The Robotic Imperium - Guide
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[edit] Overview
The Robotic Imperium - often referred to as 'The Bots' or 'The Cylon' (from Battlestar Galactica) - is a defensive race. Many of their racial specials are related to insectoid natives (often referred to as 'bugs'). Insectoid nests and insectoids are - in many ways - as important (and similiar) to Robots as colonists. Insectoids pay very good taxes.
Other characteristics of the Robots is total independence from food and a very slow fleet. Robots can't (on their own) build alien hulls, which makes the fleet even more challenged movement-wise. This will often lead to Jumpgate travelling - something that's avoided by most races.
[edit] Strengths
- Extremely inexpensive Type 1 Fighter. It is also weak, but you can make thousands of them!
- Very strong defensively. Ability to make HUGE overlapping Nova Barbitic Minefields along with Gun Zeros make Robotic space very unattractive to other races.
- Ord plants produce double the normal amount of Ord
- Do not require food in any way
- Will not work in labor camps if captured (they do work in labor mines)
- Cannot be assimilated
- No one else can build your ships, even if they get the hull plans.
- One of the best dreadnaughts in the game, the Vltava
- Can build Jump Gates
- Their fighters are cheap but have a good cost/use relationship. They get massive boni for resisting SC and PD. See Fighter Stats.
[edit] Weaknesses
- Extremely dependant on Tritanium metal
- Extremely dependant on Insectoids
- The Robots are very poor regarding ground combat strength.
- You cannot build anyone else's ships, even if you get the hull plans.
- Slowest fleet in the galaxy
- No minesweepers
- No superweapons
- Nova Barbitic Minefields will not harm wings
[edit] Insectoid Nest
- This is by far your most important building and the key to success.
- You have a growth rate of 0. One Insectoid can build one colonist and your nest can hold up to 100,000 bugs. Therefore you can produce up to 100,000 colonists per turn. The bugs in insectoid nests use 1 tritanium metal per 1000 colonists.
- Will turn all warm blooded natives into insectoids. It will not harm Siliconoids, Amorphous Worms nor Chupanoids.
The warm blooded natives (and insectoids) immediately join your base after nest activation and are transformed to bugs. For conversion it makes no difference if they are on a planet or inside your base. This is why the Native Dust Off Device is not so important. Natives inside an enemy base on the same planet will not convert. You have to ground assault and capture the enemy base first.
- "Steals" colonists from nearby bases of other players (range up to 400LYs) and converts them into insectoids. You will get 3% (rounded down) of the colonists of each base in range, even if you never had a scan report of that base before. In addition, the affected base will further lose 4% of its colonist population. Crew and troops are not affected, the happiness will not change, nor will the owner get any information. The range is limited by both the number of colonists + insectoids present in the base (look here for a table showing the range-colonist/insectoid-dependency) and the turn (look here for the exact formula).
- Converts prisoners at a rate of 10% per turn into insectoids, regardless of type (Colonist, Crew, Troop).
- Mines fuel from the planet which will generate up to 10,000mc per turn, if you have 1,000,000 bugs in your base, 1 insect nest, and 1000 Kt ore in the planet.
[edit] Practical Use
The Robotic Imperium has no growth rate. It is all determined by the amount of Insectoids and tritanium that they have. Insectoids, in most cases, are fairly easy to get by finding other natives that you can convert into Insectoids. There is an element of luck there. Tritanium will run out quickly if you are not careful. You should review your options on how to generate new tritanium. I've found that since Robot colonists are built, not grown then they can exceed the 50,000,000 colonist limit on homeworlds, but not at other normal bases.
- The Merlin Class Alchemy Ship can produce 675 tritanium per turn, but requires 2700 supplies to do so. 2700 factories can produce 2700 supplies, but requires 3,645,000 colonists to run. Use the chart below to determine how many factories and Merlins you should have per base based on the number of colonists that you have. Bovinoids double supply production from factories, but your nest will convert them so they'll have to be at another base.
| Colonists | Factories | Merlins | Growth/Insectoids Needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| less than 3,645,000 | 2700 | 1 | 675,000 |
| 3,645,001 to 14,580,000 | 5400 | 2 | 1,350,000 |
| 14,580,001 to 32,805,000 | 8100 | 3 | 2,025,000 |
| 32,805,001 to 50,000,000 | 10000 | 4 | 2,700,000 |
- New unmined metals are produced with high stress and positive delta stress in a planet. You can modify the stress of a planet in different ways. See the Hyperdimensional Stress and Crystals pages for more information on this. This can produce various amounts of new unmined tritanium, which could be up to 8000 in extreme cases, but would average around 2500 if you used the trick on the Crystals page.
- If you have a Crystal ally, the hyperlathes produce 2 tritanium per point of hyperdimensional stress consumed and could be shared with you.
[edit] Other Base Buildings
- Gun Zero: They fire at all scanned ships with a hull mass of 100+ within 250 LY.
- Cities: You don't need food to run your cities and they don't reduce your growth, so build as much as your population can support.
- Training Centers: You will need Kerria Crystal Artifacts to train HG instead of food. Training Centers do not reduce your natural growth rate because it is already zero. High numbers of Training Ceners on High-Population worlds will result in masses of Crew and Troops due to your high colonists-to-crew-ratio.
- Mineral Mines: On worlds with a large amount of metal ore (not fuel), drop only 10,001 Colonists and 90 Emotion Chips. You may build 100 mines, with the Emotion Chips countering the happiness drop. Larger populations require more Emotion Chips (linear relationship).
[edit] Ships
- All non-transport ships owned by the Robots have decent combat potential. Each boast a minimum of 4 LW mounts, and have good shields and/or armor.
- Your hulls are expensive.
- You have no Hyperjumping ships.
- All your ships have a maximum speed of 90 ly, except for the Small Deep Space Freighter and the Cybernaut (these two have a top speed of 120 ly). The Merlin Class Alchemy Ship, and the Alaska Class Refinery Ship are even slower going only 50 ly.
- Most of your hulls only require the metal Duranium to manufacture.
- Fighting ships tend to be vulnerable to fighters, due to limited Point Defense slots.
[edit] Hull List
- Small Deep Space Freighter: This ship is actually important to the Robotic Imperium, unlike most races. This is your fastest ship (next to Cybernaut), capable of 120 ly movement speed. Even though these ships lack a pod bay, they can still tow a pod weighing up to 50kt. (That is enough for 20k colonists) Using starting engines, these ships are good for starting new mining colonies and transporting minerals until you increase your pod speed.
- Cat's Paw: Possibly the most important ship in your fleet. This is a Tech 2 minelaying ship with a 40k ordinance capacity. Robots need to start laying a large, defensive minefield cloud around their Homeworld, right from the beginning of the game. You will make MANY of these ships with any winning Robot strategy.
- Q Tanker: Refuels your wings from up to 100 LY away, has a very low sensor signature at all times (unless it has less than 11 fuel), and can mask the sensor signature of owned ships within 100 LY.
- Pawn Class: Good utility ship. Tech 3 ship, has a Bioscanner, Scalar Wave Damper, Food to Supply Converter, and a Soil Sterilizer. Additionally, it has 4 pod bays, making it useful for seeding new million population worlds in mid-game.
- Cybernaut: Least expensive fighting ship for Robots. Also the fastest, being capable of 120 ly movement. Best shields for Robot fighting ships (only one that can fully utilize the GS-BFS 3000)
- Large Deep Space Freighter: First 'inexpensive' ship for Robots with pod bays. Useful for starting multiple mining planets in one trip.
- Instrumentality: A nice fighting ship. But the thing that makes it really fearsome is its ship device Eye of Madagon that destroys food and kills Amorphous Worms in a range of 250LY.
- Automa: Another good fighting ship, with a Boarding Laser, but it generally sees more use because of its Native Dust Off device.
- Golem: Best 'Pure Fighting' ship for the Robots. You should have several of these for every Vltava
- Merlin Class Alchemy Ship: Utility ship, makes metals. You want this ship as soon as possible, so that you can make Tritanium for your Insectoid nests. Then for Duranium once you turn on the Shokazul Pulse exotic tech.
- Alaska Class Refinery Ship: Utility ship, makes fuel. However, because you lack hyperjumping ships, you will likely never have to use these ships. Fuel tends to be a non-issue for Robots, especially once they have turned on exotic techs Plasma Manifold A and Plasma Manifold B.
- Super Transport Ship: Relative to your other ships with many pod bays, this is an inexpensive ship. (it boasts 8 pod bays).
- Vltava: Your flag ship. One of the best dreadnaughts in the game. However, it has a relativly small crew size, making it more vulnerable to boarding and capture than other comprable dreadnaughts.
[edit] Strategies
In general, the idea is to produce colonists, find Natives, then produce more colonists. You will have to scout out as many planets as you can as fast as possible to find all the available natives that you can turn into Insectoids, which will quickly turn all tritanium into colonists for you. When you get to the point that you need more tritanium, you can turn food into supplies, supplies into metals, which will include tritanium.
With that engine in place you should be building ships, fighters, minefields and conquering the galaxy. Vltavas should only make up 5% of your fleet. The remainder will be Cat's Paw and Cybernaut vessels. The Cat’s Paw will escort the larger ships, providing ordnance when needed and drop Barbitic Minefield for a nice trap for the enemy.
[edit] Starting Out
The start of the game for The Robotic Imperium has its ups and downs. On the plus side, you don’t need food to govern the amount of high guard that you can produce. On the minus side, you need Kerria Crystal Artifacts to train high guard and in games where there are more than one Robot player or there happens to be a high amount of Ghipsoldal natives on planets, then the cost per KCA can be very high. A strategy against the Robots is to drive the price of KCA up high enough that the Robots really have to struggle to get their HG production up. But, this is only fair since with the Eye of Madagon the Robots have a really mean device to destroy food, which most every other race needs. If I can afford it, I normally buy 1600 KCA at the beginning of the game, which will give you a growth of 40 high guard per turn at the homeworld (square root of 1600 = 40). Hopefully this doesn’t cost more than 12,000 mc.
Another plus is that if you start off with warm blooded natives other than Insectoids on your homeworld then you just got a huge boost. You will always start a normal game with 100,000 Insectoid natives in your base. A minus to this is that you have to get lucky to find and retrieve more warm blooded natives before someone else gets them.
[edit] Basic Approach
Normally, when you play a race in Planets, your goal should be to 'be aggressive', as normally the aggressor in Planets seems to have the advantage. And while it is certainly POSSIBLE to play the Robots aggressively, it is not the approach I would recommend.
Robots should have a goal of being as non-confrontational for as long as possible. No race LIKES to attack the Robots, the most they can really hope to gain is to capture a ship. There is a long list of reasons why people do NOT want to attack the Robots, as they will get very little out of it for the expenditure of resources.
- 1. No one wants to set up shop near the Robots, because the Insectoid Nests will steal their colonists. Making it a losing situation.
- 2. Early in the game, the Robot homeworld with its starting fighters, Instrumentality, and early turn 2 minefields, make it a pain to actually conquer.
- 3. Later in the game Robots should be strip mining, de-terraforming, reducing the HD Stress, and reducing the farmable soil of their planets down to 0. Which means that those planets are of absolutly no use to anyone else.
- 4. If they manage to capture a ship, and get the hull plans, it will do them no good. No one else can build your ships, even if they have the plans.
- 4. Robotic prisoners do not work in labor camps. They are of no use to anyone who captures them. And Lizards do not get a good return selling them. They work in labor mine host 199
- 5. Robots can't be assimilated, the Cyborg would much rather be attacking someone who will do them some good and gain them colonists.
- 6. Later on, by the time your Gun Zero's are up, your space should be so chock-full of minefields that its the last place that anyone wants to go.
Basically, anyone spending time attacking Robotic space is spending a lot of resources, yet getting very little out of it. Which is generally not an attractive concept, as it just leaves them vulnerable to attack from other players.
Robots should try to set up non-aggression pacts (NAP´s) with other races, and use their Insectoid nests as a mechanism to claim borders. Ideally out to 400ly from your HW, but take what you can get. Then Robots should try to just make their space as unappealing as possible for as long as possible. You want to lay low and just build up your minefields, your tech, your Gun Zeros, your fighters, and ALL the planets in your space until you are full. I'd reccomend NOT putting Insectoid nests on planets near your borders if you can get away with it. All that will do is provoke your neighbors into attacking you, as you are taking away their colonists.
Finally, once you are all set up, THEN you turn on the heat. But your heat is simply a slow and steady progression of laying more minefields, setting up more Gun Zeros, putting Insectoid Nests on border worlds to grab colonists, and claiming more space. Ideally, you do not want your attack fleet to EVER leave your minefield/Gun Zero clouds. You want to just continually expand that cloud to take more space. Your ships are not fast enough to do a surprise attack. Everyone -will- see you coming. So you want to be a juggernaut whose slow and steady expansion other races are helpless to stop. Your fleet is the slowest in the galaxy; you cannot chase anyone down. You have to make them come to you. The trick is having them come when you WANT them to.
[edit] Supply/Trit Production
1 million Colonists
- 1400 Factories
- fills a Merlin every other turn
- minimal excess MC production
4.5 million Colonists
- 3000 Factories
- fills a Merlin every turn, with some excess Supply
- moderate excess MC production
8.4 million Colonists, 10,000 Bovinoids
- 4098 Factories
- fills 3 Merlins every turn.
- decent excess MC production
[edit] Defense
- Robots are a pest (similar to the Privateers - so most likely you will be target of other races fearing your Insectoid nests and Eye of Madagon.
- Robots cannot build base shields and raid shelters. So you'll have a hard time defending your bases once an enemy manages to get past the minefields and gun zeros.
- You can quite effectively defend your empire against ships by covering it with minefields.
- Later Gun Zeros will add an additional layer of protection, especially against the enemy's biggies.
- Take care of figher races. Fighters are not harmed by hitting your minefields
[edit] Fighters
Fighter Rules change with new host release Host 213, the tips here are for host 208.
- You can use small wings of 10/0/0 to scout planets near you.
- Your fighters fly 80ly per turn, most of your ships at max. 90ly. So you can have large wings escorting your ships instead of being docked (just take care of minefields).
- Use your Q Tankers and spread them - so you can move your wings without refueling by ships or bases. It will also cloak your ships.
- Wings of 1000/0/0 is the minimum to kill small scout ships in a single vcr, below 1000 the figthers lose a lot of firepower vs warships you will need to add a few 1000 more, 5000 will do well vs ship like the Prominence.
- Good wing settings are: close to point blank, attack closest first, Anti-Fighter is optinonal and will not reduce their effectiveness vs ship only.
[edit] Old tips not working anymore due to change in Host 213
- Cheap, use them in masses of 9/1/0 or 8/1/1. You can protect your world in early game with them very well, its just that moving them is a hell of a lot of micro-management.
Small wings are now useless vs ships.
[edit] Enemies
- CoM - Quick and strong fighters
- Rebels - Quick and strong fighters and have a Rxx defense against barbitic minefields, but they need to acquire a fast towing warpship.
- Crystals - Alot of minefields you have a hard time sweeping until you capture many minesweepers
- Birds - Cloaking minesweepers
- Scavengers - Small cloaking ships immune to GZ's, and have a natural defense against barbitic minefields
- The Stormer Kingdom - Glory device for excessive minesweeping and the Victorious Class with hull mass 900 (nearly immune to GZ) and a world crusher
[edit] See also
- Stuff concerning the Robotic Imperium
- [1] Offical Race Guide
- [2] Race Guide by Skies (05/05/2006)
- [3] Race Guide by Andreas Benne (12/07/2007)
