RBMoo SG1 - Oh the Humanity - Team A

Although my initial assessment of the tech tree was highly unfavorable, I have since come to understand this game mechanism better, and there are many elements I do like. Part of the problem with the tech tree in the standard game is that the tech pace moves way too fast. The techs blur past in an endless march, and by the time you can put a tech to use, you've already researched a better one. This "tech blur" prevents the player from having the chance to evaluate individual techs, and thus prevents the player from interacting with the tech in any meaningful way and also shuts down interaction with what is the most vital aspect of the strategy.

I have come to see things a little differently. In MOO1, you could skip over certain techs entirely. This gave the player the chance to speed ahead to specific techs of interest to the strategy. That remains lost to MOO3, but all the other elements of MOO1 tech are here. The techs do matter. They matter a lot. They matter so much, that until you gain familiarity with them on the whole, in general for starters, and in detail eventually, you aren't actually playing the game yet.

Until you realize the difference a single tech can make, you won't understand the depth of strategy the game can offer. Once you do understand, then the "randomized" elements of the tech tree you draw in any given game start to mean something.

With a fresh perspective after a lot of mod play, I came to my turn this round with a fresh eye, ready to inspect our tech tree and tech situation and forge some long term strategy. Well, was I in for a shock or what. WOW. In all my games, I've not see a worse tech tree than this one. We're missing some of the most important techs in the game, and lots of them. I made it one of my priorities to see what, if anything, I might be able to get in trade from our friends. More on that later.


First up, an overview. The tech Matrix is your friend. Check it, see what we've got, see what's coming up soon, see what's coming up eventually. (None of this matters when you don't have a clue about individual techs, but this is what you do once you do know). You can also see what tech other races have, and what they may have that is missing from your tree. You can see this in the tech screen by checking the matrix from their view, but you can get a faster sense by offering to Exchange Items and then looking down a list of items they have to offer, none of which you possess. The only danger of this is determining what they have that you can't get via research (because it's absent from your tree this game) vs what you can get but aren't up to yet.

Tech Icons! These are how to identify techs quickly. Almost all the icons make sense. A few don't, but we'll come back to that. You can tell the general application of a given tech by its icon.


Here is a shot of our entire Economics matrix to date.



Normally this is one of the thinner trees anyway, but in this game we seem to be even thinner.

The Greco-Roman columns icon indicates a Government DEA Upgrade tech. Both Securities Board and Lending Associations are government DEA upgrades. These can extend the reach of a given government, and also extend the degree of effect, which means (I believe) more tax income available and more unrest reduction.

The yellow icon for Anti-Redundancy is an HFOG reduction tech. These help slow the growth of the Heavy Foot of Government. You don't do anything with them, but the more of them you have, the slower the pace of inflation on production costs.

The pink icon showing a drill is a Mining DEA upgrade. Get this tech, your viceroys will construct these at your mines (on their schedule, and no more than one per turn) IF you have some resources being spent on the Economic slider (as opposed to the MBQ, PBQ, Terraform slider, and Tech slider). More minerals you can support either more industry DEA's or more industry upgrades.

There are passive techs and active techs. The yellow-icon HFOG techs are all passive. So are techs like Broader Usage and Holistic Planning. These increase productivity slightly in ways hard to gauge until you have to play without them because they aren't in your tech tree! Then you'll miss them, and understand what they really do. That will take time, though. In the mean time, there's little to say about them.

The bar-chart icon represents financial or infrastructure tech. The Commodoties Market is a planetary upgrade, meaning you build one per planet and it's built in the PBQ.

All planetary items are built in the PBQ while regional items are handled by the viceroys and built with the Economic slider. The economic slider has a queue three items long, just like the MBQ and PBQ, but since the regional-level items are supposed to be handled by locals, the viceroys, and not by you, you can't see what's in the Regional Queue. You do need to understand that the Regional queue works the same way as the MBQ and PBQ, though. You can be doing three items at a time, and the economic queue will only finish one item per turn. That includes DEA's, DEA upgrades, and regional facilities (like the Hydroponic farm). You can open up the regional panel at any time to check on your DEA's, upgrades, and regional facilities.

ONE PROBLEM: the viceroys do not build regional facilities based on need. They do it strictly by the numbers. They will start at the bottom of the list of DEA's and work their way up. In this regard, the "more important" DEA's are the ones at the bottom, since those will always be the first to get new facilities, even if there are no DEA's there. (Yes, that's stupid, but at least for now, that is how it works).

In terms of players complaining that sometimes they can't get DEA's built... often that is because the viceroy is in love with regional facilities and keeps filling the econ queue with more and more of them. In my view, QS ought to ditch their "you aren't meant to micromanage" philosophy and grant the player access to the economic/regional queue. Not that the player should HAVE to run this queue, any more than the PBQ, but the option frankly should be there, now that I realize what is going on. And the reason the option should be there is what I just listed: the complete and utter STUPIDITY of the viceroys when it comes to regional facilities. At times when you are being starved out and the viceroy ignores your DevPlan that says to prioritize food at starving planets, you should be able to go in there and override its stupidity and insist it finish that Bio DEA or Hydroponic Farm next. At the moment, though, you can't do that.

Finally, from the above graphic, the Bulk Freight Module. That space icon does double duty. That's the icon for Space Ports and their upgrades, and also the icon for Planetary Terraforming techs. These are some of the most important techs in the game.

The first/cheapest Terraforming tech is called "Sunlight Redirection". It's a Physical Sciences tech, about TL10, so it comes fairly quickly. Each terraforming tech allows you to improve a planet by one habilitability ring. They also reduce your losses at outposts in hostile environments. As soon as you have one Terraforming tech, you can turn Y1's into G2's, which vastly increases max pop for the planet and also growth rate. You can turn Y2's into Y1's, which allows farming. And you can settle those R1's and turn them into Y2's, which are worth bothering with.

Frankly, this is the first game I've noticed where the player did not draw Sunlight Redirection. Ouch! We're still without any terraforming tech, though by the time my round ends, we do have one finally being researched. It will come in on Jaffa's round.

I have a lot more to say about tech, but that's all I can say for now. Got to run.


- Sirian
 
I'm using Grey's mod-pack to slow down tech development and 'strengthen' the AI, and ironically, it's made the AI WORSE. This is because with the tech pace slowed down, I have time to look at all the tech trees and see what is upcoming; then I can put 25% in the tree that I want most urgently.

Once I get it, I get its benefits, be they better mining, reduced pollution or better research...which then usually increases my ability to get the next one that I decide to focus on. The AI doesn't do this and so ends up being worse off than when we all got a slew of techs in no time...

I've found that all branches of the tech tree have some very useful things in it and so I'm not just climbing the same two or three branches anymore. In fact, above I mentioned the things that I used to put behind warp engines and better weapons simply because you CAN defend your home system with older military tech if the AI comes looking for you. (NO excepted! <g>)

I especially like the pollution reduction techs now since I had no idea that pollution could consume over 50% of the AUs you put in a queue. With each of these techs multiplying the pollution rate by .67, it goes 67%, 44%, 30%, 20% for savings of 33%, 56%, 70% and 80%

In my latest game I was out at the edge of the galaxy and so my scouts were alive for a LONG time. I THINK what I observed happening was that I would have a bit of a tree 'revealed' and then a scout would find a random tech on a new world that was higher in a tree than what was already revealed. When that happened, the tree was 'frozen' below that point except for techs marked as 'must be in tree' and so I missed some techs which I was used to having.

However, I recruited some Scientific spies to steal them from my neighbors! But I wonder if I made a trade or stole something higher in a tree if the same freeze effect would happen. (Of course, since it was only one game, it could have been coincidence.)
 
OK, found some time for more reporting. :) Where was I?


Here's a shot of part of our Tech Matrix, from the Energy branch:



Remember, the icons are your key. You may eventually get enough experience that you'll remember what each tech does (like most of you do for Civ3 at this point) but until then, rely on the tech icons to help clue you in.

The level 3 techs above are all Laser techs. I explained the difference between projective weapons and beam weapons. Well, actually, there are a couple of classes of beam weapons, too. (I'm not certain, two or three). In MOO1, there were three kinds of guns: beam, projectile, and field. Field weapons had a shorter range and less punch, but more chance to hit. Beam weapons had the most punch but least chance to hit. Projectiles were sort of in the middle, and did not diffuse over distance. I know MOO3 has followed this general sort of pattern, but frankly, at this point the only thing I'm clear on is the projectiles. I've seen the way they behave in combat and I "get" it, when it comes to them. That's why I explained them in the last post. The rest of these gun techs, the subtles are still unknown.

We've got three laser upgrades to start that last picture. What do the upgrades do? When are they worth using?

* Autofire: This upgrade triples the fire rate, while doubling the amount of space the gun requires. That's the equivalent of adding three guns for the price of two. There is no down side!

* Continuous: This upgrade improves targetting. Your guns will miss less often. Hitting more often means more total damage, so this upgrade is also a pure winner. Use it!

* Miniaturization: The upgrade reduces gun size by 20%. You can have two levels of this. They add minor costs, which are negligible. These are sure winners, too. Always use them. The only reason not to use them is to go with a better base gun. (Sometimes the latest guns, even without upgrades, beat earlier guns with upgrades. Sometimes not. All part of the fun. I would think Charis would like this aspect, but... guess we'll see).

* Improved: Adds 50% more damage at no size increase. Huge winner, but the upgrade comes late, so you only get this one for obsolete guns. Can make for interesting choices, though, lengthening the useful life of some old gun types.

* Armor Piercing: Improves damage vs armored ships. That is, rather than peeling off all the armor, you may be able to do hull damage sooner. This, in effect, improves total damage. Problem is, the upgrade takes up a lot of space. Vs unarmored or lightly armored targets, you get little or no benefit.

* Enveloping: Improves damage vs shielded ships. Similar net effect to Armor Piercing.

The AP and Enveloping upgrades are a real decision you need to make on the strategic level. Later in the game, they probably represent more of a no-brainer. I don't have enough late-game combat experience to know for sure. Early in the game, though, nobody really has thick armor or powerful shields yet. The real tradeoff on these upgrades, if available, is whether to forego the upgrade so you get more total guns (which is better in the short term) or to go with the upgrades (which means less guns, not as good short term, but the guns will continue to have some effect as enemy targets start showing up with shields and armor). So it depends on the mission of the ship. Starships, I tend to avoid these two upgrades. I need them to be at max effectiveness NOW, and tomorrow will take care of itself. System ships are another story. You may want to go with these items on system ships, so that the ships retain more value in the distant future. It really is an interesting choice.


The Class I shield has an electronics icon. I've only seen that used on shield techs, thus far, although you hardly need an icon to inform you that Shield Class IV is a shield tech.

The Hand Blaster icon with two firearms held in the air on a red background is the Ground Forces icon. All techs with that icon apply to ground force upgrades, which are handled automatically the same as upgrades to planetary bases. Your forces will always have the latest/best gear. This also means complete obsolescence for old ground combat techs.

The fusion cannon and quark cannon are energy guns. Since the icons are different, that may mean the guns are different classes of energy weapons, but... that's just a guess based on MOO1.

The Matter Conversion Module is a shipyard upgrade, and all techs with that icon are shipyard facilities (that I've seen). And as I said, there is no difference between them except cost, so build the cheaper ones first.


Here's more of our Energy branch:



The planetary defense icon, most of you now recognize from building bases.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells is a higher speed System Engine. These let ships go faster on the combat map, although you can still choose to slow down the engine speed to save some space. I talked about managing that in the last post.


Our latest Energy techs:



You may recognize the System Drives icon first. Then the shields icon, twice, and some energy weapon icons.

Note that Class II shield tech is missing! Each game, some of the techs will be missing from your tree. The "creative" racial setting affects this. Races with high creativity have fewer missing techs, while those who have low creativity will have more techs missing from their trees. The game is designed in this regard to give you a random set of missing techs, and a random set of headaches as a result, requiring you to adapt your strategy. Some techs (like Space Ports and Shipyard facilities) are "pivotal" and will always be present.

I was initially wary of the missing tech game aspect, thinking it came up short of MOO1, in that none of the techs seemed to matter, so it didn't matter which ones were missing. I've since changed my mind. The missing techs play a very significant role in affecting player strategy, needs, and priorities. One could invest a lot into scientific spies to try to acquire key missing techs. If one has allies, tech trades are also possible, but difficult to secure. Post-patch, the MOO1 game element of finding techs on planets conquered by your ground troops will make a return, as well. Short of these solutions, you simply have to do without! The game is designed such that while some techs are key, none are indispensible. I'm happy with the way that's been done. You will always have enough techs to compete, though there will likely be some keen shortages for parts of the game in some areas, which will vary depending on the hand you're dealt.

Now, about fighter weapon upgrades: depends on your mission for the fighters. If you intend them to be only gnats, to occupy enemy firepower only briefly, then clearly you don't want to add weapon upgrades to your fighters, since that means you have fewer fighters. On the other hand, if you intend the fighters to do actual damage, to use lots of them and rely on them to put real hurtin on the enemy, fighters most of all benefit from the AP and Enveloping upgrades, since their weak weapons run afoul of deflection by enemy shields and armor more quickly.

Fighter and Missile shields/armor are no brainers. These take up no space and make your stuff harder to shoot down. Fighters with armor and shields, and space control chassis, can actually take a few shots, and I believe they autoupgrade to your latest shield and armor techs, though that's just a guess.


Now for a look ahead, to what's coming up for us in Energy research:



That green icon represents a Sensors tech. That tech is the "class 3" ship sensor, which improves your detection range in combat.

The cloaking device is a bit of a unique item, and I've never seen that icon on anything else, so that may be the cloaking icon.

You see another system engine upgrade in our future, some gropo techs (these are the least interesting techs in the game, at the moment, because by and large that whole aspect of the game is cloaked under a shroud and I have no sense for what the techs do. There's feedback in space combat. I can see the effects. Ground combat is just a blur).

You can also see some more energy weapon techs. The Ion Pulse Cannon is key. In MOO1, only one of the three energy weapons (Beams, specifically) could get the "Autofire" upgrade. I cannot tell you how many dozens if not hundreds of games of MOO1 I played, over the years, and how crucial the Ion Pulse Autofire guns were to me in so many of those games. Well, true to life, this gun is special in MOO3, too. The "laser family" beam weapons with the pink icons are the smallest guns. You can fit more of them onto your ships, which makes them more ideal for defense: for shooting down missiles and fighters. It takes a long time for a maxed out Ion Pulse gun (miniaturized, autofire, continuous, improved, etc) to fade into complete obscurity.

I do not yet know whether "autofire" is available on all guns in MOO3. It may not be. It's certainly available on the "laser" and "mass driver" families, which is at least half the guns. The other half, I'm not sure. In MOO1, the "continuous" upgrade had to do with damage being rolled over from one ship in a stack to another. These were thus ideal for massing against HORDES of tiny ships. In MOO2, ships no longer stacked in that "Heroes of Might and Magic" combat model, so they changed Continuous to do something else, and in MOO3 it may be available on all gun types, I do not know.


Now on to the Biology branch:



Here are our early techs. Arrgh. The same icon is pulling triple duty! This is one place where the icons are less useful. The same icon represents three different tech types!

* Hydroponic Farms is a regional facility. You can build one per region, and they are built in the Regional Build Queue, by the viceroys, on viceroy time. You get no access to that queue. (We probably should have access, but that's a leftover element from the initial game design, with the IFP's and so forth, where the player was supposed to have a limited ability to intervene in what the underlings were doing). Note that unlike DEA output, which increases with population (as more folks work there), the Hydro Farms and similar facilities produce a fixed amount of food. In effect, they offer you a bit of a crutch or buffer while waiting for more farming techs to come in, and they are more useful to races with poor bioharvest, since that does not affect their output. Note also that these farms can only be built on F+ worlds (Y1 or better)!

* Decomposition centers are a planetary pollution reduction facility, and are built in the PBQ, where the player has control. These are VITAL, and more so for races with poor Environmental race pick. Pollution eats directly into your manufacturing output. In effect, it works like corruption: the pollution portion of your budget goes up in smoke. Races with poor environment effectively have poorer production, since more of their resources are tied up in cleanup costs. The urgency of pollution reduction facilities is "high" for every race, and "game-breaker" for races with poor environmental, like the Humans (which we are playing!)

* Automated Biocare is a Bioharvest DEA upgrade, which increases farm output. It is the Level 2 upgrade, by the way. The level 1 upgrade, "Soil Enrichment", is missing from our tree!

OK, so counting Hydro Farms as a "type" of food tech, this green icon represents both farming techs and pollution reduction techs. You should be able to sort out which from the descriptions.


Now for the rest of our Bio branch:



The human with the magnifying glass is the Spy icon. All techs with this icon improve spies: adding luck, cloak/dagger, reducing training time or cost, or adding bonuses to various rolls like insertion odds, extraction, avoiding detection, etc etc. Some mods are set to give you the exact info. QS may patch that sort of info into the game, as well. We'll have to see.

The river icon represents a regional population/environment facility. This particular one (Bio Monitoring) will improve the "fertility" of a region by one level -- for example, turning Arable into Fertile. This improves farming output, obviously, but I think it also increases maximum habilitability of the region. Of course, this facility is part of the "you can't touch it" Regional Build Queue, so all you can do with it at the moment is to make empire-level strategic choices in knowing how this will impact your supply-demand situation. The viceroys are totally in love with this sort of regional facility. You can't stop them from building them short of turning off the viceroy and disallowing money to be spent on the RBQ slider (aka "Local Economic" slider).

The other two techs shown are another Bio DEA upgrade and another pollution facility. AFAIK, all of these stack with others of their ilk.


OK, there you go. Another tech-lesson installment. :) More to come...


- Sirian
 
Sheesh. I assumed people knew so much information. Always easier to assimilate to teach. Big high-five to you Sirian!
 
Here's a pic of our lower Mathematics branch:



Two gun upgrades, plus the first showing of the Star Drive icon. All the star drive techs are in this branch.

MOO3 by and large copies the MOO1 tech names, progression, and general function over wholesale, plus techs from MOO2, and some new ones. All the star drive techs are the same as the warp engine techs from MOO1, though with less drastic scale in the early upgrades. (MOO1 used the tech level as travel speed, so warp two was twice as fast as warp 1!)

These are off the top of my head (yes I played too much MOO1).

Retro Engines = Warp 1
Nuclear Engines = Warp 2
Sub-Light Drives = Warp 3
Fusion Drives = Warp 4
Impulse Drives = Warp 5
Ion Drives = Warp 6
Anti-Matter Drives = Warp 7
Interphased Drives = Warp 8
Hyper Drives = Warp 9

And new in MOO3, Warp 10 = Warp Factor X

I guess they couldn't think of a new name, eh. :lol:

The system drives use the old MOO1 "fuel cell range" progression and names. Thus, "Hydrogen Fuel Cells", which is the name of a fuel cell, in MOO3 is slapped onto a system drive. "Dotomite Crystals", another fuel cell tech name. Well, these tech names do not make sense as engine names, but they do make sense to MOO1 players, so too bad for all you newbies! Just keep track of the system drives icon and you'll be OK.

By the by, please note the Projectile Weapon icon attached to mass driver techs. That icon denotes all projectile weapon techs, so you can know which guns are which.


More from the Math branch:



The Catalyst Design tech is a passive industrial tech. That icon seems to appear only on such techs, so that may be of use. These techs reduce the amount of minerals needed to fuel your industry, so they are ultimately a resource tech, but you don't have to build anything new to take advantage.

ECM techs use the same "electronics" icon as shield techs.

Note one HFOG-reduction techs (think of these as manufacturing techs, since they reduce the rate of inflation on production costs). Also note a pack of gun techs.

Thetaplex Scanning Array is a sensor tech with Sensor Icon. This icon represents both ship sensors and planetary sensors. In this case, the sensor tech improves what you can see of enemy fleets on the galaxy map.


Our current Math research:



Hackers are a ground troop. Why don't ground troops have their own icon? No idea. They ought to, but they don't. Hackers and Command Centers and Commandos and Magazines are all gropo support units that "borrow" icons without any pattern to it. These are just some of those "don't make sense" icons I talked about.

The rest of these you can read by the icons. Yes, there it is, our first Terraforming Tech coming up soon. That is often the second such tech, but this time we got cut out of the first one. We might still trade for it or steal it with sci-spies, but... there you go.

Terraformed worlds not only cost money to terraform, but cost maintenance to keep them terraformed. Thus, in some instances, especially Rapid Rot worlds, it may not pay to terraform! Or it may pay to wait for additional terraform techs, which reduce the maintenance costs associated with "holding your ground" on already-terraformed progress. Terraforming increases max pop on planets, though, and speeds pop growth, and more. It is almost always worth it to terraform, but the timing may vary. The viceroys pretty much start on it as soon as they can, though. Your actual ability to manage what the viceroys do is quite limited. You either go through MM Hell to shepherd them along, or you accept that they will work inefficiently but eventually get the job done all the way, given enough time. (That is, the order they do things is usually not ideal, and occasionally very poor or disastrous, but if hit Next Turn enough times they will ultimately finish all possible projects and then you're good to go).

Coming Up in the Math branch:



Those are self-explanatory, if you understand the icons.


More to come...

- Sirian
 
An excellent explanation and summary thus far on both ship design theory and application and technology development.

I have a couple of questions and comments on your posted ship design theory:

1.) You (and many, many others) have noted that Spinal mounts are not effective. I find them not only effective, but perhaps optimal. It seems to me that we are not just optimizing for damage over time, but damage over time per space used (so damage / sec / space). If you do the math for this, spinal or improved spinal mounts consistently have the highest ratio. I would post this information, but I have no idea how to make this editor use a proportionally spaced font or tabs. My attempts at posting columns of numbers have looked disastrous. I could upload an Excel spreadsheet that shows this if there is interest.

2.) You noted that you prefer standard or large size shields. In theory, yes, these should work better. But again, they take up so much more space, I think that small shields are more efficient. I just don't see lots of blue (absorbed by shield) damage during battles with standard or large shields. I see lots of yellow (armor) damage and much too much red (hull) damage when missiles are involved. So to me, the larger damage capacity and higher refresh rate of larger shields does not make up for the increased size of shields.

3.) Ship size -- I've found that having smaller ship sizes (frigates in early to mid game, battle cruisers or less in late games) means that more and more planets can crank out ships. So I'm not sure that always building the biggest ship is the best strategy, because its all about bringing superior force to bear repeatedly against many different planets.

4.) Fleet composition -- I am a believer in having only 4 ship types: LR gun (with a missile or two and some PD), carrier (with some PD), recon (with a pd missile or three), and IF. These break down to create 2 different types of fleets (packs or armadas): 6 LR gun, 6 carrier, 2 recon or 6 LR gun, 6 IF, 2 recon. By having a simple fleet composition (i.e. only 4 ship types, but all being built in the 5-pack range in 4-6 turns over 20-80 planets) can you achieve repeatable and replaceable superior force, which seems to me what is needed to repeatedly assault and take over the many planets any enemy will accumulate. Although from what I have been reading recently about cloaking and ECM, perhaps putting a fleet of those in there every now and again may be extremely effective, too.

Finally, I found this link to be extremely useful in showing some of the numbers behind the words:

Weapons and Armor Number Crunching

I'm not sure that this is the right forum for this discussion (and apologize if it isn't), but I haven't found a better one yet, either.

Darken.Rahl
 
because its all about bringing superior force to bear repeatedly against many different planets.
Click to expand...

This phrase leads me to believe you haven't been playing Colin's mod at all yet, DarkenRahl, because this is definitely NOT what it's all about once you have a real opponent in the AI.

QS is moving in the right direction with the patch. Their "data" patch, which should be released fairly soon (one would hope, since that was the idea behind it), has just confessed to making military AI changes "similar" to what has been done in the mods. I'd be willing to bet that that similarity is going to be closer to "identical" than not. In any event, under Colin's mod, the major threat is not enemy planets, but enemy fleets, both their SoD's and -- once you are pinned down by those -- also their small harassment forces, which can and will force you to defend every access point to your empire.

If you get around to attacking enemy planets in force, then either the enemy in question has other enemies who have their SoDs tied up, or you have already crushed their entire force. Certainly if an AI who is not at war with anybody else suddenly picks you as its target in the middle or late game, you'll get a wake up call in a hurry as they mobilize whatever portion of their entire reserve is applicable to their species and intended objectives. If you have your forces already committed to multiple fronts and don't have a massive reserve of your own (which you wouldn't, since your forces are committed), well... worrying about spreading your forces out to attack as many planets as you can will be the last thing on your mind.


My shipbuilding suggestions come within that context. I did not offer the best planet-busting TF configuration. Frankly, until the PD issue of ships sitting there like ducks on a pond for incoming missiles is addressed, we don't know what an effective assault force will look like. My advice is aimed at space superiority, since if you control the skies, time is on your side. If you don't, your production base could be degraded or you may even collapse and have to scramble to form up a new defensive position.

My SOTL fleets are brutal space superiority forces. My short range designs have taken out AI fleets of comparable tech levels with ships numbering three and four times their number, of smaller average hull size, with a range between 0% and 25% casualties. The casualty rate is important. I've had TF's go down as low as 30% strength but have taken no losses, since the enemy has been peeling off shields and armor, mostly, and as soon as my linebackers blitz them, their forces start to crumble pretty quickly. Massive enemy IF armadas that can slip their missile volleys in there with my ships not bothering to shoot back are the biggest danger, and as I said, that's a bug. I now view IF and Carrier forces as support, or in large enough quantity, as stand-off forces well eqipped to hit planets without coming under fire from the beams of planetary bases and orbitals. If I get to that stage, I'm already in a good position.


My current game, I'm trying one with senate disabled. I'm playing modified Humans who traded spying ability for diplomatic and trade ability, to make them more like the original Humans from MOO1. I've got three enemies: one Cynoid right next door, one irrelevant Silicoid who has yet to engage me a bit farther away, and one significant Silicoid who has just declared war and has a 56 ship 4-armada-TF's fleet hoving over my border system, one of my very best stars and has my best farm world. My best planet there has all three bases and is building orbitals, but it may fall. My other colonies there are dying rapidly, but buying me some time. ALL of my ships are pinned down defending against the highly productive machines. On one of my two fronts vs them, I have a force of eight light cruisers at the one choke point, backed by a planet with full bases. A second planet in that system is new, though, and as yet has no bases, and so my ships are defending on their own. I have killed over sixty enemy ships, coming at me one or two TF's at a time, and have taken five casualties there, including three of my starting ships: both starting Eagle Attack, and one starting scout. The other two casualties are two of my three "first design" MassDriver1 LC's, which lack shields. My ships with shields are clearly much sturdier, as well as better armed. On the other front, I have just seven ships, all LC, two of them an older design, four of them in a single sqaud being my best current design (autofire mass drivers, which I traded for with an ally), and the newest ship is my first IF cruiser with anionic warheads. I have lost one ship here, also an early design lacking shields, but killed some fifty or more attacking Cynoid ships that have come in packs and waves, one TF at a time.

With my best farm world blocked by the Silicoids, the rest of my empire is now actually SHORT on food, despite having traded for a bio DEA upgrade tech I didn't get in my starting tree. Without food surplus, my colony ships are sitting around waiting at destination planets in the back lines because if I do land them, they'll starve before I can get a farming DEA going. I've either got to free up my farm world pinned down by the rocks, or build up a surplus in the rest of the empire independent of that supply.

And I consider this a GOOD tactical situation, since I only have three fronts and all are stable for the moment. Yeah, three planets are gone, lost to the Silicoid SoD -- not cpmpletely dead yet, but all buildings wiped out and the populations taking huge hits turn after turn -- but if I can defend the fourth, the main planet, I can choke them up there and come at them with a force of state of the art SOTL's in another thirty turns or so. One good dose of that could clear the front, perhaps. Their deployed ships are going obsolete turn by turn, so if I can field a dozen next-generation gunships of the next larger hull size, I can retake space superiority in that system, despite being outnumbered four or five to one. Going to be dicey. Depends on how many new forces they send at me there over that period. I certainly have no interest in spreading my forces out any thinner until I can deal with their SoDs, because if they mass enough to overwhelm my main defense planet on that front, they can pour into my interior and wreak great havoc.


Fleet composition -- I am a believer in having only 4 ship types: LR gun
Click to expand...

As I noted, Spinal or Heavy mounts, or your largest mounts if you have even bigger ones later in the game, are the way to go for Long Range TF's and designs. I also noted that I don't use these much any more. The closer my SOTLs get to the enemy, the better I like it. Close in, my guns fire faster, do more damage, and start thinning out their smaller hulls while my bulky ships and thicker armor absorb their feeble potshots. Enemy fighters are a complete non-issue, while even missiles are less of a threat if my guns will bother to target them. My forces can be overwhelmed, but I have won some pretty heroic fights with this approach.


As for the mount issue, Click Here to visit the thread where I posed the issue and had a debate about it with some who disagreed. Rather than rewrite or paste some of that, I refer you there, and you can see the discussion in its entirety. Included is a mathematical analysis that is aimed at helping to explain why I have found heavy mounts to be the most overall effective mount. Keep in mind, also, that my SOTL's are Short Range Attack, not Long Range. That is the key to their effectiveness. The issue is different for LR ships.


Finally, as to ship size, attrition and guns-per-cost ratio are the two main factors. Number of planets who can build the ships is not the issue. Note that I said I do build less-than-max-size escort ships in middle and late game. My capital ships are all the biggest hull size, though.

Attrition is a huge factor. As I pointed out, I have had battles where half my TF's are below half hit points but have taken few or no casualties. Ships repair completely after a battle, so if a ship survives, it will be back to full strength for the next fight.

The other issue is a matter of how much total firepower you can field. As I've shown with transports, you can field one cruiser to carry as many troop pods as it takes four lancers to carry, but the cruiser cost is 65% of the cost of four lancers. The same applies to guns. You can effectively field a lot more guns in the same production-cost output if you build larger ships. The real choice is not between one cruiser and four lancers, but between three cruisers and eight lancers, since that is how the costs bear out. There is no doubt that three cruisers beat eight lancers in a massed fight. The cruisers carry the firepower of twelve lancers, plus there is less attrition.

That is not to say that the player should never build smaller ships, but it depends on the mission. The SOTL mission type that I use to bust enemy fleets in space battles, ship to ship without engaging enemy ground and orbital defenses, is best served, in my experience, as I laid it out.


Finally, your point about shields is probably valid for your preference for small hull sizes. My shield advice goes hand in hand with my mission designs, so if you design your ships differently and use them differently, my advice may not apply.

For validation of my designs, though, I point back to my report about the current Human game in the mod. This is the first game in which my new ship design theories have been fully tested, and so far the casualty rate with an enemy who is equal to me in tech and greatly superior in production is over a hundred kills to six ships lost, and all my losses are the oldest, weakest and smallest designs. I'm still being sorely pressed, despite that, but my planets have been in an upgrade phase, so my production base will soon be ready to crank ships again, and then it will be my turn.

:satan: :lol: [plasma]


- Sirian
 
I wish the AI were truly competent, even with Colin's most recent AI mod. I am playing a game as the Cynoids -- on Impossible which he said he has fixed, and by turn 30, I was at war with 2 Imsaeis nations (Gas Gods, in Sirian's terminology) and an Ithkul race. It was never close....

Yes, I saw some semi-large fleets -- up to a couple armadas at once. 100 ships? I suppose I probably killed a lot more than that, but it was never a challenge. I had one colony starved....that was it -- from the main wars.

Now, I'm still at war with those races, plus a Sakkra race (plus a border feud with a second Sakkra race, who actually successfully invaded one of my planets)...and it's just a matter of time before they are eliminated.

I'm playing it for a while, hoping the AI will put together some sort of a fight, but it doesn't look good. I've been first in the victory panel for quite some time, despite my less-than-auspicious beginning.....

Oh, yeah, I should point out that the Imsaeis race who started two jumps from my home had a splinter colony and a magnate civ in their starting solar system. I have only acquired a couple magnates through conquest -- zero splinters, zero magnates settled.

The AI is still plain bad.

On the ship design issue, I use a lot of carriers and a few IFs. I'd use more IF because the damage ratio/space is so nice, even if PD worked, but I feel like it's abusive to use too much. If I can stand to get a game to late-game, the balance of power might change over to guns on ships, but I've not seen that yet. SR escort ships only, usually one size below max.

Arathorn
 
I had a game under Colin's mod as Trilarian in which I zoomed way way out in front in territory and power, and halted because I deemed the game a foregone conclusion. A few comments:

* There is a pretty wide swing between the races, much more than I would prefer. Time is on the side of the Gas Gods, most of all, as they just get stronger as time passes. Fishies have a strong tech angle and diplomacy. The machines have very strong production, which makes them the strongest race in the early game. Knowing your general tendencies, Arathorn, I would guess that Cynoids probably best fit your playstyle. If you want to evaluate the game from that perspective, that's your choice.

* MOO1 had such a thing as a blowout game. A poor start and/or a weak race was required for the player to lose. The game mechanisms were such that the senate victory option was a thing of beauty. If you had a truly dominant position, you could usually translate that into a quick senate win, claim your victory, and on to the next game, which might turn out to be harder. If you couldn't win the vote, you weren't in a winning position anyway. MOO3 senate does not yet do a good job duplicating this elegant effect. I am lobbying for changes. Unless and until the senate serves its intended function, we are stuck with either a senate that ends the game prematurely (win or loss, it hardly matters), or with turning off the senate. Neither of these provides the required competitive factor for balancing the military game aspects with the diplomacy.

* Diplomacy itself is broken.

* Unviability of offroad travel makes choke points a bit too easy to create. Whether this will ever be rebalanced, I don't know.

* This game is not going to be fixed in one patch.

* More bonuses may be required to create a "deity" difficulty level suitable to your preferences.


I've not had serious trouble from any race with whom I've been at war since the beginning, in any game. Like Civ3 Always War, that seems to lead the MOO3 AI to send its fleets in amounts it thinks ought to win based on ship ratios, but which do not win, because of superior designs and tactics and larger ships for the player. If they massed all those ships and sent them at once, it would be another story. Well... they DO that, if they declare on you later in the game. I don't see anything you've reported that would change my perspective on the current state of the game. Much like Civ3 AI's, it is possible to gas MOO3 AI. It is also possible for an ungassed AI to put up a good fight. Can they actually run over you and conquer you? I don't know. If the senate victory were working properly, that kind of defeat would not be necessary to cost you the game. Just hurting you enough could do it.

What exactly is the AI doing wrong? What would it have to do differently to get the Arathorn stamp of approval?


- Sirian
 
Sirian, in case you haven't checked at Infogrames (the official QSI patch thread) lately, they seem to say a couple of things about letting you go off-roading to travel to other stars. And without reading it too closely against what you had said in the link you hit us with a couple of posts ago, it may well be what you've asked for!

So keep hounding them! I 100% agree with the whole post you had over there about the Senate victory; I turned it off after a few unsatisfyingly quick games which really is kind of wrong...

I was going to find the diplomatic post to link to it above; I did a search on 'Sirian' to find it and found all the other posts you had made which detail all the problems in the game. (And I guess you DO know about the latest patch stuff. <g>)

For anyone who has NOT gone to the site I linked to above, do so and search for Sirian and read, read, READ! <g> I read most of them as they were posted without realizing it was you posting them--you sure are prolific!


Maybe I could prevail upon you to put together a list of things that are required right now to play the game in a 'Realms Beyond' fashion vs the computer, i.e. no switching governments, no 'B' toggles to deploy fleets instantly, no reducing engine speed below what the auto-build gives you, etc., etc., etc. or do you want to wait for the patch to come out and (hopefully) reduce the list? (Actually, wait until the patch comes out since with NHL playoffs starting Wednesday I won't have time to play MOO3!)


Somewhere in MOO3 there is a great game waiting to be born--you are helping it get there!
 
Not that anyone probably cares, but it's pretty simple.

The AI has to beat me. Pretty simple, straight-forward request. I want an AI to wipe me out at least once, so that I can fear it will do so again. Only then will I feel challenged. If/when I screw up on hard difficulty levels, it should be pointed out in a clear way -- by cleaning me off the face of the galaxy.

Civ3's AI will do that. After having played for years and having learned tricks from Sirian, T-hawk, Zed-F, Jaffa, Sullla, Charis, and a bunch of others, as well as perfecting some of my own, I have to limit myself before the AI challenge is enough....and I'm losing interest in Civ3. But for a long time, I wondered if the next game I started would be another one I lost....

I started at Regeant level and lost -- the middle difficulty level. I moved up the difficulty scale reasonably quickly and hit bumps along the way. As my play improved, I made better gambles and won more consistently.

MoO3's AI doesn't challenge. War early; war late. Peaceful building, super-expansion, it doesn't matter. The challenge is not there. The AI doesn't compete. At least, I've never seen it do so. I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt by playing out my current game under Colin's mod, but it doesn't look good.

MoO3 has some very cool game mechanics that I like very much -- the different value of worlds to different races, the tech tree (unique, holes, branches, theoretical vs. practical), and macromanagement. Unfortunately, they're all broken to some degree -- player can't choose which race's colony ship goes to what world (without EXTREME micromanagement), trading techs is too unresponsive, and the macromanager is still bad enough that I feel the need to micromanage.

Add in other painful elements -- military queue problems, instant mobilization (which helps the human more than the AI -- witness RRs in Civ3), bad admirals in ceding control in combat, poor design in other places, broken diplomacy, broken win conditions -- and MoO3 is still a game with absolutely no polish.

Now, I can deal with no polish if the challenge/excitement is there. I can wait for challenge/excitement, too, if the polish is there and the commitment is evident. With no challenge and no polish, it's a tough sell....

I'm not writing off MoO3 entirely. It's broken out of the box.... Much moreso than Civ3 was, in my opinion. It's so broken, it's hard to know what's broken and what's not (e.g. PD bug means nobody knows if missiles are overpowered, like some suspect. AU payment for PPs doesn't match the manual -- bug or design change? AI so bad that it's hard to pinpoint where diplomacy is broken, etc.). What matters to me now is whether they fix it well or not. And how long it takes.

Regarding pterrok's request for a list of variants to make the game challenging...it's so bad at this point, I can't tell what's "strategy' and what's "exploit". The line is always blurry and at this point, it's beyond that. No building mobilization centers? No missiles on human ships? No building colony ships? Like I said above, the game is so broken at this point (vs. the AI) that it's hard to even identify what is broken.

That got a bit rambling, but the inherent goal of the AI is clear to me -- beat me when I screw up. Follow at least most of the rules I do and make clear what advantages the AI has. (I don't mind full map knowledge for the AIs, for example, as long as I know it's there.) Production bonuses, whatever. Just make it clear...and a challenge. A threat.

Arathorn
 
I admire the work Sirian has put into figuring this game out, and I read each of his articles. Suddenly, I began to realise, nobody should have to work this hard to figure out how to make a game that is broken out of the box, work. I mean you paid good money for this game, and you have had to study this game over and over to find out how everything works in minute detail. People like Grey shouldn't have to redesign the entire AI to make the game at least challenging. I mean we spent our hard earned money and we end up doing more work then the people who sold this too us. That doesn't sound right.

I respect the effort people have put into making this game right. It is the most beloved 4x pedigree out there. I really tried to like this game. Then I started thinking, why should I. I am the consumer. I bought Galactic Civilization and was amazed to see how well supported this game was. The game came out of the box with an extremely challenging AI. The development team promised to support the game for at least a year after its release and so far they have kept their word, with regular patches several times a week to fix minor issues and even add content and features to the game.

Now I know I sound like a fan boy, but I gave MOOIII every chance and it simply did not deliver on it's promise and for the price I paid that is simply not acceptable. If it were shareware, then maybe I would think differently. I waited years for this game, bought it as soon as it came out, spent hours trying to figure out the terrible interface without any help from the terrible documentation (thanks again Sirian, your observations and research helped tremendously to cover these shortcomings). It is my regret that I paid so much helped to inflate the sales numbers on such an unfinished and unpolished mess, that has become the norm these days with most games, and tells the big game producers that this is an acceptable practice. Alternatively, I see Stardock and Strategy First deliver a well tested game, GalCiv, that is well supported and works out of the box with no glaring problems. This is the type of game I feel good about buying, and I find it disappointing that this is so rare.

I am sorry for rambling, and I apologise in advance if this post is misplaced on this thread, but I would really like to see players like Sirian and Sulla, and Charis give Galactic Civilization a try and see what they think, and perhaps play a succesion game with them. I would love to hear what they think and could offer to a game like Galactic Civilization and it's community.

Thanks for reading this, and please don't flame me to bad, I mean well : )!
 
GalCiv certainly does sound more polished. Unfortunately, it also sounds a lot like Civ. That's not what I'm looking for, at this point. I went and checked out some reviews. I'm not unimpressed, but right now my appetite for MOO-style gameplay has been whetted, and I've been hip-deep in both playing the game and participating in effectively the post-release beta process. QS has been at least as responsive as Firaxis was, so for the moment, unfinished and unpolished game or not, they still have my attention.

MOO3 may be an unfinished and unpolished mess, but it is also much more ambitious. GalCiv is a different type of game. I will almost surely check it out eventually, but there's more to a game than how finished it is when it comes out of the box. Simpler games are easier to finish. There's just no way Firaxis could possibly have gotten Civ3 to the state it is in now through internal testing alone. You've got to get a game into the hands of skilled players to see how it holds up. The question about MOO3 is not how it is out of the box, but what it's like at the end of the beta process. Civ3 reached a state where it will be worth playing for years to come. MOO3 has similar potential. I bet you GalCiv has balance issues, too, which have not yet emerged because players have not yet poked and prodded it. These may or may not be anything on the scale of MOO3's problems, but MOO3 DOES in fact have the core MOO1 game concept buried in it, and that is the golden fleece I am still interesting in chasing. For now.


- Sirian
 
Here's the Social Science branch, all on one graphic:



The Psy Ops icon is unique in my experience. If there are any other techs that use that icon, they must be high level and I've not seen 'em.

Monuments and Media Outlets have the Govt DEA icon. Funny thing about these two techs, the game doesn't actually use them! They apply to "corruption reduction" and that game element got cut (probably a good thing). So these are sort of dead techs in the tree. Securities Board is a Govt DEA upgrade in the Economics branch that is actually used, but it applies to range and level of the DEA, not to corruption.

Cultural Districting Offices has the Entertainment Icon that shows Recreation DEA upgrades.

Advanced Research Labs shows the Research DEA upgrade icon.

Cross-Cultural References is a diplomatic tech, with the Diplo Icon. These techs improve your deal-making chances, so that there is a natural progression over time to improve your hopes on the diplo front.

We also see two spy techs and one HFOG reduction tech. One of the spy techs there adds to spy luck (spy life) and the other adds to starting loyalty, raising it from 95 to 100.



Upcoming we have two more spy techs in the social branch.


Finally, the largest of the six branches, with the most techs, the Physical Sciences branch:



Note that as of the Data Patch, and all future patches, the number of gropo techs has been reduced to something more sensible (and reduced enough to matter now if some of them are missing, so we may need to learn what these are worth, some time here soon).

Our early levels in the PS branch included three projectile weapon upgrades and a gropo tech.

Now a very busy picture:



The Mob Center icon is unique to my knowledge.

The Cruiser tech is a hull class technology, allowing larger vessels to be built. That icon is what I call the Ship/Armor Icon. All ship armor upgrades and new ship hull techs use this icon. So do a few of the gropo support units, such as the Magazine.

The Mobile tech is a ground forces tech, showing the Gropo Icon. All gropo combat units (as opposed to support units) have this icon, and these are the actual fighting units. The support units can add combat bonuses or remove bonuses from the enemy, but only modify what the main line units are doing. Support units do not actually fight. That's important to understand.

We see several other icons that have already been discussed: missile warhead, space port, gropo equipment, planetary defense, Mining DEA upgrade, and shipyard facility.


More from the PS branch:



We see the Heavy Mount, with the Gun Mount Icon.

Sanitation Infrastructure shows the Economic Facility icon. This is one of the key techs in the game. Sanitation is a regional facility that boosts the DEA output of all facilities in its region by a whopping 25%. This tech not only affects all your DEA types, but the increases also boost the productivity from which your tax revenues are drawn. A key thing to understand about these facilities is that they are built in the RBQ just like planetwide facilities are built in the PBQ. The game does not choose a region for the facility (at this point), but rather builds it in the highest numbered region first. Thus, the last region in the list always gets first dibs.

Because the RBQ only builds three items at a time, and most of these items have "minimum build times" that won't let you complete them in a single turn no matter how much cash you throw at them, the net effect is such that you only get one item built per turn, in most cases. For a planet with, say, seven regions, that means as much as ten to twelve turns dedicated solely to these upgrades (all money to the RBQ) to finish them, and maybe longer if the planet is weak on industry, has poor gravity or climate, etc etc. If you leave a few percent in the RBQ and continue spending on the MBQ and PBQ at the same time, it's going to take a lot longer to finish the upgrades.

This is why the game's default tech pace is so absurd, and why in the release version the tech seems so meaningless. When the techs come in faster than your planets can possibly do anything with them, and most of your worlds are half a dozen or more techs behind on building these upgrades, the whole mess blends into meaningless chaos, and the player gets the sense that the game prefers to play itself and keep you out of the loop. With the slower tech pace evident in Colin's mod, this chaos disappears, and the player is brought into the equation, with actual choices needing to be made as to when to push infra vs when to push military, and how to manage current techs vs techs you don't have in your tree vs upcoming techs.

The Automated Factories, shown above, have the Industry DEA upgrade icon. The rest of those icons should be familiar to you by now, or becoming so.


Our current PS area:



The Research Laboratory has the "supplemental" Research Icon. These techs affect research but not through Research DEA upgrades. The Science Guild tech (not shown, missing from our tree) improves the amount of research garnered from spending cash on added research, for example. And the research lab here is an upgrade to put on ships. These can be added to system ships being built in protectect back line areas to get anti-piracy effects from System Ships while gaining research points, too. The main application of the Research Lab for ships is to improve your speed and chances for Antaran X scavenger hunting missions.

Now get this. When you send out ships on missions to find Antarran X's, the game does not intelligently select the best ships. Rather (and much like RBQ regional facilities, which are built numerically instead of intelligently), the Antarran Expedition fleet is chosen ALPHABETICALLY from your reserves. :rolleyes: So you either need to know how to make sure that your expedition ships come up first in the alphabetical roster (which I do not yet know how, myself) or you need to empty your reserves of ships you don't want to send (by deploying them), leaving only the Antarran ships in the reserve, guaranteeing that when you send an expedition, it sends the right ships.

The Research Lab tech is hit or miss. You don't always get it, and yet it is crucial to your chances of securing an X victory. I hope to see some serious patch improvements to this side of the game, at some point, but don't yet have the experience with it to know what all is broken and how it might get fixed.


Mass Synthesizer is another game-making technology. That icon is what I call the Sensors Icon, because most techs with that icon are sensors techs for ships or for the galaxy map. Not this one. This is a Gravity Normalizer technology. This facility, when built on a planet, will improve the gravitational conditions there by one level. This tech is HUGE. I'm taking huge, people. Very very big. Quite large. Extremely significant. Poor gravity eats into your productivity, increases construction costs, maintenance, you name it. In some regards, gravity is the worst sort of penalty, and this facility can normalize gravity from yellow to green (for the whole planet) or reduce gravity severity from red to yellow. The resulting boost in productivity also boosts income. Any empire who gets its hands on this tech and gets it into place across its core will become an instant power. To top it all off, gravity also limits population potentials, so normalizing gravity can also affect the maximum population the planet can sustain, as well as the pop growth rate. Did I mention the word "huge"?

Extractor Assembly has one of those Passive Industry Icons. This is one of the techs that gives you benefits without you having to build anything new, which in game terms is "always nice".

The rest of those techs are more mundane, with icons that should clarify them for you, and names that should be starting to make some sense.

By the by, the little red beacon icons in the corner indicate that those techs require advancement in more than one branch. This has little or no impact on the typical game plan, but would very much hurt a gameplan that focuses chiefly or exclusively on certain branches at the expense of the rest.


Here's the last picture from our tech tree, the upcoming PS techs:



Housing Management is a regional population facility. Like all regional facilities, these take a long time to build up, because the RBQ only works on three things at time and some of the items can't be built in a single turn no matter how much you try to spend. Unlike DEA's in the queue, though, there is no visual indication that these are being built. All you can go by is, if the RBQ ALLOWS you to spend any money there, then there is SOMEthing in the queue that it's working on, and surely one of these regional facilities or else DEA upgrades. If the RBQ is empty because either there's nothing left to build, or the local viceroy has decided (for any number of reasons, including both legit and lobotomized reasons) not to queue up remaining items yet, then it will show the line-through-red-circle "no activity" icon next to the slider in the economic panel. That "no activity" icon is your only indication for management purposes. The slider setting is ignored if there is no activity (that is, no money is spent, regardless of what the slider may be showing).

Once you understand the mechanics of the RBQ (they really ought to open it up and let us have access), you can know when to continue spending there, or even dedicate most or all of your spending there. Once powerful new regional facilities become available (assuming Colin's mod, where tech slowdown is enough to lend these issues strategic importance), you may want to slow military spending (if you can afford to) to get them built sooner. You can also just leave it to the viceroys -- they WILL eventually "build everything there is to build", and you only have to tinker around in there if you want to increase efficiency. Whether you do that or not, though, you ought to understand what is going on "under the hood" so you can make wise decisions.

The Subterraneam Farms are the next generation of Hydroponic Farms, and work alongside those (they are not upgrades, but additional facilities). These provide some food without the need for bioharvesting DEA's, and these techs are especially important to any race with poor bioharvesting, since they are not affected by those penalties.

Disguised Freighters is an interesting spy tech. They improves your odds of inserting and extracting spies, which is the moment of greatest danger, getting in and out of enemy territory.

Honeycomb Warehousing is a Space Port upgrade. Space Ports are trade nodes. They have a "range", trading with other space ports on the same planet, in the same system, and up to a certain number of systems away. The larger your population, the more business these ports do, and the more other ports in range, both yours and any friendly neighbors, the more business the ports do. Upgrades can dramatically increase income by improving range and getting more traffic. And of course, the more business these ports do, the more taxes you collect. Also note that you can still be doing space port business with your enemies. Only if you "Impose Embargo" do your ports STOP doing business with the ports of the relevant empire, and vice versa. Imposing "Sanctions" limits the trade, not sure how much. I'm also not sure if one side can affect traffic both ways, or if each side affects only the other's income without hurting his own (requiring you to answer sanctions with sanctions of your own if you want to penalize them back -- wish I knew, but I don't).


OK, that's the end of the tech tree explanation, but not the end of the tech lesson just yet.


- Sirian
 
Finally, any discussion of tech tree must include the essential topic of "missing techs". Each game, some of the techs from the total tree will be missing from the tech tree of any given race. There are certain techs that are guaranteed to be there, such as shipyard facilities, space port, mob center, and more. Most of the techs, however, are variable, and some will not be there.

You do have the chance to trade for techs. In MOO1, you did not, you had to steal what you were missing or capture the tech from intact facilities via ground invasions. In MOO2, you could also get tech from captured enemy ships, but that is gone from MOO3, and overall, I'm glad of that. In MOO3, you can trade for techs, but unlike Civ3, these AI's won't part easily with tech. There is no "set value" in cash that you can pay. Trading is difficult, and poor diplomatic races or races with no friends can all but forget about it. Spies remain the key method of obtaining missing techs, and those take time to do their thing, as well, with no ability to target the tech you steal, which makes tech theft actually harder than in MOO1, where you could at least see what the options were and pick which branch of the tree you wanted to steal from, if you got a "hit".


Here is a shot of some of the techs we are missing, which our bug pals own:



Some of these are techs we can research, but haven't gotten to yet. Automated Assembly is clearly one of those, as that is an always-available shipyard facility. Missile Shields is another, and in fact, we researched that by the end of my round.

Fighter Armor is a key tech we simply missed out on. That's a one of a kind tech, too, unlikes some of these "layered" techs where it no longer matters if you had an earlier level once you get a later one. (Shields, for example. Once you have Class III shields, you probably won't ever use Class I again, and if you never had Class I, you won't miss it). If you don't get the Fighter Armor tech, your fighters will never have any armor. Ever. Without this tech, and if you never do acquire it, your whole strategy could be shifted away from using carriers and fighters because your fighters are so much easier to shoot down! And if you don't have a tech like this, all you can do is try to steal it or trade for it, and if stealing, well, as time goes on, stealing a particular tech becomes harder and harder as the probability for getting just the tech you want in a tech theft goes down down down the more other techs there are for the game to choose from.

Marines are a key Gropo mainline unit type we missed out on. We do now have Mobile infantry (mech inf), and those are stronger. We can do without the marines, at this point, but for a while there, all we had available was infantry!

Duranium is level 2 ship armor that we missed, and so our ships are still flying around with the starting armor type as our only option! Ugh. This keeps our space fleet weaker, but them's the breaks. We will eventually get level 3 or level 4 ship armor, and then it will stop mattering, but for now, this is a weak point, and it does affect our strategic situation and options.

Sunlight Redirection, as I mentioned before, is one of the terraforming techs, and all of those are very important. Since each one of these techs you get has cumulative effects (like the HFOG techs, and passive industry techs) you want to try to acquire them all eventually, if possible. Each tech adds one more habitability ring you can improve, as well as lowering the costs both of the initial terraforming and the maintenance needed to "hold your ground" at any given level of improvement. (The farther you take a planet away from its natural state, the more "pressure" it exerts to try to return to that state, which your viceroy must fend off with terraforming maintenance).

The Command Center is a useful Gropo Support unit. This unit can negate many of the bonuses of enemy support units, which is highly useful countersupport.


Here are some more missing techs, from our lizard pals' archives:



Soil Enrichment! Egads, man. That's a serious item to be missing! In the scheme of things, it is the weakest Bioharvest DEA upgrade of them all, but being the first one, you can really feel its absence in a slower tech game. In this game, we overcame it largely by way of getting to the second Bio DEA upgrade before we started to starve, but under Colin's mod, you'd really feel it if this tech were missing. As it is, we'd still like to get hold of it, as our food surplus is on the decline as our pop grows.

You see some gropo weapons techs we're missing. Some of those are gone from the game (consolidated to smaller numbers of these techs) as of the Data Patch.

Interorganizational Evolution, that's a HFOG reduction tech. Those are cumulative, so you want to try to get them all if you can.

Astro University! :eek: This is a huge hole in our tech tree! This planetary facility gives a 40% boost to production from population points (not DEA's). Much of the production of a planet comes from DEA's, but some comes just from the population, and these facilities boost those outputs. Not getting this tech leaves a significant hole in our productivity empire-wide.

Missile Armor! Yikes, and double yikes. Like Fighter Armor, this is a one of a kind tech. If you don't have it, your missiles all game long will be much easier to shoot down!


Add it all up, and there are more key techs missing from our tech tree this game than I have ever seen in any game of MOO3 to date. Wowsa, we drew a short hand.



OK, now for my actual turn report.

I found our empire in a sort of malaise when my round began. There was nothing bad happening, but we had mineral shortages, not much food surplus, undeployed ships, piracy problems, obsolete ship designs, and major issues with productivity. I looked around for a place to build some navy and found all of our worlds stuck in low productivity. In large part this is due to our pollution problems. We also seem to be missing a key pollution reduction facility tech, and that is especially painful to a race like us with poor Environmental pick. We're drowning in our own filth!


I spent the bulk of my turn on infrastructure. In particular, I concentrated on two things: Pollution Reduction facilities in the PBQ, and RBQ upgrades, chiefly Sanitation regional facilities and Mining DEA upgrades. I know it's hard to imagine "managing" the RBQ when you can't see what's in it, can't choose what to put in it, etc, but you CAN manage how much is spent there, to speed these items along at the expense of the MBQ, and that is what I did.

Here are the "before" and "after". Yes, I'm not only the president of the company, I'm also a client! :lol:





All four of the empire totals at the top are of import. I increased our food surplus from 50 units to 100. Our mineral shortage was abated, and now we have some surplus there, too. Note that our industry increased only a little, but the actually productivity increased by a whopping 35%. This is due to pollution reduction. The food and mineral increases come chiefly from building lots of Sanitation in our core. There's more yet to do, but our military concerns were less than dire, so I took the chance to work on productivity.

You can also see that we acquired Tewaz. That was an Ithkul world. I invaded with our ground forces and the war lasted FOUR turns before we took over. I used a Divide strategy the first two turns, to try to make sure we took some ground. (If you fail to take a region on the first turn of the invasion, your troops get cornered and slaughtered -- you lose them ALL -- likewise if you ever get pushed back to where you control zero regions). I used lower intensity Attrition strategies to finish the war off. After we captured Tewaz, the ticks (Ithkul) auto-migrated to found a new outpost for us in the Tyr system. Do NOT turn migration on, as that would only feed our human citizens to the ticks there.

We had military success on the space front, too. Our system ships up at the Splinter Colonies in the galaxy center near Orion fended off several detachments of Ithkul ships with no losses.

I managed to expand our planetary holdings slightly, with a couple of new outposts and one new colony. BAD NEWS, I screwed up one element. I sent our colony ship to a green world in the Karaken system, only for it to turn out to be a DARLOK colony ship from the magnate world. Major oops, as those folks are Red2 at the planet, and instead of a colony, we got an outpost along with some of the planet now perm-occupied by Darloks, who aren't well suited to that world. ARRGH! After this incident, I went and *****ed loudly at IGMoo, and in fact, this issue has now already been corrected for the code patch, to where the racial type present in a colony ship will be visible in future versions. In the mean time, I turned migration on and the world is slowly filling up with humans now, though at least one region will forever remain Darloks.

Please, don't build any more colony ships out of the Darloks worlds! :lol:


I built some efficient new designs, SOTL gunships. Next generation missile ships will be possible soon, as well. With the military fronts quiet, we can afford to build some more infra before going whole hog with navy, or... we can make the switch to shipbuilding as you guys decide. Right now, ALL of our ships are way obsolete and we are hurting a bit on the productivity front, needing more pollution controls, more sanitation, more population, and more shipyard facilities.

I tried some spying, but with poor results. I also perm-lowered our O-meter, having concluded now over time that it's best just to keep it lower, endure the odd setbacks, and keep chiefly diplomatic spies on the defensive, along with political spies to cover if we have any leaders. Scientific spies are the main thing for offense, to try to steal missing techs, along with perhaps the occasional political spy to try to clean out enemy leaders.


This SG probably doesn't have a lot of life left in it, with the Data Patch released. I'm now ready to start SG2, and intend to do so today. I'd have to "unpatch" to play SG1 again, or else move it over to the new patch, and that may not work out well. However, I would like each of you to play at least one more round, to get a little more experience under your belts in the wake of this round's massive "tech lesson". And of course, if any or all of you want to play this one out for any reason, there's no reason you can't, although I probably won't be there to the end, myself.

You may also want to grab this saved game here and have a look around, maybe compare it to the one I inherited and see the progressions. Maybe you can pick up some more from observation and hands-on inspection.

RBMoo SG1 Team A - T121


- Sirian
 
A few comments:
The ground campaign is merely an extended form of "Rock Paper Scissors" with a spreadsheet showing exactly how one attacker's tactic would fair against another.

Second, user-controlled ground battles can be ended prematurely by clicking "Done" before the automatic fighting takes place. This can be used to cut losses on a losing tactic or in case of misuse accidently delaying a planetary conquest victory.

Building ships on worlds starting race vs other race: We should all pay more attention to this =) It evens out with many many worlds eventually, but building darlok colony ships to settle those Red Gas Giants wouldn't be a bad idea early on.

SG1C is in a lull right now. Mostly my fault, but we're luckily in a transition point to the Data Patch. I'd like to know who's installed the patch by now--because it makes SG1 obsolete.
 
Second, user-controlled ground battles can be ended prematurely by clicking "Done" before the automatic fighting takes place.
Click to expand...

Nope, that's not what happens. The combat is still fully resolved, you just shortcut the animation of it and skip the final report, too. I have done this quite a bit. The key indicator is the speed and direction of color change on the line-grid planet graphic. I have learned to tell whether my troops will advance, hold ground, lose ground, or even win the whole combat.

There IS also more to the combat than strict rock/scissors/paper. Intensity level trades more casualties for more damage, so an attacker should always use high intensity for the first battle, to minimize any chance of failing to take ground on the first day, as that means your whole force is wiped out! Also, collateral damage setting, NBC setting vs any race lacking Enviro Suits tech, gravity preferences of the units, support units present, total unit strengths, and your racial combat modifiers, all play a role in the total outcome. How much you can MANAGE these factors is limited chiefly in gauging how much force you need to win, but that is not an insignificant decision to make.

There are also some combat maneuvers that do well for different races, as there are some races who can fly, others who do well underwater, and toughness seems aimed at defense while accuracy is aimed at offense and reflexes aimed at "evasion" and maneuverability. It may all be a spreadsheet in the game, but the player does have options. The biggest problem, as with most of the rest of the game, is lack of feedback at any detailed level, leaving the player unable to discern which factors contributed in what amounts to success or failure.


- Sirian
 
That's not what happens? Combat is resolved? I need to replay my ground battles when possible then. I recall having a few battles where I had the normal momentum you'd see from winning, clicking done, only to see that there's a small bit of land left to conquer where I'd normally take the planet.

There is more yes. To me however, it feels mostly like rock-paper-scissors. It is again apparent I assumed people knew too much--

---To attack strongly on an opening move to gain a foothold
---Low intensity harassment and delay tactics wheh

My ground forces are usually mixed racial forces, and in overwhelming numbers whenever possible (since my production).

It also seems (note seems, not sure) that the enemy empire ground forces take notice of what tactics I use-- if I use them consistently. I like massed assaults (or attacker surprise), high intensity fighting, low collateral (I either want the planet intact or not at all---planetary bombardment it until crippled or nothing).

I agree very much with the lack of detailed feedback. To me it feels either a crap shoot, unless one wants to take the risk of "Rock-Paper-Scissors" model (I do).

We're blind. Minutae can sometimes be taken into account, but the overall effect is unknown. +reflex races may be good for low intensity harassment methods, but not as the opening manuever as the attacker or on a territory which the force isn't advantageous on.

--Even with knowledge of the major territory type, individual territories speed and slow combat momentum. There's no knowing that. The end result is that the player barely won't know what works or won't. You cannot directly see major terrain type on the planetary info screen as the attacker beforehand and prepare your ground forces to take advantage of it. Educated guesses can be made, and gravity can be taken into account.

I take overwhelming forces, preferring at least a 3-to-2 ratio of total ground force power. Most planets only require a Corp sized ground force to take. More developed planets definitely need Army sized forces ore more. I see controlling size of my forces is only easily observable feedback. Bigger is better. I hope newer players aren't as blind as I am... even if likely they're overwhelmed with information.

That's enough for now.
 
Jaffa is still up. Jester, if you or Charis want to take a poke at it, go ahead. If the team wants to collectively cash in the chips, I'd like to do so by choice and consensus, not default, so let us know your plans, please.

- Sirian
 
I consense that this game is toast.

Is that what everyone else's consensus tells them?

If anyone wants to pick it up, go for it. If more than one other person wants to pick it up, let's all have a go. But I'm playing with the new patch on, and I'm half waiting for the code patch before I get back on the wagon anyway.

Jester
 
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