OSG21 - Big Brother

[RefSteel]

Okay, all of this makes sense. I may not end up building Repulsor ships of any kind, depending on our tech situation and what's actually on the Alkari fleet, but I'll consider NPGs (or even Gats if it looks like we'll have an initiative advantage over the Alkari smalls ... though Gat ships would obviously have a short shelf life) if I do. I'll try and play the turns later tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[RefSteel]

-I ended up building almost no military ships after all: Just a couple of Probes, as pictured in a previous message, and 28 long-range NPG fighters (see below for the reason for these).
-Battle Suits came in on the first interturn, and I chose Zortium over IIT6 or going back.
-I traded Sublights to the Mrrshans for BC2, Improved Space Scanner for Hyper-V rockets, and Merc missiles for BC 3.
-As of 2394, the Alkari missile bases were still packing Nukes with class 2 shields. Their Main Battle Fleet looked like this:

-At the same time, GNN reported the leaders in technology: The Mrrshans are ahead of us thanks to our gifts and trades, and the Meklar come in third, followed by the Alkari.
-The Mrrshans are building facs at a ridiculously slow rate. By the time they finish their planetary shield and first missile bases on Talas and Celtsi, the game will probably be over.
-Warp Dissipator came in, and I chose Impulse Drives over going back for Stabilizer; I pulled in IS faster by trading Dissipator to the Cats for it anyway. I also upped our trade package to 425 BC/year.
-Our feline friends finally colonized Maretta, the Rich Dead world near the south of our empire that we've been saving for them forever. We have scouts bound everywhere for which this gives us range. More Mrrshan colships are on their way to a handful of other worlds, and I think we have enough Scout 2s in the right areas to take advantage of the range extension when it happens.
-The Mrrshans' huge Tiger design is more than a decade old, as are most of their other ships (I think the Wolverines are still laser popguns), but their huge Puma is new, and might even have some legitimate defenses, weaponry, and (dare I hope?) speed.
-The Bears' starship designers are in love with Hyper V Rockets:

-Just before the election, GNN reports some news of the usual variety:

At least it didn't hit the Cats. I haven't sent any population off-world (where would I send them?) and I'm not sure if I should be setting ECO to the max (it reads "T-FORM" ... ?) or not; I have done so, but Zed can correct any of this that needs correcting; the accident just hit on this past interturn.
-The 2400 vote went like this:
Shandra: Mrrshans 6.
Abstain: Bulrathi 4, Meklar 4, Alkari 5, Klackons 4, Us 6.
-And finally, the Xenophobic Militarist Alkari just pulled in at least Range 6.

-We now have three techs in the (low) percentages: BC5, Zortium, and Repulsors. Stinger Missiles will also come in quite soon, and once we trade them to the kitties, they should also be willing to trade us Neutron Blaster.
-A couple of visual scouting reports:

The Probe that scanned Ursa is just now departing; I redirected it to Romulas to help scout things later, but this can still be vetoed. Also, our other Probe will reach Kailis next turn, and can get a more complete and up-to-date report on Proteus the turn after that if you want.
-And the map:

Ursa is heavily circled in green, Orion is labeled as before, and Rayden, which just went radiated over the interturn, is heavily circled in red. The three stars with thin purple circles and purple numbers to their left are planets to which Mrrshan colships are en route; the numbers are the ships' ETAs (~5 because that one's coming through the nebula). The green version of the same thing has a Bulrathi colship en route; it's probably just an expensive scout, but I've just sent 28 LR NPG 3s down from Rayden to arrive on the same turn, just in case. This effort was most likely pointless; a Scout 2 will reach the green star in question [EDIT: in two turns], and if it already belongs to the Meklar or Klackons, is an asteroid system, or is some other hostile that you're willing to let the Bears scout, our LR NPG 3s can be scrapped (though you might want to keep them anyway to replace our older Scouts). Or you can scrap them or give them new destinations this turn; they were just built now. Note that the Bears can only reach the southern green star because of their alliance with the birds.

Finally:
-The Alkari death fleet is still sitting around on Pollus, and now includes almost 100 of their Ion + Heavy Ion "Sky Hawks." It should take them 3 turns to get to Talas, meaning we should see them with an ETA of 2 the turn after they depart, and still be able to build a bunch of ships at Hyades and Rotan (relocing to Hyades) in time to send them to Talas and arrive at the same time as the Alkari fleet. Assuming they even go to Talas at all. Both Hyades and Rotan have Huge prebuilds going, waiting for our new techs and/or an emergency to disassemble them into smaller pieces.
-Rayden just had an Industrial Accident; your inherited turn is our first opportunity to respond.
-We have nothing in reserve right now, unfortunately (we've never had much there yet this game).
-We have just achieved contact with the Alkari. There may be no point in talking to them, considering who our allies are, but for some reason, the cats and birds still aren't at war.
-I've done no new defensive spending, but all our planets other than Helos (in the far south) already have shields up, per dathon.

Final note: I've tried to make these reports quite comprehensive to help the next player get a feel for where we are in the game. If this isn't helpful, just let me know, and I'll reduce the details accordingly in future reports.

The Save:

 

[sargon0]

@RefSteel:
I think you were right to avoid ships while Alkari refrain since more tech is required for decent spec.
Nice trading - at least the Mrrshan are helping to fill in some of the gaps in our tech tree.
The Mrrshan factory build is incredibly slow; maybe we should try for better IITn tech to help them (Zortium is a good pick for the moment to help ships etc).

Industrial Accident has turned planet Radiated and max size to 40 with 30 waste but currently still 80 people working 240 factories (see production figures)! From save 4 ticks (16%) are enough to cleanup waste but we can terraform planet to size 60 and excess spent in ECO will be lost as normal. Tricky to measure precise amount with odd situation but I roughly calculate 11 ticks (44%) should be enough to leave us with a Radiated size 60. Who said Atmospheric Terraforming would be no use to us!

I find your report & pics very useful so keep them coming; should make a good read for any spectators as well.

 

[Zed-F]

I see I'm up, will try to get this tonight.

 

[RefSteel]

I think you were right to avoid ships while Alkari refrain

Yeah, this ended up being dictated by the range between the planets in the area. I figured, as long as I can build a quick-response fleet and get it into action before the Alkari arrive, there's no point in paying maintenance on a big fleet (and starting its obsolescence clock). Once we got Dissipator and Stabilizer, I did consider building an attack fleet (including nuke bombers) to take the battle to the Alkari at Pollus, but decided to at leat wait for BC5 and Zortium before trying anything rash.

The Mrrshan factory build is incredibly slow; maybe we should try for better IITn tech to help them

Agreed, especially if we go back for RC4 when our battle computer comes in. I briefly considered IIT6, but basically decided that Incredibly Slow * 4/3 = Still Too Slow, especially since our ships were still flying around armored in tinfoil.

Also, thanks for the explanation of the Irradiation event, and for reassuring me about my turn reports -- in addition to learning the ins and outs of the game, I'm still trying to learn what to include and what not to for a useful (non-boring) OSG report.

 

[Zed-F]

Quick report:

Population-wise, the Mrrshan continue to expand. They hit the 12 planet warning during my turns. Most of their worlds are still very new and under-developed.

Tech-wise, a bunch of stuff came in and most of it was traded to the Mrrshan for their obsolete goodies:
- BC V => Jammer II (we have no Jammer for our bases and it's quick, RC IV next)
- Zortrium => IIT5
- Repulsor => Class VI Shields
- Atmos => Bio-Toxin Antidote (not much coming up that's useful other than Terra and Advanced Soil)
- Still working on Impulse Drives (but I got range 7 from the cats)
- Stinger => Fusion Bombs (quick and a decent bomb, need Ion Stream, AM Torps, or Fusion Rifle to advance)

On the military front I elected not to go to war just yet since the cats are still peaceful with the birds (who'da thunk it?) I had to redesign our placeholders to prevent them from being built; keep an eye on this as more techs come in. Since our placeholder worlds were getting full I swapped them to research and Mentar to prebuild.

Also our small fleet of fighters proved effective beating back minor Alkari and Meklar scout/colonization attempts on the far south edge of the map. Keep an eye on this. Scouts are outbound to all planets we can newly reach as of Mrrshan colonization of Draconis in the north.

It pains me to see all those Terra and Advanced Soil techs not getting researched (and gifted to the Mrrshan natch) but we are still top dogs pop-wise. The cats have lots of space but not much pop to fill it. Maybe we should research Cloning and gift it to the cats after Biotoxin Antidote!

 

[RefSteel]

Looking good; I believe this means...

Roster:
dathon78 --> On Deck
RefSteel
Zed-F --> Just Played
Sargon0 --> UP NOW

Notes:
Taking a look at the save, Mentar is getting close enough to its prebuild that we should probably switch it back to research just a couple turns into the next turnset. Also, though the inevitable Cat-Bird war isn't underway yet, and the Alkari death fleet has either moved from Pollus or scattered, I noticed a couple of things suggesting hostilities are on the horizon:

-The Cats are now mustering a serious fleet at Talas, with several Huges either there already or on the way.

-An Alkari colship is in orbit over the newest kitty colony in the northeast (the green star with a Tundra world). If they treat each other the way they treat us, this means transports will be heading up there soon/immediately, so we may want to build some fighters at Xudax and send them up to kill the colship and shoot down the inevitable blimps. Our existing LR fighter design could do the trick, but one with a computer and/or more armament in lieu of Tanks would probably be better-suited if we can afford the design space.

 

[sargon0]

I neglected ships (except to halt invasion at Dolz) relying on our superior tech and speed to react. At the end of my turns however the situation is hotting up quickly with cats at war with everyone and incoming fleets from Meklar and Alkari.
2410 Twiddle tech sliders to push IIT5, buy pop to fill Rayden following ATMOS bringing it back to normal.
IBT Alkari sending 45 pop to Dolz (as RefSteel predicted), due in 9 turns
2411 Push Impulse before ship build
IBT ECM2 hits and RC4 selected
2412 Push deposit for RC4
IBT GNN reports:

2413 Confirm Cats now at war with Meklar & Bulrathi. Exchange BC5 for Neutron Blaster. Spy reports backwards birds:

IBT Scouts chased from 3 northern Klackon worlds (Kholdan is yellow in Nebula) and 2 central Bulrathi worlds SW of Ursa
2414 Mrrshan have Biotoxin Antidote; I wonder which of our toys they traded for that! They now think they are so advanced they won’t trade or even accept gifts!
IBT Impulse hits and choose Trilithium (range 10)
…
2416 New ship design

Create 2 initially to protect Dolz
Cats now at war with bugs also
IBT Fusion Bomb hits and Fusion Rifle chosen.
..
2418 Mrrshan settle Incedius SW of Meklon!
2419 Cats finally at war with birds. Single Meklar large spotted inbound for Vega in 2 turns – send LR NPG to defend
2420 Birds waste no time:

Note this turn the main cat fleet just left Talas! The bird tech is unchanged except for addition of Inferno. Dolz transports just vanished.

Savegame: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/117018/osg21_2420_SAVE3.GAM.zip

 

[Zed-F]

Why Fusion Rifle? We can't invade anyone...

Ion Stream would have been cheaper and more useful, I think. Probably doesn't matter though.

 

[dathon78]

I'm up, eh? Should be able to play this afternoon.

dathon

 

[sargon0]

Fusion Rifle was for cats (or unlikely defense) - I wasn't sure if they could effectively use Ion Stream or if we would choose to use it. However you are right, being cheaper Ion Stream may well have been the wiser choice.

 

[Zed-F]

Ah, ok, gifting the rifle to the cats makes some sense.

 

[RefSteel]

@Sargon: Nice turns! I'd never considered a ship like the NPG27 before you posted it, but as soon as I started thinking about it, I realized it would be a very effective weapon.
(I'm just glad the Diplo event didn't hit us and the Cats! That one event was my biggest worry about this variant concept.)

Also: It sounds from dathon's post like I might be up later today, in which case I'll try and play my turnset and post the report sometime this evening. If not though, I'll need to be skipped until roughly Sunday afternoon.

 

[dathon78]

2420: Hmm, now we're finally starting to see some action! Unfortunately, we seem to be out of position.

I neglected ships (except to halt invasion at Dolz) relying on our superior tech and speed to react.

In normal situations, this would work because our planets are shielded. However, here I think it's going to cost the kitties a planet. The birds are heading for Talas with their SoD, and all we have is 2 large ships on the way? Those will be eaten with no losses to the enemy. Talas doesn't have the production to get a shield and base up, so I think the planet's toast. I'm going to give construciton tech one more turn to pop, then go with the best design I can. Also, I think sargon mis-clicked; there are no LR NPG's at Vega, or enroute. The nearest is a squad of 40 at Maalor. I sent them, but they're two turns away, and the Meklar bogey will be there next turn.

IBT: Fate smiles on us, and IIT5 comes in. Choose Armored Exo; I agree that Gropo techs aren't that useful, but IIT4 isn't much of an upgrade, and the armor is almost 6K cheaper.

2421: Well, let's see what we can do here. We don't have enough credits anywhere to build a Huge in time. Here's the two options I explored:

The small ship is pretty self-explanatory; fast NPG fighter. I can have ~475 of them in place at Hyades in two turns. However, I think the warship is the better way to go. The Alkari are fielding all Speed 1 designs. Since Talas isn't ours, we don't have to worry about defending the planet on the tactics screen. If I can "lock up" all their ships with the Dissipator, I can just wait the 50 turns for combat to end, and they should auto-retreat. That is, if they are deemed the "attackers"; I don't know how the rules work for two fleets over a third-party planet. So what I'm going to do is build the large warships out of Hyades, Rotan, and Mentar. The one from Mentar will get there in two turns, so I'll have Hyades, Xudax, and Rotan build some fighters for distraction.

2422: Easily smoked the Meklar large at Vega. It had Hyper-V missles and gatling lasers. However, the Meklar did scout the planet, so we'll have to leave the fighters there to shoot down the inevitable transports. I start building some more NPG 5.0's at Rayden to help with this.

2423: Bulrathi bogey incoming at Draconis, but I think the cats can handle it.

The Battle for Talas: ... didn't happen.

2424: Apparently, the Alkari-cat fight took place first, and the birds nuked the planet We didn't even have a battle; we're in orbit with their fleet. Maybe next inter-turn? This does NOT bode well for us being able to defend the cats. Basically, it appears that all we can do militarily is to soften up their offensive targets, and mop up fleets they lost to. Now I wonder if those fighters at Vega will do anything against the Meklar transports that I just noticed are inbound. We'll find out in two turns. Ship-building goes on hold for the moment.

2425 Elections: Kitties have 8 votes now. The Bulrathi (4), Meklar (5), Alkari (5), and Klackon (4) all vote for us. That gives us 18 out of 32 votes I of course abstain our 6 votes. Well, looks like the "diplomatic" win is off the table. The cats have pissed off EVERYBODY else in the galaxy Looks like we're going to have to switch to a domination victory condition for the cats.

2425: The Alkari SoD left without a fight. There's a smaller fleet incoming with a colony ship, but we can defeat it easily. More Bulrathi trickle headed for Draconis, not worried there. The kitten's SoD is heading back to Talas now. Bumped up some espionage against the birds. Maybe we can do some sabotage damage? I wouldn't waste too much money on it yet, until we see some good results.

2426: Hmmm, ok, if I had to guess, our fighters at Vega did indeed attack the Meklar transports. There weren't any messages, but all the cats had was a single medium, there are no bases, and they didn't lose any pop off a 50-soldier invasion. Birds have a fleet incoming to Celtsi. Their ETA is 3 turns, our from Talas is 4, but I've found that those are never accurate with a nebula involved. Dunno if we can do anything, but the big Mrrshan fleet headed towards Talas can handle itself, so I go ahead and send it.

2427: Cats colonize Maalor, down on the Meklar border. Looks like they're using most of their resources to stand up those new far-away colonies; that actually might hurt them, as they don't seem to be paying too much attention to the Alkari threat on their doorstep.

2428: We arrived at Celtsi, a turn ahead of the Alkari fleet. Maybe since we're stationed here, we'll get to battle this time? Who knows. Ugh, the idiot feline's just sent their defense fleet at Draconis on a 5-turn cruise towards the backline world of Rha, leaving it wide open for a Bulrathi attack.

IBT: Alkari fleet runs from us at Celtsi. Class VI comes in, choose Cloaking over Class VII.

2429: Interesting, Celtsi is unscathed. Makes me wonder if I had sent the ships to Talas a turn sooner if it might have been saved. That's definitely worth noting for future engagements; we might get to defend if we are already stationed when the fleet comes in. Well, looks like we have the opportunity for a test at Maalor. There's a borg fleet incoming in 2 turns, and we can have 23 warp 5 fighters in place next turn. I'm very curious to see if we engage them before they fight the colony and medium ship already there. Oooh, the kittens researched Auto Repair! I traded them IIT5 for that gem; hopefully, that will help their growth curve. Now, the birds are using 2-space guns, so a Huge ARS won't be as effective; I would opt for Dissipators over Repulsor beam on a Huge design when propulsion and weapons tech comes in.

IBT: Destroyed 20 factories on Altair RCIV comes in, as does Antidote; I take BC VI and Advanced Soil. The cats are going to need that for a domination win.

2430: Argh, #@!%& stupid felines! They didn't re-colonize Talas. Send the fleet from Celtsi back to hold it (hopefully!). Well, they have a lot of ships heading south, so let's hope they're planning on striking at the Alkari. Everybody but Helos is building factories. We'll want some real warships when propulsion and weapons tech comes in.

Sorry for the turn-log write-up, I don't have time for more today.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/52773/osg21_2430.zip

dathon

 

[RefSteel]

Wow -- that was a fast turnaround! I've got it, and will start on it shortly.

 

[sargon0]

My comment about ‘neglected ships’ was intended as an admission that I had left us ill-prepared. The Alkari only declared on my last turn and I thought the Mrrshan fleet at Talas was preparing to attack the birds but, with the tech available, I should have had us much better prepared and the loss of Talas is the result of my neglect. LR NPG should have been en-route to Vega so that was an oops.

I had noticed defending Dolz that no comment is made on downing transports to cat planets but the only ship contact I had was attacking the bird Colship already there when I arrived. Now we know we need to beat the cat enemies to defend the planet.

@RefSteel: Good luck with your turns.

 

[RefSteel]

I'm posting this before I run out the door - no time right now to upload all my report images (to say nothing of editing them to get a pretty map or anything) - so I'll do a quick summary for now, and try and post a full report later this evening.
-Bad news: The Mrrshan reach colonies beyond Meklar space were smashed before I could do anything about it. Also: We are no longer able to sabotage the birds.
-Good news: The latter is because Pollus and Proteus are now feline colonies (so is Talas, again) and Altair has just been glassed.
-Fusion Rifle came in, but I forgot to gift it to the kitties (just realized that now). I chose Auto Blaster over Pulsons, Tachyon Beam, or going back.
-Propulsion (range 10) still hasn't come in - I've been spending most of our imperial budget on prebuilds while we wait for it to do so (for miniaturization).
-I scrapped our old scouts and LR NPG 3s, and replaced them with a new LR NPG 5 design, which you can feel free to also scrap - I have at least one of dathon's NPG 5.0 fighters at each location protected by one of these since I realized after building them that we probably won't care about LR Tanks once Range 10 comes in.
-Various incoming fleets; we can easily handle anything the Alkari send at us with the fleets already at the targeted worlds, but I have no idea what the Meklar are packing. I've tried to leave our forces in good central positions.

Here's the save in case you don't want to wait for the full report (or in case I don't manage to get it posted this evening). I've done nothing yet in the turn Zed will be inheriting.

 

[RefSteel]

Obviously this isn't really a spoiler (no such thing in an OSG), but I'm putting it inside "Spoiler" tags just so no one who's already read it (or doesn't want to slog through it in the first place) will have to scroll past the whole thing. Yeah, it's a little long....

Spoiler :

-I quickly discovered that it doesn't matter if our fleet just arrived or if they've been sitting there forever; sometimes, we still don't get a chance to fight incoming fleets at Mrrshan worlds. I don't know if there's an initiative system or just a roll of the dice to determine who fights whom, or what - maybe we never get to fight except at a system where the cats have no fleet (or something)? Fortunately, we (ahem - I mean the cats) didn't lose any worlds this way; just some Mrrshan fleets. (On at least two occasions, both sides' fleets were completely destroyed when the battle was over, leaving our fleet alone in orbit over a still-intact planet).
-Our sabotage continued, taking out 10 factories on Altair (yipeeeee...) and 23 on Obaca (due to misclick) - the birds called to complain about the first set, but weren't ready to start a war.

Taking a cue from Sirian, I directed them to our complaints department: Out the door, across the corridor, out to the lakeside porch, and over the railing, into the drink.
-Maretta (the kittens' rich world) has built some bases and a shield, and should now be immune to attack unless someone's got spore ships or bombers.
-I scrapped all our designs with warp speed of less than 5 (a total of less than a hundred smalls, roughly half of them armed) but still have LR ships (plus a single fighter in case we want to scrap the new LR NPG 5s too) over all scoutable worlds.
-All our planets have now maxed again with RC4.
-On my third sabotage attempt, I changed my strategy slightly ... and got lucky on the cover-up.

The new policy was in accordance with my Grand Strategy for Mrrshan Defense in light of our questionable ability to defend their worlds directly. Then the lone NPG27 cruiser I sent to Pollus as a scout-with-scanner managed to take out two missile bases before it had to retreat. After I got through giggling, I instituted a small change in the grand strategy: Instead of waiting for tech hits and newly-designed bombers, I decided to implement the best possible Mrrshan defense immediately! And as everyone knows, the best defense is...

...yeah, that. The Alkari issued another warning (I guess their ambassador can swim), but still didn't declare war! What's that smell? Ah, yes: The smell off fear.
-The Cats have a new toy! The huge Sabretooth has sublight engines, though it probably will still keep banding up with warp 1 ships that nullify its strategic speed.
-I sent some ships to scout the Mrrshan reach colonies (beyond Meklar space) of Incedius (southwest of Meklon), and Romulas (northwest of that). Romulas quickly ceased to be a Mrrshan colony, presumably bombed out by the 'borgs, but I got a few scouts to Incedius in time to see 55 Meklar transports arrive (they took the planet before our Fusion Rifle tech came in, so it wouldn't have helped even if I'd remembered to give it to Shandra) with cover from a huge and 8 Tornado larges. I would have had to send our main battle fleet to have a chance there, and it was just too far away from everything. I did try sending the nearest fighters before I saw the Meklar fleet, but upon arrival, our brave fighter commander uttered the immortal words, "Excuse me. We were just leaving."
-At the same time, four of our NPG 5.0s hit Romulas and met 3 Klackon mediums called Horsemen. I figured 4 of our smalls should beat 3 of their mediums any old day, and as it turned out, they were apparently carrying Heavy Ion Cannons, and didn't like to fire them from point blank range. With our fighters' speed...

Romulas turned out to be an Inferno 25.
-I gave the cats a couple turns to invade Pollus, but as no transports appeared, I finally gave up and glassed the place in 2438. At that point, the birds finally realized we were at war. This lasted about two seconds, as we immediately lost contact with them - the only Alkari world within range 7 of our own had been the colony we just destroyed.
-I felt a little cocky after glassing a colony with just NPG ships, and sent our Pollus death fleet to Altair, which turned out to have 17 bases. If we'd played this on Impossible, the game would be going a little differently. It took some fancy flying around the asteroids, but since all our ships could outrun their nukes, and their battle computers could barely touch our high-maneuver ships anyway, I lost none of the cruisers (a few fighters, I think) in shredding the planet's defenses. Orbital bombardment fell just short of glassing: The planet had no factories left, and one population unit!
-The Mrrshans re-colonized both Talas and Pollus and started standing them up with transports.
-On my final interturn, our main fleet discovered that Proteus had only 3 bases. Ten dathon-class cruisers took them all down, and were nearer to dying of laughter than from missile hits. Over a hundred Alkari fighters, escorting two colships, arrived at Altair at the same time, and the one sargon-class cruiser I'd left behind for defense made them all go away - one barely-alive colship by retreating, and everything else in flames - and finished the job of glassing the birdy homeworld. Naturally, Shandra came calling after that.

Well, no, actually the Alkari menace has not reached the Psilon empire, and now it probably never will, but by all means, yes! Let us go on smiting!
-As of 2440: Relations with the cats are now literally off the charts (beyond the green on the right side of Harmony). Also, I apparently made the right move by not bombing Proteus, because it is now (already) a Mrrshan colony. I hadn't noticed the transports they must have had en route. They've also got a fleet due at the Meklon Ultra Poor Ocean of Rhilus in two turns, but that might be a real fight (the Meks have a fleet in orbit including a huge of their own). I have no idea what robot technology is like, but I'll bet it's better than the birdies'. The droids also have a pair of Tornado larges due at Vega in 4 turns. They might be missile boats and at all events have some missiles (not nukes - actual missiles), on the basis of my encounter with them at Incedius, but I've no idea what's on them apart from that. I've changed nothing in the empire, letting Zed decide what needs building or sending or changing.

A few heads-ups and reminders:
-I realized after my turnset that I forgot to gift/trade Fusion Rifle to the kitties.
-We've got prebuilds going everywhere except Helos, and even have some funds in the treasury. Our fleets should be in good position to be dispatched for either attack or defense. We also have two open design slots, and the LR NPG 5s can be scrapped without worry (thus providing still more reserves) if you want a third. Nothing spectacular, but you have some options at least.
-The Meklar have 3 Tornado larges bound for the Keeta asteroids in the middle of the nebula, due in ~6 turns; you can send something to deal with them if for some reason you decide that you care. Otherwise, I guess they'll chase away our lone fighter when they get there. (Oh no!)
-Mrrshan transports (originally meant to boost their own reach colony there) are due at the Meklar colony of Incedius in 5 turns. If you want to try and ensure the cats have space superiority when the transports arrive, you'll need either Range 10 or LR ships, and I don't know whether they can retake the colony without an assist from orbital bombardment even then (obviously depends on Meklar gropo technology). Personally, I'd ignore this and concentrate on colonies the cats (with our help) can hold more easily, but it's up to you. I do have a bunch of LR NPG 5s at or approaching Maalor in case you want to use them for this purpose (ETA from there to Incedius should be 2).
-Helos is handling all our (little) research at the moment; at this rate, and with current tech slider settings, Range 10 is at 13% (it's been climbing slowly at ~10 for several turns). Basically, my plan was to design some new ships, build them, and go on a rampage as soon as this tech came in. The only problems were that a) the tech didn't hit on my turnset, and b) I started going on a bit of a rampage anyway.
-The map:

Either too much to report or not enough, so I stuck with the basics: Orion is marked as usual, but in white (since the Meklar have now appeared). I also took the liberty of changing, adding, removing, or replacing some flags to reflect what's actually there instead of what gets reported on the official map. Kholdan is the only Klackon colony of whose location I'm 100% sure, so it's the only one I included, but of course they have more; the Meklar and Bulrathi might too. Homeworlds are circled in their respective race's color. Notice that one of them doesn't have a flag. Awwwwwww. So sad.
-The save is in my previous post.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, I will try to get this tonight.

 

[dathon78]

Excellent turns RefSteel Way to take it to the dirty little birdies!

dathon