OSG 12 - All Your Rocks are Belong to Us!

Due to the holidays, I'll be out from Wednesday to next Monday; please skip me as needed. I can play today or tomorrow up to 2:00.

dathon
 
Executive Summary:

First up, I allowed the scouts to complete scouting of the Human worlds, at least as much as can be done with bases up.
- Phanatos: Size 75, 14 bases
- Kailis: Size 65, 9 bases -- Our first target.
- Escalon: Size 100, 12 bases
- Sol: Size 110, 14 bases
- Denubis: Size 40, 3 bases -- Probably should leave this world for last.

Next, I send our fleet to Kailis. We encounter heavy resistance from a large portion of the human fleet: over 10 larges and 50 mediums, mostly armed with NPGs. We lose all our minnows and a few of our missle boats, and are forced to withdraw, destroying 2 missle bases and a few ships. Clearly we are not ready to go on the attack.

Over the remainder of the turn, I defend Dunatis against several waves of Human attackers. Our missle boats are adequate but not great at killing human ships and we wind up losing control of the skies over Dunatis for one turn. Our missle bases sorely miss better shielding against the human NPG fleets, though we make them pay dearly for their victories. We successfully regain space control over Dunatis in time to defend against the human troop transports, only to spot two fleets of human huge ships come in. These turn out to be death spore ships, which are slow but sturdy enough to take a lot of punishment. We barely manage to destroy the first wave of 1 huge before it spores Dunatis, but the second wave contains 2 huges. We can only destroy one before bombardment commences, and at the end of the battle, Dunatis is down to 6 population! Nevertheless it manages to finish off the human huge before succumbing completely.

We continue to attempt to reduce the human fleet, and by the end of my turns it is a pale shadow of its former self. Our own fleet power has been climbing steadily as planets throughout our empire build missle boats to contribute to the effort. On the technology front, we have stolen Inertial Stabilizers and Battle Computer III from the humans, as well as developing Ion cannons. Only poor Stalaz is currently researching anything, which is Class III shields. We should now be in a position to start attacking human planetary defenses in a more serious way.

Combat evaluation of our current designs: Having a 5-rack on our missle boats proved both good and bad. The problem is that because the human ships are relatively speedy, and our missles are not, our ships sometimes have a bit of a challenge actually landing missle fire without exposing themselves to return fire. This in some sense defeats the purpose of having a missle boat. On the other hand, the extra ammunition did come in handy for destroying as many human ships as possible at a couple points. We did acquire a couple new technologies during my turn, but I wasn't happy with any of the designs I can make at this point in the game. We should feel free to redesign a new fleet once we capture more technology from the Humans, however -- especially sublight drives.

Attached is the save file and a number of pictures showing what we are up against and where we are now, especially relative to our point world Dunatis.
 

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Some extra pictures from the last turnset...
 

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Nice turns Zed. Knowing full well that the humans were going to be a bear to take down, you did a fabulous job for the first stage of the fight. Keep in mind wars of attrition are only in our favor here as we have an industrial base the likes of which never before seen in an osg lol.


Dath <--- up?
Zed <--- played
Stup
Liq
Olorin
Str00ld3 (missing)

Well dath comes back monday but Stup, if you want to take turns go for it then dath can play before me. As for str... skip until we seee him again I guess!:)

Cheers!
-Liq
 
I see it, and will play it, but a question before I do: are we playing with the missile-boats-must-retreat rule? As in, if you retreat missile boats from a fight, they must return to a friendly colony before re-engaging; no leaving them at the planet. Obviously this only affects offense, not defense. I would vote to observe this rule, but will follow the will of the group. :)

dathon
 
I see no real reason to hold to a 'must retreat' in that 1, zed dealt with the brunt of the humans attack, and 2, we have ships to burn.

Keep in mind that the dynamics involved here now are not about keeping ships alive as our entire economy is based on building new ships as it is, 'where are our ships?'. Too many ships alive and our empire will be bogged down with maint cost. The ships we do have are only useful if they are within a few turns of reuse, which makes engine tech sooo important.

Think of it as moo's version of civ4's slavery. Whip a few ships to keep under the 'happiness' cap I guess, it's ok to harm a few (or alot) for the benefit of the others.

bearing in mind transit time, we can replace any ships lost in a turn or 3 for the most part here so if there's a reason to stick around, take it! Not to say throw ships away though, just use common sense.

Oh and to be explicit, there are no restrictions on re-routing ships after a retreat. This variant is tough enough without placing additional restrictions on us.

Cheers!
-Liq
 
Actually, I wasn't worried about keeping our ships alive, but avoiding what to me is an exploit in the game. We've had this discussion before, but basically the issue boils down to a small fleet of missile boats that are fast enough to fire and retreat without taking much damage. By re-directing them to stay at the same planet, that enables the player to win fights he really shouldn't. A fix we proposed at one point was to say that all missile ships must be retreated to a friendly base to "re-load" My view is that this is a good way to close the loophole, but I wasn't actually trying to re-open the debate. I just want to know what the group feel is before I go off and do something stupid :lol:

dathon
 
Our current ships take away some of the exploitive nature of missile boats by having 5-rack launchers. These tend to stick around long enough to actually take some enemy fire, where the 2-rack launchers can really abuse missile bases by getting off both volleys and retreating before any missile from the planet can reach them.

Personally, I will avoid using the redirect to the same planet exploit on my own turns, but it's a minor enough issue that I don't care how other people handle it.

Olorin
 
Ok, so I'm taking my turn, and I manage to get space superiority over Kailis and send in troops. 87 Rocks take on 56 Humans, and we win with 39 troops left (I traded PDS from the Psilons to even the odds). There were (and still are) 120 factories left on the planet.

We did not get ANY tech from the conquest.

:mad: :gripe: :aargh: [pissed] :wallbash: :shake:

Now, considering the goal of this scenario is to steal tech, I am understandably upset. I'm also baffled. Does anybody know why this happened??? I've saved the game where it is at (2418). Here's the questions for the group:

1. Why did this happen?
2. Alongside that, could I have done something differently to avoid this?
3. If I could have, should I replay my turn from the beginning?

If the answer to question 2 is yes, than I think the answer to 3 should be yes as well. We NEED that tech to progress; the Humans have been re-building their fleet, and while not what it once was, is re-building as they retreat from us. I would hate this variant to end up losing because I've misunderstood some mechanic. As far as I know, you just have to take more than 50 factories to get tech, right?? I'm at work, (slacker, I know :p) so I can finish/replay tomorrow. I'll also try and see what the MOO bible has to say about this.

dathon
 
I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that; it's not something I've ever investigated in depth. You might just have gotten very unlucky. I would be tempted to play your turns to the end of your round, save the game, and then keep going. Once you've captured more human planets you can let us know if you continue to get no tech captures on subsequent conquests or not (and nothing else that might be a spoiler.) It won't hurt us too badly to get one lemon planet capture, so long as they don't all turn out that way.
 
From the MOO strategy guide:

"If the attacker succeeded in the invasion attempt, for every factory captured on that planet, he has a 2 percent chance to steal one of his opponent's technologies. A d100 roll is made separately for each factory captured but, on average, that means you'll steal 1 technology per 50 factories captured."

Well, that's the answer; we rolled snake eyes. The odds for not getting a tech from a 120 factory planet is (0.98)^120 = 8.85%, which aren't actually all that great. You will roll an 11 or a 3 (probability of each number individually, not either or) on two dice less often than this event will occur. Interestingly, the odds of not getting a tech from a 50-factory planet are 36.4%, or greater than 1 in 3. And the odds reach 50% at 34 factories.

I'll finish my turns tomorrow.

dathon
 
I thought that it was probably something like that. I know that I have very rarely gotten a tech from a world with very few factories, but have always kept a rule of thumb in my head that if I wanted to try for techs, wait until they had 50+ factories, and then cross the fingers.

Late in the game, when you can grab worlds with 400+ factories, that's when the tech starts rolling in.

For the next invasion, have our commanders remind our ground troops not to use blueprints as kindling for their victory bonfires.
 
Out of the office unexpectedly, won't be able to finish until tomorrow, sorry!

dathon
 
Okay, well I finally got around to playing my last two turns. As I mentioned in my previous post, I opened my turns by trading Stabilizers to the Psilons for Personal Deflector Shields; that takes our gropo odds to 1:1 instead of 1.5:1. Plus, they were down to uneasy, so I upped trade with them to 95, and relations there were back up to high neutral by the end of my set. We won't have the tech to get past their defenses for awhile yet.

I took Kailis, putting Dunatis out of range of the current Human capability. That planet continues to rebuild. Gion is still in range, however, and Dolz may be as well, so watch for flanking moves. The Humans have a decent fleet over Sol, including one of those Huge spore ships. Their ships can outrun missile unless they are pinned down in the back of the tactics screen.

Class III came in, and I chose Class V planetary, not that that matters. Looks like we've hit the wall on our own research efforts. Careful of planets going to research after completing factory building, planetary shields in the future, etc.

The invasion of Kailis came from Volantis and Draconis, both of which will be back up and running at full capacity next turn. Our transports are still at warp 1, so factor that into your invasion plans. Zoctan will be online with a base next turn, and although we can't use it's artifacts, will still make a decent production planet. Good luck Stup! :goodjob:

dathon
 

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I have the save, one thing you didn't mention is that the Psilons have a fleet inbound to Rha due next turn. Since we are still trading it is likely a border war, but it will be difficult to deal with, and if they want the planet I am not sure we can keep it for too long without better shield/missile tech.

I also would like to try and take Sol, or prep to take it this turnset (1 parsec per turn means our transports take forever to get anywhere) That should net us nearly all the human tech and effectively cripple them.

I will let you know how it goes.
Stup
 
Sorry Stup, I didn't see that fleet; the brains have been sending fleets back and forth to those colonies in the far east, and I missed the one with the deviated flight plan. I probably should have been fortifying it more heavily. My bad if we lose it.

dathon
 
No worries dathon, I finished my turnset and we still hold Rha (for the moment):

Apologies for the long log, but a LOT happened.

Inherited: Poke around a bit, everything seems to be in order as far as production goes. Wait a minute! The Psilons have a fleet near Rha! They could be going to the uninhabited planet behind Rha, but I do not think they have the range for that yet. I reserve pump to get an extra missile base up before next turn and send half the minnows from Lyae to assist (although they will get there 1 turn too late).

2421: Good thing I built that missile base! Psilons sneak attack on Rha, I believe this is merely a border skirmish as we are still trading. No colships are in the fleet, so they appear to be trying to take it via ground invasion.

Psilons come with 3 designs.
1 Huge: 5 heavy blast cannons, 2 neutron blasters, shield 2, comp 1
13 Med: 4 fusion bombs
2 Med: 2 fusion bombs


I elect to attack the Large with my missile bases as I am not sure one missile base can take it down before it takes down the missile base. Also that will allow the minnows to peck the other bomb only designs to death next turn.

Results:
Psilons lose: 1 Huge, 2 Med FBx4

We lose: 2 missile bases, 16 pop, 69 fact

The Human fleet elected to move their Sol fleet towards Kailis into the teeth of our fleet. Since Kailis is already at max factories for its current pop, I elect to pump reserves into building some missile bases before the fleet arrives. It looks like we will take the Human fleet in one swift motion.

2422: I built a single scout out of Rha to assist in blocking the heavy bombers for as long as I could, had it been a favorable map (many roadblocks) I could have trapped them indefinitely, alas it was not to be they snuck next to the planet about turn 15 so they got off all their bombs. They lost about half their number before they retreated though. We came out on the losing end of that fight losing 20 pop and a great deal of factories (not sure but had to be ~100). I am rebuilding with emphasis on defense. I am also adding some bases to the surrounding colonies. I transfer some pop from the Fertile in the back lines nearby to help speed up the rebuilding on Rha.

2423: Human fleet demolished, only 2 escorts escaped (NPG larges). We lose a couple guppies. A definite win for us. The human fleet again is brought down to a handful of ships.

2424: Bulrathis want more trade. I decline. Psilon transports inbound to Rha (28) I build some minnows to thin the herd. The rest of the garrison at Lyae is sent to reinforce.

A scout will arrive at Denubis to have a look to see if I should attack there or SOL next. This will also allow the secondary fleet to get in position (Human fleet can reach us in 1 turn and it takes 2 for ours to cover same distance).

2425: Vote: Opponent Humans: 4 + 4 Darlok (chosen unwisely) + 2 Bulrathi (chosen unwisely), we have 15, just short of half the votes we and the rest abstain.

Humans send fleet to Kailis and run into 3 missile bases and our secondary fleet, our primary fleet will arrive at Sol next turn.

2426: Battle for Sol, We lose a few guppies and a couple flounders but we own the skies over Sol. It has 107 Pop and 206 factories, so I will be shipping Pop from all over to take it. I start from 8 turns out so the next person will have the battle during their turn. They are only up hand lasers on us, but that could change in transit. I will be shipping as many as I think we can spare. I start with 38 from poor Vulcan (they aren't doing anything there anyway but building pop and the IIT from Humans will make this colony much more productive anyway).

2427: Small attack on our fleet over Sol, they ran for no losses. I take 25 each from Voltanis and Draconis and 20 from Zoctan to ship to Sol. Psilon troops due next turn @ Rha, I have a decent fleet there and a few missile bases. I don't think they will get anyone through.

2428: Psilon transports all destroyed! 25 more troops from Stalaz.

2429: Psilons gather a fleet of 4 unidentified Huges. A misclick skipped most of what I was doing this turn, but the only issue is that I misclick so the reinforcements from Dunatis will be a turn late (Shouldnt be needed to win, so it will just up pop).

2430: 25 from Dunatis and 10 more from Gion added to the mix.

Next player remember that Psilons due at Rha next turn and that Kailis can ship troops to Sol next turn. These should not be needed to win, but it will help Sol get up and running quickly so we can move on to other fronts since Humans should have very few tech left after we take Sol (PRNG permitting) and should want peace (they offered it at least once during my turnset). The Darloks are second to Psilons in tech and are not allied with anyone, whereas the other 3 are in a dynamic of trading alliances with one another (currently Bulrathi <- Alkari -> Psilon with Psilons and Bears not in alliance). Hopefully Darloks will have gained some decent weapon/force field techs.

A note, I checked after I saved that the Psilons are willing to trade Hand lasers for Range 6 (they have range 7) and some other techs that I am not sure they don't have a better alternative for already. This would make our invasion of Sol more effective. Others will trade various things for Stabilizers.

Good luck to the next person (Liq?), I did the best I could to give Rha a fighting chance, but don't be surprised to have our fleet smashed by superior firepower from the brains.

StuporMan
 

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Good job Stup! :goodjob:

BTW, the odds of not getting a tech this time are about 1.5% (assuming the same factory numbers), so we should at least get SOMETHING :rolleyes:

dathon
 
sigh, seriously just skip me as I'm saccing sleep now just to catch up on a few innocent SG's and coming home at midnight doesn;t help.

Same goes for the cats rebooted as I simply don;t have time to concentrate as to not embarrass myself.

Don;t count me out of the SG's, just merely skip this round. Can still root the team from work... erm I mean the stands!:dubious:

Cheers!
-Liq'd
 
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