PCPP Game Guide 2/PCPP_GG2.iso/PCPP/strategy/imperium.txt

Text File | 1998-06-02 | 14KB | 277 lines

Imperium Galactica

Random thoughts on the game, by Peter Knutsen

these things are written from memoey (it's kinda hard to check stuff, when the
game multitasks badly) but should be fairly accurate. Even if I've got a detail
wrong, like the fact that the first invasions always is on San Sterling when it
really is on Achilles, the general sense of what I write is accurate (the
invasion is always on the same planet, and it's possible to prepare for it)

Things happen in the same order from game to game, but not always at the same
physical places. For instance, the first invasion will always be on San
Sterling, and will consist of 5 Light Tanks (Garthogs). The second invasion from
the Garthogs have occured on Naxos, Centronome and New Caroline. There is no
reason to think that the second invasion can't as well be on Achilles or San
Sterling.

The second invasion consists of 7 Light Tanks and 2 Medium Tanks.
How do you counter these invasions? Any attempts to use your fleet to stop the
Garthog Invasion fleet, in the first hours of the game, will end in disaster,
since the Garthog Invasion fleet has a Flagship. You can destroy this, then the
invasion will fail, because it is the flagship that carries the ground vehicles
used in the invasion. So an invasion fleet is invulnerable - on the other hand,
a flagship is rather strong, especially if you don't have one. I've never tried
to stop an invasion fleet with a space battle, I prefer to solve this type of
problems with a ground battle.
On San Sterling, there is 6 Light Tanks as a default, this is enough to defeat
the Garthog Invasion force, which consists of 5 light tanks. But it will be a
hard battle, and you can improve the odds, by transfering 2 more light tanks
from your other planets (one from Achilles and one from Naxos) to San Sterling.
Why only 2? Because the base storage capacity for a planet it 8 ground vehicles
(light, medium, heavy, or something else, this does not matter).
With your 8 light tanks against the enemys 5, the battle should be easy,
especially if you read my combat advice later.

The second invasion is a problem, because you don't know where it will happen.
And you need to have at least one barrack, preferable three, on the planet where
the invasion takes place, because your 8 light tanks will be no match for the
Garthogs, they have 7 lights and 2 medium. I have tried to save the game each
midnight, and then when I know where the 2nd invasion will hit, I reload the
last saved game and build 2 barracks (3 if I can afford it) on the planet.
Except this doesn't work, the place of the invasion if not determined
beforehand, so you will just have to guess. And if you're wrong, reload and try
again. You can not afford to build 2 barracks on every one of your 5 planets
(even if one of them has one barrack already, so it's only 9. But it's 9 times
15.000 and that's 135.000 and you don't have that kind of money in the
beginning)

how can you beat the 2nd Garthog ground invasion with 16 light tanks? Well, it's
not so hard. Always concentrate on enemy units in this order

1. special units
2. heavy units
3. light units

Concentrate your fire. Order 3 of your units to fire on the same enemy, then set
3 of your other units to fire on another enemy. IF you're using weak units
(light tanks) against strong units (medium tanks), tell 5-6 of your units to
attack each of the enemy's unit.
Standard military doctrine says that if your forces outnumber the enemys 3 to 1,
you will win with very few losses. You will almost never have a 3 to 1 ratio of
units, in general, but you can have a local superiority. So, concentrate your
units.

One other thing you might like, is to use single units to draw fire away from
vulnerable units/structures. If your Cruiser is almost destroyed, set a single
fighter to attack the enemy unit firing on the cruiser. Maybe the enemy unit
will stop firing on your cruiser and attack your fighter. You'll loose the
fighter, very likely, but you will have time to
move the cruiser away, so it can survive the battle and be useful in the next
one as well.
Likewise, if you have 9 light tanks and the enemy has 5, and you've divided
your tanks in groups of 3, each group attacking a single enemy tank, and you
notice that the 2 other enemy tanks are attacking your Fusion Power Plant, then
you might want to set a single tank to attack the offender, because you don't
want your fusion plant destroyed.

These hints are general, and can be applied in both ground and space battles.
One more hint regarding space battles:
don't group your fighters (so you have all of them occupying a single square).
It's neat because then your heavier ships can move close to the enemy and help
kill him, but your fighters will die quickly. When a heavy ship has destroyed a
fighter (any kind of ship, actually) it will have to aim the guns at a new ship,
and this means that there is a brief time period where the enemy ship won't
shoot (maybe 1/3 second, maybe a whole second). But if you have several fighters
occupying the same square, then there is no need to aim the guns again, so your
fighters
will have a shorter lifespan.
With this knowledge, you can decide whether to group your fighters or not.
Both options have advantages.

Ground battles are strange...
The Garthogs seem to employ some kind of Radar Jammer. during the 3rd invasion,
I shot this vehicle with a thich, short "damage" bar. (medium and heavy tanks
have long'ish, thick damage bars, light tanks have long, thin damage bars) and
the static that was on my radar screen went away (there was no static in the 1st
or 2nd ground battle). The vehicle I shot might have had large (baloon) tires,
black ones, but I'm not certain. The problem is, during the 4th ground invasion,
I shot another vehicle which I thought looked like the first one, except when it
was destroyed, there was still static in the radar window.
There's something even more strange. The 1st and 2nd ground battle ends when
you've destroyed all the enemy tanks (5 and 9, respectively). But I was really
surprised when the 3rd ground battle ended all of a sudden,
I thought "Now I've lost, because the must have blasted my Colony Hub or
sum'thin' like that" (I still had a lot of tanks left). Only the summary screen
told me that I had defeated the forces of the Garthog Republic. The list of
vehicle types were long, there were both Light, medium and heavy tanks, and also
one special tank, and one or more rocket or missile tanks (1st and 2nd missile
tank, I think it was).
Maybe the special tank was some kind of command vehicle, and if you destroy
that, then the invasion is over?

The same thing happened during the 4th ground battle (things were grim, I only
had 2 barracks on San Sterling (the ice world) which meant a maximum of 16
tanks. I had researched Medium Tanks, and built 30 of them,
but with only 16, I seriously only thought of loosing the battle quickly and get
a look at the summary screen).
I went after the vehicle that I thought was the radar jammer, sent 1 medium
tank. My tank got killed, so I punched "A" (select all units) and went after the
"radar jammer". I killed it (15 medium tanks can kill almost any
single unit they want to). The radar was still partly obscured by static (like
before, it wasn't less obscured after I killed the "radar jammer" I think).
Well, I didn't do anything much, but suddenly the screen faded.
And I still had some healthy tanks left.
The summary screen only listed four kinds of vehicles this time (the summary
screen after the 3rd ground battle listed at least 6, maybe 7 or 8)
Light Tanks
Medium Tanks
Heavy Tanks
Special Tanks

there was 1 special tank killed, it said. The command vehicle, since how else
could the battle have ended? Maybe the radar jamming effect this time came
from some orbiting device...

Production
build at least one factory of each kind. Which planets you build on doesn't
matter, since you can "teleport" stuff between planes. I tend to build as many
structures at possible on the Earthlike planets (Naxos and New Caroline, I think
they are), since here you can have both Fusion Plants and plenty of flat land
(The ice planets also enables you to build fusion plants, but it's hard to find
open space on which to build things)

Start by building a lot of Lasers, and a few Light shields. Put a light shield
into every one of your destroyers that doesn't already have one (you get a
single light shield as a reward early on). None of your capital ships
(=everything but the fighters) are filled with lasers when you recieve/build
them, all have room for more. Fill them up with lasers yourself, since it
increases their firepower. Also produce a lot of Fighters (fighter 2's, they're
better than the mk I models, and I don't think the extra cost makes them less
desirable)
Also start building some new destroyers, and make sure to equip them with a
light shield each, and fill up with lasers. Build a single Radar Array and put
it in your Cruiser.
You don't need to manufacture any light tanks, you have plenty of those already.

Research
You only have 6 planets, when you reach the rank of Commander. This sucks,
because you can only have 1 research facility on each planet, and each invention
requires you to have a set number of research facilities before
you can research them. Since there are 5 kinds of facilities, this can be
a tough decision.

I've found this to be a good choice

civ. eng. 1
mechanical 1
computer 1
AI 1
military 2

This allows you to research several items

Medium Tanks (research these ASAP, or sooner, if possible. They're *so* vital,
since your tank storage capacity are limited by the number of barracks on each
planet). As soon as you've researched Medium Tanks, build 30 of them, and start
to build barracks so that every planet has at least 2 barracks, then build more,
so each planet has 3 barracks, then 4. I don't know if you can stop here, since
I haven't played that far.

Ion Guns
These add more firepower to your Cruiser (I use the singular form, since you
can't build more cruisers until you research them, and the above combination
will not allow you to research cruisers - oh, you might also be able to add some
Ion Guns to your Flagship of course)
Orbital Construction Facility
This facility allows you to build flagships. I haven't tried it yet, but it
sounds fun

Cargo Pod
this allows your flagship to carry more tanks. Useful if you want to invade
a Garthog Planet (I haven't tried this yet, but it seems like you can't colonize
until you advance beyond Commander rank (the "Colonize" option is greyed out)
but it might be possible to expand your empire by conquest,
already at Commander Rank

There are 1-2 more items you can research with the above mentioned combo of
research facilities but I can't recall which.

What next?
If it turns out you can't invade Garthog planets yet (rank to low, or forces to
weak), you will have to demolish some of your research facilities
so you can build new ones. Right now you have

civ 1
mek 1
com 1
ai 1
mil 2

To research the fighter 3, you need

civ 0
mek 1
com 2
ai 2
mil 2

You need a total of 7 research facilities, and which only 6 planets, this
is clearly impossible. So forget about fighter 3 for now
The laser 2 needs this

civ 0
mek 2
com 0
ai 1
mil 2

So you can demolish either your civ. or your com. facility, and build a second
mec. facility. Then you can research a better laser (the pulse laser)
The pulse laser also allows you to research destroyer 2, but I don't know which
facilities it will take to develop a destroyer 2 (the game won't reveal this
until you've got the pulse laser)
A cruiser?

civ 0
mek 2
com 1
ai 1
mil 1

Your best shot might be to build the facilities I recommended earlier, then
research what you can (medium tanks first!!!!!!!) Then demolish your Civil
Engineering facility and build a second Mechanical facility. This allows you to
research both Laser 2 and Cruser 1. The Laser 2 allows you to reserach Destroyer
2, but we don't know which facilities you need to do that yet.

Untested ideas about ground battles

you should try to find out which ground units the enemy has, and what they can
do. Which ones has a long range, which one has a short range? are there a
special command unit, and if yet, do the enemy hide the command vehicle a safe
distance from the battle?
Is there a radar jammer, can you get rid of that annoying static by killing a
special enemy unit?
The amount of information you get during ground battles is very small compared
to space battles, so you have to learn how to recognize each enemy unit.

Experiment with non-tank units like the radar car and rocket sled. The radar car
might be a way to counter the enemy radar jammer (I think it is, but have never
tried it).
The rocked sled is fast obviously. Maybe you can use 2, 3 or 4 rocket sleds on a
suicide mission, to take out special enemy vehicles (command vehicles?)

that's I can think of right now

okay, one more thing, keep the tax rate at "moderate". Wild fluctations seems to
produce less money, in the long run, since after a period with high taxation,
you need a period with low tax.