Empires Of Planets 4

The Crystals

Race Attributes

• Good Psi rating (Good at contraband gathering from planet's surface)
• Can lay all 4 different minefield types
• Weak ground combat skills
• Weak ship designs
• No farms
• No alchemy ships
• Cheap fighters
• Very high growth rate
• Siliconoid natives produce ord units for the Crystals
• Low income
• Low mining rate
• Low happiness
• Require a climate 98 to 100 planet to grow in numbers
• Other races can not own plans to Crystal ships
• Crystals can not own plans to ships belonging to other races
• Can not be assimilated by the Cyborg
• Can not be harmed by amorphous worm natives
• Can not be arrested by the Enforcers
• Can not be harmed by the solar gamma ray device
• Immune to boarding lasers

Unique Units

• Nothing Special

Missing Base Buildings

• Farms
• Ship Repair Plant
• Ord Plant
• Terraformer
• Scanner

Special Base Buildings

• Hyper Lathe: Produces food, money, supplies and ord using planet stress energy, heats the planet
• Ground Sweeper: Sweeps all mines in the area and turns them into ord units
• Infernorator: Heats the planet to climate level 100 (max)

Ship Attributes

• Boarding laser has no effect on Crystal ships
• The Crystal Lightship has a insanely high scan power of 870
• The Crystal Lightship has a 400 LY hyperjump range, can carry 2 fighter wings, 2 cargo pods, has a super laser and has a top normal space speed of 120.
• The Onyx Class can go speed 190, lay mines and has the X Field device
• Ships have energy absorbing shields that absorb half the power from energy weapons and use that power to charges the ship's weapons
• Shields take half damage from energy weapons
• Shields take triple damage from ord based weapon systems

Ship Special Devices

• Crystal X Field Device: The device steals repair units from all ships, pods and planets within 50 LY of the ship. The device can take up to 500 repair units from bases and ships and as much as the ship can hold from pods. If the Crystal X ship does not have the room to hold all the repair units being taken the extra repair units will be dumped into space. Every ship and base will loose 500 repair units for every X Field it is sitting in. The device has a 50% chance of capturing any enemy ship that has over 99% engine damage. The device will erase any ship plan that ships, bases and pods have stored in their memory within 150 LY
• Crystal Inferno Device: If a base has less than 90 climate the device will use one HD stress point on the planet to increase the climate of the planet by 20 points. If the climate is 90 or above the device will increase the climate of the planet without using or needing any planet HD stress points
• Minefield Destabilizer: Can destroy one minefield per turn. The device will destroy a minefield that has a center that is within 150 LY of the ship after movement. The only fields that it can not destroy are web mines and cloaked barbitic mines. The device will destroy your own minefields.
• Long Range Minefield Detector: Detects all minefields within 500 LY that are not cloaked
• Web Mine Dropper: Converts ordnance units into web mines and drops them. Web mines are cause damage to ship engines and stop ships from moving. When a web mine is detonated it will do 10% damage to all ship engines within the field and will not do any harm to other web mines in the area. Any ship belonging to another race moving through your web minefield risks hitting a mine and taking engine damage and coming to a complete stop. Minefields can be stacked on top of one another. Ships can move safely through a web field at speed 6 or less. When a ship has over 99% engine damage from hitting or being in detonated web mines the ship can be captured by the X Field device. All ships belonging to the Crystal race are immune to web mines and can travel freely through enemy web minefields at full speed.
• 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. The only minefields that a barbitic field can not destroy are other cloaked barbitic fields. 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.
• Laser Mine Dropper: Converts ordnance units into laser mines and drops them. Laser mines can destroy fighter wings that are not docked with a ship and small ships. Large ships take very little damage from laser mines. Ship with a hull mass of less than 60KT take extra damage from laser mines. Pods that hit laser mines are destroyed. Any ship within a detonating laser minefield will be brightly light up on sensors. All ships traveling at speed 12 or less are safe from hitting laser mines.
• Gravitonic Mine Dropper: Converts ordnance units into gravitonic mines and drops them. Gravitonic mines are anti-hyperjump mines. A hyper jump can not be made by a ship in a gravitonic minefield. If a ship is jumping through hyperspace and they cross over a gravitonic minefield they will return to normal space. Ships moving through a gravitonic minefield can hit them and take some damage. A ship with a hull mass of 100 kt can take up to 10% hull damage per hit. Gravitonic mines are 10 times less powerful than barbitic mines but your odds of hitting a gravitonic mine is 2.6 times greater than your odds of hitting a barbitic. All ships traveling speed 12 or less are safe from hitting gravitonic 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 only type of minefields that the mine sweeper array can not sweep are cloaked barbitic minefields.
• 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 an enemy fleet off of a planet and into a fight with a fleet of cloaked ships.
• Soil Sterilizer: Destroys the soil of the planet under the ship so that farming can not take place.
• Scalar Wave Damper: Reduces the stress levels of the planet under the ship. This is not something you are likely to use very often. Unless you are trying to hurt an enemy Crystal's Empire by destressing a planet you have no hope of holding.

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.

Playing As

Your ships are very weak, if you are hit with ord based weapons your ship will experience triple shield drain. Be sure to pick fights that you can win. Always attack in numbers great enough that you can take out the enemy. You are much better off if you can avoid fights and hide behind your thick minefields. Be sure to build lots of small mine layers lay minefield everywhere. One of the most deadly traps that can be set are cloaked web mines. A cloaked web mine can not be detected by the enemy. If you can get the enemy to park in your cloaked overlapping fields you can blow all the fields at once and do massive engine damage. One web field exploding causes 10% engine damage. Eleven web fields exploding at once will cause 110% engine damage. If you rush in to the enemy fleet's location with Lightships or Onyx Class ships with the X Field on you will take repair units from the enemy ships and possibly capture enemy ships before they have a chance to repair their disabled engines. The X Field has a 50% chance of capturing any enemy ship with more than 99% damage within 50 LY. If you can field more mine layers than your enemy can field mine sweepers you can trap enemy fleets in layer after layer of web mines.

A handy ship command code for the Crystals is "ORD". This command code orders the ship to beam up as much ord that the ship can carry from any or your own bases under the ship. You could just park ships over planets will repeat mine laying turned on and have the "ORD" command code automatically top off your ship with more ord every turn.

The Crystals have some major problems to overcome. You have no refinery or alchemy ships so you will need to capture those ships if possible. Your only source of fuel and metals is from mining and from whatever ships and pods you can catch in your web fields. If you fail to expand and take control of new sources of fuel, food and metals you will run out of fuel and food and die off. Hiding behind web mine fields the whole game will lead to failure. You must actively seek out and defend high HD stress worlds because they are such an important source of food and ord units for your race. You should seek out siliconoid natives for the ord units that they will produce for you.

It is better that you build very few cities if any at all. Cities require a great deal of food and your race has a very limited supply of food. You would be better off using just your tax income to survive and maybe make extra money by investing in the contraband market. Amorphous worms are a great source of income for the Crystals, because the Crystals can not be harmed by the amorphous natives.

To scare the daylights out of an enemy send out groups of Lightships with super laser weapons and just start blowing up his planets. That is a completely unexpected move. They will be expecting you to hide behind your web minefields and do nothing. Hit all the enemy planets that are not well defended and avoid enemy warships if possible.

It should be very easy for you to make an alliance with another race. Almost any race would like to have your ships running around in their space and on their battle fronts dropping web and gravitonic mines. They will most likely supply you with ord, fuel and food in exchange for the mine laying help. By careful not to harm your friends with detonating web fields and be care not to zap your friends with the Crystal X Field, it will take repair units from your friends as well as your enemies. It can also delete your friends alien ship plans, so you should only turn the X Field on after warning your friends or only where it will not harm him. You friends will also relish the scanning power of the Lightship if you share your contact data with your friends you can become their eyes.

Any race that is at war with the Evil Empire is most likely going to welcome help from you with open arms. They will want you to lay gravitonic minefields for them around their important planets.

Playing Against

Nothing fries the shields of a Crystal ship as quickly as banks and banks of sandcasters. Crystals have powerful shields but almost no armor. Once you get the shields of Crystal ships down it is very easy to rip through their thin armor.

The best way to stop a crystal player from growing to remove his only sources of food and ord. Make sure he does not take the high HD stress planets near his space. Use HD stress dampers to make the planet worthless to his hyper lathes. If you can, blow the planet up with a super laser weapon. Without HD stress planets he will run out of food and stave. Without HD stress planets he will have far less ord to lay more minefield. Take amorphous and siliconoid native planets away from him. The amorphous natives do not harm him like they do other races and they are a great source of income from the production of the spice contraband. The siliconoids will produce free ord for him allowing him to lay even more minefields.

To fight a war against the Crystal that is hiding behind a wall of web mines send in mine sweepers and mine layers the more the better. Escort the mine layers with a few good war ships that use ord based weapons. Have your mine sweepers sweep as many web mines as possible. Have a group of support ships stay behind loaded with repair units. If some of your mine sweepers take engine damage and run out of repair units have then withdraw to the support ships and pick up more. If the Crystal is overwhelming you with web mines withdraw and bring in more mine sweepers. If the Crystal has many overlapping web fields bring in a ship that can lay barbitic mines, go into the web field and lay the biggest cloaked barbitic field you can. Next turn detonate the cloaked field, this will clear all the webs that have their centers in your barbitic field at once. Follow up the barbitic detonation with a group of mine sweepers. As soon as you clear a path to one of his planets send in the battle fleet to take out his base. You should be able to slowly push him back planet by planet.

If you can scare the Crystal player into staying behind his web fields and just defend it will only be a matter of time before he runs out of food, fuel and ord and fades away. Most Crystals will do exactly that, so all you have to do is contain them and slowly eat away on them until they are dead..

If you see the Crystal player using ships with special devices that will give them a big advantage take those ships out if possible. If they get their hands on scalar wave amp, alchemy, or food producer ships they will be far more able to hold out behind a wall of mines and with their high growth rate they will become very rich over time.

Natural Enemies

• The Cyborg: Their cubes have mine sweeper and mine droppers. They will eat through your minefields and carry vast repair unit stores. A pack of Cyborg cubes is one of the most dangerous threats the Crystals must face. The Cyborg are to be feared more than any other ememy you will face.
• The Crystals: Enemy Crystal ships are immune to web mines, they can fly right through your web fields and blow up your major bases with a super laser. They will be searching for the very rare high stress planets just like you and have the power to dampen their HD stress levels making them useless to you as a source of ord and food from hyper lathes.
• The Colonies Of Man: Are extra good at sweeping minefields using fighter craft
• The Federation: Many fast cheap ships with mine sweeper arrays and Barbitic mine droppers
• The Stormers: The glory device ships can blow holes through minefields
• The Evil Empire: The H Ross Class can hyper jump into your Gravitonic fields and clear them so that big nasty ships can jump right into the middle of your Empire. The Empire has a very special hatred of races that can lay gravitonic fields. The good news is only the H Ross Class Empire ship has a mine sweeper array.

Crystal Race Stats