Empires Of Planets 4

The Birdmen

Race Attributes

• Stealth ground bases (sensor image of only 20, other races have ground bases with sensor images of 800)
• Great spy powers
• Stealth fighter wings
• Speed 25 cargo pods
• Good at ground attack
• Good growth rate
• Good income
• 50% of all Cyborg "killed" in ground combat are reclaimed as colonists
• Avians like Birdmen more than the other races
• Cloaking starbase
• Scanners give off double normal noise
• Engines give off half normal engine noise
• No alchemy device
• Starts with 3 transwarp speed ships
• Highly resistant to probe launchers detecting ground bases

Unique Units

• Plasmatron: Causes enemy assault craft and fighters to suffer from electronic overloads and shut downs during ground attacks on your base. They also mine metals and can smelt ore cleanly and safely. Each plasmatron acts as one mine and one smelter and has no negative effects on the colonists and natives. Each plasmatrons will decrease the attack powers of enemy assault craft and fighters by 0.5% (with a maximum of 50%) against your own assault craft.
• The Three Praetorian High Guard Masters: Master spies. You will never see them and rarely hear from them. You have no control of this team of three. Their powers include being able to steal enemy universal friendly codes. With the universal friendly code of any enemy you can avoid being auto intercepted and hitting enemy minefields. They will assist in stealing enemy ship plans, by confusing and temporally blinding any enemy high guard protecting the ship from having its plans stolen. Their power flow from the people, the more colonists you have and the greater their happiness the more the Three Praetorian High Guard Masters can do for you. The power to steal enemy friendly codes is only active when the Birdmen have more than 10 million colonists in their empire. The Praetorian will sometimes make mistakes and give you the wrong enemy universal friendly code.

Missing Base Buildings

• Terraformer
• Scanner
• Undercity

Special Base Buildings

• Labor Camp (prisoners produce supplies and 10 megacredits per camp)
• Labor Mine (prisoners dig for metals and produce 10 megacredits per mine)
• Resort (Improves happiness of colonists and natives)

Ship Attributes

• Most ship designs have very weak scanners
• Most ship designs have cloak
• Most ships have very weak tow beams
• Cloaking capable ships get to fire before non-cloaking ships during combat
• The Deth Specula Class Frigate have an attack bonus so high that they overwhelm enemy point defense systems. Their weapons simply do not miss and are not shot down.
• The Bright Heart Class Destroyer is a cloaking mine sweeper and can drop barbitic mines.
• The Fearless Wing is the perfect ship to use to board damaged enemy ships, few ships can stand up to a boarding party of 75000 from a cloaked ship. This ship lacks a boarding laser so it can only be used on damaged ships. A Deth Specula could be used to damage the target ship and then board it with the Fearless Wing.
• The Avalor is a cloaking starbase
• Alaska Class Refinery Ship processes ore and can make fuel from metals.
• The Darkwing is a very powerful ship that can cloak, mount the largest of large ship weapons and can mount a super weapon.
• The Darkwing G can fire through Cyborg shields
• The Darkwing G can fire through enemy Birdmen shields and have a 1000 armor arc bonus against Birdmen ships
• The Resolute, Darkwing, and Darkwing G are immune to Tachyon scanners

Ship Special Devices

• Cloaking Device: Burns fuel and reduces the ship's sensor image by 50 points. Ships that have a sensor image of 0 can not be seen. The ship overview screen will show you your ship's current sensor image. Be aware that moving at high speeds, using your transporters, traveling through web minefields, or enemy tachyon scanners can uncloak your ship. You can never be completely sure that you have not been seen. If you have the attack order for the ship turned on your ship will attack from cloak, you need to turn off the attack switch to avoid combat while cloaked. The cloaking device on ships with a stealth rating of more than 50 do not fully cloak the ship, the cloaking device will only make the ship harder to see.
• Self Destruct: Destoys the ship. Does no damage to anything in the area.
• Particle Fountain: Extracts mineral ore from the core of the planet under the ship and converts it into metals and stores the metals in the ship's cargo hold. The only limit to the amount that can be taken is the size of the ship's cargo hold. The fountain increases the climate of the planet by 3 a turn and the HD stress of the planet by at least 1 to 50 points. The device has no effect on ore or metal that is sitting on the planet's surface. The device will not mine fuel or fuel ore.
• Barbitic Mine Dropper: Converts ordnance units into Barbitic mines and drops them. Barbitic mines are powerful anti-ship mines that also can be used to destroy enemy minefields. When a barbitic minefield is detonated it does damage to all ships in the field and destroys most minefield in the radius of the field. When a minefield is set to detonate it will do so before all movement starts. Blowing a Barbitic minefield will completely clear the area of mines and allow safe travel through the area. All minefields have a limited life time of around 20 turns before they run out of power and disappear. Any ship belonging to another race moving through your barbitic minefield risks hitting a mine and taking massive damage. Minefields can be stacked on top of one another. Ships traveling speed 12 or less are safe from hitting barbitic mines
• Mine Sweeper Array: Destroys one enemy minefield or recovers one minefield belonging to your race converting it into ordnance units and stores the ordnance on your ship. You do not collect ordnance from enemy minefield that you sweep. The device will not sweep cloaked minefields.
• Boarding Laser: Only used when you are transporting your colonists, troops, crew, or high guard to an enemy ship as a hostile boarding action. The boarding laser helps your troops take over the enemy ship. It cuts holes in the enemy ship doing between 5% and 300% hull damage to the target depending on the size of the target ship. It kills up to 10% of the enemy crew, 40% of the enemy colonists, and 10% of the enemy troops. You need to beam over 1 of your guys for every 5 enemies you want to take out. There are 200 movement phases and combat will not start until phase 50 so during the first one quarter of movement you have time to fly past an enemy ship, transport over a boarding party, rip the enemy ship up with the boarding laser and get away back out to deep space. The Deth Specula can do this perfectly, it can travel 47 LY before the first ship to ship battle takes place. Starting at 23 LY you can fly to the transfer target enemy ship, transfer over your attackers and be back out into deep space at around 24 LY before the first combat begins. The Crystals are immune to Boarding lasers.
• Ore Processing: When on the ship grabs ore from any pod in the area ( including ones that do not belong to you), any planet you are over and any of your own bases. The ore is converted into metals and stored in the ship's cargo hold. You can have the metals automatically transported down to a base you own if you are over one with the ship command code BDM (Beam Down Metals). Two ore units yield one metal unit. The only limit as to how much can be processed in a turn is the size of the ship's cargo hold. Ore processing costs nothing.
• DTMS-N fuel Converter: The device when on will convert 10 supply units into 1 kt of fuel. It can also convert 1 duranium, 1 tritanium, or 1 molybdenum into 1 fuel unit. The converter only uses metals and supplies that are in the ship's cargo hold. It will stop processing when the ship's fuel tank is full. If the ship uses the command code "BDF" all but 60 kt of fuel will be beamed down to the planet below.
• Mind Crusher: Causes colonists and natives in all bases under the ship to loose 40 happy points. Device works after movement. The mind crusher produces 25 units of sensor image noise when used. It has a range of 10LY. You could use it to draw part of an enemy fleet off of a planet and into a fight with a fleet of cloaked ships.
• Spy Scanner: Find high pop enemy planets with heavy industry within 1000 ly. Has a 10% chanace of detecting any enemy bases with more than 5 cities and a population of over a million.
• Nanovirus Bomb: Uses 100 Med units to fire. Turns 30% of all Cyborg colonists on the planet under the base into natives. The natives will be found on the planet's surface. Use several ships at once for greater effect. It is best to ground attack the base right after the nanovirus attack to make sure the natives are not quicky reassimilated. The device will work through shields. The device will kill the Cyborg high guard (King) on the target base. The nanovirus device makes 15 units of sensor image noise when used.

Ship Super Weapons

• Super Laser: The best of the super weapons when it comes to ship combat. The weapon also has the power to destroy a planet. Just set the planet as your ship's kill target and park the ship over the target planet, the next turn the planet will be gone. Any bases on the planet will also be gone. Any ship firing a super laser might show up on enemy scanners. To use the weapon set the planet as your ship's kill target. After all movement and combat has been finished your ship will destroy the planet. The ship will only fire the super weapon if the weapon is turned on and the ship has orders to attack. Any enemy ships at the target planet will get a chance to stop you from firing the weapon into the planet.
• World Crusher Missile: Has a range of 200LY. Uses 300 ord when fired. Can be fired as long as you have ordnance to arm it. To use it turn it on and target an enemy base or planet within 200 LY of your ship. The missile has a 33% chance of hitting each base on the target planet. When a base is hit it is completely destroyed. The surface of the planet will be covered with the remains of the base. A shield will protect the base from being harmed. The world crusher firing takes place after movement and combat. The world crusher missile targeting system produces 120 units of sensor image noise when used. If the exotic tech Transphased World Crusher is used the weapon can be fired through enemy base shields.
• Protomatter Cannon: A great combat weapon, will destroy almost any ship it fires at. Its main function is to remake planets that have blown up due to the HD Stress levels going over 1000, or have been the target of a super laser. The newly formed planet will be rich in metals and have very good farming soil, but will have a very high HD Stress delta causing it to explode in 22 to 35 turns. Firing the Protomatter cannon requires 1000 ordnance units. To use the weapon on an exploded planet (astroid field) just turn on the weapon and park your ship at the location of the dead system. The next turn the new planet will appear.

Playing As

Place photon torpedoes on your high attack bonus ships. Use the very fast Deth Specula to disrupt enemy freighter runs. Take advantage of your strong ground combat power to capture lightly guarded enemy bases. Be careful not to destroy your own fighter craft with the Nemesis Torpedo super weapon. Your scanners are weak on most ships so be sure to build Skyfire class ships to be your eyes. Have Skyfires travel ahead of your cloaked ships. Use the Darkwings with world crusher missiles to get close to unshielded enemy bases while under cloak. Fire the world crusher missiles and return to cloak and move to a new location. Board enemy ships from cloaked ships. If the enemy is grouping to attack your fleet scatter your ships and take out many of their bases at once. If the enemy is spreading out to defend his planets group your ships into strong fleets and take out his spread out ships a few at a time. Try to make friends with other races, they would most likely want to trade ship plans or want you to help them fight the Cyborg. One of the most powerful attacks you can use on an enemy ship is a boarding action from a Deth Specula using all Birdmen High Guard Rangers. Your boarding High Guard will be able to kill 2 to 50 enemy crew and guests each and get away back to your cloaked ship if they fail to take the enemy ship. Packs of Deth Speculas can do a lot of harm to an enemy ship's crew. Load a cloaking ship up with Gold Pods full of contraband that your enemy's colonists like. Fly your ship up to less than 60LY from the enemy planet and order all the docked Gold Pods to sell the contraband to your enemy's base. That will drive the crime rate and unhappiness of the enemy base throw the roof and cut their income on that planet to almost nothing. If you see enemy life pods lying through space capture them and take them to a planet you can safely defend and place the new enemy prisoners inlabor camps or labor mines. This will drive your enemy's colonists mad with anger (if they are not Cyborg) and their happiness will drop to the point that they will refuse to pay taxes..

Playing Against

Use minefields to protect your planets. If a Birdman ship hits a mine it will be forced out of cloak. Gravitonic mines are very good mines to use as Birdmen detectors, they do little damage but have 2.6 times the odds of hitting enemy ships as barbitic mines. When a cloaked enemy ship hits a gravitonic mine it causes the ship to become visible, your ships might have time to auto intercept the cloaker and destroy it before it can get away. Place war ships over your important planets to protect them from sneak attack. Build bases on planets that you suspect the Birdmen to be hiding at, they will be able to spot their stealth ground bases. If you are able to build Tachyon scanner ships, build them and use them to watch for cloaked ships and find cloaked Birdmen bases. It can be hard to defend against cloaked ship, it might be better to take the fight to their space. Destroy their bases, force them to uncloak and use their fleet to defend their colonists. Kill their colonists and their empire will run out of money and fade away. If you build no more than 5 cities on planets with more then one million colonists they can not detect your planet with their spy scanner. If you see the Birdmen using ships that have good scanners attack them when possible, this will blind them. Use their poor scanners against them, to trick them into thinking your empire is somewhere it is not. Keep your ships moving, use zig-zag paths you never know when a boarding party of 75000 Birdmen are going to jump out of a cloaked Fearless Wing with Deth Specula escorts and take over your parked ship. Keep your ships supplied with repair units so your can keep your ships at 0% hull damage. The Fearless Wing can only board your ship if it has some hull damage. Lay laser mines around your planets if you can, if you suspect that the Birds are cloaked near your planets blow up a laser mine field to force their ships to show up. Don't worry about the Three Praetorian High Guard Masters idiots, they hardly ever do anything.

Natural Enemies

• The Feds: Their Loki class ship can decloak all but the highest tech Birdmen ships. Their large and fast ships with powerful scanners are ideal for hunting down the Birdmen ships and bases. Their powerful economy allows them to produce a lot of ships.
• The Lizards: Their Loki class ship can decloak all but the highest tech Birdmen ships. The Lizard's ground combat and heavily armored make short work of any base the Loki finds.
• The Crystals: The web mine is the most deadly of all weapons that can be used against the Birdmen. Many of the Birdmen ships have limited repair holds making them easy prey to the Crystal X device.
• The Robots: The Robot's strong mine laying power protects them from attack.
• Cyborg: Will most likely attack the Birdmen out of fear, most likely try to kill the Birdmen before fleets of Darkwing G's start attacking them

Birdmen Race Stats