The Centaurs - Guide
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[edit] Overview
Descripton from Raceview (edited to fix some typoes):
The Centaurs are a half-human half-horse life form. The fact that they appear in human mythology is because a tribe probably visited the Earth aeons ago. Their origins are unknown, as they do not keep written records, aside from some vague legends. Their society is remarkably primitive: they live in tribal family groups with a central matriarch. They don't have many ships of their own design, and tend to use such designs and technology as they encounter during their intergalactic travels. Aggression is quite foreign to their nature, and they much prefer running to fighting. They are extremely well equipped to do just that their ships are the fastest around, and they have a racial speed psychosis. Most of their capital ships can hyperjump, and they even have a hyperjumping carrier. Their ground combat abilities are weak. The only real combat advantage the Centaurs have is their fighters and their piloting skills, both are formidable and in good supply. They're a nice bunch of guys, and natives like them.
[edit] Strengths
- Extremely Fast Ships. Centaur ships are fast and agile, check out the shiplist for more details.
- Steeple Jump. Centaur hyp ships can move after hyperjumping!
- Astrogation. Centaur ships and bases get a "grey" scan of all stars within 5000ly.
- Free Exotic Tech. Centaurs start by knowing the Plasma Manifold A Exotic Tech for free.
- Wide Farming Range. Centaurs can farm in climate ranges from 10 to 78, but the host option which if enabled requires a 1 k Colonists per farm does eliminate this advantage.
- High Capacity Low-tech Transport Centaurs can build the Shahmia Class Starbase at ship tech 2. Limited weaponry, but can transport up to 168 000 Passengers and 2800 Cargo, great for establishing a new base. But then the Centaurs do not need the Shamia to estabilish new bases, they usually need small bases and for that Jump Pods or other cheaper (and faster ships) are enough. Currently the uses of the Shamia are limited, and its main use is the reallocation of your HW to another base. The Food-to-Supply-Converter they do not need anymore and the Shamia cannot help, unless the 1 k colonists per farm host option is disabled, in preparing outlaying small bases for the arrival for a big part of your Population, which might be necessary if your HW or other big bases, in case you have any, are threatend to be attacked.
- Fast Pods. Centaur Pods have a base speed of 40. This means they can concentrate on building ships to fight rather than transports. The so called fast pods are not really an advantage not at that low speed, especially considering the generally high cargo room on their ships. They had their uses under older host versions, but that is about all...
- Have Soil Reformer. The Arkab Class Supply Ship has the Soil Reformer tech, which boosts a planets soil rating to a max of 250. Which again is a nice feature, but is not real advantage for the Centaurs either, but for their allies, because of the host options which if enabled requires 1 k Colonists per farm.
- Excell at removing Minefields With the Shah you have the best minesweeper, which currently exists. the reason for that is that is cheap and can hyp, with the introduction of Steeple Jumping however this ship is quite capable of plowing through a minefield after emerging from hyper jump, so might consider flying at a safe warp speed to avoid minehits. And you have the Raffa to remove heavily mined areas via the Glory Device.
[edit] Weaknesses
- Slow growth rate. Centaurs either need to hit hard and early, or else be prepared to have one of the smaller empires in the system. Problem with the hit hard an early part is, that the Small Weapons are currently rubbish, as are fighters nowadays for nearly all races. And even at their highest power rating, wrt host version, the hist hard and early was usually around or even after turn 20
The latest racepack (v.102) increased the growth rate to 85 (same as UEA). - Cannot Build Undercities. This means Centaurs cannot offset the growth rate reduction of a normal City. This is a weakness but a minor one.
- Weak Ships. Only three of your ships have armor - the Super Transport freighter, large Deep Space Freighter and the Shantah class Armored Transport - and only the Raffa and the Riza can mount Large Weapons.
- Vulnerable to ship sabotage attack The light power rating of 0, effectively means that HGs do not offer any additional protection against ship sabotage attacks. And with the generally low hull mass ships this means that most succesful targeted ships will get outright destroyed, with not chance to survive such an attack.
[edit] Base Buildings
[edit] Racetrack
 | This building has two main effects:
This means with at least 1 Ghipsoldal, 1 Humanoid, 1 Reptilian and 1 Avian present in a base with 1,000,000 colonists you get 600 MCs per turn. Having more then 1 Racetrack does not increase the income. |
[edit] Market Place
 | This building earns 30mc for every 100,000 colonists on the planet, including allies. You can build up to 5 of these in a base. Each costs 500 MC and 1,500 Supplies, that means with a population of 1,000,000 it takes about 7 turns until you make profit. With higher populations however this can be much faster. Remember that this also works for (fast growing) allies. So spending 2,500 MC and 7,500 Supplies at a friendly hw with 10,000,000 will give you 15,000 MC each turn and doesn't require any food to run (like cities). |
Using both buildings together you can get up to 2,100 MC per 1,000,000 colonists. This is double the rate you could get with cities, but without any need of food, producing new cities for every 100,000 colonists and probably most important without any growth penalty.
[edit] Growth
The Centaurs have a rather slow growth. However they have lots of stuff on their starting ships (more than 100k Colonists, 12000 Fuel...), which gives them a small boost in games with low starting populations.
[edit] Military
There are some very fast designs in your shiplist with Warp + Hyperjump. Use them to strike early. You have to be fast. Later in the game the other people will outgrow you. To get better ships you need to steal/trade them from others. Problem with this is, that nowadays alien hulls usually fight poorly (due to some host options), so you might just stick with your Raffas and Rizas and your fighters, whose fighting power has been greatly reduced in the last 40 host versions. Only ships which might proof valuable, are ships with certain devices, like Warp or Ground Base Chunnel, Jump Point generator, Protomatter Cannon, or Alchemy Device or DTMS-N Fuel Converter and in some rare cases a ship with a Gravitonic Minelayer.
[edit] Allies
(Currently) you really need some allies to make the most of your economy using the special race buildings (See Above). And there is no race, which is not a good ally for the Centaurs, and no race, which would not profit from a Centaur as an ally, although your role in any such alliance may vary, and in most cases the primary fighting will be done by your ally. Of course with some races as an ally your alliance will be stronger than with others, but for all races you are a good ally, which is not true for all other races. A short overview (not yet all races mentioned):
- EE, Rebels might have problems with Grav Mines and Grav Well ships. You have the means to remove them (easily) with the totally cheap Shah and the hyp-jump capable Raffa. Rebels are otherwise the biggest contender for the amorphous worms, but in contrast to him you have the means to turn them into spice and thus in the long run into money. The EE will probably be interested in your scan data, after ll they can then better plan their next assult target, of course a nice Centaur would never do that ;-).
- Birds have a problem with getting enough scan data and really lack some towing capability. Well most of your ships have a really big scan range (most ships have 300+ ly scan radius) and are really cheap. Also most of your ships can tow the Birds starbase. And there are other advantageous for the Birds.
- Lizards are very good in ground combat and ie. the Jump Pod can help them to assault many small enemy bases...
- Privateers have no minesweepers and mines, especially Grav Mines and Grav Wells can hinder the privs, to rob every enemy blind. And here you come into play, removing any enemy mfs and a occasional Grav Well ship, so that the MCBR can do their job. And the Privs will also have another way to convert their amorphs into spice or money. And together you can also sell a whole lot of contra to your victims (not just robbing them).
- Xtals will probably fear your ability to remove their mfs for another race (your military power are currently to limited to become a real thread), and there just is no better way for him to make sure that you want than by allying with you. Not to mention that his worlds are a prime target for you to build him some farms or to use Marketplaces for some additional income for you and the Xtals.
- The Borg can use especially in the beginning a Jump Pod or two, in the long run you can provide them with some excess natives you will most likely get and use your Marketplaces to make additional money from ie. the Borg HW. Also the Firestorm can be towed by your ShaiShan.
- Draconians are a very slow race and you are a very fast and mobile race. Together well you do then Math. And their Krait Class Dread Star can be towed by many of your ships, saving the Dracs a whole lot of money for the engines. Also you will usually have more intelligence (scan data) on the universe than about any other race. Also let the Dracs know, that you can send to any Draconian base 100 mcs and supplies very fast, for them to build additional Government Centers (or for them to replace them).
- RCS has very powerful warships with the Lotus Class Pursuit Ship (and the Aurora Class Flagship). What they lack is hyperdrive capability, ie. for fast transportation, are vulnerable to minehits, especially the Lotus is for its fire power kind of fragile, and means to ie. tow the Aurora at a speed of 190 lys or above, and will usually need more Med Units than their Arrean Capitals can provide, you can provide all of it. Also the Marketplaces should be an addiional source of money for you and your RCS ally, on his major population centers, which will either be Xelovi hives or Nawole Gardens.
- Scavengers: Well first of all they like spice (and via corporation the negative effects of contra sold to once bases can be minimized), they also can get additional stuff via their Scav Crawlers from natives and they have an insanely high growth, that is mostly limited by food - they surely will want the services of the Arkab Class Supply Ship for that reaseon...
- Robots: Well their main defense are nova barb mines (coupled with Gun Zeros), but the Gun zeros will not shoot down your Shahs and the Raffa will most likely just use its GD before the Gun zero will destroy it also you can easily use an Isar to clear his mfs with barb mines, all of this means that you are able to remove his defense easily, again not for your own fleets but to give other races an opening. And the best way for the Bots to prevent is by allyingwith you. Also they will often get a high population on many bases, meaning that you can use your Marketplaces to good effect. You can also let occasionally some of your natives (with low worth for yourself) end up in an a insectoid nest, for a few new high paying bugs. you can also send him some of your excess LW manufactured by your amphibians, in case you get any, since you will most likely not need most of these LWs yourself.
...
And one last word of advice, do not trade any hull plans with an ally or anyone else unless you know that you will be allied with him until the bitter end, hopefully for your enemies and not for your alliance.
[edit] Enemies
Everyone can out-gun you, so you need to outrun when possible.
- You only have masses of light small ships and some of your fighters are very expensive: Beware of any race with a Nemesis Torpedo.
- Most of your ships can mount only Small Weapons, so ships with Organic Armor are just bad.
- If you can, steal ships and ship plans to increase your usable fleet. But take note that this is not that feasible with the alien hull fight poorly host option enabled.
[edit] Early Enemy Assaults
You have quite a good chance to defend against early attacks on your HW by many of the other races, as you will in most cases see such an attack comming, due to your superior scanning ability (high scan ranges of your ships) and your starting Raffa Class Heavy Cruiser's Gravity Well Generator can stop hyperjumps and give you additional time. If you still lose control of your orbit, you can still built tons of Itsha Hovercrafts for a price of 7.5 per unit (due to the Racetrack doubling the Ishar production).
[edit] Strategy
First thing for you to understand as a leader of the Centaurs is, that you can usually not outbreed any other race. And even if you could the money your Colonists would generate (income rating is 40) would still be much lower than that of other races with half your population. Also the strength of your empire does rise and fall with the native population which you do have, particulary the Amorphous Worms and Ghipsoldals, as well as Avians, Humanoids and Reptilians (for your racetrack). The problem is that you have in contrast to the rebels (and privs and bots) no Native Dust Off device, thus you will need to gather the natives differently, via Public Space Ports. But to be able to gather them that way, you first of all need to get some natives of the types you want to gather. And for that you need to know where the natives are. But with the Jump Pod you have the means to colonize many planets very fast with a few troops, or Colonists, remember you only need a base on a planet for a chance of any native type on that planet to join your base. The Jump Pod is tech level 1 and if you waste fuel in the beginning does usually not matter, you have over 12 k kt of fuel on your starting Shamia, and that not without reason, so don't hesitate to use that fuel, and with a cheap hyp drive and cheap engines it can cost you less than 100 mcs...
[edit] Playing against
- The Centaur ships rely on shields and high evasive bonuses: That makes them extremly weak vs Sand Caster, Streak Missiles and Tachyon Gun
- The Centaurs are currently no real threat to you. But their shiplist is a threat to you, regardless which race you play. So it is usually best to not force them to ally to one of your enemies or to attack them, unless you can take them out (completly), very, very fast, or they are your last opponent. As they do not need a high population, much money or anything else, to give access to their shiplist to your worst enemy in the game. And they might do that just to make sure that you do not win, but someone else.
