OSG 24 - The Guns of Sssla

I fail to see how a NAP helps. If we own the planet when they gain orbit, they send troops. If the humans have the planet when they gain orbit, they send troops.

Trying to fight for the planet that is this important instead of making sure we get it is like spending a thousand bucks on a lottery ticket where the first prize is a thousand bucks. We might win, but what have we gained?

Alright, I concede the point. There is indeed little cost to forming an alliance, if it can be obtained easily. We'd gain nothing from fighting the Meklar defensively, so I agree that we may as well duck that fight.

As for the alliance scheming, I actually felt that this was a lesser exploit than hiding pop so we wouldn't be nominated. I didn't feel that asking them to break an alliance in order to secure our election was shady in the least, not even considering our peace variant. If people want more detailed rules for this game about what we can do diplomatically, np with me.

RE: Sol/Meklar Alliance. If Sol wasn't so important to have, I'd be all for fighting that fleet. Also, if I felt the Meklar alliance would hurt us, I wouldn't want to sign on to it. It's a bit of an odd move, but I feel a correct one. I think it'll be fun after the game to see if we could have shot that fleet down though.

RE: The other issue. It's not that big of a deal. My feeling was that we could have sent transports on the turn before the vote, and, by the time it arrived our fleet could have zapped the bases to allow the invasion. Any "overflow" pop could have been sent off Sol before it overmaxed on to the other planet we want up there as part of our invasion there. We wouldn't have even been oversending, as we actually would need the pop there.

However, I'll accept you feeling that what you did wasn't an exploit (or less of one as the case may be), especially if you felt that "hiding pop" was shady. What you did certinally wasn't against the rules as listed, and no one else seems to be bothered by it in the least, so don't give it another thought. I probably shouldn't have even brought it up.

I still maintain that Sol is not all that crucial, since Rigel will remain in range via our Silicoid friends. As for the NAP plan (just in case we can't get an alliance), it would allow us to send transports through their blockade and would mean that we'd only need to fight their ground troops, not their fleet.

I'm confident that their fleet is obsolete, though. I still say we gun them down lizard style on basic principle

Of course, all this might be moot if the Meklars won't give us an alliance, and I don't think we're quite high enough yet by one category (I originally thought we were, but I don't think so now), so we should probably sign a NAP for now, and we can keep checking every turn (or we could bribe them up with something obsolete as tribute). This probably means we will have to build a fleet for now, sned it to Sol, and just hope we'll get the alliance in the next few turns so we don't have to use it (Unless we bribe them up into Alliance relations).

Rigel does LOOK like it's in range of a Silicoid planet, so maybe it's not AS big of a deal, as long as they don't cancel our alliance, but do we really want Rigel instead of Sol and Argus?

as for the NAP plan (just in case we can't get an alliance), it would allow us to send transports through their blockade and would mean that we'd only need to fight their ground troops, not their fleet.

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Not so sure. Now, if we're trying to invade them "unintentionally" intentionally (ie It was w human planet when we sent the troops, so sorry! What, you're declaring war?) that would probably work, but it might be a bit exploitive.

SOME of that fleet is obsolete, or they wouldn't be moving at warp one, but I'd be surprised if it all is. Why take a chance?

Also, I have another "fleet watch" situation. These 2 races are not allied.



The Meklar fleet in orbit is a lone dread.

For the sillicoids, that's a pretty big fleet that has access to Shield IV, BC VII, Andrium Armor, and AMB headed to a planet that has Shield 10, Jammer II, and nothing but scatter pack V. If the Silicoids have managed to make a couple of intelligent designs... (with the AI, maybe not)

We can already see the Bears have been ripping the Meklars a new one, so don't be surprised if the Silicoids glass the planet, and if they do, there is no colony ship in the fleet, so we should be ready to pounce if they do. (Another place where an alliance would help give us time to stand the planet up)

I'm tired after a very intense weekend spent at my new clinical assignment, so I'm not going to analyze the situation in detail right now, but I did want to comment on this:

ToddMarshall said:

Of course, all this might be moot if the Meklars won't give us an alliance, and I don't think we're quite high enough yet by one category (I originally thought we were, but I don't think so now), so we should probably sign a NAP for now, and we can keep checking every turn (or we could bribe them up with something obsolete as tribute).

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Remember that the Meklars are Xenophobic and therefore halve the benefits of all positive diplomatic actions. So it could take a good bit more to bribe them up the relations scale than a non-Xenophobic race.

jmas said:

I'm tired after a very intense weekend spent at my new clinical assignment, so I'm not going to analyze the situation in detail right now, but I did want to comment on this:



Remember that the Meklars are Xenophobic and therefore halve the benefits of all positive diplomatic actions. So it could take a good bit more to bribe them up the relations scale than a non-Xenophobic race.

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Actually they are close enough probably even Hand Lasers or Controlled Barren would do it.

A fairly eventful turn-set:

2450: Have a look-see around. Things appear to be in order. Combat transports to Sol.

2451: Form NAP with Meklars -- we aren't quite at Alliance-relations yet. They're willing to trade us Skittle Pack 5 and some junk (RIW 80, Controlled Dead)... no thanks. The Sillies are willing to part with ECM V but it's expensive (Advanced Scanner or Impulse Drives).



Start building some new gunships at Beta Ceti and Dolz.

2452: Humans offer RIW 80% for peace, heh.

2453: Humans send a meaningless fleet to Sol.

One of our scanner ships arrives at Regulus and gets a peek at some Klackon ships:





We get the full complement of six technologies ransacking the ape homeworld:



2454: CPU/Force Field/Planetology infiltration on the Humans....



That's the tech we really wanted that we didn't just get capturing Sol, that works out well...

With the Meklar fleet one turn away from Sol we ask for an Alliance and get it straight up:



Looks like a few turns of NAP was just the medicine. Up our trade agreement too, what the hell.

2455; Our ships destroy the bases at Argus and take orbit. A single Corvette class ship arrives at Sol only to meet our new fusion beam ships.

Set Beta Ceti to produce more bombers for Terran Artemis in the south.

2456: Humans show up with a fleet at Argus, I annihilate their ten large Warship class warships (creative name there, Boris) for this unforgivable audacity.



PREPARE FOR DEATH, NON-SAKKRAS

I select Cloning over IT+60 for now... we have IT+40 already, Cloning's cheap and I suspect will be quite useful in our combat transport campaign.

2457: Zzzzzz....

2458: We capture Argus. No tech, too bad. Not that the Humans have too much left at this point...

2459:



2460: And we're done. Almost everybody is terraformed up and has lots of new factories. All but a couple of planets have Class X planetaries. A lot of time was spent playing with the sliders, you probably want to re-visit the tech field spending.

Dolz and Beta Ceti are working on fusion beam ships right now. A fleet of 122 bombers is 2 turns away from Beta Ceti, and there's 45 more bombers and some gunships waiting there already. That should be more than more than enough to stomp on Artemis, the Human's Terran holding in the south. The Humans are in sad shape.

Diplowise we're at Harmony with both Meklars and Silicoids; the Klackons are thrilled with us as well. We have current spy reports on everybody.

Save attached

Just skimmed the report before going to bed, but it looks really good. I'm sure I'll have (way too much) more to say later.

I see I'm up. I keep getting the game at bad times (like always a Monday) and next week is inventory at work on top of that, so I might need till Wednesday (or even Thursday night at the absolute latest) to get it played and reported. I might not, but I might.

Awesome tech grab at Sol, and how did you format the picture to show all of them? Very nicely done. Perfect to top it off with infiltration afterwards, the stars must want us to succeed.

Good job securing the alliance with the Meklar (although I still wanted to blast them out of orbit). I fear that we won't stay at peace long enough with Meklar for the new trade treaty to be profitable, especially if the Silicoids plan on warring the robots.

ToddMarshall said:

I might need till Wednesday (or even Thursday night at the absolute latest) to get it played and reported. I might not, but I might.

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If you'd like to skip a turn, jmas or RefSteel might be up for taking a round before then. I would too, just don't want to be greedy


ENEMY ANALYSIS

Meklar
IRC6!! Their production is crazy, and they have just as many planets as us. Their ships have access to very high tech, their bases suffer from weak missiles still. If we are to take them on, fast bombers can ignore their missiles completely. Planetary shields are also still fairly weak at a total of 12, with ECM mk5. Andrium Armor won't really help them either, we can punch through that easily. Make sure to send our scanners to explore Meklar space, now that they've issued us an invitation. They seem to have lost Imra (west of Hyboria) and it seems to be currently unclaimed. Maybe we should have a fleet of scavenging colony ships ready to grab whatever comes up.

Silicoids
Starting to fall behind slowly, as they no longer have any racial advantages. I think we should seek to maintain this alliance long-term as they won't be a threat. Btw are we allowed to break alliances and NAPs per our rules? And are we allowed to go to war with someone per the bidding of an alliance partner? I would hope yes to both.

Klackons
Strong, but not scary. Only IRC4 and IT+10 curbs their production, along with a low system count. The Meklar have a transport fleet bound for Regulus, arriving in 2 turns. Very weak bases, easy to take apart. Good ship tech, but their fleet seems to be retros based on codehappy's report.

Humans
Meklar seem to be about to take Rigel. Should we take Artemis if they do, and suffer the diplomatic penalty? Might be a good way to provoke a war or two. They won't get much research done while this small anyway, and we don't know how long Artemis will be available for. I notice they still have a couple techs we want, so grabbing a system would be nice. We could also snatch Rigel out from under the Meklars' noses if we're quick.

Bulrathi
We haven't met them yet, but we're starting to know a bit about them. They seem to be quite strong technologically, but a bit behind in pop count per recent election results. If we decide against wiping out the humans, the Bulrathi might be a good target. But they're so far away, ships and transports would take quite a while to reach their systems. We'd need a good sized fleet built up before assaulting them.

I have a suggestion for a small rules change: After we defeat the Guardian (if we get there first), we get to be as nasty to the AI as we please

This way we get an extra incentive to take Orion, and the end game becomes potentially much less drawn out.

I'd really rather not be skipped or swapped, no. I've already looked at the save and have really big plans for this turn.

RE: The suggested rules change, I'd rather not. I don't think it's required. We gave ourselves an out that we can vote ourselves in if we have 2/3 of the vote, OR we can vote ourselves in and go to final war. However, if people want to approve that, I won't stand in their way,

Good point about final war, that would be more fun.

I *think* we'll be able to pick off people one at a time well enough. We should soon have contact with the Bears, and it'll just be a couple of turns till we're asked to aid our "friends". By the time we're done assimilating them, we should be plenty big enough to piss everyone off with our size and an extermination or two... If not, there's always final war.

I agree we should go get Orion at some point though. I like to kill the guardian with megabolt cannons, but I expect fusion beams or (hey, we don't need pulsons urgently now that we have stingers!) auto blasters The larger we are, the more it'll piss them off.

Catwalk said:

Awesome tech grab at Sol, and how did you format the picture to show all of them? Very nicely done.

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By using that ultra-powerful image processing tool: Microsoft Paint. That and copy-paste fu gets you far!

Perfect to top it off with infiltration afterwards, the stars must want us to succeed.

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Yeah, between IT40+Stingers+Class X Planetaries+etc. we stripped the Humans of almost everything useful except Repulsors.

Good job securing the alliance with the Meklar (although I still wanted to blast them out of orbit). I fear that we won't stay at peace long enough with Meklar for the new trade treaty to be profitable, especially if the Silicoids plan on warring the robots.

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Quite possibly true on the trade deal, although I think the bears are a natural target after we finish the humans. We'll see what happens with our alliance partners.

Meklar
IRC6!! Their production is crazy, and they have just as many planets as us. Their ships have access to very high tech, their bases suffer from weak missiles still. If we are to take them on, fast bombers can ignore their missiles completely. Planetary shields are also still fairly weak at a total of 12, with ECM mk5. Andrium Armor won't really help them either, we can punch through that easily. Make sure to send our scanners to explore Meklar space, now that they've issued us an invitation. They seem to have lost Imra (west of Hyboria) and it seems to be currently unclaimed. Maybe we should have a fleet of scavenging colony ships ready to grab whatever comes up.

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Agree that keeping an eye on Meklar space with scanning ships is a good idea.

About the only thing that would ruin this game is the Meklars absorbing the Bulrathis or Klackons or something and running away, though at this point we have the production and are nearing the technology level where we'd be able to stop that anyway.

If I were playing this single player I'd consider running espionage on everybody; we aren't really worried too much about diplo and taking CPU tech on the occasional lucky hit would be potentially very profitable. It won't be terribly cheap compared to simply teching since most spies will fail, but it will allow us to effectively "research" more techs concurrently.

Humans
Meklar seem to be about to take Rigel. Should we take Artemis if they do, and suffer the diplomatic penalty? Might be a good way to provoke a war or two. They won't get much research done while this small anyway, and we don't know how long Artemis will be available for. I notice they still have a couple techs we want, so grabbing a system would be nice. We could also snatch Rigel out from under the Meklars' noses if we're quick.

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Personally, I'd probably just take Artemis regardless of whether the bots get it, banking on our accumulated goodwill. Of course, I also just said I'd be running spies; all those happy good diplomatic feelings are just currency to be spent. (And in this game, attacking a common enemy gets you very far with positive diplo modifiers, even with Xenophobic races. We'll have plenty of opportunity for that, I think.)

Bulrathi
We haven't met them yet, but we're starting to know a bit about them. They seem to be quite strong technologically, but a bit behind in pop count per recent election results. If we decide against wiping out the humans, the Bulrathi might be a good target. But they're so far away, ships and transports would take quite a while to reach their systems. We'd need a good sized fleet built up before assaulting them.

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Agreed.

The turn is now underway. It will NOT be finished, let alone posted tonite. There will be no spoilers leaked tonite. It's more suspenseful that way

codehappy said:

By using that ultra-powerful image processing tool: Microsoft Paint. That and copy-paste fu gets you far!

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Much talent you have *bows in awe*

If I were playing this single player I'd consider running espionage on everybody; we aren't really worried too much about diplo and taking CPU tech on the occasional lucky hit would be potentially very profitable. It won't be terribly cheap compared to simply teching since most spies will fail, but it will allow us to effectively "research" more techs concurrently.

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Agreed, and I think it's cost efficient to run 1-2 spies per race.

Personally, I'd probably just take Artemis regardless of whether the bots get it, banking on our accumulated goodwill. Of course, I also just said I'd be running spies; all those happy good diplomatic feelings are just currency to be spent.

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Agreed, getting more systems (and denying Meklar expansion) is probably our top concern.

How about imposing a rule saying that we must trigger Final War by 2525?

Just so you know, I'm still working on the turn. I don't think it'll get completely posted by tonite, but I'd expect it'll be done by tomorrow. It's taking a bit of time, as It's very picture intensive. Like, 10 or so on the first turn

LAST EDIT OF THE NIGHT: I'm 2 turns from finished. Taken about 30 screenshots so far. It's been rather eventful... I'll play the last 2 turns tomorrow.

^^Thank you for the update, Maniac. Just so everyone knows, there is another maniac in the house--my new clinical instructor. We just got to experience some of her charms for the first time last weekend, and today--with extremely short notice--she announced a major schedule change for this week, arousing great among us students. But, it does look like I have some free time Wed evening this week, Thursday morning, POSSIBLY Friday evening (though I'll be tired from our rescheduled clinical day), and there is a good chance I'll be free on Saturday.

After this weekend, I'll be pretty booked on Saturdays and Sundays through May 1. It will be a busy time for me.

::Arrives really, really belatedly to the party::

Terrific turns, codehappy! It looks like we're now well positioned to win this thing.

codehappy said:

By using that ultra-powerful image processing tool: Microsoft Paint. That and copy-paste fu gets you far!

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Indeed! I've been using GIMP lately, with mixed results. (Sometimes I think my over-edited screenshots will lead people to wonder if I'm even playing the same game!)

Quite possibly true on the trade deal, although I think the bears are a natural target after we finish the humans. We'll see what happens with our alliance partners.

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This makes sense to me. Considering our variant, we'll just have to see how it falls out, but I think at this point we can take on anyone in the galaxy.

If I were playing this single player I'd consider running espionage on everybody; we aren't really worried too much about diplo and taking CPU tech on the occasional lucky hit would be potentially very profitable. It won't be terribly cheap compared to simply teching since most spies will fail, but it will allow us to effectively "research" more techs concurrently.

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Like most everyone else, I agree with this completely. (As well as the bit about taking Artemis ... although I suspect Maniac may have done so already!)

ToddMarshall said:

The turn is now underway. It will NOT be finished, let alone posted tonite. There will be no spoilers leaked tonite. It's more suspenseful that way

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Catwalk said:

How about imposing a rule saying that we must trigger Final War by 2525?

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Don't look now ... but unless we trigger Final War much sooner, I don't think the game will last that long!

ToddMarshall said:

LAST EDIT OF THE NIGHT: I'm 2 turns from finished. Taken about 30 screenshots so far. It's been rather eventful... I'll play the last 2 turns tomorrow.

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Cool - looks like we're Living In Interesting Times ... or rather like the AIs are....

jmas said:

^^Thank you for the update, Maniac. Just so everyone knows, there is another maniac in the house--my new clinical instructor. We just got to experience some of her charms for the first time last weekend, and today--with extremely short notice--she announced a major schedule change for this week, arousing great among us students. But, it does look like I have some free time Wed evening this week, Thursday morning, POSSIBLY Friday evening (though I'll be tired from our rescheduled clinical day), and there is a good chance I'll be free on Saturday.

After this weekend, I'll be pretty booked on Saturdays and Sundays through May 1. It will be a busy time for me.

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Thanks for letting us know. (Unlike, say, me. My problem is that my schedule is kind of in constant flux, due to the nature of my job.) I hope the new schedule works out better for you than it initially seems!