Perhaps all the games greats play SS? Rely on no one.

Anyway, onto the topic. Types of SS players:

It's really about understanding the following:
PRSS = pure resourcer self-sufficient
PBSS = pure banker self-sufficient
MRSS = mixed resourcer self-sufficient
MBSS = mixed banker self-sufficient
MESS = mixed equilibrium self-sufficient
*but while understanding that this is a rudimentary sample of the wider spectrum of SS play types.

I'll go through each of these 5 types and point to different sub-sets of each of these types.  First the pure resource self-sufficient player.  This player is usually an attacker or opper who primarily sells resources to maintain fleet / agents / wizards.  Wardancers are in my opinion the best race to use for this sort of play.  Camaar would also work, but I wouldn't recommend it due to low income.  Quantum could work, but only if the player researched military to the hilt and kept spread really tight. Alternatively, a typical custom attacker race with at least some income, high attack and research bonuses would also work.  The pure resourcer would build a lot of resource infra so as to get enough income from selling resources to maintain high fleet levels.  The challenge for the PRSS is that enemies of similar NW who are funded by their fam would tend to have higher fleet levels, not as many planets, not as much infra.  Therefore, using the sab portal or CPFF op is a must for any pure resourcer SS player hoping to take planets from players of similar NW.  Due to this inherent disadvantage faced by the pure resourcer SS, some players try to go HCSS or hard-core self-sufficient, which, personally, I haven't ever really made a serious attempt at, and so don't feel qualified saying much about it.  I don't think anyone currently even tries to play it because it is simply too difficult.  But if anyone does have something to say about the HCSS, please feel free to say something about it in this thread.

What I will say about the HCSS is that it is on the extreme fringe of the spectrum of SS play.  The ultimate HCSS doesn't build infra except research centers - and not too much at that.  He funds his fleet levels by pure market profiteering and income or resources he gains by holding conquered planets. Wardancer is pretty much the only race I would recommend using to attempt this sort of play.

More on pure resourcer SS to follow

There are many types of pure resourcer SS players.  There are those who mine all resources, or only a couple, or only one; those who build research centers and those who do not; those who both buy and sell resources, and those who only sell them.  What they all have in common, including the HCSS, is that they will at least hold significant reserves of all kinds of resources (whether they produce them or not) at any given time, because if you hold all kinds of resources there is a high likelihood that at least one of the resources will fetch a high price at market at any given time.  Generally, the PRSS and HCSS try to fund fleet levels by selling all of their highest priced resources, and holding their lower priced resources until market prices are higher later.  Alternatively, they sell portions of all kinds of resources regardless of what price they are, using a price-averaging strategy whereby they sell a lower percentage of the reserves of a given resource when the price for that resource is low and sell a higher percentage of reserves of a given resource when the price for that resource is high.  Those who both sell and buy resources (which the HCSS must do) will use a similar strategy to buy.  Moreover, they will calculate a certain percentage of GC in excess of expected upkeep requirements as 'play money' to be used to buy resources.  They might calculate according to a general rule of keeping about 10 to 20 ticks of upkeep at all times (or the number of ticks it will be until they next log in).  Another way is to determine how much upkeep to hold is to predict how much income will be gained from their current sell bids over the ticks until they next log in.  If gains should be enough to maintain upkeep, holding only a couple ticks of upkeep may be necessary.  This can be risky, of course, and is best used when you won't mind some of your fleet disbanding in the event your sell bids don't clear.   This amount of play money in excess of upkeep, however it is determined, is used to place low buy bids for resources which are already priced low at a given moment.  Alternatively, some players will not worry about trying to predict the markets or care about the prices at all and instead buy and sell according to the spread between the buy and sell prices of a given resource at a given time.  They will place simultaneous buy bids and sell bids for a resource with large spreads between its buy and sell price.  They can sometimes also use an averaging strategy when spread buying and selling, whereby they will place larger bid amounts when spreads are larger and smaller bids when spreads are smaller.

In general, for the average pure resourcer and hard core SS players, they've got to use a combination of strategies which will allow them to sell significant portions of their reserves regularly and quickly at decent.  The last thing they can afford is for their reserves or bids to decay.

The elite players, however, will recognize that sometimes accumulating reserves is important.  When their fleet size is sufficient to terrorize players or fams into jumping fleet sizes, usually they can then dump their reserves at high prices, and by terrorizing players and fams, make them buy these overpriced resources.   A favorite strategy of Arby, perhaps?  A huge fleet or huge op force (or both) is necessary to intimidate the fam or player into doing this.  Ultimately, the aim of the elite SS player is to secretly (and yet legitimately) dominate and even control the buying and selling behavior of their target, perhaps sometimes the entire galaxy.  Is it possible for an SS to terrorize the top fams into panic buying while at the same time buying up lower buy bids on the market to drive prices even higher?  Is it possible for such a player to then sometimes stop terrorizing the top fams and then sell resources so as to cause drops in prices so they can then buy up huge amounts at a discount?  To do so repeatedly over the course of a round, making the entire galaxy their personal puppet, so as to maintain absurd fleet sizes which no one can defend against and use this huge fleet as clout to extract NAPs and planets in compensation and thus win rounds, and do so without ever really having to fight, is, I think, the ultimate win for an SS player.  Some might think this is unethical market manipulation, but I think it would be just good, old-fashioned, elite SS play.  If a fam did it, yes, I would think it unacceptable. But because it is an elite SS doing it, I think it should be celebrated instead of despised.

> Mace wrote:
> Perhaps all the games greats play SS? Rely on no one.

Might be the case for some, for others it's not a choice but a necessety because the family consists of no reliable players you can really count on.

But I think the prime motivation to play as a self-sufficient: it's so much more rewarding and interesting strat and tactic wise. The big decisions in every 4x-game are when and how to allocate your resources: construction, research, units. Add to this the excitement (or pain) to see your chosen race design fit well into the challenges to come, the always difficult choice when, whom and how to attack. Plus some special market fun.

In comparison I found it boring to play a specialized role.

And for newbies playing a specialized role might look easier but so much of the game mechanics, the needed strat and tactics is lost this way that it is almost a shame.

This is, of course, also the main reason why I think
!) HC-galaxies should be open for everybody (especially newbies, while most will get slaughtered, the learning curve can be steep).
2) There should be always one galaxy designed in a way that it favours self sufficient play and discourages specialized play.

Like the PRSS players, there are many variations of the pure banker self sufficient players.  There are as many variations as there are types of bankers: some who pop bank; some who bank with cash factories; some who use tax offices and research centers; some who don't.  Again, what all pure banker self-sufficient players have in common is they don't build any resource infra and get all their resources from market.  The same sorts of market strategies used by the PRSS player as discussed in previous posts can be used by the PBSS player.  Like the PRSS player, the PBSS player tends to develop a reserve of cash and resources to fund their buying and selling market activities and use profits and / or portions of their actual reserves to fund infrastructure development and fleet.  Unlike the PRSS players, PBSS players don't have to worry about upkeep.  Instead, their main concern is determining how much of their resource reserves they should use to build what sort of infrastructure and fleet at any given time, and how much of their resource reserves they should reinvest on the market.  They have to have access to the right amounts of the right kinds of resources to suit their infrastructure and fleet objectives at any given time, and so maintaining access to the appropriate resources is very tricky.  Usually, in developing infrastructure, they need as much iron as possible as quickly as possible for the cheapest price possible.

Unlike the PRSS or the HCSS player who will have fleet levels and attack bonuses to provide opportunities to gain planets, the PBSS does not always have this luxury, and their larger NW is an encumbrance to gaining planets from anyone other than other high NW bankers.  They desperately need more and more planets in order to avoid high OB-ing costs, and their own fams are not usually willing to just hand planets over to them for free.  Thus the main challenge for the PBSS player is always boosting their planet count.

Aside from buying planets from their fam members (which sort of defeats the purpose of going SS in the first place) there are various ways to overcome this planet count challenge.  Using Quantam with its tax offices and relatively high income not only makes it a natural good pure cash factory banker, but also, with its droids, and using its research bonus to increase not only income but also attack bonus, Quantam has the potential to allow the PBSS player to gain planets by attacking other bankers.  Alternatively, Partaxian, with its relatively high research bonus, tax offices, and magic bonus not only also make a good, well-defended natural pop banker, but also using wiz ops in support of fam objectives can prove to be so beneficial to the fam to permit the PBSS to keep some retakes or some of the spoils from fam wars.  Quantams also make excellent agent oppers, and so, in general, arrangements could be made with the fam to compensate the PBSS with planets for his contributions from ops and attacks even.  Revalons I don't think would make a good PBSS race, either as cash factory banker or pop banker.  They lack the potential to gain planets by attacking due to their low attack bonus, and don't really have the ops to really support fams during wars.  They simply don't have the potential to acquire planets on their own or to really provide enough of a benefit to the fam to warrant getting planets handed to them.  Any custom banker wanting to go PBSS would have to choose between earning planet from the fam due to their op support or gaining planets by attacking, not both. Custom races with high enough income to be a banker and high enough attack bonus with the speed bonus and the ops necessary to feasibly gain planets on their own might be the following:

Custom PBSS Races:
------------------------
Population growth: -30%
Income: 50%
Research: -30%
Attack: 50%
Magic: -30%
Speed: 40%
   
Spells
Space Amazement
Operations
Sabotage Portal
Investigate Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Specials
Droid

Alternatively, instead of space amazement, one could have no fear for extra 10% attack bonus, and, instead of droids, have tax offices for extra income potential, and more speed, which any attacker would say is quintessential if you are going to make any incursions farther away than adjacent systems:

Population growth: -30%
Income: 50%
Research: -30%
Attack: 50%
Magic: -30%
Speed: 60%
   
Spells
No Fear
Operations
Sabotage Portal
Investigate Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Specials
Tax Office

Alternatively, yet again, if you are only going to make attacks in adjacent systems, and can do without speed, this might work:
Population growth: -30%
Income: 50%
Research: -30%
Attack: 50%
Magic: -30%
   
Spells
No Fear
Find Target Planets
Space Amazement
Operations
Sabotage Portal
Investigate Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Specials
Droid
Tax Office

Alternatively, custom PBSS races would focus on ops over attack bonus, and there are plenty of variations.  One might be:

Population growth: -30%
Income: 50%
Research: 40%
Attack: -30%
Magic: -30%
   
Spells
Space Amazement
Operations
Spy on Target
Plant False Info
Infiltrate
Place Nukes
Check Relations
Destroy Units
Terminate Scientists
Sabotage Portal
Investigate Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Destroy Cash
Specials
Tax Office

No custom race for PBSS-ing as pop banker is possible, in my opinion. The only race to use for popbanking as a PBSS player would be Partaxian in my opinion, due to its magic defense, and value as an wiz opper.

Ultimately, it is far easier to gain planets from enemy bankers as a mixed banker or mixed resourcer self-sufficient, due to your comparably lower relative NW.

More on the mixed resourcer / banker self-sufficient classes in next post...

> xeno syndicated wrote:
> Again, what they all pure banker self-sufficient
> players have in common is they don't build any
> resource infra and get all their resources
> from market.

At this point I need to ask: what's your definition of a self sufficient player?

Who would choose a strat as a self sufficient player where your setup behaves exactly like a specialized team-player but without the ability to rely on a team-mate or the whole family but with 100% dependence on the market? If the market doesn't go along with your strat, you are lost... well, it's getting very difficult at least. And the smaller the market the more unreliable and the more dangerous such a strat.

Btw: Although I wouldn't make so many strict roles for self sufficient play-game, nevertheless I found your posts very interesting and well thought out.

Whenever there is an SDSS round, especially if it's with allies and no market, I like to be super agressive and kill everyone around me asap.
To be superaggressive early on however, you do need to sacrifice a few perks in your race. The most costly being science, which will give you a hard time may you survive till late round (I'd say from 2 weeks + you're already getting behind).

Eat Your Fugu!
I cannot see her tonight./ I have to give her up/ So I will eat fugu.//   

Population growth: -30%
Income: 40%
Research: -30%
Attack: 40%
Magic: -30%
Speed: 80%
   
Spells
No Fear
Space Amazement

Operations
Infiltrate
Place Nukes
Destroy Units
Planetary Infrastructure

Specials
Droid

Explanation of this race:
40% Income gives nice quick return on investment on CF's, very necessary to get a quick start to get ahead of the people around you. Without this upperhand you will only be able to catch people by surprise, with it you can actually take on prepared foes.
40% Attack makes that you can kill enemies with relatively smaller fleets. Very nice for portalbusting and killing people off, which is the sole purpose of this race.
80% Speed because as you start killing off more and more players, your travel time will become larger and larger. People will spread out to several systems as round develops, and to prevent people from retaking you'll want to kill them off in as few ticks as possible. During the round I played this race, the retake-delete gayness was very rampant, therefore prompting me to utilise this high speed to get around this.
-30% research is the major drawback of this race, but required to get the points for income, attack and speed.

This race has all the really necessary ops to attack: infiltrate to find out fleet numbers and portals (requires some dedication keeping infils up to date), DU to kill stationed units, PI to get laser counts. NF for easier attacking, SA for cheaper exploriation and spreading out.
FTP might be advised for people without VIP. Whenever I attack, I get VIP, so for me FTP wasn't necessary at all since it's 1 man fams, basically making a YAMA = plist.

This I might change:
- Remove nukes: Nukes are a very difficult op to land, and require you to almost be dedicated to building agents. Now this race requires some high agent counts to keep succeeding infils, but I feel like nukes are just a waste.
- Remove droids: with the recent changes I feel like droids are obsolete. One could utilise this race to go more CF and RS heavy, building less MF's, relying on sols primarily for ground. This would make better use of the 40% income.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, I've been playing around with the following idea to be used in galaxies for SDSS with allies:

Stage one: after getting my eco settled nicely with my high income % and speed, I can quickly start building portals and fleet. My race has major drawbacks that only become bigger as round progresses, so I will need to utilise it's pros asap.

Stage two: I grab planets early on, use my high income to make nice shortterm profit from my planets. My grabbing all these planets I create a buffer zone around me and my allies, so that my allies can easily infra up while I keep all threats at bay.

Stage three: One of my allies, preferably Quantam, starts overtaking me in economy due to his very nice science bonus. At this point he could start building my planets for me: I provide him with fresh/low ob planets, he does the expensive high ob planets, keeping some and passing some on to me. This'll ensure that I can keep up my economy without having to fund into science too much. Building fleet will still be a pain with my low con, and my income will never be as high as his, but at least I can survive until his science finally REALLY kicks in during late round.

I've tested a strategy very much like this one in an SDSS with allies round some time ago, in which I was allied to Munder and Parrot (who replaced Easyway after he had to quit). I knew that I was going on vacation 2 weeks into the round, and that therefore I couldn't finish the round. I decided to clear the way early on for Munder and Parrot to have as easy of a rest of round, giving Munder my planets when I left, which gave me a lot of fun in the process. Munder and Parrot (together with their later ally, Hc4e) went on to win the round.

If I was about to play SS in a normal galaxy I would take this race, and would use lot of market playing:

Population growth: -30%
Income: -30%
Research: 50%
Attack: 50%
Magic: -10%
Speed: 100%
   
Spells
No Fear
Create Portal Force Field
Find Target Planets
Space Amazement
Operations
Spy on Target
Infiltrate
Destroy Units
Sabotage Portal
Investigate Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Specials
Droid
(possibly go -20% magic or 40% attack to have destroy iron and destroy cash)
---

In a SS round with no market i would go for:

Population growth: -30%
Income: 50%
Research: -10%
Attack: 10%
Magic: -30%
Speed: 60%
   
Spells
No Fear
Space Amazement
Operations
Infiltrate
Place Nukes
Sabotage Portal
Planetary Infrastructure
Specials
Droid

Although at the same time I feel that the 20 race points it costs to get Income from 40% to 50% is A LOT. these could be used to increase Attack or Research 20%, the latter perhaps being best (as in an SDSS round without market you will not only be making cash, but also resources. Resource income will benefit from resource science, and obviously won't from race Income).

This'd give a race like the following:

SS Test *No Market*

Population growth: -30%
Income: 40%
Research: 30%
Attack: 10%
Magic: -30%
Speed: 60%
   

Spells
No Fear
Space Amazement

Operations
Infiltrate
Destroy Units
Sabotage Portal
Planetary Infrastructure

Specials
-

Another reason I would take attack over research is research points can be opped.

I value research reasonably high! Especially if you wish to turtle for some time. IMO Research > Attack.

If you have your research set up correctly you will be able to build quicker/cheaper and make more income. Combined with the right ops, it outweighs any benifit that Attack bonus would have.

IE, you have decent cons and higher income than most since you are researching correctly. You then are able to support and build more op defense for less. With having this sort of op power youre then able to sab/ff/kill units etc a lot more successfully. You cant fight a fight easily when all your portals are sabbed and youve been nuked constantly and units killed on stationed planets, making Attack bonus basically useless in this occasion.

I've been trying to figure out how to express what the mixed equilibrium SS strategy is.  I've broken it down to answering 5 questions one might have about it:

1.  What is the equilibrium of the mixed equilibrium self-sufficient strategy?

Keep in mind, as discussed earlier, we are talking about a 'mixed' economy, one producing both resources and galactic credits.  The equilibrium is the ideal ratio of resource income to galactic credit income.  Practically speaking, equilibrium is reached when, after spending GCs and resources according to a player's objectives, there are no GCs or resources left over in a player's reserves.

2.  How is the ideal ratio determined for the MESS strategy?
 
There is no magic formula.  The ideal ratio depends on too many variables: the sum of a player's objectives at any given time during the game, such as how much fleet / agents / wizards the player needs to build and maintain; how much and what sorts of infrastructure the player needs to build; how much additional galactic credits the player needs to invest in research; how many ops the player needs to conduct any given tick; how many portals he or she needs to build, how many exploration ships or fleets are needed to be sent, etc..   It is simply not useful to come up with any equation to determine an ideal, static ratio of resource income to GC income at any given time because a player's objectives change over the course of a round.  Also, these objectives are themselves influenced by yet more arrays of variables. Generally speaking, a player reaches equilibrium in his or her economy by successfully guesstimating future needs according to predicted future objectives, and does so as round events like wars, alliances, naps, etc. might change objectives over the course of a round.
 
3.  What is the advantage of playing MESS as opposed to playing MBSS or MRSS or even not going SS at all and just using fambank?
 
The main advantage is growth potential: While the mixed banker or resourcer SS player will use the market to correct imbalances in resource or GC reserves, resources or GCs can remain on market for many ticks, and cannot be used in re-investing in infrastructure.  This is wasteful because, generally speaking, the sooner resources and GC can be reinvested into an empire's economy the sooner returns on that investment can be realized.   Therefore, when having attained equilibrium, where there is no imbalance in need of correction by using the market, the MESS player is using the full potential of his or her economy to make it grow: we are talking literally all resources and all GC produced every tick reinvested back into his or her economy, and he or she can do so every single tick.  This is a huge advantage, not only over other SS players, but over fambank players as well, for players who use fam banks suffer from the same inefficiency that plagues MBSS and MRSS players.

Some other advantages include:

a)  While at end of round, when resources are scarce and market prices top out, the MESS economy can rebuild fleet much faster and for much cheaper than enemies who must rely on the market.
b)  SS players in general, not only MESS players, tend to fund their own upkeeps, and so when a fam's bankers have suffered major income losses due to getting opped and when there is temporarily no funding to upkeep the fam's main fleet, it can be the SS player who can then provide at the very least a distraction against the enemy, and delay the advances of the enemy long enough for bankers to recover, and thus allow the fam to continue the fight.  Similarly, when a fam's main fleet is blown, the SS player's fleet can be called upon to continue the fight until the fam can rebuild their main fleet.
c)  Often, an enemy might not know that a player of a fam is playing SS, and so while they think their attacks or opps against that player are draining the resources of the entire fam, in fact it does not have any effect on the fam whatsoever.  In this way, the SS player can act as a punching bag or shield to absorb attacks and drain the ops / morale of an enemy and thereby allow the rest of the fam to retaliate at full force against a surprised and 'demoralized' enemy.

There are plenty of other advantages which will be discuss in more detail later on.

4.  Who should try this MESS strategy? 

First, the MESS strategy is for players who are active enough to be able to log in many times a day (if not every tick) to take advantage of the growth opportunity the mixed equilibrium self-sufficient strategy provides.  For being able to reinvest all income produced by the MESS economy (both resources and GCs) as often as possible is the whole purpose of the MESS strategy, and if you aren't going to be active enough to do this, you'd be better off using a different SS strategy or not going SS at all and just participating in fambank.  Second, the MESS strategy is for people who are experienced enough, as we've discussed, to be able to guesstimate their future resrouces / income needs according to their accurate predictions of future round events.  If you can't predict what kinds and amounts of resources and how many corresponding GCs you will need at a certain point in the future, you have no idea what infra to build at any given moment.  A MESS player needs to be able to guesstimate and predict appropriately every tick how to allocate their GCs and resources according to their future objectives. Also, a MESS player needs to know where it is safe to explore and needs to know what types of planets (according to their resource bonuses) they need to explore.  All of this takes a keen understanding of how IC works, one which only comes with experience.

5.  Does the MESS player use the market at all?

Ideally speaking, not until wars or until their planets are saturated with infra should the MESS player use the market.  All other times, if the MESS player is active enough, and they are successful in maintaining their equilibrium, they are actually better off not using the market at all.  Even when there are huge spreads between buy and sell prices that could provide 100% yields or more, eventually, because market prices rise and fall and price spreads shrink and grow it is inevitable that anyone playing the market will have resources and GCs just sitting on market not being used.  Not only are these amounts in danger of getting opped, but they also represent a loss of growth potential: had those amounts been reinvested as infra, they would have produced more than than the value of those amounts stuck on market. 

Although not having to use the market is the ideal scenario, rarely is the ideal scenario ever the reality.  Practically speaking, no matter how hard the MESS player tries, actually attaining perfect equilibrium so that they never have to use the market is impossible. No matter how good they are, the MESS player will end up having to use the market at least a little bit in order to balance the economy from time to time.  Essentially, the equilibrium that the MESS player is always trying to attain can never be attained. 

The only time the MESS player uses the market in any significant extent is in preparation for wars when they are saving to jump fleet / agents / wizards or when their planets are saturated with infra and the OB cost is simply too high for them to reinvest in infra any longer.   When the MESS player uses the market, they use all of their income and resources to save for fleet / wiz / agent jumps either for wars or for the purpose of taking more planets.

Are there any other questions / answers I should include?  Please feel free to post them in this thread, and I can add them.

Later on I'll go through an ideal round for the successful MESS player, including start builds and specific details following the process of establish a thriving, secure MESS empire.  I'll also discuss specific, ethical ways the MESS player (and SS player in general) can provide an incredible advantage to not only the player's own empire but the whole fam as well.  Before this, though, we must discuss why players play SS in the first place.  The SS player is often misunderstood by the fam, as their method of playing or their intentions are not always clear to others.  This lack of understanding undermines the potentially enormous benefit a fam can gain by working with their SS player.