OSG 12 - All Your Rocks are Belong to Us!

Dath <--- On Deck
Zed
Stup <--- played
Liq <--- skipped
Olorin <--- UP NOW
Str00ld3 (missing) <--- autoskip?
 
One more comment I forgot to mention from the end of my turnset, the Bulrathi are building up a respectable fleet of large ships near our 3 isolated colonies in the northeast. This is also where the Psilon's have been testing our defenses. We probably want to pump defenses there heavily for a while to ensure we keep them.

StuporMan
 
Hey all,

I thought I might have time to get my turns in yesterday, but it didn't happen. I've got my oral exam for grad school Tuesday, so I won't be able to do my turn until Wednesday. If anyone else wants to take a swing at it before then, be my guest.

Olorin
 
Good luck with your exam Olorin. We're rooting for you!

StuporMan
 
Pre-turn:

Sol is going to be taken out in 4 turns. I would trade someone for Hand Lasers, except that we don't trade with inferior lifeforms.

I see that we don't have any reserves, and I want to build some up to be able to pump bases out of planets when they have fleets inbound. I take Cygni, Reticuli, and Xendalla off shipbuilding and put them into reserve pumping. Their ships were taking a long time to reach the front anyway. I also moved all the relocs to Kailis from Dunatis.

Checking our records, I see that the next largest Human colony is Escalon, which will be my next target after Sol.

I also put a click into spying for all races. I want to get a peek at what they've got. Once we take some computer tech from the Humans, we may be able to start spying elsewhere.

2430: I chase 4 Human larges away from Sol, and kill off 1 missile base.
Psilons show up at Rha with 4 Dark Stars.



I offer them a stack of Minnows to chew on while the Guppies unload their missiles. The Psilons manage to retreat the last one intact.

2431: Kailis adds 16 pop to the attack on Sol (we will have 185 to their 110). More Humans ships show up and run away from Sol.

2432: I send the fleet from Kailis and half the fleet from Sol toward Escalon. Hopefully the Humans will stop running away, or their fleet is going to get big again. Humans send 4 larges to Sol again. This time they stay and fight. We trade one of our larges for two of theirs before they run. Humans also attack Kailis. They bring 4 of their faster Warships (large with Neutron blasters and NPGs). And one of their slower models. They take out the 10 Guppies and 3 of the 4 bases before the last one is blown up. Their beams can get past our bases shields and do small amounts of damage. I reject peace with Strader.

2433: Ursa has launched it's fleet at Rha. They have 2 Huges and 8 Larges. I reserve pump Rha for more bases. Other reserves to Kailis to replace its bases. We get a peek at the Alkari tech. Switching to espionage.



Our fleet arrives at Escalon. It is defended by 5 Warships, 2 Escorts and 17 missile bases. We have 6 Flounders and 286 Guppies. We lose 5 Flounder and xx Guppies, but take out all the missile bases, 3 Warships and 1 Escort.

We take Sol, losing 95 troops. We discover Hand Lasers, Death Spores, Sub-lights, IIT8, and NPG.

Darlocks, Alkari and Psilon protest our expansion.

2434: We get a peek at the Darlock tech. They have Fusion beams, and nasty bombs, but no missiles.



I use the Human tech to design a NPG popgun called the Stinger. I upgrade our missile boat to Barracuda, with manuever 3.

Bulrathis attack.



Claws are the only ones without Gats, so our new NPG popguns will take it out. Missile ships/bases will focus on the Tooths, as the Warbear can't hurt our bases and the Rhino has auto-repair, and can't touch the bases once its missiles run out. We take out the Claw and 7 Teeth, losing mostly Minnows who drew enemy fire. Once our ships retreated, so did the Bulrathi. We need better missiles or a lot more than 7 bases to really take on their fleet.

Spies steal BC2 from the Humans.

2435: Sol has refitted, I put some toward Terraforming and some to defense spending there.

2436: Humans get a Derelict event. Our fleet from Escalon is back. I send them for a second attack. Unfortunately, it's unexplored, so I can't get the troops underway. Instead I send some at Kailis and Sol, due in 3 turns, so I can launch attacks from there and get repopped immediately.

Bulrathi tech



2437: Just how many techs does someone get from a Derelict? Here is the Human tech now...



Fleet arrives at Escalon. No new bases, just 3 Escorts and 3 Warships. They run. Humans have 100 pop, 194 factories.

2438: Sol and Kailis send 82 troops, they will get repopped next turn. I send another 40 troops from 3 turns out, they will get reinforced from a second wave from Sol and Kailis. I leave some ships to guard Escalon, but forward most of the fleet and all the new ships at Kailis to Denubius. I want to try to kill off a good chunk of the Human fleet, and hopefully take down their bases before they get a planetary shield up.

Repel a small attack at Kailis, destroying 4 Human larges.

2439: Sol and Kailis send a second wave of 60 additional troops.

Denubius has 7 bases--shield only level 5 :)
They also have 7 larges for defense. Denubius has 74 factories and 39 pop.

82 troops land on Escalon and kill 69 Human defenders. They have 31 left, and we have another 104 troops inbound. We should take it next turn.

2440: There is a Psilon fleet near Ursa that is heading towards our trio of planets. I can't tell which one is the target. Watch out for their beams, they penetrate our shields pretty easily. The next emperor should probably try to get troops onto Denubis ASAP. If they finish their planetary shield, and get a base up, we won't be able to scratch it with our current weapons. If you can get to Phantos fast enough, we might be able to genocide the Humans, but if they get a shield up, we'll just have to isolate Phantos and keep our defenses up. I've got spies operating against both the Alkari and Humans. The other races have too much CPU tech on us, though we'll have to attempt the Bulrathi when we get the Humans ISS, because they will be the only viable target for increasing our computer tech.

We have one empty design slot to use when we take more tech from Escalon. Either anti-matter bombs or torps will give us the ability to hit shielded planets at least. We might also need to build a ship with death spores to whittle down population before our troops arrive (especially when we try to fight the Bulrathi).
 

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I would trade someone for Hand Lasers, except that we don't trade with inferior lifeforms.

And score one rules violation for me :cry: :shake:

I didn't even catch it until now. I traded Stabilizers to the Psilons for Personal Deflector Shields. At the time, I was equating trading with commerce trade, not tech trades, and the tech was below lvl 10 so it didn't set off any alarms there. :crazyeye: Consider me chastised :spank:

Also, looks like I'm up by the original roster, but maybe Zed and I should switch permanently now that we've done it once? Seems early for me to be playing again.

dathon
 
Actually I noticed the rules violation but really was too tired to find the proper smilie set....


:sheep: :whipped:
dance!

or

:spank:
just a plain spank.

It happens dath :) at least is was a trade WORTH the pain hahahaah.

Was it sirian that said
"if you are going to accidentally break the rules at least make it bold tasting" or wait that was a BBQ sauce. nm.

oh and We discover "Hand Lasers, Death Spores, Sub-lights, IIT8, and NPG"

IMO that makes up for the wunderkin roll we got on the first human world.

sublights and npgs alone mean a *vast* upgrade to the guppy to add hand lasers (that's how we trade for tech!) and iit8 is icing. Adding in Death spores is really nice as well as we really have no reason not to use them soon enough.

Good stuff.

Cheers!
-Liq'd <--- only one D this time!
 
Um, you want me to be up? Ok... I'll get it sometime this weekend. Not sure when exactly. If you want to go ahead and take your turns anyway, that's fine with me.
 
Executive Summary:

The humans posed no further threat and were easily wiped out over the first 5-6 turns of the decade. We managed to get Improved Scanners, Class V deflectors, and Class V planetary shields from Escalon, which was sufficient to save Primordius from the Psilon attack fleet (which would have otherwise nuked the place.) After a couple cold war attacks there were repelled, the Psilons have since been quiescent. A pic of techs acquired from the humans is attached.

I scrapped our obsolete fighter designs (most of which were destroyed during my turns) and came up with some new ones: an Ion Cannon fighter and an Anti-matter Bomb fighter. Unfortunately I couldn't fit a computer on the latter, so it's not going to be super-effective against enemies with lots of ECM technology. A picture of our new fleet and designs is attached.

Our new construction is relocating mostly toward Romulas, and the bulk of our warp 3 missle boats has headed there as well. The bulk of our fleet is old warp 2 design which have taken longer to make their way back from human space, and have just arrived at Stalaz. We have a small fleet of warp 3 missle boats at Primordius, but our defenses there are mostly in the form of bases. A picture of the extent of our front lines is attached.

I reallocated espionage according to our new anticipated next target, that being the Darloks. They have some nice computer tech to pick up that we will not be able to easily acquire via espionage, and which will help in our eventual fight against the Psilons; they are also the logical next target due to proximity with our core. The Darloks have relatively good planetary shielding, but their ECM isn't horrible for our bombers and their ships will be slow and poorly shielded. A pic of Darlok and Psilon technology availability is attached.

Of course, the save file is also attached.

Zed <--- Just played
Dath <--- UP NOW
Stup <--- On Deck
Liq
Olorin
Str00ld3 (missing, autoskipped)
 

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Nice turn.

Getting those shields from the Humans was a real key to keeping the Psilons at bay. Did the Humans manage to get a shield up anywhere before you destroyed them?

I agree that our next target should be the Darlocks. The Alkari are tempting with only one planet, and the chance to score some Battle Suits, but they are allied with the Brains.

One suggestion for the last design slot in our fleet: A death spore ship. It looks like we are in a defensible position even if the other races declare war due to our using bio weapons. Including a few spore ships with the fleet would help knock down enemy population before invasions, and they would draw enemy missile fire at the beginning of battles. The key would be to remember to withdraw the bombers from a planet before using bombard with the spore ships. We don't want to ruin any factories! A spore ship with a Battle Scanner would also be handy for when we scrap the Flounders and upgrade them with some new tech.
 
Nope, no shields for the humans. Their economy couldn't support it and the AI doesn't prioritize defense spending the way we would for threatened worlds, so it takes them quite a while to get shields up generally speaking.

Re: Battle Suits -- we can get those from the Darloks, so no need to bug the Alkari (other than by spying on them...)

Re: Spore ships... We could conceivably use a few with scanners. Maybe a semi-generic large with scanner, beams, and spores. We don't have the tools to build a really nasty beam ship yet, lacking autorepair and beams better than neutron guns, but if it's mostly there for generic mop-up, scanner, and sporing, then it doesn't need to be anything really special and we probably won't build a ton of them. I would like to keep a slot open for later in case we come up with enough tech to significantly improve our bomber design by adding a half-decent computer (at least BC2-BC3.) If we commit to a spore ship now, then that means we'll need to scrap something later (probably our Flounders as you mentioned.) I normally don't like tying up a huge amount of production in any one design like we have with the guppies, as it makes it emotionally harder to scrap them when they near obsolescence, but we don't have anything else to spend our money on. ;)
 
I think a good spore ship with our new beams (neutron blasters), battle scanner, bc 2 or 3 and some shields would be a nice upgrade to our flounders. Our flounders really aren't netting us that much (bs + another source of hyper x's). The upgrade would net us a lot more without much cost to upgrade.

As to the Darloks next, I have no problems with this. I would like to point out, however, that brains have fewer shield techs (no planetaries), the same advantage in gropo (+10 from fusion rifles), some really good techs (fusion rifle, hard beam, phasor, fusion drives), and 2 planets within our current range (Misha and Paranar). Paranar is the northeastern most planet, whereas Misha is in the heart of Psilon space. These are more out of the way, and so this may not be the best option, but it certainly is another option. It may serve to keep the Psilon's from gaining too much defensive and gropo tech for our tech to be effective. (Class X planetaries, Antidote 1, Personal absorbtion, exoskeletons, hand phasor, hercular missiles, and scatter pack VII are in their current tier for research assuming none are missing).

In any case, if we do choose the Darloks, we do not want to wait too long to attack the Psilons, or we may end up fighting too much of an uphill battle. Darloks are probably the better choice for now, as they have more beneficial techs to steal (RC4, battle suits, auto repair, hard & fusion beams, pop +30) and their planets serve as good launch points into Psilon space, but once we get 3-4 of their good techs, Psilons make better targets.

StuporMan
 
Uh, it's still morning, right? :mischief:

After opening the save file, I thought long and hard on who to attack. While the conventional wisdom pointed to the Darloks, the Psilons were actually in a pretty weak position (for them) and I debated going after them now. However, ultimately I held off. Including natural defense bonus, we would be fighting at +10 to them, or 1.5:1. That, combined with the distance that their empire is from our planets, made it not worth attacking them immediately.

Yarrow was easily taken from the Darloks. I used 50 bombers against their 6 bases, which turned out to be just about perfect. We lost 20 bombers, but eliminated the defenses with only 3 factories lost. I sent in 164 troops against their 65, and won with 63 remaining, almost filling up the planet :snowcool: Our tech haul was just about as good as could be hoped for. We picked up both Deep Space and Advanced Scanners, the Battle Suits, RC IV, IT +30, and Fusion Drives. Substitue the beams for the drives, and it would have been perfect.

By the end of my turn, we were at war with everybody else except the Bulrathi. The bears did make a brush war play for Lyae with their huge missile platforms (see pic), but were handily turned back with no losses to us, one to them. After we took Yarrow, the Alkari sent an expedition for it, but all of their designs carry laser weapons, and didn't even try to fight. They are a non-factor.

On the spy front, we stole Range 5 from the Alkari, blaming it on the bears, and ECM II from the Bulrathi.

I stopped building ships about halfway through when the terraforming and RC techs were "discovered." All planets are done terraforming, and are currently in the process of building pop/factories. Be careful that we don't accidently build some research when pop and/or factories are maxed. I never did design the spore ship, and I'm actually not sure we need it; we just need to be sure to carefully measure how many anti-matter bombers we throw at a given target at a time.

The Darlok fleet is made up mostly of bombers/spore ships. The two large designs are each sporting about 10 Fusion bombs and a spore, while the hornets are carrying 3 bombs. I would guess the Scorpians are similarly armed, but that appears to be a mroe recent design, so who knows. There is a sentry fleet or guppies at Stalaz, but I don't know if that would be enough to take out all 54 large ships in the main Darlok fleet, so careful if they try to come after us.

The rest of the fleet is gathered at Yarrow, ready for the next strike. I kept it there to rebuff the Alkari and Darlok advances, but they are in retreat now. I would actually suggest striking Mentar next. We are on straight up 1:1 with them gropo-wise, and while they have Class X planetary now, our bombers can easily cut through that, and they STILL don't have any better missiles than Hyper V, and it looks like they just axed a large portion of their fleet. We should have enough fleet to go after both that and Aurora at the same time (I wouldn't send more than 75 bombs there), though invading both will take some coordination. Uxmai would be easier, but as an Ultra Poor with only 20-some factories, it is practically useless. I actually wouldn't mind just razing that planet.

dathon
 

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Nice turns as always dath.

Actually razing the spud would be more effective than trying to keep it imo. Will distract the races as they make their predictable rush for that hunk of junk plus it frees up our ships for useful planets. Throwing the Bears into that pretty much means a clean sweep for them if they manage to land 10 population lol. win win pretty much.

After that first scare on industrial tech from the humans... we've been getting some nice "make-up rolls" on the other planets lol. Another fantastic haul.

In retrospect, the rocks are prolly the strongest race to play in this variant provided they score on those 3 or so key techs early on.

just barely not enough tech to cram a neutron blaster into a stinger tiny and still keep its engines but it's -><- close...

if you cannot get to turns tonight stup, I can play finally if you want to swap.

Cheers!
-Liq
 
If we hit another Darlock planet and get Fusion beams, you'll get your neutron blaster ship, Liq.

I second the vote for glassing the ultra-poor. It's always good to distract the other races, and we don't want to devote ships to defending it for the eons it would take to put up bases.

I also agree that pushing for Mentar is a good plan. It will give us plenty of new tech, and homeworlds are always easy to get back up and defended quickly. Plus it will cut down on the Psilon tech lead, and give their economy a nasty knock.

I'm actually amazed at the fact that we are flying around with Hyper-X missile boats still. Even more so by the fact that they are the most advanced missile in the game. It is both a plus and a minus for us. The good thing is that AI bases are pretty weak when all they have to throw at us is HyperV or X. Then again our bases are just as weak. If we hadn't gotten good bombs, we'd be stuck without a way to hit shielded planets though.
 
Liq,

I will be unable to play until tomorrow or Thursday. After that I will not be around for a few weeks. If you are absolutely sure you can get a set done before tomorrow evening you can swap with me. If not, then I would prefer to make sure to have my last turnset of this game.

And as always, good job Dath. We should now be in a winning position, provided Psilons don't get 2 gropo techs before we can take Mentar (even then it is just a delay).

StuporMan
 
ok!! prepare for the WORST turn set ever in the history of liq's entire moo playing career... I'm not kidding!!!!!:D


ok job one is to make sure no research gets funded and see if I cannot take out mentar. Should be no issue really as we have quite a fleet going at yarrow. Send out ships to mentar and they will all arrive in 4 turns. with my left over bombers I take out the nazin spud world of uxmai with no losses. Get a spy break on the bears and construction is all that comes up for auto repair!!! nice just incase we ever get a real armor. Send about 200 pop over to the psilon home world.

I get lost in an ocean of max pop and factory messages and double check my work using f2 f3 thought all this.

First round of mentar with 160 bombers vs 17 missle bases.... lost about 100 bombers before they run out of ammo but metar is down to 5 bases... the MAD rush for spud as begun! next round 25 bombers left, one missile base!!! omgomg. so 3rd try and the dumb brains shoot at the guppies instead of the bombers... I manage to kill off the last base and take over the airspce of Mentar.

145 population with 109 defenders and 317 factories... and we stink up the joint!!! 55 psilons live. I managed to mis time the troops... another 30 on the way. Manage to steal Battle computers 4 from the bullrathi (thanks!) but no frame as icing.

Silly me thinking bombers were ion beam tinys managed to lose yarrow to the darloks.... via bio weapons Good thing I had just completely stripped that planet of population! also we steal hard beams from the bears and frame it on the darloks. that's a boffo tech. psilons ask for peace as well...

just to restate
We stole Hard Beams from the bullrathi but they aren;t our highest tech weapon.

And we BARELY kill off mentar... wow 2 rock population left brains were killing 3 to 1. the techs are......
Fusion bombs
Warp Dissipator
Armored exoskeleton <------- WOOOOOOO
ECM 3
Planetary shields X <---- WOOOOOOOO
Range 7

missed phasors and fusion rifles as well as ecm jammer 4 and class 4 shields.



and what in tarnations.... I managed to lose the entire fleet due to refueling issues even as we control mentar.... omg wtf that is the most :smoke: thing I've ever done in any moo game ever.... well the good news is I guess we can use a new round of ships with all that new tech uh yeah the psilons have population arriving at mentar I think as is so they will retake. Yarrow itself should be next target again since it never lost it's factories... the darloks bioed and repopped with a colony ship same turn. So prolly get fusion beams going there. BTW the darloks never got any tech from capturing yarrow.

NM psilons destroyed their old home world lol.

We can fit a neutron blaster on a tiny now btw so jump for joy.

I put all planets on 100% defense for last turn and only 2 or so planets made it to X shields. Have time to remake all our ship designs.

As embarrassing as it is to lose the entire fleet to a bug. keep in mind what is built now took 4 turns or so to make... meaning we can regen a fleet each turnset easy. I honestly do not see a reason to keep making missle ships since we still only have hyper X one of the reasons I lost yarrow.... 20 missle basses weren;t enough to take out 30 larges. Time to make a spore ship as well.

darloks have zortium armor and fusion beams btw to taking back yarrow is a good idea and easy with the ships we have now. Don;t be afraid to scrap most of our designs.

Cheers!
-Liq
 

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