OSG 24 - The Guns of Sssla

All right, what with the Imperia and other stuff going on, it's been ages since we RB folks have had a succession game up here. (Okay, there's OSG 23, and Maniac and I haven't abandoned that one, but the second turnset report is taking the concept of "relaxed pace" to new limits. THIS one is NOT a "relaxed-pace" game; it's a regular 24/48 SG.) But we're ready to roll again with...

OSG 24 - The Guns of Sssla

For centuries, the Sakkra people of Sssla have been at peace. Their ancestors, huge lizard-like beings with massive claws and razor teeth, had battled endlessly for food and territory, and at first, even those who learned to band together for mutual strength did so in an inevitable hierarchy: The top Sakkra was the one with the toughest scales, the fastest claws, and the sharpest teeth. Sakkra nations rose and fell with the might of their warrior-kings as scientific knowledge made its slow, halting, progress toward modernity.

Until someone mixed saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in just the right quantities.

The first general to use guns in battle - weapons that could penetrate Sakkra scales like paper from long range - simply became a new, invincible-seeming warrior-king for an unusual reason ... but a reason with deep consequences. His rule lasted only as long as his soldiers' loyalty. Strength of tooth and sinew no longer mattered for rule, and as the guns found their way into ever-more-numerous Sakkra claws, would-be warrior kings faced a grim new reality: Their might had become irrelevant. The greatest warrior in all of Sssla could be taken down by a lucky shot from a child in his tweens. While other races on other worlds considered weapons a tool for specialized warriors only, millions of years of evolution told the Sakkra that weapons were as natural to their people as hands and lips - or rather, claws and teeth. The guns became ubiquitous, and with everyone armed, constantly, the rule of the land fell to the only force that could still enforce it: The sheer numbers of the majority.

So the Sakkra democracy was formed, on the strength of its guns and rifles. Peace spread across the world because breaking it meant certain death for anyone who did. There were no innocent bystanders: Anyone and everyone at the scene of a violent crime became what another race would think of as armed police. Though recent centuries have bred a culture of peace and openness among them, the Sakkra people continue to carry guns as a matter of course, and so when they learned to cross the stars, they mounted all their starships with the Guns of Sssla, inevitably.

Race: Sakkra
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Large
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Events: On
Variant Rules:
1) All Sakkra are armed. Every ship we design or build must have at least one weapon on board, even if it's only a laser. We'll scrap our initial unarmed Scouts immediately. (The initial colship will exist for so short a time that we can just pretend it's armed, since it won't encounter any alien fleets.)
2) The Sakkra are a peaceful people. We may not engage in acts of war (attacking alien colonies with fleets or transports or using "sabotage" spying) unless we are already at war with the target race. Note however that we have a free hand over neutral worlds; we're not willing to attack them, but neither will we buckle to their aggression at the sites of potential colonies. Moreover, we may never threaten to attack another race.
3) The Sakkra are a democratic people. We respect the will of the galaxy's peoples, not the tyrants who rule over them and get to vote in the galactic elections. We must abstain in all high council votes, as they are a sham of democracy. EXCEPTIONS: If we have enough votes to win single-handed (i.e. conquest victory) we may elect the Sakkra democratic process itself as "high master" and accept the victory. Also, if we as the players decide it would be more fun at any point and have the opportunity, we may "revert to our violent ancestral roots" by voting for and rejecting a leader and initiating Final War.
4) The Sakkra fight their own battles. We may not use any of the tactics forbidden in the Realms Beyond Orion exploit list. For instance, we may not ask one race to declare war on another unless we are already at war with the target race ourselves.
5) I said, all Sakkra are armed! We may send invasion transports to another race's colony when at war, as the soldiers are armed and will use their weapons in ground combat - but we may not send defenseless "colony transports" (meaning ANY TRANSPORTS AT ALL) to our own colonies.

ROSTER:
jmas
RefSteel
codehappy
Maniac Marshall (ToddMarshall)
Catwalk

Turn Set 1: jmas
- Report
- Closing Comments & Save

Turn Set 2: RefSteel
- Planning
- Report
- Closing Comments & Save

Turn Set 3: Catwalk
- Full Report

Turn Set 4: codehappy
- Full Report

Turn Set 5: Maniac Marshall (ToddMarshall)
- Full Report
- Save (@RB)

Turn Set 6: jmas
- Full Report (@RB)
- Save (@RB)

Turn Set 7: RefSteel
- Pre-Flight
- Report
- Post-Mortem
- Save

Turn Set 8: Catwalk
- Full Report
- Save

Turn Set 9: codehappy
- Full Report
- Save

Turn Set 10: Maniac Marshall (ToddMarshall)
- Pre-turn analysis
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2 (& Save)

Turn Set 11: jmas
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2
- Save

Turn Set 12: RefSteel
- "Plan"
- Report
- Closing notes (& Save)

Turn Set 13: Catwalk
- Report & Save
- Status Updates

Turn Set 14: codehappy
- Full Report

Turn Set 15: Maniac Marshall (ToddMarshall)
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2
- Report Part 3 (& Save)

Turn Set 16: jmas
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2 (& Save)

Turn Set 17: RefSteel
- Pre-Flight
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2
- Report Part 3 (& Save)

Turn Set 18: codehappy
- Full Report

Turn Set 19: Maniac Marshall (ToddMarshall)
- Report Part 1
- Report Part 2 (& Save)

Turn Set 20: Catwalk
-Full Report

Turn Set 21: RefSteel
- Final Report

(Unless someone really wants to play more turns and wipe everything out completely....)

Lurker:

Good see you guys are going strong and some of the familar names.

Checking in, and subscribing. Should be fun to see a good RefSteel and Company report.

A word to the wise: I use a dictation program (and a version a few years old, at that) to type these things. So if I write something silly... please don't take it amiss. The program makes some entertaining mistakes and I don't always catch them all.

There wasn't a number of turns suggested for the early phase of the game. I played 20, and now have to wrap up and get ready to be on-call tomorrow.

Our glorious leader (a man/lizard of the people, of course; you can be sure the people wouldn't have it any other way...)



Here is our start:



Looks like we drew a lot of decent opponents, although the Psilons are not among them.

I scrap our scouts and send our colony ship to the only star within reach.

In 2302, here is the planet we colonize... yummy!



With our new colony, there is one star-- the neutron-- at a range of three, two at a range of four (the red in the South and green to the northwest), three at a range of five (the Southeast Green, the North-by-Northeast white, and the West-by-Northwest white in the nebula), and one at a range of 6 (the yellow to the SSW).

It looks like it will be a little tricky to get out of this corner; the best bet might be the red star to the south if it's habitable. With that in mind I opened construction, planetology (mostly because we're Excellent at it), propulsion, and weapons as soon as possible just to see what our options are for getting some more range to our ships and more space for small ships so that they could possibly mount reserve fuel tanks in addition to the obligatory laser at some point in the future..

In construction it's IIT9 vs. R. I. W. 80%. I choose IIT9.
In planetology, its Barren only, though for the bargain price of 210 RP.
In propulsion, we have the pick of range 4 or 5. I pick range 4 since it will allow us to reach two planets and is much cheaper. Only now it occurs to me that it might have been better to just go straight to range 5..
In weapons, it's Hyper-V or Gatling Laser; I choose Hyper-V.

Then I stop research in all fields except for propulsion.

I design a mighty ship to carry the first Sakkra guns into space (1 bc cheaper than the default fighter):




After building one, I seed our propulsion research with all of the funds available on Sssla. Then I micromanage the research to put in just enough to maximize interest.

In 2311, we reach the neutron star, Dolz, a Rich Inferno 40.

In 2316, we pop range 4 at a 9% chance. I debated between going for IIT9 (which we might still get some use out of at Tau Cygni) or Range 5. I opted for range 5 and seeded it. I also routed our ship to the red star at 4 parsecs, and built another PewPewPew and routed it to the green to the northwest.

Here we are in 2320: both of our ships are two turns from their destinations (No screenshot of that); we should be earning maximal interest toward range 5 right now, and here is a screenshot of our burgeoning empire of scaly green Wild West gunslingers.



No ships from other races observed so far.

I seem to recall there being a convention about which save slot to use for saves, but I don't remember it right now, so you're getting save slot 2 where I happened to have this turn of the game.

If anything is unclear or something does not appear right about my posts, please let me know.

By the way, I think it's going to take a fair amount of construction and/or weapons tech to get to where we can have armed (small) scouts with reserve tanks. I did some calculations based on the table in the strategy guide that tells you how many spaces construction tech levels add to a large ship. Assuming the proportion of spaces added to the starting total space on the ship is the same... getting IIT9 for example will probably only get us to where reserve tanks would require about 18 space and we would only have about 8. So we may need some mediums for a while...

Still sorting out roster order as noted in the first post, and we're doing it by sorta playing catch. And ha-ha, I've got the ball now!

GOT IT!

(Expect a report from me sometime this weekend - although if codehappy or Catwalk expect to be able to get to it before ~Saturday night though, they may steal the ball away from me before I get a chance to take a shot ... thereby getting us a quicker report!)

All right, now playing. First things first: Let's take a look at the save.

Our fleet currently consists of two PewPewPew fighters, with one en route to each of the stars we haven't explored within range 4 - each will arrive in 2322. (The 3 parsec neutron star is Dolz, a rich inferno world that can support 40 million people).



All (and only) the stars within 7 parsecs of our worlds (i.e. reachable with our current fuel technology) are displayed here.

We are currently researching Deuterium Fuel Cells (range 5) with enough of an investment in place to light up the very bottom pixel of the bulb. I agree with jmas that going directly for range 5 would have been wiser than teching Range 4 and then Range 5, but I'm not going to waste the investment already made. Actually what I would have done would be to build scouts (armed mediums) to explore the range-4 stars before opening Propulsion, so I would know whether we could get away with skipping range 5 altogether if that was an option. In the meantime, I'd have poured more BCs into factory construction, especially on the homeworld. (Tau Cygni will eventually be the better world, but Sssla has too much of a head start to be wasted.)

So, here's the plan: Sssla is going to concentrate on factories and medium scouts - I'll want at least three of the latter ASAP - while Tau Cygni funds our research efforts and develops its own factories - after building one more PewPewPew to stand guard over Dolz, in case there are any Silicoids nearby. I leave tech spending all on propulsion for the time being.

Before I do anything else though, I need to design a new ship. We have some options for long-range medium scouts, but I go with the old standby:



The Long Range Lemon, known to our Sakkra Gunsslingers as the Sscout 1.0 (the suffix always designates engine type and model number; thus, if I later design a more advanced scout ship with retro engines, it will be the Sscout 1.1; if I design a more advanced scout with nuke engines, it will be the Sscout 2.0) has two lasers, reserve tanks, and nothing else. Since we've completed Hydrogen Fuel tech, there's room to stuff a battle computer onto the thing, but it isn't worth the cost in BCs. (If I were crazy, I could even have outfitted it with a single laser, battle computer, and shield to go with the reserve tanks. I mean, if I were a different kind of crazy.)

I notice we still have 5BC in reserve from the original Scouts we scrapped. The best thing to do with reserves at the start of the game is to pour them back into the homeworld, as the factories they create multiply like compound interest. At this point, I could put them into either colony, and they'd have a larger relative impact on Tau Cygni, but I'm giving them to Sssla since I calculate that will let me just finish a second Sscout 1.0 in the very first year. The calculation proves correct, I set the ships to Relocate to Tau Cygni, and I'm on my way!

My goals for this 15-turn set:
1) Explore every planet within range 7, and prevent the AIs from colonizing any of them (except to the extent it's already too late).
2) Max out factories on Sssla and at least get some up on Tau Cygni.
3) Add at least one new colony to our empire, and have at least a second colony ship complete.
4) Have fun doing it - especially writing the report!

Let's see what I can manage! Any discussion, suggestions, etc. is welcome, as always!

Having looked at the save, I'd say you need five of those LR scouts, and I'd make them at max right now, as those yellow and red stars look particularly threatened.

Not sure relocing them is a good idea.. won't that delay scouting the yellow star at least?

ToddMarshall said:

Having looked at the save, I'd say you need five of those LR scouts, and I'd make them at max right now, as those yellow and red stars look particularly threatened.

Click to expand...

I agree; I set the homeworld to max ship production AND fed it our little store of reserves just to pump out two in the first year - and I didn't stop there. I've played the first few turns, and yes, I wound up building five of the Sscouts as well as the PewPewPew for Dolz (so far).

Not sure relocing them is a good idea.. won't that delay scouting the yellow star at least?

Click to expand...

Nope - three turns to Tau Cygni, plus six from there to the yellow star = 9. Later Sscout production shows that the ETA from Sssla directly is 8, and since you don't get the first move on the same turn as production without reloc, 1 turn to produce + 8 turns in transit = ... also 9. So, no loss on the yellow star, but also no gain.

I'm ready to go if you finish it sometime within the next 7h or so. Your plan looks solid, really hope we'll get some good news for the nearby star systems. Chances should be decent that both the green and red stars have a habitable planet for us. I really like the no unarmed ships variant, early planning is a major challenge this way!

Sstate of the Empire Report, outgoing Gunsslinger RefSsteel to the Gunsslinger-Elect
Classsification: Top Ssecret

Alien incursions have begun on all frontss. We firsst detected them in 2322, jusst two years into my reign, though the common people know nothing of thiss as yet.



My first fleet of newly-designed Sscout1.0s were sstill a year away from Tau Cygni when my predescesssor's PewPewPews reached their desstinations four parssecss from our worlds. The planetss they disscovered - a terran world at green Trax near Sssla and a vasst ocean world at red Esper near Tau Cygni, will be vital to our empire's future - as I sstated in my third annual Sstate of the Sakkra addresss - but I did not sspeak of the Human Scout that met uss above Trax. It can be sseen in thiss image, retreating toward one of the yellow sstars beyond the nebula, where the Humans no doubt make their home. Fortunately, the Scout immediately fled - perhapss when our pilot radioed the name of our sship to theirs, the Human thought it was the ssound of our laser cannon firing.

It was at thiss time that our third Sscout 1.0 sset out for the coreward red sstar, sseven parssecs away. Yellow sstars have been sshown by our Asstrobiologisstss to be the only ones capable of developing ssentient life, and yellow, green, and red sstars - the ones mosst capable of ssupporting life - very near to them were our Sscoutss' highesst priority. The yellow and red sstars beyond Tau Cygni would be reached by our first batch as early as they posssibly could be - as Gunsslinger candidate Marshall ssurmised, the yellow sstar we can reach musst not harbor the homeworld of a sspace-faring sspecies, or we would have sseen their sshipss in Tau Cygni's viscinity long ssince.

His calculation was correct, but though I did everything posssible to get a Sscout over in time, I was sstill one year too late.



In 2328, the Meklar people claimed Arietis, which turned out the next year to harbor a large arid world. It couldn't have been a long-sstanding colony jusst brought into contact with uss through new Meklar range technology because the planet'ss Meklar population was sstill at jusst two million. Even if it was deuterium and not colonization that brought uss into range, the colony musst have been formed very, very recently.

The chief robot, M5-35, informed uss that if we entered Meklar sspace, we would be desstroyed on ssight. Our Sscout'ss desstruction ssadly failed to materialize when it arrived at the undefended sstar, but I thought it besst to be diplomatic, and disscretely ssent our sship away. After all, we were playing nice with the Meklar ... publicly. I made much of our trade agreement in my 2328 Sstate of the Sakkra sspeech, but it was only for 25 BC - we're sstill losing money on it now, to the tune of 5 BC per year. At leasst it has warmed relations a little; they're neutral toward uss now, though at firsst xenophobic old M5-35 was uneasy.



Who ever heard of an ecologisst robot, anyway?

Lesst you imagine that my Sscout sshipss were russhed on their way in vain, or lesst you doubt the importance of their misssions, our nexst alien encounter came jusst three years later, in 2331 - two years after my Sscout reached the Simius ssysstem.



Had out two-gun desstroyer not been ready to warn them away, the Silicoids would have esstablisshed a mineral-rich base at the most coreward sstar we can presently reach - a huge sstep toward boxsing uss in effectively. (A Human Scout sshowed up there two years later too.) Even as it sstands, I don't know how long we can hold that sstar againsst them - if they ssend a sseriouss esscort fleet with another colony sship, I don't think we can sstop them at long range - but we've delayed them now for sseveral years at leasst. The direction of their departure was as troubling as their presensce though:



They come from one of the yellow sstars beyond Arietis, which means the large barren world at Endoria, the red sstar jusst nexst door, may fall to them at any moment. I took sstepss - beginning sseriouss ressearch into Controlled Barren technology and disspatching the Sscouts from green Jinga to help defend Endoria, jusst in case - it will arrive nexst year. Jinga itself is a masssive tundra world, but too far away from the Silicoids for their colonies to reach it ssoon, and if you confirm my final orders, we'll have a PewPewPew in orbit there anyway in jusst five years.

Two years later, in 2333, I disscovered the reason Gunsslinger jmas didn't mention our ssecond-tier propulssion choices when he sstarted work on deuterium insstead. We have accsesss to sstars as far as five parssecss away now, thankss to a lucky "5%" hit...



...but we had no choice. Our only posssible ressearch project in the field was to develop an Inertial Sstabilizer for our shipss. I've made no invesstment at all yet in the thing.

If you're wondering why I did not run for re-election in 2335, you have your reason. I've been Gunsslinger too long now; though my interesst is keen, my sscaly body grows weary, and a weary Gunsslinger is a poor choice for dealing with ssuch an unfortunate propulsion tree ... and to bring an entire race, with alien incurssions on every side, out of the virtual scellar. You ssee, as you may recall, GNN alsso made a report in 2333.



Sso I turn the reins of power over to you, my ssuccsesssor. There is a time of trial before uss in the galaxsy. We have an armed Colsship 1M (for Minimal) almosst at Esper, and another ready to complete at Sssla by year's end. A Sscout is already on itss way to the coreward blue sstar jusst brought into range by our new deuterium scells, jusst besside the rich Simius ssysstem. I've even given orders to the new batch of PewPewPews jusst finisshed at Tau Cygni, though you may countermand them if you wissh. The Meklar are sstill exspanding - they have establisshed a new colony at Phyco, a green star far beyond Arietis, ssugessting - ssinsce it musst rely on their alliance with the Ssilicoids - where the rock-people's homeworld musst mosst likely be.



Our corner of the galaxsy is very fertile - the terran world of Trax can ssuport 90 million Sakkra, the ocean world of Esper that we're about to reach can ssuport 100, even the Dolz inferno and toxic Simius are rich worlds, and the barren and tundra worlds at Endoria, Jinga, and Antares-in-the-Nebula all have unusually large amountss of habitable sspace. (It sshould be noted as well that Trax is definitely not in the nebula, though Anatres musst be - the star background at Trax proved it when the Human Scout ssaw uss and ran away.)



It's jusst a quesstion of claiming all those sstars - by no means a ssimple tassk - and somehow breaking out of our corner of the galaxsy!

Okay, that's two turnsets in the books! Set three should go for fifteen more turns (to 2350) and each set thereafter can go 10. Both Catwalk and Maniac have said they're read to take the save, so I'm going to just leave it up for grabs now: Whoever posts a "got it" first is UP! (except that jmas and I have to wait of course.) Some notes on the save:

- We have not yet encountered Orion. If you do spot it, please make a note of it in your report so we're all aware of where it is! Also note that if one of our ships reaches Orion and retreats immediately, the Guardian will probably not destroy it(!) because it generally moves back to its back row after filing its missiles and torpedo (which won't quite reach our back row) if the fleet it's facing is armed but subject to a one-hit kill from its missile volley.

- We have a Colsship due at Esper in two turns and a Sscout due at the range-8 blue star in 5. I've assigned one of the new PewPewPews to explore the white star in our back lines, though of course you can override me on this one since those ships were just produced.

- Now that R5 is in, we can fit a third laser on a medium hull with reserve tanks. I suggest that we do so if we plan to build any more LR destroyers any time soon. A three-gun ship does cost 13 BC more than a one-gunner, but that triples the firepower for less than a quarter of the ship's price, and we'll likely have to hold one or more long-range stars by force. (Computers and shields remain non-cost-effective for this type of ship.)

- I have invested a few clicks in Hide spying on the Meklar, but nowhere near enough yet to actually land a spy. I've temporarily cut off spy spending to pour our full economy into other projects, but you may of course resume at will.



- Our relations with the Meklar have improved to Neutral. Our trade agreement is still at the minimum 25 BC for now (presently losing 5 BC per turn) but can presumably be upgraded if you think it's appropriate.

- There are 5 BC in our treasury from factory-completion overflow at Sssla - by coincidence, the same amount of reserve that was left to me at the beginning of my turn set. I was planning to save them for our new colony, but of course you can do with them as you please.



- The total investment in Controlled Barren now sits at 84 RP (so 6 RP would take full advantage of the tripling effect). There are also (just) 10 RP in II9. I realize it's more efficient in theory to invest a single large amount right away and then just enough each turn to take advantage of tripling, but I've taken to spending small amounts prior to that initial investment in a field I know I'll want to start up soon, but don't have the funds to properly seed yet. Just think of it as pre-seeding. Or argue that it's inefficient and convince me to cut it out!

And now to check on my goals:
1) Nope. I still haven't gotten that back-lines white star explored (though at least we can do so in five turns). It wasn't as complete a failure as it looks though: Arietis falls firmly into the category of "already too late." Nothing I could have done would have prevented the Meklar from claiming it. (In fact, suspecting the importance of the area, and advised to do so by Maniac, I sent a Sscout there as quickly as it was possible to send one.)
2) Success! Technically! Sssla is maxed out, and Tau Cygni does have more than twice as factories as when I started ... but 39 factories isn't exactly a world record.
3) Not quite. Our next colony will be founded in two turns, just too late to fall within my turn set ... and our next Colsship after that is due next turn! I missed it by that much! Of course, I could have met this goal quite easily if I'd built one less Sscout (or even just delayed it) and sent my first Colsship to Trax instead of Esper. I think what I did was better for the empire though, and that was more important than meeting some specific tactical goal I had set.
4) Yeeeup! I hope you enjoyed reading it too; I can't wait for my next set!

The save is attached, now in Officially Sanctioned Succession Game Format(TM) (unless I forgot what it's supposed to look like). I've left it in slot 2.

Got it! My wife graciously granted me half an hour of nerding time before bedtime, so I'll get cracking on finishing at lightning speed!

...the nerding time part, not the bedtime part.

Got as far as 2341 while rushing, will finish tomorrow.

Lurker: Nice to see a new succession game. Looks an interesting variant with some challenging restrictions. Should be good to see how this plays out. Good luck everyone.

sargon0 said:

Lurker: Nice to see a new succession game. Looks an interesting variant with some challenging restrictions. Should be good to see how this plays out. Good luck everyone.

Click to expand...

Thanks, sargon! I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out too! (And of course contributing to the madness again in 2380....)

My main goal with this turnset is to continue our colonization efforts, grabbing Thrax and speeding up Planetology research to hopefully grab Dead colonization technology. That'd let us colonize the two Tundra planets and expand our borders nicely. I'll leave fleet numbers low for now, putting a single PewPewPew on all systems.

2335:

- set all research to Planetology
- lowered ship production on Sssla in favour of research

2336: 1 colony ship and 5 fighters produced.

- started producing next colony ship on Sssla, anticipating Barren tech to hit before completion. Currently at 4% with 45 RP
- dropped ship production on Tau Cygni in favour of industry
- sent 3 fighters to Esper, 1 to Sssla and kept 1 at Tau Cygni

2336: Esper colonized, silicoid scout spotted near Endoria.

- Planetology at 12% with 27 RP
- sent 5 BC to Esper
- sent a fighter to Endoria to relieve a scout there

2337: Silicoid scout attacks Endoria, repelled.

- lowered research further at Sssla, Planetology now at 18% with 18 RP. Colony ship complete in 4 years, but will upgrade it to a Barren ship.

2338: Barren hits! Only option is Death Spores This is a very sad tech tree so far. We now have no means of colonizing the 2 tundra planets in a reasonable time frame.

- designed Barren Col, producing it at Sssla
- Tau Cygni and Sssla at high research for the turn
- opened research in Computers and Force Fields
- seeded Construction with 49 RP and Weapons with 53

2339: Orion discovered, it's the blue system west of Simius. Our scout miraculously survives, as the Guardian foolishly pulls back on the 2nd turn! ECM I available in Computers, Class II shields available in Force Fields. Trax colonized! Beta Ceti explored south of Endoria, it's an ultra rich Tundra planet housing 25 million!!! Defending this must be made an immediate priority, although it's uncertain when we'll be able to colonize it.

- scout retreating from Orion redirected to Simius
- resumed max industry on Tau Cygni
- 39 RP from Sssla, going into Construction and Weapons
- I realize that I made a blunder in not deploying enough scouts to explore new systems made available with the colonization of Trax, but decide to let a single scout handle all the exploration for now

2340: Vega explored to the north, size 45 desert!

- lowered research further at Sssla, need to produce another colony ship urgently.
- sent several fighters to Endoria, later to be sent to Beta Ceti.

2342: Phantos discovered, size 12 Desert planet. Undoubtedly polluted by the foul silicoids. Barren colony ship completed.

- hollered at the Meklars and ask if they want to give us something good for range tech or Barren tech. Unsurprisingly, they don't want to give us anything.
- producing another colony ship at Sssla to colonize the desert planet at Vega.
- put a bunch of RP into Force Fields, currently researching 4 techs: IIT9, Shield II, Death Spores and Hyper-V. Will make Planetology a high priority after the colony ship has been produced, we need better colonization and improvement techs badly.

2343: Repel a silicoid colony ship at Simius (Toxic, Rich).

- set Tau Cygni research output to 20 and adjusted all 4 tech fields for maximum interest, will increase Tau Cygni research by 22.5% every year for a while now.
- I decide against fortifying our fleet at Simius, it would probably take 3 scouts to repel a colony ship with a single laser on it and they could easily bring a few fighters in to overpower us vastly. Not worth fighting that hard over a hard to reach system that we won't be able to colonize for a long time anyway. As long as we can stave them off with a single scout it's fine, and I'll leave it at that.

2344: We encounter a medium human ship at Simius. It seems to be armed with a heavy laser and a normal one vs our 2 normal lasers. The battle is going evenly, but at 6 hp to their 8 I decide to retreat and send it north west. Also repelled a silicoid colony ship at Beta Ceti, still unarmed. Those rocks are creeping up to our doorstep...

2346: Sol discovered to the west, it's the first yellow planet. 20 missile bases on it that are firing either Nuclear or Hyper-V at me. Surprisingly, they have only 183 factories to be operated by their 110 milion people. I screwed up and forgot to remove relocation at Sssla, so the new colony ship will be sent to Esper before it can be sent back up to Vega Will delay colonization by more about 10 turns, bummer.

2347: 25 klackon fighters force me away from Beta Ceti, but I decide to keep my scout there. Kailis (U-Poor, 55, Arid, green) discovered to the south east.

2348: Rigel discovered to the west, another human colony. A single missile base repels me.

2350: 3 human fighters repulse me from Beta Ceti, embarrassing. I'm doing barely any damage against small ships without a battle computer, whereas they hit me quite easily. Endoria finally colonized, still not bringing me in diplomatic range of the silicoids.
- I send 6 of the 7 fighters guarding Endoria to repel the humans at Beta Ceti. I have a dreading suspicion that my typical reluctance to build early fighters will cost us...
- I finally remember to keeping my scout parked around the silicoid system of Phantos is really not a very friendly thing to do Fortunately, it now has new systems to explore with the colonization of Endoria.

That was my 15 turns. It didn't go particularly well, as I did not play particularly well. I fear that the lizards are in for a very rough tumble in this one, it'll take mastery beyond mere mortals to turn this tiny, trudging tribal nation into a glorious empire.

Status:
274 RP in Construction, almost done
133 RP in Force Fields
830 RP in Planetology
122 RP in Weapons

- 5 planets colonized, one more underway (don't forget to send the colony ship back up )
- total population of 252 million
- total production of 499 BC
- still no fleet to speak of, didn't produce any scouts and only a handful of fighters
didn't accomplish much of anything technologically, except ascertain that our tech tree really does suck (although either Planetology choice after Death Spores is good, so we can't really go wrong there)
- relations with Meklar are still at Neutral, didn't change our trade agreement with them (which is now at a whooping -1!)
- doing somewhat decently on factories at Tau Cygni, will be maxed in a few turns (wasn't sure if waiting for IIT9 was worth it, decided against it)
- did a fair bit of exploration, didn't find anything really interesting
- repulsed a good chunk of scouts and colony ships, but are starting to see some pressure on outlying systems now

My apologies for the lack of images, I've been really short on time and didn't want to mess with it. Please comment on the quality of the report and which images you would have most liked to see it included, I'll try to do a better job on the next one.

I wish my successor a whole lot of luck!

I'm not well, so I won't be playing tonite. (Oddly I would have been able to play either of the previous turnsets, I was just to slow to got it.

Looks pretty dicey. We'll probably lose that toxic planet to the silicoids, but if we can at least get the rest of the planets we've explored, we MIGHT have enough good land to win. Probably do. I'll try to get it tomorrow if I'm feeling better, or someone can get it first.