Ant Sounds Crossing the Delawær Nebula (Neptmas Day, 3776)
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@dakotahawkins , that is funny ! Why are you posting that modified painting ? You have pasted two NP2 avatars over it. What is your story ? Ha Ha !
For the rest of the forum who might not be aware of the [American Revolutionary War] (American Revolutionary War - Wikipedia) for Independence against Great Britain, that is a painting titled “Washington Crossing the Delaware” , showing General George Washington leading the American colonial Continental Army troops across the icy Delaware River in a surprise attack against Hessian mercenaries in The Battle of Trenton.
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I just managed to cross over into the lead in a 32 player game, with the help of my trusty ally Poseidon’s Shame (pictured, blue in intel below).
Nothing is certain, but with ~1/3 of the stars still to go, a very well-coordinated effort has gone a long way! I’d like to see us in the top two spots but there’s still a considerable gap there. The purple player you see in the intel has been the leader by a large margin for most of the game, and the light blue had the easiest (only, really) path to the center of our circle map.
I can tell I’m in good shape because I’m leading in the One True Statistic:
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Okay, I’ll bite. Why the “One True Statistic?”
I’m convinced the constant price of carriers makes them OP and that you almost can’t have too many of them.
Carrier price scales in Proteus.
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Glad I’m not the only one with this idea. Carrier count is my main judge of player skill.
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Interesting. Whereas I tend to continuously tune my carriers for optimal coverage without overspending. If I can avoid building 3 carriers, I can build an extra science.
If you don’t mind telling me, how often do you schedule pick-ups on your production loops? I’ve got half your carriers, and I’m picking up at worst every 12h.
This game has 36 hour production cycles with 6 hour turns, so I’m doing exactly every 12 (dropoffs and pickups are synchronized everywhere). I don’t always use a scheme like that but it has been particularly easy to make adjustments to (change direction, extend, fork, etc.).
I go as far as having ten or so carriers between two stars when necessary. Usually four between decently spaced stars during the latter part of games. Getting ships to the front is more important than a couple of points of infrastructure imo.
Synchronized pick-up and drop-off is a great idea; I just haven’t had time this game to do that.
But I just can’t see running more than 3 carriers between stars. If the stars are more than 18h apart (36h round trip), I’ll build warp gates. (Except for the remote stars at the edge of the galaxy; they’re not usually producing enough ships by themselves to be worth a huge infrastructure expense to move the ships off.)
Maybe I build too many warp gates, but after any reasonably-sized (winning) war, I have a bunch scattered around anyway…
I meant that many carriers WITH warp gates. I feel a lot of players underestimate the importance of a fast ship flow.
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I agree with everyone on this, i guess…
The best way to extract ships in wide strategy is fluidity i believe…
Industry-Manufacturing-carriers ad infinitum-warp lol !
Supply lines are ‘‘everything’’ always sync drop/collect (if possible) always mirror d/c (if possible) and everything must happen within 6hrs or below, above that add carriers or warp, only warp below 6hrs if: Desperate/Rich/tactical (if possible) xD !
Obs: Desperation makes everything possible lol ! Also you can keep ‘‘anyone’’ with 2xtimes your economy in check for days (not a precise formula (yet) but works ok) !
I don’t have too many places where there are >3 carriers. A few with 4 for a 24 hour loop, but almost all of those are old and from before gates were as cheap as they are now for me.
It is building up a “wave” of excess carriers and ships towards my front, as the player I’m fighting promised not to leave any gates at all and has kept that promise. Ships coming up the chain catch up as they’re coming up a gated pipe.
The one thing that I’m not sure about (or about how much of an effect it’s had) is where maintaining the synchronized 12-hour loops requires larger delays (like if stars are 7 hours apart, that’s usually two carriers taking 12 hours each way). Once the loop gets set up it’s fluid, but it delays manufacturing/industry increases and leaves a lot of ships “in the system”. I have observed before that it seems like at peak efficiency you can have about 1/3 of your ships at your front, so I’m probably doing a little less than that.
Ow ! i did something wrong didnt i ? lol i forgot some answers are ‘‘hidden’’ (i suck at forums sorry) i didnt read all that stuff lol !
I like turn-based games, but BBB-BLIGHT-NEPTUNE dont work in turns for me (for no particular reason, am i crazy ?) so im not sure if my previous noob tips applies to this case because i never played NEPTUNE in turns but i feel the:
peek efficiency thing/locked pipe gate effect x
the rythm imposed by production clock and turn duration x
time/distance between your stars x
your strategy xD !
Except for turn duration the rest of this equation/dillema happens in real-time too (but easier to mitigate i guess)…
sometimes instead of delay order and/or use 3 carrier in contra-tempo to force x stars to fit your system, you might want to use a longer route (maybe adding stars to the circuit until you find your golden loop number 6-12-18-24-etc/hrs…consider this multiples to work with different cycles/rates short/mid/long you never know when to react or improvise from an sneak attack at the middle of your supply chain, remeber that this also a perception game = you get prepare for what you see and guess what you dont (defensive) you plasma burst what you see and gambles what you dont (offensive) more or less lol) seeking a better fluid/ciclic reinforcement timming at the cost of ‘‘gaps’’ (but rythmic ones xD) in your front or…
Create an independent supply system with those weird stars like a reserve force keep it hidden keep it slow building a ‘‘momentum force’’ waiting for the ‘‘right or wrong’’ move from your enemies to lunge at them xD ! (tons of variants here, think its your sniper armada, with time a big hammer) and for that you might consider build the infra-structure for those odd stars cause it will pay up (you gonna make sure of that lol) and remember you dont need to be superior all the time, only at the right ones xD !
If you are the underdog, the onus of creativity: distraction/multi-attack/play dead/fake retreat or any other spell are yours, the big guy is comfortable just raising numbers so instead of perfection make sure the other guy make more mistakes than you 
!
Obs:Not sure if im helping 
, seems like you were expecting a mathematical aproach… (not my stronger point lol)… still a strategic thinking for sure !
Obs2:Mathematical aproach = be richer than your enemies and mimetize them lol !
Obs3:Obs2 is a cruel joke and a half true dont do it !
Good Luck !
That’s definitely what I’ve done wherever possible/reasonable.
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Your peak efficiency is 1/3? Maybe it’s just me, but I usually aim for about 1/2. That’s also how I calculate enemy investment into different fronts, how close his active shipcount is to 50%.
Or maybe late game empires get realllly inefficient. In the early game, I sometimes see 75 or even 80% activation for an day 2-3 rush.
I usually use fairly low carrier count until right after I digest my first conquest.
I haven’t done an extensive study or anything, it’s what I’ve observed. It’s true I have probably only worried about it mid-to-late game. It’s just because as you expand the average distance from your ship production to the front increases and your ship production speeds up (more industry+manufacturing) while the speed of your carriers has a hard limit. That percentage would start really high and then should drop at some kind of reliable rate as you expand.
You could probably figure out a much more accurate limiting factor given star distance settings, galaxy size, and number of stars.
Interestingly, in this game, I just massaged my carrier list to filter out looping carriers, and if we assume the ships on non-looping carriers are “at the front” I get 61,094 / 171,177, or ~35.69% !
YES, this is such a key figure! Better players ALWAYS have higher numbers. I like seeing anything close to or above 40% as great, and I try to keep it above because like I said, I make lots of carriers.