February 12th, 2017, 19:41
Posts: 5,016
Threads: 111
Joined: Nov 2007
Thanks for the write-up, Ianus! I disagree on a couple of points though:
In spite of the relative ease with which we conquered the galaxy, this game actually highlighted the importance of tactical speed for me. We had a lot of breaks go our way in this game, first and foremost being the almost total absence of real missiles from the game. You mention the power of autorepair repulsor huges, but these actually were of secondary significance at best; the critical tech that allowed us to sweep across the galaxy was Shield 4, rendering our ships immune to every missile base not owned by a Meklar (or, technically, barely, the Alkari with their Hyper-Vs). Had Scatters been more widespread, our offensive would have stalled until we could get shield 6 or Impulse Drives, and if anyone had teched Mercs or better missiles, we couldn't have touched them, especially if we never put Maneuver 2 on our ships, until we built a monster fleet that could (and would) absorb heavy casualties.
In this case, it's true that we could have won the game without using Maneuver 2 at all, but it sped things up significantly against the Meklar. The Rockthrowers deployed by my predecessor were the first ships to use it, since that was the first time they were allowed by the variant, but every one of my ships did in my final turn set. Even my Avalanche dreads would have been more vulnerable to Meklar Scatters without the extra point of missile defense, and taken hits from twice as many volleys before they reached bombing range and could hit their target. (I suspect I would have used a rather different design in that case though.) Defending is also so, so, so much easier when we can match or exceed the maneuverability of enemy ships....
On a variant: I wouldn't want to attempt an OPE (or even 2PE) in a large galaxy; I suspect that if we had any chance to succeed, many of the turns would get rather dull as we wait (and hope...) for Thorium Cells to come in. Some of my favorite Imperium variants were the somewhat-less-restrictive Green Stars Only variant (Imperium 35: Going Green) and Imperium 37, where we couldn't spend reserves but had to avoid both the use of threats AND the loss, even temporarily, of any planet we settled or conquered.
