The Complete Interview - Vultur

V: I am 52 years old, married, have two daughters and live in Hamburg, Germany. I used to work as a stock analyst for many years. Meanwhile I am self-employed and earn a living as portfolio manager for private clients.

V:   Like so many others here I started playing Planets in the nineties. We played private games with friends and friends of these friends, one game at a time and one turn per week. Monday evening was Planets time. One of us was host and turns were submitted via modem. The average skill was clearly lower than that of average PlanetsNu players today, but the fascination no less. Friendly banter, storytelling and detailed and decorated reports of heroic commanders battling each other played a much more important role than today. I miss that part sometimes.

V: That's a difficult one. I am not the type of player specialising on one race. Colonies are among my favourites. Fighter mine sweeping is quite helpful late game, Virgo and especially Cobol are decent assets. CoM always has something useful to offer for trades. And in Campaign games you can afford Advanced Cloning plus the IL Command Ship without giving up anything essential. The Command Ship is a gem which greatly improves your chances against both Crystals and Privateers (or basically any mine or  cloak-tow tactics).

That said I particularly enjoyed some games where I played either Birds or the race that shares the Deth Specula design with them (I don't like the F..... name), though my officer ranks don't show it.  And though you don't asked it: My least favourite races are probably Robots and Crystals. The former are so damn fuel consuming and lack any finesse. Just relying on huge minefields and brute force is not my cup of tea, and apart from heavy carriers they don't have anything to offer for trades. The latter are like spiders waiting for prey, a species I don't like in RL too.  

V: Most games I try to stay out of sight as long as possible without compromising fast economical development too much. Typically I build at least 2 LDSF (except when playing Borg), the 3rd ship being either another freighter or a cloaker, depending on race, game settings, and concrete constellation in the sector. I find the most difficult thing early on is not to run into duranium supply problems. Start to think about when and how to build your first Merlin early!

V: Too many because I am not exactly a fast player. It is so tempting to start a game, and after that one more. It's exciting and doesn't take much time in the beginning. More than once I underestimated the time necessary to play a game (as good as you can, that is) in middle or late stage. Repeatedly I played 4-6 games but at one point in time had to withdraw from several of them because I couldn't afford the time to play anymore. Add RL issues and even one 3 turns per week late stage game can be too time consuming. To sum up: 3 games in various stages is maximum for me. Hope I will remember that next time before I think about starting another one :)

V: The fast action of a melee, the classic or standard 11 player games, the added possibilities and complexity of campaign games - I like them all.

PN: What's your most memorable game, and what made it so interesting? 

V: A recent very interesting one was planets.nu/#/sector/145024, a melee. I played Colonies (with Command Ship and Adv. Cloning). This game had it all for me: A not so good start due to mediocre planets and a Bird neighbour who harassed me early, massive help (ships) from a friendly Lizard, I almost dropped due to connection problems while on vacation, lots of drama (aka diplomacy) including lies, some true friends and a false one, a late stage and successful attempt to dethrone the leaders, over time a flourishing economy and massive fleet with all you could ask for: grav ships, poppers, Cobols, Red Wind Storm-Carriers (very helpful!) and Dark Wings (like the Red Winds captured (!) and then cloned) and in the end a very rapid expansion and solo victory. Most entertaining however was the diplomacy part. In fact this was the first and so far only game where I reviewed turns from different parties afterwards to see if my suspicions and conclusions were true. They were.

V: In one of my first and most entertaining games on Nu I met Paquitojazz and Gnerphk. Guess I don't need to say much about the latter, however: Gnerphk is one of the top players here, bright, very eloquent, not dogmatic, (almost) always courteous - and he likes malt whisky. And Paquitojazz? Well, he is probably the guy here on PlanetsNu I'd like to meet most in RL to drink a few beers together. Not sure why but that's how it is.

V:  To be honest, I think I never have come up with anything inventive. I still marvel at the refined tactics of top players like Emork, Mentar, SMN or Ted, to name only a few.  

V: 3 if I may: 1) Ability to plan ahead with regard to economy and warfare. 2) diplomacy and 3) endurance. The latter is not my strong suit unfortunately, but look at the Capricorn players! 

V: First I run the planetary management tool (soooo useful) and check afterwards if grave mistakes need to be corrected (especially overtaxing). Its not important to start with this step, but would be awful to forget it later on. After that I read messages (if not done much earlier because i received them via e-mail), review vcr and check reports to see what has changed. Early and mid stage (when typically a lot of things need to be done to develop planets, build bases etc.) next step is to check planets one by one. In late stage games I often omit this step as planets have been fully developed anyway. 

After that I move ships, again one after another early and mid stage, and using the all/idle function more as the game develops. Planning for future base development and shipbuilding happens somewhere on the way. However, having  issued building orders is typically the last thing I make sure not to have forgotten before I ready the turn.All the above is the procedure if I am not under pressure timewise. If need be I just run the planetary management tool, check it it worked properly, check vcr, combats, explosions and distress reports, browse through the ship list, thereby concentrating on the hot spots of economy and war and using the idle ship function, and issue ship build orders to bases.

V: Great community, committed admins, great players, and much more comfortable gameplay than back in the nineties.

V: Advanced Cloning is overpowered. Or maybe not overpowered overall, but the way it's now it massively favours the carrier races.

Finally: Thanks fo your attention!