You Make the Call

Why would you be concerned about the friendly code on your starbase? An MCBR isn't going to be able to take out your starbase (with 50 fighters - not a chance) - assuming it is coming to your starbase and assuming it is within one-turn striking distance (nothing in your question implies anythiong of the sort). The question supposes an action by the Privateers which may or may not happen and a defensive strategy against those privateers. So your question assumes the fear is that they will park a MCBR on your starbase and they are within striking distance. Build torps with your starbase, load them on the SSC, lay a minefield and move your SSF towards your Loki if you are so concerned about losing your SSC and then return it. Who cares what the friendly code is? Guess, if you want, to take a chance at capturing the MCBR.

Too many suppositions in your questions. Same as your first example where you felt that putting a Merlin on the amorphous world was a good way to build your economy. Since it is the Merlin we are talking about, on an amorphous world that you will be limited in your ability to grow colonists and build factories, a Merlin would take the equivalent of 3024 supplies just to satisfy the mineral component of the ship. Add in another 840 supplies for the cash equivalent and you're looking at nearly 3887 supplies to build a Merlin. No way that makes economic sense. How many turns would it take to reclaim 3887 supplies on a 99-degree Amorphous world?

It's the same thing with your starbase. You claim to be making a ton of cash, so why concern yourself with the MCBR for the one or two turns it may be on your starbase? If you are making a ton of cash you can easily build starbase defenses. Leave it alone and deal with it when the Loki arrives. Don't hover your starship on the world if that is your fear. Guess at a friendly code but that's not really a defensive strategy, that's simply a way of catching the Privateers off-guard. A defensive strategy is to get your ship off planet and return when the Loki is there. A minefield gives you a semblance of a lucky chance the MCBR will hit it.

Scenario 3: The Cylon Solution

You are the Federation.  It is turn 86, and you are locked in a 3 v 3 battle to the death.  Your allies are the Rebels and the Fascists, but neither of them are on hand to help you with what you face now.  You are facing off against the Empire, Robots, and Crystals.  All the other races are dead.  Things have been quiet for the last few turns, but now there is a fleet of Robotic Automas and Instrumentalities en route to your homeworld.  You have run the simulations, and the Robots have almost twice the firepower necessary to finish your fleet of Missouris and Novas off even if you get the good side in every VCR.  Here are the important details:

The enemy fleet is 75 light years from your homeworld.  It consists of four Automas and eighteen Instrumentalities, all moving at warp nine.  They all have a mass high enough to indicate that they are fully armed with enough fuel to make the final leg to your homeworld.  In addition to the base ships, the Robots also brought three Cat's Paws.  They are currently only six light years off your homeworld.  Your Fascist ally informs you that every Robot carrier he has fought for the past 40 turns has been armed with tech 10 beams, but those Cat's Paws just intercepted and destroyed three Bohemians.  They each have X-Ray Lasers (and over 100 Mark VIII torpedoes remaining).

For your part, you have the Novas and Missouris all with Heavy Phasers, Mark VIII launchers and about 50 torpedoes each. (I am being vague here on purpose - just trust that you have more than ten of these ships, but your total fleet is nowhere near a match for the enemy, and that the torpedoes are well more than the ships can fire before they explode against fully armed base ships.)  They must be brought in from a planet nearby.  The planet is only 15 LY away from the current location of the Robotic carrier fleet, in fact. You also have three Nebulae at port orbiting your homeworld, also armed with Heavy Phasers and Mark VIII launchers.  You have plenty of cash and minerals at home - enough to fill the cargo of each Nebula with anything you want, even torpedoes if you choose.  Your starbase is fully defended.  You have no other ships of note.  The two planets within 81 LY of your homeworld are worthless rocks, one of them being the one your fleet must travel from.  You can be fairly certain that the Robots know where to attack since The Empire Dark Sensed you in the beginning of the game.  There is no mine field around your homeworld, and there are no cloaked ships around that you are aware of.

You had been thinking about your predicament all day when finally the solution came to you.  This one takes more than a trick to solve.  More than the others, it requires some knowledge of game mechanics. No multiple choice this time.  How can you win this battle?

The solution is  triple minefields consisting of 4761 mines with centers at the homeworld. The fleet clears all Cylon mines at moves to defend the homeplanet in case the Cylon players gets lucky and 2-3 ships manage to arrive at the homeworld. The following turns you kill the leftover ships, damaged from minehit, and build some kittyhawks and this prevents the other players from building any new ships.

Best wishes,

JoeSnoffy

Time is up.

There were several different well thought-out answers.  One person got it right. 

Ask yourself: What will the enemy likely do?  In typical Robotic fashion, he is almost certainly going to blanket you in mines and move in for the kill with overwhelming force all at the same time.  Hey, it's not elegant but it works. You do not have the firepower to defeat him in a fair fight, so how can you warp the odds? With minefields, of course.  But he has enough minelaying ability and sweeping ability to prevent you from having a minefield in place when he moves...not necessarily.

To solve this, you had to know a few different details.

First: You can not lay more than the max number of mine units on a given turn per ship.  For the robots with mark VIII, that is ~56.  For everone else with mark VIII it is 225.  If you try to, you will simply have torpedoes left in your cargo hold.  You can not create more than one mine field with any given ship on any given turn no matter how many torpedoes you have.  So both sides here have the ability to lay a max minefield with three different ships. Note that the Robots do not get the 4x mine advantage when laying mines in another team's name.  But that does not matter here.

Second: You can overlap minefields in an ally's name.  Heck, in a pinch you can lay a minefield in a mutual enemy's name - but you will just sweep it up in this scenario.  So, the fastest way to get triple coverage here would be to lay three identical mine fields - one with each Nebula.

Third: Mines destroy Mines happens AFTER minesweep.

Even if you are both able to max-out on mines, your fleets will sweep them up before any mines destroy mines.  The trick here is to lay just the right amount so that the enemy is barely out of range to sweep them.  Minesweep range is 5 ly from the edge and his sweepers are 75 ly from your minelayers.  So you lay about 4800 mine units (48 torpedoes, 69 light year radius) for yourself with one Nebula.  One for the Fascists.  One more for the Rebels.  Minesweeping occurs and you sweep all the Robotic mines while his ships are out of range to sweep yours.  Finally, mines destroy mines, but only yours remain at this point.  So you have triple coverage for 69 of his 75 light years of travel.

If you lay mines with your battleships, they will certainly be swept by the Robotic fleet, since you are so close.  So forget the six mine fields.  But, kudos to eraulli for the tiny mine field idea right next to the Robotic carriers.  That is a lovely addition, and a great plan.  Sure, you may even get a few extra hits that way.  Go for it!  Just remember that you need a total of 57 Heavy Phasers sweeping Robotic mines.

Now, he can tow half of his ships with the other, but he takes the chance of not having mine field superiority if he does not sweep with all of his ships.  His ships only have 4 beams each.  Eleven of them can sweep 17600 (of 22500 possible) mine units, leaving you with almost exactly the same number of mine units remaining (if you lay max) as if you only lay the 48.  It's a tough call for him, but not for you.  You get your 69 light year radius for sure my way.  At any rate, he has all of his ships at warp 9 on this turn, presumably mine sweeping, and he knows that it is enough to clear away your biggest field to make room for his own mine fields.  Even if he is extremely good and has thought of all this, he still has to gamble.  Do you have more torpedoes or more firepower? Strangely, if he guesses wrong (firepower), he may tow half his fleet with the other half, and you will face a few more undamaged Instrumentalities. Even still, it is very likely that much more than half his fleet will not make it. 

This is because his ships will be braving 207 light years of mines.  Each mine hit does 29% damage to an Instrumentality and 18% to an Automa.  Automas make the trip unless they hit 6 mines.  Instrumentalities stop after hitting one.  There are only four Automas to tow with. Against Fed battleships the ships that make it will get chewed up.  If all goes well, the damaged Instrumentalies get taken out next turn.

Well done, Joesnoffy.  You called it perfectly.

BTW, The Robots could actually do something unheard of to counter this - lay fewer mines.  He can actually do the same out-of-range trick you are doing to a certain degree.  But then he has to know that you do not have sweepers on your homeworld to digress from the tried-and true tactics for which the Robots are known.  Without Lizard or Romulan cloakers, he can not know that in this scenario.

I hope I covered all the details.  Another puzzle coming soon.

I chunnel in Four Biocides, two of them with a lower SHIP ID then the two Fireclouds, and Four LCC's cloaked with 50 MK 8's each and I'm assuming the Biocides are under Lizard Control and I don't want to hear about the cheaper cost of MK 7's as the Lizard that is a non-issue and with MK 8's the Lizard Ships are stronger in combat. (If you can afford MK 8's build them)  I move the LDSF North out of the way, if fuel is an issue, I put it up in the gravity well, and I keep the LCC with No Torp Tubes (As if I would ever build one with No Torp Tubes) over the Privateer Planet Cloaked, as a Spy, as it has no fuel, which would be real simple if it did, because I would tow the Golem this turn to Planet Starbase A to meet the Biocides.

There are three objectives here.

The First Objective is to destroy the Golem.

The Second Objective is to not get your ships robbed.

The Third Objective is to save both Starbases in tact, which may be possible by just leaving them by themselves, as it's 50/50 that a Golem can take out a 200/60 starbase solo, and you didn't mention the number of fighters left on the Golem after it finished off the planet it sits on, which may factor into safer players minds, in just leaving the starbases to fend for themselves in fear of being robbed.

Now, by Chunneling in the Four Biocides, we easily have the Firepower necessary to achieve objective One and Three. By Chunneling in the LCC's we have the tools necessary to keep the minefield in tact and in fact improve it by overlapping, which increases our ability at Objective 2. We can also force a "Lucky" MBR to tow more than 81 lt years (Our reach with intercept with the Bio's) in order to rob anything, which makes the success rate for a successful rob about 25%. 

Which is highly unlikely to happen, considering the Golem would have to move 82 light years away from Planet Starbase A this very turn, AND the MBR would have to cloak to Planet Starbase A, this turn, successfully without striking a mine (At 40 lt years it's 19% chance to strike a mine and a 50% chance to cloak to the right planet). The odds of being robbed off the Chunnel considering all variables invloved about 12.5% and thats 25%  if the Privateer player is Psychic or had prior knowledge to which Starbase was more likely to have something to rob.

After this turn, I have all the necessary tools to achieve all three objectives, and once the Golem is gone, I chunnel everything but one Firecloud and a couple LCC's out for their next mission.

Thats how I would play it, and please consider there are other variables I'm assuming don't exsist, like other MBR's. (Where there are one - there are many)  Your likely to know more.

The Golem is obviously there for it's fuel tank and robbing, as one Golem is hardly a planet busting fleet, but a 2000KT fuel tank, robs any ship in the game.

I don't expect the Golem to move this turn, and the MBR will either lay a minefield to bust up your mines, or attempt to cloak to one of the two starbases, depending on the distance it has to travel,  at 80 lt years a MBR has a 33% chance to dust itself on a mine. For unknown target ships, it's not worth the risk.

Thats how I would play it.

-Admiral Star

The Golem moved further than the LCC at Warp 9 so it broke the tow and left your LCC at the planet.

The MBR probably stayed put, cloaked over the planet and set to rob this turn, incase your dumb enough to leave the LCC uncloaked.

The Golem is sucking up whatever supplies Starbase A had on it, and the crew of the Golem is currently throwing a huge party at the ship bar, called The Pirates Den.

I would cloak to the Golem this turn with the LCC and hopefully you have enough fuel to tow it to Starbase B next turn, to put it down.

Anyhow, In my world the Golem ran into two Bio's and is currently destroyed.

I choose 5. Drop 4 Virgo's for 4 Rex's.