OSG 13 - Today is a Good Day to Die

[IamI3rian]

used an old moo screen to match my frameskip and cpu cycles from before lol.

Brilliant

Sorry I ran a bit late, didn't realize I had to work a little tonight. Anyway, got it now, and I'm playing my ten out presently.

Edit: Incidentally, I had to preform a disk recovery recently (kinda like a reformat without LOSING files, just returning them to the original format) and I don't seem to be getting DOS sound anymore. I use Windows ME (yeah I know) it's all I have, but it DID work. I can't seem to remember what I did to get the sound working... anyone have any ideas? Not a super big deal, but I was fond of the music.

Edit2: Fixed it, comp was just being ghetto

 

[IamI3rian]

Preturn: Set human spy to espionage. Send Las's from Exis to Crypto to try to hold the planet.

2421: Plague event hits Kakata. Also Kakata gets max factories this turn, so it's not ALL bad. Propulsion at 13% I make a placeholder huge ship, to try to pump some faster fighters later. Also, spend reserve to try to fix that plague. Scrap the scouts for BC's

2422: Shuffle some lasers to Simius and Esper. I won't let the sillys get them.

2423: Class III Deflectors and Enhanced Eco restoration comes in.
Planetary Shield V <--- I pick this
Class IV deflector

Death Spores
Soil Enrichment <--- I pick this
Bio Toxin Antidote

2424: Shift Spending to emphasize soil and Imp. scanner. propulsion at 21%

2425: VOTE 25 votes us versus sillys. They have 10 votes. We only get klackon vote (1 vote) all others abstain, we had 7 votes.

2426: Spies infiltrate humans.. Comp Cons and Weap. Go for weap, and get hand lasers Battle suits come in

ARS
Reduced Ind Waste 60% <--- I pick this
Imp Industrial 6

I hope I made the right pick here
GNN says hyboria (psilon world) will go super nova

I manage to spot a new silly huge too... that doesn't bode well

2427: Silly colships hit Simius and Esper. Both retreat. Sub Lights come in

Nuclear engines
Dotomite (range 7) <--- I pick this
Energy Pulsar
Fusion drives (speed 4)

I design a new fighter. only costs 3 BC's for a mark I. I thought about leaving it off, but honestly, we need to roll that 4 damage as much as possible to even do damage to lots of ships. cost is 17 each.

2428: 233 new las 3 pump out. (woulda been 283 without the comps... maybe a bad choice on my part) switch ship building worlds to tech. 2 clicks to silly spies. I wanna see what they have.

2429: Imp. Scanner comes in.
Ecm mark 2, 3, 4
IRC IV <--- I pick this
Battle computer V

Everyone is headed to Crypto. I send 60 shiny new las 3's to help defend. I also see that Kakata is dying (duh) so I send colonists from Xengara to man (cat?) the factories.

2430: Nothing happens, I change nothing.

Next emperor should maybe make a play for Phyco. Now we've got a fleet (such as it is), and I really don't see the meks or the klacks being able to stop us. (sure wish we had a better weapon though ) Might wanna try to trade some tech around. Can't let those sillys get TOO far ahead.

Kakata is still plagued, still trying to spy on humans and sillys. There's a LOT going on in the east.

Roster:
dathon -->UP NOW
Stup --> On Deck
Zed
Olorin
Liq
I3rian --> Just Played

Good luck Emperor dathon!

p.s. Check me out, I can FINALLY make a decent screen shot

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

We could also look into building some medium with Hyper-X missiles. They should be enough to knock out missile bases from anyone who doesn't have a planetary shield yet. They would also help defend against larger enemy ships that aren't easily whittled down by lasers.

Also, it wouldn't be a bad idea to design a large hull with a Battle Scanner. Mostly to take a look at enemy ship stats, but outfitted with a computer and a stack of gatlings, it wouldn't be bad at defending the ultra-riches (Comp+Scanner+Cats= decent damage even with gatlings)

 

[IamI3rian]

Yeah, I thought about Hyper-X's too. With a 5 shot rack it costs 68 BC's. I decided against actually building any, because I thought that they would be pretty ineffective (not that the las 3's are top of the line). In fact, I think it's still sitting in the design window of the save file. Didn't think about using them to take down bases though. I guess I wasn't thinking along those lines.

Battle scanner crossed my mind too, but I didn't consider throwing on some gatling lasers and using it to defend Simius and Esper. Great idea. Clearly I still have a lot to learn. I just wrote it off as a waste, until we'd get a better beam weapon, or even ARS from research or the brains. I gotta remember that cats can hit stuff pretty well, and manage to do damage even with outdated weapons.

 

[Liquidated]

oh my the damage this collection of moo cows have wroth with medium missile boats.... shudder.


oh and reduced waste 60% is such a vital tech... good pick.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[StuporMan]

Good Turnset IamI3rian. The only decision I would have made differently would have been to research Fusion drives (speed 4) instead of Range 7. I am not saying Range 7 was a mistake, but Speed 4 allows you to bomb a planet one turn earlier (turn 3). If we manage to pick up IS from someone, that means we are bombing on turn 2. It also moves us up the tree. Range 7, puts us in range of more of our weaker opponents planets. This is good as it allows us to pick where we will attack, and is fairly cheap. A toss up really.

Umm, did anyone notice that neither Radiated nor Toxic showed up in our tree. So much for the theory that you are guaranteed one or the other. That does not bode well for preventing the Rocks from taking the rich hostile worlds in our territory. Eventually they will send a bigger fleet than we can defend against and they will take them from us. Decent bombs are looking more and more appealing.

Hopefully we will get another spy penetration on Human weapons soon to get Fusion Bombs online.

StuporMan

 

[Zed-F]

I can't say I agree, Liq -- we just got Enhanced Eco, so Reduced Waste is rather superfluous. Reduced Waste 60&#37; doesn't advance us in the tree; our only new tech to research was IIT 6.

Similarly, Dotomite Crystals (Range 7) was available already last time around (we chose Sublights instead) so picking it now won't advance us in the tree. Besides, I believe we already have range 6. I would have gone with Fusion Engines, which are very important for enabling move 3+ bombers, and for general strategic speed -- move 3 transports being that much better than move 2 transports.

The other tech choices all look good to me, except I'm not quite sure what kind of battle computer we are running. I don't think we've researched a new one yet, have we? We should perhaps pick one up next.

 

[dathon78]

Pre-turn
I have to agree with Zed's analysis on the tech situation, but nothing to be done for that now. Set 20% each to RCIV, ClassV, Soil, and Drivers, leaving 10% each to RW60% and Rng7. I like to arrange tech in 5-click (10%) increments for easier bookkeeping except in the opening stages. Why are we not spying on the Meklar's? They are behind in computer tech, and have both Ion Cannons and NPG's! Nothing ultimately came of my increased spying there, but I did try. Silly's have a fleet inbound to Simius, 4 large's and a colony, so I guess we'll see how those laser 3 fighters work out. Last thing, I don't think 5 bases is enough for Xengara since it is in a nebula, so I bumped up some spending there.

Turnset
This was the turn of events. The plague ended after my first turn. Hyboria, a Psilon world, got destroyed by a Supernova It's a back-line world out of sensor range, no idea what happened there. The Klack's got 1300 from the merchant event in 2438, and promptly used those funds to declare war on us.

On the war front, I did not go after Phyco. It only had 26 factories beginning of my turn, we only had 80 fighters, and the Klacks had both ships and troops inbound, so I felt that a move would have been premature.

The Silly Mako and col ships carry NPG's, and they can do some significant damage to fighter stacks. Through some maneuvering, we never lost any las3's, but we're almost out of regular lasers. The rocks were massing an enormous fleet at Neptunus, but decided to send it on a 13-turn expedition to their backlines at the end of my turns. Whew! They ended up making two plays for Simius, though, so they are definitely interested.

I designed a missile boat, Sublights, maneuver 2, 5-rack Hyper-X, Mk I computer, and a scanner. I didn't see the utility of Class II shields, ECM I, or Titanium II armor.

On the tech front, Drivers and Class V's hit on my turn. I went back for the bombs, but went light on the spending in the hopes of stealing. No such luck though, and bulb is almost full. I chose Class V shields after the planetary's, we have some shields going up and border line worlds.

Post-turn
I've been building and massing missile boats at Exis in preparation for taking Phyco. We now have 35 boats and 165 fighters, more than enough to take and hold the planet. The Meklar's are fielding medium warp 2 boats with 2 neutron blasters, no specials, and only attack lvl 1. Phyco is up to 47 factories, but the Meklar's are currently allied with the Psilons, so your call when we should go.

Soil should pop on the next turn set, Fusion bombs if we're lucky. Only option for weapon's advancement after that is fusion beams, so not too bad there. The rocks have some huge's running around near the border that will have to be watched. I stopped factory construction at Trax to boost research while constructing our fleet.

Good luck Stup!

Roster:
dathon --> Just Played
Stup -->UP NOW
Zed --> On Deck
Olorin
Liq
I3rian

 

[Liquidated]

and liq quarrels with zed! neither is correct of course but I'll place forth Liq's view... tables are never pretty on these forums.


eco..................100%...80%...60%...40%...20%
At start 1/2.......50........40.......30.....20......10
improved 1/3.....33........27.......20.....13......7
enhanced 1/5.....20........16.......12.....8........4
advanced 1/10...10........8.........6.......4........2
Complete 1/20....5.........4.........3.......2........1

Ok here's the deal, at start of game half of all industry is consumed by waste management with two ways to combat it, eco and reduced waste.

the sweet point in total management for least effort is enhanced 1/5 + 60% which reduces total waste management to a mere 12%

Now zed and liq are both right about the wisdom of going for waste 60% and both are incorrect. You pick! The only right answer being the informed answer, where both zed and liq are dead on the money.

I'm assuming we didn;t have 80% already so the jump is from 20% to 12%, for what I see as relatively minimal effort. that difference makes the entire empire run much smoother and literally that savings translates directly into more tech, making up for lost time a bit later on.

Keep in mind with those two tech, it's safe to now skip all other waste management skills other than the no waste at all end game tech (which an osg will never see lol).


So all that said, zed and liq can politely disagree, which is what these thar SG's are all about!

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Instead of taking Phyco, we could zip a Las 3 over to Kholdan and see how many bases they have. If we want to take on the Meks, we could go straight for Meklon, and let the Bugs and Bots keep fighting over Phyco.

If we decide to take on the Meklars, we should first recruit the Silicoids to declare on them. That way, the Psilons will get pissed at both of us. After we take Meklon and Phyco, we can make nice with the Meklars and Psilons and we end up with everybody vs. the Rocks.

I would advise taking out Kholdan first though. While we would like to end up with a coalition against the Rocks, we need to give ourselves enough time to develop better weapons. We'll soon have fusion bombs, but not the speed to make them effective. We want to be able to start glassing the Rock hostile worlds that are on or within our borders as soon as we finish with the Meks. Otherwise the Rocks will have too much time to start absorbing Psilon worlds.

 

[dathon78]

I'm assuming we didn;t have 80&#37; already so the jump is from 20% to 12%

Nope, we had 80%, so the jump was from 16% to 12%. The beauty of this game is that a lot of choices are situational, not rote. I believe that 60% was absolutely the WRONG call for these reasons:

1) We are the Mrrshan, meaning construction tech is EXPENSIVE.
2) Construction is the most critical tech for shipbuilding, as it determines how many toys a vessel can have.
3) This map situation has us saddled with several poor/small worlds with low factory production. Most of our production will be coming from population instead of factories. We would actually be further ahead advancing our planetology tech to increase the pop bonus rather than making industry more efficient to advance our economy.

The thing that really hurt about 60% is that it doesn't advance us up the tree. We are slow there anyway being poor in construction, and this puts us even further behind. This is a perennial problem for the cats, who need to use that military edge before their opponents' production bonuses snow them under. What good is having good gunners manning ships with too few guns/engines/shields/etc?

For industry-heavy races like the Meklars, that 4% might be worth it, but even then, I would be tempted to continue up the tree, hoping for 40% or 20%. Keeping that construction tech level climbing is just too critical to detour in most cases. The only reason I usually do so is if I need a gropo tech I've skipped, or have drawn no clean up in the planetology tree.

dathon

 

[dathon78]

Argh, hit the reply key too fast.

@Olorin -- I doubt we have enough to take Meklon at this point. The Meklars are fielding Hyper V's, and have Class IV shields now. Our ships will take a round of fire before they are even in range, and I'm guessing the Borg have around 20 bases on their planet. Kholdan might be doable, the bugs only having Nukes and Class II, but would still probably need to wait 10 turns for enough missile boats. Probably 15 bases there.

My suggestion would be to take Phyco on the next turn set, and keep building the boats. After that planet is secure, we should have enough ships for a strike on Kholdan, and after that, we should have enough for Meklon.

dathon

 

[StuporMan]

Well I staggered through a quick turnset, but it was productive.

Steal Fusion Bbomb from humans early on and switch to Fusion Beam. Design a fusion bomber, decide to go for full manuever 3 as it increases defense and only cost 1 bc. I dial back spending on Humans as they have no more useful techs. Humans choose unwisely (based on spying). I would have taught them a lesson with our new toys, but we can't land on Sol (their only planet at the time more later).

Soil Enrichment falls, switch to Atmospheric as it is the only one that moves us forward (and it is a flat killer tech with soil enrichment). Planetology spending increased everywhere to get this through (extra pop is super necessary for us now).

Steal NPGs from Meklar near end of turnset, next leader can make an NPG fighter. Xengara builds shield, and I am not 100% sure that it is within the nebula as normally shields get major discounts in nebula (in my experience they have been free).

Vote comes up, Psilons and Meklar abstain, rest vote coids. 29 votes total, we had 8 (2 shy of 1/3 threshold). I forget how many the rocks had but it was >= 12. Our front world colonies now all have shield V, Less poor Trax and Fieras (yes It is in range of coids).

Interesting turn of events though, Cygni alternated between Humans and Klacks this turnset. I believe we have a spud here! Phyco has been held by borg entire turnset and they have kindly done the hard work of building 100 factories for us to use. We have the advantage in gropo with battle suits and hand lasers (they have durralloy so it is a small margin), and since I shifted production from missiles to small bombers shortly after getting bombers we have a good base killing fleet (meaning we can quickly go to capture both Phyco AND Meklon in one fell swoop). Achieving this may give us the necessary votes to get us to 1/3.

A word of warning, Rocks have a death fleet building at Neptunis. It has 5 huges (6 in 4 turns), and 12 assorted larges. To make matters worse, they have AMB, Stingers, Stabilizers (only nuke engines thankfully), and a massive gropo advantage (fusion r, PDS, Battle suits, Andrium armor). We are in trouble if they decide to pick on us. We probably want to get in a joint war with the Psilon's against someone to build relations (they are already pretty good as I got the pleased with trade event). Then cash that in for a war against the Rocks once we mop up the smalls. Psilons now tech equals of Rocks according to status menu, so they can probably stand up fairly well.

StuporMan

 

[IamI3rian]

Well, I appologize for not considering advancing the tree in my tech choices. That was the primary reason I chose as I did, as otherwise (with the exception of range and speed, which I thought was more or less a toss up) I think I made the right choices. The advancement of the tree is more important though, than a slight economic boost, so I clearly blundered there.

Nicely done Stup, ya damn theif. Managed to get a good gun AND a good bomb .

I'm amazed that the psilons were unable to stop the super nova. Truely, when it came up, I figured it would've ended in a few turns. I'm happy with the missile boat design, as incorperating scanners was a great decision.

Zed, I believe we only had a BC mark I during my set, but I figured that more factories was a better choice, since we're slowly falling behind in production levels.

Interestingly, I've never had to deal with sillys with such a gropo lead. Very strange group of rocks, these. Anyway, next time I have a decision to make, I'll try to consider everything it impacts, as I really think I shoulda thought about advancing the tree too. I'm having a blast with this osg. Great way to learn stuff

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Good turnset!

Finally, we are going to be able to go on offense. It's tempting now that we have fusion bombs to try to take out a few Silicoid worlds. Anraq for one still has no bases, so it would be easy to glass. Unfortunately, that Silicoid fleet likely could take out any one of our planets, even with our entire fleet for defense. We might consider asking the Psilons to go to war with the Rocks now, and when the Rocks commit their FoD somewhere, we can glass Anraq. The recent Rock colonies near Psilon space are also undefended, so the Brains should be able to turn Silicoid worlds into spuds to fight over, rather than losing their own. If the FoD comes after one of the Ultra-rich worlds, we need to get our missile boats there and destroy any colony ships they bring along, then retreat. We can't hope to win against that many Huges.

I loaded the save to take a look, and noticed a pretty big Meklar fleet about to hit Kholdan. This might be a good opportunity to take out Kholdan, because their defenses will be weakened or destroyed by the Meklar fleet.

 

[dathon78]

IamI3rian -- don't worry about it Nobody's angry; just having a debate on the choices. We've all definitely made sub-optimal moves in the past, and will again in the future.

dathon

 

[IamI3rian]

I know no one's mad, there really were way worse things I coulda done. I'm also glad that the choices were pointed out as being bad, as that's the only way to find out that they were (even if Liq agrees at least a little with the reduced 60% choice). I'm just a bit upset with myself, for not thinking about advancing the tree. That's really a big part of deciding what to research. If that even REMOTELY entered my mind, I would've made different choices.

I dunno, I've won with the darlocks on impossible medium before, and once with the meks on impossible small. I think what's so frustrating about this game is the fact that it's 'only' hard, and easily one of the hardest games I've played. (Not to mention being taunted by the RNG with 2! Ultra riches in our first ring, and STILL not being able to settle them, ) Seems like every decision is a maker or breaker.

For example, since my turnset the Hyper-X ships seemed to be our most important ship. If I built those (which I thought of doing, and even designed one) instead of the Las 3's we would have 58 more, BUT I wouldn't have put the scanner on them. They certainly will remain useful longer than laser popguns, especially considering that we've stolen NPG's from the Meks (Meks Techs if you will ). Without that steal though, I think redesigning the Las 1 was a good move. At least in the short term.

Again, IIT 6, combined with the upcoming RC IV might have also been the way to go, even NOT considering the tree advance. I dunno, I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but the important thing is I LOVE playing MoO and OSG's are the best way to play anything, ever . I've learned more playing this game, than I think I did any other way, except maybe, from reading Sirian's battle reports all those ages ago.

Incidentally, can someone explain to me EXACTLY how tech advancement works. It's the last tech that we would have access to per box, (in the manual I mean) like personal deflector shield if we didn't have class 3, right? Then, when that advance (personal shield for example) is learned, that opens up all techs we have access to in the next box right? Or is it just the next sinlge tech we have access to?

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Tech choices:

Before the game starts, it determines what techs are in your tree, and which are not. You will have at least one choice out of every box (every 5 levels). When you are given a choice of what to research, the options will be everything in your tree that is from one box higher than your highest tech of that category + all the lower techs that you didn't learn yet. The exception is that the level 1 techs you get to start with don't give you access to the level 6-10 box.

Example: First choice in computers will be between ECM1, DSS, or BC2 (minus any that didn't make it into your tree). No matter which of those you choose, the next choice will also include items from the next box, ECM2, RC3, or BC3. ECM2, RC3, or BC3 would open up the next level. If for example, you started by researching ECM1, and then the only 2nd tier computer tech available was ECM2 so you chose to get BC2 next, then when you finished, your choices left would only be DSS or ECM2. In this case, where ECM2 is the only tech in the 2nd tier, you MUST research it to advance in the tree.

Actually, there is a way around having to research from a particular tier. If you capture or steal a tech that is in a higher tier than you have gotten to so far, that tech will open up the next tier (and lower tiers) for you.

Most of the time, you want to research a tech that is going to advance you in the tech tree. Occasionally, there will be times when you want to get multiple techs from the same tier (as happened here when we got Hyper-X and later went back for Fusion Bombs). Another common example is the third tier in planetology. If Enhanced Eco or IT30 are available, they are usually chosen over Toxic bases. But when you finish them, if you find Radiated is not in your tree, you'll likely want to get Toxic instead.

Most of the time, advancing the tree is a major factor in tech choices, especially in fields like computers where skipping a level of BC or two can be fixed by researching a higher level one later. Other techs are not made obsolete by higher versions, and are worth waiting to advance the tree, or going back for. Fusion bombs are a good example of a tech that is good to go back for. If you get them the first chance, they will be too big to fit into a small ship, and you're still at 2nd tier techs, so you won't have the engines needed to make a fast bomber yet. Since either NPG or Hyper-X are more immediately useful from that tier, you'll often see us skip fusion bombs for them and come back and get them later (if we don't steal them first).

 

[IamI3rian]

Thanks Olorin. I appreciate the detailed explanation. Yeah, I knew how it was formed, but not precisely how learning techs affected the next choice you got. That really helped. Apparently I was confused on a few things.

Which means in my example, that learning EITHER class 3 or personal shields would advance the tree.

Can't remember where I read the skip trick, but I've used it quite a few times. Those small fusion bombers are SO nice for glassing planets, sometimes into the early middle game (though hopefully by then you've got SOMETHING better).

 

[Zed-F]

Preturn: I notice that we are spending over 15&#37; of our economy on ship maintenance... that's a bit high for my taste. I halt shipbuilding. I'd design a NPG fighter, but I'm not really happy with any design I can come up with, and would like to see if we can develop or capture/steal any tech that will help. Since I'm not planning to build any more ships right now anyway, I can afford to wait. I try to place a spy in Psilon territory as our view of what they have is 41 years out of date. I cut down on espionage expenditures otherwise to help our struggling economy. I send our fleet gathered at Exis off to Kholdan.

Early turns: The Klackon fleet and the fleet the Meks sent to Kholdan largely wipe one another out, leaving only the Klackon bases behind to defend their planet. The Meks gain air superiority for one round and send in a bunch of troops, but they have no gropo tech. Our own fleet arrives shortly thereafter to wipe out the Klackon missle bases, which it does with no losses (the bases targeted our bombers, which retreated while the missle boats wiped the bases.) Meanwhile, the Silicoids send a massive fleet at one of the ultra riches we've been guarding, Simius. Our 150 laser-3 fleet guarding there doesn't even manage to last long enough to pop the colony ship before getting vaped by 5 huges and a dozen larges. The huges seemed to be mostly armed with NPGs and didn't seem to have much trouble hitting our laser fighters. So one of our two back-yard ultra riches is now in Silicoid hands. I find out later that the Psilons have Toxic bases, but that's their highest planetology tech, so they won't trade it for now.

Late turns: We finished RC IV during my turns and are close to finishing Reduced Waste 60% and Dotomite Crystals (both in percentages.) I chose Advanced Scanners next because I think we can acquire a decent computer from the Meks, and soon we will reach a tech bracket where we can't choose anything other than BC or ECM, so going back for the expensive BC V didn't seem to make sense. Thanks to our non-aggression pact with the Meks, their troop transport headed to Kholdan get through and take out about half the planet's defenders. Our own transports arrive shortly thereafter and finish the job; we capture range 5 from the Klacks. Later on we manage to steal Stabilizers from the Meks, and I can finally design a NPG fighter that seems reasonable. The Meks are unhappy with our espionage attempts, however. They've also allied with the Silicoids, so I ask the Psilons to declare on the Meks, who we plan to target next. They agree, for the price of Stabilizers, which I accede to. By the end of my turns, the Psilons are also at war with the Silicoids and the Humans (also Mek allies.)

Summary: Overall, things are looking a bit unstable. Kholdan is maxed on pop but not factories, so I set it to build Soil this turn while it continues to work on factories. Our ship maintenance is back under 10% so now that we have a decent NPG design we can start building them if desired. The Meks have a fair amount of shipping heading to Meklon but I still think that we can take them out once Kholdan is relatively secure, especially if we build some NPGs to supplement our laser-3s (or perhaps leave the laser-3s at Kholdan to cover it until we can build a shield and some bases, and replace them with new NPG builds.) Note that the Meks might decide to send a fleet off to pester the Psilons, which would be an ideal time to make a play for Meklon and Phyco.

Roster:
dathon
Stup
Zed --> just played
Olorin --> UP NOW
Liq --> On Deck
Iam3Irian