Slow starts....

posted on August 18th, 2010, 11:11 am

I'm looking for suggestions to improve my very early game play.   

Looking at the guide, it appears that for every race (except Borg) that queuing-up 4 freighters, building Tri and Di mining stations, a Yard, and a Research station are standard across the board.

My question is, what to do after that? 

In normal 2v2 or larger games, as soon as the last of those items are built, and my primary mining is set-up, I have been opting to parallel queue-up the following items:

4 expansion miners
an additional scout
4-6 warships
2nd and/or 3rd tier research base

I then set about to secure my natural expansion mining, which basically expends all of my starting resources.  I seem to consistently be hitting a wall with every race (except Borg), where I'm struggling to get my expansion mining operational due to resource crunch...which kills my ship production as well.

I think that this is a mistake against very aggressive opponents (as it leaves my allies to fight two or more opponents), but I'm not sure how to find an early-game balance between economy and firepower...because if you don't expand your economy, your dead in the long-run.  Likewise, if you cannot protect your expansion, your dead as well.

posted on August 18th, 2010, 11:41 am

well on maps with close starting moons you can make 1 mining station between them and make 5 miners from your starbase to fill up those moons.

this gives u around enough for a cheap destroyer early on.

as a cloaked race an additional scout is always a good build, u can wait a minute or two for it if you want, u dont HAVE to make it immediately.

running out of money at the start is perfectly normal.

in your average start you should have started building a combat ship before you expand.

maybe a monsoon or two as feds, a rhienn or a leval as romulans, something like that.

when your constructor gets to your expansion you may very well not have the money for a mining station, so use the halt construction button to pause construction of ships for a while, start making the station, then unpause.

queue the expansion miners after your second combat ship usually. although all strategies are malleable.

posted on August 18th, 2010, 2:47 pm

The trick is to balance teching up with ship numbers - if you are skipping tier 1, you are often going to be low on funds with no ships, which is never a good thing.

Incidentally, although the standard build may be what you described, take a look at all the strategies listed there - there are quite a few that do not follow the normal path and have their own advantages, as do the standard builds .

posted on August 18th, 2010, 5:40 pm

The trick is to balance teching up with ship numbers - if you are skipping tier 1, you are often going to be low on funds with no ships, which is never a good thing.

Well, to give an example of my delimna...  I was playing Feds by random draw both games last evening on Star Traffic.  Both games, I tried to follow the "Warp-In Hybrid" strategy. 

In the first game Clintsat (Dom) and I (Fed) were playing butterbread (Fed) and PRETORIAN (Fed).  I was able to get my expansion up and running before the first attack (Warp-in by butters on my Main Di).  I forget the exact timing, but I had only built maybe 3 or 4 ships from my Antares Yard by that time.  Once that first attack was done, I had fielded an Eraudi Yard at my expansion.  I was able to take my first few ships, plus some warp-in support, to help Clint in taking-out butters main Di mining. We were able to win thanks to some excellent teamwork, even though I lost my main Starbase, Di mining, and initial Antares yard to various attacks while I was supporting Clint.

In the second game Boggz (Kling) and I (Fed) squared off with Clintsat (Kling) and butterbread (Kling).  This game, one of them hit my expansion mining with 3 B'rels and 2 KBQ's before I had a chance to erect a Phaser Platform (canceled construction).  Ended up losing my constructor and 3 miners before I could get two intrepids & a Monsoon out of the yard.  Within a minute or two, a second attack was launched on my primary Di mining, which I was able to drive-off....but further delayed production.

Within this space of 8-12 minutes in, I was able to produce only 4 Intrepids and 3 Monsoons, while the Klingons expanded to 3 moon pair mining & Battle Yards by the time I got Starfleet Command up. 

It also didn't help that I made several rookie mistakes (setting movement to yellow, and forgetting to hold CTRL when issuing movement orders)...but that's another story. 

Boggz also mentioned something on TeamSpeak about not building -something- (I'm assuming Starfleet Science) early on in favor of fielding more starships, but I couldn't hear him clearly after building my Antares yard.

I guess what I'm struggling with is, was this a failure of me building-up slow, or was it that the "Warp-In Hybrid" strategy is weakest against a "hyper aggressive opponent ".  I was hoping to talk to Boggz on Tunngle afterwards, but apparently they went right into another game.  Hopefully I can get some more insight this evening...cause this is the second time that I fell completely flat on my face as Boggz's ally. 

posted on August 18th, 2010, 9:22 pm

It sounds to me like all you really need is more info.  Learn to use your scout to buzz the enemy base as soon as physically possible, so you can get an idea of whether he's going to harass.  If you're building a phasor platform at the expo, 15 seconds can literally make all the difference, so maybe you want to build it before the refinery, or maybe you want to leave your constructor in some remote niche or nebula until after your enemy checks the expo and finds it empty.

All early strategies are either optimized (and ignore enemy actions) or adapting (and are entirely based on enemy actions).  With its counters, fleet ops makes it very hard to pull of an optimized strategy, so you want to adapt.  At the end of the day, it's all about scouting.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 2:04 am

Regarding the second game Nero...

The issues you had with my raids were a direct result of solid scouting on our side.  We knew how many ships you had and where they were so it was easy for me to raid you.  It is real easy to be aggressive as Klingon when you know you have a numbers advantage AND an intel advantage.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 2:20 am

Nero one of your problems was that, as feds, you chose to make your station at your expansion before you made the phaser platform.  Frankly, against dual Klingons you can even go pulse platform because the Klinks have so many short range ships.

  You built the phaser platform too late and had nothing protecting your builder.  You had ships in your base that weren't defending the construction of your platform.


  You have to think about where you opponent is most likely to attack when you're facing cloakers .

posted on August 24th, 2010, 12:55 pm

I'd go with 1 mining station for your moons, it's what I do and I tend to over take the AI with contruction, then again they outproduce me with ships by about 2 to 1.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 3:25 pm

Why don't you play online mate? You'll find quite a few things change when you do so - including mining strategy 

posted on August 24th, 2010, 4:38 pm

Why don't you play online mate? You'll find quite a few things change when you do so - including mining strategy 

Tell me about it... two mining stations first is not a good starting strat against experienced players.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 5:00 pm

Tell me about it... two mining stations first is not a good starting strat against experienced players.

well that all depends.

if u know your enemy will go for a slow strat (or isnt aggressive) then u can set up 2 mining stations (assuming moons are too far apart for 1 mining station between them serving both moons) first and benefit from the slight resource advantage.

if u go for 2 mining stations and your enemy goes for a fast strat and gets many ships out early, then u wont have enough ships to defend your main mining.

posted on August 24th, 2010, 5:06 pm

Not to take over anoth's topic, and assuming ou were talking to me, I've played a few games online, was embarassed each time. Alot of Romulan players, why? Anyway Playing SP to work on my abilities, merciless ai. Also figured out that bit about 2 starting mines against the AI, works great on normal but do it with hard and merciless and you might as well surrender. Turrets aren't exactly useless but unless you have a fleet with they won't hold.