Question for the New Players

[Kabuki]

I noticed in Charis' response to Bam-Bam's report that the new players want help/information/AARs to help and/or describe certain elements of the game.

As I feel comfortable back in the saddle with MOO I was thinking of doing a AAR on a casual game, but before I did so I was wondering if there was anything in particular that the new players wanted me to focus on in the game. It will probably be a Hard/Large to give me more time to focus on teh desired topics. I'm not an expert player, but Sirian's early management school (from his AARs) has benefitted my game immensly and I feel comfortable enough to share my game play with others.

This thread can thus be used for request for my game (and I'll post my game over the weekend), and possibly other players like Sirian, Bam-Bam and the rest who have more experience than me can pop by and pick up ideas for new AARs as well.

My initial idea was to do a game focuing on espionage and defense after my extremely successful game last night, but I'm up for anything.

[barron of ideas]

While there are a lot of variables and strategic decisions, perhaps the most important, and hardest to master is what to research and when. If you can provide data and your reasoning on what you decide to research and when, it might help us lesser skilled/confident players better understand what to emphasize.

While everything is important, which of
ground troop improvement/
bases improvements/
missle improvement/
improved industrial capacity through greater population or number of factories/
ship speed/
ship range/
etc

is most important at a given point and why? There don't seem to be absolute answers, except you don't often have to emphasize ECM and if all other things are equal, go for the cheaper option as that will give you a chance to have it earlier than the more expensive one.

But if we can follow your thought process it will help us be better at it ourselves. Not Sirians, but perhaps the best we can be.

[Charis]

Excellent! The answer you'll get will depend on the level of the player. Several of
the questions I was asking Sirian and Bam-Bam are *so* basic that no player should
live in that depth of ignorance for more than about 3 games. Interface mechanics,
except for little-known tips, are best left to a tutorial type game/report.

I think in general though, the "why" is the critical thing, saying as clearly as possible
what factors were important for a given decision, how you got the info you needed if
it wasn't available, what the options were, and why you chose how you did... those
are all very good things. This style is good for all sorts of questions:

- Do I grab this planet, or that planet?
- Do I fight the Klackons over that rock, or let it go?
- When/how many/where do I make bases?
- Ship design, the relationship between the why and the design decisions
- At this stage in the game, how do I see myself winning? How can I move in that direction?
- At what point do you realize the game is headed for a loss if you do nothing drastic, and
then how do you come up with an alternative bold plan?
- How do I decide how many and of what type of ship to assault a planet?
- Trading seems a hugely uphill poor value battle. When do you do it?
- More of the why behind the whole espionage system, and also, security (I'm clueless there)

What almost any game AAR report can do is to big one or two *key decisions* or turning points
in their game, and spend a few paragraphs going into why this was a critical point, what mattered,
and what they did to change the outcome. It's way too easy to say "it was a turning point when this random event occured and I lucked out / got unlucky" but tha'ts useless :P

Including 1-2 such key moments in an AAR will be of great value to a variety of readers, without
boring more advanced players by making such comments (obvious to them) frequently, and will
reduce the text you have to actually write to something much more realistic :D

Thanks!
Charis

[Kabuki]

Ok, it'll be Large/Hard - I was thinking about the Darlok, but since everyone seems to be playing them I'll go with... the Meklar.