This is great to follow along; thanks for posting guys.
I like how you all pick up on things like knowing Meklar missile tech will overwhelm your smalls. However, that info is gathered from a somewhat buried and very archaic looking tech-report from spying that new-ish players would completely miss.
Any thoughts about presenting this type of info in more intuitive ways? This could be really useful feedback for Ray (not actually changing the game; just the gui and highlighting key points)
No worries, Thrawn: We'll definitely be able to handle the situation; it's just that it has a lot of wrinkles I wanted to figure out before I started playing, so I could decide on a definite overall plan. (Also I'd rather blow up human ships than exploit their bad decision-making if they give me an opportunity.)
(January 23rd, 2017, 11:38)Reformations Wrote: This is great to follow along; thanks for posting guys.
You're welcome!
Quote:Any thoughts about presenting this type of info in more intuitive ways? This could be really useful feedback for Ray (not actually changing the game; just the gui and highlighting key points)
Ray doesn't like mouse-over info - I like a lot of what he's doing but strongly disagree with his opinions about the future of UI - but an easy way to see what each tech does from the espionage screen would do the trick. (As for "archaic-looking," he's paying a UI designer specifically to take care of stuff like that.) Also I'm not sure this information would be visible in Remnants; we might see "An Unknown Technology" instead of Scatter V. (I don't remember the details of how the "unknown tech" thing works or whether I just dreamed it though.)
The screen isn't esoteric if you're paying any attention to the strategic game though. You can have a tutorial to explain how to plant spies with other races and see what techs they've got, but once you know how, of course you would do that with someone you're trying to invade. And from there, sure, Thrawn was doing pretty specific calculations in the thread, but I reached the same conclusion just from, "Scatters fire five times as many missiles as everything else and do enough damage to get through our shields."
Yeah; sorry this is taking me so long. I made things a bit complicated for myself (you'll see when I post the report!) and had to work until nine PM yesterday. I have finished about half the turns though, and intend to finish them today.
Maybe it was due to playing late at night and exhausted, but this turn-set has been kind of surreal thus far: The AI is just completely loony. I'm having a blast though, and I hope to hand over a save with many opportunities for you to bring (still more of) our rocky justice down upon the frail biological organisms of the galaxy!
Not this time, I promise! It really is just a bunch of real-life stuff that's slowing me down, not trying to figure out how to wipe out the galaxy in one set. Still plan to play tonight, but I might post the save a bit late. Sorry it's taken me so long!
Sorry this is so late, but I'm finally done with the set! I'm afraid the situation in the save is also a bit ... messy. I guess I can say that the plans I made were good enough to overcome making some egregious errors in execution and a certain amount of rotten luck, but that doesn't make the errors any less severe.
I'm not going to have time to post anything like a report tonight, so some really brief notes for now:
1) You've got almost 1,500 BC in the reserve, but basically nothing has been funded yet this turn (including the URs!)
2) I didn't try for Altair because I'm pretty sure they have enough Hyper-V bases to slag our current bombers. I did go for one of the peripheral Alkari worlds though: What turned out to be an artifacts world in the north that I ended up glassing in the interturn because I underestimated how much damage the bomber would do. We can recolonize it if you like. At least it's better than...
3) I colonized a couple of rich worlds in the corners of the galaxy just for fun. One turned out to have a lizard cruiser en route when I founded the colony, and I didn't haverealize I had a fleet I could get over there in time to repel it. The Sakkra cruiser is in orbit there right now, but didn't bomb, so the additional LR colship I sent in advance of some transports and a fleet of neutron fighters (so that hopefully neither would crash) may be superfluous. I freely admit the entire endeavor is and was very silly.
4) Willow (once a Psilon colony, now ours) has a bunch of Psilon fleets incoming. We also have a fleet of neutron fighters coming to kick them out. The Psilon ship designs are basically all bombers - the larger ones are two-movers - except for the smalls, which are ... nuclear missile boats. The fighters should be able to handle the first wave of attacks, but I'm sending a Repulsor bomber (still can be vetoed) from the bombed-out Art world in the north to help with the next set that comes in. ... This is a gross waste of resources, so please do veto it and do something better (like reloc'ing a repulsor large to do the job from Paranar instead of fiddling around with a colship for the Art world).
5) Tau Cygni (also an ex-Psilon colony, also ours, but pretty small) also has a bunch of incoming fleets. There are fighters already there, but there are some big fleets coming against which they will be inadequate. Probably Drakka should do something about this.
6) I tried not to leave you with too many transports in space, but there are I think three groups. One is heading toward the aforementioned Rich reach world (the southern rich reach world; I didn't bother doing anything for the one up near Psilon space because it's purely to taunt the brains and be fun and silly - so feel free to prove me wrong and come up with a way to make it a huge contributor to our empire or something if you want) and due in I think four turns. The other (two?) are bound for the galactic center (Sol, I think? Or Phyco...) and will arrive quite soon. None of our planets are overflowing though, so this isn't a problem; just a thing.
7) I doubt if I'd really be building Class X planetary shields at so many planets this turn if I were actually playing it; your call on what to actually do of course. (What? Yeah, we have Class Xs. One of exactly three techs I pulled from over 300 Psilon factories. Fortunately I got all the good techs before I invaded. Not by spying of course. In spite of excellent computer tech levels and keeping spies active on every rival every turn, I didn't get a single espionage success.)
8) These really aren't all that brief, are they? Errrr, oops. Sorry.
9) We have a bio-toxin antidote, so spores can be ignored. I've seeded Impulse Engines heavily, Absorption Shield a bit, and now also Cloning. Still no investment in any other tech field.
10) The Meklar have Impulse Drives. Not necessarily on any of their ships, but in their spy reports. They've had them for several turns now.
11) There's an ultra-poor Psilon world with no defenses and a few factories in the far east, just past Tau Cygni. The other defenseless Psilon world is Mentar. I haven't bombed it yet, but maybe I should have instead of dreaming of setting up a possible invasion.
12) Mentar's not in the nebula, but note that our amazing UR toxic world of Drakka is. Note also the Psilons have Controlled Toxic.
13) Okay, okay, I'll be quiet now until I can post the report. The save is attached!
Well this is another fine mess you've gotten me into! I'll have a look at the save later today and see what I can do to keep this ball rolling along. Is there any chance to win a vote in five years? Probably not without cloning. I'll capture Mentar if I can and continue our war efforts while consolidating our gains. And beyond that I will just see how things go. I can't wait for your detailed report Ref, your hints were very tantalizing!
