RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

No, that looks fine overall. To answer some of your questions:

IBT I auto-peaced at Ir'idan, and apparently things got violent with the Tarka ship. It died, we lost no one. I guess I should have handled the battle myself, maybe gotten a peaceful result?

You could have, but only if you wanted to eventually befriend the Tarka in this part of the map, and probably only if you were researching the xenotech needed for a NAP. You'd have to manually play out that same battle every turn otherwise, as the Tarka ship is out of fuel and not going anywhere, and neither are we. If we want to steal their expansion room, then you might as well auto-peace here.

I guess there is no way to repair this damage before Repair and Salvage cruisers, since the planet is not going to be colonized?

No, but if we want to we can build another one, gate it there, scrap the old gate, and deploy the new one.

I decline, which hopefully is not a disastrously bad move. I do not really want the Tarka sharing space in unclaimed systems with our gates.

Hivers in general go like NAPs so they can gate rival worlds to increase their gate capacity and colonize worlds others have overlooked, but if we want to keep our rivals small in this part of the map then maintaining a war footing with the nearby ones is probably not a bad thing.

New designs are created with the pulsed fission engine section for ER, gate, and tanker types. Armors and colonizers are not changed, as they move by gate.

Ok, but do note that the tactical speed boost of pulsed fission engines on our armours could be useful if we want to run away from stuff like VNs. Also our ships in general (especially gates, which want max durability) could benefit from using hammerhead rather than standard command sections.

and I think it is safe to say he (she? it?) is not happy with us.

Liir are hermaphroditic actually, so either he or she could be appropriate depending on how the Liir in question thinks of themselves.


Tyrmith is up next, and can go ahead and take us to turn 40.

[Mardoc]

Looks good to me! A few comments, mostly minor:

Some of the them will probably be lost, as we are sending them to systems that naming suggests are Tarka or Liir or Morrigi. But what else can we do but attempt it?

I agree. And if they are foolish enough to let us establish gates above their planets, we can have a wonderful Pearl Harbor when we're ready to start.

It would be a 200 CH world for the Tarka, though, so we should keep it out of their control.

I think I disagree on your conclusion; I kinda want to let them take it, so that they can pull it into a zone worth eventually colonizing (although probably not til we have Biomes). True, more land for enemies is a bad thing, but if neither they nor the Liir do the first part of terraforming, we'll never have a decent shot at this world.

I suppose it would be even better for us if the Liir got it; they're closer to our hazard, so it would both be less profitable for them and more profitable for us when we dispossess them

- Etos'che itself is a rather nice world, well worth some strife:

Wish the resources were more plentiful, but only 83 CH is very nice indeed. This world needs to be added to our empire as quickly as possible.

Ooooh! Very nicely done. I agree, anything sub-100 is golden and worth grabbing ASAP.

- Pulsed Fission has gone over budget at 105%.

We are just not having any luck with research this game! First Waldos, then Pulsed Fission - we need some new scientists, people who understand the concept of 'budget' .

- The Tarka Concordiate suggests a ceasefire, which means they have researched our first level xeno-tech. Interesting choice by the AI. I decline, which hopefully is not a disastrously bad move. I do not really want the Tarka sharing space in unclaimed systems with our gates.

Disastrous? Nope. We can probably get back to a ceasefire as long as we keep winning the fights we pick. I would personally prefer peace with the Tarka and probably Liir while we're still working on our Gate network and catching up economically, since we don't want to steal their worlds anyway. Then when we're ready, we can take them down a lot of pegs all at once.

- Etos'che has been colonized. Set mostly to infra, as the pop will grow very fast with this low hazard rating.
- Rozokor is also set to mostly infra, as it has more pop than needed for its infra already. Darn low resource worlds.
- Gene Modification is at 31%, gaining about 10% a turn. We should get it over 50% and then if needed can slow research a bit to improve our cash situation.

Looks good to me. I notice that E'toshche costs maybe a third of what Rozokor does, despite being much newer - that's quite a bit of value from the lower hazard! Even though it was established 10 turns later, I don't think I'll be surprised if it finishes up first.

- We have 3 old-style tankers at Isketot, not sure what to do with them. We could save a little cash by building some old-style gate ships and sending them out, although we would lose time of course.

I think I agree with this idea. Our limit on expanding the gate network is still pretty much production, right? So they'd be slow, but not as slow as nothing going that direction.

- We have 7 deployed gates now for 21 network capacity. Quite a few more gates will arrive at new systems over the next turnset, so hopefully this will continue to climb. So far none lost to menaces or AIs -- seems very unlikely that will continue, but I am not complaining.

Excellent - and I see that there's still many gates in the sky, so our mobility continues to improve by leaps and bounds.

A question for Zed, actually. When's a good time for us to take on that Morrigi independent? I figure it should be ASAP, but I'm not sure when Possible is. Maybe at our first weapon tech, whether green lasers or mass drivers? Personally, I'd be willing to spend a lot of ships to get us access to another 80 Hazard world.

[haphazard1]

You could have, but only if you wanted to eventually befriend the Tarka in this part of the map, and probably only if you were researching the xenotech needed for a NAP. You'd have to manually play out that same battle every turn otherwise, as the Tarka ship is out of fuel and not going anywhere, and neither are we. If we want to steal their expansion room, then you might as well auto-peace here.

Given how close we are to the Tarka (and to everyone in our end of the barbell), I am assuming that we want to push aggressively for territory. So I declined the cease fire offer. I find it interesting that the AI Tarka put research into our xenotech this early. Or maybe they got some additional techs at the start?

I probably should have followed up and destroyed that other Tarka ship that showed up later. Since it doved immediately, it was probably a tanker or even a colonizer, and would have been an easy target.

No, but if we want to we can build another one, gate it there, scrap the old gate, and deploy the new one.

I am not sure if this is necessary -- the total damage was fairly minor, a couple hundred points. Although given how important our network is, maybe it should be done?

Hivers in general go like NAPs so they can gate rival worlds to increase their gate capacity and colonize worlds others have overlooked, but if we want to keep our rivals small in this part of the map then maintaining a war footing with the nearby ones is probably not a bad thing.

Since we have only found 2 decent colonization targets so far, plus the independent world, I think we are going to have to push hard for expansion room. Especially since the Morrigi CH is so close to ours, there will not be many (any?) overlooked worlds unless we "make" them be overlooked.

But I see your point about being able to get treaties and then put gates over other factions' worlds.

Ok, but do note that the tactical speed boost of pulsed fission engines on our armours could be useful if we want to run away from stuff like VNs. Also our ships in general (especially gates, which want max durability) could benefit from using hammerhead rather than standard command sections.

Good points. I thought about hammerhead, but it is a signficant jump in cost per ship and our budget and building capacity is limited. But we do have ERs and gates on the way to most of the stars in our end of the barbell, so maybe we can upgrade our designs for the rest. It is definitely a choice between quality and quantity right now.

If we do an updated armor design, maybe we should put something other than red lasers in the medium mount(s)? Missiles are not all that great in the small numbers we would have, but they would offer a bit of long-distance striking power. Red lasers are very short range, and chasing down those Liir colonizers with our RLaz armors was painful. We had to be practically on top of them to get in range to fire.

We need to find time/budget for some weapons research. But GM seemed like the best "growth" choice for now. Depending on how many more colonizable worlds we find, maybe green lasers before SA?

Liir are hermaphroditic actually, so either he or she could be appropriate depending on how the Liir in question thinks of themselves.

I haven't gotten through all the lore wiki pages on all the races yet. I did work through the wiki pages about the Hivers since we are playing them, and have done the Tarka for my learning game. And some on the Zuul, from reading about the Deacon storyline.

Tyrmith is up next, and can go ahead and take us to turn 40.

Good luck, Tyrmith! You should probably recheck the notes on the various systems -- most of them should be up to date, but it is mostly just minor stuff about which stars have gates on the way and such.

Glad to see I don't appear to have messed up our empire too badly.

[Zed-F]

We don't need better weapons for a raw numbers low tech bum rush to work, but we do need C&C. As soon as we get that we can go ahead with grabbing the Morrigi indy.

As far as Liir/Tarka terraforming worlds for us goes, I would tend to prefer to not let them build a colony we would have to destroy. Biomes are not that hard to get. Also note that if we backstab someone in our side of the galaxy it will make it much more difficult to find anyone in the far side that will trust us.

That said, either approach can work. I would consider allowing other races to settle worlds we have gated to be the riskier option, mind you.

Regarding armour with missiles, that's fine especially if we plan to be autoresolving a lot for the near future.

[haphazard1]

I think I disagree on your conclusion; I kinda want to let them take it, so that they can pull it into a zone worth eventually colonizing (although probably not til we have Biomes). True, more land for enemies is a bad thing, but if neither they nor the Liir do the first part of terraforming, we'll never have a decent shot at this world.

I suppose it would be even better for us if the Liir got it; they're closer to our hazard, so it would both be less profitable for them and more profitable for us when we dispossess them

I don't totally agree with this. Letting our rivals have a nice (200 CH) size 5 world with more resources than anything we have (including our homeworld)...that is a big advantage to give them. We could hope to take it from them later, but assuming we get biomes we can just colonize and develop it ourselves at that point.

Maybe if it was even further from our preferred CH it would be worth it, but I don't like it in this case.

Ooooh! Very nicely done. I agree, anything sub-100 is golden and worth grabbing ASAP.

And such low CH means it does not even cost us much per turn, as you note later. I felt this one was so obvious I didn't wait and check with the team before taking it. Although it did mean angering the Liir.

We are just not having any luck with research this game! First Waldos, then Pulsed Fission - we need some new scientists, people who understand the concept of 'budget' .

It was a bit disappointing. Especially since our current research pace meant plenty of turns between 50% and 100%, so lots of chances for a breakthrough. We could certainly use an early tech or two.

Disastrous? Nope. We can probably get back to a ceasefire as long as we keep winning the fights we pick. I would personally prefer peace with the Tarka and probably Liir while we're still working on our Gate network and catching up economically, since we don't want to steal their worlds anyway. Then when we're ready, we can take them down a lot of pegs all at once.

How much emphasis do we want to place on denial of systems to our rivals? It all ties together, as with the thoughts above on whether to let them have a nice (for them) world in hopes of getting some terraforming and free (if damaged) infra later.

Looks good to me. I notice that E'toshche costs maybe a third of what Rozokor does, despite being much newer - that's quite a bit of value from the lower hazard! Even though it was established 10 turns later, I don't think I'll be surprised if it finishes up first.

The lower CH means faster pop growth as well. So Etos'che will likely reach full development faster. I just wish our first two colonies were not both <3000 minerals.

I think I agree with this idea. Our limit on expanding the gate network is still pretty much production, right? So they'd be slow, but not as slow as nothing going that direction.

It does cost us a few more turns in transit, at the distances we are currently sending them. But it would let us build gate-gate-gate rather than gate-tanker (x3), and get them on their way sooner.

Excellent - and I see that there's still many gates in the sky, so our mobility continues to improve by leaps and bounds.

Lots and lots of gates on the way. Some of the ones you built are still oh-so-slowly getting to their targets, and I got at least one each turn except for the two turns spent on all colonizers. But I expect some of the current ones to get destroyed as we hit menaces or rival colonies/homeworlds. Still, at least some of them should survive and deploy.

A question for Zed, actually. When's a good time for us to take on that Morrigi independent? I figure it should be ASAP, but I'm not sure when Possible is. Maybe at our first weapon tech, whether green lasers or mass drivers? Personally, I'd be willing to spend a lot of ships to get us access to another 80 Hazard world.

The independent world has 10 light sats, plus some planetary missiles. So we are likely to lose ships, especially if they have improved warheads as Zed mentioned. With so few imperial pop even a couple assault shuttles would wipe them out if we could deliver them to atmosphere, but I am not sure how likely that is. Maybe some armors with missiles would work? Our current design is so short-range that we would just be stuck taking fire, unable to strike back until we got very close to the planet (if we did).

And if we don't succeed, we presumably lose the gate. Probably lose it anyway to missiles, so we would need a reserve gate one turn out into STL space.

[Mardoc]

Well, I'm willing to go with the consensus, and play more hostile to our near neighbors in the short term, to avoid lying to them. The far end of the barbell will be pretty much all claimed and terraformed anyway, so we can use that as a comparison.

Do keep in mind 'only 2 decent colonization targets' is out of what, 6 total systems? At least, no gates destroyed, and we're up to 7 total, so I assume it's only 6 really explored at this point. And we have the independent, which is a decent target too, once we manage to scrounge up some birdshot. It feels late and poor, but I think that's largely a matter of being Hiver and sloooow. So I wouldn't be surprised if Tyrmith finds something(s) worth having, too. I just hope that our current colonies get on their feet fast enough that we can afford to keep growing. I'll admit, the endgame of SG1 kinda messed with my perception, I figured Rozokor would be much closer to done by now, but of course that's without all the boosting techs or Biome colonizers that I had been taking for granted. And for that matter, not the 75% industry. It just means that the situation will still be about the same by the time my turns come back around. But hey, that's what we asked for, right?

And I should have realized that CnC was a requirement for any large military action, like taking a planet. That'll let us keep the Gate in the rear, too, in addition to having a lot more ships in action at once and the new ones showing up where we need them instead of all the way across the battlemap.

[haphazard1]

I have been having a similar problem, Mardoc. The personal game I am playing is in the very late stages, with tons of planets and tech and huge freighter networks everywhere for gobs of money coming in every turn. Shfiting back to the very limited means at our disposal and our very slow, incremental improvements as Hivers has been a massive mental shift.

But things are improving, with two colonies established on quite decent (if not spectacular) worlds. And more gates on the way to expand our network. And we are making steady (if slow) tech progress as well.

I am not sure how our emphasis will shift once we have gates on the way to all the systems in our end of the barbell. Do we keep sending out gate ships towards the connection and other end? I guess so, though that will be a LONG way to travel STL. But that is a turnset or two off yet, and we will need to deal with that independent world, and after that one of our neighbors will probably need to be dealt with, and.... Things will happen as they happen.

[Tyrmith]

Looks good- I'll play probably late tonight or tomorrow depending on how much time I have.

[Zed-F]

Tyrmith, how's it coming? Any updates?

No need to rush if you are playing, just want to know what's up.

[antisocialmunky]

If you have Sniper Drivers, those would be a really good alternative to lasers for logn range standoff. Plus the speed bonus would make it so you can kite.