recently I attacked some good player's figs and became extremely evil. I decided to take it as a sign and start making money via robbing. I'm playing by myself in this stock 5k turn game and I have a few level 4's so I am not too worried about defense.

However what I am worried about is losing out on colonists. the colonist regen rate is set to 65k which seems high. so I am losing out to everyone else in the game (I'm the only significant red) in terms of organics, etc. Is there a way I can have the best of both worlds besides sticking to my current org planets or is it to my advantage to be good again?

general thoughts on being a solo red (as opposed to being a solo blue) are welcomed.

The only thing you need to do is take other peoples planets, then you will have the best of both worlds

Long term, colonists are much better then stealing, because they work for you while you use 0 turns. Eventually, your colonists will produce far more in a day than you can make on your own.

If you intend to succeed as a red in a solo game, you have to make a lot of cash fast, buy a lot of figs, and take all of the blue planets.

yup, as a red you can make cash fast and use it to buy figs and then invade and use your l 4's to strip colonists from the other players. so in this way you do get the best of both worlds.

Looking to boost my experience back up (after falling a bit from 14k to 8k due to busts) I tried D/RTR as detailed in Cabal's site. However I ended up losing net experience. Am I doing this wrong?

quote:Originally posted by Damion

Looking to boost my experience back up (after falling a bit from 14k to 8k due to busts) I tried D/RTR as detailed in Cabal's site. However I ended up losing net experience. Am I doing this wrong?

um...you might have been having a bad bust day?

<grin>

Seriously tho. You need more experience (like about 20k ideally) to begin to have this tactic work in your favor. I guess I wasn't really clear on that part. At around 20k experience, you can quickly get to about 100k exp, then it tends to stabalize there. The goal is to be able to rob the port in one or two shots. (at 20k, and 5k units of eq on a sell port, you can get it in two shots. above 40k, you can do it in one. at 100k, you can usually buydown 10k eq and rob it in one shot.) The fewer times you rob, the fewer times you bust. My corpie Roberts is the master at this tactic, and he's been known to do this and go a week or two without busting using it. But he runs the numbers and knows exactly how much to upgrade and buydown so he gets the cash in one shot. (All them charts I made on port prices helped him out there My advice is to keep working with it in non-mbbs games. It does rake in the money, and experience, but you have to have high initial experience.

If you are starting with less than 20k experience, then you need to run the numbers and figure out what the max you can rob in two attemps is. Then stop the buydown at that point. And cross your fingers. Remember, the goal is to get all the cash in ONE shot, so as soon as possible, you need to get it down to one shot. Also, if it's a non-mbbs game, then keep in mind the sysop can change the rob settings to make it less profitable.

Hope that helps. I'll try to add some clarification to my site when I get a chance.

Traitor,
In a non-MBBS game I noticed the ROB % factor and the STEAL % factor that a Sysop can change. I am confused as to which way these numbers work. You can set them from a range of 10% up to 850%. My question is if the %'s is high does that help the evil players more or vice versa?

Thanks
_Grey_Ghost
THE TEXAS CONNECTION

Just a note, Robbing in general will net you lots of money fast but it also has, from what I have noticed, a higher chance of busting than Stealing does and as I recall you take a bigger hit when you bust Robbing than you do when you bust Stealing. And Traitor is right, before you even try to Rob you need to have a lot more experience and make sure you run some numbers to make sure you dont try for too much just because its there. If there is any doubt, Rob a little less, then rob another port and come back for the rest after that. Mega Rob in MBBS mode is a different story so dont confuse the two.

Is robbing fundamentally more profitable than stealing? (i.e. SST)

If your experience is high robbing can be more profitable than SST. Only if the ports have lots of $$$ Check the total current value of the ports in the game.

One advantage of Stealing is it will work no matter how many credits a port has so you can use it anytime. Robbing only works if the port has credits already.

quote:Originally posted by Rand

If your experience is high robbing can be more profitable than SST. Only if the ports have lots of $$$ Check the total current value of the ports in the game.

One advantage of Stealing is it will work no matter how many credits a port has so you can use it anytime. Robbing only works if the port has credits already.


Money isn't a problem because there are a lot of alien traders and I'm the only real red in the game. But at what experience level does robbing become more profitable than stealing?

quote:Originally posted by Damion

quote:Originally posted by Rand

If your experience is high robbing can be more profitable than SST. Only if the ports have lots of $$$ Check the total current value of the ports in the game.

One advantage of Stealing is it will work no matter how many credits a port has so you can use it anytime. Robbing only works if the port has credits already.


Money isn't a problem because there are a lot of alien traders and I'm the only real red in the game. But at what experience level does robbing become more profitable than stealing?

Depends on the game settings. Figure up the profit/turn used for sdting vs the profit/turn for rtring. For profit in rtring, the profit is in what you make selling the product you bought. The robbing just gets you money back.

quote:Originally posted by _Grey_Ghost

Traitor,
In a non-MBBS game I noticed the ROB % factor and the STEAL % factor that a Sysop can change. I am confused as to which way these numbers work. You can set them from a range of 10% up to 850%. My question is if the %'s is high does that help the evil players more or vice versa?

Thanks
_Grey_Ghost
THE TEXAS CONNECTION


Check the following link:
http://www.tw-cabal.com/formulas.html
Look for the evil rob/steal settings. That provides the formulas for you.

-Traitor

quote:Originally posted by Traitor
Seriously tho. You need more experience (like about 20k ideally) to begin to have this tactic work in your favor. I guess I wasn't really clear on that part. At around 20k experience, you can quickly get to about 100k exp, then it tends to stabalize there.


I've been running across more than a few random ports with a few million on hand and I must say that after building myself up to 25k exp, RTR is working miracles. Now my biggest worry is that I'm attracting too much attention with high exp and low align.

Will work the numbers on D/RTR though when this cash cow runs dry and post useful thoughts.

hm. my align is so low (-300k region) that I'm worried that I'm showing off my wealth too much (i.e. 300k align x 1000 factor = 300mil credits). Any ideas/strats?