OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[haphazard1]

I think you are correct that we should be thinking in terms of a quick strike here, if we are going to do anything offensive at all right now. Even just glassing an enemy world or two would be a solid step for us, cutting down enemy production (and votes). If we could manage an invasion to capture tech that would of course be even better. But if we are not in a position to hold such a world, then opening ourselves to a counter-invasion might not be a good move.

[Mardoc]

Played the turn.

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is, the game crashed on me before I saved and I had to redo my turns.  The good news is, this time around the Silicoids did not declare war.  So instead of having frantic exciting turnset, I mostly just kept building factories.  At the end I started building missile boats, that Ianus ought to be able to use if he wants.  I ended up with a Medium design with 2 racks of 2-shot missiles each - could fit that or one rack of 5-shot, and I figure 4 missiles immediately would be more use than 5 eventually.  We're going to need more missiles than I thought, though, presumably because of the Alkari evade bonus their ships did not take very much damage.

A few things that were noteworthy.
2430:  

Our pulsar research finishes.  I seem to recall Impulse drives being particular useful (I think they are the ones that let you bomb on the second combat turn?) plus climbing the ladder is always good, so I go for those.
2432:  our spies steal some Alkari tech.  I decided to go for Computers, even though other fields would be more lucrative, on the theory that this will make our spies better and give us more tech down the line.  Also on the theory that the Meklar are blowing up a lot of our stuff with their spies and anything I can do to prevent that would help.


2435: The Alkari fleet arrives at Paladia.  I get a look at it, and resolve to immediately stop building bases.  Nothing they have can hurt our shielded planets.  They do manage to blow up a bunch of our laser fighters while I attempt to whittle them down with missiles...they are really dodgy!


2436:  The Mrrshans want a NAP.  I sign one, on the theory that it's a big galaxy and we probably want to hit the Silicoids next.

2438:  The Meklar want to declare peace .  Well...it's not like any shots were ever fired, and they're too strong to want to hit soon...I accept.

2439:  I get a look at the Alkari planet nearest us.  19 bases, plus an ever-changing array of laser-equipped ships.  Not simple to deal with, but not impossible either. I'm not sure that 60 bombers will be enough. I did notice that fusion bombs can now fit on Small ships; probably better to build those if we need more bombers. The Laser 2's can be scrapped whenever we need the fleet slot, they're not very useful anymore.


And that's all.  The empire is pretty boring at the moment, but at least the vast majority of our planets have finished their factories. The exceptions are both on factory construction now.  I have four planets on missile boat duty, relocating their ships to Paladia; stop building them whenever you think we have enough.  Cygni, the Meklar border world, is still building missile bases and probably can switch to something more immediately useful.  The backlines planets are working on tech.  We're still funding espionage against the birdies, but haven't gotten any new results...I guess I ought to have picked something directly useful instead of trying to boost the spies.

[haphazard1]

Well, the erratic machines randomly decided on peace, for a random number of turns before they randomly decide on something else. Don't you just love erratic races? Especially when they are the most powerful empire in the galaxy? Still, it is helpful for now.

Did I miss a mention of what tech was stolen from the Alkari? I assume it was not anything notable. But every computer tech helps a little with spying.

Propulsion tech: at least our ships can move fast. They may not be too good otherwise, but we can at least get them where we need them quickly. And this will help our transports move faster, which will be quite useful when invasion time finally arrives.

So what is our current goal? Attempt a hit on the birds with what we have available, and hope to grab some tech from an invasion? Just glass their closer planet to weaken them and make it harder for them to reach most of our worlds? Not sure we could hold a disputed planet with our current fleet long enough to get proper defenses built.

[DaveV]

Finish up Deflector V (which should only take a few turns), and we can completely block both lasers and nuclear missiles, and mostly block heavy lasers. The birds would be pretty much helpless, especially if we traded for decent beam weapons and computers.

[Mardoc]

Did I miss a mention of what tech was stolen from the Alkari? I assume it was not anything notable. But every computer tech helps a little with spying.

Battle Computer II.  We have BC III and are researching BC V.  I guess it might also give us a little bit of scaling down options for our ships, maybe we'll have a ship that can't have much room for computers but a BCII would fit.  Otherwise it's just good for spies and being a tech our troopers can't pick up anymore.

So what is our current goal? Attempt a hit on the birds with what we have available, and hope to grab some tech from an invasion? Just glass their closer planet to weaken them and make it harder for them to reach most of our worlds? Not sure we could hold a disputed planet with our current fleet long enough to get proper defenses built.

Nothing in my turnset made this harder, anyway.  Alkari have no new tech that I saw, and I'm pretty sure I killed more ships than they produced.  I started our fleet late in my turnset, but 2-3 more turns should see us with enough of a concentrated fleet to gain one world.  We still have big Fertile planets with a ground-pounder tech lead, so the actual invasion and regrow should be straightforward.

The Alkari still have tech that I'd love to capture: Reduced Industrial Waste heads the list, but some of their propulsion tech would be a step up for us as well.  And another world is another world.  I suspect that an instantly-full planet with a bunch of captured factories will not take long to get its first missile base up, after which it's pretty secure.

Alternately, if people don't like the missile boats for this, we could wait until Neutron Blaster and Shielding 5 come in, then build an autorepair Huge with those techs plus a handful of bombs (or add in Small fusion bombers).  I don't really think we need to wait, but I'm no longer in command either

Roster:
Haphazard1
Mardoc: Just Played
Ianus: UP!  <-------
DaveV:  On Deck
Sullla:  Warming up

[Mardoc]

especially if we traded for decent beam weapons and computers.

Variant Rule: We may never use the "Audience" button to conduct diplomacy! (It's okay to agree to deals proposed by the AIs themselves; we just can't initiate our own diplomacy.) Moreover, we may never vote for an AI race at the High Council. It's up to the aliens to draw our charming diplomats of their shells; we won't initiate any diplomatic action with them!

[DaveV]

Well, aside from that "against the rules" detail, it was a good plan.

[Ianus]

Hooray! I've GOT IT!
Just had a quick look around, and things look good. One more round of techs need to come in before we are REALLY ready for war, so getting research completed will be my top priority. I'll see what I can do with all of these missile boats and bombers. Taking the Alkari colony of Phantos will be my second priority. Don't expect me to spend much more time on Hyper X missile boats when Autorepair Blaster Huges are on the horizon. We can also build small bombers, although there still isn't much room on the hull for anything beyond the basics. I'll see what I can do there too.
We are poised on the edge of galactic domination!

[haphazard1]

Good luck, Ianus! If we can get some value out of the current fleet, while working towards more tech, then I think we should be OK.

Steal of BC2...spying often seems to work that way, you get a lesser version of something you are already working on. Probably just confirmation bias again, though, because sometimes you really do get a critical steal. Not often, but it does happen.

For a ground invasion, I agree we should be able to regrow the pop without too much trouble. And anything we could gain by pointy stick means would be helpful, especially waste reduction or other economy-boosting techs.

[Ianus]

2440-2450

2440: And here we are, back again!  Its taken a while to get through the latest turns, mostly because the galaxy has gotten a lot more complex lately.  We have been getting some diplomatic penalties mostly because of our strength and the end of peaceful expansion.  Of course as the Humans we can get away with a lot diplomatically speaking.

Things are looking good overall.  Other than our war with the impotent birdies things look great.  Calm relations with the cats and bears AND a NAP with kitty means that we could probably get alliances with them if we were allowed to ask.  Unease with the Meklar despite just ending our war, and Neutral relations with the rocks.  That is to be expected and is probably for the best as I think that we will need to attack the rocks once we get ourselves on a war footing.
I need to keep in mind that there will be a council vote in ten years, so I can’t let things get too bad for us as I don’t know that we have a veto bloc yet.  Our planets are certainly big enough!
Our spy reports are hopelessly out of date on the cats (20 years!), bears (28 years?!), and rocks (30 years?!) we are in no position to make good planning decisions.  I reassign a tick of spying to each race.

Our research is looking good overall.  We are researching BC5, Zortium armor, Class 5 deflectors, Atmospheric terraforming, Impulse drives and Neutron Blasters.  Wait, Atmospheric terraforming?!  Why are we spending a full 1/6 of our research on a tech with minimal use?  Only three of our planets are Hostile, and of those only one is really important (UR Exis).  The bubble on this one is half full, but a better course of action would be to finish the current round of techs in the other five fields, which we cannot effectively go to war without, and then finish AT with a trickle while we are building ships and waging war.  We WILL want this tech to complete, if for no other reason than to go back for Toxic controls so we can grab as many Silicoid worlds as we can.  Toxic Rich Celtsi certainly looks nice, even if we can’t grab all of those UR Radiated worlds.
So the name of the game here will be research.  At the moment we are building HyperX missile boats which are a fine design but really won’t carry us very far.  I’m going to stop shipbuilding for the time being to focus on research as much as possible.  We have a fleet of 88 HyperX 3s and 68 Bombers that Sullla built so long ago to blow up the comet with.  They should come in handy too!

We can currently design a small F-Bomber which is great, but at only speed 2 this design will suffer HEAVY casualties as it closes with enemy bases.  Better to wait for Impulse Drives to come in.  And who knows, maybe we will steal Inertial Stabilizers from the birds too.

I put all worlds on research except Exis which stays on reserve spending.  We have almost 10,000BC in reserve, which will be very useful.  UR planets are awesome!
And here we go!

2441: No new spy reports.  I’m curious how spying works.  We were supposed to get a spy into each empire last turn, but this turn we have no spies and no reports.  

AND according to our spymaster’s yearly report WE caught one Alkari spy (and roasted him) but no one caught ours.  I noticed this during my last set too, it took two years for a spy to get in and report back with enemy status updates.  Does anyone know how this works?

Research is coming along nicely.  Unfortunately Propulsion is going to take the longest, but as other techs complete I will be able to swap spending in those fields into Propulsion to push it ahead faster.  At this point I am just going to go ahead and finish Planetology as we are so far along in it already and it will help with miniaturization.  Plus we could really use some more waste reduction tech.  We are spending roughly 1/4 of our production on cleanup.  What a drag!
I am sending troops from Darrian (our closest non-hostile world) to Phantos this turn (3 year transit) to coincide with our fleet which will depart from Paladia next turn (2 year transit).  Are you ready birds?  Apparently not as their only fleet is ~15 medium hulls.  I don’t know whats on them but I bet that our missile swarms will take care of them!

2442: We have updated reports on the Meklar and Bulrathi:

Those Meklar are doing pretty well, but I notice that they aren’t doing so well in Weapons tech.  While Merculites are nothing to sneeze at we could probably do quite a lot of damage to them if we wanted to.  Something to think about…

2443:

Class V shields hit at 15% odds.  I take Planetary X next and dial Force Fields down to nothing.
Combat at Phantos next turn.  We will see if our missiles can clear out space for our troops to land.

Spy reports on the cats and rocks.  Why are the Mrrshans always so sad?

Yikes, both the Bears and Rocks have fleets incoming at Collassa!  It only has 2 bases built at present so I set it to build a bunch more.  Bears are due in two turns, so I think some reserve spending is in order here.

2444: Here we go at Phantos

The Alkari ships retreat and our missile boats fire on the planet and destroy the bases while they are busy shooting our bombers.  We lose one bomber to a missile that makes it through the asteroid field.

Zortium Armor hits.  Quick, send the plans to our combat engineers!  They can manufacture the armor while landing on the planet!  I ALMOST take Improved Industrial 6 for our next tech, but then I think to check the tech list and see that Armored Exoskeleton is the only choice to move the tree forward.  Then I think about it and take II6 anyway.
And ground combat at Phantos:

We lose WAY more marines than we should have given our tech advantage! [the After shot failed to take, but we lost 57 to their 58!].  Spoils of war are fantastic!  Range 7, Fusion Drives, Reduced Waste 60% plus Shields 3 and Gatling Laser.  The only thing we DIDN’T get was Inertial Stabilizer.  Nice!  With Fusion Drives our need for Impulse drives decreases drastically, so I dial down Propulsion spending.  That should speed things up!

Now that is a bomber!  Sadly it will still take 3 turns to close with a planet without Stabilizers, but they are cheap to build!  I start Sol and Darrian on building them.  They can build 100/turn between them without Reserve spending.  Full speed ahead!

We just took 2nd place in Total Power.  Go Humans!

2445: The Bulrathi attack at Collassa.

They brought some bombs along!  Luckily those bombers are super slow and my bases blow them all up.  The colony ship and the destroyer retreat.

Atmospheric Terraforming completes.  We have great options in the next tier but I backtrack for Controlled Toxic so we can take some Silicoid worlds away from them.

2446: The Alkari offer peace, and since I don’t want to destroy our relations with other races by genocide-ing them I accept.

2447: GNN reports that we are second in production behind the Meklar.  Excellent!

2448: Neutron Blaster discovered.  Better late than never!.  I choose Hard Beam because I have to.

2449: Exis maxes factories.  Election next turn.  BC5 well into the percentages.

2450: Now THAT is how to leave a turn set in order!

Advanced Scanner is the only option for the next tier.
And the Council vote, us against the Meklar:
Machines vote 12 for themselves, Bulrathi vote 6 for us, Alkari vote 1 for us, Mrrshan vote 4 for us, Silicoid abstain with 8.  We abstain with 13 and the game goes on.  We currently have 29.5% of the total vote, so we will be safe soon, not that we need it.

This is the Huge design we can build with all of our new toys.  I really wish we had a Repulsor Beam to complete it, but its not to be in this galaxy.  I leave it up to the next player to take us to war.  We currently have almost 600 F-Bomb 4’s at Darrian.
The Silicoids are due at Collassa in two turns, but with 18 bases there I don’t expect any trouble.
Phantos is still building factories and growing population.  The planet currently has mobile missile launchers in orbit but it could use a shield and some permanent bases whenever it is convenient.  No one is attacking us there right now.
Thats everything I can think of.  Have fun!