OSG 15b - Profound Psilons

[OlorinStormcrow]

Looks like a good turnset. My advice did not account for Toranor becoming available.

Now we are finally working on RC4 and Radiated, which will give us a big boost (that UR Radiated will become nearly as good as Toranor once terraformed -- and then atmos'd, which is the tech after radiated). Plus its safely in the back of our empire, meaning we can get it stood up and pumping out ships faster. RC4 will also push our economy up another notch.

We'll have to try to do what we can with Toranor, but make sure you don't lose Xengara in the meantime. That planet is already stood up, and another artifact planet will really help us get to Warp 5, and galactic domination.

On the diplomatic front, it sounds like only the Rocks are not at war with us, make sure that they are at war with the Humans, Sakkras, and Bears though. We don't want them to ally with one of those, and then get pushed into declaring on us. If only we had managed to avoid the erratic nature of our neighbors for another 10-20 turns, we would be pretty much unbeatable.

 

[TheArchduke]

Turn 1

Everything looks fine. I design and build Repuls 1.0 quite similar as our sting design only with a repulsor beam. The nice thing? We are in a war with everyone else.

Turn 2

I scare away the 37 large bio terminator stack. And settle Toranor.

Turn 3

With heavy WMD losses I beat 10 large Human ships, they loose 9 we loose 4 WMD.

Turn 4

Unknown spy destroys 9 factories at Xengara. Personal Absorption and Hard Beam pop. Kataka is lost to 55! Bulrathi troops. I think Toranor is more important.
Next up Omega-V bomb and Plan X Shields. Maretta will be destroyed by a comet. Things are getting iffy.

Turn 5

With forces enroute to Maretta and both Xengara and our new ultra rich under attack, things are are really getting out of hand..

Turn 6

Xengara with Plan Shield and 2 new! Bases is greeted by the Humans. SHIELD 7? Miss Def7?? As they only got Merculite Missiles, they down 2 WMD but then can´t attack the planet. We need new missiles and we need them quick.

Turn 7

Xengara holds and could already produce 1100 Research per turn. But I build 3 more missile bases and max prod. We can´t hold off the humans, but we can ttry to hold off the rest.

Turn 8

Klystron comes under heavy attack from 5 large ships and 1 colony ship. I manage to kill the colony ship with my 1! Ion thanks to Maretta stealing ships..

Turn 9

One round without any panic? No way, Ajax will be hit by a MAJOR SoD in 2 turn. I begin to build more bases. No WMD there, well thanks to? Maretta..

Turn 10

We pop RC IV. 81 percent of the Comet destroyed. I put 25 percent into Factory Construction for now.

So. Summary.

Maretta. This comet stricken Planet is eating up my new repulse designs and is a definite drain on our ressources. The good news, we should be able to destroy that comet with our new Mentar Repulse ship.

Xengara. With 7 Bases and a 2nd detachment of our fleet it awaits a massive stack of 437 medium ships. But if we survive, we have a godly 1200 research planet on our hands.

Toranor. Neglected by now, we have shields up on the next turn and base production soon starting. We might consider terraforming shortly and send some pop from Xengara though.

Ajax. Nothing to do but build bases.

Kataka. There was zero I could do to hold it, and being poor I had no intention to waste any of our precious ships.

Klystron. Defended by a measly WMD, we need to get more ships ASAP or a Colony when Radiated pops. Maretta nearly cost us that Planet.

For all, I recommend building the new factories ASAP, except for planets under threat. I used Paranar like Blake and Obaca for reserve production to give Xengara and Toranor those much needed boosts. And let´s hope they hold. Radiated should pop soon.

So, next time, please give me a less stressful turn. Thanks.

 

[Blake]

It's most fortunate that the big 437 medium ships went for Xengara rather than Toranor, that was exactly the kind of luck we needed. With Toranor in our hands we have another strong production base.

As a note, I would have sent more population to Toranor, Xengara didn't need the excess pop above what it needed for factories, so sending about 20 pop (in small installments each turn to allow for incremental terraforming) would have got the planet up A LOT faster. Also factories pay back incredibly quickly on Ultra Rich worlds so enabling more factories to built = good.

Ajax is screwed I think, at this point missile bases will no nothing, what's really needed is a ship with Repulsar beam and a 5 rack of slow missiles, and the rest of the space either heavy beams or fast missiles. Unfortunately the Repulsar design is quite bad (bombs?), deign a new ship for Ajax and provide the reserves needed to build it.
The design will need to be very weird. Max defenses including jammers. A 5 rack of stingers, a 5 rack of slow missiles.

Something like this: (notice the thick armor? LOL)

It should be possible to bounce two stacks with the single ship, by firing the stinger from the back of the map then moving forward and firing the other rack, or altrenatively fire exclusively from the bacjk of the map, so the stingers will be used first then once the stingers run out the enemy ships can move closer and get chased away by the slow missiles. Did I mention I don't like the yoyo exploit? LOL. But I understand it.
Makes the game so much easier. Any attack can be defeated with a few bases and proper abuse of the yoyo.

 

[TheArchduke]

I agree, sorry about Ajax, but my mind was definetly somewhere else with 2 planets attacked all the time and Maretta.

On Design, it seems I need to focus on more specialization with ships. My Repulse 1.0 is too much of a hybrid. Need to work on that.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Tour the empire. Tweak a few things. Fleet coming at Xengara (lots of mediums). I push reserves to get 5 bases/turn and send some of Toranor's ships (2T trip, no one currently inbound to Toranor). I also shift Toranor off shield building and split between terra and facts (it's only at 7 pop, not time yet for defenses).

I set Mentar, Marretta, and Obaca to max factories. Paranar and Rha leave some on tech.

2499) Ajax is attacked by:

And is defended by:

The mediums can't hurt the planet, and the Hvy Blasters can only scratch it. I fire at the Bio terminators -- 3M dead per shot - 1M Antidote = 2M lost per hit

Bad news, I can only kill 2 of the Bio Terminator ships per volley (check out their missile defense!!) The mediums retreat right away, and I take out as many Titans as I can until they run out of terminators and retreat (planet is very dead by then). The valks stuck around to try to kill our bases, they did kill one of them, but only 12 of them escaped.

In other news, we get Range 9, start on Warp 5 (Star gate and W6 next).

Comet is destroyed.

I agree to give Humans 800 BC for peace treaty, they had sent a fleet of their heavily shielded ships toward Toranor, this will turn them around.

2500) 400+ mediums come to Xengara, zero leave. All thanks to the repulsor ship which kept them away from our other ships, and allow our hvy beams and missile bases to thrash them.

Sakkra and Rocks each have 11 votes, I abstain with our 7 poor Ajax, as we would have pushed the Rocks over the top.

2501) I build a Col 2 at Mentar, which joins with the comet fleet to head for Ajax. Obaca, Mentar, Maretta max.

Bears send a slow fleet toward Paranar. I send 1 repulsor, and will add more bases when it maxes out facts.

02) Arm. Exo. researched, Andrium next. Paranar and Rha max, Paranar to bases (will have 19 in time for Bears) A shipment of colonists arrive at Toranor, and I keep pumping reserves there to max out pop and facts.

04) I arrive and destroy the new Sakkra colony at Ajax.

05) I colonize Ajax (117 factories left), but Sakkra have SoD inbound, so I switch it to tech. Our fleet can't stand up to what they're bringing.

06) Radiated finally pops at 25%. Paranar starts on a RadCol, while Toranor finished its shield.

07) A fair sized fleet of Bear beamers hits Paranar, but our bases make short work of them. They still have poor shields, movement and missile defense. Xengara and Toranor max out.

08) Tyr is founded, 20 pop sent over. Another big Sakkra fleet heads for Toranor. I dial them up to offer peace, and the voices in their head say "yes"!!

Ajax is now a viable colony, as both that SoD and the one at Toranor will turn around. I send colonists over to Ajax, and start terraforming, and then set Toranor to pump the reserves--to reinvest in itself, and to pump artifact planets.

09) Defenders kill a Huge Bear at Klystron.

2510) Found Klystron.

Humans declare war on us Probably their alliance with the Bears (I tried several times to break it, but no dice).

Situation report:

All our planets are maxxed out, with the exception of Ajax and the two new radiateds. We are in %s for 3 techs (BC5, Omega bombs, PSX), and those engines are finally getting close. We just need to hold out a little longer, and we'll have our engines.

Those PSX shields should pop soon, and putting those up will make the Bears pretty much toothless for awhile. The Sakkra still have bio terminators, but the rest of their ships will be obselete vs. our planets.

CAUTION: The Humans, Bears, and Lizards all have upgraded their engines. Do not assume that we will always have warning of attacks on the front lines. For awhile, they'll still be pairing their new faster ships with Warp 1 slowpokes, but watch out for them to start moving faster soon.

Observation: Those repulsor ships work great vs. 1 space ships like the Sakkra mediums. They would also be great against spore ships to keep them away from the planet (wouldn't have helped at Ajax because those Valks escorts had Hvy beams, and would have killed our repulsors in one round).

I think that we are getting closer folks. If our fleet gets some breathing room, you can go glass Kakata again for fun.

I'm hoping that we can upgrade to PSX, get our three new planets maxxed out, and have Warp 5 by the end of next turn. With a really fast bomber design (move 4, ECM, Shields, and AM bombs), I'd love to swing by Sol, and remove the Human influence to the far side of the map. In terms of worlds to try to capture, Vega is the juiciest target, as are most of the Sakkra worlds with their huge terraforming tech and large factory base.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Here's the save.

 

[Blake]

Btw, I tried playing the previous save with my suggested "yoyo design" and I managed to hold Ajax losing only a couple of missile bases. The yoyo is amazingly exploitive, I didn't realize quite how exploitive it is - I knew it was bad, but this isn't just lowering the difficulty by a level or two, it makes the AI completely unable to attack, making it possible to win battles which you have absolutely no right whatsoever to win, let alone win flawlessly decimating the enemy fleet. Since it completely destroys balance (by making it impossible to suffer losses on defense) I guess it's good that you didn't try to use it.

I'm not really sure where I stand on the yoyo exploit in SG's... I think it might be needed to win some impossible games, but maybe those games simply shouldn't be won .

I'll play pretty soon.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

The general feeling for the SGs has been not to use the yo-yo tactics in battle. It is generally okay to 'pin' an enemy stack to the back line, in order for later volleys of missiles to be effective. That is a much different situation from using the yo-yo effect with missiles that would really only be an irritation if allowed to hit; in order for planetary missile bases to pound on the enemy.

Basically, if you are backing up the AI so that your _ships_ can get close enough to hit with their missiles, it okay (after all, you use up 1/5 of your ammo to do it). If you are backing up AI ships to allow your _bases_ more shots, it's exploitive (as bases have unlimited ammo).

While I could have tried yo-yo tactics at Ajax, I didn't even think about it. I was hoping that enough bases would be able to take out the terminator stack, after which the rest of them could barely hurt me, but their super missile defense prevented that.

Usually, 31 bases would be enough to take down 37 large hulls given that I had 3 volleys before they got in range to drop the bio's, and if I was knocking off 7-8 ships per volley, they would have needed 3 or 4 rounds of sporing to kill off the planet. Instead, they still had 30 ships left when they reached the planet, and only needed the first two rounds of bio's to kill off the pop.

Some of the other SG players would probably consider it exploitive of me to continue firing missiles after the planet was depopulated. I had 3 extra rounds at the bio ships (as they stuck around and bio'd the dead planet 3 more times), and a lot of rounds vs. the beam ships who stuck around much longer trying to chip away at the bases. A human player would have retreated immediately after killing off the pop, preserving an extra 6 or 7 bio ships, and 40 of the beamers.

The research all tech in order part of our variant is actually quite a significant handicap. Our bases are now suffering (early on, they had the artifact scatter 5's to boost them). We are behind in computers, making our missiles hit less often, and had we been skipping around the weapons tree, we'd be one or two levels higher in missile tech by now too. Not to mention that we would have better factory controls and terraforming, meaning the ability to throw up more bases when enemy fleets are inbound.

 

[Blake]

Turn 0:
Not much changed. I do get a little more pop moving through space.

Turn 1:
Again not much, other than keeping the population flowing to the developing worlds.

Turn 2:
No tech luck for me this time.

So more population sent off to developing colonies and more reserve shuffling (to new colonies and feedback).

Propulsion is now in percents so this will be the last turn I send off pop at warp 1.

Turn 3:
I deserve some tech?
Planetary X -> Shield VI
Omega V Bomb -> Fusion Rifle

Turn 4:
NOTHING?

Turn 5:
NOTHING?
(Meaning some babysitting of the developing worlds and more ultra rich reserves feedback)

Turn 6:
NOTHING?

Turn 7:
IMPULSE DRIVES? -> Star Gates
Tyr is now maxed and has guns.

Some Ship Design Time.

Hard Beam: 8-12 Damage, Halves Shield Strength. 91 Space.
Against 5 shield strength should deal 6-10 damage, 8 damage average.

Heavy Blast Cannon: 3-24 Damage, Range 2. 139 Space.
Against 5 shield should deal -2 to 19 damage. Should be 9 damage average.

Neutron Blaster: 3-12 Damage. 47 Space.
Against 5 shield should deal -2 to 7 damage. Should be 3 damage average.

The Hard Beam would seem to be our best choice for a ship which gets in nice and close, since it does nearly as much damage as a Hvy Blast, but we can fit 50% more on a ship. Will also be good against humans.

Bombs:
Omega-V bomb: 20-50 damage. 99 space.
Against 10 shield should deal 10-40 damage, average of 25.

Antimater Bomb: 10-40 damage. 40 space.
Against 10 should should deal 0-30 damage, average of 15.

The antimatter bomb would seem to be the best, especially considering some enemies have less shielding than 10. It wont be the best choice against Humans, but I don't think we need to worry much about the apes for now.

Turn 8:
Andrium Armor breakthough! Very low chance of that -> Tritanium Armor.

And OHBEARPOOP, the Bears are coming to Klystron.

I call up the bears and offer a peace treaty. They accept. Whatever.

Turn 9:
Nothing?

Turn 10:
Comp V FINALLY comes in, at 45% odds -> ECM VI.


Okey Dokey ship design time (I decided to wait on cons and comps before comitting any designs). What I said above about the beams hasn't changed.

What I tentatively came up with:

Some points:
Range 1 vs Range 2. Our enemies are using range 2 mostly and aren't using repulsar beams. There is little benefit to engaging in a range 2 shootfest, instead we may as well immediately close to range 1 and use more powerful range 1 guns.

The rule of thumb here is:
If the enemy ships move faster than you, then match their range.
If the enemy ships move slower and are range 1, use range 2 and kite them.
If the enemy ships move slower and are range 2, use range 1 and get in close.

As for armor:
Andrium Armor adds +25% longevity to our ships. It increases the cost by ~10% (the extra space used is very little). In comparison, building 10% more ships will add 10% more damage and 10% more longevity, which comes to a 21% advantage. Basically, Andrium armor is justified for ships which WILL take hits. Ships which only might take hits... ehhh... go with zortium and more guns.

As for Shields:
Most enemy weapons of this era deal about 10 average damage. The Class V shield halves that damage, doubling the longevity of our ships. Omitting a shield may allow at most 25% more guns. This means a shield is a 4x better use of space than more guns, assuming the stack is going to take hits.

As for comps and scanner:
Enemy defense is high enough to justify pretty much any amount of attack rating we can add. Add the possibility of winning init and you can't go wrong with maxed comps.


Final design. We'll benefit greatly from a defense monkey wrench design, to screw up enemy attacks.

I suggest something along these lines (lacking a free slot, I haven't comitted any design):

The important thing is the repulsar beam and sticky beam thing. Since it'll be backed up by missile bases the weapon loadout hardly matters and an argument could be made for more movement speed so it can effectively outrun missiles and kite stacks of doom while slowing them. It doesn't need defenses since it can outrun missiles and if it actually gets in range of a stack of doom, it's going to die, defenses or no (wouldn't really want to have more than 1 per planet, since the toys it has only need a single ship to be present).


It looks like our first target will be the Sakkra for their comp and planet tech, and due to their bad missile bases (don't look at the rocks military tech, you'll be happier not knowing ... ). The usual divide and conquer tactics should be effective, and we'll initially have +15 gropo on offense (I think) increasing to +35 once we have Fusion Rifle, if we can get such a high gropo advantage even their large worlds like Sssla will be easy prey.

For the next turnset, fleet buildup is the important thing (there are masses of reserves to feed into a fleet, it built up a lot quicker than I could reasonably spend it, since the only tech I was waiting on was already high percents, the best use = waiting to feed into the new gen ships), I'd suggest putting every world except the artifact worlds and Tyr onto building ships. Gotta hit the Lizards hard before they get real missiles or some other nasty thing. At the moment they are ripe for the harvest but add hercular missiles and our offense would be stopped cold.

 

[Blake]

Oh another note (as if my post wasn't long enough). Since we are at relative peace I didn't bother upgrading to Planetary X shields. Frankly we still don't really need them because only the rocks have weapons which seriously threaten our currently shielding, but it would still be wise to get them up.

Ajax is about to complete it's shield and first batch of bases. The incoming bear fleet should turn around since they accepted peace. There are no serious threats until the voices in our erratic neighbors heads start playing up again.

Another note, I only just turned spy funding back on. The Bear and Human reports are very much not current.

And I forgot to sign a NAP with the rocks, and we could also upgrade trade to 1400. If the Sakkra invasion goes well the rocks will probably declare war on us for getting too large but the NAP wont hurt. We might even be able to pick up an alliance.

And hold the phone on those ship designs! We can trade for Megabolt cannon with the Rocks! Try and do so immediately and load out the beam design with megabolts. With MB's we'll eat the lizards alive.

 

[TheArchduke]

I am currently unable to play MoO thanks to a huge CPU crash and my laptop not responding positively to Dosbox.

So I fear I need a skip, if you wanna continue before Wednesday, go ahead.

Else sit tight, I should be able to play again soonish.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I'm leaving for a conference very early Tuesday morning, so I don't know if I could get to it either. Then again, it's a long plane flight, so I might be able to play then (I should have some kind of internet access at the conference).

If you get your computer running before I get back to you, go ahead and play. I have no guarantees that I'll be able to play before Saturday.

 

[TheArchduke]

The bad news, my graphics card died.

The good news, Moo doesn´t need a fancy graphics card to run and my CPU is semistable. So I will play my 10 turns now.

 

[TheArchduke]

Turn 1

I sign a NAP with the Silicoids. Those radiated planets are ours, no? In any case, I start a massive fleet buildup. Megabolt cannon acquired from the rocks. Replaced beam 5.0 with beam 6.0 design with bolt cannons.

A good call on Toranor, that baby produces two beams per turn.

Turn 2

Atmospheric Terraforming comes in, Terra +50 next. And SUPRISE, the lizards declare war on us. Well, we are building up for war any way.

Turn 3

Xengara will be attacked by humans, so I gather a bigger fleet there and build the new shields ASAP.

Turn 4

11k research points lost in weapon research. Bleh.

Turn 5

The fleet of the bears doesn´t even attack baseless Klystron, I united the fleets on Xengara.

Turn 6

Peace with the birds? Why not. I attack Kronos whilst waiting on more ships and hopefully defend Xengara successfully against the humans.

Turn 7

Ion cannons and merculite missiles, the humans didn´t come with a nasty fleet. Shield 7 on the corvettes.. Ouch, but Ion Cannons as a attack.
I smash the fleet, though our hopelessly outdated WMD designs die.

We should have scrapped them. Kronos is taken with no losses and IT5
is conquered. I need way more bomb ships for the 33 bases. The response is a massive lizard counter attack with 75 larges with Ion Stream Projector and Heavy Blasts. Nope, we leave.

Rha will be attacked soon by a big SoD so I move one repulse there.

Turn 8

Kronos gets lassed. I move population from Mentar to Torenor in anticipation of an attack on Gaia Gienah.

Turn 9

Gienah will be covered by the 75 larges, hmm I reconsider and attack another outlying world for tech.

Turn 10

Fleet is enroute to Rotan, I hope for another lucky tech like Kronos, we just need some luck to find factories there.

Summary:

The Lizards still have a nasty, nasty fleet. Especially the 37 large spore ships fly around and I don´t even wanna try to fight those Ion Stream Projector/Heavy Blast ships with our Bolt Fleet..

 

[TheArchduke]

Olorin is gone till Saturday, Blake are you avaiable?

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I've got the save, and I'll post my turns later today.

We do have internet access at the conference, and I was able to find enough time to play my turns yesterday. I'll post later when I have more time to upload some pics.

--Olorin

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

One note on ship names: Beam 5.0 would refer to a Beam ship with warp 5 engines. If you update the model, you would generally use Beam 5.1, saving 6.0 for a ship with Warp 6 engines. This simplifies things when moving fleets around, because you can tell which designs can keep up with the others.

--Sakkra fleet coming to Rha. I redo some of the RELOCs and send the ships currently at Toranor to help defend (1 Repulse ship won't last against this fleet--they'll have 2 space beams, and worst of all, they have the top tier bioweapons. Completing PS10 won't help there.

--Fleet and troops bound for Rotan. I can't figure this one out. Rotan only has 4 bases, which is easy, but it also only has 4 factories. Hardly a worthwhile planet to try to conquer (it would take forever with a fleet to babysit to get it stood up). I'd rather take a fully developed world, even if it means losing a lot of our bombers to the bases.

--I scrap the WMDs and Ions and design a ship with no defensive toys, just a lot of 5 shot stingers, and one AM bomb because it fit. It will be useful in just about any battle, but especially in ones where we don't want to get into beam range. The other slot I use for a RadCol.

30) Rotan bases taken out in one drop. 4 bases did 60 damage to our bombers. That means 16 or so bases to take out a 250 hp ship. I like those odds. I go ahead an bombard Rotan (40 troops vs. 60+ pop), oops, they all died. While I figured that our troops would take them, I was hoping to get a feel for how many pop 10 bombers would kill. Turns out that it's alot. We lose the 40 troops, but I don't mind, seeing as I didn't plan to babysit the barren planet my whole turn to get it set up. My fleet wants to take Vega! But first, a diversion to Sol (1 turn away).

31) Sol's bases are taken down easily. Those bombers do a decent job outrunning missiles. I bombard Sol and miss glassing it by 12 pop. I'll leave a bomber and a Beam ship to finish the job. More importantly, I arrange a surprise party for Vega in 3 turns. The fleet from Rotan is invited, as well as anyone left from defending Rha in 2 turns (they can reach Vega in 1 turn). I also invited 130 citizens from various planets as well. The 95M inhabitants will be so surprised!

32) The Humans show up with a stack of medium ion guns, which prevent me from finishing off Sol. Not too bad, since with no bases or factories, someone else should finish the job soon enough. This should mean the Humans lose range to most of the map.

Battle at Rha.

Sakkra bring 37 bio ships, and 85 larges with ion streams, merculites and heavy blasters. The planet is only in danger from the bio ships, so I focus all efforts on them. I do somewhat better this time, with the repulsor ship pushing them back twice before getting hit by a merculite volley. My stinger ships took down a couple of them before they caught an enemy volley too. I managed to retreat 2 bombers and 2 beams ships, while I lost 9 larges. The bio ships reach the planet with 21 remaining. That was enough to kill off the pop in 3 rounds of bombing. The ion stream ships did impressive looking damage to the stack of bases with those streams, but neither their missiles or beams could manage even 1 point of damage. Good thing I had a Radcol around, I refound Rha same turn.

34) 10 Bombers take down 32 bases at Vega. I lose 2 bombers and 1 Stinger. They moved a large fleet of Juggernaughts away at the last second, leaving only a few for our fleet to kill. The planet is left with 85 pop and 435 factories, with 130 troops inbound.

Our troops find Sub-lights, Duralloy, Toxic, Range 5, Gatling Laser, and finally, Advanced Cloning.

Now, holding Vega is the next trick. I forgot that the fleet that trashed Rha was returning to Vega. I have 2 turns to get ready. First I dump reserves into Vega. I set it for +13 pop (to fill up), and the rest to bases (11/year!!). I also call for every ship in range to get there on the double (including one colony ship, just in case). I really want to hold onto this UR 95 pop planet.

35) Vega ended up maxxing pop, and getting 16 bases. 27/year now.

36) Vega is defended fairly easily with 43 bases. My ships help take down part of the rest of the Sakkra fleet before I retreat them, and they run from our untouchable bases.

Silicoids dissolve NAP.

The remains of the Sakkra fleet head to Tauri to lick their wounds. They will take 3 turns to arrive. My fleet, and 47 troops from Vega will be there next turn, and have 2 turns to prepare a reception.

37) Tauri reduced to 85 pop and 164 factories. 47 of our troops only drop them to 27 pop. Next turn another wave from Vega will join with the wave from Ajax last round to take the planet. All I need is to get PS10 up, and it will be safe.

38) Take Tauri with 29 troops left. FF7, Ion Stream, Universal Antidote (-2M from bio weaps) found. Scientists also discover FF6 on their own (cloaking device next).

Tauri can't finish the shield in time, so it's up to the fleet to defend vs. 50 Sakkra Hydras.

39) Tauri survives. I lost all the Beam ships, and some of the Stingers before they retreated. There were still 27 Hydras left, so our bombers led them a merry chase until they got tired. I did lose some bombers due to the ion stream and hvy blaster though.

I also glassed Kronos for fun. It had no factories to speak of, but 57M Sakkra died.

The Sakkra then called up and sued for peace. I said stuff it, we're coming for your tech, and they said here, have RC5! I agreed to peace with the Lizards, since it will take us awhile to upgrade our shipyards now.

2540) Silicoids declare on us. Oh well, now we have another target. Specifically I recommend Endoria. It's a Rich Toxic, and also the only Rock planet in range. Be careful though, the Rocks are packing Hercular missiles now. At least they have 360 factories, so we stand a chance of having our own Herculars if we invade.

We have +10 for Andrium vs. Duralloy, +20 for Armored Exo, +10 for PAS over PDS, but they have Ion Rifles (can't remember what the value is).

So its +40 for us, -Ion rifles, - 5 for defender. We should have a fairly easy time on the ground, but try to bring enough troops to nearly fill the planet after the fight. I really helps stand up a planet with factories if you start with a high pop (as Vega illustrated).

I've rerouted our ships all to Ajax, where all the building is RELOC'd. You can change the orders if you want, but I'd advise putting together everything we've got to attack Endoria.

Also, for the RC5 push, I put Mentar and Paranar on tech to hold the investment, while everyone else went for factories. The UR planets are already finished and back on ship-building. When the Artifacts finish and take over tech again, you can put Mentar and Paranar through their round of upgrades.

On the tech horizon is Star Gates, which will help us quite a bit with fleet management, and also Fusion Rifles and Tritanium armor. Those will really give us the ground edge vs. the Rocks when they come in. IT50 will boost our production another notch too.

We are finally on the offensive! Once we take Endoria and get a few of the Rock techs, and our next round of tech comes in, it may be time to just start exterminating. We can scrap the slow Stinger ships and the Repulsor beams, and design a new class of ships. Perhaps Hercular missiles or Fusion beams. We may want to design a fresh bomber, if we can fit more bombs due to miniturization (or wait for cloaking device). Another design to consider is a ship with Warp Dissipator, Ion Stream, and Inertial Stabilizer, packing the best 2 range beam we have. Several Sakkra designs have speed one, so a Dissipator would ruin them. Plus, the immobilized ships can't retreat, so you get to destroy them all.

 

[TheArchduke]

A really nice turn. I gotta admit to my shame, that I didn´t know you can check out factories on other planets. Can´t you just see PoP/Bases from scout reports?

If I knew Rotan was that crappy, I wouldn´t have bothered either.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

If you click on a planet, and then click again (while cursor is question mark) you'll see a picture of the planet, ships in orbit, and icons for pop, factories and waste. That is where you can see the factory count, as well as see what planetary shield they have.

This works for your own planets as well as any planets that have scouting info.

 

[Blake]

Awesomeness. I love gropo wars. The strategy of taking planets intact and instantly building a zillion bases is one I'm well familiar with.

Taking a rock world, despite the losses, will be a priority. They shall pay for their long period of much-needed friendship!

And that sure was nice of the lizards to give us RC5.

Will play now.