

[Fyron]

It takes a few years of game time to get a monolithic economy going. But, you don't start out building 50 of them. You build a few at first, and then more and more as they start being completed. It creates a snowball effect.

Talismans and Allegience Subverters are not balanced to begin with. IMO, they shouldn't be used, especially together. It is a valid strategy because it is allowable in the game, but it is still not a balanced strategy.

[PvK]

Sounds to me like there is a counter-design to just about any design*, which is as it should be. I think Fryon is missing or belittling a few strong points in favor of organic weapons and armor, but he's obviously such a strong player, that I won't bring those up here.

(* except maybe the Talisman, and I think ramming is made far too easy)

One though is that distribution of resources is still important in late game because of reduced build times, and that resource conVersion has a cost, and being able to use rich organics resource values is another factor.

Another I can't help mentioning is that organic armor is extremely cheap, and even though PPB's and DUC's have good damage per kT, they don't have very good damage per _resource_, which determines the number that can be built and maintained.

As for normal armor becoming unuseful after strong phased shields are developed, that may be sort of true from a superiority-design perspective with certain assumptions. However there are still some other uses besides the "Last 10 kT" use. Cheap ram-ships, defense against shield-damaging weapons, and combination with emissive armor, are all still effective uses of standard armor.

PvK

[Fyron]

Actually, APBs and DUCs both have lower damage per cost than the equivalent Plasma Charges and Electric Discharges. PPBs are actully only slightly higher than Hyper Plasma Vs at long range, and less at short range. Organic weapons are actually very expensive, to make up for the fact that they lower overall build time of the ship.

If the conflict happens very quickly in the game, then the Organic player might have the advantage because he can get more ships built in a short time. But, if the conflict happens later, the normal player will be able to build as many ships as the organic player (assuming equal sized empires). Being organic does not allow you to support very many more ships (maybe 10% more, if that) with Monoliths and Resource Converters. With roughly equal numbers of ships, the normal player should win, because his ships overall will be stronger than the Organic players ships.

If you want to talk about the very early game (1 planet, low tech start, and on a small map to create early conflict), someone using DUCs and normal armor will likely be able to overrun an organic race. The DUCs are much stronger than any low level organic weapons and are very cheap (with a much, much better damage per cost value), and take a lot fewer research points. With medium tech costs, you can get DUC IV or V before the enemy gets Organic Weapons 1, and most certainly before he gets OA 1. Even if the organic race has 50% more ships, it won't make up for it. And then, take into account that the normal player gets 1500 more racial points. These can be put into minerals production and construction bonuses, to lessen effect of the decreased build times of organic ships.

I am not saying that organic weapons and armor are useless, I am saying that they are not more powerful than normal tech, and probably not worth 1500 points.

However there are still some other uses besides the "Last 10 kT" use. Cheap ram-ships, defense against shield-damaging weapons, and combination with emissive armor, are all still effective uses of standard armor

IDs stop ram ships dead in their tracks. Emmissive armor is not very effective when BBs and DNs come into play. 30 points isn't much compared to the 180 or so being done by the weapons.