I Think I've Figured It Out!

[Sirbomber]

:ph34r: NOOOOO! I accidently clicked tab and backspace! I have to type it all over!!!!! Ahem...

We All Know That Plymouth Has the Better Strategy For Multiplayer, Due to Their Cheap Units. Or do they...?

Presenting...

THE EDEN STRATEGY

Note: Due to the fact that the only people I can play Outpost 2 with can be beaten using my tongue and with one eye closed, I've had to test this on Eden Starship. You know, the once where they dump you in the middle of nowhere under a volcano and say, "Enjoy." Er, anyways...

AT THE BEGINNING

As soon as you start (assuming Morale Steady is on and Resources are Set to High), trash the Residence in the Structure Factory. Build an Advanced Lab Structure Kit. Reserach Metallogeny (or whatever it's called) and have a Vehicle Factory, Nursery, and University built. When Matallogeny is finsihed, get High-Scale Optical Resonators (Lasers). By the time that's done, the Advanced Lab Kit should be done, of you should already be building the structure itself. If not, research Hypnopedia. You'll need it. When the Advanced Lab kit is done, build:

An extra Structure Factory if you want (you'll probably need it)
X Common Ore Smelters, with X being the number of ore mines around you.
1 EXTRA Nursery (Bringing you to a total of 2)
1 EXTRA University (bringing you to a total of 2)
AT LEAST 4 Vehicle Factories (Bringing you to 5)
X Robo Miners, with X being the number of ore mines around you. (Make sure you've sruveyed them first.    )
Anywhere from 3X to 5X Cargo Trucks, with X being the number of ore mines times #, 4, or 5. DO NOT BUILD SIX CARGO TRUCKS FOR ONE MINE, OR THE ORE SMELTER WILL GET JAMMED, EARNING YOU NOTHING!
(Example: You have two mines and want five Trucks for each. X = 2, so % time 2 equals 10 Trucks)

I know this is a huge strain on your population. But that's what Unis/Nurseries are for. And cheats.    (sarcasm)

Anyways, back to the Advanced Lab. Get Mobile Weapons. When it's done, well, you should know what to do. If not, why are you reading this?   Build Laser Lynx by the dozen. You should have about 20 in a few minutes.

Now, you're enemy has probably become alerted to your activity. But that's why God gave us the ability to keep building our stuff when the enemy comes. Don't worry about the battle, if he's been doing the same thing as you:

A) He/she will most likely not be attacking anyways.
B) He/she will get anhilated by your sheer numbers.

Anyways, you'll want to continue reseraching. When you get a new weapon, use this handy chart to see if it's worth buildinmg and when to build it:

EMP: Build 1 for every 5 Laser Lynx
Acid Clouds: Don't build often, as it could damage your short-range Lasers.
Starflare: AKA The Money Waster. Just don't build it.
Rail Gun: Build 1 for every 3 Lasers
Thor's Hammer: Build as you see fit, just not too many...

Anyways, you should now take up a little over half the map with your massive amounts of units.  :lol:  And your opponent should be panicking. Especially when the map looks like this:

0 - You
@ - Your Units
X - Them




                            @@@               X
                            @@@    X  X    X
                            @@@    XXX
                            @@@@@@@@@@@@@@
                            @@@@@@@@@@@@@@
                            @@@@@@@@@@@@@@
                            @@@@@@@@@@@@@@

0 000  0
000  000

You see what I mean? Now, to screw around with them, build some Guard Posts at their base. Especially at the entrances.


SCOUTS

Scouts, surprisingly, play a key role for Eden. They are fast, with no armor or weapons. But you can use their speed very well. How? Self-destructing? Maybe. But the more intelligent player will release that units auto-target enemies...

Please, please, PLEASE DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF SENDING ALL OF YOUR UNITS OUT AT ONCE!!!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH! I've seen so many players send out their entire forces, which only get ambushed by their enemy, leaving their base defenseless.

Also, DON'T build Panthers or Tigers often. You'll be relying on the speed of the Lynx and their sheer numbers for your battles.

Here's the Chart for Panthers and Tigers:

Panthers: Build 1 for every 20 Lynx.
Tigers: Build 1 for every 50 Lynx.

Why? Because you're Lynx will get to the enemy base and your Tigers won't even be halfway there. This not only causes unneccesary wait, but also alerts your opponent to your emminent strike.

DAY AND NIGHT MODE

This can be fun. Very fun. In fact, I might recommend building Tigers at a more accelerated rate.

DAY/NIGHT MODE CHART:
Panthers: 1 for every 5 Lynx
Tigers: 1 for every 10 Lynx

Just turn off the lights, and you're enemy won't know what hit them.

Again, the key to winning is sheer numbers. Of course, you will want Scout Class Drive Train Refit, Advanced Armoring Systems, Heat Dissipation Systems, all that.

And, well, that wraps up the strategy for now.

[Highlander]

1) Why have 2 of both universities and nursury ? Early in game they won't make a difference.. only take away important scientists.

2) 2-3 Cargo Trucks per smelter is more than enough. Just make sure you build it close to the mine.

Further Comments:

Why play on your weaknesses instead of your strenghts ? Laser is a poor weapon compared to almost any other, yet you choose to let more than 50% of your army consist of it. Build from 30-70 up to 50-50 of EMP's and Thors instead and you have a much better army. If your using Lasers, I know I would have massacred your army quite fast be it Eden or Plymouth.

Scouts, waste of time.

So few tigers and you'll be really screwed if your Plan A (Lynx) should be broken.
You always need a tight defense.

I'll give you credit for exploring the D/N option with this strategy. Using D/N on your strat, with some modifications is actually very good.

Never underestimate the power of a few well placed Starflares.


Happy Hunting.


 

[Sirbomber]

You use the Laser because it's cheaper and you can get a lot in a short amount of time. Thor's Hammer's take too long to build, and EMP is a bit useless against Plymouth's Scorpions/Spiders. Which is most liekly who somebody will be against. The Tigers are too slow and take too much time and money out of time that could be spent getting more Lynx.
Time to Build 3 Lynx = Time to Build 1 Tiger

You say Lasers are weak, but that's because you don't build enough. Lasers are cheap and effective, you can get more out of them. Remember, the basis of my strategy is to overpower your enemy with massive amounts of units.

Basically, it all boils down to this:
"If you build more units at a cheap price, you will win."
Don't forget, with more units, that more firepower. Sure, Thor's Hammers are powerful, but so are many Lasers. You forget that they all fire and do their own damage, not just one.

And the Scouts I just threw in to see if people would actually comment about it. They really don't make a difference. Maybe I put it in to see if people would believe me. Give me a break, okay? I had tried this after waking up against the CPU. Yes, I had to go against the AI. Their easily fooled, but I wasn't going to waste 20 minutes and not write about it.

Yes, I am psychotic.  

[Leviathan]

Plymoth owns Eden
mics upgraded earler than lasers
gg
-

  He/she will get anhilated by your sheer numbers.

if the spots r the same u will both have same amount units, lasers and mics 750c
10 mics will anhilate 10 lasers
gg

[Leviathan]

Give me a break, okay?

yea ill give u a break
but im sorry, u no nothing about the game.

maybe one day u will play multiplayer regulary and enjoy the game to its fullist.
thank u 4 spending the time 2 post and thx 4 ur views the thing which made me laugh the most was the thors. once u can build them u should only realy need them along with a few emps. eg 9 thors, 1 emp. thors own

how i play eden:
dump res, get lab,
univ
VF
adv lab
2 trucks
SM
1 truck
lasers from now on
SM
Tok
VF
nursery
robo cmd center
ill get about 10 lasers then be killed

even doing 1 SM u wont be able 2 get ur lasers 2 kill Plymouth, when u dont get ur 2nd SM Plymouth will no 2 get a sticky
gg

if any one wants any videos of any stragties or anything in op2 tell me and ill make em. i personaly think i no the game better than any player. so got questions, fire away.

[Hooman]

Yeah lasers do kinda suck and the lack of upgrades early in the game doesn't really make them all that useful. Besides, the cost of railgun isn't really all that much more. Once you get rail gun, there isn't too much point in building lasers. Also, EMP is quite useful, especially in multiplayer since I rarely ever see other people build spiders or scorpions. And tigers don't really take that much longer to build. They have a build time of 900, as opposed to a built time of 600 for a lynx. And face it, lynxes don't last very long. If you have to defend against an army of tigers with an army of lynxes, you're going to lose. Even if you have more lynxes (to a slightly unreasonable point). And more units doesn't mean more weapons firing. They have to be in range, which is harder to do with more units, plus, tigers have two turrets so they fire twice as much as lynxes or panthers. And Lynxes don't last long not just because of the 300 hitpoints but also because of the light armor. An 800 hitpoint heaver armoured tank is going to last much longer. Also, Thors Hammer is a very powerful weapon and you should pretty much build as many as you can afford.

You did get one thing right though. The mobility the lynx offers can be a great reason to use them late in the game. Especially for day and night maps. But it isn't in shear numbers that they're useful. It's well placed small strike forces that are usually most effective. Granted, with only one or two guarded enterances to the enemy base, there isn't much you can do, but on the wide open maps you can outmaneuver an army of tigers and cut into the soft underbelly of their base. Keep in mind, time will usually be limited before the tigers arrive so you have to target key structures.

And starflares are sometimes well worth their cost. Most of the time they are a waste of money, but if you've ever gutted someone's base by starflaring their advanced lab, you'll appreciate their worth.
 

[Highlander]

yea ill give u a break
but im sorry, u no nothing about the game.

Actually Lasers owns Micro's in two ways... do you know which ?

And given the right conditions Eden will own Plymouth in a no mark game.. do you know how ? (Both bases start with same resources)


And by the strats your all presenting, I very much look forward to coming back to play OP2 one day and kicking some asses  :lol:



Cut the guy some slack though.. getting this strategy from playing against the comp isn't all that bad. If he has no online gaming experience against experienced players he's doing quite good.  (thumbsup)

And I believe he never states this is the best strategy ever, it's just his interpretation of how it could be done..  

[plymoth45]

um, yeah, i always have 3 smelters to one mine. 2 trucks to each smelter.

[Leviathan]

yea sorry i just c the game from my point of view

[Sl0vi]

hmm.. I like the guerilla warfare part of this strategy, get as many units as possible and take ehm by pure numbers, and not thinking of the quality of the units.
Depending on what strategy the player you play against uses, this might work very well.
Question, what if you use somewhat the same strat with plymouth, who wins?

[Highlander]

It all breaks down to what units are used. Given a game with all tech researched and good ore, I'd bet on Eden. But of course, you must also keep in mind which players are up against eachother.

But Micro vs Laser battle(same numbers), Micro will win.



But back to my 2 questions, can you answer them Leviathan ?

1)
Actually Lasers owns Micro's in two ways... do you know which ?

2)
And given the right conditions Eden will own Plymouth in a no mark game.. do you know how ? (Both bases start with same resources)

Of course, given the event Lev finds no answer, I'll gladly hand the challenge over to the rest of you

[Leviathan]

if mics r upgraded, dmg, rate of fire they will kill same number of lasers
i think Eden would win vs Plymouth on a world map because i think when Plymouth atttacks with mics eden will have emps/rails. eden eventually gets thors and wins..

Sl0vi u both use the same strat and Ply wins, thats wut i was saying, ur have same number of units but the mics will win the fight.

[xfir]

Eden Laser   

Area of Effect   very small
Range   short
Rate of Fire   very high
Concussion Damage   none
Penetration Damage   low

----------

Plymouth Microwave   

Area of Effect   very small
Range   short
Rate of Fire   very high
Concussion Damage   low
Penetration Damage   low

From the manual itself, it would appear that the Microwave is better than the Laser due to the fact that Microwaves have concussion damage.

[Leviathan]

starting values for

laser
Concussion Damage 0
Penetration Damage 35

mic
Concussion Damage 20
Penetration Damage 20

if i rember correctly

[Highlander]

As I explained on IRC yesterday

1) Laser slices through walls faster than Microwave

2) Laser is faster to research the Microwave(Think this is both for laser as a weapon and to get laser lynx)

[Leviathan]

Yeah, Great

Lasers r unique.
researching them faster if u can dosent matter cuz its not much difference 2 Ply and if u get some lasers quick the time u attack Ply they will have stickys/mics

[Tellaris]

Sticky very useful vs lasers.   And anything else.
Plymouth gets ESG Lynx, you little strategy is worthless, ESG wastes lynx by the dozens.   A little sticky in the way, and you arn't gonna do much damage.

Eden's power is the Thor's Hammer.
This combined with the rather powerful EMP, is almost unbeatable.   To destroy such an army, Plymouth needs to use EMP missiles.   Fairly clumsy weapon if you know what your doing (the eden player)   This as tigers is actually very hard to beat.   Even though tigers are very slow, the army is still quite powerful.   Thors outrange ESG as well (mines go one whole square further).

Oh, and nothing beats a lot of emp with a few combat units.   EMP prevent fireing, so you just keep enemy army disabled, while you slowly kill them.

[Hooman]

Lasers have 35 penetration damage and no concussion damage, where as microwave's have 20 penetration damage and 20 concussion damage. I believe the concussion damage is protected against by armour, but the penetration damage is not. But then, the armour values I think are low enough that the microwave still comes out ahead, or at least breaks even for heavy armour (buildings only, such as CC, SF, Tokamak, Smelter). Also, the laser has a relod time of 35 where the microwave has a reload time of 30. (Microwave fires faster). All other weapon stats are the same.

Eden does get to research things faster.
Cybernetic Teleoperation:
Eden research cost: 800
Plymouth research cost: 1000

Mobile Weapons Platform:
Eden research cost: 1400
Plymouth research cost: 1600

Focused Microwave Projection:
Max Scientists: 10
Research cost: 1200

Large Scale Optical Resonators
Max Scientists: 12
Research cost: 1200

But keep in mind that research progresses 3 times faster in multiplayer, so that doesn't really give you a whole lot of extra time. Also, it'll take time for your units to get to the enemy base, which likely means they'll have time to catch up and build corresponding defenses, only with stronger Plymouth weapons.

Eden has lower research costs for a few other noteable techs but then Plymouth has it's strong points in research too. Mostly techs that affect morale.


Also, walls appear to be unarmoured, so from the stats, it looks like microwaves might be better at killing them rather than lasers. Maybe you want to double check your claim. Or maybe I should try it out myself.  

Anyways, in short, it appears Plymouth has the advantage here.

[PlayingOutpost0-24]

Yeah, Great

Lasers r unique.
researching them faster if u can dosent matter cuz its not much difference 2 Ply and if u get some lasers quick the time u attack Ply they will have stickys/mics

faster research can be useful, 15 laser lynx can own 10 mics...
btw while researching stickys eden can get another... 15 lasers.

[Highlander]

Baikon.

1)Remember lynxes are mobile and can, if given room to manouver, get quite close to ESG's or go around them.

2) If Plymouth player knows what his doing aswell, EMP Missiles can be deadly accurate. Followed by a few Supernovas you big army might be alot smaller. Or disabled vehicles can simply be weakened very much by the ESG's.


Hooman, Just test how many shots a laser uses compared to a micro.

PO, You won't get 15 lasers with Eden while Plymouth have 10. By then Ply has sticky and your tactic is screwed. If you send 1 laser to kill off something vital, the fact that eden researches faster gives you an advantage.

[Leviathan]

a player, Xuan used 2 use this as a rush but it never worked, i just got sticky then lynx. he built 4, 5 or 6 lasers quick as possible and attacked. he didnt get smelters at his base so if it failed hes dead.

[Ezekel]

well, its seems like the laser vs micro problem will need to be fixed ...
what i mean to say is that, well now that we can edit the game's rules, we can address balance issues, though we'd need to be careful, and also we'd need to agree on one new system, rather then having 15 different mods addressing balance in different ways.

perhaps to make up, we could give eden a slight boost in resource collecting... i.e. maybe allow smelter-postprocessing to be researched earlier for eden, or similar.
(or create a new research topic all together that is available after metalogeny)

i gotta say, eden's lack of decent weapons early on really is not funny...
i mean,
laser vs micro - already in depthly discussed about
railgun vs stickyfoam - having a "special affect" weapon and a splash damage weapon, though not nearly as damaging as the rail gun is very unbalanced
starflare vs starflare - well if you can get a starflare at the common smelter early on, congrats to you... there isn't really any balance issues here to mention, though plymouth's supernova could be mentioned.

finally you have the combos that plymouth has and eden lacks,
emp missile+ nova
emp missile+ spiders (though not usually very effective, i'm guessin that teh developer had in mind a thor's tiger+emp and acid cloud vs spiders and emp attacks, cos that does sorta allow for a stale mate ... sorta)

emp vecs+spiders

scorps+emps (though not too useful IMHO... scorps are probably more useful against a plymouth enemy as back up base defence if they EMP missile you)

i suppose what it really comes down to is that plymouth can rush early to win, but if they fail, then eden will likely win (provided that the location of eden's base is good... i.e. if there's few, hard to reach rare metal sites, then magma wells + also the geocon, provided the vents aren't in the middle of nowhere).
actually, i'm wrong, the real thing it comes down to is the players. heh

well i'm done

[Highlander]

Plymouth owns Eden in short games.
Eden owns Plymouth in longer games.

This is just the way it is and it always has been. I mean there's really no reason to change it.

The problem is that in no mark games Eden has nothing to stand up against Plymouth with and is thus easily defeated. This resulting in Eden being a poor choice for games where maps are small and there is no attack mark.

However, if lasers are upgraded to the level of mics Plymouth will loose the initiative in all aspects of the game. So then Plymouth would have to be upgraded again, following a circle.



One possible solution, though I do not like changing the rules of the game, would be to let Eden get their Lasers upgraded at the same time as Plymouth. (After research of mobil weapons)


This would lead to following:

Eden can now defend better against early micro rushes and beat off attacking plymouth units simply by staying at base and producing more units to thow into the battle. However since Micro would still be slightly stronger than Lasers, the initiative would not be entirely lost. Plymouth also have the Sticky Foam weapon availible, which allow Plymouth to outmanouver, and range kill Eden Lasers.




On the weapon combo's:

EMP Missile's can be defended against, it's just that people tend to for get it.
Important locations can always be defended with a couple of Meter Defenses.
Costly, yes, but probably worth the effort.

Spiders are not worth it in multiplayer games.  

[Tellaris]

This results in Thors Hammer being more powerful starting off though...

[Highlander]

Well, Thors Hammer are pretty powerful from the beginning, adn the upgrade are nothing more than 1 single research away.

In multiplayer this research can be done quite quickly, so I don't think this should have such a big effect on the game.

But then again, I'm against changing anything in outpost 2