STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP (THE SEDG)

(Sponsored by Flying Moose Technologies' Starweb Analyzer

- http://www.flyingmoose.ca)

VOLUME 100, January 2019.

The long awaited 100th Anniversary Issue

CONTENTS

Feature Article - “There must be 7 ways to kill your neighbor: Planning and executing a workable

Berserker strategy." By Tom Pennington

Questions - What do alien races look like?

SEDG Web Page URL

The Swap Corner

Correspondence

FEATURE ARTICLE - The long awaited 100th Anniversary Issue

“There must be 7 ways to kill your neighbor: Planning and executing a workable Berserker strategy.”

By: Tom Pennington

Date: 18 Dec 2018

So you open turn 1 of your newest StarWeb game and discover that you are signed up as a berserker.

Oh s##@! I must have done that a year ago when I signed up for the next anonymous game. I don’t

remember that. Well bummer! Berserkers NEVER WIN! Oh, well….Well, since I’m gonna lose, let’s pull

out the rule book, look at berserker points and see how many points I can score before I lose.

Hmmmm…seven unique ways for a berserker to score points…no eight unique ways. But even with all

those ways, can you get to 7,000 or 8,000 points by turn 20? Seems like mission impossible but let’s roll

up the old Excel spreadsheet and see what we can plan. Herein follows the plan and the execution for a

winning berserker game.

Berserker cognoscenti (including the author of SEDG issue #1) have described many ways to optimize

the number of points a berserker can score by combining attacks with allies, cooperating with jihadi’s

and so forth. In an anonymous game, the berserker is reliant on his own efforts and resources. So after

seeing how the early game developed, around turn 9, the author looked at his score (210) and tried to

build a plausible plan to get near 7000 points by turn 20.

Looking through the rules, 8 ways to score points are:

1. Artifacts: Can’t do much about this in an anon game but a very lucky start left me with 30 points

per turn so project out for turn 10 thru 20 for 320 points.

2. Killing Fleets: 2 points for each ship killed IFF you destroy entire fleet. An anon game won’t

have many large fleet battles so project 8 points for the entire game by killing ships. Besides,

it’s much better to use shots to kill badlife rather than ships.

3. Killing Converts: Pound for pound, this is the most effective source of points. 1 p-ship kills 1

convert = 2 points per turn. By turn 9, I had already started gifting worlds to a neighboring apostle

and could expect to kill 10 to 20 converts per turn on worlds I recaptured. Project 592 points through

turn 20.

4. Attack Population: uses keys and ships but can be effective. Park an 18 ship fleet over a world with

100 population and score 18 points each turn. Project 784 points.

5. Drop Robots: uses up ships but is an efficient way to kill badlife. One ship creates 2 robots who kill

8 badlife for 16 points. Budget 592 points for robot attacks.

6. Migrate Robots: Terribly inefficient but if you have industrial worlds near neighbors or near your own

goodlife planets, achieve kills without using keys. Plan for 864 points.

7. PBB: The biggy for any berserker. 200 points plus population killed. As others have pointed out,

not efficient for populations below 100 but great for all those high pop worlds I was nourishing or observing.

Estimate at 400 points average per PBB and plan to drop 1 every other turn. Project 1600 points over 8

turns starting T13.

8. Robot Worlds: 5 points per each fully robot world. Every little bit helps. Don’t forget to R1 after each

world you bust. Project at 385 points.

Table 1 shows my turn 10 plan. Not enough to win a game but enough to lose with a respectable 5145 points.

Table 1: Berserker Plan
8 ways to score points
		T10	T11	T12	T13	T14	T15	T16	T17	T18	T19	T20
1	Artifacts	20	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30
	Points	20	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30
	Cumulative	20	50	80	110	140	170	200	230	260	290	320
2	Kill Fleets	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Points	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Cumulative	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8
3	Kill Converts	13	13	20	20	20	30	30	30	40	40	40
	Points	26	26	40	40	40	60	60	60	80	80	80
	Cumulative	26	52	92	132	172	232	292	352	432	512	592
4	AP	0	12	20	30	30	40	40	50	50	60	60
	Points	0	24	40	60	60	80	80	100	100	120	120
	Cumulative	0	24	64	124	184	264	344	444	544	664	784
5	Drop robots	3	15	5	7	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
	Points	48	240	80	112	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
	Cumulative	48	288	368	480	496	512	528	544	560	576	592
6	Migrate robots	8	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
	Points	64	80	80	80	80	80	80	80	80	80	80
	Cumulative	64	144	224	304	384	464	544	624	704	784	864
7	PBB	0			1		1		1		1
	Points	0	0	0	400	0	400	0	400	0	400	0
	Cumulative	0	0	0	400	400	800	800	1200	1200	1600	1600
8	Robot worlds	4	4	6	7	8	8	8	8	8	8	8
	Points	20	20	30	35	40	40	40	40	40	40	40
	Cumulative	20	40	70	105	145	185	225	265	305	345	385
	Total Plan Points	186	606	906	1663	1929	2635	2941	3667	4013	4779	5145

In the event, I overran another home-world, thereby doubling the rate at which I could build PBB’s (I

ended the game with 3 HW’s through helpful allies and dumb luck. Table 2 shows the actual result. The

game ended on turn 19 in an orgy of 8 PBB’s with a final score of 8884, narrowly beating the victory

score of 8084. A careful plan helped along with lots of luck.

Table 2: Actual Points Scored

	T10	T11	T12	T13	T14	T15	T16	T17	T18	T19
Worlds Robot	3	4	6	6	9	10	10	10	11	12
Points	15	20	30	30	45	50	50	50	55	60
Cumulative	65	85	115	145	190	240	290	340	395	455
Artifacts	20	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	55	60
Cumulative	100	150	200	250	300	350	400	450	505	565
Pop Killed	0	59	190	258	173	170	106	363	169	992
Points	0	118	380	516	346	340	212	726	338	1984
Cumulative	80	198	578	1094	1440	1780	1992	2718	3056	5040
Ships destroyed	3	4	0	0	3	0	0	2	0	0
Points	6	8	0	0	6	0	0	4	0	0
Cumulative	6	14	14	14	20	20	20	24	24	24
PBB Dropped		0	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	8
Points				200	200	200	0	200	0	1600
Cumulative				200	400	600	600	800	800	2400
Total	251	447	907	1703	2350	2990	3302	4332	4780	8484

Editors Note:

Tom, congrats on your win. Berserkers often win in games where they don't forget that scoring is the

pursuit and not war. In reality, Berserkers are pussy cats. Berserkers in non-anonymous games should

sacrifice ships for points and not worry about fighting wars thus wasting ships. They should be peaceful

killing their populations and those of like-minded apostles and other berserkers. Too often they get

caught up in Pirate wars and lose their ships or fail to get any from their allies.  I believe you were able

to win in the anonymous game because you correctly reasoned that getting more HWs=more ships to

sacrifice . So, war is not without it's uses. Exterminated players cannot win and their HWs can be put to

good use for scoring.

Another strategy is to trim worlds of some of their population and let the pop grow back to be trimmed

again. You do need enough turns to let that happen.

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QUESTIONS - Can anyone answer these?

What do some of the denizens of the cosmos look like?

A: Well, as you can imagine some of the character types have been inappropriately stereotyped. Here

are a couple of pics taken by our intrepid reporters who have been imbedded amongst the troops.

REYNARDIANS - This race has been known as Merchants and Pirates. They are very versatile and take

many vocations but in any incarnation usually look like:

SOMNOSIANS - Again this race has been known to take on many characters and their appearance has

been described to vary greatly. Perhaps more than one race occupies the SOMNOS HW. Here is a recent

picture seen amidst the destruction of a planet:

The STARFROGs are aptly named:

XENONIONS have travelled the space laneways for millennia.

But many races are mysteries and few have lived to describe their visages.

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STARWEB EMAIL DISCUSSION GROUP - is available on the web.

Look for our MAPPER'S SECTION on the SEDG Web Page.

http://www.flyingmoose.ca/SEDG/sedg.htm

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FEATURE - THE SWAP CORNER

STARWEB ANALYZER V1.5 - It's on the web site and it's no longer a Beta!

Go get it! As before - registered clients of any previous V1.x version

can upgrade for free. www.flyingmoose.ca

Just a note about the Starweb Analyzer V1.5

As of Windows 7, 8 & 10 we have been receiving intermittent feedback from new players that they

cannot get the trial analyzer to install. This does not happen in all cases and we have many players who

have installed it on Windows 7 successfully. We are not sure where the incompatibility is arising from

but we have determined that it is in the windows installer and not the Starweb Analyzer. If you

encounter this problem it is easy for us to package the Analyzer so that it can be placed on your

computer in the C:\Program area and it will work properly.

Alternatively you can copy your 'Flying Moose Technologies' folder from the Program Files folder, put it

onto a USP drive then paste it onto your new computer. You lose the information about old games that

is stored in the memory unless you bring those game folders over and reload them but the program

functions well.

If you encounter this problem just contact us for the fix.

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CORRESPONDENCE

Please send comments or questions!

Well, that's it for Volume 100. Don't be afraid to submit articles or

suggestions. They don't have to be long. Address your correspondence

to Elliot Hudes at somnos@flyingmoose.ca.