RBSotS1 SG2

[haphazard1]

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.

Good news with the Neutronium Rounds. That will extend the useful life of our existing ships.

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

There was another planet we could mine out in the far side of the barbell, can't recall the name right now but it was in my previous report.

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.

Nice work! Lots of enemy ships destroyed and a solid blow to the planet as well, at very minor cost to us.

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.

Hmmm. I know I deployed all the gates that arrived during my turnset, so that may mean they have been sitting there for 10+ turns. I did not think to check if there were any arrived and just sitting there.

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.

I will have to remember that. You might be able to delay an incoming fleet for a crucial turn or two, with just a couple throwaway DEs. Buy time to build/move additional units for defense.

SGs are great for learning little techniques like this.

[Mardoc]

27/30 Tarka ships present killed? Nice work! Um...how the heck have they seen us incoming for a dozen turns and not scrambled any real defense force here? Does that mean we've broken their back, and as long as we keep the pressure on we'll have easy pickings?

I will probably be able to play tonight & tomorrow (your rate of progress suggests I'll have the opportunity) - unless one of the lurkers would like to take a turn?

It looks like the priorities for the upcoming turns are to win the battles you've set up and set up assaults for haphazard1 to play with, with particular attention to finishing the local Tarka and starting in on whatever Morrigi remain. With Fusion-powered fleets and probably neutronium rounds, I suspect the battles will be lots of fun

And it's likely that my turnset will let us discover if we can be friends with an expansionistic Far Tarka, or not.

I do have one question, not directly prompted, but sort of reminded about by this:

Redesign combat ships with heavy mounts to use heavy AP drivers

What exactly happens when you put a weapon in a mount bigger than required? Is it just a copy of the smaller weapon, partially wasting a hardpoint that could have been more effective? Is it scaled-up somehow? I realize, without any Heavy-mount only weapons, we might as well fill the spots with something - but just how much combat effectiveness do we gain by putting in heavy drivers?

Good news with the Neutronium Rounds. That will extend the useful life of our existing ships.

Yes...and it'll greatly increase the effectiveness of our upcoming ships, too. Apparently it's +50% damage, which combined with our already improving base, I suspect will be devastating .

[haphazard1]

I do have one question, not directly prompted, but sort of reminded about by this:

What exactly happens when you put a weapon in a mount bigger than required? Is it just a copy of the smaller weapon, partially wasting a hardpoint that could have been more effective? Is it scaled-up somehow? I realize, without any Heavy-mount only weapons, we might as well fill the spots with something - but just how much combat effectiveness do we gain by putting in heavy drivers?

Heavy Drivers are a large mount weapon. So we are not losing anything with the size of the mounts in this case.

Hmmm...just checked the wiki and I am now not sure. Apparently HCL are actually in "special" mounts rather than large mounts.

But in general:

Large mount = 1 large or 2 medium or 3 small weapons
Medium mount = 1 medium or 2 small weapons

[Zed-F]

Yep, neutronium AP drivers are an AM-era capable weapon. At least, early AM-era capable. So even though the other races may have DNs, they probably still don't have weapons this powerful to attack with... at least unless they have their own neutronium rounds.

As far as putting a smaller weapon in, small weapons in medium mounts double up, as do medium weapons in large mounts. Small weapons in large mounts triple up, but this is usually a waste. Generally you want a weapon sized for the turret, given access to any weapon you want... but it's not always worth the research cost to prioritize that as a doubled smaller weapon is usually almost as good. For instance, our AP heavy drivers gain a significant range boost over regular AP drivers, but only something like a 25% DPS improvement over dual AP drivers. While that's significant, in our case we are only getting zero or one turret upgrade per ship out of 50K RP worth of research, which is pretty marginal. Opening up neutronium for +50% to essentially everything is definitely a big deal, though.

[haphazard1]

Opening up neutronium for +50% to essentially everything is definitely a big deal, though.

A question: does the neutronium round bonus also affect guass point defense?

I've been unsure of the pros and cons of laser PD vs. gauss PD, but if guass PD gets the bonus maybe we want to use it by preference?

[Mardoc]

Heavy Drivers are a large mount weapon. So we are not losing anything with the size of the mounts in this case.

I think my question has been answered, but I was asking more about the pre-redesign state, where our heavy mounts were occupied by normal AP drivers.

So, Zed, essentially how I'm interpreting you is that the main trunk of the technology tree(s) is usually a small but real improvement, but the dramatic benefit is usually in the branches unlocked by researching up the main trunk. That fits with my understanding of, say, cruisers - just researching cruiser construction didn't actually buy us a great deal, but it unlocked stuff we wanted in half a dozen areas.

[haphazard1]

I think my question has been answered, but I was asking more about the pre-redesign state, where our heavy mounts were occupied by normal AP drivers.

OK, I guess I missed the main point of your question. Sorry.

So, Zed, essentially how I'm interpreting you is that the main trunk of the technology tree(s) is usually a small but real improvement, but the dramatic benefit is usually in the branches unlocked by researching up the main trunk. That fits with my understanding of, say, cruisers - just researching cruiser construction didn't actually buy us a great deal, but it unlocked stuff we wanted in half a dozen areas.

I had not really thought about it that way, but it seems like a good way to view the results. The "main" trunks are the core techs everyone can get, and they give you real but moderate incremental improvements. The random techs can potentially give you bigger benefits, but you don't always get any specific one (so you can't plan your strategy around one specific thing) and you never get all of them.

At least, not before drawing a couple straight flushes in a row.

[Zed-F]

Regarding ate the Near Tarka out of gas? Well considering we out-economy something like them like 5 to 1, I don't think it really matters what they think, relative to us they are perpetually out of gas. We can and are attacking them everywhere at once, so really there's nothing they can do about that; they can only build ships so fast.


T226: Tarka send a whole 3 cruisers to reinforce Shuu'nan; shouldn't be a problem.

Launch attack on Ko'Velan. Still need one more turn of builds at the homeworld before launching that fleet, then we will have a fleet at or enroute to every Near Tarka world. After that, we can worry about launching fleets for Morrigi space.

Interturn 226:

Tarka have 7 cruisers, 4 destroyers left at Shuu'nan. We bombard the planet, eliminating the imperial population but sparing some of the civilians, and destroy most of the remaining Tarka fleet for no losses, though I do have to withdraw a number of damaged PD ships for repairs.

Turn 227:
I spot a Far Tarka attack fleet enroute to a white Morrigi world, Kuikuilcos, which is great news for us! This world is a small size 1 world we can probably afford not to have. The Tarka are crossing most of the map and will take a dozen turns to arrive, which is plenty of time for us to arrange for one of our fleets to arrive and help them out. We should get a substantial positive relations boost out of doing so, which should help cement our alliance with them, helping to overcome any annoyance they might feel about squishing the near Tarka. We should let them colonize the world once they take it, if they want to.

I deploy a gate at Shuu'nan since we have a couple spares and the near Tarka don't have many ships left. I'd like to get some of the Biomes I've been building at Peten over here to settle the world.

In the meantime I keep building fleets to send against the Morrigi (though some of our current fleets will be arriving at targets soon and able to get new targets if needed.

Let's see if the Liir at Ulol can put up any kind of defense. Probably not... looks like a single cruiser and a whack of destroyers.

Interturn 227:
First Liir wave wiped out, cost of 1 deflector cruiser and 2 PD DDs in the red, withdrawn to back lines for repairs. We advance on the planet and bombard while fending off subsequent waves of small numbers of destroyers.

[Zed-F]

A question: does the neutronium round bonus also affect guass point defense?

Yes, it affects all ballistic weapons.

I've been unsure of the pros and cons of laser PD vs. gauss PD, but if guass PD gets the bonus maybe we want to use it by preference?

It's more what each of them is good at dealing with. PD lasers are considerably more accurate than gauss and so are better at dealing with large numbers of missiles. Gauss hit harder, but tend to miss really small targets, and have shorter range so are less able to support ships across the entire formation. Gauss PD is certainly better at dealing with drones and torpedoes than laser PD, and can be better against highly armoured missiles like heavy planet missiles.

So, Zed, essentially how I'm interpreting you is that the main trunk of the technology tree(s) is usually a small but real improvement, but the dramatic benefit is usually in the branches unlocked by researching up the main trunk. That fits with my understanding of, say, cruisers - just researching cruiser construction didn't actually buy us a great deal, but it unlocked stuff we wanted in half a dozen areas.

Hm, well it's more of a case-by-case basis really. Different trees operate differently. For cruisers, definitely. For dreadnoughts, kinda, but the main offshoot we really would want is DN CnC. For drivers, mass drivers are for their time are a massive improvement over gauss cannons (a mass driver has over 2.5x the DPS of twin gauss!), as well as leading to good things... heavy drivers are a much smaller improvement over mass drivers, but also lead to other good things. For power techs, different races value the power techs to a different degree, depending on how heavily they rely on power techs to get a strat speed boost. So, I wouldn't try to make a general rule out of your statement, but it certainly does apply in many cases.

[haphazard1]

Looks like more very good work, Zed-F!

So we need to time our arrival at Kuikuilcos (sp?) very carefully so we show up and fight alongside the far Tarka? 12 turns is not a lot of time, given how slowly our fleets move across space.

The Liir are not long for this galaxy. If our fleets are as effective against the local Tarka, we should be wrapping up control of our half of the barbell very soon.