MOO2 Humans - Remembering How to Play

Harv · Aug 8, 2012

Spoilers are put in to divide up the dialoge and make the post look shorter.

General Events:

Spoiler :

Exploration: ISP1 continues its ongoing mission.

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Production:

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Research has been as follows:

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So expansion has been more sideways than might be ideal. I suppose a Hyperspace Flux might have that effect.
Here is a look at our colonies:

Earth right now is the center of research. There is also a secret project to suddenly develop a space fleet capable of defeating that Giant Space Amoeba.

Echidna is the bread basket and the center of commerce. There will be a limited production of Colony Ships since it also the center of expansion.

Telum 2 after it is terraformed will be for producing space ships.

Mercury is feeding the population boom on Echidna. Then it will feed Telum.

Venus is building up whenever there are funds available. This will go a bit faster as soon as there is a robo miner plant working.

Here is a map of the galaxy:

The next target is Vega. A few Destroyers should easily defeat that pesky Giant Space Amoeba.
Vega will be the production central for ships.

We still have only contact with the Sakkra and relations seem good. I note that out of my current 40BC surplus, 10 come from a Megawealthy Captain, and 19 come from trade with the Sakkra.

scratchthepitch · Aug 9, 2012

Harv

Do you have interceptors? If you do, then a cheap way to knock out that amoeba is with about 6-8 destroyers armed with interceptors. Vega looks close enough to not need the extended fuel tanks, so the only special you will need is battle pods. Dump the shield for the extra space also and then fill the ship with as many interceptors as you can. Any space left over can be filled with whatever missile you have that will fit. Any of these destroyers hit by the amoeba will be destroyed, so no sense in wasting space for defenses. If you have scout lab, this will help. You can build a couple of destroyers of the group to a slightly different design with scout lab and interceptors. Or if there is room on these destroyers to have scout lab without sacrificing an interceptor, then go ahead and put scout labs on all 6-8 destroyers.

If you don't have interceptors, use the best mirv'd missile instead and maybe build a couple extra extra destroyers to be sure.

When in the attack screen, you'll probably lose 1 destroyer before your round since the amoeba will be moving first. What I do on my first round is fire off the interceptors, then turn my ships away, starting with the outer ships first, to clear space for the ships next in. The amoeba will probably destroy another ship on its 2nd round, then the interceptors should connect with and destroy the amoeba.

Harv · Aug 9, 2012

No Interceptors - I took the Reinforced Hull. I can check with the Sakkra to see what they have.

My current design is:

Amoeba Buster
Cost: 196
Fusion Drive
Tritanium Armor, 20hp
No Shield, No Computer
Battle Pods
6x2 MIRV Nukes for 2 Round of Damage at 192.

Three of these should kill that Amoeba with one salvo. For 208 I can make those nukes Fast and maybe the whole salvo will hit in one round and I lose only one destroyer.

I plan to build up the fleet a few turns before the Colony Ship is ready then send it off.

EDIT: I am trying to decide if a Space Academy is worth it on Earth before I build the small fleet. I am inclined against it because these are missile destroyers and they do not need experience. They can get it from an Instructor I guess.

scratchthepitch · Aug 9, 2012

Harv said:
No Interceptors - I took the Reinforced Hull. I can check with the Sakkra to see what they have. 6x2 MIRV Nukes for 2 Round of Damage at 192.

I'd forgotten that mirv'd missiles take up about twice the space in my mod. Those missile destroyers should do the trick. :lol:

If you use 5, that should give you some leeway and make sure of a kill the first round. If you move your ships towards the amoeba, then fire the missiles, they should all hit on the amoeba's next round. You shouldn't need fast missiles for that.

Harv said:
I plan to build up the fleet a few turns before the Colony Ship is ready then send it off.

I usually include the colony ships in the attack fleets (colony ships don't appear in the combat). That way I save some turns starting the colony and don't run the risk of an AI snatching up the planet (it's happened :mad:

). If there is more than one juicy planet, then I send along additional colony ships.

Harv said:
EDIT: I am trying to decide if a Space Academy is worth it on Earth before I build the small fleet. I am inclined against it because these are missile destroyers and they do not need experience. They can get it from an Instructor I guess.

The space academy gives the ships 50 experience to start, instead of 0. The experience doesn't help with missiles, but if you decide to upgrade the ships later into beam ships, that extra 50 experience is nice. The boost is more important with larger ships than destroyers. I usually build the academy before I begin building ships, if I got it, since the ships also gain experience faster in systems that have an academy.

I usually don't go after the monster systems till I've colonized all the other worthwhile ones, since the AI tends to grab some of these while I'm busy building a fleet. But in your situation, there doesn't appear to be many good systems explored. If you outpost Waage, you'll likely meet the race in the bottom right corner, and perhaps find a worthwhile uncolonized system. Colonizing Indus and Phantos will open up more systems. Outposting or colonizing Ponnuki will do the same. Vega is safely yours right now without colonizing it, because the AI will be a long time getting to it. There might be some good systems reachable that can still be snatched up before the AI gets them. If it was me, I would be building colony ships to expand some more, and probably a cruiser or a battleship as insurance against an AI attack. Though playing at regular level, the AI aggressiveness may be low enough you wont need a large ship yet.

Harv · Aug 9, 2012

This segment of our adventure in galactic space takes features our first real space battle.

General Events:

Spoiler :

Research:

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Production:

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2494 The Battle for Vega

Spoiler :

Here is a map of the galaxy in our present situation.

Here is a look at our colonies.

Earth is still our center of Research.
Echidna has the extra Scientist, but is instead the center of Commerce.
Tellum is going to build a planet out of that Asteroid Belt and then build a Colony Base.
Mercury when terraformed will be a center of research.
Venus is the planet of love and fertility.
Vega, with the Natives, will become the bread basket - and also the Ship Yard.

Immediate Plans:
I intend to hire Tellik.

I probably should have expanded outward instead of sideways. However I am working colonies at a pace at which I can develop them.
On the other side, this map does seem to lend itself to slow and peaceful expansion. Losing 100RP to a Virus when generating nearly 500RP is a sign.

There are two systems that I am supposed to explore. I will make a note and do that. It might reveal something better than my current plan.

Maybe I should grab the Heightened Intelligence to make my rate of research more ridiculous.

scratchthepitch · Aug 10, 2012

Harv said:
I probably should have expanded outward instead of sideways. However I am working colonies at a pace at which I can develop them.
On the other side, this map does seem to lend itself to slow and peaceful expansion. Losing 100RP to a Virus when generating nearly 500RP is a sign.

I just noticed that Humans have a federation government instead of the regular democracy. Is this game you are playing a mod where the government name was changed, or did the Humans begin the game with the Federation bonuses? The research list still has federation as something that can be researched.

It looks like you have a very solid core now and are ready to explode outwards. Your obvious tech advantage should help in that direction, but by waiting on expansion, you may have lost out on some systems. I would go full blast on colony ship production and put research on the back burner.

I continued with the game I started from your save. You might find it interesting as a comparison, since I took an expansion direction instead of concentrating on research. This puts me quite a distance behind you in tech. I've taken the game to 3520.2 so far.

Vega was colonized on 3518.5, at which time I already had 9 colonies in 8 different systems. And I still have not got around to colonizing Venus and Mercury. As far as population goes, our games are about equal, I had about 50 around 3519.5. But since I have not gotten the radiation shield and terraforming techs, none of my planets have been terraformed and also the population is not concentrated on just a few planets, but more spread out. I've met 4 of the races, of which 3 I have non-aggression pacts, trade and research treaties with. The 4th alien race is repulsive. To catch up with techs I missed out on, and get a few I still had not reached, I have done extensive tech trading with those AI's. This has netted about 12 extra techs and some very good relations. Right now I can produce around 200 research points a turn without using any pop as scientists.

The first council vote was on turn 3518 and I was ranked 2nd most populous. Sakkra were first, with more than twice my pop rating in the votes. In tech, on the info graph, I'm among the top 3.

My ship construction has been 1 cruiser, 3 destroyers and 3 frigates. Besides the 9 colony ships and 1 colony base. I built the cruiser in case the repulsive race got ideas, but I need more, since their fleet is about 3 times mine on the info graph. The frigates were initially cheap scouts and the destroyers were for Vega. I was going to build more destroyers to attack Vega, but my command points were already deep in the red. So I had to settle for the bare minimum. Right now I'm building a couple more colony ships and putting star bases on all the older colonies to raise command points.

My scouts became surplus in 3516.8, when I hired a leader with Galactic Lore, so I upgraded them into missile/fighter killers. The destroyers are armed with missiles, like yours. The cruiser has 1 regular mass driver, 1 interceptor and 4x2 shot mirv'd nuke missiles. The interceptor serves 2 purposes. They can attack missiles and other fighters, besides ships. For defense, it has heavy armor and reinforced hull (both tech trades). My computer tech is still bottom tier, so I'm still relying upon missiles, mostly, with beams meant mostly to defend against missiles and fighters.

The repulsive race has been quiet, without their attitude dropping. That must be due to the regular settings. On impossible, their attitude quickly goes to feud and they usually attack within a couple dozen turns if you don't have a strong fleet to oppose them. The other 3 races have been excellent helpers, adding to techs, research and taxes. The last 2 I've been relying upon, since my own research and tax infrastructure has been lagging due to the emphasis on expansion.

One of the things that has slowed me down is I have hired every leader who has appeared. All had very useful stuff, but no free techs, unfortunately. They've boosted both planet production and farming, and Karg had Galactic Lore. This has cost around 30 turns when I bumped up taxes, and slowed production, to save money to hire several of these leaders. That probably slowed expansion by a couple of colony ships, therefore, a couple of new systems. I leave 1 leader slot for each planet and ship types, so additional leaders will show up. When somebody shows up with better traits, I hire them and dismiss the weakest leader.

Whenever a planet reaches max population, I'll sent that last pop to a developing planet. This keeps all the planets producing population, while not reducing their potential due to transfer caused depopulation. I had to pass on cloning centers, so pop rate is still slow and so far nobody wants to trade it.

I've not spied yet, to avoid bad relations (and war with the more powerful repulsive race), and surprisingly, not been spied upon as far as I know. I have 2 agents and not lost any.

The map appears to be unusual in that there are a lot of poor to very poor planets near the Humans and there are not many low or high gravity planets. The GNN random events have hit the Sakkra pretty bad, they've had 3 negative events. They have also been in 3 wars. The first war, they captured 2 of 3 of a race's systems, and I thought that race would get knocked out. But soon after the 2nd capture, the Sakkra fleet was reduced to almost nothing. They had a good sized fleet on the info graph and I think they made a go at that 3rd system and got wiped out. Later the 2 systems they captured were reduced to uninhabited, so the race they were fighting apparently counterattacked and killed everybody on the planets. The Sakkra then went to war with another, but I no systems changed hands or were killed off. Then they and a 3rd race went to war and one of that 3rd race's systems was killed off. This is where it stands now. So while the AI have been very pleasant to the Humans, they are chopping each other up.

Harv · Aug 11, 2012

This is Version 1.4b23 from Gog. My government is regular Democracy. If you have Galactic Federation, are you sure you did not get this from Tanus the Revolutionary?

General Events:

Spoiler :

Research:

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13 Colonies Total in 8 Systems
Production and Colony Description:

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2529 here is where it gets interesting......

Spoiler :

So this is the map of the Galaxy in the year 2530.

This is our diplomatic situation. I was going to gear up for the Silicoids but suddenly they surrendered their 5 Systems to the Psilons 3 Systems.
There is room in the Galaxy for one more race.

So any ideas on what I should build to take out the Space Hydra?
I might go with a bunch of those Destroyers. If I build a bigger ship it is going to need shields. We are not that far from Class 5.

The expansion plan mostly involves building. If we can afford to Terraform, we terraform. If not, then we can stop at Robo Miner Plants and build Population.

Another Scout Ship, ISP2 should be able to find Orion soon. When we find Orion, I will get ideas on what will take out the Guardian.

Harv · Aug 11, 2012

This round got cut short by an Election.

2531 We build the ISP2 on Echidna. Mercury builds a Holo Simulator.
The Meklar and Psilon go to war.

2532 Spy on Echidna. Colony Ship on Telum 2. Robo Miner Plant on Indigo. Auto Factory on Ponnuki.

2533 Warp Interdictor Technology Discovered.
Sparky wants to join again.
Telum Prime terraformed to Swamp.

2534 Spy on Echidna

2535 Explored Jabo System - Elerians have Large Barren Poor Gems Planet.
Mercury builds a Spaceport. Telum 2 another Colony Ship. Telum 1 Soil Enrichment.
Vega 2 builds Robo Miners. Vega 3 builds Auto Factory.

2536 Explored Draconis System. The other planet is Medium Tundra Poor.
Colonized Arietus Prime. Earth built the Artifical Planet on Jupiter. Indus built the Robotic Factory.

The First Galactic High Council Meets and ballots are cast to elect a Supreme Leader.

10 Votes from the Sakkra for Caesarrus Rex

The Alkari abstain for 2 Votes.

6 Votes from the Psilons for the Humans
5 Votes from the Gnolam for the Humans
3 Votes from the Meklar for the Humans
2 Votes from the Elerian for the Humans
9 Votes from the Humans for the Humans
25 Votes Total out of 37 Total

So.....

The alternative was to abstain to keep the game going while we take out Orion and build a fleet to defeat the Antarans who did not make a single appearance. We were planning to take the Space Hydra and the Artifacts with this:

Vega could build this every 8 turns and we were not far from Class 5 Shields.

I might try again on Hard with either the same or a different race. I do not remember how the game jumps going to Hard or Impossible. I do remember seeing a bunch of interesting extra picks for the Alien Races.

scratchthepitch · Aug 12, 2012

Harv

That was quick. :lol:

But an entertaining read. Thanks for posting it up.

Thanks also about the info about Tanus. I'd forgotten he had techs. Which is stupid on my part, considering the work I did trying to change his techs in a mod a couple of years ago. He is one of the few leaders who have hard-coded techs that don't change when the data in the HERODATA.lbx file is changed.

It's also good to know that saves from your newer version of the game are compatible with my old version. I'm using the original cd version from the 90's with the 1.31 patch.

When I played your save, I got a similar council vote win at 3530. All the others voted for the Humans. I had friendly relations and treaties with all of them by 3528, the last contacted being the Psilons. The Sakkra were still engaged with their 3 wars, so they probably weren't too popular with the others.

All the tech trades I did with the AI kept their attitude ratings very friendly, and probably netted the Humans more techs than they researched themselves. Sometimes I made as many as 4-5 trades with the same race in a single diplomatic encounter. The Humans at that time had 19 colonies, spread among 16 systems (one shared with the Sakkra) and a population of 81.

I went back to a save the turn previously and played the game for about 35 more turns. The Humans population increased to 132 by that time, with 24 colonies in 19 systems.

The Antarans made their appearance at 3525.6. One frigate which splatted against the wall of Telum's defenses 4 turns later.

In a prewarp game, Antarans don't show up till around 3525, about 100 turns later than their usual debut in a game with an average start. I don't know when they appear in an advanced start game, I've never played that start.

Your "Hydra Killer" should do the job. :lol:

But those missile destroyers you used before would also work. Hydra's have 3 weapons, doing 60 damage each. I'm not sure if these weapons have the enveloping mod. A zortium armored destroyer has 40 armor and 40 hull, so it should survive a hit, if the weapons are not enveloping. If they are, just use 3 more destroyers. Seven would probably be enough.

At the time I stopped playing, I was going monster busting with destroyers. I was using an early missile armed type similar to yours, armed with 5 mirv'd, ecm'd, 2 shot nuke missiles (these had scout labs to boost damage 20%). The latest model of these used 4 mirv'd, ecm'd, 2 shot merc. missiles. A second later type had 2 interceptors and 1 mirv'd, ecm'd, 2 shot nuke missile. This fighter armed ship proved very effective once I had phasors. Four of them took down a dragon, with one loss. By that time I had enough movement I was able to come alongside the dragon, so the fighter and missile damage I did to it was immediate and the combat was over in the first turn.

When the game is played at the regular level, the AI doesn't challenge the player much at all. They are not aggressive, slow to expand and easy to do diplomacy and treaties with. The AI just kind of sits there, waiting for the player to attack. At the impossible level, they are more aggressive and less likely to do tech trades. They also get 1 or 2 get additional traits. I also think the leader appearance rate is reduced. It's a much better game.

One thing I had forgotten about, since I've been modding the game for several years and exclusively playing these mods, is how weak the monsters are. And also how unbalanced missiles were in player use. These things I changed long ago so that a few missile destroyers are no longer enough to kill a monster.

neilkaz · Aug 15, 2012

Harv, this was a well played easy win. I hope you try a Human game on a higher setting. I think they are a good enough race to jump to Impossible and still give you good chances.

Harv · Aug 15, 2012

If I play Impossible, then I might have to stop at some break points and get some more advice from the crowd. If I remember correctly, the jump to Impossible is about coming back from behind.

There will be races like Sakkra, Klackon, and Silicoid that spam colonies and will be about ten systems by the time we meet them.

I am up for trying!

scratchthepitch · Aug 15, 2012

Since you like to research a lot, you might like playing the Psilons. They are creative so they get every tech in each field they research, not just the usual one tech. They are +2 at research and have an artifact home. Very good "builder" race for a "rusty" player. A more challenging game might be played using Elerians. These two races are what I liked playing the most in the stock game.

neilkaz · Aug 17, 2012

scratchthepitch said:
Since you like to research a lot, you might like playing the Psilons. They are creative so they get every tech in each field they research, not just the usual one tech. They are +2 at research and have an artifact home. Very good "builder" race for a "rusty" player. A more challenging game might be played using Elerians. These two races are what I liked playing the most in the stock game.

Psilons got nerfed a bit in one of the patches that raised the cost of Creative from 6 to 8 pts and now have large HW rather than Arti HW. That being said they are certainly one of the top civs. The only real problem they'll have on Impossible is if they roll a bad start and have issues early on with aggressive enemies making war before they've teched enough to have decent production and better ships.

Harv · Aug 17, 2012

Okay - Psilons are coming up by popular demand!

MOO2 Humans - Remembering How to Play

Harv

Emperor

scratchthepitch

King

Harv

Emperor

scratchthepitch

King

Harv

Emperor

scratchthepitch

King

Harv

Emperor

Harv

Emperor

scratchthepitch

King

neilkaz

King

Harv

Emperor

scratchthepitch

King

neilkaz

King

Harv

Emperor

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