Digger/Fleeter Alliance

From IceWars Documentation

This concept basically divides your alliance into diggers and fleeters, each will use the gouvernment and genetics to optimize their accounts for their purpose.

• the diggers

They are producing all the resources needed in the alliance. Therefore, the preferred type of gouvernment is the dictatorship, to improve the production. Likewise, in genetics the diggers usually set the production modifiers to the highest level while the ship construction modifiers can be tuned down. The diggers do not need to research any ships, therefore they do not need as many labs as fleeters, however they should not get too far behind because to colonize special types of planets like asteroids and for new resource buildings they will need some research.

Some alliances divide their diggers further into diggers and transformers, the diggers just produce iron and/or chemicals, while the transformers transform it into steel and vv4a. That's because in genetics there is one option for digging and anotherone for transforming, so by specializing you can save some genetic points, plus you can leave out some researches and save the rp. On the other hand, the specialized digger will have to construct iron mines on his old chunks of iron even after he already has colonized an asteroid, which is not really efficient anymore. Also, if one specialized digger leaves the alliance, the transformer he produced for will suddenly have no iron to transform and be useless until some kind of solution is found. That's why it is still debated whether it is better to have specialized diggers and transformers or allround diggers.

Another specialized form of the digger is the cash cow, which is ruled by a monarch instead of a dictator. His primary aim is to produce as many cash via taxes as possible. Searching planets he usually looks for gold and good living conditions instead of high iron or chemical modifiers, plus to get taxes he needs a large population, therefore most cash cows are also transformers, sometimes just transforming steel into vv4a because vv4a mills need lots of workers.

• the fleeters

The fleeters are producing all the ships for their alliance. Therefore, fleeters usually select communism as their type of gouvernment. However, fleeters also need to research very fast to get to the better ships and such. That's why some fleeters might also prefer a democracy. Since fleeters get recources from the diggers they hardly build any resource buildings, and construct research buildings and shipyards instead. In a war, the fleeters will be the primary target for bombs, so fleeters often also build a lot of defensive structures.

Especially in the beginning of a round some alliances have specialized fleeters, e.g. one just to construct colonization ships, one for transports and a third one for war ships. That way, each one can save some of the researches and get faster to the better labs and ships later in the techtree. However, the whole alliance will need to be very close to each other or the fleeters will have to construct lots of telescopes to transfer the ships whithin the alliance.

Another kind of specialized fleeter is the late bloomer, he has no diggers himself and has to construct his own resource buildings in the beginning of the round and of course will fall back in research and will have few shipyards, however at some point, the proper fleeters will have built all the shipyards available, and from then on some of their diggers will be transferred to the late bloomer who can start to catch up in research and put up his shipyards.

Since some shipyards need a lot of people there are alliances where (some of) the cash cows (see above) not only build vv4a mills but some ships, too.

• the squads

If there is more than one fleeter in the alliance, the alliance is often divided into squads for organization purposes. Each squad consists of a fleeter and his diggers. The number of diggers varies a lot, because it depends on how capable the diggers are and also, in the beginning a large number of diggers is usefull, but later the fleeter will reach his shipyard limit, and his many diggers will not be usefull for him anymore. In the various digger/fleeter alliances of the past there were between 5 and more than 20 diggers per fleeter, usually there are about 10 diggers in a squad.

If you go for seperate diggers and transformers, finding a good relation will be difficult, depending on how good the characteristics of your future colonies are. Right at the start of the game two diggers would be needed for each transformer, however later on when a digger has colonized asteroids with good characteristics, he might even be able to support two transformers. Mostly, teams of one transformer and one digger are used, sometimes the purpose of accounts is changed over time, like in the beginning it is a specialized digger, but later when he colonized asteroids he starts transforming on some of his chunks of stone and becomes an allround digger.

Cash cows are used by most digger/fleeter alliances, most often there is about one per squad. There is a weird idea floating around of having only monarchs as allround diggers instead of the usual dictators, however for various reasons, I'm pretty sure that this would not work out better than the old fashioned system with dictators.