OSG 10-- Meklar Mayhem

[Yuri2356]

Ok, starting off my turns.

First click of 'next' brings in IIT6. The only choices are IIT7, and Exoskeletons. I take the Exos to move us foreward, since T7 is an obvious waste. I also divert a bit of research towards weapons to help with the Ion stream projector.

Turn after that, the furry little gits down south declare war on us! I put a tick into defence on the three worlds on that front to help shore up defences while I redeploy ships. I crack open the design menu and find an unused design for a large ship:


Initially, it just had the two Heavy lasers, but since there was room I tacked on the two-shot stinger to beef up its alpha-strike in battle. I dub it, the "Lineholder".

Also, I throw togeather a fast Colony ship design for rushing in to claim destroyed worlds, and scrap the old LR lasers. (We only had 9 of them anyway.)

I set Meklon and Moring on building Lineholders, (each can manage one every other turn) I also split the fleet of sledges/Bombers at Draconis in half, sending a group to Kuthlos to prepare to advance on the kitties.

BCIII comes in, I can choose between Jammer 4 or 5. I take 5.

Lineholders are starting to come out of the shipyards, holding position up north for now, But I may send them south once the attack on the cats begins. Everyone else is at war with the Mrrshans, so this will be a slight plus for our realtions.

Cat ships attack Kulthoswith, Mediums with Heavy Ions cannons and one large with Hyper-Vs. Easy Prey. Their entire fleet is whiped out in three solvoes. Methinks the kittens won't last long if we advance.

Annother Mrrshan fleet arrives, two more large designs with Hyper-Vs and Lasers. *Yawn* They're soon reduced to a cloud of metal shards. It's obvious that the kittens can't handle what we're packing, So I send the five completed lineholders to the south. A colony ship has been prepared to take root on the first world we target. They only have mediums left in sight arround their worlds, I we don't take those someone else will. Though, with two turns left in my set, it'll fall to the next guy to oversee the attack.

For my final turn, Class V deflector comes in, and Class X planetary appears as an option. The other choice was repulsors. Weapons is at 13%, at the lineholders are about to arrive at the south.

Save:

 

[Zed-F]

I admit it, I'm confused. What is this Lineholder supposed to do? Why do we have a class V computer on a ship with no guns? Why are we even building ships with no guns? If you wanted a damage sponge, why isn't this a huge instead of a large?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[Liquidated]

yes that ship design confuses me as well. Needless to say not my own but large auto repair is needless without some serious armor superiority.

Also the batle computers with heavy lasers makes me

We we prolly better off with mediums or huge here until we get ahold of a real beam.


oh but score on the class X planetary shields

Really looks like the kitties are in trouble though here. Those ship designs make our heavy laser look current..

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Pre-turn: I note that the Silicoids have 4 huge and 16 larges 1 turn from Fieras. I decide that it will be fun to send whatever Silicoid ships survive the battle packing, after they've removed those pesky missile bases for us. The Cats have Shields 2 and Planetary shield 5, so the stingers are our best option for base killing. Even then, I'd like some fusion bombers to speed up our aquisition of planets. Weapons tech is at 13%, and I pump most of the rest into propulsion to get our engines to speed 5. With any luck, I can get both speed 5 and fusion bombs on my turn, and our new bombers can be designed. In the meantime, I send almost our entire fleet at Fieras. I only leave about 30 sledges and one lineholder at Draconis.

Speaking of that, what is up with the Lineholder?
Auto-repair on a large? It will only heal 22 per turn, not worth sacrificing the space. Even worse, the energy pulsar? It's nice when you can fit it onto a medium because you can get enough of them together for the pulsar to pack a punch, even then, I'm not a big pulsar fan, especially as our main competition prefers large and huge ships. The stabilizer is okay, but then there's no battle scanner

The real kicker is that with all the specials, there's only enough room for 1 (2-shot!) stinger and a couple heavy lasers.

I immediately halted Lineholder construction, and designed a Huge class ship to take real advantage of auto repair. For now, I set Meklon and Morrig to produce one in 7 turns, since I want to wait for the tech or spying to hit and redesign before they roll off the line (had to slow down Meklon). The current ship is mostly a placeholder, although I tried to design the best one I could in case one accidentaly gets made.

I upped our defense spending as well, I want front line planets to have double-digit bases, and Dolz still needs a shield.

Up spying against the Cats, as it's war, and I want their beams.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

2460: Fleets en route to Fieras.

2461: As expected, Sillys control Fieras airspace, losing 2 larges and their colony ship. I have 52 bombers and 86 sledges due next turn, and another 54 and 63 with 5 lineholders two turns later. I probably won't be able to take out all the Sillys, but I'll start wearing them down (and the Mrrshan also have ships inbound).

2462: Gah, forced to fight the Mrrshan first. 18 bases and 4 mediums. Sledges move in, fire at the planet. Planet targets bombers first, then sledges. Mrrshan only have HyperV, so sledges unload second volley while outside range of planet. I take out 10 bases with the first volley, and the rest with the second. Next turn everyone retreats with no losses, but I have no more ammo to throw at their mediums. Fleet heads to Collassa to regroup. They can come back just in time to meet the Silly transports inbound.

2463: Silly fleet chewed down to 1 huge, 12 larges. Mrrshans have impressive base building capability. My second fleet nears the target.

2464: No Mrrshan bases this time, and only one medium. Guess what it does? Now the Silly fleet. 1 Huge and 12 larges. I have no scanners! I target the Huge with the sledges, and could have killed it if I sent both racks at it immediately...damn auto repair. I was hoping to save something to throw at the mediums, and let the lineholders finish the Huge. Good news is that the Sillys only have missiles, and after expending their ammo, they retreat. We lost 10 sledges in the battle. Bombing kills 5 and 20 factories. The other half the fleet reaches Collassa and heads back to Fieras.

Ion Stream Projector hits. Scatter 7, Auto Blaster and Tachyon beam are new choices. I go back for fusion bombs. Propulsion just hit percentages, I keep priority on fusion bombs. I also set Kulthos to produce 27 bombers per turn to help bombard while I wait for fusion bombs.

2465: Sillys have a bigger fleet inbound 8 huges and 2 larges. This time our whole fleet will be there, should be enough for each sledge volley to take out a huge. Then it's back to dancing around until they run out of ammo.

2466: Mrrshan come up with a Huge ship from somewhere, it dies to one volley from the sledges plus one from the lineholders to finish the 28 health left. Their 4 mediums don't do so well either.

We get a low level steal from Meklars, Comps, Propulsion and Weapons. I go for comps because our spies need the help, get ECM2. We get caught, and lose the relations bonus we've gotten from bombing Cats.

I turn off ship production at Meklon and Morrig, who were at 1 turn (due to tech improvements). I redesign the placeholder so that the next tech advance doesn't pop one out by mistake (even with zero production into shipbuilding, if a design gets cheaper due to new tech, the ship will be built if the cost falls below what you've already spent). This is also why sometimes you get a bunch of scouts produced somewhere--if you scrap a design, a planet with a little money still in shipbuilding that was set to that design will revert to design number one, which might be cheaper than the stored production.

Weapons and propulsion are both in percents.

2467: Silicoid fleet arrives. They have 7 of the earlier Huges, 1 new Huge, and 2 larges. I had the sledges hit the new Huge first, good thing because it has graviton beams. One volley got it low enough for the Lineholders to finish. The second sledge volley took out another Huge. We lost some sledges as they retreated. The lineholders also suffered a few losses as they did their best to evade missile volleys. Turns out that inertial stabilizer was key. I tried using the pulsar, but it kept missing the Silly ships.

We get a low level steal from Mrrshan, Comps, Prop and Weapons. I go for weapons to weed out a lower level tech for next try, and get HyperV.

2468: Impulse drives are discovered. Warp Dissipator, Star Gates, Range 10 or Ion drives. I choose Range. Ion drives are only a 1 speed improvement and Star Gates don't strike me as a necessity. Dissipators don't advance the tree.

We are up to 20 pop, 63 factories per bombing at Fieras. Psilons complain about our size. They are still neutral, Sillys are peaceful.

I redesign the Huge and call it the Marauder. Since I have only two turns left, I hold off on completing so that Zed can tweak it if he wants (plus I'd rather have Fusion bombs instead of nukes filling in the excess space). Maybe we'll even steal a beam in time. I put Collassa and Kulthos on 3 sledges/turn to recover some of our losses. With the Sillys starting to tote beams, we'll need those huges, and lots of support from missile boats to hold onto Fieras when we finally get it. Fusion bombs are at 26% even with equalized techs, so we got unlucky there.

2469: Fusion bombs hit. I choose the auto-blaster. It was a tough choice. I could have gone Fusion beams for 1/2 price, or Gravitons for 20% less, but Auto-blaster advances the tree, and we have a chance of stealing gravitons from the Sillys, or Ion or Neutrons from Mrrshans. Fusion beams would have been quicker, but auto-blaster have much more punch. I designed a small fusion bomber. I debated building at Collassa and Kulthos, but figured we could use another 6 sledges, and I'll give Zed the chance to tweak (and the rest of you to comment) on the design.

2470: Scare some more Mrrshan mediums off Fieras.



Final version of the Marauder:



I go with Comp3, Shield2 instead of 5s because of the size. Same thing with maneuver of only 2. 2 is enough to bring the stingers in range of the planet first round, and speed 3 chews up 1000 space whether you do it via maneuver or IS. That's a lot of weapons. The auto-repair is good for 135 hp per turn, almost the entire health of a Lineholder. The battle scanner helps make up for the smaller comp, as it increases targeting, but more importantly it will tell us who to kill first, and when to retreat.

Main weapon is the 5 pack stinger launchers. They will be useful for either missile bases or large enemy ships. The scatters are for smaller ships, or lightly shielded larges. Heavy lasers because we don't have any other beams, and I'd hate to waste a missile volley on a lone Mrrshan medium. Fusion bombs are there to help with bombardment, or missile bases if the stingers leave a couple leftovers, and because they're small. Plus if they target our Huge instead of our bombers, all the better.

The stinger/scatter/laser combo allows us to go for multiple targets. Stingers have range 7 and scatters 5. That means you can fire stingers at something (like the planet) at range 6 or 7, then target a ship within range 5 with the scatters. Then the lasers can fire at something even closer. And after all three weapons fire, you could still use up your movement because of the bomb racks (or move in and fire at the planet).



Now for the Fusion bomber:



It's got the critical speed of 4 which gives it two turns to orbit. I had room for comp 3, so I added it to help with targeting and damage rolls. Duralloy armor cost 1 BC and zero space, so I took it. Going from maneuver 6 to 7 didn't even cost any BC, but upped the missile def 1.

Please offer any suggestions on these ship designs. I didn't get the engine tech until 2468 and fusion bombs came in 2469, so I held off building any until Zed's turn.

--Olorin

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

@Zed: I've turned Meklon and Morrig back to shipbuilding this turn. They will each finish a Marauder unless you change that. I left Kulthos and Collassa building Sledges, but you'll probably want to build some bombers.

Meklon is reloc'ing to Dolz because it is one turn, and I wasn't sure if Dolz was going to be one or two turns from Fieras with a warp 5 ship. It might save a turn if it is. Morrig couldn't get to Dolz in one turn, but can get to both Dolz and Kulthos in two. It's reloc'ed to Kulthos. The Morrig ship can be at Fieras in 3 turns, and the Meklon one in 2 (if lucky), otherwise in 3. I'd estimate that's also how many more bombing runs Fieras can withstand with its 53 remaining pop.

The Mrrshan fleet is gone. They have less than 20 bobcats left. One Huge or even a dozen sledges would be enough to escort a fusion bomb fleet and take down the rest of their worlds.

Our current fleet might be enough to hold Fieras, but you'll probably want to design a new missile boat with our new engines. Maybe a 5 shot version with good speed to dodge the Silly missiles. I would have put a design in, but we don't have anything left to scrap (though I'd suggest scrapping the Lineholder design once the Huges take over guard duty at Fieras--they are still the best option for absorbing Silly missile fire, since I'd rather lose a couple of those instead of 10 sledges).

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Roster:
Olorin << just played
Zed-F << up now
piR8 << on deck
dathon
Stuporman
Liquidated
Yuri

Good luck Emperor Zed! I had an eventful turn. It's nice to finally be on the offensive. And taking a terran 130 as our first conquest is very nice!

I noticed at the end of my turn that there's a good bit in the planetary reserve. That will come in handy to get Fieras stood up faster. Let's see, get 130 pop there, IIT6, that would be 65 production/6 per factory = 10 factories per turn, minus some for ships and spy maintenance costs. Not a bad start, especially if you double production with the reserve. Figure 3 turns to bomb, 1 to colonize, 2-3 turns to get the population there, by the end of the round Fieras could be off to a good start. Though we might want to slow down the planetary shield research so that Fieras only needs to build the class 5 before it can put up some bases.

 

[Liquidated]

The bomber makes me drool. tinys with max speed and fusion bombs against level 5+2(?) planetary shields?????? like using a blow torch on butter. Warms my heart to see my battle computers 3 tech choice in action. A mere 17 BC per bomber muhahahahaha. Who cares if they die, even uxmi can pump them out fast enough to replace lol.

As for the huge I'm not really an expert on the jumbos but seeing lasers on it makes me cry lol. Not much choice but like the staying power on the stingers and the scatters for flexibility. We really can use a better armor tech, another area we've gotten shafted tech choice wise.

As for weapons, imo the choice was autos or megabolts with either choice being the correct one. Autos are just the bomb when it comes to moderately shielded targets. I don't see anything getting real shields up any time soon plus autos advance the tech.

The advantage of megabolt would have been the time differential and their overall usefulness with advancing tech. Who can tell we might still end up picking them up.

Seems like the sledges still get the job done. Are better engines really required?

Great turnset. Lots of fun kitty bashing. Oh and the power charts are looking good.


oh another edit..

psilons have antimatter bombs so when push comes to shove we'll need fleet back up to kill off their bombers. Also, for some reason, your save game files still shows 0 views on it even after me downloading it olorin... shrug.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[StuporMan]

Good turnset Olorin. We can finally start expanding the empire again. It was quite a bit of bad luck having the Cats declare war. With a vote in 5 turns, I am not sure there is any way for us to avoid final war. With planet X's in the tree we should be good for survival for a long, long time, but our conquests will grind to a halt shortly after the AI's exchange their technology. This will especially show as the silicoids get the holes in technology that we have been exploiting filled. Ah, well, nothing to be done about that now. Our only hope would be to get the Psilons to attack the Silicoids, but that may violate the spectator wars clause and is likely to fail anyway since they are allies.

And I just read Liquid's post (he posted shortly before I clicked reply). Antimatter bombs make our class 10 +5 shields insufficient to contain the damage. Looks like we will be needing a real beam ship real soon. We probably need to prioritize getting the blasters. We will need a beam fleet to keep us from getting hit with scattered antimatter showers. At least we can get rid of the pretense that we might allow the other races to live in OUR universe.

StuporMan

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, looks like interesting times. We'll see how things turn out.

Maybe going back for repulsors to help contain those AM bombers (should they show up) would be a good idea. Repulsors are a great choice for auto-repair huges.

 

[StuporMan]

I am also a bit confused as to why our current huge design has lasers instead of an Ion Projector. Wouldn't the projector be more damaging to the large and huge ship designs? I know it takes quite a bit of space, but it would let us stand toe to toe with the new Silicoid Huges while we wait for a decent beam to come in.

edit: Also the Ion Projectors should never become completely obsolete. which is a plus.

StuporMan

 

[Yuri2356]

Woah, completely didn't notice the pulsar on that thing. Must have been a smudge on the 'ol retinas.

Was wondering why it had so little room for weapons... (Would only take a max of 5 Heavy lasers)

So, yeah, scrap it as soon as you need the space for a better ship.

 

[dathon78]

Maybe going back for repulsors to help contain those AM bombers (should they show up) would be a good idea.

I heartily second, thrid, and fourth that motion , especially in light of the upcoming vote, which will likely place us in final war, at which point EVERYONE will be running around with AM bombs...

dathon

 

[Zed-F]

Looking some more at the proposed designs....

The bomber is easy. Looks good except I would not add in Duralloy. Sure, it only costs 1. But on the other hand, whether we're at 3 HP or 4 HP, we're still in one-hit-one-kill range for our bombers. I'd consider spending money to put Zortrium armour on fighters, but I'd only put Duralloy on if it were free or if I knew I would be facing Graviton-armed opponents. Having 6% more fighters for the same money means having 6% more kills the enemy has to make and 6% more firepower.

The huge... well, I'm not sure. It looks more like a hammer than an anvil, despite the auto-repair. Repairing 135 hits in a round is not going to repel a serious assault, not with a defense of 1. I'm worried this design will drop quickly to any serious attack that gets tossed at it. If we want a hammer, wouldn't we be better advised to just redesign our missle boat? If we want an anvil, won't we need more ability to evade and/or shrug off enemy fire? I am tempted to dump the computer and weapons, and load up on specials and maneuver. Maybe we should wait for autoblasters and/or repulsor beams to build a huge ship.

Actually what I am thinking of doing is holding off on the huge altogether and just building a massive bomber fleet to scour the galaxy, probably using 2 identical bomber designs to ensure that one stack can get in place while the other draws planetary missle fire. If the AIs are squabbling to recolonize a bunch of burnt-out worlds, they won't have the time or range to bother us while we resettle the former Mrrshan worlds and slowly expand our borders. I would like to have a speed 5 ship with a scanner though. I'll see what I can come up with on my turns.

 

[pi-r8]

I have a question about combat. Is it possible to choose to fire only stingers or only scatter packs from a ship? Because, if it's not, the huge is going to have to waste its stingers against small ships, and waste its scatter packs against big, heavily shielded ships.

Also, I would suggest reducing the number of heavy lasers on it in favor of more missiles, or more defensive stuff. The reason being that heavy lasers are only going to be useful if they have nothing except just a few mediums or a handful of smalls, and in that case, they won't be able to get past the auto-repair, and will probably just retreat.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I did start to second guess the lack of maneuver on the Huges after I posted. Giving them speed would certainly help against the Silicoid Huges, and against planetary base fire. Even throwing on the Class5 shields could help them survive much longer. At first I was thinking in terms of firepower, but now I realize that even with several Huges, we couldn't knock out the Silicoid huges anyway. What we really need is a ship that can absorb or evade their initial missile barrage, and then outlast whatever beam weapons they have left. A higher maneuver would help there too. Now I'd recommend making an ARS Huge with speed 3 or 4, perhaps class 5 shields, and maybe the stream projector if there is room. At least the stream damage can't be healed by auto-repair. One of those would should be enough to hold Fieras, especially if supported by sledges and a new class of missile boats (5 rack launchers?).

If you decide not to use any Huges yet, you can get your battle scanner by redesigning the colony ship. After we found Fieras, we won't have any left, and we'd want to make a new one with Warp5 anyway. You can even throw a few bombs on it and try to draw enemy fire.

Whatever you decide, Meklon and Morrig have plenty of stored up ship building to work with.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

@piR8: There is no way to toggle for only one kind of missile to fire. You can get the missiles to fire on separate targets if you work the range--fire at something that the scatters can't reach, and only the stingers launch. Then fire on something within scatter range, and they will fire. I should have put more speed on the ship to make that feasible though.

The ability to control the fire of each weapon was definitely one of the improvements made in Moo2.

 

[Zed-F]

When I inherited the game, we had a war we didn't really want with the kitties, and were facing a vote due to arrive in 5 turns, at which point the galaxy could be united against us. On the diplo front, things were looking decidedly peaceful aside from the war with the kitties. If we continued on the course we were on, final war seemed inevitable.

So I decided to stir the pot a little. Knock some heads. Mix things up.

Inherited turn: I redesign most of our navy. We only have a few of those larges left. I scrap them. I also scrap our obsolete nuclear bombers, leaving only our existing Sledge fleet and our colony ship. I'd like to scrap that colship design too and modernize it to Impulse drives and include a scanner, but for now we need it. I do create the modernized colony ship design, but don't scrap the old one. I also find myself needing a quick medium with a battle scanner, and upgrade the sledge design with impulse drives to do so. I don't intend to build a lot of these; they are mainly there to get some scanners out the door and onto ships quickly.

I redesign the small bombers to remove the Duralloy, but otherwise make no changes to them; they're good as is. I do make a duplicate identical design so we can have 2 stacks. As for the huge... what huge? I skip on the huge for now, and decide to use the built-up shipyard points for something else. The dockyard workers arm themselves with blowtorches and begin cutting the huge hulls into many smaller pieces.

I also ask the Psilons to cancel their alliance with the Silicoids. They agree. Next turn I ask them to declare war on the Silicoids. They agree to backstab their former allies.

Wait a minute! What about the no spectator wars clause?

This is no specator war. The Mrrshan brush wars just got escalated into Galactic War I.

Turn 2 Interturn: 400 fusion bombers pound across the Silicoid-Meklar border. They level Proxima.
Turn 3: Artemis, a size 80 toxic ultra-rich, is levelled. I find out the Silicoids do in fact have a huge with graviton beams. (Doh!) However, there's only one of it that I can see, and it's only got an attack rating of 4 to our bombers' defense rating of 9. We take survivable losses.
Turn 4: Paladia is levelled.
Turn 6: Obaca is mostly levelled. It is finished on turn 7.
Turn 8: Rigel is levelled.

During the melee, the vote happened. The kitties, furious with us for our bombardment of Fierias, threw in their lot with the silicoids, as expected. However, our new allies of convenience, the Psilons, voted for us. We scraped by the vote, once again avoiding final war. All that goodwill we accrued by beating up on the kitties had served its purpose. The Psilons eventually offered an alliance after we'd glassed a few Silicoid worlds; I decided that would not be within the spirit of the variant -- we are xenophobic -- so I declined.

We've taken some losses to our bomber fleets during this conflict, but Meklon and Morrig have made good on replacements. The Silicoid missle bases can't destroy many of our bombers on each sortie, but they do destroy some. They have ECM V and it is making a significant dent in the effectiveness of our bombers, which only have Mk III computers. To really blitz with no casualties on our side, we would need a better bomb and/or a better computer. Either will require more tech and miniaturization. Late in the turn, I started running out of places I could reach with our bomber fleet on the silicoid front. If you need to go on the offensive again with it, be careful not to strand it. We will either need more range tech or more colonies up north to extend our range. I placed an optimistic throw-away colony on Artemis, hoping that with all the enemy worlds nearby glasses, we might be able to squeak in claim to the planet. No such luck; a silicoid attack fleet is on the way and will wipe the place out in a few turns. I did not bother to send any pop there; the world will be easily retaken once we can field a defense force for it. The colony also got us contact with the Klackons, which we will probably lose soon, at least for a while.

Since we smoked a bunch of Silicoid worlds, they sent a single attack at our point world, Draconis. A fleet comprised of several huges so it at least looked like it had the potential to be scary. I crash-built a bunch of missle bases there but needn't have bothered; they didn't bring anything which could penetrate the planetary shield.

On the kitties' front... the timing there just didn't work out. Without actual bombers, it takes too long to whittle down planetary population, and most of the bombers were up north pasting the silicoids. I did build a couple hundred for the Mrrshan front over several turns, and eventually wiped Fierias, but it took too much time. Every time I considered landing our colony ship, either there were already Mrrshan troop transports inbound, or a fair-sized Silicoid fleet was enroute. Fortunately, the Silicoids have left so we should be able to claim Fierias now, so long as we keep enough Sledges there to shoot down possible incoming troop transports. I also prepped Vox for our conquest while I was waiting, and have some colony ships built/building for the rest of Mrrshan space. Watch out for the fleet of Mrrshan troop transports enroute to Vox, though; we probably want to settle the planet after they leave, unless you think you can destroy them all before they land.

On the tech front, things are slow going. We have a lot of expenses: ship maintenance is about 10%, plus we are spending a lot of money on spying and spy defense. We really need a bigger economy, and if we'd got any decent planetology picks since Terraforming +20, we would have it. I managed a couple tech thefts but didn't acquire anything remarkable. I would like to try to keep more of our worlds on research and fewer on shipbuilding now that our ship maintenance is in the double digit range. But that may not be possible if we want to claim new worlds in the short term.

I'm thinking if we wipe a bunch of worlds and spam colony ships everywhere, we might be able to keep a couple planets long enough to build significant defenses. Especially in Mrrshan space, where we have our big fleet of Sledges to help protect our planets. I would really like to claim Artemis as well but it will be tricky to time the arrival of a fleet and colony ship for when we can have enough time to stand up the planet... either that, or get the right tech and ship design together to build that huge we've been talking about.

Save is attached.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Roster:
Olorin
Zed-F << just played
piR8 << up now
dathon << on deck
Stuporman
Liquidated
Yuri

Nice work on the diplo front Zed

It's about time that we knocked the Silicoids back. 5 worlds gone will hurt them pretty good, especially that ultra-rich 80. And they won't be able to resettle with our bomber fleet on the prowl. Now I'm very glad that I beelined to Fusion bombs and Impulse drives.

As for Fieras, I recommend colonizing it, and relying on the sledges to hold off an attack. They can take out at least one Huge, so if they bring their graviton ship, we can kill that one, and dodge the missiles from their older models. Meanwhile, our bomber fleet can use the range from Fieras to glass Rotan, Nordia, Cryslon, and anything else in range. The Silicoid have the same range as us, so taking out all the planets in range of Fieras will prevent them from attacking it again. There is the risk that if we lose Fieras we strand the bombers out of range. But because the Silicoid fleet moves so slow, we can just make sure that the bomber fleet is headed back towards safety anytime a Silicoid attack is about to arrive at Fieras.

We also have Range 10 in the pipe from Propulsion. If we can get that to come in before the next vote...there might not enough planets left to hold the vote

 

[Liquidated]

yah great turn set zed glassing the sillys was keen but setting up the psilons as buddies was golden!

Seriously that bomber did a ton of good, fusion bombs came in just in the nick for some serious hurt.

Cheers!
-Liq