OSG-28

[shallow_thought]

IRC4 -- I would be tempted to take the time to max factories. More production drives everything else: more ship building, more research, more everything. And those factories will pay off for the rest of the game. We are very close to being ready to launch our assault on the bears, though. Hmmmm.

But then the Bulrathi might tech improved missiles or battle computers or something and us lurkers would miss out on a chance of blood!

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Also, it might make sense to wait for Factory cost 6 to come in.  Improves the payback rate considerably.

As if it's not hard enough already we have to entertain the lurkers too .

The points are sound though. I probably need to build factories at Mentar so that we have the capability to build reserves (and maybe somewhere else so that if Mentar gets hit by a supernova or plague I can pump to Mentar?), but otherwise I want to focus on killing bears grabbing our birthright as the galaxy's foremost race. And waiting until the factories are cheaper makes sense.

Anyway, got it. I'm not going to rush things, but hope to be able to play tomorrow morning. If I can't finish then, I may not be able to wrap things up and report until the start of next week (as said, sister's birthday plus other family stuff). But I'm looking forward to this...

[haphazard1]

Good luck, shallow_thought! No need to rush. I believe the usual pattern is 48 hours to play after claiming the save; we have been playing a lot faster than that generally. But actual life events (and birthday parties ) are more important.

[Mardoc]

As if it's not hard enough already we have to entertain the lurkers too .

Oh, don't worry, you've been doing a fine job so far. Enough to make me seriously think about signing up for OSG-29.

[RefSteel]

Errr ... Factory tech already came in back in 2422! (See DaveV's first-half report.) We're working on Armored Exoskeletons now. As for factories on Mentar, they'll already be making a profit on their seventh turn of existence, and as shallow_thought pointed out, it's good to be able to build reserves. Of course that doesn't mean you have to build them immediately if you need more ships right now, and I mostly agree with DaveV's decision to delay infra to finish the first-wave attack fleet. They should definitely be a priority though! Now we just have to use that fleet to get ourselves some more Psilon worlds - note it looks like we still need colship(s) for resettling purposes, and if we start to suffer attrition we'll also need to replace part of the fleet. (Also, an up-to-date spy report on our target would be useful to make sure we're not running into suddenly-improved defenses....) Factories on other worlds, especially near the front, can probably wait since we'll be sending transports to fill up our new colonies: With a single click to refit (maybe not even necessary, but Sargon believed it was) we can now drop planets to 3/4 of their pop without any factories going idle. (Don't send any transports from rich Mentar though!) In general, it's worth regrowing pop onto factories, but not beyond that. Now that we have Cloning though, and with hopefully some big new worlds to populate soon, regrowing becomes much more efficient across the board.

I'm a bit worried about our apparently-buggy space-superiority ship designs; hopefully they'll work correctly in the next battle....

On the Darloks: The Venom design has been around since at least 2410 (see the very first image of my latest report, with 63 already in orbit at Proteus: Those are indeed Venoms) - the 'loks seem to be building those ~exclusively, since the other numbers are basically unchanged.

[RefSteel]

Oh, don't worry, you've been doing a fine job so far. :nod: Enough to make me seriously think about signing up for OSG-29.

That would be terrific!

[haphazard1]

More participants for MoO SGs would be great, Mardoc! If someone as unskilled as I am can play, anyone can join.

I think DaveV mentioned plans to build a colony ship for the resettle, but had not done so yet. We will certainly need one.

If the Darlok venom design has been around for a while, hopefully it will not have anything too advanced on board. But if they are building more of them, it is probably a death spore ship.

[Ianus]

Here are my observations regarding missile movement in MoO. I observed this quite some time ago in one of our games here, but I can't remember which one.  Obviously this isn't exactly the same as what we see in our game, but it serves to illustrate the point.

So in this case my bombers are closing on an enemy planet firing Scatter Pack V missiles (speed 2.5) while my bombers have speed 6.
For the first run of the battle I bring my bombers in ABOVE the planet:




For the sake of the demonstration the ships are moved to the space directly above the planet, where they are able to drop their payload before getting hit by the missile salvo.
Next I reload the turn and bring my ships in BELOW the planet:




This time the bombers are hit by the missiles while moving into the space directly below the planet. My theory as to why this happens is that there is some bit of code within the game that slightly retards missiles moving toward the top of the battle screen because of how the screen is laid out. The planet is not exactly centered between top and bottom, instead it is located within the top half of the screen so missiles have slightly less distance to travel to reach the top vs the bottom of the screen. Whatever the reason the result is that bombers can reach the planet and drop bombs before being hit by missiles when moved "above" the planet, but will be hit by missiles when moving "below" the planet.  Note that Stinger Missiles (speed 3.5) move fast enough to overcome this, but up to Merculites (speed 3) missiles can be dodged in this way.
Have I mentioned that I play A LOT of MoO?

[shallow_thought]

Galaxy descends into war! Read all about it!

Dastardly Psilons sneak attack Bulrathi, and plant their own colonies!

Psilon ambassador tries to assassinate Darlok Emperor!

Darloks go to war with Sakkra-Klackon alliance over ruins of Ursa!

Silicoids and Sakkra-Klackon alliance are at war, just because!   

Sakkra declare war on Psilons because planetary alignment tells them to!

Psilon transports poised to accidentally (so they claim) invade former Bulrathi, then briefly Psilon world of Talas, just claimed by Silicoids!
Will this lead to war with the last race the Psilons have met that they're not already fighting? Or will the Sakkra bomb the colony first?

Psilon war-leader shallow_thought resigns, saying that this really wasn't his fault*. Really.  

There will be a full report at some point, but it could be a little while.  I'm posting the game now so that Ianus (and the rest if you want) can have a long, hard look at this before he plays. Good news is that most of our actual military action went fine; bad news is that it's netted us one new colony. It's going to be an ... interesting ... vote in 10 years time at this rate. You wanted a challenge, right?

*Ok, the gamble of reaching for the artefacts world of Talas may be about to backfire spectacularly.

[haphazard1]

Wow. Sounds like some very busy turns, shallow_thought. We drew the assassination event, against the Darloks? Well, we had good event luck earlier with Mentar becoming rich, I guess this offsets.

Will try to take a look later, but today is going to be busy.

[shallow_thought]

OK. Now that I have calmed down again (sodding erratic lizards), a few key points for anyone looking at the game (only things that are not obvious just by checking screens in game).

- I replaced our large heavy laser design with a large heavy fusion one (ARS, Repulsor). It has done decent service against the Bulrathi huges and Sakkra larges.
- The Darlok mediums running around are a mix of spore bombers, Hyper-X and Neutron Pellet. Not too scary. They have a huge design around, heading for Ursa, that I've not yet had a chance to scope out
- I traded repulsor beam to the Silicoids for scatter-pack V to defend against Darlok medium spore-bombers. YMMV.
- Our bombers are currently on their way to the Darlok ultra-poor to glass it: partly to remove it as a jumping off point for an attack, more to impress our scaly friends by attacking our mutual enemy. Oh well.
- After fields VI, I have focused on Pulsons for defence.
- A few planets, but notably not Mentar, have maxed factories under IRC IV.
- There's a Bulrathi fleet inbound on Argus. I think our single large can handle it, I have a nasty feeling I've not left anything else in range to get there. Argus could probably build another one itself in time.

I deliberately went for a fast attack and risked stretching our defenses because I wanted to start killing bears before they toughened up (they now have Zortrium, for example). As a strategy I think it was defensible, but it relied on some good luck (hey, we had some - the Darloks and Sakkra mixing it up is funny), and tactical skills to even up superficially uneven fights. I managed to run rings around Bulrathi and exploratory Sakkra fleets, but I lost the ship defending Talas when the repulsor did not kick in - I think it failed because it would have pushed the stack back onto a stack that was already there. Yep, that was "ship". Details of that little sequence of errors will be in the full report. That probably won't be out until tomorrow evening.