quote:Originally posted by Ahab

Well, I DO have maxed figs on the planet as well as maxed shields. I never set a sector blast because the cannon can get drained by throw-away ships like merchants and such. I tend to play on a board with both a vanilla game and edited games. Granted the people playin there aren't in the league a lot of you are, but still they can't take me.

One of the major problems with allowing someone sector control is that they have the chance to attempt a collision at extern. With 5 planets/sector, you end up with a 13% chance one of your planets will collide. Also, one can moth atmostphere with empty ships just as easily as they can moth sector. Finally, while it may take more to take a single planet, if you factor in the sector cannon blasts from all planets, it's probably less resources to take a single one with just atmosphere cannons. If your goal is to keep something, just atmosphere is probably the way to go. If your goal is to keep everything, sector blasts are the way to go.

quote:Originally posted by Shorty

Thats actually a very good strategy, the atmospheric cannons do more damage with less fuel and if you have the planet fighters maxed and set them to 100% offensive, thats gonna kill a lot of ships before they get on your planets. Only problem I see is most people keep their bank in their deepest sector in a bubble so with no sector cannons they can walk all the way to your bank sector and take it without having to go through all your other planets. If you change it up then its always a guess but there is still a chance that they guess right the first time and only have to deal with 1 planet. Or it gives them opportunity to safely load up your sectors with planets and their own fighters so you get a nasty surprise later. Once I invaded someone like that...took 1 planet in each sector and moved them out and put in maxed level 6 H's. Thats really upsetting when they try to leave the sector and get wasted. Just some things to think about.

You need to keep in mind that a military reaction is dampened by a photon... and they figs won't attack until all the shields are destroyed. By taking the shields to less than 200, you can photon invade and never get attacked by the figs on the planet (until they're low enough they won't kill you). You still have to actually kill them, but they won't kill you. Given the odds difference (2:1 or offensive, 3:1 for defensive) it's normally better to leave the military reaction off.

Yes, my military reaction is set to 0. And you do bring up a good point. So question for you keeping in mind I play in a decent ( to my way of thinking only the connection could be faster ) edited game and our H's are eitehr stock or 'beefed up' edited H's with 5 mil fuel and ftrs, we'll keep the 5 planets/sector. What would you consider to be the better settings to, as you say, keep everything instead of something? Also keep in mind I have at least 3 sectors the same way before you even think about my cash? Your comments gave me a lot to think about.

quote:Originally posted by Ahab

Yes, my military reaction is set to 0. And you do bring up a good point. So question for you keeping in mind I play in a decent ( to my way of thinking only the connection could be faster ) edited game and our H's are eitehr stock or 'beefed up' edited H's with 5 mil fuel and ftrs, we'll keep the 5 planets/sector. What would you consider to be the better settings to, as you say, keep everything instead of something? Also keep in mind I have at least 3 sectors the same way before you even think about my cash? Your comments gave me a lot to think about.

A lot depends on the ship size and your ore generation capabilities. Assuming the maximum ship can take 200k damage before being blown up, I would probably set 5 of the 5 million ore planets in the door with settings at something like 7, 6, 4, 5, 4 as the firing order goes. This will do 18 poddings of a 200k damage ship (the most a corp of 6 can do in one day) without having to change the settings. It then depends on your colo production. With adjustments to the cannons every day someone moths you, you could probably stay there for weeks before someone could even enter the sector. In addition, it's often a good idea to put a large number of sector figs (maybe 2 million) to make gaining sector control even that much more difficult. And finally, I always find the best defense to be a good offense. In most cases, if you are pounding on someone else and taking stuff from them, they won't be in a position to come attack your door.

Good posts Kemper, I agree, with major planet edits it makes it a little more tricky to figure out cannon settings because of the big edits. The way I structured my cannon settings where I found it to be most efficient for a 1M fuel ore H with 5 planets in sector was as follows. I havent figured out how it would work with those kind of edis as I dont play games with those extreme edits. I set up the sector cannons to destroy the biggest ship in the game, in my case it was the Stock IC, I set it so the first 2 sector cannons just barely destroyed it if it was maxed. Then the second, third and fourth time they entered the first 3 cannons would kill them all 3 times. Then the fifth, sith, and seventh times, the first 4 cannons would kill them. And the eighth, ninth, and tenth times all 5 cannons would kill them. The 11th time they would get in with about 18k fighters left but at that point they still have to deal with sector fighters. Providing you have more sector fighters than that then they still have to retreat or die again. Weather or not the same process can be used for other edited planets I have not tried but like I said I dont play those games.

assume stock.

1) Isn't a maxed IC 104k damage?
2) Don't you leave yourself vulnerable to merfs then?

quote:Originally posted by Damion

assume stock.

1) Isn't a maxed IC 104k damage?
2) Don't you leave yourself vulnerable to merfs then?



1) Yes.
2) Not really. Remember, in an unedited game anyway, the second highest total battle point ship is the ISS at 52k, exactly half that of the IC. So this configuration has advantages beyond simply stopping the most maxed IC's. ONLY an IC would manage to moth more than just the first planet on the first pass, or break through to further planets on other passes. Granted, someone that saw what the first planet via getting podded with a merf might assume all the planets had the same setting and use an IC with just 50k fighters instead of 100k to save some resources on the first pass, and calculate similarly for later passes, but anything less than IC's would take a lot more mothing iterations to break through since most ship configurations would just moth the first planet or two and not break through to the later planets, at least not in the first day's mothing.

It's pretty easy to stalemate games by swapping out H's, which is why I like below-default planet/sector limits. Course that doesn't stop people from overloading until extern, but oh well :/

quote:Originally posted by Damion

assume stock.

1) Isn't a maxed IC 104k damage?
2) Don't you leave yourself vulnerable to merfs then?


You're not really "vulnerable" to a merf. Yes, they can use a merf to drain some ore with no fig usage, but they can easily do that no matter what your planets are set at by carrying *just* enough for one more planet to fire. For example, if the first planet hits for 1000 damage, carry 1001 figs. I would rather guarantee someone can't invade my sector than worry about them costing me ore without using figs.

Hmmmm...a LOT of food for thought. Set the cannons high enough to kill without draining them with enough of a sector blast to discourage visitors. Also a good point about overloading the sector with planets. I hadn't thought about that angle but then the kids playin in the games I play in don't think that way anyway but is still a good point.

Shorty-

worked through the math and was only able to do 77,761 damage on the 11th time. but thanks for the tips

Well I would say thats pretty close...I used an Excel spreadsheet to figure it out, that way you can see all the changes as you make them. Enjoy.