The Lizard Kingdom - Guide

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Contents 1 Overview 2 Strengths 3 Weaknesses 4 Starships 4.1 Interesting Ships 4.2 Specials 5 Fighters 6 Ground Assault 7 Economy 7.1 Growth 7.2 Taxes 7.3 Prisoners 7.4 Mining 8 Strategies 8.1 Lizard Class Kamikaze 8.2 Armor Cost 8.3 Efficient Ship combinations 8.3.1 Lizard Class / Saurian 8.3.2 T-Rex / Lizard Class 8.4 Planetary Development 9 Enemies 10 See also

[edit] Overview

The Lizards specialize in ground combat and heavily armored ships. They don't have many bizarre racial powers or ship devices; beginners can play them comfortably.

[edit] Strengths

• A massive ground attack bonus for their ground troops, when attacking enemy personnel. Also get a bonus when defending.
• Heavily armored ships with very damage-resistant armor.
• Can sell their prisoners for a profit.
• Can intimidate their Colonists and Natives to become more happy, using their Psi-Opps Hisser Device.
• Have a fully cloaking hull.
• Heavy weapons can shoot through Base Shields.
• Have terraforming ship devices.
• Have the Loki Class Destroyer with it's Tachyon Emitter for detecting enemy cloakers.
• The T-Rex Class Battleship has a Gravity Well Generator and is deadly for hyp ships.
• Have a very high mineral mining rate, plus Reptilians like Lizards to boost the mining rate even further.
• Ships are cheap in minerals and money.

[edit] Weaknesses

• No Anti-Aircraft Guns, Base Ion Cannons, Laser Cannons or Undercities to protect their population.
• Fighters are expensive and weak.
• No defense against hyp attack until the tech 10 T-Rex Class Battleship becomes available.
• Most ships have weak shields.
• Many ships are light and therefore vulnerable to Minefields and Glory Devices.
• Many of the lower tech heavily armored and lightly shielded ships are vulnerable to the armor arc and system damage of the Ion Cannon and Ionic Gun Array Large Weapons, particularly in the hands of The United Enforcement Authority (with their system damage bonus).

[edit] Starships

The Lizard ships come in two basic types:

• Their own unique hulls, which are heavily armored, have weak shields, no evasive bonuses and lower attack bonuses.
• Three hull designs they share with The Solar Federation, which are lightly armored, have strong shields, evasive bonuses and higher attack bonuses.

Most Lizard ships are heavily armored but have weak shields. This is generally an advantage, as most weapons drain more shields than armor. Consider also, that there are exotic techs which can increase your shield strength, but no way exists to improve your armor strength. Additionally Lizard ships that are owned by a Lizard have some bonuses:

• Armor is 66% resistant to enemy large weapon fire (armor drain).
• Armor is 50% resistant to enemy large weapon fire exotics bonus (armor drain)
• Armor is immune to small weapon exotic bonus (armor drain).

The Lizard shiplist includes no ship with Gravitonic Mine Dropper. This makes them very vulnerable to hyperjumping races until the T-Rex Class Battleship with its Gravity Well Generator can be built. Once these are available hyp races need to watch out.

[edit] Interesting Ships

• The Vendetta Class Frigate and the Loki Class Destroyer are have low armor and good shields.
• The Loki Class Destroyer has a Tachyon Emitter
• The Lizard Class Cruiser can fully cloak
• The Saurian Class Cruiser also has a cloaking device, but it can't become completely invisible
• The T-Rex Class Battleship is one of the most cost-effective battleships around.

[edit] Specials

• Lizards can fire through enemy Base Shields.
• Large weapons on Lizard ships that are owned by a Lizard do approx. 10x damage to ground bases.

[edit] Fighters

Lizard fighters are expensive & ineffective. The starting Lizio Class Fighters may be used in free flying wings against unprotected enemy freighters.

[edit] Ground Assault

Ground assault is very important for the Lizards as they rely on prisoners.

• If a Lizard base is attacking, the Lizards receive a 30x bonus to their kill power. This is quite bad as it makes it harder to capture prisoners.
• If a Lizard base is defending, the Lizards receive a 2x bonus to their defense.
• Lizards can force an enemy base to surrender in ground assault before all the enemy Assault Craft have been killed. Only the enemy troops need to be dealt with.

[edit] Economy

[edit] Growth

The Lizards'growth is average. However in the long run it may be below average as they can't built undercities for an growth boost. If you can afford it, you should consider purchasing the Tank-O-Tronic Cloning System A.

[edit] Taxes

Using Psi-Opps Hissers and Resorts the Lizards can use the "Complex" Tax Setting and still stay at 300 happiness.

[edit] Prisoners

The Lizards primary source of income are prisoners. Different from other slave races that have to build Labor Camps or Labor Mines to get money from the prisoners, the Lizards sell them directly. 10% of the Prisoners in each base are automatically sold each turn.

Price per prisoner sold for each personnel type (prices taken from [1]):

Personnel	Price
Colonists	0.66 MC*
Crew	2.4 MC*
Troops	3.6 MC*
High Guard Rangers	7.5 MC*

*Cyborg, Robot or Evil Empire prisoners sell for far less. (The price for an EE colonist is approx. 0.088)

[edit] Mining

• Lizards have double the normal mining rate.
• Using Psi-Opps Hissers to offset the happiness drop more than 50 mines can be used.

[edit] Strategies

[edit] Lizard Class Kamikaze

You may consider sacrificing your starting Lizard Class Cruiser for a suicide run on an enemy homeworld if you don't see a reasonable chance to capture it (e.g. Cyborg). With the 10x damage and the (undocumented) ability of Lizard ships to fire through base shields (valid as of Host 204) you can lay waste to the enemy destroying valuable buildings. Repeat this procedure with newly built ships.

[edit] Armor Cost

This is more of a trick than a strategy, but here goes... You can save a lot of money by building Lizard ships with little or no armor. Instead, let the ships repair their own armor using repair units. Obviously this won't work if you're in a hurry, since it takes several turns for a ship to repair all of its armor. It doesn't cost less Duranium, either... but the megacredits are saved.

Later in the game, if you have enough ships, it's even more efficient to use the Borlox Armor exotic tech to get free armor.

[edit] Efficient Ship combinations

[edit] Lizard Class / Saurian

The Lizard Class Cruiser as a cloaking miner is a wonderful ship; it's one weakness being a small ord hold. To compensate, you can follow it with the Saurian Class Cruiser (a partial cloaker) with a pod full of ord. This ship need not be armed and is very cheap and augments your LCC enormously.

[edit] T-Rex / Lizard Class

The Lizard Class Cruiser is also a huge asset to the T-Rex Class Battleship. The T-Rex is another great ship, not the best tech ten ship, but cheap enough to make many, and armored enough to always do well in battle. One weakness is it's relatively low number of Point Defense Slots. Follow this with 1-3 (or more) LCCs and you can pretty much take fighter wings out of the equation, allowing the large guns of the T-Rex to do it's damage. Huge armor bonus (grown for free as detailed above) can allow the LCC to survive much, much longer than its counterparts.

[edit] Planetary Development

With the Saurian's Particle Fountain to raise the temp, and the T-Rex's Scalar Wave Amp to raise the stress levels, any planet can be made into a profitable farming/mining source for you. This is very important, as gathering resources under duress and constrained borders can often make the difference. Often, the collection of Duranium and Molybdenum is a greater chokepoint then cash, particularly if you've gotten prisoners, in which case the cash can be very good. In desperate situations, you can overamp and stripmine a nearby planet for a mind-boggling amount of minerals, if you don't mind exploding a planet or two.

[edit] Enemies

• The United Enforcement Authority - can be deadly with their system damage bonus and equipped with Ion Cannon and Ionic Gun Array [[Large Weapons]. The T-Rex Class Battleship has enough armor not to care too much about this.
• The Crystal Assembly - small Lizard repair holds and Crystal web mines make for a difficult fight.
• Evil Empire - their cheap battlebots are immune to special ground attack powers of the Lizards (as are all Mechs). Their fighters are much cheaper as well.

[edit] See also

• Stuff concerning the Lizard Kingdom
• [2] Official Race Guide
• [3] Race Guide by Paul Honigmann
• [4] Race Guide by Lordfire