INTRODUCTION
Recently I've been playing around with some openings as the Mrrshans on medium maps on impossible and I've found that rushing tier 2 weapons tech early on (within first 50 turns) is a viable and maybe even necessary strategy.
The typical opening strategy is to focus on getting range and planetology techs for early expansion, and also focusing on factories and colony ships to execute this expansion. This will typically, on a medium map with average luck, land a player with about 5 planets by about 2350, albeit with most of them still at the beginning stage of being built-up and without hardly any techs researched other than the bare-minimum of expansion techs. At about this time the AI starts to arm its colony ships and send armed escorts out, and it will start to probe whatever frontier worlds are within range with some small and medium laser fighters, or the occasional large cruiser. Anticipating this and dealing with it while also industrializing and getting research going is always my biggest problem with the Mrrshans. I end up getting spread too thin, and I end up losing some of my frontier worlds, meaning that I would have been better off not even trying to colonize these frontier planets in the first place and spent the production on something else. This is always really frustrating!
The typical expansionist opening strategy works better with races that have some sort of early eco or diplo bonus. For example, with a race like the Klackons, you can have your frontier planets set up and defended a few turns earlier, which is often key. I understand why players tend to perceive the Mrrshans as a subpar race. The Mrrshan diplo penalties are particularly bad for the early expansionist strategy. If you expand too quickly in pop early on as the Mrrshans, it is easy to get dogpiled, which can set you back in a practical sense or even cause you to outright lose the game due to bad luck with an early council vote.
But what if we play to the Mrrshans' strengths? So what if the Mrrshans don't get along with other races! If you keep your population low enough, you won't be eligible for a council nomination in the first place! But surely you cannot hope to go toe-to-toe with early AI fleets on impossible! Well, sure, not if you play the typical expansion-oriented strategy! But if you make it a priority, I think it can be done.
THE STRATEGY
Making early warfare a priority means that you will have to redirect some resources from colony ship building to teching and building combat ships, which means, first of all, being more selective about which planets you try to colonize. If you have safe backline worlds that don't require hardly any tech detour to obtain, then sure, go for it. But when it comes to worlds on the frontier—that is any world between your initial two planets and where the AI is likely to be—the idea is to let the AI colonize them first and then POUNCE with your kitty paws and take it from them, saving you the cost of building a colony ship yourself. After all, if you are going to have to fight the AI anyways (as is often the case with the Mrrshans), you might as well get something out of it.
Note that this doesn't mean you have to go to war with every AI neighbor you meet. Even if you don't plan on being in the running for the council vote, it's still probably best to limit these attacks of opportunity to one or two foes while trying to keep the peace with the others for as long as possible. But I would say, when it doubt, fight it out. If there is a particularly juicy frontier world that an AI has just claimed—a world right next to your homeworld that would normally be in your "1st expansion ring" if following a typical expansionist start—don't be afraid to POUNCE!
This POUNCING strategy should ideally take place in two phases, with each phase taking advantage of two different ideal windows of opportunity for pouncing on a newly-colonized AI world:
Phase 1. right at the time of AI colonization, or
Phase 2. after factories and pop have been built up, but just before missile bases start accumulating.
Phase 1: the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to keep these planets depopulated so that it can be taken over by a small invasion force. If you are unlucky enough to not have any safe backline worlds, and if you are following the POUNCING strategy for expansion, then you absolutely need to take some planets in this manner in Phase 1 because two planets cannot reliably generate enough population to do a full-scale ground invasion of an AI world in Phase 2 (see below).
The ideal execution for a Phase 1 POUNCING is to have ships that are already finished or close to being finished that can reach the new AI colony and gain air superiority before the enemy's population transports can reach it. The AI will start to arm its colony ships and escort them to your frontier areas sometime between 2340 and 2350, so ideally you ought to aim to have a small fleet ready by then. The idea is to shoot down the incoming reinforcements and keep the planet at 2 or 3 population for easy pickings from a small ground invasion that will follow immediately after. (I got this idea from the AI, who has done this to me more times than I care to admit!) Boom! Just like that you have yourself a new colony, except now you'll be able to defend it since the resources that you would have spent on a colony ship went into techs and combat ships. Note that, if AI troop reinforcements do manage to scoot in before you can get your interdiction fleet there, it's not the end of the world. Just bomb down some of that new population for a few turns until it is more manageable for a small invasion. There won't be any factories at this point anyways, so you are not wasting anything by doing this.
Phase 2: the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to capture the planet with many factories intact. To do this, you'll need to already have 4 or 5 full-pop worlds, to have a realistic shot at pulling this off (so, your starting 2, plus a few others either settled in the backlines or acquired during phase 1). And if you are surrounded by the Burathis, then skip this idea.
The best time to execute this phase of aggressive expansion is right before the planet starts stockpiling missile bases. You can keep an eye on an enemy planet's progress towards this and have at least a rough idea of how close they are to this by sending frequent scouting sorties to the planet. Once the enemy planet is about halfway industrialized, you have limited time. For this phase, you should bring along some nuke bombers as well—enough to safely destroy 1 or 2 missile bases, in case those pop up at the last second en route. Depending on how recently the AI has colonized some of the planets on your frontier, you should plan on being ready to roll with this force by about 2360 or 2370 at the latest.
Note that this method will also require a full-scale ground invasion in addition to your air superiority fleet, meaning that you will have to pretty much empty your initial planets of pop to make this work—and that's assuming you have at least 4 planets from which to send the ground invasion. Any less than that, and it is probably not going to be feasible. If worst comes to worst and you doubt your ability to win the ground invasion, you can always bomb down the enemy population and factories and revert to a belated Phase 1-type invasion. It's better than nothing.
THE EXECUTION OF THIS STRATEGY
So, if we are talking about being ready to execute Phase 1 aggressive expansions by about 2350 and Phase 2 aggressive expansions by about 2370, what techs can the Mrrshans realistically have researched by then? Another question is, what techs are worth researching by then? Consider that, if you are careful about taking advantage of the research interest mechanic, you should only have to pay about half of the listed price for each tech. (The theoretical maximum would be one third, but the discount will inevitably be diminished slightly by the need to seed the tech at the beginning and the need to go slightly over 100% into the percentages).
First, I think shields II is worth investing in because the vast majority of what your ship will be facing early on is laser fighters, and shields II drops the expected damage of each hit from 2.5 to 0.75, which is a 70% reduction! Compared to shields I, it is 1.5 vs. 0.75, or still a 50% damage reduction! You will be taking half the damage from most ships, which means twice the survivability. Shields II will cost 800 RP, or about 400 actual production if you research efficiently. That will buy about half a cruiser. I think having one cruiser that has twice the survivability, plus having shields II researched, is better than having one and a half cruisers without level 2 shields.
Second, I think it is imperative to obtain a better beam weapon than either lasers or gatling lasers. Those go obsolete so quickly on impossible. You've already seen the math on how bad they do against even class II shields. Class III and IV shields, which will really nullify lasers completely, do not take that much longer for the AI to reach on impossible. Plus, having to resort to heavy lasers is so inefficient. So, I think it's imperative to speed through the first tier of weapons (hand lasers is best. God help you if all you get is gatling lasers) and see if you have access to either neutron pellet guns or ion cannons in the second tier.
In addition, you'll of course want waste cleanup tech as soon as possible (ideally seeding research for that on turn 1), and you'll need some sort of range tech. Deep space scanners is also fabulous to have if you plan on having to war early. Ships move so slow at warp 1 that a few more turns of early warning make all the difference!
So, by 2350, in addition to having the first two planets fully industrialized, I would shoot for having the following:
If several safe backline planets are available, it might be worth delaying this slightly in order to colonize those. But I would aim to have at least 1 of something like the following ship ready by 2350 to POUNCE on any reachable frontier planet that the AI might try to colonize:
THE "POUNCER"
As the Mrrshans, this bad boy will have an attack level of 6, giving it a 100% hit chance against enemy larges, a 90% hit chance against enemy mediums, and an 80% hit chance against enemy smalls. It will get the first strike on everything and, with its class II shields, it will shred through even large swarms of laser fighters like a hot knife through butter, taking no attrition unless met with 80+ fighters. Even just one of these POUNCERS will require multiple large enemy cruisers to take it down. But don't stop after building just one of these! Because, sooner or later, the enemy WILL show up with multiple large cruisers, or even a huge dreadnought. For this reason, the POUNCING strategy will require you to basically shut off research at this point (keep a trickle going into propulsion and weapons) and build nothing but POUNCERS, invasion population, and factories until all of your first-ring frontier planets are back under your control via either Phase 1 or Phase 2-type takeovers. It might be about Year 2400 before these planets can mostly defend themselves. Hopefully your trickle of research will have brought in tier 3 propulsion and weapons by this point, and if you did any Phase 2 conquests, hopefully that will have netted you some tech conquests.
At this point, you might go back to researching as normal, or focus research on propulsion and weapons and get some tier 4 stuff from these fields (like, ideally, fusion drives and antimatter bombs) to prepare for a Phase 3 conquest (bombing out and taking over a fully-developed AI world with max missile bases). The deciding factor will be how your ground combat compares to that of your AI targets. You might also need to pay attention to the council votes once again if your Phase 1+2 conquests were particularly successful at expanding your empire and population into the top 2.
TIMING
How on Earth can all of this be accomplished in the timeframe allowed? Remember that, since you won't be taking the first initiative to colonize contested frontier worlds, you will save on the production that would be needed for that. Also, the key to doing this all efficiently is to start seeding 1 tech at a time from turn 1. You should start with tech fields that will give you an immediate economic bonus, then move to tech fields where you aim to have multiple tiers researched by 2350, then much later (maybe by 2325) seed any other tier-1 fields that you want finished in time for your first POUNCER around 2350. Here's what your allocations each turn might look like:
Turn 1: Build 3 additional scouts and seed planetology with 100% of remaining production, while also peeking into the other fields.
Turn 2: If Improved Eco is available, seed fully for 1 more turn. Otherwise, reduce planetology to interest-trickle and seed construction tech with remainder.
Turn 3: Reduce construction tech to interest-trickle and seed weapons with remainder.
Turn 4: Reduce weapons to interest-trickle and seed propulsion with remainder.
Turn 5: Reduce propulsion to interest-trickle (planetology, construction, weapons, and propulsion all now at interest-trickle) and devote rest to factory construction.
Turns 6-???: Continue devoting an interest-trickle into the 4 fields and building factories with the remainder. Continually draw-down factory allocations each turn to top-up the interest-trickle for the 4 fields until a field is in the percentages. Once a field is in the percentages, reduce to a single tick and re-allocate to factory construction or other fields' interest-trickles as needed.
...
Turn ~25: Seed force fields 1 turn.
Turn ~26: Reduce force fields to a trickle, and seed computer tech (if Deep Space Scanner is available). Theoretically, a trickle is all that should be needed for the next ~20 turns to get force fields to pop in time for building the first POUNCER.
Turn ~27: Reduce computer tech to an interest-trickle. Hopefully you have started researching tier 2 weapons by now so that you'll have a better beam weapon in time for your first POUNCER.
...
Turn ~30: Hopefully you have seeded a tier 2 propulsion tech by now if you have nuclear engines or inertial stabilizer available and plan on doing any Phase 2 invasions (which will require bombers. And bombers are SO much better with 2 moves instead of 1!)
With this painstaking technique, you will get a headstart on techs and reach them surprisingly quickly while still managing to industrialize almost as quickly as you would if you did nothing but build up factories first.
Think of it this way: research that benefits from the interest-trickle mechanic basically triples itself. So, how long does it take production that is plowed into factories to triple itself? After factoring in waste cleanup, factories pay for themselves after 20 turns. But that is only how it takes them to "break even." It will take another 40 turns, or 60 turns total, before that production plowed into the factory will have achieved the same tripling of itself that BCs get when they triple themselves with the research interest mechanic. Of course, beyond that the factory will outperform tripled research in terms of payback. But if you wanted to know the most efficient way to convert raw-BCs into effective BCs within the first 50 turns, then taking full advantage of the research tripling mechanic is the way to go.
Note that, with Improved Eco Restoration, factories pay themselves back in 15 turns and triple themselves in 45 turns, which makes maxing factories first and then going full-bore into research more attractive. But also consider that you have to start counting from when each factory is actually built. In other words, production used to build a factory on Turn 1 will have tripled itself by Turn 45, but production used to build a factory on Turn 15 will have tripled itself by Turn 60. You can't just assume that, if you focus on maxing factories first with IER, then ALL of your factory production BCs will have tripled themselves by Turn 45. That will only apply to the BCs plowed into factories on Turn 1.
By contrast, BCs that go into the research interest mechanic triple themselves instantly. That is the magic of the research interest mechanic in MoO1. Yes, it is micro-intensive, and I understand if remakes of MoO1 wanted to revamp it. But it really did yield some elegant gameplay tradeoffs.
RNG (LUCK) REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS STRATEGY
I do have to admit that, if you get absolute crap options for techs in the first few levels of weapons and propulsion, this strategy might not work.
In the first 2 tiers of weapons, you need to hope that you can obtain either neutron pellet guns or ion cannons. It will also suck if you only have Range 6 offered in Tier 2 of the propulsion tree...unless you only get Range 4 offered in Tier 1 and it turns out that you need at least Range 5 to reach any planet of value. In any playthrough, you should be able to tell from early scouting and peeking into the tech fields to see whether you might need to ditch this POUNCER strategy and improvise something else....
A LET'S PLAY DEMONSTRATION OF THIS STRATEGY TO FOLLOW SHORTLY....
Recently I've been playing around with some openings as the Mrrshans on medium maps on impossible and I've found that rushing tier 2 weapons tech early on (within first 50 turns) is a viable and maybe even necessary strategy.
The typical opening strategy is to focus on getting range and planetology techs for early expansion, and also focusing on factories and colony ships to execute this expansion. This will typically, on a medium map with average luck, land a player with about 5 planets by about 2350, albeit with most of them still at the beginning stage of being built-up and without hardly any techs researched other than the bare-minimum of expansion techs. At about this time the AI starts to arm its colony ships and send armed escorts out, and it will start to probe whatever frontier worlds are within range with some small and medium laser fighters, or the occasional large cruiser. Anticipating this and dealing with it while also industrializing and getting research going is always my biggest problem with the Mrrshans. I end up getting spread too thin, and I end up losing some of my frontier worlds, meaning that I would have been better off not even trying to colonize these frontier planets in the first place and spent the production on something else. This is always really frustrating!
The typical expansionist opening strategy works better with races that have some sort of early eco or diplo bonus. For example, with a race like the Klackons, you can have your frontier planets set up and defended a few turns earlier, which is often key. I understand why players tend to perceive the Mrrshans as a subpar race. The Mrrshan diplo penalties are particularly bad for the early expansionist strategy. If you expand too quickly in pop early on as the Mrrshans, it is easy to get dogpiled, which can set you back in a practical sense or even cause you to outright lose the game due to bad luck with an early council vote.
But what if we play to the Mrrshans' strengths? So what if the Mrrshans don't get along with other races! If you keep your population low enough, you won't be eligible for a council nomination in the first place! But surely you cannot hope to go toe-to-toe with early AI fleets on impossible! Well, sure, not if you play the typical expansion-oriented strategy! But if you make it a priority, I think it can be done.
THE STRATEGY
Making early warfare a priority means that you will have to redirect some resources from colony ship building to teching and building combat ships, which means, first of all, being more selective about which planets you try to colonize. If you have safe backline worlds that don't require hardly any tech detour to obtain, then sure, go for it. But when it comes to worlds on the frontier—that is any world between your initial two planets and where the AI is likely to be—the idea is to let the AI colonize them first and then POUNCE with your kitty paws and take it from them, saving you the cost of building a colony ship yourself. After all, if you are going to have to fight the AI anyways (as is often the case with the Mrrshans), you might as well get something out of it.
Note that this doesn't mean you have to go to war with every AI neighbor you meet. Even if you don't plan on being in the running for the council vote, it's still probably best to limit these attacks of opportunity to one or two foes while trying to keep the peace with the others for as long as possible. But I would say, when it doubt, fight it out. If there is a particularly juicy frontier world that an AI has just claimed—a world right next to your homeworld that would normally be in your "1st expansion ring" if following a typical expansionist start—don't be afraid to POUNCE!
This POUNCING strategy should ideally take place in two phases, with each phase taking advantage of two different ideal windows of opportunity for pouncing on a newly-colonized AI world:
Phase 1. right at the time of AI colonization, or
Phase 2. after factories and pop have been built up, but just before missile bases start accumulating.
Phase 1: the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to keep these planets depopulated so that it can be taken over by a small invasion force. If you are unlucky enough to not have any safe backline worlds, and if you are following the POUNCING strategy for expansion, then you absolutely need to take some planets in this manner in Phase 1 because two planets cannot reliably generate enough population to do a full-scale ground invasion of an AI world in Phase 2 (see below).
The ideal execution for a Phase 1 POUNCING is to have ships that are already finished or close to being finished that can reach the new AI colony and gain air superiority before the enemy's population transports can reach it. The AI will start to arm its colony ships and escort them to your frontier areas sometime between 2340 and 2350, so ideally you ought to aim to have a small fleet ready by then. The idea is to shoot down the incoming reinforcements and keep the planet at 2 or 3 population for easy pickings from a small ground invasion that will follow immediately after. (I got this idea from the AI, who has done this to me more times than I care to admit!) Boom! Just like that you have yourself a new colony, except now you'll be able to defend it since the resources that you would have spent on a colony ship went into techs and combat ships. Note that, if AI troop reinforcements do manage to scoot in before you can get your interdiction fleet there, it's not the end of the world. Just bomb down some of that new population for a few turns until it is more manageable for a small invasion. There won't be any factories at this point anyways, so you are not wasting anything by doing this.
Phase 2: the goal for this phase of aggressive expansion is to capture the planet with many factories intact. To do this, you'll need to already have 4 or 5 full-pop worlds, to have a realistic shot at pulling this off (so, your starting 2, plus a few others either settled in the backlines or acquired during phase 1). And if you are surrounded by the Burathis, then skip this idea.
The best time to execute this phase of aggressive expansion is right before the planet starts stockpiling missile bases. You can keep an eye on an enemy planet's progress towards this and have at least a rough idea of how close they are to this by sending frequent scouting sorties to the planet. Once the enemy planet is about halfway industrialized, you have limited time. For this phase, you should bring along some nuke bombers as well—enough to safely destroy 1 or 2 missile bases, in case those pop up at the last second en route. Depending on how recently the AI has colonized some of the planets on your frontier, you should plan on being ready to roll with this force by about 2360 or 2370 at the latest.
Note that this method will also require a full-scale ground invasion in addition to your air superiority fleet, meaning that you will have to pretty much empty your initial planets of pop to make this work—and that's assuming you have at least 4 planets from which to send the ground invasion. Any less than that, and it is probably not going to be feasible. If worst comes to worst and you doubt your ability to win the ground invasion, you can always bomb down the enemy population and factories and revert to a belated Phase 1-type invasion. It's better than nothing.
THE EXECUTION OF THIS STRATEGY
So, if we are talking about being ready to execute Phase 1 aggressive expansions by about 2350 and Phase 2 aggressive expansions by about 2370, what techs can the Mrrshans realistically have researched by then? Another question is, what techs are worth researching by then? Consider that, if you are careful about taking advantage of the research interest mechanic, you should only have to pay about half of the listed price for each tech. (The theoretical maximum would be one third, but the discount will inevitably be diminished slightly by the need to seed the tech at the beginning and the need to go slightly over 100% into the percentages).
First, I think shields II is worth investing in because the vast majority of what your ship will be facing early on is laser fighters, and shields II drops the expected damage of each hit from 2.5 to 0.75, which is a 70% reduction! Compared to shields I, it is 1.5 vs. 0.75, or still a 50% damage reduction! You will be taking half the damage from most ships, which means twice the survivability. Shields II will cost 800 RP, or about 400 actual production if you research efficiently. That will buy about half a cruiser. I think having one cruiser that has twice the survivability, plus having shields II researched, is better than having one and a half cruisers without level 2 shields.
Second, I think it is imperative to obtain a better beam weapon than either lasers or gatling lasers. Those go obsolete so quickly on impossible. You've already seen the math on how bad they do against even class II shields. Class III and IV shields, which will really nullify lasers completely, do not take that much longer for the AI to reach on impossible. Plus, having to resort to heavy lasers is so inefficient. So, I think it's imperative to speed through the first tier of weapons (hand lasers is best. God help you if all you get is gatling lasers) and see if you have access to either neutron pellet guns or ion cannons in the second tier.
In addition, you'll of course want waste cleanup tech as soon as possible (ideally seeding research for that on turn 1), and you'll need some sort of range tech. Deep space scanners is also fabulous to have if you plan on having to war early. Ships move so slow at warp 1 that a few more turns of early warning make all the difference!
So, by 2350, in addition to having the first two planets fully industrialized, I would shoot for having the following:
- Deep Space Scanner (if available. Otherwise, if not available, get ECM 1 since it is so dirt-cheap, or just ignore computer tech). Don't research beyond this.
- II9 or Reduced waste 80% (Either one will help industrialization if obtained early, and it will help with space on ships). It might be tempting to try to research beyond this if Duralloy is available in tier 2, but I really don't think that there is enough time to reach it by the time you'll need to be building ships.
- Class II deflectors. Don't research beyond this.
- Terraforming +10 and/or Improved Eco Restoration (and/or controlled environment techs up through tier 2 if relevant. Otherwise, don't research beyond this.)
- Range 4 or 5. Also, if you plan on executing any Phase 2 invasions, try to get either nuclear engines or inertial stabilizer by 2365 to give your nuke bombers 2 moves. Maybe keep a trickle of research into this field regardless. If you can get some fast fighters (with, for example, fusion drives) with NPGs or ion cannons, the Mrrshan +4 attack bonus will help them stay relevant for a LONG TIME. The AI tends to pack wimpy battle computers until the mid-2400s, so these fast fighters will have free reign of the skies and be nigh indestructible for a good chunk of the middle-game—even without having to invest in additional computer, construction, or shield tech!
- A tier-1 weapon tech (preferably hand lasers) AND neutron pellet guns or ion cannon (hope that you have a choice of 1 of these two...otherwise, heavy lasers it will have to be (ugh!)). Also keep a trickle going into this for the long run to exploit the Mrrshan tech bonus in this field.
If several safe backline planets are available, it might be worth delaying this slightly in order to colonize those. But I would aim to have at least 1 of something like the following ship ready by 2350 to POUNCE on any reachable frontier planet that the AI might try to colonize:
THE "POUNCER"
- Large Hull
- Battle computer 1
- Shields II
- Retro engines, maneuver 1
- 15-20 neutron pellet guns OR 12-15 ion cannons OR 6-8 heavy lasers (you see how important getting something better than lasers is!)
- Battle scanner
As the Mrrshans, this bad boy will have an attack level of 6, giving it a 100% hit chance against enemy larges, a 90% hit chance against enemy mediums, and an 80% hit chance against enemy smalls. It will get the first strike on everything and, with its class II shields, it will shred through even large swarms of laser fighters like a hot knife through butter, taking no attrition unless met with 80+ fighters. Even just one of these POUNCERS will require multiple large enemy cruisers to take it down. But don't stop after building just one of these! Because, sooner or later, the enemy WILL show up with multiple large cruisers, or even a huge dreadnought. For this reason, the POUNCING strategy will require you to basically shut off research at this point (keep a trickle going into propulsion and weapons) and build nothing but POUNCERS, invasion population, and factories until all of your first-ring frontier planets are back under your control via either Phase 1 or Phase 2-type takeovers. It might be about Year 2400 before these planets can mostly defend themselves. Hopefully your trickle of research will have brought in tier 3 propulsion and weapons by this point, and if you did any Phase 2 conquests, hopefully that will have netted you some tech conquests.
At this point, you might go back to researching as normal, or focus research on propulsion and weapons and get some tier 4 stuff from these fields (like, ideally, fusion drives and antimatter bombs) to prepare for a Phase 3 conquest (bombing out and taking over a fully-developed AI world with max missile bases). The deciding factor will be how your ground combat compares to that of your AI targets. You might also need to pay attention to the council votes once again if your Phase 1+2 conquests were particularly successful at expanding your empire and population into the top 2.
TIMING
How on Earth can all of this be accomplished in the timeframe allowed? Remember that, since you won't be taking the first initiative to colonize contested frontier worlds, you will save on the production that would be needed for that. Also, the key to doing this all efficiently is to start seeding 1 tech at a time from turn 1. You should start with tech fields that will give you an immediate economic bonus, then move to tech fields where you aim to have multiple tiers researched by 2350, then much later (maybe by 2325) seed any other tier-1 fields that you want finished in time for your first POUNCER around 2350. Here's what your allocations each turn might look like:
Turn 1: Build 3 additional scouts and seed planetology with 100% of remaining production, while also peeking into the other fields.
Turn 2: If Improved Eco is available, seed fully for 1 more turn. Otherwise, reduce planetology to interest-trickle and seed construction tech with remainder.
Turn 3: Reduce construction tech to interest-trickle and seed weapons with remainder.
Turn 4: Reduce weapons to interest-trickle and seed propulsion with remainder.
Turn 5: Reduce propulsion to interest-trickle (planetology, construction, weapons, and propulsion all now at interest-trickle) and devote rest to factory construction.
Turns 6-???: Continue devoting an interest-trickle into the 4 fields and building factories with the remainder. Continually draw-down factory allocations each turn to top-up the interest-trickle for the 4 fields until a field is in the percentages. Once a field is in the percentages, reduce to a single tick and re-allocate to factory construction or other fields' interest-trickles as needed.
...
Turn ~25: Seed force fields 1 turn.
Turn ~26: Reduce force fields to a trickle, and seed computer tech (if Deep Space Scanner is available). Theoretically, a trickle is all that should be needed for the next ~20 turns to get force fields to pop in time for building the first POUNCER.
Turn ~27: Reduce computer tech to an interest-trickle. Hopefully you have started researching tier 2 weapons by now so that you'll have a better beam weapon in time for your first POUNCER.
...
Turn ~30: Hopefully you have seeded a tier 2 propulsion tech by now if you have nuclear engines or inertial stabilizer available and plan on doing any Phase 2 invasions (which will require bombers. And bombers are SO much better with 2 moves instead of 1!)
With this painstaking technique, you will get a headstart on techs and reach them surprisingly quickly while still managing to industrialize almost as quickly as you would if you did nothing but build up factories first.
Think of it this way: research that benefits from the interest-trickle mechanic basically triples itself. So, how long does it take production that is plowed into factories to triple itself? After factoring in waste cleanup, factories pay for themselves after 20 turns. But that is only how it takes them to "break even." It will take another 40 turns, or 60 turns total, before that production plowed into the factory will have achieved the same tripling of itself that BCs get when they triple themselves with the research interest mechanic. Of course, beyond that the factory will outperform tripled research in terms of payback. But if you wanted to know the most efficient way to convert raw-BCs into effective BCs within the first 50 turns, then taking full advantage of the research tripling mechanic is the way to go.
Note that, with Improved Eco Restoration, factories pay themselves back in 15 turns and triple themselves in 45 turns, which makes maxing factories first and then going full-bore into research more attractive. But also consider that you have to start counting from when each factory is actually built. In other words, production used to build a factory on Turn 1 will have tripled itself by Turn 45, but production used to build a factory on Turn 15 will have tripled itself by Turn 60. You can't just assume that, if you focus on maxing factories first with IER, then ALL of your factory production BCs will have tripled themselves by Turn 45. That will only apply to the BCs plowed into factories on Turn 1.
By contrast, BCs that go into the research interest mechanic triple themselves instantly. That is the magic of the research interest mechanic in MoO1. Yes, it is micro-intensive, and I understand if remakes of MoO1 wanted to revamp it. But it really did yield some elegant gameplay tradeoffs.
RNG (LUCK) REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS STRATEGY
I do have to admit that, if you get absolute crap options for techs in the first few levels of weapons and propulsion, this strategy might not work.
In the first 2 tiers of weapons, you need to hope that you can obtain either neutron pellet guns or ion cannons. It will also suck if you only have Range 6 offered in Tier 2 of the propulsion tree...unless you only get Range 4 offered in Tier 1 and it turns out that you need at least Range 5 to reach any planet of value. In any playthrough, you should be able to tell from early scouting and peeking into the tech fields to see whether you might need to ditch this POUNCER strategy and improvise something else....
A LET'S PLAY DEMONSTRATION OF THIS STRATEGY TO FOLLOW SHORTLY....
There are strategic reasons to deviate from building factories, of course, like needing ships in crucial locations and researching key techs. However, there's a reason why building factories is the default tactic in this game, because they allow the player 
