OSG 26 - The Bearperor Returns

[Ianus]

So I slept on it and I woke up this morning feeling bad that I didn't start Final War at the end of my turns. It would have upped the challenge factor enormously on what I'm afraid will stall out as a rather tedious end of game. More fool I for not thinking of it ahead of time!

[RefSteel]

That ... was beautiful.

Well played, Ianus! Let's see if Psillycyber and I can match your example!

Ignoring this in a game that's already won just to avoid a little tedium is probably fine

I would say this qualifies, as you have amply demonstrated. (I think the "diplomatic" win we rejected in 2400 was kind of a case of the game recognizing when the player has won and offering the official victory, as Sirian notes it often does.)

So I slept on it and I woke up this morning feeling bad that I didn't start Final War at the end of my turns. It would have upped the challenge factor enormously on what I'm afraid will stall out as a rather tedious end of game. More fool I for not thinking of it ahead of time!

Honestly, I don't think even Final War would have challenged us much after what you did to the Alkari; there'd be more alien fleets to stop, but it's not as if anyone had better tech than the birds. I'd have been happy with any choice you made in the election, and unless someone gets Class X planetaries soon, that was the last election in the game.

[Ianus]

Thanks Ref! We have Class XVs in our tree, but obviously that doesn't mean that anyone else does. From off the top of my head the Alkari were at Class IX deflectors (stealing those is what opened up Class XV planetaries) so they COULD get them but who knows. The Sakkra are only at Class VI deflectors and Class V planetaries, and the Meklar don't really count. I meant to go after the Sakkra too but the Alkari proved to require more resources than I had originally bargained for. Complete Eco would have been nice...

[Psillycyber]

Okay, I GOT the save. (In fact, I've already played a little). Looks great, Ianus! You really got things rolling on the birds! Also, great Birdshot design! Me likey! The nice thing is, they are almost as good as the carebears as long as the Alkaris don't show up with too many warhawks, and they can be in more places at once. Very nice support ship!

So I slept on it and I woke up this morning feeling bad that I didn't start Final War at the end of my turns.

Well, I know that it isn't QUITE the same, but rest assured that my first order of business in my first several turns was to start indiscriminately bombing every race whenever it happened to be convenient to do so. Honestly, I kind of doubt that enemy tech sharing would up the difficulty much. The Alkari have great tech, but they are not using most of it in their fleet. And all of them lack good engines, which is a gamebreaker for all of them. Our fleets can practically be in several places at once compared to theirs. Even if the Sakkra or Meklar had a good fleet, they have no planetary defenses. I'm pretty sure, because I just double-checked, that the Sakkra don't even have class V planetary shields. I've already reduced the missile bases on some of their planets. It was a piece of cake. 1 volley from about 1400 homewreckers,, boom: 40 bases gone. All it would take would be to wait for the Sakkra or Meklar fleets to depart their planets (assuming that they had good fleets to begin with), and we could just pounce in and glass the planets if need be. Their slow engines are KILLING them. Actually, WE are killing them, but their slow engines aren't helping. Ref getting impulse drives was a game changer, for sure!

Honestly, this game won't last another complete turnset. I plan on wrapping up the Sakkra and Meklar before my term is up. The Alkari are a tougher nut to crack with their planetary defenses, so maybe Ref will get a chance to play a few more turns after I'm finished. The fun now is just playing with our toys. I've built another design, a large cruiser similar to the Birdshot, but including a number of recent improvements: class IX shields, Zortrium armor, and auto repair. Hehehe...I don't regret not ending the game earlier for a minute!

And actually, the Meklar just showed up with a pretty decent fleet (much better than anything the Alkari have fielded, to be honest). It seems this game still has a few surprises left...

[RefSteel]

Sounds exciting; I can't wait to read about it!

[Psillycyber]

And actually, it is probably going to be another day before I can finish the turnset and the writeup on it. Some family obligations came up at the last minute. Sorry y'all! But it will be a satisfying read, I assure you!

[Psillycyber]

Aaaaand I have to substitute teach today. So it won't be until this evening until I can post my report.

[Ianus]

Come on Psilly! We're dying here!

[Psillycyber]

OSG 26 - Part 14 Report - 2450 to 2460

Okay, here's the save. Full report to follow shortly...

Edit: Here is my report, sirs. Apologies for the lateness.

Ever since the Alkari War had started under the masterful reign of Bearperor Ianus, Psillycyber had been getting his kicks by commanding one of the Bulrathi Empire's new "Birdshot" cruisers. "Ah, the Birdshot! A name I can relate to!" Psillycyber mused lovingly as he gently patted the underside of the vast hull of the new, sparkling cruiser, straight off the Tannenberg assembly lines. "We are going to have some fun times together, you and I."

For several years, Psillycyber commanded his new Birdshot III, and was loving every minute of it! So when word came down that the Bulrathi Senate wanted him for a fifth term in office, Psillycyber was initially reluctant. "We've had such good times, that Birdshot and I. The Battle of Gion...the Battle of Seidon..."

"But this is the chance you've always wanted!" one of the Bulrathi Senators exclaimed. "You said you wanted to grind those birds into the dust. We'll, you can be a much bigger part of that as Bearperor. To keep you as merely a commander of one cruiser would be a waste of your talents. You know that."

And Psillycyber knew he was right. So, after some tearful goodbyes to his beloved Birdshot III (and some less tearful, fully manbear-like goodbyes to his fellow crew aboard the Birdshot III—because, after all, now was not the time to show undue sentimentality around the enlisted bears with the Bulrathi Empire still locked in a life and death struggle with those birds—a struggle that would yet doom many millions more young bear recruits in the years to come), Psillycyber boarded the neutrino shuttle to return to Ursa once again to take up his former tasks as Bearperor.

And what tasks they were! Even during the Silicoid War, Psillcyber had felt overloaded by the work of managing a dozen star systems and hundreds of nuker 2.0 bombers. But now the Bulrathi fleet numbered in the thousands, and there were scores of homeworlds for which to issue orders. "Good grief!" Psillycyber harrrumphed. "I just wanted to shoot me some birdies. I had no idea this job would involve....all of THIS."

And as Psillycyber got to looking at the notes left by his astute predecessor, Bearperor Ianus, Psillcyber also came to a slightly disappointing conclusion. "Those birds have quite the shielding on their planets. It will take us years to marshal a force of homewrecker bombers to take out those planets. Meanwhile, the remnants of the Battle of Altair, a fleet of bombers fully 1200 strong, are just sitting there—too weak to take on any of the other Alkari planets, but plenty strong for pouncing upon...other prey." Psillycyber licked his lips. "Looks like lizard's back on the menu, boys!"

And with that, any hint of disappointment in Psillycyber's greedy brown eyes vanished as he eagerly rubbed his paws together, anticipating the many glories against the Sakkra to come...

Here are the notes from Psillcyber's logbook for those subsequent years:


2450:
I decided to send the main part of the Alkari fleet against the vulnerable Sakkra world of Argus, leaving 2 birdshot behind to cover Altair. I also sent two birdshot from this fleet to cover Xudax. I also sent the fleet gathering at Tannenberg to join the Altair fleet at Argus. I figure I will knock out the Sakkra while our fleets are gathering for their next big push against the Alkari.

Otherwise, I simply followed through with invasions already in progress. I diverted research at some planets to making those planets Gaias and growing pop to replenish outgoing transports. I have a feeling that our main bottleneck going forward will soon be a matter of regrowing enough population to replenish our outgoing marines, not our fleet numbers.

Otherwise, I just re-arranged some of the relocation orders. I will have three main assembly points:
1. A Western assembly point centered on Fozzie. This force will help clean up the Sakkra and Meklar in the SW.
2. A Central assembly point centered on Tannenberg. This force will deal with the rest of the Sakkra and most of the Alkari.
3. An Eastern assembly point centered on Little Sal. This force will sweep down the Eastern side of the galaxy to take care of the Alkari planets in that sector.

There were various fleets incoming, but not a single one of them were of any consequence. Either we had planetary V shields and at least 1 missile base present, or the planet was covered by Birdshots or CareBears, or Birdshots were en route. Even the planets that Ianus was worried would fall (like Willow) I think will hold, as there are Birdshot in range that I redirected to get there in time to intercept incoming transports.


2451:
The Battle over Pollus was dicey, simply because of the nebula and thus lack of shields.



The Alkari should have beaten us if they had chosen to stick around. They had an additional Warhawk in addition to these others shown. Without shielding, our Birdshot was an even match with this Warhawk, and the other ships could damage us too. Meanwhile, our homewreckers could do nothing useful after taking out the one misile base. As you can see, our Birdshot was taking severe damage. However, once the homewreckers took out the planet's missile base, the Alkari fleet became demoralized and fled home.

(Edit: Wait, what was I thinking? The remaining Alkari ships couldn't get through our repulsor beams. There was nothing to worry about after all... )

Even outside of nebulas, I found that our Birdshots were evenly matched with the Alkari Warhawks. What we had in shielding, they seemed to make up for in maneuverability. A duel with one Warhawk over the Alkari planet of Omicron came down to the wire with our Birdshot having 2 hp remaining.



Thankfully, the remaining foxbats could not touch our ship due to our repulsor beam.

We lost a handful of troops on Berel as 13 out of 23 Alkari transports made it through our orbital blockade.



On Omicron, we killed all 8 million Alkaris at the cost of 1 million of our own troops.



I could tell that we were not going to be able to take Crius next turn.



There was only 1 Birdshot I could send to escort the 23 million transport troops to the surface, and there were 3 warhawks waiting for us. No way that we would win that fight. But I had more Birdshots on the way, so in 3 more turns we shall try again. Still, I felt heavy of heart knowing that 23 million bears were going to their doom....


2452:
No notable fleet battles.

All Alkari transports attempting to land on Willow were destroyed. Hehehe....



Then again, it was kind of "pick yer poison for them." Would you like to perish on the planet surface or off the planet surface, bird-brains? But hey, at least this way not a single bear marine had to die defending the planet from the Alkari invaders.

Pollus was a massacre, as expected. Our marines easily captured it from the Alkari.

And somehow, 22 of 23 million headed for Crius managed to weave through the Alkari fleet orbiting that planet.



Three cheers for those transport pilots (and their impulse engines!) Once on the surface, they took the planet easily, of course. Hooray! So not all of those 23 million were doomed after all!


2453:
Our single CareBear drove off this entire Alkari fleet over Phyco to make way for our transports.





I was alarmed at the battle over Argus when I stumbled into this Banshee design, until I remembered that it would not be able to touch our Birdshot design due to our repulsor beams.



The homewreckers took out all of the Sakkra bases in one round of bombing(!), losing perhaps 50 bombers in the process. You see, the Sakkra lack all planetary shielding technology. Oh, the Sakkra are going DOWN!

BTDubs, our spies also stole Improved Terraforming +20 from the Sakkra. Not really a big deal at this point.

The Alkari did an orbital bombardment of Crius, killing 9 million of our precious bear brethren and destroying 2 factories.



Those Alkari will pay! Their fleet will be dispersed from the area next year by incoming Birdshots.

Our bears at Seidon did excellent work, dispatching over a hundred million Alkari at the cost of about 30 million of our own.





I guess I should mention that there....umm...should have been about a hundred million Bulrathi marines landing, except that I kind of flubbed things up with the orbital blockade at Seidon. You see, I sent all of the homewrecker bombers on to another planets and left one Birdshot, thinking that it would take care of the incoming Alkari fighters with its repulsor beams. And it would have been fine, except that emergency Alkari militia rebuilt one of their missile bases before the next year's transports were through. That one missile base drove away our Birdshot before it could deal with the Alkari fighters that had also arrived, and so our transports had to weave through that missile base fire as well as the ion blasts from the Alkari fleet. Luckily, enough survived the gauntlet to take the planet.

Our tech haul included:
*Trilithium Crystals (10 Range).



Not important in its own right, but it will bump up our propulsion tech level by quite a lot, allowing a lot of miniaturization.

*ECM Jammer IV.



*Cloning.



Now we're talking! The only thing worse than bear marines is cloned bear marines. That, or bear cavalry...



...although we bears do not submit to such second-class treatment as the bears on faraway Sol reportedly do.

Meanwhile, on the lizard front, since our former Altair fleet so thoroughly trashed the Sakkra planet of Argus, I've decided to keep sending the bulk of it along. This fleet should be able to clear out a Sakkra planet each turn.




2454:

The Alkari showed up at Willow with a decent group of 3 Warhawks.



No match for our 6 Birdshots, however. (Actually, they did kill 1 of our 6).

Similar story at Crius. There it was 5 Birdshots vs. 3 Warhawks. Once again, they shot down 1 at the cost of their whole fleet.

The attack on the Sakkra world of Thrax was another slaughter. Thanks to a conveniently-placed asteroid field, their 35 missile bases only killed 12 of our bombers before the bases were toast.

In other news, our 13 Birdshots over Xudax shot down all 43 million birds trying to land there, thus living up to their name. Huzzah!




2454:
We attacked Sssla.



More carnage. All aboard the Bulrathi Pain Train! Next stop? I dunno, whatever the next Sakkra planet is. I can't even keep track of them anymore...

Oh, by the way, the Meklar randomly showed up with this megafleet at Thrax, where we had just thrashed the Sakkra missile bases before moving the bulk of the Pain Train on.

Lots of slow missile boat trash, but a few gems in there, like the Nexus and Nemesis designs. I had to retreat. Thankfully, this was not over one of our planets. The Sakkra planet of Thrax will probably get thrashed some more by this fleet. Maybe there will still be a colony there when our transports arrive?....?

Oh, and I will have to get a CareBear2 down here to deal with that Meklar fleet, along with maybe some of our new Bearfang5 cruisers. Oh, I didn't mention our new ship design?



Yes, another fun toy to add to our...increasingly messy toy pile.


2455:
The Alkari wanted to play with our carebear. I guess the name "Care Bear" sounded cute to them.



They were mistaken.

There was also an attack on Ursa. 1 stinger missile base with class-14 shielding easily destroyed the 3 Warhawks that stuck around.


2456:
We gained air superiority over Centauri.



We also gained air superiority over Endoria.



Our spies stole Anti-Missile Rockets from the Sakkra.



More importantly, our marines captured Argus....

...and found several nice techs in the Sakkra research labs:



*Advanced Eco Restoration.
*Complete Eco Restoration
*ECM Jammer Mark VI
*Hard Beam
*Improved Terraforming +50
*Battle Computer Mark VI

Meanwhile, an overwhelming fleet was sent at the Alkari world of Rhilus, due to arrive in two years.

2457:
Lots of population transports headed to all sorts of places. Enough to make my head spin. Lots of worlds are simply regrowing population to feed the Bulrathi Gropo machine.

Our fleet attack on Reticuli:



Result? Devastation.

And YES! Finally we got Advanced Space Scanner, at something like 40% odds.



I chose Battle Computer Mark VIII for going forward, although I don't think it will matter.

We captured Galos easily.



And...SOMEHOW (hats off once again to our brave transport pilots!) enough of our transports made it through the gauntlet of Meklar ships orbiting Thrax to take that planet as well.



Lucky us, we have a CareBear2 and some other large cruisers on the way to relieve them from the Meklar fleet orbiting there.

2458:
The Sakkra showed up with some impressive reinforcements at Endoria.



Eeeps! Better run...

The jokes on them, though. We have transports en route to all of their remaining planets, including probably enough en route to this one to sneak past this fleet and take out the planet from under their noses. When that happens, they will be without any remaining planets, and their impressive megafleet will be without fuel or supplies, thus automatically activating its self-destruct sequence. That's what happens when you mess with....DA BEARS.

2459:
As I was saying....



And....



And....the grand finale....

Thus ended the Sakkra plague on the galaxy.

Oh, and one last parting gift that the Sakkra bestowed upon us was:



Megabolt cannons. Not bad. Could be useful on a dedicated anti-Alkari ship-to-ship combat cruiser design....

With the Sakkra down, I sent some of our fleets on to clean up the Meklar:



One and done. (Referring to the salvos needed to take out the missile bases there at Kakata).

We also resumed our offensives against the Alkari:







Those last two fights were just a tad tricky. Both of the large Alkari ships had warp dissipators on them, which they aimed at our bombers. And one of the cruisers had repulsor beams. Our ships had to weave a tight course in between the Alkari ships to reach the planet in time before their impulse engines were shut down by the Alkari stasis fields.

Meanwhile at Thrax, our CareBear2 and some supporting craft came to the rescue of our newly-arrived colonists there:



I almost lost the CareBear2 to some missiles, but was able to back it away just in time for our onboard engineers to activate the automated repair system. Meanwhile our cruisers held the line with their repulsor beams and heavy fusion beams, chipping away at the enemy. In the end, our losses were only 1 Birdshot cruiser.


2460:
Our western fleet arrived at Meklon.



Even with 53 missile bases, it was another slaughter for them. This is becoming routine....

Oh well, only one more Meklar planet to bomb out before our transports arrive. Our fleet has been ordered forward to that last Meklar planet (can't even be bothered to look up the name of it, to be honest, as it won't rightly exist this time next year).

On the Alkari front, our transports arrived at Helos. Bulrathi journalists were joining along to capture yet another Bulrathi victory on camera for the evening news, and......



WHAT??!! The Alkari slaughtered our bears in GROUND COMBAT?! They must have somehow gotten their claws on those new toys of theirs. Fusion Rifles and Personal Barrier Shields. Perhaps our bear marines were so busy slobbering and salivating at the sight of those new toys that they forgot how to fight.

The same thing happened at Rhilus. Another rout for our marines. Very well. We shall redouble our efforts! New transports have been ordered to those fronts. Vast, vast numbers. Nearly two times the number of defending Alkari. We will break through. And when we do, we will get our paws on some of those shiny new gropo toys.

[Ianus]

So... Excited... Can't wait to read!
What do you teach? I'm going to guess math or a science.