RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

An alliance victory is probably our "obvious" path to victory, with the far Tarka, far Hivers, and us splitting the galaxy. We do need to grab some more worlds to make sure we remain #1 overall.

Or we could have a massive war with our top opponents....

We could, but massive wars tend to take massively long to finish. Especially when playing as Hivers, who have a relatively hard time blitzing compared to some other races. Farcasters help a lot, but even so you still need to set up gates to cast from, and farcasting is not 100% accurate.

We can start building more fleet any time we decide to, but with tech advancing (if slowly) waiting seemed like the better option while we continued building our income.

There is definitely a strong temptation to just keep buffing economy, especially when playing as Hivers, who give up a lot of initiative by default just because of how they get around the galaxy. One should always be wary not to rely too much on a farmer's gambit, though, to the point of neglecting necessary defenses and at least minimal outward expansion.

Still, once you've got to a certain critical mass of economy, it often doesn't really matter what you do beyond that point; as long as you keep working towards victory, it will come in due course, and the only question is when. We probably could have been building a more even mix of military and economy builds for the last half-century or so, if we'd wanted a more action-packed game experience. But there's nothing inherently wrong with pushing our economy through the roof first either. Once you're over the crest of the hill, how you get to the finish line is purely a matter of style.

That much is true of just about every 4X in existence, though, so SotS is hardly unique in that.

At some point we will have to load the current saves from the far Tarka and far Hivers POV and find out how they are really doing. We keep building and building and building our trade income (vertical growth) while the far Tarka are grabbing new worlds (horizontal growth). They should have less income and more development expenses...and yet seemingly they are ahead in tech as well with DNs and stations, etc.

The Far Tarka don't yet appear to have DN warships, just stations. The Far Hivers do have DN warships. As to how they can keep up and even pass us tech-wise... well you really answer your own question here:

We have put immense amounts of IO and money into our trade network, and our income has soared as a result, but it just continues to get absorbed by still more trade network.

The answer is that the other races aren't putting a ton of effort into building their trade networks. The AI does work on them but not with anywhere near the degree of focus a human player can. Instead they put that money straight into tech. So it's really not that hard for them to keep up with a human player tech-wise. What you will see, though, is that the AI tends not to be able to be explosive like a live player can. When a live player switches gears from economic investments to military, they can build a lot of ships in a hurry precisely because they focused on economy first. The AI, on the other hand, builds up its navy much more gradually. It can amass a lot of ships over time, but once that navy is depleted in combat, reinforcements are often relatively slow in coming, compared to what a live player can produce.

We are building up our economy not just so that we can research a few expensive techs like the AI does, but so that, once we really start researching heavily, we can knock them down one after another in quick succession. The same goes for our fleet capacity. We don't just build one or two death fleets, we build several of them and attack across a broad front -- which is far more likely to overwhelm even a stout defense, because the defenders can't easily be everywhere at once. We are spending about a quarter of our budget on fleet maintenance, but that is almost all on megafreighters. If we were to double our fleet maintenance budget building warships, we would have built over 400 extra cruisers on top of what we have now.

My 4X gaming experience tells me this kind of cascading growth loop should pay off and put us ahead of the AIs, but my limited SotS experience means I am not sure how well it is really working. The temptation to just start cranking out fleet is sizable. But of course those ships would just end up crawling slowly across space, while the far Tarka could move very rapidly and hit our planets.

You may be underestimating just how fast we can build up our navy once we choose to do so. Think of how many megafreighters you've been building every turn, and then note that megafreighters take about 50% more I/O to build compared to regular cruisers. Remember that I built that original locust-killing fleet of around 80 cruisers in less than a single turnset, and that was back when it really hurt our growth curve to have to do that. Now we could build a fleet like that without breaking a sweat, and I'm pretty sure we could match 80 of our cruisers against the bulk of the Far Tarka navy and come out on top. We can probably build a strikeforce of 20-30 cruisers every other turn if we want to -- there's no way any other empire can match that.

We have no real need to fear the Far Tarka's ability to retaliate before the late AM era, when everyone gets dangerously fast and has enough DNs that they are hard to stop before they get to orbital bombardment range. Even then... colonies are easy to rebuild in the late AM era, and the best defense remains an overwhelming offense.

[haphazard1]

We could, but massive wars tend to take massively long to finish. Especially when playing as Hivers, who have a relatively hard time blitzing compared to some other races. Farcasters help a lot, but even so you still need to set up gates to cast from, and farcasting is not 100% accurate.

I am not really advocating a mass war with the other big powers. As you say, it would take a lot of turns and a lot of real time effort. Even with farcasters, and especially without them.

There is definitely a strong temptation to just keep buffing economy, especially when playing as Hivers, who give up a lot of initiative by default just because of how they get around the galaxy. One should always be wary not to rely too much on a farmer's gambit, though, to the point of neglecting necessary defenses and at least minimal outward expansion.

We are not really playing a farmer's gambit, though, since we do have our various zone defense forces and our three assault fleets. Admittedly we are closer to it now than before, since those three big assault fleets will be in transit and unavailable for defensive needs. But they do represent outward expansion, so we need to have them on their way.

I assumed (and you bring this up later) that we could quickly build defenders if needed, as long as we can detect them coming in time. AM era speeds would make that difficult or impossible, though.

Still, once you've got to a certain critical mass of economy, it often doesn't really matter what you do beyond that point; as long as you keep working towards victory, it will come in due course, and the only question is when. We probably could have been building a more even mix of military and economy builds for the last half-century or so, if we'd wanted a more action-packed game experience. But there's nothing inherently wrong with pushing our economy through the roof first either. Once you're over the crest of the hill, how you get to the finish line is purely a matter of style.

That much is true of just about every 4X in existence, though, so SotS is hardly unique in that.

I tend toward the "pump the economy" builders school, so I am always happy to continue doing that. Even when I should be focusing more on military.

The Far Tarka don't yet appear to have DN warships, just stations. The Far Hivers do have DN warships. As to how they can keep up and even pass us tech-wise... well you really answer your own question here:

Can you explain how stations work? I noted that there were different symbols, but I was not sure how to interpret them. I did see the far Hivers' station during the fight against raiders at their world -- it was huge and off to one side of the planet, with some defense sats (I think?) circling it.

The answer is that the other races aren't putting a ton of effort into building their trade networks. The AI does work on them but not with anywhere near the degree of focus a human player can. Instead they put that money straight into tech. So it's really not that hard for them to keep up with a human player tech-wise. What you will see, though, is that the AI tends not to be able to be explosive like a live player can. When a live player switches gears from economic investments to military, they can build a lot of ships in a hurry precisely because they focused on economy first. The AI, on the other hand, builds up its navy much more gradually. It can amass a lot of ships over time, but once that navy is depleted in combat, reinforcements are often relatively slow in coming, compared to what a live player can produce.

OK, this makes sense. They have less income, probably quite a bit less, but are also not sinking ~3 million per turn into constructing still more mega freighters. And the fact that we are able to spend all our IO on building also means our income is depressed, compared to the extra income we would get from unused IO if we were not building all out every turn.

This sort of reminds me of Financial AIs in Civ IV, where often they keep up in tech very well but if pushed militarily turn out to be made of glass.

We are building up our economy not just so that we can research a few expensive techs like the AI does, but so that, once we really start researching heavily, we can knock them down one after another in quick succession. The same goes for our fleet capacity. We don't just build one or two death fleets, we build several of them and attack across a broad front -- which is far more likely to overwhelm even a stout defense, because the defenders can't easily be everywhere at once. We are spending about a quarter of our budget on fleet maintenance, but that is almost all on megafreighters. If we were to double our fleet maintenance budget building warships, we would have built over 400 extra cruisers on top of what we have now.

You may be underestimating just how fast we can build up our navy once we choose to do so. Think of how many megafreighters you've been building every turn, and then note that megafreighters take about 50% more I/O to build compared to regular cruisers. Remember that I built that original locust-killing fleet of around 80 cruisers in less than a single turnset, and that was back when it really hurt our growth curve to have to do that. Now we could build a fleet like that without breaking a sweat, and I'm pretty sure we could match 80 of our cruisers against the bulk of the Far Tarka navy and come out on top. We can probably build a strikeforce of 20-30 cruisers every other turn if we want to -- there's no way any other empire can match that.

Maybe we should take a turnset or two and build 5-6 additional assault fleets, and just hit every remaining local Tarka and local Morrigi world in one big push? We would have to pause the mega freighter spam for a while, but assuming we can form a three-way alliance with the other two big powers the game would be over. Maybe the whole thing can be wrapped up a lot sooner than I was thinking was possible?

We have no real need to fear the Far Tarka's ability to retaliate before the late AM era, when everyone gets dangerously fast and has enough DNs that they are hard to stop before they get to orbital bombardment range. Even then... colonies are easy to rebuild in the late AM era, and the best defense remains an overwhelming offense.

True. I need to remember that Tarka fusion era engines are nice, but not so fast that they can planet hop in a single turn usually. But if they ever reach AM engines, they will have a huge edge in being able to hit wherever they want while our fleets crawl around space. Gates are great for strategic movement, but assuming most of our distant gates would be wiped out in the opening turns of a war would leave us in a very difficult position.

Thanks for the perspective, Zed-F!

[Zed-F]

Can you explain how stations work? I noted that there were different symbols, but I was not sure how to interpret them. I did see the far Hivers' station during the fight against raiders at their world -- it was huge and off to one side of the planet, with some defense sats (I think?) circling it.

There are several types of stations:
- Command stations give an I/O boost and act as a command ship (between CA and DN CnC) if the planet is attacked. They are fairly well-armed.
- Repair stations reduce I/O cost of ship construction, and give repair points. They are lightly armed.
- Sensor Stations have powerful sensors that reach further than any others and, with tunneling sensors tech, have a chance to spot cloaked ships on the strat map. Along with DN EWar command sections they are the only things that can be equipped with tunneling sensors. They are also lightly armed.
- Trade stations give a sizeable bonus (25%) to all existing trade routes terminating at the planet it orbits, as well as adding 2 extra 'free' routes to fill with even more freighters. The extra routes will by preference go to other races' colonies that you are NAPed or allied with. These are unarmed.
- Science stations are one of the only ways to get a global research bonus, of 5% per science station. This applies to ALL science output, not just science money from that world -- at a small planet, a science station may easily outproduce a trade base in terms of effective income generation, while larger worlds can support both trade and science bases. These are unarmed.
- Morrigi can build a habitat station, which houses an extra 100M imperial and 100 or 200M civilian population. (Can't remember which offhand.) These are unarmed, and are the only kind of station which you can have more than one of per planet. The extra population on these stations does count toward satellite size class eligibility and the thresholds needed to build more stations, so Morrigi often build these first.

Other notes:
- Stations are built by special-purpose construction cruisers. These are built the regular way from planets.
- All stations can have up to 5 small satellites for defense.
- The limit to the number of stations you can build at a world is based on the world's population.
- A single station can be built in systems that don't have colonies, but are triple the cost to maintain if this is done.
- Stations are exceedingly expensive to start with, the construction cruiser needed to build one is upwards of 0.5M and the stations themselves are several million apiece. However, the economic ones at least do pay for themselves fairly quickly in most games.
- In combat, stations are more of a target than something you want to be present in the fight. None of them can have armour and they are expensive barely mobile investments, so their weapons are usually more defensive than offensive.
- There is one other station that is used for combat purposes - the asteroid monitor. It is possible with station technology and mega-stripmining to build one of these in an asteroid system that doesn't have one. They are, like all stations, very expensive.

I assumed (and you bring this up later) that we could quickly build defenders if needed, as long as we can detect them coming in time. AM era speeds would make that difficult or impossible, though.

True. I need to remember that Tarka fusion era engines are nice, but not so fast that they can planet hop in a single turn usually. But if they ever reach AM engines, they will have a huge edge in being able to hit wherever they want while our fleets crawl around space. Gates are great for strategic movement, but assuming most of our distant gates would be wiped out in the opening turns of a war would leave us in a very difficult position.

We might be in a difficult position if we were facing a living opponent, who knows how to apply Tarka strengths to Hiver weaknesses... but this is still an AI we are talking about. What I said earlier about the AI building fleets gradually applies to the ones it uses offensively as well as defensively. The AI tends to be much more deliberate when attacking than a live player. It will generally not launch multi-pronged attacks timed to arrive simultaneously, and it's usually not too hard for a live player to take the initiative and put an AI-led empire into defensive-panic mode -- especially if you keep attacking and keep the pressure on.

Even if they could one-turn ambush us, they wouldn't be able to do it more than once or twice before we pushed them firmly back onto their heels and started taking their staging points away. And like I mentioned, we can easily build the biomes needed to re-found burnt colonies, whereas our rivals don't really have the economy to do it in a hot war situation -- not to mention the judgement to know when this is safe to do and when it's a waste of resources.

This sort of reminds me of Financial AIs in Civ IV, where often they keep up in tech very well but if pushed militarily turn out to be made of glass.

Yes, to an extent, but bear in mind that I'm talking from the perspective of where we are in this game now, relative to our AI neighbors. We've been buffing our economy almost continuously for decades -- centuries even. We've built up a pretty massive economic advantage; I'd guess that we have close to triple the Far Tarka's income right now.

While the AI empires can be brittle like glass when pushed hard enough at the right time, if push comes to shove too soon that glass can seem awful thick. There was a time not that long ago when we got attacked by a near Tarka cruiser strikeforce when we were still researching our own CA CnC. If we were playing with a harder setup, it's entirely possible to get attacked by a nearby rival empire's strikeforce even before having researched cruisers. On harder difficulties, if that nearby rival happens to be a Zuul, it goes from being possible to being likely.

Maybe we should take a turnset or two and build 5-6 additional assault fleets, and just hit every remaining local Tarka and local Morrigi world in one big push?

I was planning something along these lines, yes. We'll have to see how many fleets we can build how quickly, how many we want to support from an economic standpoint, and how many we want to support from a management of multiple attacks per turn standpoint.

[haphazard1]

There are several types of stations:
- Command stations give an I/O boost and act as a command ship (between CA and DN CnC) if the planet is attacked. They are fairly well-armed.

Hmmm. The far Hivers had the two DNs and a whole bunch of DEs flying around during that raider fight. I wonder if they have Armada CnC? Or maybe they just had Strikeforce CnC and enough ships for a big outnumbering bonus.

- Repair stations reduce I/O cost of ship construction, and give repair points. They are lightly armed.

Forge world stations, presumably.

- Sensor Stations have powerful sensors that reach further than any others and, with tunneling sensors tech, have a chance to spot cloaked ships on the strat map. Along with DN EWar command sections they are the only things that can be equipped with tunneling sensors. They are also lightly armed.

I haven't really even thought about cloaked ships, either tactically or strategically. Sounds like that could get really nasty.

- Trade stations give a sizeable bonus (25%) to all existing trade routes terminating at the planet it orbits, as well as adding 2 extra 'free' routes to fill with even more freighters. The extra routes will by preference go to other races' colonies that you are NAPed or allied with. These are unarmed.

25% bonus plus two routes? Wow...at worlds like Isketot or Rozorkor with double-digit trade routes already, that could be pretty substantial. Isketot has 11 TRs, so 55 mega freighters would become 65 + 25% or ~81 mega freighters, an almost 50% boost overall to what is already a lot of income.

- Science stations are one of the only ways to get a global research bonus, of 5% per science station. This applies to ALL science output, not just science money from that world -- at a small planet, a science station may easily outproduce a trade base in terms of effective income generation, while larger worlds can support both trade and science bases. These are unarmed.

Hmmm, boost to total science could be pretty nice. We are spending a couple million a turn (depending on our slider's exact position), so that could be a sizable boost. And if you built these across your empire....

- Morrigi can build a habitat station, which houses an extra 100M imperial and 100 or 200M civilian population. (Can't remember which offhand.) These are unarmed, and are the only kind of station which you can have more than one of per planet. The extra population on these stations does count toward satellite size class eligibility and the thresholds needed to build more stations, so Morrigi often build these first.

Sort of a buildable Arcologies effect. Seeing the boost we got from that, I can certainly see why these would be useful.

Other notes:
- Stations are exceedingly expensive to start with, the construction cruiser needed to build one is upwards of 0.5M and the stations themselves are several million apiece. However, the economic ones at least do pay for themselves fairly quickly in most games.

How does the construction cost work? Once you have the construction ships built, how does the budgeting work? All at once upfront? (Ouch if so.) Or spread out over the construction time? How long does it take?

Sorry for all the questions, but I don't know much about stations.

- In combat, stations are more of a target than something you want to be present in the fight. None of them can have armour and they are expensive barely mobile investments, so their weapons are usually more defensive than offensive.

Yeah, something that large and mostly not mobile would be a pretty easy target. And unlike planets it doesn't shoot missiles at you. Although I guess it will be close enough for the planet to send missiles anyway.

- There is one other station that is used for combat purposes - the asteroid monitor. It is possible with station technology and mega-stripmining to build one of these in an asteroid system that doesn't have one. They are, like all stations, very expensive.

I have painful experience with these from the randoms which can be hacked. Especially the upgraded Mark IIs...early in the game those things can be very nasty.

We might be in a difficult position if we were facing a living opponent, who knows how to apply Tarka strengths to Hiver weaknesses... but this is still an AI we are talking about. What I said earlier about the AI building fleets gradually applies to the ones it uses offensively as well as defensively. The AI tends to be much more deliberate when attacking than a live player. It will generally not launch multi-pronged attacks timed to arrive simultaneously, and it's usually not too hard for a live player to take the initiative and put an AI-led empire into defensive-panic mode -- especially if you keep attacking and keep the pressure on.

So we would have to wear down their existing forces, but could almost certainly out-replace them over time. Good to know.

Even if they could one-turn ambush us, they wouldn't be able to do it more than once or twice before we pushed them firmly back onto their heels and started taking their staging points away. And like I mentioned, we can easily build the biomes needed to re-found burnt colonies, whereas our rivals don't really have the economy to do it in a hot war situation -- not to mention the judgement to know when this is safe to do and when it's a waste of resources.

And we are too big at this point to be defeated by losing a few worlds, or even 5-6 worlds. OK, I feel better now about our chances if a big war does break out.

Yes, to an extent, but bear in mind that I'm talking from the perspective of where we are in this game now, relative to our AI neighbors. We've been buffing our economy almost continuously for decades -- centuries even. We've built up a pretty massive economic advantage; I'd guess that we have close to triple the Far Tarka's income right now.

Note to self: when game is over, load T220 save for far Tarka and check their income. I am curious how accurate your estimate is -- I agree that we should be ahead after all our economy pumping, but I really don't have any feel for how much.

While the AI empires can be brittle like glass when pushed hard enough at the right time, if push comes to shove too soon that glass can seem awful thick. There was a time not that long ago when we got attacked by a near Tarka cruiser strikeforce when we were still researching our own CA CnC. If we were playing with a harder setup, it's entirely possible to get attacked by a nearby rival empire's strikeforce even before having researched cruisers. On harder difficulties, if that nearby rival happens to be a Zuul, it goes from being possible to being likely.

How much trouble would we have with enemy DNs, if we were to get attacked? Our CRs have been effective against planets and enemy CR forces, and we have mostly been using stuff that isn't even state-of-our-tech. If a pair of DNs showed up, how big a force would we need to defeat them (in general terms)?

I was planning something along these lines, yes. We'll have to see how many fleets we can build how quickly, how many we want to support from an economic standpoint, and how many we want to support from a management of multiple attacks per turn standpoint.

Well, we have an alliance with the far Tarka for the moment, and they have been off and on allies with the far Hivers. Assume the local Liir and far Morrigi disappear within the next turnset (very very likely I think). That leaves the local Tarka and local Morrigi with maybe 5-6 worlds apiece. I think we could aim to wipe out everyone but the big three within the next 3 turnsets, although travel times for our fleets may make that 4 turnsets.

Thanks for the information, Zed-F! It is much appreciated.

[Zed-F]

How does the construction cost work? Once you have the construction ships built, how does the budgeting work? All at once upfront? (Ouch if so.) Or spread out over the construction time? How long does it take?

Costs are like all ship costs in SotS, up front. It takes 3-5 turns to complete a station, depending on the race and the station. You can have multiple constructors working at a planet at once though.

I wasn't able to get to the game tonight, but I will when I get a chance... probably on the weekend.

[Ranamar]

Forge world stations, presumably.

I'd say that construction platforms are superior, because they increase I/O instead of what repair platforms do, which is increase build points which are a function of I/O. (Although, for awhile, I thought they didn't even do that and didn't bother building them at all, in favor of sensor stations.)

25% bonus plus two routes? Wow...at worlds like Isketot or Rozorkor with double-digit trade routes already, that could be pretty substantial. Isketot has 11 TRs, so 55 mega freighters would become 65 + 25% or ~81 mega freighters, an almost 50% boost overall to what is already a lot of income.

It's worth noting that the 2 extra trade routes are both foreign (less money if you don't have the relevant addict tech, more if you do) and don't get the 25% boost that the natural trade routes do.

Hmmm, boost to total science could be pretty nice. We are spending a couple million a turn (depending on our slider's exact position), so that could be a sizable boost. And if you built these across your empire....

Another nice thing is that they're the only way to get a RP boost for special projects, which have a fixed investment per turn. It may or may not be strategically sound, but, in the game I've started myself, I'm building one of those at every planet in hopes that I can speed up acquisition of stolen techs. (Even with what must be 40 of them, because I made the galaxy too big, special projects still take eons, though.)

Sort of a buildable Arcologies effect. Seeing the boost we got from that, I can certainly see why these would be useful.

How does the construction cost work? Once you have the construction ships built, how does the budgeting work? All at once upfront? (Ouch if so.) Or spread out over the construction time? How long does it take?

Sorry for all the questions, but I don't know much about stations.

According to the wiki, habitat stations also sometimes increase your population enough to support another station. (Each station makes use of a block of civilians up to 250M, so a 500M planet will support 2 stations, but a 600M planet will support 3. If you build a hab station at a 500M capped planet, you can build a third station.)

Well, they're about as expensive as your mobile dreadnoughts will probably be... (I'm playing a Human game, but my stations are 1-2M and my dreadnoughts are generally around 1.3M) The one issue with building them is, while you can parallelize construction by having two constructors, you can't have two constructors working on a single station. If you serialize them onto a single constructor, sometimes you can squeeze an extra

Yeah, something that large and mostly not mobile would be a pretty easy target. And unlike planets it doesn't shoot missiles at you. Although I guess it will be close enough for the planet to send missiles anyway.

Well, the armed ones might be chucking missiles at you, considering they get ~10 medium slots and can be orbited by 5 LD platforms.
(Command and Sensor stations get a few Large slots, too, but not many.)


As a disclaimer, I haven't finished my first game yet because I wasn't thinking about starcount and made a 201-star spiral galaxy for 6 players. As humans, I had the entire middle and was in the AM era before I even started going to war. So far, all of my battles (except perhaps for wiping out the Zuul, which was occasionally tense but not much trouble) has been bottom-feeding curb stomps. (I may have erred strategically by letting the Morrigi flourish, and those chickens may come home to roost sometime, but their hab is terrible for me.)

[Zed-F]

I'd say that construction platforms are superior, because they increase I/O instead of what repair platforms do, which is increase build points which are a function of I/O.

Note that if what you are doing with the I/O is building ships, the repair base's ship cost reduction bonus is more valuable than the command base's I/O bonus.

On that note, I begin my turns.
T220:



Start building warfleets at Ke'Pranum and Isketot, beginning with CnC and support ships since heavy drivers should be due next turn. I build one more round of freighters elsewhere but I anticipate cutting way back on that as soon as heavy drivers completes.

We have attack fleets due to arrive on-target in 6, 8, and 13 turns. The fleet due in 6 at Shuu'nan might actually arrive in 7 due to Liir pickets being in the way.

[haphazard1]

Start building warfleets at Ke'Pranum and Isketot, beginning with CnC and support ships since heavy drivers should be due next turn. I build one more round of freighters elsewhere but I anticipate cutting way back on that as soon as heavy drivers completes.

Sounds good. Certainly our war fleets need lots of non-combat ships as well: repair, gates, jammers, fuel (either tankers or refineries), etc. We have various gate fleets arriving in the far end of the galaxy, providing an ongoing source of spare tankers. I used these for the fleet heading to the local Tarka home world. More should become available with time.

We have attack fleets due to arrive on-target in 6, 8, and 13 turns. The fleet due in 6 at Shuu'nan might actually arrive in 7 due to Liir pickets being in the way.

Not sure I understand the picket thing? Does our fleet's movement not happen if we get attacked in deep space? That seems rather odd if true.

Good luck, Zed-F!

[Zed-F]

T220 Interturn: Colonize Ke'Thalt.

T221: Land more biomes at Ke'Thalt. Heavy Drivers come in. We have Neutronium Rounds in our tree (as well as Shield Breakers.) I decide that even though it will take 9 turns to finish at our current rate it's worth pursuing now, since it will apply retroactively to all our current ships and we are about to step up hostilities with the Near Tarka. Redesign combat ships with heavy mounts to use heavy AP drivers. Of course without war sections or DNs this doesn't amount to all that much, but it can't hurt.

Fleet construction at Isketot, Ke'Pranum, Kaa'Vaalu.

Interturn: VNs attack Xha'chak. We repulse them with no losses and avoid killing the mothership.

T222: Continue building fleets at Isketot, Ke'Pranum, and Kaa'Vaalu; we should have 2 moderate-sized fleets ready to launch next turn and more thereafter. I opt to put the remainder of our funds into freighter construction this turn.

Interturn: Nothing of consequence.

T223: Launch fleets at Gla and Xhangfenos in the center of the barbell. Begin construction of new fleets at Isketot, Ke'Pranum, and Kaa'Vaalu.

T224: Building more fleets...

T225: Mining concludes at Ibibu. Continue to build fleets, another will be ready to launch next turn. Sink leftover money into freighters.

Shuu'nan attack due this turn.

Interturn: Far Tarka scout Yellow Morrigi homeworld, it has 64 destroyers, 14 cruisers, and a double sat ring. We attack Shuu'nan, which has 7 cruisers, 23 destroyers, and a double sat ring, with 17 cruisers and 28 destroyers. The Tarka do not appear to have a command ship present since they only send 2 cruisers our way, but it may be that they do have one command ship and it's just keeping its distance since I do see a lot of DD tankers to kill through the course of the battle.

[Zed-F]

Sounds good. Certainly our war fleets need lots of non-combat ships as well: repair, gates, jammers, fuel (either tankers or refineries), etc. We have various gate fleets arriving in the far end of the galaxy, providing an ongoing source of spare tankers. I used these for the fleet heading to the local Tarka home world. More should become available with time.

Yup, been putting them to use. I also noticed a number of our gate fleets arrived without the gates being set up so I fixed that and sent those spare tankers back as well, ended up being quite a few.

Not sure I understand the picket thing? Does our fleet's movement not happen if we get attacked in deep space? That seems rather odd if true.

It's not that it doesn't happen, but our fleet does stop if it runs into someone to fight so we may only get a partial move. I decided just to go around them by redirecting to another planet in the same direction for a turn, and then correcting course back to our original destination; this wound up not costing us a turn.