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Themes:
(301) Homeworld Distances
(302) Colonization
(303) Bioscanners
(304) Mine Sweeping AND Mine Laying                 NEW
(305) Chunneling
(306) Cloning
(307) Taking over Probes
(308) Cloaking Fuel
(309) Trace Cloakers (and Hyps) via interception
(310) Money from Glory Device
(311) Webs and Gravity Wells
(312) Imperial Assault Ships
(313) Extended Missions
(314) Extended Mission: Gather/Build Torps
(315) Some special FCs _DO_ match!                    NEW
(320) Miscelleanous

(300) Very specialized tips

An unsorted collection of tricky features...
 

(301) Homeworld Distances

It is eminent to know how far your neighbours are away from you and where their homebase are to be presumed. If you're playing in a normal game, all races may start in some equidistant spots in a certain radius around the universe center. For instance, in the normal VGAP universe with a "classic" startup where you have planets from X/Y 1000 to 3000 and a center 2000/2000, the radius where the homeworlds are located often is some 500 ly. For 11 players, your neighbours will sit about 280 ly away from you, in about the same distance to the center as you are. The rough formula is [radius * 6.283 / players], here: 500*6.283/11=286 ly.
 
 

(302) Colonization

If you find a planet with very good features, like Bovinoids and thousands of ores, which is but ice/desert, you could just drop more clans than allowed and quickly build as many mines and factories as you can. Bring supplies and money with your colonists. If there is a low structure decay rate (1..5) then even if your colonists are dying (take them away 1 turn after building the structures, with VPA you could even beam them up again immediately without even losing a clan!), the mines will keep on producing! And you only lose very few each round.
 
 
 

(303) Bioscanners

IMPORTANT ships! Build them early, if you can. They will find out the planets with the best natives. Later on, they'll spy out your neighbours planets - it is always an advantage to knoow about potential foes. From a certain point on, they lose some of their advantage because you cannot bioscan planets you can't sensor sweep (normally, with more than 14 Defenses).
 
 

(304) Mine Sweeping and Mine Laying

In my opinion, no race can live without decent mine laying ships. Do not underestimate the importance of building half a dozen tech-10 torp ships. Start laying small minefields around your planets in the early days, continue laying increasing defensive mine fields over the whole game. It will slow down any possible attack, not only from cloaking races. Try to get low-ID-minelayers! Shelter them, clean them, be careful not to lose them!

It is VERY important to have low-ID sweeping ships, because they will sweep first. You also have an advantage if you scoop your own mines when enemy ships come to sweep them! If your torp ship has the lowest ID, you will scoop the torps up BEFORE others destroy them, no matter whether you scoop by "mine sweep" plus friendly code  "msc" or by the extended mission "mine scoop" (leaving the FC free for other purposes, but probably without simultanously sweeping). (Tested with PHost 3.2) Find out the mine sweeping range in your game (e.g. have a look in PCONFIG.SRC) VPA helps you to calculate how many mines you have to scoop until your sweeping enemy is JUST outside sweeping range, an catch the ship unexpectedly in the mine field. Once you have low-ID torp ships, you can do that again and again and again. Even if your enemy isn't surprised anymore, he'll never be shure whether he can trust his mineswepping capabilities.

Check out this link!.
 
 

(305) Chunneling

Be careful, there are a few things to keep in mind about chunneling. Normally, every ship of your own that is at the same spot as your Chunneler Firecloud will be chunneled, whether fueled or not. But there is a trick to keep ships at their location (at least with PHosts up to 2.12). When you are in orbit of a planet, travel 2 ly with warp 2 or more. That ship will go the two light years, THEN (while chunneling occurs AFTER normal movement; works only up to PHost 2.12) the Cloud chunnels, and THEN your 2-ly-ship will get drawn in again by the warp well. That's it!

If you try to tow a chunneler, the docs say that chunneling will not work. This is not quite true. E. g., if you tow it that way that your towing ship arrives without fuel, chunneling will happen. And, of course, while cloakers without fuel get chunneled too, your towing cloaker will get lost.
 
 

(306) Cloning

Occurs BEFORE normal builds, erases the normal build order! In PHost, it doesn't take away parts of the normal build order, though. You can only build OR clone in one turn. You only pay more money for cloning, not more minerals! The default money cost is 2 times the amount of MC for all parts (hull+equipment), for the normal cloning cost of 200%. Do not build the necessary parts yourself, the cln-FC will do it for you! Works only, of course, when enough money and minerals are there to build the ship. You must check that before! VPA, again, does a good job here.

Be careful: when you have cloned a ship, you have to remove the "cln" ship friendly code manually! Otherwise, the base will clone the ship again and again. Might be fine as well, but an often-had problem was that the player forgot the cln-FC and initiated a new regular build order, using all money (or ore) that was there. Now the base tried to CLONE instead of build, but couldn't due to the lack of money. NOTHING happend!

If you happen to get a foreign ship prize, clone it, THEN use it or sell it.
 
 

(307) Taking over Probes

If you happen to stay beneath someone else's hyp-probe with a ship with two or more engines, he won't be able to leave (even by hyp) if you tow him - without necessarily moving. Put a torp ship on NTP and capture the probe, they are worth it. The same affects all ships with just one engine, they can't escape (e.g. your cloaker) when they are towed. Especially bitter for Patriot fans...
 
 

(308) Cloaking Fuel

In PHost, you have to have sufficient fuel on your cloaker, to stay cloaked AFTER movement, that is:

Fuel needed to remain cloaked = 1 KT after movement phase
                              = CLOAK_FUEL_BURN + 1 KT before movement phase

...where CLOAK_FUEL_BURN mostly is 5 kT for each 100 kT pure hullmass. So your tiny spy should have at least 6 N on board for staying cloaked (and not moving). But I encountered Archaeopterixes (Swirt Hearts) that stopped cloaking with even 12 N (?). So be careful.
 
 

(309) Trace Cloakers (and Hyps) via interception

You cannot intercept cloakers that are not cloaking in the moment but that will cloak again next turn. You will be trying to intercept them in vain. BUT do it nevertheless! That way, you get at least an idea where they travelled! Set one of your ships (it doesn't even have to be in the immediate vicinity) to intercept and it will move in the direction of the new location of the now cloaked ship. If you set it to warp0, it still works, but it will show the direction only if you set it back to more than warp0 the next turn.

Of course, you can do the same to find out hyperdrive destinations.

You could also intercept any ship with hyperdrives. The target must be 340...360 ly away. Apparently (at least with PHost 3.2), HYP comes before other movement, so your interceptor will hyp to the start position of the targeted ship!
If the target is not 340...360 ly away, your intercepting hyperdrive will HYP exactly 350 ly in the direction of the target starting point, as usual in that case.
 
 

(310) Money from Glory Device

Let a pop/trg-ship detonate at an amorphous planet. (?The planet doesn't have to be owned (PHost 3.2)? - not tested yet). You will get 10.000 MC for 10 million amorphs on the planet and the amorphs will vanish.
 
 

(311) Webs and Gravity Wells

Web Mines stop ships immediately when hit - in PHost 3.2, if hit inside the gravity well of a planet, the ship will NOT be pulled in by the planet but stay where it is!
You could catch ships with webs lapping over the PWrap. You d
 
 

(312) Imperial Assault Ships

The SSD resp. the Draklor can take over planets and bases by just beaming down 10 clans. They will NOT be attacked by planets (similar to rebel or fascist ships)! They will of course be attacked by defending ships. The IA will only work with a non-damaged ship, though. If you own cloakers, try to arrive at the target base without fuel on the IA-ship and have a cloaker with fuel there, cloaked. The IA-ship will not be attacked, thus not be damaged. Next turn, transfer fuel to the IA-ship, beam down your ten assault clans and the base is yours. Nevertheless, your ship could be towed away and destroyed by a stronger ship afterwards. Also, the victim could take back the base via ground attack in the next turn. Apparently, IA comes after normal ground attack, so simultaneous GA and IA will just lead to success of the IA (PHost 3.2).
 
 

(313) Extended Missions

PHost Extended Missions ("MIT"): help you greately! Use them! They overwritenormal missions! You cannot have two missions in one turn. Period. Though a quite complicated feature (not if you use VPA!), you can now order exactly how many torps to be layed as mines, or to be scooped, or how many MC to be beamed down to a planet. You can even beam up different items at once, e.g. Clans, Molly and Money. NB: "intercept-" and "tow-" values have nothing to do with tow or intercept! They are just parameters. E.g., for beaming down 100 MC to an orbited planet from ship 10 (extm. No.25), you'll send the message "extmiss 10 25 100" to yourself... Better: use VPA 3.51, where menus offer the ext-mess-possibilties.
Here are still some small bugs: apparently, you can only beam up 500 MC per turn and ship (!!!?).
 
 
 

(314) Extended Mission: Gather/Build Torpedos

PHost Extended Mission "Gather/Build Torps" allow your ships to build as much Torps as they have cargo room in just one turn! This is not especially documented! So your mine-layer with 90 cargo left builds 90 torps, not just 30! Big deal.
 
 
 

(315) Some special friendly codes DO match!

As a Bird, your ship with an FC = mfX will in fact surrender to an enemy starbase with the same FC! The FC "mfX" is not treated as special, here! Tested in PHost 3.2.3.
 
 
 

(320) Miscelleanous/ Anti-Race-Tips

Against Cloakers, use minefields, minefields, minefields. Eveyr race needs many minefields, thus you need some minelaying ships! I recommend at the very least four of them until the end of the building phase, for the four sides of your realm. Lay sudden minefields, scoop them once in a while an lay them again. Cloakers deep in your territory cannot detect new minefields without uncloaking!
An additional tactic is to intercept your freighters every now and then, especially when you do not need ships and they stay in port. Put every ship to Warp9.
The best is, however, having Lokis/Constitutions. Buy them, even at high costs.

Note that the Empire Dark Sense only detects MC, not supplies! Maybe you can hide a good Bovinoid planet from it by not selling the supplies.

Against Privs, use small ships with large fuel tanks (and fuel) and a low ID, they will be robbed first and therefore save your better ships that tow them...

You should set ships that fight better than a Rebel Falcon to "Primary Enemy: Rebel". You might catch an incoming RGA-ship.

Last updated: 02.08.2001
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