RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

T228: Neutronium at 81%.
Continuing to build fleets at Isketot, Kaa'Vaala, Ke'Pranum. Building Biomes at Peten, Noshu, Shononu. Leftover money going into megafreighters.

T228 Interturn: Eradicate Liir, the poor fishies. Better luck next time!

T229: Neutronium hits. Start Orbital Drydocks.

Finish off the last fleet builds at Isketot; I think we have enough ships constructed for now. Build more megafreighters with the remaining income.

Interturn: VN attack a Far Tarka world but they destroy the mothership; our gate survives, as does the Far Hiver gate.

T230: Build more biomes, and send a couple fleets forth to the last Morrigi worlds. I believe Mardoc is up next, so this should be fun...



Most of our fleets should be hitting the Near Tarka in a big wave and followed by the Morrigi. We have fleets enroute everywhere we might want to send one, assuming we can work toward getting an alliance with the Hivers as well as the Far Tarka. Bear in mind though that the Far Hivers might not want to ally; Hivers in general like NAPs more than alliances. We might find preserving the Far Tarka alliance to be easier than getting both other races onboard, especially since the Far Hivers are very much penned in by the Far Tarka.



I have used most of our gate capacity for turn 230, but most of our cash has yet to be spent. We have plenty of warships now so I guess you can build more freighters and/or turn up the tech rate. We are nearly done on Megafreighter builds (except for captured colonies) so after Incorporate Morrigi, it's up to you if you want to pursue trade/science stations next, or DN CnC, or AM->Farcasters.

And the save...
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/foru...hp?id=1434

[haphazard1]

Looks very good, Zed-F!

Fleets are on their way, we are taking over some new worlds, and research is progressing nicely. Lots of fighting this coming turnset -- good luck, Mardoc!

On research, I would finish Orbital Drydocks and then grab Heavy Platforms for the 10% IO bonus across our empire. Not sure if we should go for DNs after that, although it would be one way to give ourselves more firepower. Stations would be a good way to keep growing vertically, boosting our many systems.

With the Liir, local Tarka, and Morrigi starting to disappear we should open a number of new trade sectors. So I expect we will be able to shuffle our excess DE freighters to cover those sectors, and then build more mega freighters if we want to keep growing vertically. Pushing more cash into research could be good as well, to give ourselves a real edge over the other big 2 powers.

If we don't think we can get all 3 of us allied for 1 turn, then sticking with the far Tarka as allies and fighting the far Hivers will be messy. We could build up for a mass backstab using our gate network. Or take the time to move lots of extra gates through with escort forces and move them 1 turn out system everywhere, so we could re-establish gates relatively easily. I would be perfectly happy with an alliance victory if we can get it, though.

[Ranamar]

Note that if what you are doing with the I/O is building ships, the repair base's ship cost reduction bonus is more valuable than the command base's I/O bonus.

I got the impression from the wiki that one gave a 10% I/O bonus and the other one gave a 10% construction point bonus, rather than an actual 10% cost reduction. (http://sots.rorschach.net/Station#Repair_Stations) I can't imagine that construction points are other than linearly determined, although I might be wrong. In that case, I/O multiplication should give you a bigger boost than construction point multiplication due to trade routes...

(Now to read the last three pages to see if someone already covered this...)

[Zed-F]

When in doubt, the best thing to do is to test it. Loading a game where I can build stations, I built a command station and I/O at a planet went as expected from 15716->16083 (since there are other I/O bonuses from tech and these are additive, not multiplicative bonuses.) Then building a repair station next, the available I/O to build with went from 8408->9248, which is a much more substantial increase.

So you're correct that it gives a 10% increase in construction points rather than a 10% reduction in ship I/O cost, but repair stations are still better than command stations for actually building ships, because there are far fewer ways to get a bonus to construction points than to I/O points, and bonuses are additive. When you've already got a lot of bonuses to I/O, a further 10% boost doesn't do much; you need a bigger bump for the effects to really be noticeable.

This is why, when you get this high in the tree, Heavy Platforms isn't so useful for the small I/O bonus it gives, it's more that it opens the way to DN construction and other useful techs. The valuable production boosters at this level (other than stations) are Gravity Control (from Tractor Beams, which is from Heavy Platforms or AM) and AI Factories.

Regarding our own research priorities, make sure to grab Incorporate Morrigi before too long, since we will want to keep any Morrigi civilians we possibly can. They have similar climate hazard needs to us so we should be able to hold a lot of them. On that note, make sure when colonizing any world with civilians of another race on it to adjust the planet's civilian maximums using the 'i' button on the planet summary panel. Generally we will want to set our own civilians to their max without overharvest (we default to none on captured worlds so this is important), and the captured civilians to the max they can be at. This is because other races' civilians live in different environments from ours and thus don't consume resources like our own overpopulated civilians do.

[Mardoc]

Yikes, I really didn't expect that much to be achievable in one turnset merely by putting fleets as a higher priority than Megafreighters!

On the brighter side, I should have our new ships, outfitted with Neutronium rounds, to play with, in lots of places! On the down side, I expect this turnset to take quite a while, with...9 assault fleets in motion. We'll see how much I can accomplish today; the good news is that Tuesday's my only upcoming busy day, so even if I don't finish today, I ought to do so soon.

So, goals for my turnset, starting about now:

• Win the assaults
  
• Settle the newly taken colonies
  
• Continue buffing our economy
  
• Research some more useful stuff - probably Incorporate Morrigi first, then I'll head for farcasters and DN construction.
  
• Try to ally with the far Hivers about when we're due to finish off the last of the little guys. If this doesn't work...then at least DN's and farcasters will make the inevitable war easier to tolerate.
  

What I DON'T intend to do any of, unless one of you objects:

• Build more fleets - I figure we have enough to handle the little guys; either we'll win outright shortly, or we'll need to refocus on a bigger war, in which case we'll want econ and Farcasters to support it.
  
• Launch new assaults at either of the big guys; if I notice any overlooked little ones, though, I'll pay them special attention .
  
• Allow our worlds to be attacked successfully
  

[haphazard1]

Sounds like a good plan to me, Mardoc. Good luck!

Grabbing Incorporate Morrigi first also sounds good. And the tip from Zed-F about captured planets with civilians is very handy -- I have little experience at that, so this is a good thing to keep in mind.

The 10% IO bonus from Heavy Platforms is not large at this stage, since we already have other stacked IO bonuses. But it certainly does not hurt. And we need the tech to progress to DN construction and other things, so why not go ahead and grab it? (Yes, this is my maniac builder side talking. But sometimes it is right.)

[Mardoc]

T230 - Lan wants to add the local Tarka to our alliance. I decline. I'm definitely glad we're on track to finish them quickly, though.

Spend the treasury on Megafreighters.

T231 - Argos is mined out. I send the mining fleets home to Isketot, and next turn will look for another target.

We spot an incoming fleet of Morrigi to Shuu'nan, fortunately 1 turn out instead of 0; a zone defense fleet is on its way. Orbital drydocks is overbudget, but we should get it next turn. More Megafreighters.

No fighting...yet. .

T232 - Alright, now for the fighting part of the turnset. 2 assault fleets arrive, plus the Shuu'nan fight. We slaughter the Morrigi at Shuu'nan, but not before they kill off all our settlers. I'll be sending replacements here, although it appears we lost a lot more civilians, probably from a different race .


Xhangfenos, on the other hand, goes swimmingly; we kill all the imperial population and most of the defenders; one more turn of fighting, then we ought to be ready to send colonizers.



And, Gla is a tricky one; it's fortunate we have a tech advantage here. Now that the planet is dead, I think I'll hold steady and let the Tarka come to me. I'm not sure why the Tarka chose to fight for the 600 residents here rather than the 720 million at Xhangfenos, but that's what they did.



I queue up Biomes all over the place; we're going to have plenty of use for them!

Orbital Drydocks comes in, and we start translating the Female Dialect (Morrigi 2).

[Mardoc]

T233 - The far Tarka tells us 'I want Xhangfenos'. WE did all the work to clear off those smelly lizards.... . Do we give in, once we clear the local Tarka? I would like to remain allied - but it's a nice planet! And we did the work! Size 6, 4500 resources, comes complete with partial infrastructure and a couple hundred million Tarka civilians...

I'll take advice here. It seems a ridiculous demand, but maybe it's worth giving in just to try to end this game sooner.

We finish Female Dialect and start in on Incorporate Morrigi. It's fun to be able to blast through techs like this Especially because we're simultaneously building Biomes in lots of spots and Megafreighters most everywhere else.

We finish the Tarka at Xhangfenos, so we really will need to decide whether to grab this world or not. Gate's going up, of course.

The Tarka decline to fight at Gla; I suppose a dead world isn't worth it. That fleet is headed toward Shangsis, a Morrigi world with a different fleet of ours inbound. Gla will certainly be settled next turn!

We fight at Ku'Van, the Tarka homeworld, as well. This one is...ok, I guess. We kill 8 of their cruisers for the cost of 3 of our own. I need to think about how to manage the fight better, because that's not actually an attrition ratio that I feel confident about winning with. Maybe next turn I need to drive for the planet and see about killing the imperial population. Or maybe continuing the current path is ok: they only have 20 cruisers here, and they're mostly sporting weapons I haven't seen before - I think they're torpedoes. One looks like a really white spark, goes straight through a shield, and seemed to do a lot of damage. They also have some that make our ships spark a lot and start drifting. But that means, if we can kill the cruisers, maybe we'll be in better shape overall.

And...we resettle Shuu'nan. Maybe this time we'll even keep it.

[Zed-F]

The Far Tarka will want everything they can settle; obviously that's not going to work. We should settle the better worlds and leave some of the smaller ones for them.

[haphazard1]

Looking good so far, Mardoc!

On these worlds where the other Hivers have ships/gates, we should be quick to settle them. Or we may get beaten to it.

We cleared the planet, we take it. The far Tarka will hopefully remain allies, but we should not hand over good planets for nothing. They have gotten more than grabby enough already.

On the local Tarka, I mentioned that weapon in my reports. Pulsar torpedoes are not affected by deflectors as they are not a physical/ballistic attack. Not sure about the sparking weapon?

We definitely need to finish off the local Tarka quickly. I am glad our alliance prevented them from allying with the far Tarka.