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Imperial logistics Logistics is the aspect of war that deals with the supply of military goods and war material. Yeah so you may think it's boring and dull... listen up pal, this ain't Doom, you gotta have some brains if you wanna have the guns to blast everyone else! Logistics is particularly important if you play carrier races like I do, for two reasons.
The first step to planning your logistics is knowing where your resources are. It's surprising how the most basic of ideas can be very effective - if you use Winplan, simply plot each world with a colour in the starmap window according to what it's best at producing, ie. Blue = Tritanium, Green = Molybdenum, Yellow = Duranium, Cyan = MC, that funny beige-like colour = Supplies etc... (It may be possible to do this in VPA as well, I'm not sure, seeing as I don't use it, or maybe some player utils like Echoview, but again, I just use Winplan, and keep track of everything in my head, so I have no need of external utils.) What you are doing is this. You are giving yourself a nice broad view of where your resources are, and which ones you are lacking / have an excess of. Note that if a planet can specialise in more than one resource, mark it WHITE (or some other bold, easily noticed colour) - you want to guard that one really well! Eg. A planet with 9 million bovinoids and 10K+ of a mineral, or something like that (if you have as much luck as I did in my last game as the Rebels, you might even find an Insectoid Representative planet with 8 million natives plus 10K moly and 9K Fuel!) How do you decide what a world is specialising in? Ok, first thing, some planets won't be able to specialise in anything! A fair proportion of your worlds will be these useless piles of dirt with < 1K of each mineral in them at lousy concentrations. If this is the case, don't colour it anything! Average planets in the same way, don't get a colour either. To be a "specialist" planet, it should have over 5000 KT of the mineral at a concentration 50% or better (concentration doesn't really matter if you're the Lizards, and similarly the amount in the planet's core doesn't really matter if host has set Isotope TUDR at something really high, like 100). "MC Specialising" planets should be able to make at least 500 MC a turn on the maximum yellow level. Of course, you won't be setting the tax on the maximum yellow and just leaving it like that - see the previous article, Managing your economy for details. An important aspect of this game is to know yourself (and know your enemy, too). What I mean is you will have to figure out what you desperately need. As a general view, if you're the Empire, you need moly, and lots of it, heaven help you if you don't find a good moly planet within 200 lys of your homeworld. A Colonial will find themselves looking for Tritanium, as well as moly, unless you like having lots of sluggish nova-drive battlestars. The Rebels are fairly balanced, although they tend not to need too much duranium. Surprisingly, you'll find the Robots are quite well balanced in their mineral requirements - look at it this way, fighters don't use any duranium, and you'll need lots of fighters, you'll have more tritanium and moly available because all those baseships won't consume all your trit and moly, so you're fairly well off! Decide on what exactly is going to get supplied. If the cluster is near your homeworld, well, it's obvious. But no-one can survive on just one starbase alone. As soon as you've explored the closest dozen or so planets, think about where base number 2 is going to be (note that if you're the Empire, just build bases whenever and wherever you can, believe me, you're going to need all of 'em, except if you're lucky enough to ally with one of the true fighter races). Now I don't have any formulas, strict numerical guidelines, or anything like that to help you with your logistics (yes I hear the disappointed groans... sorry, but it can't be helped) it's pretty much up to your intuition as to what you do. But there are several well known components to good logistics. Supply routes that the enemy doesn't know about Supply routes that are difficult and often risky for the enemy
to terrorise If the route is on your border, you must consider escorting your LDSFs with a heavy warship. That still is no protection against a cloak intercept, because the cloaker will target the ship he's intercepting (ie. Your LDSF!) and fight that first, only then can your heavy warship enter the battle. The warship, with the right PE set or mission KILL, will likely waste his cloaker then recapture the LDSF (since it will only have 10 crew when it's captured by someone else, and the fighters will strip the crew while only doing 10% damage to the hull) but if he's smart, he won't fall for that, he will equip his cloaker with beams like Positrons which will destroy the freighter rather than capture it. Sure he doesn't gain anything, but you lose a heck of a lot : a massive freighter filled to the hilt with minerals and other goodies in exchange for some puny scout. So minelaying here and there would be judicious. An efficient supply route The bidirectional linear route Now I should mention another benefit of using a warship to explore planets first. Not only is it more secure and intimidatory, it lets you know what to bring on your LDSF. If I find piles of natives I will bring more clans and less supplies. If I find more lifeless worlds more supplies less clans are required. Think : 1100 clans, 100 supplies if ALL worlds with natives, 600 clans and 600 supplies if NO worlds with natives. For in-between - you do the calculations!!! :-P When I reach the end of my linear route, I will simply head back along it (either home, or if later in the game, toward my nearest starbase) collecting minerals. Now, the matter of deciding the end planet, lets call it the terminal world. This will be a good planet, with good starbase potential, it will likely have natives and good mineral content, or no natives but bloody excellent minerals. And, it MUST HAVE A GOOD CLIMATE! I will leave the warship there while the LDSF continues back. The warship will be set to KILL, unless I have a non-aggression pact with my neighbour, which I usually get, since in every single game of mine except a couple last year, I have quickly shot up to the top of the scorechart or very near it, which makes for good intimidatory value). In this case, it will just guard the planet in case any of the said sneaky cloaking types decide to pay it a visit. Once the LDSF gets back to its supply waypoint (lets call this the initial world, the first world of the bidirectional linear route), it dumps all the minerals, and picks up more supplies and clans for further development of the worlds. I will usually assign a new warship to accompany it along its next mission. If a world along the line, near the initial world end of the line, has natives, I won't take any MC from the initial world (obviously, I need the cash on my bases for tech upgrades and ship building!) but will rather take some of the credits from the native world, which should have a surplus since I will drop a larger amount of clans on the native worlds when compared to the non-native worlds. What the LDSF does on this route depends. It does one of two things:
At this stage, I will decide on one of two alternatives:
Obviously, this cannot be followed to the letter every single time, if it could, the game would become rather mundane. Planets running dry, meteor impacts, and worst of all, surprise enemy attacks, complicate things a great deal! Variety, and new and unique opponents, are what make this game so exciting! Above all, you must be flexible and have intuition as to how to form and modify your logistical routes, and react to crises. I cannot help you there, you will have to develop this knack on your own... it comes with experience. No player is perfect. We are all continuously learning and adapting! A flexible supply route Note that I keep mentioning LDSFs. This is without question the most practical, balanced size of freighter to use. And I am not alone with regard to that. The only reasons you would want to use any of the others:
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