RBSotS1 SG2

[Tyrmith]

What is our best approach for using Advanced Scanners, once we get them? This enables Deep Scan sections, right? I presume these will mainly be used on specialty ships, as it looks like Hiver Deep Scan sections are really lightly armed. How widely should we spread these around? Would it be worthwhile to station them at all of our colony worlds?

Is that something we should try sneaking near enemy colony worlds? Would they get killed off quickly if we left them in deepspace, or could we kite enemy fleets around since we'll be able to see so far off?

I think we should go ahead and get UV lasers. They are less likely to be reflected, are longer ranged, are more accurate, and do more damage. And they are not very expensive.

With the menace I definitely think we should make it a priority. Mardoc said the description said it was a swarm of ships, that's what uv laser would be the best weapon for barring emitters.

I agree that the longer we wait the harder it will be to take back. But it seems we have more pressing worries with this grand menace.

To be honest I think we should really only bother with it if it'll be easy to take back. If we capture it back we'll have to keep a strong fleet there for quite awhile as every other race will see it as easy pickings.

What would make a good [STRIKE]ritual sacrifice[/STRIKE] scout group?

I say we toss a small fleet of cardboard cutouts. Either an old MD dd, or a couple swarm ships to see how well we do defending against the Menance.

The distance measuring tool (which is pretty sweet! Never knew you could do that before!) Says that it's 3.0 from Izakis. It's 5.7 from Baymou, which is the only other semi-close planet.

Edit:

A couple other things after looking at the save-

-Our swarm 6.02 design- do we want to update that, or wait for UV lasers? Right now the design seems pretty outdated. Additionally, do we want to keep that center medium weapon a mass driver? Or is a armor piercing mass driver (once we update the design) just more useful then a medium laser as an anti-swarm ship?

-UV lasers is only two turns away at our current research rate (~90%)

-Just FYI for the next turn- There's a scout fleet 1turn from Eretria, with just a naked gate there.

- Random question- The green tarka have fleets just sitting out in the middle of nowhere that arn't actually moving- is that basically their sentry network, or is the AI being weird? Is that a normal practice when playing a race that isn't hiver?

- How close a watch do we need to keep on our funds? Is keeping above 1 million in the bank still a big deal?

-According to the wiki our other special weapons project (Chak An'taw) is a ballistic weapon.

[haphazard1]

That's a very solid turn set Mardoc, real nice!

Except for Atalanti.

Was the incoming force just missed, or did they 1-turn move on us? Or have some other tech to allow them to sneak up on us?

Zed- So you made me look up unknown menace on the sots wiki. First of all it was interesting to see the kind of mythology the game has for just 1 incarnation out in stores.

The mythology of the game is one of the parts I like most. Plus all the references to SF scattered everywhere.

Putting further stuff inside spoiler tags, just in case:

its looking more and more like that menace is perfectly the kind that we can't defeat easily. From what wiki was saying about the menace that fit the picture Mardoc had, it's lots of little ships, with the mother ship consuming resources to make more as the battle goes on. It looks to me like the ideal ship would be one with emitters and shields, which is kinda the opposite of our fleet's design choices. Hopefully the alien tech pans out? Is there anyway to speed it up?

We do not currently match up well against the Locusts at all. And I am not aware of any way to speed up special research projects.

Killing it though would be pretty awesome, as it apparently gives 2,500 resources to the planet it's destroyed at. We just can't let it stay at any of ours as it apparently takes 20,000 away/turn if it isn't destroyed!

It is worse than that, actually. The Locust fleet/world will fully heal itself whenever it strips a planet with resources. And once it gets enough resources it will duplicate itself, with both them proceeding to strip more planets and duplicate themselves again, and on and on and on.

Attacking in deep space so you can damage it over several fights would normally be a good tactic. But as Hivers, we are not fast enough to intercept it in deep space as it moves faster than we do. Maybe you could get an intercept by starting from the planet it is heading towards?

But this assumes that anything we have could actually survive the swarm long enough to do any damage to the fleet/world. Which seems rather unlikely.

So we are going to be losing planets one after another, with the Locusts multiplying geometrically. Our end of the barbell will be overrun, and the empires at the other end will live a little longer. If we could get control of a planet at the far end of the barbell we might survive long enough to "win" the game after all other races are eaten by the Locusts, but that doesn't seem worth doing to me.

Unless this thing is a LOT easier to kill than seems likely from reading about it, we are doomed.

[Zed-F]

Well guys no question that it's bad, but it's not quite that bad. more when I get home and we'll certainly have a talk about options once we scout it (or once everyone playing is spoiled, if Mardoc also wants to spoil himself.) Despite everything, we are not *completely* helpless here.

[Mardoc]

Is that something we should try sneaking near enemy colony worlds? Would they get killed off quickly if we left them in deepspace, or could we kite enemy fleets around since we'll be able to see so far off?

Kiting usually assumes we're faster than they are

With the menace I definitely think we should make it a priority. Mardoc said the description said it was a swarm of ships, that's what uv laser would be the best weapon for barring emitters.

Maybe. There are a couple ballistic weapons in the tree that sound potentially useful - bursters, mass shotgun, both sound like tools for taking out a bunch of little guys. I know we have bursters available, and mass shotgun is a 90% chance for us.

-Our swarm 6.02 design- do we want to update that, or wait for UV lasers? Right now the design seems pretty outdated. Additionally, do we want to keep that center medium weapon a mass driver? Or is a armor piercing mass driver (once we update the design) just more useful then a medium laser as an anti-swarm ship?

Well, I figure we should update it as soon as we actually want to build some. Recently everything I've built has been AP MD's, so it didn't matter what the design of record was for swarm ships.

-UV lasers is only two turns away at our current research rate (~90%)

Which is the reason it might make sense to go for them after all instead of bursters, depending on relative costs

-Just FYI for the next turn- There's a scout fleet 1turn from Eretria, with just a naked gate there.

Oops!

- How close a watch do we need to keep on our funds? Is keeping above 1 million in the bank still a big deal?

Yes, I think so, but remember it only matters at the start of your turn. I had been adjusting the slider each turn to end up slightly above.

Was the incoming force just missed, or did they 1-turn move on us? Or have some other tech to allow them to sneak up on us?

I'm not really sure, which is part of why I quit when it happened. It is Morrigi, in a large fleet, so they're pretty quick, and it was near their part of space. But it might have just been my error, too.

Well guys no question that it's bad, but it's not quite that bad. more when I get home and we'll certainly have a talk about options once we scout it (or once everyone playing is spoiled, if Mardoc also wants to spoil himself.) Despite everything, we are not *completely* helpless here.

Oh, I'm spoiled, assuming that I'm interpreting the interface correctly and that it's Locusts. I've been well taught at this point, any time I'm confused I rush to the wiki .

[Tyrmith]

Here's an old TAR of a guy dealing with a galaxy getting overrun by the alien menance. At one point he had well over 30 copies running around stripping planets.

How long does it usually take for it to reproduce its self? Is it something where it just needs to hit a planet once and it'll have a duplicate out?

Also remember, if we arn't just giving up on Izakis (which would be a heavy blow, as it has the #2 industry of our empire), we only have 3 turns before it hit Izakis, apparently it moves at 1 LY/turn, so if we do go for UV lasers, we're only going to have the UV ships we get from just building them at Izakis.

We can also build 10 med defense satilites, which would take two turns, but we don't have a design at the moment, so we need to decide on the weapons loadout.

[ssmagus]

The locusts go for the nearest planets with the highest resources, they are countered by lots of suicide refinery's, Corrosive missiles, Disruptors (The drones only have energy weapons), and missile pd.(The drones are too fast for laser and Gauss, and Phaser does not enough damage.)

How long does it usually take for it to reproduce its self? Is it something where it just needs to hit a planet once and it'll have a duplicate out?

Needs about two planets do it, three if it takes heavy damage.

[Zed-F]

What is our best approach for using Advanced Scanners, once we get them? This enables Deep Scan sections, right? I presume these will mainly be used on specialty ships, as it looks like Hiver Deep Scan sections are really lightly armed. How widely should we spread these around? Would it be worthwhile to station them at all of our colony worlds?

Yep, Deep Scan, quite handy. there are lots of ways we can use it:

• I tend to use deep scan on most ships that are not intended to see combat but will be included in most fleets, such as refinery/repair/tanker ships. This gives us the strategic level benefit of larger scanner range, and the potential to see the composition of enemy fleets by right-clicking them if they are close enough, for pretty much no downside. It does mostly miss out on the tactical level benefit, though.
  
• If I see/suspect evidence of cloaking tech in play or I am planning to deal with VNs (who I know have cloak in play) then I will often put deep scan on my CnC for use in tactical combat to spot cloaked ships.
  
• Also if I am using very long range weapons and am playing a keep-away game, either by kiting or by pillbox tactics, deep scan CnC is often a good plan. Alternatively if I need speed for my CnC I may put the deep scan on an escort DD or CA.
  
• Deep scan is also handy for deep space picket DDs. These will get intercepted if they venture too close to enemy worlds, but generally speaking if they stay 5 LY out or so, they won't be bothered much. This lets you keep tabs on large parts of the map. Deep scan destroyers at every colony are similarly helpful for extending your scan range. Even better if these are deep scan/jammer pickets as they will both be harder for the enemy to spot (some innate stealth from jamming) and will conceal the numbers of your ships guarding any given planet.
  
• If you are playing the trade raiding game, either attacking or defending trade lanes, then deep scan on your raiders/escorts can be helpful in finding the other guy before they find you.
  
• In our particular case as Hivers, I usually put deep scan sections on DD gates, because no DD command section is all that tough anyway, and "free" deep scan in tactical defending every colony can be very useful. I usually do not put deep scan sections on CA gates though, because if I am deploying a CA gate it's because I expect it to get pounded and I want the gate to be as survivable as possible.
  

Is that something we should try sneaking near enemy colony worlds? Would they get killed off quickly if we left them in deepspace, or could we kite enemy fleets around since we'll be able to see so far off?

Yes! We should send a whole bunch of tiny gate/tanker fleets all over the place, making sure they have deep scan so they know where colonies are and who they belong to. Any uncolonized world, we'd like to try and gate. Also any world belonging to someone who will NAP with us. If we send a whole bunch of gate/tanker pairs at once, the Morrigi probably won't be able to intercept all of them by the time they get where they are going, and we only need one to sneak past Morrigi territory in order to use it as a springboard for more.

Let's hope we get something soon from these, rather than waiting and waiting and waiting.... And I am not aware of any way to speed up special research projects.

Well it won't be very soon, I'm afraid. It still takes in the neighborhood of a couple dozen turns for a special project to complete, even if it is a cheap tech like light emitters. There is something that will speed up special projects though -- any general science booster will. Of course the only general science boosters we could get ahold of at this point are science stations and AI tech, and neither of those are in the cards any time soon.

According to the wiki our other special weapons project (Chak An'taw) is a ballistic weapon.

Well that's pretty good news as well -- it's likely Point Defense. Same story on when the project is likely to finish as light emitters, though.

To be honest I think we should really only bother with it (Atalanti) if it'll be easy to take back. If we capture it back we'll have to keep a strong fleet there for quite awhile as every other race will see it as easy pickings.

Don't forget that with gates, we don't really need to keep a fleet there, so long as we can spot incoming aggressors in time. Deep scan should help with that. And denying it to other races can be as important as settling it ourselves. Whether we can afford to do anything about Atalanti right now is, on the other hand, a good question.

-Our swarm 6.02 design- do we want to update that, or wait for UV lasers? Right now the design seems pretty outdated. Additionally, do we want to keep that center medium weapon a mass driver? Or is a armor piercing mass driver (once we update the design) just more useful then a medium laser as an anti-swarm ship?

I would absolutely upgrade this to use AP Mass drivers and UV lasers once we have them. AP drivers are generally more useful than mass drivers against anything that might be armoured or is smaller than a dreadnought. We aren't likely to get a better small weapon than UV lasers until we salvage something (or potentially if we get Fusion and have X-Ray lasers, which is pretty unlikely.)

The green tarka have fleets just sitting out in the middle of nowhere that arn't actually moving- is that basically their sentry network, or is the AI being weird? Is that a normal practice when playing a race that isn't hiver?

If the AI sends a fleet out to intercept something in deep space, such as a gate, it typically just leaves it sit there for sensor coverage. Even if that would be a monumental waste, like in the late game when it's intercepting with large DN fleets. Not exactly optimal behaviour in a lot of cases, but it makes sense early on when intercepting fleets are typically small, so there is a method to the madness. It may get some tweaking in the next patch, but I suspect SotS2 will handle things a bit differently due to the AI being implemented using a different control paradigm.

How close a watch do we need to keep on our funds? Is keeping above 1 million in the bank still a big deal?

Yep, keeping a good size bank balance is the best way of maintaining or growing our morale to cover off things like getting attacked -- especially if we start losing colonies. At least until we get Fusion and can start building police and propaganda ships.

What would make a good ritual sacrifice scout group?

I say we toss a small fleet of cardboard cutouts. Either an old MD dd, or a couple swarm ships to see how well we do defending against the Menance.

That would be fine, I tend to think.

So you made me look up unknown menace on the sots wiki. First of all it was interesting to see the kind of mythology the game has for just 1 incarnation out in stores.

Yep, the lore the devs have poured into this game is pretty impressive for a strategy game! It beats any other 4X I am aware of hands down in that category. And SotS2 will make this an even bigger draw with its Encyclopedia of the Stars.

Here's an old TAR of a guy dealing with a galaxy getting overrun by the alien menance. At one point he had well over 30 copies running around stripping planets.

I should note that the Locusts are one of the most TARed menaces in the game. There was a bug when they first came out which dramatically increased the odds of them showing up in a game. As a result there are a number of games where people described what they did to counter them and many possible approaches have been described.

But as Hivers, we are not fast enough to intercept it in deep space as it moves faster than we do. Maybe you could get an intercept by starting from the planet it is heading towards?

Yes, that's the most likely way to get an interception, short of being faster than it (which we aren't.)

Maybe. There are a couple ballistic weapons in the tree that sound potentially useful - bursters, mass shotgun, both sound like tools for taking out a bunch of little guys. I know we have bursters available, and mass shotgun is a 90% chance for us.

Bursters wouldn't really help, as they are not very accurate cluster munitions that explode into a bunch of mass driver rounds. As a flak-style weapon they are pretty good at taking out large underarmoured targets, but these locusts are neither large (except for the fleetworld) nor underarmoured. In fact they are quite well armoured thanks muchly -- stuff like UV lasers would just bounce. Even our AP drivers will reflect fairly regularly off the fleetworld! Mass shotgun might fare a little better -- I haven't tried them recently -- but we can't get it until after bursters, and both are expensive 50K RP techs, so basing our plans around those might not be the best choice.

Also remember, if we arn't just giving up on Izakis (which would be a heavy blow, as it has the #2 industry of our empire), we only have 3 turns before it hit Izakis, apparently it moves at 1 LY/turn, so if we do go for UV lasers, we're only going to have the UV ships we get from just building them at Izakis.

We can also build 10 med defense satilites, which would take two turns, but we don't have a design at the moment, so we need to decide on the weapons loadout.

I'm pretty sure we can't put a locust-killing fleet together in 3 turns. We might be able to do it in a lot more than 3 turns, though.

How long does it usually take for it to reproduce its self? Is it something where it just needs to hit a planet once and it'll have a duplicate out?

Needs about two planets do it, three if it takes heavy damage.

Depends on the resources of the planets involved. If it's high resource worlds, two is enough, but if they are all low resource worlds it may require more 3.

they are countered by lots of suicide refinery's, Corrosive missiles, Disruptors (The drones only have energy weapons), and missile pd.(The drones are too fast for laser and Gauss, and Phaser does not enough damage.)

Well there's a bit more to it than that, but I'm getting there. More on this in my next post.

[Zed-F]

So, what do the locusts do?

Well, firstly, they attack with a lot of small, fast, drone-sized ships which form most of the fleetworld's firepower. These have a middle-range beam weapon which does a lot of damage, but only an average recharge time.

Up close, the fleetworld itself also has a number of fairly powerful beam weapons, which hit a bit harder than the locust beams, but these are also middle-range weapons with an average recharge time.

If they visit a planet and are not stopped, they will wipe out everyone and everything there, consume all the resources at the planet, fix any combat damage, and move on to the next closest world that has resources. Once they have saved up enough resources, they will split any make another fleetworld, and both will continue from there. The fleetworld cannot repair itself except when winning a victory at a planet, though.

However, it is important to note that fleetworlds move at a speed of 1 LY/turn so they will take time to strip a region of the map bare. Also, they don't generally do obscene amounts of climate damage to planets they visit. Once Locusts have stripped a planet bare and moved on, they will ignore that planet in the future as long as it has no resources for them to consume.

So, this leads to a couple categories of approaches, with a number of options per category:

1. Not fighting the Locusts

1.1 Ignore the Locusts.
This option relies on the fact that the Locusts don't move all that quickly from place to place, and their movements are inherently predictable. If you can trace the Locusts' projected path and see that they won't do too much damage to your colonies too quickly, or they will hurt enemies more than you, or you can defeat all rival empires before the Locusts become a real thorn in your side... then you don't really need to deal with them.

1.2 Bait the locusts.
This involves trying to encourage the locusts to attack someone other than yourself. Through selective mining, you could potentially encourage the locusts to follow a particular path through the galaxy away from your empire and toward other empires. You could even abandon your own colonies and mine them ahead of time in order to do this. The resources mined in this fashion could be dumped on a world that is not projected to get attacked soon based on the Locusts' rule of 'always go to the closest planet with resources.'

1.3 Survive the locusts.
Ok, so the locusts just came and ate one of your colony worlds. Terrible, yes. But... they didn't eat the whole world, just the resources off it. Your people can still live there, they will just have to take up quilting instead of metalworking. And if nobody else in the galaxy has resources either because the locusts ate everything, well then it's a level playing field, right?

If the locusts enter the game soon enough, there's usually at least some of this going down anyway, because the other options involve fighting the locusts off, and that can get expensive and/or time consuming, depending on what state the game is at.


2. Fighting the locusts.

2.1 - High tech approaches

• Meson shields are the ultimate counter to the Locusts in SotS1, they make you nearly invulnerable to anything the Locusts have other than a locust drone ramming you or slipping inside your shield bubble to shoot.
  
• Really buff top-end ablative shields will probably do a pretty good job against locusts, though I haven't tried it, since they take a ton of punishment and recharge very quick.
  
• Absorbers coupled with phasers/phaser PD will eat locusts for breakfast.
  
• Improved cloaking can be useful.
  
• Disposable burst damage: lots and lots of AM torpedo destroyers can ignore the locusts and just concentrate on popping the fleetworld; even if they die in droves that just lets you get freshly charged ones on the field faster.
  
• Phaser PD by itself will work but you'll take quite a few casualties unless you have some method of protection from the locust beams.
  

2.2 Medium tech approaches

• Interceptor missiles are a good fusion-era tech for locust busting. These work really well at this job because the locusts have no PD themselves, and because interceptors can alpha a lot of damage since, being missiles, they have a large bonus to their firing arc; pretty much all your interceptors will be constantly firing as long as any PD-eligible target is in range.
  
• Disruptor shields give you invulnerable forward protection against locusts -- if you can kill the locusts quickly enough they may not get too many shots behind your shields. This is a fission era tech but most races have poor odds to get it, especially since Deflectors is a prerequisite.
  
• Other powerful fusion era weapons such as heavy fusion cannon or projectors could help take down the fleetworld relatively quickly once the locusts are dealt with.
  

2.3. Low tech approaches

• Disruptor torpedos: Any single section ship that relies on turrets for firepower is vulnerable to these simple, fast-firing torpedoes which don't do a lot of damage but force any turret weapons on whatever section they hit into recharge. Not useful against zippy locusts, but prevents the fleetworld from shooting back while you pummel it. A very cheap fission era tech which most (but not all) races have good odds to get.
  
• Corrosive missiles can be really useful for a couple reasons; the locusts don't all launch at once, and the corrosive missiles will damage every locust still docked to the fleetworld as well as doing good damage over time to the fleetworld itself, which doesn't move out of corrosive clouds very quickly. Not so useful against zippy flying locusts though. These are a core fission-era tech, costing 35K RP.
  
  
• Refinery: We were just talking not that long ago about how refineries produce a big boom when they die, right? Against any AI opponent that you can sucker into surrounding your refinery and uses lots of small targets like drones or destroyers to do it, this big boom can be very helpful. Doesn't tend to work well against MP opponents who know better than to get close, mind you, but if you've got no other good way to deal with locusts, this is a pretty reliable (if costly on the refinery budget) way to do it.
  
• Lots of ships!: No matter what tech you are using, the fleetworld can only take so much punishment (though you'll want to avoid techs that can potentially bounce on the locusts' really buff armour, where possible.) If you can take out the locusts, you can take out the fleetworld, so long as you can do enough damage in the time available. Deep space intercepts can help here to prevent the fleetworld from getting repair opportunities.
  

So that's it! Out of that list, there aren't too many things we can access right now, but certain basic approaches (strikeforce CnC, refineries, corrosive missiles) are guaranteed to be in everyone's tree, so as long as you have cruisers and can build enough ships -- it will take a lot! -- you can always take the locusts down.

Doing it while weathering attacks from your rivals is the interesting part!

[haphazard1]

The locusts go for the nearest planets with the highest resources, they are countered by lots of suicide refinery's, Corrosive missiles, Disruptors (The drones only have energy weapons), and missile pd.(The drones are too fast for laser and Gauss, and Phaser does not enough damage.)

Suicide refineries I guess we can use some. Everything else you mention is far out of our reach. And suicide refineries do zilch to damage the fleet/world.

Izakis is toast, and since the Locusts will repair themselves with its resources there is no point to even attacking them until afterwards. Not that we have anything capable of doing any real damage anyway.

We're doomed. And even worse, it will be a slow, drawn out, inevitable kind of doom. With the rival empires picking off additional worlds once our core has been destroyed.

[Zed-F]

Suicide refineries I guess we can use some. Everything else you mention is far out of our reach. And suicide refineries do zilch to damage the fleet/world.

Corrosive missiles are very much within reach; they are a core tech we can get right now if we want. At 35K RP they are only slightly more expensive than AP Drivers.

Don't be so pessimistic, Haphazard. If you think you can't, you're right.

Consuming an entire empire takes time! We will lose Izakis for certain. Baymu should be next on the Locusts' hit list, and Miirio after that. We won't be able to do much once it gets to Miirio since that's where the Morrigi monitor is. But if we put everything we can into defending Baymu before the locusts arrive, we might be able to save it. We would need to pretty much do nothing but build cruisers and send them to Baymu, and try a deep space intercept battle first, but we could do it.

If you're really not feeling up to that challenge, though, you can always ask for a swap.