RBSotS1 SG2

[haphazard1]

Looks like a solid and productive turnset, Tyrmith.

Thanks for the swap -- we had a bit of a crisis at work and I ended up working past midnight. But it has been resolved after a lot of emergency effort, so I should be able to play later today. It looks like goals for the turnset will be:

- Reorganize the trade routes and shuffle some freighters between sectors as needed. Also, we should probably drop the trade route at the capital.

A question: when you reassign freighters between sectors, they usually have to travel between the "sector hubs". I guess this means STL for us as Hivers? At least from the hub to a planet with a gate, then gate, then STL again to the new sector hub? This will take some time.

- Redesign our biome colonizer as ZedF mentioned.

- Start mass production of biomes and start grabbing the available worlds. Our gates will help enormously, letting us move biomes from anywhere we can build them to our target planets. And we can focus on each planet and then go to the next, so we get immediate impact of mass biomes rather than trickling them in as we can build/move them like most races would have to do.

I will have to check the save for the best prospects, but a combination of CH, resources, and size will be used to prioritize. How aggressive do we want to be? Planets like the 600+ CH one Tyrmith mentioned will be late in the list, but we can develop them if we choose.

- Some fleet reorganization as ZedF noted, maybe a few minor builds to make sure we have everything we need.

- Put together a small force to explore Mitrou and open that sector for trade. Do we know if the system is colonized, or does it only have the monitor? If it is an actual enemy world then we would not get the trade sector anyway.

- Finish Expert Systems and get the 15% IO boost everywhere. Then I think Atmospheric Adaptation for our new worlds, then Data Synergy for strikeforce CnC. This should take all of my turnset (and more) I expect, but after those I would go for Salvage followed by Asteroid Mining.

- Keep playing zone defense and protect all our gates and worlds. We should be fully occupied with buiding biomes and developing the new worlds, so further expansion and offense can probably wait until we have consolidated our new gains.

I should be able to play in maybe 6-8 hours, so there is still plenty of time for comments and suggestions.

[Mardoc]

Tyrmith, I think what Zed was mainly referring to is this:


As you can see in the red boxes, we have more freighters than we have routes for them. Trade routes are controlled by the slider with the green arrows; to open up another trade route (and use 5 more freighters), slide the control to the next tick mark.

The downside is that it literally takes from our IO for that world to run the trade route; as the slider moves to the right, we have less IO with which to build ships. Except for specific cases (like keeping our homeworld as a forgeworld), it's generally worth it.

@haphazard: That sounds like a solid plan to me.

Personally, I think we should be very aggressive with our settling, once the trade network is fully staffed (which it may be as soon as the appropriate route opening and shuffling is accomplished). What else are we going to do with our IO? Of course, I will be shocked if you make it to that 600 CH planet in just 10 turns, it should go most attractive to least attractive, and if something else comes up in the interim, like a war, then we can obviously delay settlements. But I don't see any downside to settling systems we've already committed to defend because of gates. Especially when, as you mentioned, we needn't face the cost of more than one or two at a time, since we're Hivers.

Actually, the only debate in my mind is when to stop sending Biomes to a planet and open the next - I would guess once a planet makes it to 100-150 CH, it's going to be able to finish itself in a timely fashion. Especially with atmospheric adaptation. I suppose a more rigorous method to judge is when a planet can terraform more efficiently itself than with Biomes. A Biome costs ~110,000 credits, and gives us 22 hazard and 4 infrastructure. Once a planet can produce that much terraforming and infrastructure in fewer turns*cost/turn, it's probably worth moving on to the next world.

I don't think we know anything about the monitor except that it exists and someone claimed it.

[Mardoc]

Also - a question for general consumption. Might it be worth having two categories of Biomes, with and without suspended animation? At some point, a world will have lots of natural population growth, but we'll still want to use Biomes to improve their hazard and infrastructure. It seems like a waste to spend an extra 25,000 credits in order to bring an extra 27,000 population if a planet is adding millions in natural growth. On the other hand, at the early stages of a planet, having that extra population will be golden.

Basically, it comes down to - are people willing to do the extra management to only build and send suspended animation Biomes to new worlds and bare bones Biomes to somewhat established worlds?

[haphazard1]

Hmmm. CH costs us (if I am recalling correctly) 150 credits/point/turn. So a biome removing 22 points will save us 3300 credits/turn, plus some value for the improvement in pop growth and pop maximums, etc. So the payoff for a ~75K credits (plus IO cost, which is foregone income after all) biome is about 23 turns or so, leaving out the hard-to-quantify pop growth effects. Not sure that is worth it purely to knock down CH.

The biggest bottleneck for development of most planets is the population, especially with biomes adding chunks of infrastructure. So I would be tempted to just make all biomes SA biomes and get the additional population. If we were to drop say 5 biomes on a planet, that is 45000 pop (225000 with SA), 20 infra, and 110 CH terraformed. The 20 infra needs 800000 pop to fully utilize it, so having the extra pop from SA means we work more infra and get more IO sooner. And once we have about 1 million pop and are working 20+ infra, the planet should have enough IO to start knocking down CH by double digits per turn anyway.

Interesting that Hiver biomes only give 4 infra, while the default Hiver colonizer gives 2. I am used to a much bigger ratio from my Tarka game. It might be worthwhile to pump out some default colonizers purely for the infra boost, without SA to keep them as cheap as possible, paired with SA biomes to get the pop and initial terraforming bonus. With the Hiver pop growth bonus we are likely to find ourselves short on infra once pop growth gets going, and some default colonizers might be the cheapest way to get an extra 10-20 infra in place quickly.

On trade routes and moving the slider for them costing us IO, remember that the IO is not truly "lost". It just becomes income, exactly as if you had leftover IO on a planet because you did not build anything (or at least did not max out your IO). The sacrifice is that once you set the slider for trade routes, your maximum IO for builds per turn is reduced...unless you choose to reset the slider and disrupt your trade routes, which will lose income as you have to spend the turns to re-establish and re-mature them.

Since we have gates and can get ships built at our 200 infra homeworld to where we need them in a single turn, we can make it a forge world and build up its resources through mining operations. (And again, gates help to move mining ships to/from the homeworld in a turn). Most games as other races, the homeworld ends up too far from the front to be particularly useful building ships and turns into a massive trade world. So we should avoid trade routes for our homeworld so we can keep all its IO for ship construction.

[Zed-F]

A question: when you reassign freighters between sectors, they usually have to travel between the "sector hubs". I guess this means STL for us as Hivers? At least from the hub to a planet with a gate, then gate, then STL again to the new sector hub? This will take some time.

Nope! Just gate to one of our colonies and you can gate straight to the sector hub of your choice. Hivers get a bit of an advantage in this regard relative to other races. Of course it's offset by the fact that they can' raid rival trade routes at all...

I will have to check the save for the best prospects, but a combination of CH, resources, and size will be used to prioritize. How aggressive do we want to be? Planets like the 600+ CH one Tyrmith mentioned will be late in the list, but we can develop them if we choose.

We want to grab pretty much everything we can in our side of the barbell; we aren't looking to make too many friends over here. We mainly want friends in the other half that we haven't gated yet, though if the other races will tolerate our expansionism I'd be happy to take friends in our side of the barbell too.

- Put together a small force to explore Mitrou and open that sector for trade. Do we know if the system is colonized, or does it only have the monitor? If it is an actual enemy world then we would not get the trade sector anyway.

Actually we would get the sector anyway since we have more friendly colonies in the sector than enemy ones. We don't have deep scanners yet and haven't explored it, so we don't know whether it's colonized.

Basically, it comes down to - are people willing to do the extra management to only build and send suspended animation Biomes to new worlds and bare bones Biomes to somewhat established worlds?

Generally I don't bother, as I tend to find that money is less of a bottleneck at this stage of the game, but we are on reduced econ settings. If people want to I'd be fine to go along with it. If we did I would stick with Biomes rather than DD colonizers as cruisers are generally more I/O efficient than destroyers and I tend to think the hazard reduction to reduce colony maintenance costs (so we can grow more worlds at once) and to spur faster pop growth is more valuable than the increased infrastructure from DD cols.

[haphazard1]

In my usual slow and methodical (some would say "plodding" ) play style, I have made it through 5 turns.

Turn 110

- The other Hivers are #1, we are #2 , other Tarka #3, local Tarka #4, rest who cares. This is definitely progress though.
- Cancel almost all the freighter builds (a couple are substantially done, but I go ahead and kill the 2% complete, 6% complete, etc.). I set Etos'che and Izakis for slight civilian over-population as ZedF suggested.
- Activate trade routes and shuffle freighters all over the place. I go ahead and set 3 trade routes at our homeworld to use some of the excess freighters for now; we can always withdraw them later. Being able to move by gate to trade sectors is excellent -- a real advantage over other races.
- Our planetary development budget is zero! We must correct this immediately and get some more worlds under development. I send biomes to Noshu. A couple of the "prospects" in our explored systems list do not have gates and are almost certainly enemy colonies by now.
- Move wounded ships from Peten to the homeworld for repair, but we have a couple with blown engine sections which will have to wait for repair ships to be researched and built.
- Massive ship shuffling to get fleets in position for zone defense, re-organize around CnC, etc.
- Queue up biomes all over the place, spending HUGE amounts of money. It's time to get the next expansion wave moving!

- IBT I kill a single local Morrigi ship at Izakis.

Turn 111

- The over-pop works as planned at Etos'che and we get another trade route with only 1 overharvest per turn. Freighters sent to the sector.
- Expert Systems goes over budget.
- Shuffling ships to get some combat vessels at Noshu, in case of a colony trap. Newly built biomes sent as well.
- Kaa'Vaalu adds a light sat ring for additional defense.

- IBT we have a big battle at Kaa'Vaalu. I don't think I handled the defense very well.



The Morrigi targetted the gate and destroyed it, then started going for the planet with missiles and assault shuttles. Our ships took damage but only the CnC was lost. Fortunately we planned ahead and had backups.

Turn 112

- Combat ships ready with biomes at Noshu. Sending forces and biomes to Wiira.
- Expert Systems completes, start Atmospheric Adaptation (4 turns).
- Our trade sectors are looking good.



Many new routes still, so it will be a few more turns before everything is running at full speed.

- IBT we smash a local Liir force at Ke'Sothrum with no losses.



The damaged ships will be moved to the homeworld for repair and future reassignment.

- IBT we (almost) finish off the local Morrigi at Kaa'Vaalu. Much better performance this time, as without a gate to target the enemy moves for the planet and gets hammered by our defenders. No assault shuttles make it to atmosphere this time; our forces and the planet suffer no losses.



The last Morrigi ship had a blown engine section. There is no combat the following turn, so I guess it scuttled itself?

- IBT colony trap at Noshu. I hate these things. We suffer heavy losses, as our mass driver ships are not very good at fighting drones. I try my best and save 2 biomes, but one is lost.



You can see the damage inflicted listings, but it did not seem to matter. Endless swarms of the damn drones. At least they don't go for the gate.

Turn 113

- Some gibberish from the local Morrigi. Who cares? All Morrigi should be exterminated for their ancestors' crimes of creating colony traps. :mad:
- 15 local Tarka ships are incoming to Shononu in 3 turns.
- Send biomes and defenders to Xha'chak.
- Izakis over-pop of civilians works (now that I stopped building biomes there and let the civ pop grow, anyway). The extra trade route is activated and 5 of our excess freighters are sent to the sector.
- Continued shuffling of ships for zone defense against incoming enemies.

Turn 114

- Noshu and Wiira are (finally!) colonized.
- Atmospheric Adaptation has a breakthrough at ~60%! :dancing5: Start Data Synergy for strikeforce CnC, although Environmental Tailoring also looks very good with our ongoing colony development plans.
- Rozokor gains an 8th trade route for Wiira and I activate it, sending our final 5 excess freighters to the sector. The planet has essentially no free IO, but is producing huge amounts of income -- more than the homeworld on turns when it is building to its IO limit.
- Our first combat cruiser comes into use -- I built it while defending Kaa'Vaalu. Lots and lots of mass drivers...can't wait to see it in action. I considered a strafe/armor design for more forward firepower, but the hammerhead's greater arcs seemed better despite giving up half the command section's firepower.

Turn 115

- Xha'chak is colonized! Amazing what dropping 8 biomes on a planet can do to instantly get some real production going.
- More biomes sent to Noshu.
- First biome and defense forces sent to Ke'Pronum as our next project, they can spring any colony trap which may exist.
- We have incoming Tarka fleets at Knossai and Shononu. I put up a light sat ring at Shononu.
- Our rankings are looking a lot better now, except for tech:



- So is our trade income and overall budget:



With three new colonies in the last 2 turns, our planetary development costs aren't bad at all. Almost exactly half our fleet maintenance.
- All our freighters are now in use, and trade income is over 600K per turn. That is an increase of about 250K in just 5 turns. (Most of the freighters had already been built by Tyrmith, of course.) That will climb a bit more as new routes mature, but we are close to max until our new worlds mature. We still have 3 TRs active at the home world.
- I am gathering some ships at Eretria to send to Mitrou, to try to survive the monitor and explore the planet and open another trade sector.
- We are now tied with the other Hivers for the lead. Trends are definitely positive and soon we will leave these AIs in the dust.

I should be able to play 5 more turns tomorrow, if that is OK. Or ZedF can grab the save. Sorry for being slow but it took a while to figure out where everything was, adjust all the trade and freighters, and get the colonization set up.

[Zed-F]

No problem, haphazard. Go ahead and finish your turns.

We should be seeing the Tarka fleet arriving at Knossai during the second half of your turns... we'll have to see if that's a colony fleet or an actual attack fleet. If the latter, it's probably got cruisers.

Note that you want to be overpopulating Etosche and Izakis slightly less than you currently are, so that the resources lost per turn is -1. The pop slider just needs to be fractionally above the 50% mark. Also, Chozanti could still benefit from similar overpopulation. You could even do the same for Shay'mi and Noshu in advance, although they will be a while before their population grows high enough for it to matter.

[Mardoc]

Looking good! 3 new colonies in 5 turns - that's definitely the power of Hivers with Biomes . At this rate, we'll have everything in our network colonized well before my turnset, and likely several of them profitable by then as well. Trade is just about maxed out, too, except in whatever new sectors we manage to open up. I certainly won't object to slow progress when it's this solid

A shame about the first battle at Kaa'Vaalu, but we can't win them all (especially when we're still #8 in tech). And you cleaned up nicely for battle #2.

So what makes sense next? I realize we still have a good deal of work to do, establishing colonies everywhere in our gate network and trade routes to go with them, but I can see the end of that process, at the rate haphazard is moving! I only ("only") see 6 planets remaining that are colonizable and within our current Gate network, so I'll be surprised if we can't manage to grab them all in the next 15 turns.

I note that in nearly all your screenshots, our Gate network is operating near its limit, which certainly suggests to me that we ought to do something to expand it. I don't imagine the needs of the network will shrink as our foes keep building bigger fleets and we have a greater ratio of colonies to gates.

Do we want to tech for a while and get some fun toys to play with, maybe Gate Amplifiers, a bunch of econ and war tech, etc? Or should we start clearing our half of the barbell - take on the Liir, then the Tarka; these are both bound to be slow projects, but I think with Strikeforce CnC they're likely to be possible. For that matter - I know cruisers aren't very gate-efficient, since they cost us 6 DD transits, but they ought to work just fine for setting out across interstellar space to grab enemy worlds. Or maybe it's time to work up the Xenotech trees, and see if we can't intimidate the little ones in our half into submission?

Obviously we can do some of all of the above, but where should our focus be? My personal, bloodthirsty inclination is to start sending off fleets on slow treks to invasion, backed up by whatever tech we can afford.

[haphazard1]

We should be seeing the Tarka fleet arriving at Knossai during the second half of your turns... we'll have to see if that's a colony fleet or an actual attack fleet. If the latter, it's probably got cruisers.

The Tarka are arriving at Knossai and Shononu next turn, then another Tarka force at Shononu the following turn. Cruisers could be...bad. I will see if I can shift a bit more force to Knossai, we have a strong fleet in place at Shononu and I have built a light sat ring there.

Note that you want to be overpopulating Etosche and Izakis slightly less than you currently are, so that the resources lost per turn is -1. The pop slider just needs to be fractionally above the 50% mark. Also, Chozanti could still benefit from similar overpopulation. You could even do the same for Shay'mi and Noshu in advance, although they will be a while before their population grows high enough for it to matter.

Hmmm, it was only -1 overharvest when I checked. Maybe it grew further since then though. I had trouble adjusting the slider as it had "snap back" to the default position whenever it was close to that point, so I could not seem to adjust it only slightly but had to take a bigger increment. I will try to tweak this again.

I will continue playing zone defense while grabbing a couple more worlds. We are getting to the 500+ CH prospects in our list, so I am planning to hit them with at least 10 biomes each. We can produce enough biomes for that about every two turns, while still keeping the research rate decent. And once we get strikeforce CnC we should be able to handle any opposing cruiser fleets without too great of difficulty. At least as long as they do not have strikeforce CnC themselves....

I should be able to finish the remaining 5 turns later today, maybe 6-8 hours from now. So there is still time for comments, suggestions, heckling from the crowd, etc.

[haphazard1]

Ah, cross-posted with Mardoc. Responding....

Yes, I was maxing out our network capacity most turns. Biomes are cruisers and we are moving 6 or 8 of them per turn (36 to 48 network points) so that has been a large fraction of the total. The rest is defense fleets moving around, damaged ships moving for repairs, etc.

I think we should continue to focus on developing our remaining gated worlds and trade sectors, while grabbing some key additional techs: Salvage, Asteroid Mining, Environmental Tailoring, and probably the first levels of the three xenotech trees. Maybe the second levels as well, so we can get NAPs if anyone is willing.

As you noted, this will probably take another 20 or 25 turns. Towards the end of that process I think we should be ready to have some fleets moving out to forcefully expand our domain, using our new strikeforce CnC and cruisers. Tech focus can shift to some better toys: maybe some further weapons development (heavy drivers? HCL? other?), better sensors so we can be sure to see enemies coming in time to defend our gates, and maybe the jump to the Fusion era.