RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

I *was* wondering why I couldn't withdraw some of the cruisers, but of course it makes sense that you can't run away without engines.

Yup. You also can't withdraw if you are too close to any enemy unit including the planet, or if there is no CnC with a working mission section on the map.

We could play with addicting them, or head for Accomodate/Proliferate to get some extra civilians on all our worlds. And if I'm interpreting the wiki correctly, we can achieve all of those techs (subjugate, addict, accomodate, proliferate) for approximately the same cost as Antimatter alone. Does addict Tarka affect our own citizens? Aka - do we need Tarka Temporance too?

I don't think so, not unless someone else researches Addict Tarka. If we have any worlds where Tarka citizens are getting addicted we will get a notice in the form of an event about it. But getting Addict Tarka is certainly a good idea, especially if we also go for stations to get trade bases. Researching stations would be super-cheap right now.

As far as Accomodate and Proliferate go... certainly we can afford to research these, and in the case of our worlds with large captured populations Accomodate may make some sense, but unfortunately alien civilian population growth rate is still adversely affected by hazard rating even with Accomodate. We would be better off to proliferate Morrigi than Tarka because their base hazard rating is far closer to ours (and potentially because their civilians won't get annoyed with us no matter who we go to war with, if there are no Morrigi factions left in play.) Even so, alien civilian population growth isn't exactly speedy so this would be something of a long-term investment.

[spellman]

I opened up the save and noticed we have in some sectors more freighters than we need. At least, that's what I think 74/55 freighters means on the trade tab. I'm guessing we should shuffle them around to maximize all our sectors?

[Mardoc]

I opened up the save and noticed we have in some sectors more freighters than we need. At least, that's what I think 74/55 freighters means on the trade tab. I'm guessing we should shuffle them around to maximize all our sectors?

Yes - this is a consequence of replacing our destroyer freighters with cruiser freighters, but not scrapping the destroyers; we have the cruisers actually running the trade routes, and DD's gradually being made obsolete, but still hanging around. If I left any routes with 0 freighters, then we absolutely want to move the excess into those routes.

For the most part, we've been able to move the DD's on to new sectors and expanded trade routes (like right after researching Arcologies) soon enough that we're glad we still had them around, unscrapped, but probably we'll eventually want to scrap some of them.

You say 'we' - does that mean we're four again? Where would you like to slip into the order?

[spellman]

Yes - this is a consequence of replacing our destroyer freighters with cruiser freighters, but not scrapping the destroyers; we have the cruisers actually running the trade routes, and DD's gradually being made obsolete, but still hanging around. If I left any routes with 0 freighters, then we absolutely want to move the excess into those routes.

For the most part, we've been able to move the DD's on to new sectors and expanded trade routes (like right after researching Arcologies) soon enough that we're glad we still had them around, unscrapped, but probably we'll eventually want to scrap some of them.

M'kay. I'm curious, how do you properly move the freighters between sectors?
I tried sending them to the "lock" on the screen, but they plot a sublight travel. And when I sent it to a planet it didn't seem to properly join the network. Either that or I'm doing something horribly wrong...

You say 'we' - does that mean we're four again? Where would you like to slip into the order?

Um, no idea. Pick a reasonable spot?

I'm realizing just how terribad I can be at tactical combat. Although I'm finding the mass mass drivers hilarious for flipping their initial ships around then smashing them with the next volley. Also, ensuring everything is building everywhere is a real pain sometimes. Is there a hotkey to "go to next colony" so I can flip through and make sure they're all busy building stuff? Otherwise I've been using the Colony Management tab, then adding tot he queue, then Esc to main screen, then re-open Colony tab....

[haphazard1]

Played four turns. With time to re-familiarize myself with the current state of things, this isn't too bad. I should be able to play six more tomorrow evening.

Turn 240 (inherited)

- I offer alliance to the far Tarka as discussed, and they accept.
- We are at 22% on DN Construction, but I switch to Translate Kona Kai as discussed. I hate to give up research already invested, but it would be good to finish the local Tarka fighting soon if we can.
- I spot a new mining candidate at Kek'kepre, a barely colonizable world at the far end of the galaxy in other Hiver space. We could claim it (it is size 8), but I decide to follow our existing policy of not grabbing worlds which are clearly in other empires' territory.
- I shuffle lots of freighters around, and establish a reserve of excess DE freighters at the home world. This will let us move them where needed in a single turn. I also tend to leave 5 excess DE freighters in some "filled out" sectors in case we get a new trade route from growth or whatever. We have plenty to spare these days, although with our conquests opening new sectors that may change.
- We still need 168 more mega freighters to max all current sectors, and that total will certainly go up at least 100 more with new routes. So I build more mega freighters. MUST HAVE MOAR!!!

- IBT raiders hit Kaa'Vaalu. I follow Mardoc's example and auto-resolve the otherwise hopeless battle, and sure enough all the raiders are destroyed. They did not even inflict any damage!



They were local Tarka raiders and not a random event. Surely the AI did not send unarmed ships to "attack" us?
- IBT at Niishini we mop up the remaining 17 Morrigi ships with no losses. I almost felt sorry for them, they were so...fragile. :neenernee
- IBT at Uxhmal we had 3 CnC ships forming our front line for some reason. I withdraw them and get some fighting ships in place, then drive straight for the planet. The handful of Morrigi ships are busy fighting (and dying) against the far Tarka, who also do us a favor and start sweeping away the defense sats. I go for the planet, and the last Morrigi dies with 3 seconds left on the combat timer.



Turn 241

- We begin the turn with this unsurprising message:



And then there were 4. Or 3.05, anyway.

- The far Hivers call us up to say their Queen would like to forge new ties with us. Maybe our hopes for an alliance to end the game are not out of reach?
- Translate Kona Kai goes over budget.
- I reset our civilian sliders on Ko'Graapa and Ko'Velon to permit our own people to live there. What else did we conquer them for, after all?
- Miners are on their way to Kek'Kepre to strip it before the other Hivers realize it could be a useful planet.
- I get some gates on their way to Dzaxhab and Kuekuen (10 turns each) and to Atalanti.
- Ko'Graapa becomes our newest colony.
- DN Construction is at 17%, so we are losing 5% per turn. We will end up losing pretty much all of it to get the Tarka xenotechs first.
- I send all our colony info to the local Tarka, to prepare the ground for an eventual surrender demand.

Turn 242

- Translate Kona Kai completes, start Subjagate Tarka.
- Colonize Kuikuilcos, with just a couple biomes completing terraforming and infra. I set the slider for our civilians and activate a TR, since there is nothing else needing spending.
- Colonize Shangsis, set slider for our civilians, etc.
- Building biomes with a few mega freighters, with a few ships for the new planets thrown in (jammers and police cutters, to control morale of our non-Hiver civilians).

Turn 243

- The far Tarka downgrade us to an NAP.
- Colonize Niishini.
- Deploy gate at Mitrou, we should claim this planet before the other Hivers can arrive.
- A raider fleet is detected in Sector 21. I assume this is more local Tarka, and move some available fleets to the worlds in the sector for defense.

- IBT we get a raider attack at Liiruuma, and again auto-calc destroys them all. They do a little damage this time, but again zero losses.

Turn 244

- Subjagate Tarka completes. I tentatively restart DN Construction (2% left ), but we may want something else. Morrigi xenotech so we can start proliferating them, maybe? Stations tech?
- Kek'kepre has been stripped. I send the miners to dump ore at the home world. Should we keep them around (we have 11), scrap some, scrap all?
- Colonize Uxhmal. Three homeworlds now under our control, soon to be four.
- Our gate capacity is now over 500.
- Our total income has passed 10 million.
- More freighter shuffling, we are adding quite a few new routes at our new worlds and sectors. We still need maybe 280-300 more mega freighters, beyond the 550+ we already have. MOAR!

I would appreciate advice on the next tech, and what we should do diplomatically. Do we go ahead and demand surrender from the local Tarka? Will that work with them in alliance with the other Hivers, or do they judge relative strength based on their alliance? Our fleet will arrive at Ku'Van in 4 more turns (I think, maybe it is 3?), so even if they refuse the game will be down to three empire soon enough. Avoiding a bloody smashing of Tarka would presumably be a good thing diplomatically if we can get it, though.

Save attached for your examination.

[haphazard1]

M'kay. I'm curious, how do you properly move the freighters between sectors?
I tried sending them to the "lock" on the screen, but they plot a sublight travel. And when I sent it to a planet it didn't seem to properly join the network. Either that or I'm doing something horribly wrong...

As Hivers we can use gates to move our excess freighters around. However, you have to move from a planet to a sector, or from a sector to a planet. For some unknown reason you can't gate directly from one sector to another. (This really makes no sense in SotS-universe logic, but that is the way it works.)

I'm realizing just how terribad I can be at tactical combat. Although I'm finding the mass mass drivers hilarious for flipping their initial ships around then smashing them with the next volley.

I am still not great at tactical combat. But I am getting better slowly. Just practice, practice, practice in a personal game or three, or using an old save from this one or the first RB SG. Try different formations, different combinations of weapons, use the different fleet modes, practice withdrawing ships and bringing in reinforcements, etc.

Also, ensuring everything is building everywhere is a real pain sometimes. Is there a hotkey to "go to next colony" so I can flip through and make sure they're all busy building stuff? Otherwise I've been using the Colony Management tab, then adding tot he queue, then Esc to main screen, then re-open Colony tab....

The interface is a bit annoying at times -- I hope there are some nice improvements with SotS II. It would be nice if you could just work through the colony management tab without it closing to the galaxy view every time you go through the build screen. Just take us back to where we came from and it would be significantly better.

You can sort of do this through the trade sectors screen, using the build freighter button for each planet in the list. But this only works for freighters, and it always builds the most recent freighter design (which may not be the one you want if you are not aware of this little quirk).

Um, no idea. Pick a reasonable spot?

Maybe we can slot you in after Zed-F? (Assuming the game doesn't end in an alliance before then, of course!) He always does an excellent job, so you get to start with things in pretty good shape. As compared to my or Mardoc's turnsets, where there may be some problems to deal with and messes to clean up. But we are getting better, really we are.

Welcome to the team!

[Zed-F]

M'kay. I'm curious, how do you properly move the freighters between sectors?
I tried sending them to the "lock" on the screen, but they plot a sublight travel. And when I sent it to a planet it didn't seem to properly join the network. Either that or I'm doing something horribly wrong...

Move them from their current sector to a colony, then to another trade sector.

As Hivers we can use gates to move our excess freighters around. However, you have to move from a planet to a sector, or from a sector to a planet. For some unknown reason you can't gate directly from one sector to another. (This really makes no sense in SotS-universe logic, but that is the way it works.)

It has to do with how trade routes aren't really a specific destination. They are just "somewhere in the vicinity of the nearby planets in that sector." It makes more sense if you try commerce raiding, which operates on the same principle -- you don't want people to be able to use trade centers as easy jump-off points for assaulting enemy planets.

Is there a hotkey to "go to next colony" so I can flip through and make sure they're all busy building stuff? Otherwise I've been using the Colony Management tab, then adding tot he queue, then Esc to main screen, then re-open Colony tab....

Tab key from within the build screen will allow you to move between colonies (in order founded) while still remaining in the build screen. IIRC shift-tab will go backwards through the colony order.

Maybe we can slot you in after Zed-F? (Assuming the game doesn't end in an alliance before then, of course!) He always does an excellent job, so you get to start with things in pretty good shape. As compared to my or Mardoc's turnsets, where there may be some problems to deal with and messes to clean up. But we are getting better, really we are.

That would be fine with me.

[Zed-F]

I would appreciate advice on the next tech, and what we should do diplomatically. Do we go ahead and demand surrender from the local Tarka? Will that work with them in alliance with the other Hivers, or do they judge relative strength based on their alliance? Our fleet will arrive at Ku'Van in 4 more turns (I think, maybe it is 3?), so even if they refuse the game will be down to three empire soon enough. Avoiding a bloody smashing of Tarka would presumably be a good thing diplomatically if we can get it, though.

Save attached for your examination.

Regarding next techs, DN construction -> Armada CnC is good, AM -> Farcasters is good, or trade stations -> Addict Tarka is good. I don't think it especially matters which order we do it in although the economy techs would of course help us get the others a bit faster.

That was a short-lived alliance. And it shows the importance of common enemies in diplomacy. We couldn't arrange for the elimination of the Near Tarka and the establishment of a 3-way alliance before the elimination of the Morrigi, and now that's come back to haunt us. The Far Tarka are looking around to see who their next target will be, and they are considering us (as well as the Far Hivers) as a possibility.

I would suggest that we might as well continue with the plan of getting the Near Tarka to surrender if we can. Make sure to show them all our planet info before asking them to surrender. I think the main thing an alliance would do is encourage them to surrender to their ally (if he has incorporate xenotech) rather than to someone he's not on good terms with. Beyond that, I'm not sure how the next set of wars will shake out -- whether it will be both hivers vs. the Tarka, or us and Lan against the other Hivers.

There is one option for influencing that decision -- we are rich; we could afford a much larger bribe to improve relations than we are making right now. Of course that money would go straight into the war chest of whoever we are bribing, which makes it a bit of a risky venture in that respect if we can't maintain good relations despite the bribe. But if we can maintain good relations, at least that money would not be used against us. There is also still a chance we can get the 3-way alliance through bribery, but I don't know how big a chance that is. My gut tells me it's less than 50/50 though.

[Mardoc]

I'm realizing just how terribad I can be at tactical combat.

Hah, join the club!

I don't have anything concrete to add to haphazard1's advice, except one thing - find your pause key. It's a lot easier to keep up with the action that way. But really it comes down to practice; you need to play enough battles that you know where all the controls are automatically, that you know what it looks like when a ship's in trouble, etc. Fortunately, this game will give you lots of practice!

Also, in large part, I find that most of the results of a battle are dictated by the strategic level - which ships you have available, how you've organized their formation. Careful admiralship can move you from a victory to a crushing victory, or a crushing defeat to a defeat you survive, but if you don't have the right tools, there's only so much you can do.

Regarding general plans - I definitely agree with trying to force surrender of the local Tarka. Given how temporary our alliance was with the Far Tarka, I don't think that you'll be able to end the game for us, though. Still, give it a try - probably bump up our bribes for a turnset or so, and keep asking (unless they get annoyed by too many requests?)

But, I think we should be planning for a long game at this point. Which means, to me, head for Stations and Addict Tarka first. Along with those 300ish Megafreighters, plus all the Megafreighters unlocked by building stations.

We'll need to pick someone to war against, assuming the bribery approach fails. They may make this decision for us, if we stick with econ boosting for a while yet. If it comes down to our choice, I think I'd go for the far Hivers first. We've got gates all over the place in their barbell, while they don't have many in ours yet, so we ought to be able to manage to get a defense set up using a small fraction of our forces and attack with the rest. If we're lucky, we can induce the Far Tarka to join in, fight together to become re-allied, and end it that way. If we're not, then at least we'd have gates all over the galaxy with which to war against the Far Tarka next.

[Zed-F]

Hah, join the club!

I don't have anything concrete to add to haphazard1's advice, except one thing - find your pause key. It's a lot easier to keep up with the action that way. But really it comes down to practice; you need to play enough battles that you know where all the controls are automatically, that you know what it looks like when a ship's in trouble, etc. Fortunately, this game will give you lots of practice!

Practice is very important... but so is experimentation. Once you have a baseline feel for how things usually go for you, never be afraid to try something a little different to see how it works. Figuring out why approach A is better than approach B in circumstance X is what you really want to do.

Also, in large part, I find that most of the results of a battle are dictated by the strategic level - which ships you have available, how you've organized their formation. Careful admiralship can move you from a victory to a crushing victory, or a crushing defeat to a defeat you survive, but if you don't have the right tools, there's only so much you can do.

To some degree this is true, but those limits can be more flexible than you might think. It is entirely possible for a underequipped defender to pull off a delaying action that disrupts an attacking force long enough for reinforcements to arrive, or for an attacker with a technical disadvantage to overwhelm a foe through strategic surprise/mobility and/or through sheer weight of numbers. A lot of my TARs on the Kerberos forums show some of the kinds of things you can do tactically, especially against a relatively predictable AI opponent, though many of them will also work against live opposition.

Regarding general plans - I definitely agree with trying to force surrender of the local Tarka. Given how temporary our alliance was with the Far Tarka, I don't think that you'll be able to end the game for us, though. Still, give it a try - probably bump up our bribes for a turnset or so, and keep asking (unless they get annoyed by too many requests?)

I think that asking more than once every several turns will probably hurt more than help, yes. Once or twice a turnset sounds about right.