What would be the best methods to use in the first few days of a turn limit game when playing red? Say for 3 different turn limits, say 1K 5K and 10K. Thanks

SDT is generally the best method unless the planetary trade % is below about 80%. In that case, SST may be more efficient. If you are in a MBBS mode game, then mega-rob is definately the way to go once you have a mobile planet.

As always, game edits can alter what you best choice will be. Other things to consider are if you are playing solo or on a corp and what scripts you have available.

Steal, dump, transport. Steal takes 1 turn, transport 1 turn, dump none. SST, steal sell transport. Steal 1 turn, sell 1 turn, transport 1 turn.

Result? SST takes 3 takes per loop, SDT takes slightly over 2 (the sell off). If ptrade is over 70%, use SDT. If it's under, use SST. Coordinate busts and furbs to minimize turn usage, get a smart blue to bring furbs. In a slow planet edit, mbbs or no, put a tpad on the cit so the blue can tpad to dock in fewer turns.

In an mbbs with high port regens (50% or better) you can switch to megarobs once you have enough cash to get it going. But be careful in the switch, it's easy to spend too much of your reserves and get stuck doing less turn efficient methods again. If port regen is too low or the universe is tiny and the enemies are aggressive... then megas might end up being too expensive to maintain.

Once planets go big mobile and are producing a lot of product you can skip some of the megas and do ptrade. In most games this rarely comes up... most times you don't want to colonize to that extreme, but there are times when it works out.

Very interesting guys, thanks. And very valuable, I thought in an MBBS game megarob would always be the most useful, but now I see that depending on game edits and the situation in the game, that might not always be the case. Any public blue furber scripts out there that kind of automate some of the furb stuff, like letting you give it a list of sectors of where to put the ships or planets? Or is that something I am gonna have to try to write up myself? Thanks

Supg's Furb, CK's Furb, Ram's team SDT.

But that's just furbing. Where to put planets depends on where the ports are and what kind of player you are. Sometimes you need to build in a particular area, sometimes it's a bad idea.

If you use a script to tell you where to put stuff someone like me will come along and figure that out, then use it to extrapolate the remaining positions.

If your blue won't be online at the same time as you, then find a place that they'll be safe, preferably close to your SST/SDT area. Otherwise leave them at dock and let the blue bring them to you. The blue should automatically decash you too, so that you aren't sitting out in space with a lot of money.

Normally I'll have a 2nd blue @ dock, atleast during the critical starting phases of the game, to decash the furber too. That way nobody with money is ever exposed. Corb up the cashing ships and the twarper too, if you can afford it, and you can exchange pod for pod and end up hosing them over w/ an alignment conflict if extern gets too close.

There was a game a while back where the main early game hunter (a scout basically) had no pod and corbo was really cheap. So all our cashing ships had just enough corbo to #SD# a hunter. Too bad nobody ever tested us on it. With me in-sec running a kill script they couldn't have gotten a cap off in time.

Megarob is usually more valuable, but if ptrade is really low... then obviously it's not going to break even with SST. If regen % is really low it means you need more ports to get your megas going, which means in a competitive game enemy gridders are more likely to find your ports... meaning you've spent money for nothing. Later on, as you get better at hiding ports and defending your grid you may be able to pull off lower regens without losing your investment too early... but for now, it's better safe than sorry.