Empires Of Planets 4

The Evil Empire

Race Attributes

• High PSI rating (Good at contraband gathering from planet's surface)
• High Spy Rating
• Speed 35 cargo pods
• All ships have Hyperdrive engines, some with jump ranges as far as 750 LY
• All but one ship has a low normal space speed limit
• No Alchemy ships
• A cheap type 1 fighter
• Cheap ground assault units
• High dark powers (More attack damage in ground combat)
• Very good at training crew, troops and highguard
• Low growth rate
• Low income
• Low mining rate
• Low happiness

Unique Units

• BT7 Crawler Produces 15 Battlebots a turn each and can sometimes produce Battle Tanks. 100 Crawlers will produce 10 tanks a turn, this a the maximum tank production level. There is no maximum Battlebot production level.

Missing Base Buildings

• Raid Shelter

Special Base Buildings

• Labor Camp (Enemy prisoners produce supplies and 10 megacredits per camp) Labor Camps do great harm to the happiness of your enemies (except the Cyborg)

Ship Attributes

• All ships have hyperdrives
• The Mig Shuttle has 2 cargo bays
• All ships except the Super Gorbi have a 50% shield bonus
• The Super Gorbi has a 100% shield bonus
• Evil Empire sandcaster weapons are weaker than normal against enemy fighter craft
• H Ross Destroyer is mine hit resistant, take much less damage from mine hits than normal
• Moscow Class Blockade ship has a Contraband Lockdown Device when on no one within 200 light-years can sell contraband
• Enemy fighters can fire through empire ship shields
• 10% of all fighter fire passes through both the shields and ship armor
• Fire from enemy fighters can hit the "exhaust ports" of the ships main reactor causing the ship to explode (critical hit).
• Heavy lasers (Large ship weapon) can fire through Empire shields with 10% passing through the armor
• Heavy lasers can not cause a critical hit
• An Empire ship in the hands of another race has 25% normal shield power and are more likely to take damage from enemy fighters and heavy lasers (3 times more likely)
• The Super Star Cruiser has a Ballistic Battle Computer that gives 500mm Guns and Antimatter Guns a +100 accuracy bonus when mounted on this ship. Great ship to use to take out pesky small enemy ships that have a high evasive bonus.
• Scanners can see what weapons are on enemy ships

Ship Special Devices

• 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. Very useful in making planets useless to the Crystals who produce food and ord from planetary stress..
• Dust Off Device: Removes troops, high guard rangers and ground combat units from the base under the ship and places them in an assault pod and loads the assault pod into an empty cargo bay. Everything will be placed in a single pod, there is no limit on the mass of a dust off pod. The dust off device works both before and after movement, so you could do two dust offs from two different bases in the same turn.
• 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 to move cargo to something you do not own, 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.
• Self Destruct: Destroys the ship. Does no damage to anything in the area.
• Contraband Lockdown: Prevents the selling of contraband by any race within 200 LY. They can still load the contraband up into pods and try to run away with it.
• 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 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.
• Laser Mining Drill: 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 drill increases the climate of the planet by 0.3 a turn and the HD stress of the planet by 10 to 60 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.
• 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. Ships 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-hyper jump 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. Gravitonic mines can be ordered to detonate and will do engine damage to all ships in the area, because they do not destroy other mines when they detonate a large number of them can be overlapped in a stack and do massive damage to ships in the area. Mines detonate before all movement happens. If the enemy's engine damage goes over 100% and you steal all their repair units they enemy is pretty much dead in space and you can attack it with boarding attacks turn after turn until you capture it.
• Gravity Well Generator: Knocks any hyperjumping ships that pass within 50 LY out of hyperspace and into normal space. Any ship within the gravity well can not hyperjump out of the well. This includes your own ships.
• 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. You could hyper jump in on top of your victim ship with your Moscow class and then run away and hopefully be out of combat range before movement phase 50 comes around.
• 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 an enemy fleet off of a planet and into a fight with a fleet of cloaked ships.
• Spy Scanner: The scanner has a 1000 LY range and has a 10% chance of detecting each enemy base with more than 1000000 colonists and more than 5 cities.
• Food To Supply Converter: When on all the food on the ship is turned into supplies. One food unit is turned into one supply unit.
• Mobile Ord Factory: When on it turns supplies into ord units. One supply unit is turned into 100 ord units. It is only limited by the size of its cargo hold and ordnance hold.
• Mobile Repair Plant: Produces repair units from duranium. One duranium unit yields 100 repair units. The only limits as to the amounts produced is the size of the repair hold.
• Mobile Fighter Factory: Builds fighters in space using just cash. The device will add fighters to any wing docked with the ship that does not have the full number that can fit in the fighter bay. If the ship has any empty fighter bays new wings will be formed and the bays will be filled with new fighters.
• Probe Launcher: Uses 100 ord units and scans all planets within 500ly of the ship. The probes have a 90% change of detecting any enemy bases on the planet. The device has a very hard time detecting Rebel and Birdman bases, unless there is a Highguard Ranger on the ship and even then the odds are still low.

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.
• Antimatter Maul: Can destroy jump gates, converts the hulls of enemy ships into metals and stores the metals in the ship's cargo hold To destory a jump gate just set the jump gate as your kill target. Also a pretty good anti-ship weapon. If you destroy an enemy ship with the antimatter maul all the metals from the enemy ship that your ship can hold will be stored in your ship's cargo hold.

Playing As

You will need to use your fleet to take money and resources from your weaker enemies. Your big weakness is going to be money. You are going to need to steal money if possible due to your low income and growth rate. One of the best sources of cash are the contraband stockpiles of your enemies. Send out Star Destroyers with their probe launchers and spy scanners on. Use them to locate enemy bases that have contraband on them or have high populations. When an enemy base is found that is rich in contraband send in Moscow Class ships to keep the enemy from selling the contraband, then send in an attack fleet to take out the base. Be sure to include H Ross class destroyers to sweep any minefield the enemy puts in your path. If possible use ground assault battlebots and tanks to take the enemy base so that you have instant access to the enemy contraband. Load the contraband up into pods and hyperjump out with it back to your area of space. If you see any lone enemy ships with small crews hyperjump in on top of them and transfer a boarding party to the enemy ship using a Moscow Class ship. You will be able to transfer your boarding party onto the enemy ship before they get a chance to move. Your larger ships can be mounted with large power demand weapons, it would be best that you use Tylium Thrusters on these ships so that you will have enough energy output to keep your weapons charged and also have engines that are strong enough to withstand damage that you might take from enemy fighters and heavy laser weapons that can fire right through your shields and armor. Most enemy ships will have engines that can out run your ships in normal space movement. When enemy ships travel at high speeds and try to avoid you the only thing you can do to stop them is to attempt a boarding action with a Moscow Class. It could be better to just avoid such wild goose chases by ignoring their ships and just attack their planets. They will have to move their fleet into a fight with you to defend their planets or lose their planets to you. Take their planet and take their resources and use the resources against them. The Slayer Class Ship is a true monster. It can park over a planet and mine 1000000 kt of metals in a single turn. That will completely mine out a planet in a single turn! The force of that much mining might cause so much stress in the planet's code that the planet could exploded. If the Slayer is supplied with megacredits it can build any ship it needs, when it need it. If it gets trapped in a minefield it can build a fleet of H Ross Class Destroyers on the spot to take care of the minefield problem. It runs out of fighters it can just build more instantly. You are most likely not going to have any problems with metals once you have your first Slayer built. The Slayer is a ship that can be outfitted with an anti-matter maul which can be used to destroy jumpgates. You might consider spending money on exotic cloning tech to increase your population faster. You might want to gather up natives that are far from your area of space and move them back to your area of space. Do not forget your big shield advantage. Your Super Gorbi has double normal shield power. That is a nightmare for the enemy to fight, they will most likely use Photon torpedoes and sand casters to try to knock down your shields. You should bring a few suppose ships with you into battle with holodecoys to reduce the accuracy of the enemy torpedoes. You should outfit your Gorbi with a few concussion rocket point defense systems, these are the only weapons that can counter sand casters.

Playing Against

Use gravitonic minefields to protect your planets if you can lay them. Park gravity well ships at your planets so that they will have a hard time getting into and out of your important planets. Consider building a wall of gravitonic mines or gravity well ships between your area of space and the Evil Empire's. You might have to keep powerful fleets and wings over your important planets. Always mix in a few cheap ships with nothing but Heavy Lasers. Those weapons can fire through evil empire shields and may get in a lucky hit that will take out a weapon or power system without having to eat though all the extra heavy shields and armor on empire ships. If you have to fight them the best loadout of weapons is most likely photon torpedoes and sandcasters. Empire ships have poor evasive bonus factors to they will not be able to avoid the torpedoes very well. The sand casters will do two important jobs, destroy cheap fighters and destroy holodecoys that can reduce the accuracy of your torpedoes. It is important that you keep them from gaining to much money by stealing it from you. You might consider keeping large sums of money stored in cloaked warships parked in a safe area of space. It would be better that the money be lost than be taken by the Evil Empire. You should if possible send ships into Empire space to take out any weakly defended targets. A heavy and fast ship would do very well in Empire space. The Empire has nothing that can stop a fast moving battleship that is avoiding combat with the main fleet. They can only lay gravitonic and laser minefield, a large ship should be able to plow right on though at high speeds. They do not have ships that are fast enough to chase you down all that they can do is send Moscow class ships out to board you or sit on their planets with fleets of ships and wait for you to attack them. That is good, if these ships have to stay home to defend planets they are not out attacking your planets. If you can get them to give up an offensive war and go on defense you should be able to overwhelm them. Target anything that is going to make them money, their ships are expensive and their income is poor so do what you can to keep them getting the funds together to build a deadly fleet. If they have built a powerful fleet try to take out the most expensive assets that they would be hard pressed to find the funds to replace.. The Empire has spy scanner 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.

Natural Enemies

• The Federation: Cheap and fast ships
• The Rebels: They have very good fighter craft that tend do a extra good job of finding just the right spot to get a critical hit. Their ships have hyperdrives that make theirs every bit long range jumpers. They have fighter wings with hyperdrives, expect them to attack you with small groups of deadly fighters with no fighter escort. They have special power that allow them to hide from spy scanners and probe launchers. The Empire can not see their bases using scanners and probe launchers only sometimes see them.
• The Colonies Of Man: Very good fighter craft, plus very fast ships.
• The Stormers: Victorious Class can carry a Nemesis Torpedo super weapon which can destroy all the fighters in a fleet in a single shot!
• The Crystals: Mines, Mines, and more Mine! They have gravitonic, webs, lasers and barbitics! They can jump in and lay a large gravitonic large minefield on an Empire planet that would keep hyperjump ships from coming in to defend it.
• The Birdmen: They can send in cloaked ships with super laser that can outrun in normal space all Empire ships.
• Cyborg: The cubes can really make a mess of Empire planets
• The Privateers: Can rob the Empire blind by stealing contraband and megacredits. Their ships are so small and fast that they are almost impossible to catch.

Empire Race Stats