RBSotS1 SG2

[Mardoc]

T234 - Driving for the planet at Ku'Van was a tad premature - we lose 7 cruisers to the Tarka 8, and only kill a million or so Imperialists. Still...that pretty much cleans the Tarka out of cruisers here, so maybe next turn we should charge the planet again anyway. One good round of bombardment will make the rest of our fighting much easier. I don't want to use shuttles just yet, due to the still intact satellite rings.

We're sending Biomes to Gla, to colonize, and the Xhangfenos, to keep our options open; we still haven't decided if we'll actually cede this one or not, but if we decide to keep it, I want to be ready. Or...we would, but I take another look - those dastardly other Hivers snuck in, and they've settled Xhangfenos already! Well...I already said I'm not starting a war with them...I'll let the far Tarka argue with them about who gets the world.

That said, the far Hivers have allied with the near Tarka. So we might be doomed to fight it out anyway, depending on how much punishment they're willing to let us dish out to their allies.

Incorporate Morrigi goes overbudget, so I turn down research to hopefully finish it off this turn without spending too much extra.

T235 - At Ku'Van, we fight a few cruisers, then abruptly start killing freighters instead. We do charge the planet, and kill off 200M, at the cost of 9 CR's. Their planetary missiles are just nasty! I don't have any better ideas, though - we killed some satellites, but I'm sure enough remain to make shuttles still a very chancey proposition.

We auto-calc a Raiders event at Liiruuma, out of despair - and it somehow works! 2 swarmDD's kill off the entire fleet of 6 raiders, for minimal and easily repaired damage.

Well, we've seen this before - but it still doesn't bode well for our chances of a quick alliance-type victory:

Maybe we'll be able to reupgrade this pact once the local Tarka are dead.

Incorporate Morrigi finishes. I want to go for Antimatter, but it costs still 13 turns, so I decide to pick up Heavy Platforms first; that'll at least boost our income a bit for the big push. It's looking more and more likely that we've got a lot of fighting still ahead, so Farcasters will be a necessity to keep from going nuts .

And we colonize Gla.

[haphazard1]

Grrrr. I was worried about the far Hivers doing exactly that.

Keep up the good work with all the battles. Hopefully I put enough ships in that fleet at the local Tarka home world.

Raiders auto-calc results...meh. I wish there was some logic or reason to the auto-calc stuff. Getting results from auto-calc that are not even remotely possible for a human-controlled battle is not a good thing.

On over-budget research, if you spend past the 150% point any excess gets refunded to you. If the tech breaks through before 150% you do not get refunded. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage, sometimes not.

Alliances (local Tarka and far Hivers) and no-longer alliances (far Tarka)...not good news either one. Good thing we have built up our military power recently. We may end up losing our gates at the far Hiver worlds. If that happens, we need to be positioned to wipe their gates in our systems or in neutrals in our end of the galaxy (mined out worlds, etc.). We should pre-position some ships for this task and be ready. If possible, we would like to save our propaganda ship stationed at the far Hivers' world -- those things are expensive. But there is probably not much chance we could.

Mining targets...I do not think there are many (any?) left. But check around, there might be something somewhere. If not, do we keep the ships? Or scrap them over the homeworld for whatever we can get?

Tech path sounds good. A little more IO and a step closer to DNs, then go for AM. 13 turns is not bad at all for that tech -- not too long ago it was over twice that. It will open up some nice options for us in a number of areas, not just farcasters.

[Zed-F]

Raiders auto-calc results...meh. I wish there was some logic or reason to the auto-calc stuff. Getting results from auto-calc that are not even remotely possible for a human-controlled battle is not a good thing.

There is some fuzzy logic to it. We do have neutronium rounds and it does include our planet missiles in the calculations. Fortunately though for SotS2 you won't have to worry about this as the game will sim out the auto-resolved combats sans graphics, rather than doing a mathematical approximation of it.

Alliances (local Tarka and far Hivers) and no-longer alliances (far Tarka)...not good news either one.

Nope, but hopefully a shared combat over a Morrigi world will help refresh our odor as far as the Far Tarka are concerned.

Mining targets...I do not think there are many (any?) left. But check around, there might be something somewhere. If not, do we keep the ships? Or scrap them over the homeworld for whatever we can get?

I might keep a half-dozen or so around but we can probably scrap most of them.

[Mardoc]

T236 - I really don't have lots of confidence that we'll actually win here at Ku'Van, I keep losing too many ships to the planetary missiles. I've taken the Xhangfenos and Gla assault forces and sent them here; maybe we can just hang out in the outer system and survive until the reinforcements arrive. I don't know if it's my admiralship, or not enough ships, or maybe we've finally reached the limit of what's possible with our fission-era Locust ships, but we just can't seem to get close to the planet and survive. We are, at least, tempting the Tarka to fight each round, and whatever they send at us gets smashed, so I'm confident they won't be building up a scary fleet while the second wave crawls across space here.

In contrast, the fleet arriving at Ko'Velan immediately clears out any ships who dare challenge them, and the entire Imperial population of the planet. We still need to finish off the satellites, but this planet will be open for colonization very shortly.

Gla, meanwhile, goes from untouched to 0 CH, 100 infra, the turn the Biomes land. Only 2 million citizens so far, but I bet their population grows magnificently

We've opened Sector 22, and immediately shipped in a bunch of DE freighters to fill the routes; meanwhile most of our sectors are actually getting full of Megafreighters. Without an obvious place to dump the cash, it's going toward research. (or maybe it's obvious that we should be dumping cash into research about now )

T237 - Ko'Grappa also goes swimmingly, and Ko'Velan is down to only one remaining satellite - no ships or population. I think it's ultimately simply that our older ships have reached the end of the line. Ku'Van therefore has the ships hide in the outskirts, and kill some freighters that inexplicably decide to charge us - maybe so that the planet has sensor data on where to send its missiles?

T238 - I accidentally tell Ku'Van to autocalc, and now that fleet's mostly dead . I will back it away from the planet by 1 turn's worth of movement to hopefully keep the remnants safe until the 2nd wave attack fleet succeeds here.

The war's going well everywhere else, though - at Shangxhis (first Morrigi planet), I play it safe, and therefore only kill 2/3 of the enemy fleet and 150 million Imperialists for no losses. Next turn I'll be much more aggressive here . Every other Tarka planet we're assaulting has gone down pretty easily, too.

T239 - We fight alongside the Far Tarka at Kuikuilos The Morrigi never have a chance - I think either of us alone could have eradicated them, but together it's just sad. Since this planet's only size 1, maybe we should let the far Tarka keep it.

Shangsis is now down to just a remnant of satellites and some civilians. Deploying the gate, Biomes should follow.

Heavy Platforms comes in, and I discover that Dreadnought construction is actually maybe half the cost of Antimatter. We'll want it anyway, right? DN's are more efficient with Gates than CRs...I start us on DN construction. Antimatter will have to wait for the next turnset.

Biomes are headed for two former Near Tarka worlds

T240 - Tokhta the Just surrenders to us. I move Biomes to a bunch of our new worlds.

So...the wars went well. Everywhere except Ku'Van, where a combination of older tech on our side, newer tech on the Tarka side, and probably a flustered admiral, resulted in it holding for now. I have a new fleet inbound here, though, which ought to do the trick finally.

And, at the last moment...


Next up - finish the local Tarka, the second Morrigi, and then drive for the win. If you can get the far Hivers to join the alliance, we're done. If you can't...then we'll need to plot an even bigger war.

Fortunately, our Megafreighter program is nearing its end. More sectors than not have entirely Megafreighters; only new ones are working DE freighters, and even there only as a stopgap. This recent series of attacks opened up a bunch of new trading sectors, so haphazard1, you probably can play with more econ, getting them all set up nicely, maybe even start a station-building program if you're willing to delay Antimatter a bit.

[Mardoc]

And, the Save

[haphazard1]

Sounds like a pretty good turnset overall, Mardoc! One mis-click on that fight at Ku'Van, but these kinds of things happen.

I expect the problem at Ku'Van was a combination of not enough ships (I should have sent more there) and it being a home world. Home worlds are tough, as the doubled population means a LOT more planetary missiles. We will just have to keep hammering at it once the fresh forces arrive -- if we can get a couple good strikes in against the planet to cut down the population, the missile situation will improve rapidly.

OK, I have the save and should be able to play some turns tomorrow. So there is plenty of time for advice and ideas.

[Mardoc]

I expect the problem at Ku'Van was a combination of not enough ships (I should have sent more there) and it being a home world. Home worlds are tough, as the doubled population means a LOT more planetary missiles. We will just have to keep hammering at it once the fresh forces arrive -- if we can get a couple good strikes in against the planet to cut down the population, the missile situation will improve rapidly.

The other big contrast between this fleet and our others was that our new designs have point defense in all their small mounts - we had 5-6 CR's with PD, plus 3 PD DD's, which meant usually that no missiles hit. It was fun, wading into the Morrigi, even at a homeworld, watching the fireworks as drones and missiles exploded all around us.

At Ku'Van, however, we had only the 3 DD's for point defense. Which meant that missiles got through...and what was worse, occasionally a missile would get through and hit one of the point defense DD's, usually killing it with one hit. Once that happened, our force just evaporated.

So, what's to be done? Well, honestly, I think the incoming Fusion-era fleets will be able to get the job done at Ku'Van; they have enough PD to survive, and certainly enough firepower to inflict all the damage we need.

In other areas - well, in my turnset, we unlocked probably 5 new trade sectors. We also cleared a lot of new planets. I tried to keep up with making sure every planet was colonized, had trade going, picket forces...but I probably let some of that slip through the cracks. Fortunately, our empire is now to a state where you ought to be able to fill out 5 sectors with Megafreighters as one of your tasks, not the only focus .

Aside from that - finish off the Morrigi - these battles are fun! And finish the local Tarka when that fleet shows up. At that point, I figure, offer the far Hivers an alliance, and keep offering every ~5 turns. IF they ever accept, then we're done. If not, then I guess it'll be time to start building a Pearl Harbor force, preplacing fleets everywhere.

Tech-wise, we want to finish unlocking dreadnoughts and maybe some of the related toys, like DN command and stations; we also want to get to antimatter and its related toys. It's up to you which way to go. If you keep buffing the economy, that'll make all the tech choices easier.

[haphazard1]

Well, I guess it is not really a surprise that our older ships could not manage to overcome a home world's defenses. We certainly got good use out of them with other worlds, and crushing a lot of Tarka CRs. So now we bring in newer builds and finish them off.

OK, I will make sure to go through all our worlds and new acquisitions and trade sectors, and try to tidy up anything which needs it. Plus fighting the ongoing battles, of course. Hopefully we can get the game narrowed down to just the big three powers, and then try to grab an alliance victory if we can. If not, then we will get a chance to play with AM-era toys.

[Zed-F]

Sounds like a good set of turns Mardoc, apart from a couple oopsies regarding Xhangfenos and Ku'Van. Agreed that the Locust ships were simply inadequately equipped (PD/armour) to deal with a homeworld's fusion missiles. You might have been better off to put in more than 3 PD destroyers at a time, if you had enough to do that, but you might not have; I don't recall what was in that fleet. I would tend to guess that you were mostly losing engines first on the cruisers while approaching the planet, which would make it hard to withdraw many to the back lines for repairs.

Haphazard, you'll probably have to re-establish the alliance with the Far Tarka. Diplomatic changes require a turn to take effect; if Mardoc accepted the alliance offer at the last moment, then saved the game, the alliance won't actually have taken place. If the Far Tarka don't re-offer the alliance as soon as you load the game, ask them for an alliance straight off.

Seeing as our tech pace is so rapid and the Near Tarka are down to just their homeworld, we might want to abort our DN construction for the moment and get Translate Kona Kai and Subjugate Tarka quickly first. This will give us the opportunity to ask the Near Tarka to surrender rather than fighting another battle with them when we will be out of Morrigi enemies with which to placate Lan Mak'Kona. If you do, make sure to speak to them first and offer to show them info on all our planets first -- this will demonstrate to them the extent of our empire and show them they have no chance to compete on their own. They will probably surrender. The downside is, they might surrender to the Far Hivers or to Lan Mak'Kona instead of to nobody or to us, so it's a bit of a gamble, but we certainly don't want Lan to break his alliance with us again so it might be a gamble worth taking.

Make sure to grab Uxhmal, Ko'Grappa, Shangsis, and Nishiini with Biomes ASAP. We don't want anyone else getting a shot at these. It is more important that we claim them promptly than that we drop a whole load of biomes to get them perfect instantly. We can leave Atalanti and Kuikuilcos for Lan to grab, and we've probably already lost any chance to snag Kankuen, though we will want to make sure to get gates at Atalanti and Kankuen.

We have a gate headed to the Morrigi Asteroid Monitor world of Mitrou; it's 2 turns out. As soon as Uxhmal is done for, then the AM will vanish and we can gate it. Make sure that the gate arrives after the Morrigi are finished off! The Far Hivers also have a gate fleet enroute and we don't want to allow them to colonize it instead of us.

[Mardoc]

Sounds like a good set of turns Mardoc, apart from a couple oopsies regarding Xhangfenos and Ku'Van. Agreed that the Locust ships were simply inadequately equipped (PD/armour) to deal with a homeworld's fusion missiles. You might have been better off to put in more than 3 PD destroyers at a time, if you had enough to do that, but you might not have; I don't recall what was in that fleet. I would tend to guess that you were mostly losing engines first on the cruisers while approaching the planet, which would make it hard to withdraw many to the back lines for repairs.

If I'd realized sooner, like turn 1 of the battle, then I could have brought along all our point defense ships at once, and that might have worked. Actually, it probably would have worked. I think we had something like 6 of them, though; after the first couple battles I was out. It didn't help that I was getting used to just romping through defenses with a similar setup at other worlds - I'm sure I was overconfident. I *was* wondering why I couldn't withdraw some of the cruisers, but of course it makes sense that you can't run away without engines.

The only thing I could have done differently at Xhangfenos, I think, was to deploy the Gate even sooner, before we finished clearing the defenses; the Far Hivers already had a Gate in orbit, so they settled while we were setting up transportation. We might consider sending one or two Biomes along in future invasion fleets, to avoid this issue. It's not like the cost of a world for a couple turns while we set up the Gate and bring in supplementary Biomes will crush us anymore; we've got something like 8-9 million in income, and a planet can't cost us any more than 100K/turn.

Haphazard, you'll probably have to re-establish the alliance with the Far Tarka. Diplomatic changes require a turn to take effect; if Mardoc accepted the alliance offer at the last moment, then saved the game, the alliance won't actually have taken place. If the Far Tarka don't re-offer the alliance as soon as you load the game, ask them for an alliance straight off.

Yes, that's exactly what happened.

Seeing as our tech pace is so rapid and the Near Tarka are down to just their homeworld, we might want to abort our DN construction for the moment and get Translate Kona Kai and Subjugate Tarka quickly first. This will give us the opportunity to ask the Near Tarka to surrender rather than fighting another battle with them when we will be out of Morrigi enemies with which to placate Lan Mak'Kona. If you do, make sure to speak to them first and offer to show them info on all our planets first -- this will demonstrate to them the extent of our empire and show them they have no chance to compete on their own. They will probably surrender. The downside is, they might surrender to the Far Hivers or to Lan Mak'Kona instead of to nobody or to us, so it's a bit of a gamble, but we certainly don't want Lan to break his alliance with us again so it might be a gamble worth taking.

Hmm, I like this idea. Either it succeeds in getting ourselves into good odor with the Far factions, and we declare an unending peace of victory, or it doesn't, in which case we'll still have use for Tarka xenotech for most of the rest of the game (especially if we simply aim for the Far Hivers; I think the most likely scenario is that we stay allied with the Tarka and have to beat on the Hivers). We could play with addicting them, or head for Accomodate/Proliferate to get some extra civilians on all our worlds. And if I'm interpreting the wiki correctly, we can achieve all of those techs (subjugate, addict, accomodate, proliferate) for approximately the same cost as Antimatter alone. Does addict Tarka affect our own citizens? Aka - do we need Tarka Temporance too?

Make sure to grab Uxhmal, Ko'Grappa, Shangsis, and Nishiini with Biomes ASAP. We don't want anyone else getting a shot at these. It is more important that we claim them promptly than that we drop a whole load of biomes to get them perfect instantly. We can leave Atalanti and Kuikuilcos for Lan to grab, and we've probably already lost any chance to snag Kankuen, though we will want to make sure to get gates at Atalanti and Kankuen.

I agree, but this is something that will be relatively easy to do both; there are ~4 worlds in our empire that have been more or less continually manufacturing Biomes (they all have ! notes at them); at least one of those planets has Biomes in the process of colonizing and one has Biomes on their way already.

Atalanti is probably a hopeless cause, the Far Tarka cleared it themselves, and I don't believe we even have a Gate there.