The Birdmen Guide to the Galaxy
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/(_W_)\ C h a p t e r 1 /(_W_)\
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/ \/MvM\/ \ T H E B I R D M E N : A N A N A L Y S I S / \/MvM\/ \
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What exactly are these Birdmen guys anyway?
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<====== 1.1 Strong points ===============================================>
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* Cloaking ships.
Most of the ship types you can build are able to cloak. You've even got a
cloaking battleship!
* Mineral Balance.
The minerals you need to build ships are pretty good balanced, maybe more than
any other race. You won't get stuck with this enormous pile of surplus mineral
of type x.
* Small ships
Your ships are relatively small. This gives you an advantage early in the game
where other players are struggling to put out a decent ship using the
resources on their homebase and nearby planets.
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<====== 1.2 Weak Points =================================================>
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* Big ships.
You don't have any *big* heavy capital ships. You're missing decent fighter
carriers.
* Fuel usage
As most of your ships you have can cloak and cloaking costs fuel, it is very
likely that you will end up with large fuel shortages. The fuel a ship needs
to cloak is dependent of the host settings. Default is 5 kT fuel per 100 kT
hull. Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13b the Resolute and the Dark Wing
don't need any more fuel to cloak.
* Cash
You're not that heavy on cash as many other races. The Federation have their
double tax profit and the Lizards can use HISS to increase the %% tax till
over 50%. The Fascists can occasionally Pillage a native population for MC or
set off an Glory Device to turn an entire Amorphous population into supplies.
The Cyborg can assimilate natives and they will have almost an unlimited
supply of colonists (tax!), cash and supplies (Bovinoids!). The Empire, the
Borg and the Rebels have HYP ships they will use to expand their empire (and
economy) very, very fast.
The Privateers and the Colonies have their Lady Royale pleasure ship, although
the maximum of 160 MC per turn per ship they get is almost nothing when
compared to the income of the Federation and the Lizards.
The Fascists, the Robots and the Rebels have climate advantages to withstand
barren climates. The Crystals have their own (best!) particular way to
survive - their growth rate depends liniar on the temperature and can't be
compared to the other races. They can have 1000 clans (clans!, not colonists)
for every degree of temperature. This means 1000 clans on temp 1 planets (and
0 clans on temp 0 planets). Keep in mind the Crystals need a lot of cash for
their WEB mines - their race specialty, main means of defence and way to get
better ships - all in one - and are usually short on cash. Some races
(Federation, Lizards, Crystals) can change the climate to their liking.
Those six races will use their planets to a higher rate than you!
And the Privateers don't need that much money: they will only build MBRs, they
won't fight but ROB, so they don't need to spend their money on the
techlevels of starbases. And they expand much, much faster!
You've got none of it all: you're basically screwed. So believe me when I say
that you will have to pay much attention to your economy!
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<====== 1.3 How to overcome your weak points ============================>
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* Big ships
You don't have any real big capital ships, the biggest ship you can build is
the Dark Wing. The Dark Wing needs about three times less minerals than one
of the 5 big carriers. However you'll need three Dark Wings to be sure to
destroy a big carrier.
(Take these three Dark Wings as an average; you'll need to find the right
combination of Resolutes and Dark Wings for each large enemy battleship. You
will certainly need a battle simulator like BSIM by Thomas Voigt, or P.A.C.T.
by Chris Holz, Jan Klingele and Timo Kreike.)
The Dark Wing is quite good as a torps ship: it is better than the Victorious,
Diamond Flame or T-Rex (even with Lizard crew) and comes close to the Nova
and the Annihilation (especially if the Engine Shield Bonus is high). So
you've got space superiority against the Lizard, the Fascists and the Privs,
while you lose against the best ships of the Feds (Kittyhawk), the Crystals
(Crystal Thunder) and the big five carriers of the Borg, Empire, Robots,
Rebels and the Colonies. That places you in the 8th rank which is the best
for a race without a decent carrier.[11]
* Fuel usage
Use your Super Spy abilities, get the FC of an enemy planet and beam up the
fuel from the planet. Serves two purposes: you will have fuel, and your enemy
will have less.
This, however, is nearly impossible if your opponent uses a tool like RandMax
(by Steffen Pietsch) to change the FCs every turn. You must rely on your
Resolutes to transport fuel : their cloaking is free (in newer hosts) and
they have a much larger fuel capacity than the Dark Wing. Supplies can only
be refilled in enemy territory by capturing an unprotected or weakly
protected planet, or from an uncolonised planet (read: amorphous). Note that
Resolutes to support the fuel-hungry Dark Wings are truly critical.[8]
Use freighters and Neutronic Fuel Carriers inside your territory - where your
opponents can't see them.
* Cash
a. Use your Super Spy abilities and set the FC of an enemy planet to 'bum'.
This will cause the planet to beam up its megacredits to all ships in orbit -
including own and enemy ships. It's a pity a ship can't carry more than
10,000 MC....
(Watch out for ion pulses! Only use Swifties for this! Or battle-ready Dark
Wings....)
b. You'll need to put extra attention to your economy. Try to squeeze the most
tax out of your natives, maximise the number of factories on your planets
etc. (Don't do this on planets with good natives: your decrease in tax income
will in most cases be greater than your increase in supplies.) In Eden Tans
Infolist you can find formulas to make optimal use of your planets. Use them.
Use the Growth method (high/low tax) to make your colonists and natives grow
quicker while getting the same or more tax.. Keep colonists HP over 70 at all
times! RandMax can do that for you - it sure is a valuable tool.
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<====== 1.4 Birdmen DOs =================================================>
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* Try to build at least one starbase early in the game (near turn 15 -
20) over a Ghipsoidal planet. This starbase will be operative from the first
turn: on this base you will be able to build Swift Heart Scouts with
Transwarp drives and x-ray lasers. These ships with only an engine will be
capable of capturing freighters and spying in the enemy worlds. [1]
* Two words: freighter hunting!
* Attack, attack, attack! Think and be aggressive from turn one, never ever be
put on the defence. This holds true for all cloaking races, and extremely so
for the birds. Because you don't have big ships you shouldn't wait until your
opponent can build his large carriers. Move in, capture planets before they
are productive and kill supply lines. This is what you're good at, you can
move into enemy territory and snipe freighters with dirt cheap scouts. The
cloaked intercept makes this even more fun, even if your opponent escorts his
large freighters you can still take them out first. If it's empty follow a
LDSF or a STF to a planet and intercept it the next turn when it's full. Make
a good estimate of the odds whether you can fly it into your own territory
(use x-rays) or whether your enemy will capture the freighter back (deep in
enemy territory. Use something that destroys the ship).
* Don't be afraid of building Starbases, they can always be used to build
scouts (warp 6 or higher engines, or only to take up shipslots/gain PBPs).
Also good for defence later (if needed...) [6]
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<====== 1.5 Birdmen DON'Ts ==============================================>
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* Don't use any non-cloaking ships. You've got the most different types of
cloaking ships of all races so use them. [It is however hard to run a
productive economy without large freighters.] And if you do want to use
non-cloaking ships, like LDSF, make sure they planet hop, and NEVER show your
heading!
* Don't trade your large capital ships. The Dark Wing is so terrible that it
is a big threat for you. One of the best combos I have found it's a Meteor
towing a Dark Wing. Be sure that the Privateer never gets one. Don't trade
Resolutes either!! In Privateer, Robotic or Crystalline hands, they're much
more lethal than a Dark Wing...
* Don't play in games where Privs robbed cloaked = ON, cloak failure >5% or
games where cost of cloaking is high (>5N/turn) Birdmen are also favoured by
low mineral settings. Some hosts give Birdmen 5x ground att/def bonus, which
is fine! [6]
* Don't build anything but Resolutes, Dark Wings and Swifties after 20-30
turns.. They can accomplish everything you want!
(Maybe an occasional Merlin or Refinery.)
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/(_W_)\ C h a p t e r 2 /(_W_)\
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/ \/MvM\/ \ P L A Y I N G T H E B I R D M E N / \/MvM\/ \
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What should a 'typical' Birdmen game look like?
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<====== 2.1 Your game ===================================================>
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* You'll try to stay cloaked/hidden for at least the first 10 - 20 turns. If
you get the two free ships, fill the Swift Heart Class Scout (tech 6 engines,
X-rays) with 20 clans and send it away to drop a clan on every planet. The
Small Deep Space Freighter... if you can't planet-hop to keep the ship hidden
you won't use it. (Maybe you could tow it to get 70 kT extra cargo hold.)
Increase your engine tech to 10 and send out 2 - 4 Swift Hearts filled with 20
clans. When you find a good planet, build a Fearless Wing Cruiser as a
cloaking transporter and start expanding your economy.
* Check if you can move between a couple of planets that are < 81 LY's away
from each other, then use a LDSF, much quicker expansion in the beginning -
IMPORTANT for Birdmen!
* Your money will be gone soon - your cloaking ships (except the Scout) need 2
engines and that is very expensive in the first 10 - 15 turns. Don't buy
fighters or starbase defence for the same reason. You'd better find a nice
planet with a large native population. Tax!
Just like in any other game, start thinking about your second starbase at turn
10-15 and build it between turn 15-20. A tech 10 hull or tech 10 engines base
is useful - you really don't need tech 10 beams/torps yet. Depending on your
neighbour you'll have to start thinking about some defence. Think about the
Deth Specula, the Resolute and the Dark Wing.
* Find that Bovinoid planet fast. As you search for it put the SB to build
mainly Swift Hearts. When you find the Bovinoid planet put all resources into
building 1 Merlin to place lots of clans on the Bovinoid planet. Build a SB
there. This way you'll have hundreds of each mineral each turn. Don't forget
to place enough clans to receive all those supplies. (Divide no of Bovinoids
with 10000 to find out how many clans you need!)
With this you will have lots of minerals and so distribute them to all the
nearby planets and build SB on all of them. Start building ships as fast as
you can. Mainly Resolutes, Dark Wings, White Falcons, Fearless Wings, Swift
Hearts and Freighters. [2]
* Early on the game, players don't have the resources to lay enormous
minefields, or to build Lokis or Glory Devices so take advantage of that and
scout their territory looking for valuable planets and ships. Use Swift
Hearts for scouting and White Falcons for smaller ships.
* About starbases: Generally, unless its a long game, don't build them. They
use an incredible amount of resources which could be shipped to your
HomeWorld to make Dark Wings. I do think there is one great point about
starbases in a short-medium game and that is on a Ghipsoidal planet. You
have an instant Swift heart factory! New starbases are also hard to defend
and you generally won't find that perfect planet in which there are a lot of
natives, a lot of minerals, and a nice temperature. [7]
* You should be building Swift Hearts throughout the entire game, sending
them off into your opponent's territory. As the Birdmen, you should know
where every planet of every opponent is located.[8]
* Remember to use scouts when exploring ANY new territory, remember the movie
Aliens - what kind of bozo sends civilians to examine unexplored territory?
Hopefully not you. Moral: Resist the urge to "get there first". It's very
rare that you will discover a tropical 15 million Bovinoid unity planet.
Don't use large freighters to explore new clusters.[9]
* This race is possibly the most "human" when it comes to advantages, no tax
or mining help, just good old fashioned "crazy-like-a-fox" strategy and
planning.[9]
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<====== 2.2 Your ships ==================================================>
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This is the standard shiplist. Alternate shiplists will be described in
Chapter 8.11.
Small Deep Space Freighter Too small for most of your needs. Use it at your
own risk. Use it for Reverse Alchemy (see article
in The Planeteer - issue 4 or 5) or to get free
ship slots.
Swift Heart Class Scout The ultimate scout. Equip it with 2 X-ray lasers
to capture freighters and unprotected planets.
Build lots of them: 20% of your fleet may not be
enough, because you will lose lots of them
performing their dangerous spy mission in
minefields finding Glory Devices and Loki's.
It may seem silly to use Heavy Phasers on Scouts,
but as your Scouts will in most cases operate in
teams, such a team could need heavy beams to
sweep an enemy minefield when trapped inside.
When equipped with Transwarp drives it will never
get obsolete in a game.
It's low mass and relatively large fuel tank will
let you take the Scout deep into enemy territory.
Neutronic Fuel Carrier A dilemma...
You will certainly need ships to carry fuel, but
this one doesn't cloak. When you use this Fuel
Carrier you will expose the location of your
starbases, important planets and your ships.
You'd better not.
Use White Falcons (430 kT), Fearless Wings (360
kT) or Resolutes (480 kT) to transport fuel.
Those ships are heavier and their cloaking
devices will need fuel. :-(
(Except for the Resolute of course.)
Medium Deep Space Freighter They won't cloak. Believe me, I've tried it very,
Large Deep Space Freighter very hard, but those damn bastard ships won't
Super Transport Freighter cloak. So only use these freighters when you can
planet-hop.
If not, you'd better use the White Falcon (140
kT cargo), Fearless Wing (240 kT) or Resolute
(280 kT).
[1200 kT (LDSF) vs. 280 kT (Resolute) = 4.2 times
worse economy!]
White Falcon Class Cruiser Needs just one large tube to lay large
minefields.
Cheap ship to tow enemy warships.
Bright Heart Cls Destroyer Cheapest ship to tow enemy ships. Has a very,
very small fuel tank which makes its use very
limited.
Cheap mineral cost and four tubes make this a
good defender.
When build with tech 5 engines they can defend
your planets and freighters against enemy
HYP probes.
Small Transport Worthless.
Fearless Wing Cruiser Needs just one large tube to lay large
minefields.
Perfect minesweeper. Use it as a freighter.
Skyfire Class Cruiser Doesn't cloak. Don't build it.
Valiant Wind Class Carrier Doesn't cloak. Don't build it. Maybe for
defending starbases? Excellent for trading.
When the E-S Bonus is high and you have access
to cheap fighters, it fights well against torp
ships.
Deth Specula Class Frigate Nice ship, nice ship indeed.
Multi-purpose: excellent minesweeper with high
tech beams, prefect mid-size destroyer. It's only
large (!) disadvantage is it's small fuel tank. A
fully loaded Deth flying cloaked will run dry
within 5 turns. Use it as a short-range defender/
attacker/patrol ship.
Use it to soften up large torp ships for your
Dark Wing.
Some Birdmen players won't use the Deth when the
E-S Bonus is low or off: its mass is to low for the
ship to be of any good use, and the fuel tank is too
small.
Resolute Cls Battlecruiser One of your best ships. Perfect minesweeper,
great minelayer. A Resolute can take out a medium
starbase stocked with 30 fighters without taking
any damage.
Large cargo hold, large fuel tank. Perfect for long
range missions in enemy territory.
Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13b it's cloaking
device doesn't need any fuel any more. Resolutes
and Dark Wings also stay cloaked inside Ion-storms!
Very good once you have a huge storm over your
territory!
Red Wind Class Carrier Right. Two beams and two fighterbays doesn't make
it a very useful ship.
But... with access to free fighters it is a
perfect fighter transporter. Exactly 60 fighters
fit in the cargohold: a complete starbase fighter
(re)fill.
Very useful in teamgames!
Dark Wing Class Battleship Remember you'll loose two good ships to a large
fightercarrier - only the third ship (a Dark
Wing) will kill it. Except for big Fed carriers:
for example for a Fed Gorbie you'll definitely
need more Dark Wings.
The Dark Wing is cheap - build lots of them.
Since host 3.22.005 and phost 2.13b it's cloaking
device doesn't need any fuel any more. But
remember, every 3 or 4 turns it will need a full
cargo of fuel.
Resolutes and Dark Wings also stay cloaked inside
Ion-storms! Very good once you have a huge storm
over your territory!
Neutronic Refinery Ship/ In a mineral rich game you probably won't need
Merlin Class Alchemy Ship any: build one when you need one. (Simple eh?)
* The White Falcon makes a real good towing ship (warp 9)! Build a LDSF with
low-level engines (5), fill it up with for example 1150 colonists, 50
supplies and enough money (600 MC), tow it to a star-cluster and start
colonising. Use the LDSF to colonise the nearer planets (planet to planet -
moves). Use the White Falcon (cloaked) to colonise the planets more far away.
Don't waste your colonists! 100 clans on a normal planet is sufficient. Build
up one planet (having a temp near 50/Temperate-Warm) as "breeding"-planet.
Undocumented and unverified feature:
Towing will burn less fuel than the LDSF would have burned. Its a way to
spread out quickly and it's not that expensive. It's a real quick way to
build up a couple of planets. [3]
* When you're building White Falcons for misisons deep inside enemy territory,
try equipping them with Gamma Bombs and Blasters. When you detect an enemy
freighter or little capital ship you can always choose if you want to
_capture_ it using the Gamma Bombs or to _kill_ it using your Blasters (FC:
'NTP')
* If you've got freighters, set their missions to Mine Sweep, or Sensor Sweep.
Your capital ships will be cloaked most of the time and can't perform
Mine/Sensor sweeps at the same time, your freighters can't sweep mines but
they can detect them and keep you up-to-date of the current status of your
minefields and the enemy minefields near your empire. [1]
- This way you can update the datafiles of your EchoView and/or Informer game
aids. It gives you valuable information.
- This is particular useful when you capture an enemy freighter in enemy
territory: your raider can cloak again whilst the captured freighter will
update your enemy minefield info.
- Same to any non-cloaking ship you might possess: the Merlins and Neutronic
Refinery Ships in orbit of your starbases make great minesweepers.
* About freighters:
Nonetheless you'll need those ships, 280 kT cargo space is way too little,
large populations of natives can be taxed so much sooner when you drop large
loads of clans, making expanding so much easier. Plus, you'll need clans in
the front-line, because one of the hardest parts of playing planets is still
how to occupy newly conquered territory. If you moved out lots of clans early
in the game, you'll have huge stocks next to the places where you need them.
Too bad enemies may guess where you are, but once you are the one that's
doing the attacking all this knowledge is nothing compared to the advantages
you have with a good freighter fleet. And when you can use the freighters in
a "safe" zone this frees up the cloakers for spying and sniping at your
neighbours. [4]
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<====== 2.3 More on Scouts ==============================================>
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I am constantly amazed at the attitude of some players regarding scouts. Sure,
they are great in the beginning when you can't build anything else, but let's
take another look at these wonderful little vermin.
Scouts are light, cheap and have a long range. Combine a cloaking device
with that and you have a great intelligence ship.
My experience comes with working with the Archaeopterix class scout, a
single-engine 3-beam PList ship, but the standard Swift Heart works just as
well.
Things to do with your scouts:
SCOUTS IN EXPANSION:
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Exploration:
a full fuel tank and a few colonists to use as markers. Put Transwarps on
them and Heavy Blasters (Birdmen scouts have more beams and mass than other
scouts ships, i.e. Borg or Rebel hyper-warp ships) Set a waypoint, and as
Picard says, "engage!". Vital in games with Exploremap.
Couriers:
A cloaking cash vault. Send one to that far away insectoid unity planet,
and shuttle your cash home with peace of mind.
Minefields:
Found a minefield? Find the owner's planet closest to the center of the field,
send in 5 ships and change the friendly code, neutralising it and letting
your warships cruise on in. Just set all the f-codes the same value, and set
your fleet all to the same code as well.
Only got a few scouts? Enter orbit and spy anyway and read the code, just
make sure to check it every turn. Some players will use RandMax to change
their codes after each turn. note that NUK, ATT etc. will not work - you will
need to change the planet code with 5 ships if that's the case.
SCOUTS IN COMBAT:
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Too often a game will proceed as follows:
- turns 1 - 20 expand, colonise, establish starbases and supply routes.
- turns 21 - ?? pump out Resolutes and Dark Wings and prepare to invade
the territory of other players.
You will almost never see a scout from any race ever again. This is bad.
Why? read on...
Scouts as advance warning for the fleet:
Planning to invade enemy space? Build 3 scouts and send them out 2 turns
before your main fleet is ready to go. This is _essential_ to a successful
invasion. Not only will you get advance notice of enemy fleet movement, but
once your main fleet shows up your scouts will probably already be deep
inside enemy lines, and can snipe away at support vehicles (fuel carriers and
freighters) once the battle gets really heavy.
Scouts as part of the assault:
Dark Wings are great for killing starbases and capital ships, but they can't
be everywhere. And what's the sense in sending a resolute after a freighter?
Kind of like sandblasting a soup cracker... Mop them up with those little
guys!
** Host 3.22.05 allows Dark Wings and Resolutes to cloak without extra fuel,
so disregard the following advice if you're playing in a newer host game. **
It is not always necessary to cloak every ship leaving your HomeWorld. There
is a 200 LY scan range for ships and planets, so if you can guarantee the
safety of your immediate space, don't cloak your main ships until your scouts
make contact with the enemy (either via seeing enemy ships, entering orbit
over an enemy planet, or driving through 81 LY of mines :))
Decoys:
In a game I once played in, the Privateers managed to sneak two Blockade
Runners behind the Colonial minefield lines, and managed to wreak havoc just
by decloaking in full view and then hiding and running all over the place.
It threw my ally into a state of panic because he assumed there must be more,
and stopped an invasion in progress to mop up these little ships.
The same can work for you - 3 or 4 small ships appearing at once in a pack or
apart can cause a player to split up a defensive fleet to take care of you,
or at least lay a minefield to try and slow you down. The minefield laid is
that many torps less that will hit your warships (just make sure to sweep as
you go!) And the ship that breaks off of the main group to intercept you is
one less your ships will have to fight that turn - these things can make or
break a battle.
Note:
Scouts typically have small crew - if at all possible, try to avoid capture
(drive through a minefield at warp 9, cloak and stay still, or run like hell
if you can). [9]
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