OK, lets look at the fleet situations.
We have 40 scout II's. Some may not like this, but I don't like having scouts arround when war starts as I'll either forget to send some ships out or screw up and include the scout sometimes. Plus, we have Shields, Imp Scanner and Warp 4, allowing us to mount real responses on medium to short notice, so I fail to see that these things are any real deterrent any more. I scrap them.
We have a warp 1 LR Colony ship which probably got built by accident. God knows I build something accidentally every single game myself. This ship is just taking up design space imho, so it gets axed.
We have 132 Warp 2 NPG fighters at Beta Ceti. I fail to see the unsefulness of keeping this design slot arround now. They definately served their purpose, but in a pinch the local huge righ planet could make about this many warp 4 ones in a turn. I scrap this design.
We have our buddy "placeholder" who also served his purpose, but his day is now done. He gets purged as well.
We have 1400 warp 4 fusion bombers, which appears to me to be enough to make 3 stacks that can wipe out bases in 1-2 shots. I deem we have enough of these.
We have 176 of those mobile bases, which could be useful. I don't usually build 5 shot racks. I prefer to have the speed of the 2 shoters. I definatly wouldn't have put scatters on a manouver 1 ship as they lack range and speed. This is a personal preference, not a criticisim. I doubit I'll ever find a use for these, but I don't scrap the design as somone else may. I do d/c making them though.
I design a warp 4 pelet gun fighter to play traffic cop and be a better escort for our bombers. I'll make these about equal to the bombers, then stop. As luck would have it, it exactly holds our top of the line stuff (BCIV/Duralloy/Warp4/Maneuver4) with nothing left over.
Actually, I do tell the 2 planets in the south to keep up building bombers to get a southern taskforce, but switch 4 planets in the north to fighters. I turn the rest of the core planets off ships alltogeather. I don't see the point on waiting on the Sakkra. We'll just have one nice big simultaneous war.
I decide not to invade Iranha till I get a look at Nordia. Whichever planet is worse will get to be their zoo. (we know their other 2 planets are Terran size 100+). I leave the scatters in orbit to deal with fleet suppression.
OK, planets situation
I do a planetary tour, mainly looking to make sure all of our maxed out planets have a "minimal suite of bases" where minimal suite = 1
I feed reserves to the planets that ARE still making ships. Hopefully just 3 turns or so and ship building will go on hiatus.
Then I look at tech and notice Robotics IV hit but we arent building factories, so I cycle through and put almost everywhere on factories except the Ultra Poors, who do research, 2 planets that terraform, and the 6 planets building ships. I keep the 1 base build in place though.
IBT - A force arrives at Nordia. It's size 85, so we want this baby instead of Iranha. We didn't bring enough toys to the fight, so our force does a quick turnaround retreat.
2441 - I do the planetary tour and turn off bases. I feed the planets still making ships reservers. not much else.
IBT - We slag the bases at Nordia w/o breaking a sweat. Repulsor Beams hit. Fusion Beams hit. I select PAS over Class VI, and weapons offers Omega-V bomb and Ion Stream Projectors. I go back for the cheapie/might be useful Anti Missile Rockets.
2442 - I sent half of Tauri at Nordia. Others will join them en route. I do what I should have done earlier by increasing spying on the Klackons and Sakkra and telling them to go for Espionage. I take the last 2 non rich planets off building ships and onto factories. This is the last turn of ship building period.
IBT - I use our scatters to lightly bomb Iranha 12 mill killed. Oh yeah, that should boost relations. Yep, they are all neutral now
. The Bugs threaten to declare war
2443 - I send half of Seidon's pop at Nordia. That should take it easily. Seidon is told to grow em back.
IBT - We bomb Iranha again. Wow 33 million this time?? Thats an unexpectedly huge swing. They do survive with 10 million still. The bugs declare war. The humans disolve our nap. *I REALLY don't like that*. Factories max out all over the palce.
2444 - Everyone is Peaceful with us now. I use this opportunity to re nap with the Kitties. I don't care about naps with anyone else. I send the southern force attack Kholdan. The second northern force will depart next turn and is earmarked to start the Sakkra war. I set the Ultra Poors to terraform as their research is no longer needed.
IBT - Sakkra decide to horn in on Nordia. Yeah right, as if pal
. Our npg fighters trash their large/medium stacks easily. At Kholdan we win taking out 7 large, 20 mediums, 78 smalls, and 22 bases, though we do lose about 150 bombers. I made the mistake of thinking 400 bombers would be enough there and it
almost cost me. Ah well, we can replace those fairly easily if we need to. What saved me in this battle was the scatters. Because of the all warp 1 fleet the klackons used, the Scatters could move in unchallenged with an assist from the fighter and bomber stacks drawinf attention. The bombers were only getting like 3 bases a shot, the scatters got 10 in one shot
Sorry for dissing these things, they were great in this battle. Go combined arms
2445 - I start cooridinating the Invasion of Kholdan by sending 65 from Ryoun. It SAYS 4 turns, but they are flying through a nebula so that may not be accurate
. I rotate the fleet at Moro to Nordia and the one at Nordia to Selia to start the Lizard war.
(to be continued)
). I tend to go a little light on the fleets early on (probably too light), so my bases probably see more action than all but the most paranoid maniacs 
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
. The Sakkra get all Pissy 
, Stingers, and Mercs, which is all the tech they have. Now the next leader can design a nice merc or stinger medium if he likes 
Nonsense. The rest of you just like to run around defenseless like naked mages. 
) drive off a small "force" of Klackon ships. Our real force at Drakka drives off 19 Klackon mediums, then reloads and drives off a cowerdly human force.
