OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[Mardoc]

 Ok, I thought the missile boats I built would be sufficient...not that they would be overkill!  Only lost one?!?

I'd tend to think that five techs and a world is a decent return on investment on those suckers, when they only cost half our empire's production for about 4 turns :D.

Looks like a solid turnset, gaining one world and setting us up so nicely for future wars.  I bet we can have at least one conquest per turnset for quite a while now. IIT6 will be quite useful for getting all our upcoming worlds established and contributing...

Can we just start bombing the Silicoids, or do we need an official war declaration?  I'm not sure how to make it official when we can't use Audience.

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

[Ianus]

I've always thought that the lack of a "Declare War" option was a rare miss by the developers. But fusion bombs will get the point across very nicely just the same.
Those missile boats were much stronger than I gave them credit for. Very nice! I obviously didn't try them against any other targets but they will be good for defending new conquests down the line.

[DaveV]

Got it, but before I play, I'd like team input on my competing battleship design. Maneuverability costs a lot on a huge hull, and I'm generally happy with two moves on the tactical screen. The drop from combat speed three to two means I can almost double the number of beams.

[Mardoc]

I like Ianus' design better. Here's my reasoning:

The point of an auto-repair Huge is to be invincible, not to have lots of damage output. Maneuverability doesn't just (or even mainly) improve speed, it also reduces the number of enemy shots that hit. Combine that with the shielding, and we hopefully reduce damage taken to lower than auto-repair can keep up with. Then as long as we have any damage output at all, we win the battle. Primary focus on designing the ship is to soak damage, only secondarily to be able to inflict any. The biggest deficit to Ianus' design is the lack of ECM, but we can't fix that anytime soon since there's no ECM in our tree so far. But note that his design has defense and missile defense 3, while yours has defense 1.

The alternative strategy is to alpha-strike, to kill the opponent's stack before they can do much damage to us - but if I were going for that, you can get a lot more damage output per BC from building smaller ships.

Your design works as well as Ianus' against laser/nuclear foes, but it won't stay relevant as long once our foes start improving their weaponry, because it will be easier for them to reach 180 damage/turn and outrun the auto-repair. When we're spending 5000 BC on a single ship, we want it to remain relevant as long as possible. That's also the main reason to put Heavy Beam weapons on a ship instead of missiles or regular beams - we lose overall damage per turn, but gain the ability to consistently do damage even against high shielding foes.

[haphazard1]

Looks like very good turns, Ianus. A world conquered, some techs grabbed via pointy stick, and some more techs from our own research labs. Good stuff.

Hmmm, combat speed vs. fire power. Speed 4 tends to make a big difference, but is 3 rather than 2 worth roughly half the fire power? I would be tempted by more guns, myself.

[Ianus]

I definitely favor strong defense. Lacking a Repulsor means that this ship will have to soak up LOTS of damage as we lose the immunity to 1 space weapons that makes that design so powerful. I wonder if it would actually be worth building Large hulls with regular Blasters, as even with Auto Repair we need to expect attrition in a major battle. Losing a few large hurts a lot less than a huge.

[DaveV]

Played.

2450 - I agree with the plan to expand into Silicoid territory, but we need Controlled Toxic first. I put everything into Planetolgy, except one click into each of the other fields. I start building Ianus's new design (christened HBC 4) at Exis. By raiding the reserves, I can build the ship in three turns. This is dangerous if a comet or nova event happens, because I believe the ransom is based on the boosted production.

Diplomatic situation: the Silicoids and Meklars are at war with the other three races. No one is at war with us. Alkaris and Mrrshans are allied. I switch our Alkari and Meklar spies from Hide to Espionage. The Alkaris are too weak to do us any harm; the Meklars are going to declare war eventually anyway (and we're unlikely to succeed against them).

2451 - Planetology is at 1%.

2452 - Silicoid fleet arrives at Collossa. Their Whale design is able to drop one round of fusion bombs before our bases can destroy the ship, costing us one missile base. Newsdroid:



Planetology is at 28%.

2453 - The Mrrshans want us to switch to Espionage on them, too.



HBC 4 completes, will arrive at Darrian next turn. Planetology is at 58%.

2454 - Controlled Toxic completes, I pick Terraforming +50 next. Advanced Soil is tempting, but it costs twice as much and won't help our soon to be conquered hostile worlds. [after the fact edit: oops, we already have Atmospheric Terraforming. +50 is probably still the right choice because it's so much cheaper.]

Tech screen: everything into force fields, except one click in each for the other fields.

2456 - Celtsi's bases are cleared. Troop transports arrive next turn. Note that the Silicoid Polaris design has an Energy Pulsar, the perfect counter to our F-Bomb fleets. A new HBC 4 completes; I send it to Crypto along with 150 F-Bombs in an attempt to clear the Silicoid beachhead.

2457 - The Silicoid fleet at Crypto flees from our single ship, which then chips away the missile bases to nothing. Orbital bombardment glasses the planet.

At Celtsi, I sent too many transports because I didn't do the math, but the odds were against us. We find Inertial Stabilizer in the ruins. Silicoids declare war.

Force Fields research is at 10%.

The planet killer fleet is re-routed to Selia, another Silicoid Ultra Rich Radiated planet.

2458 - I equalize research; force fields now at 17%.

2459 - Seila is glassed.

2460 - Guradas missile bases cleared. Meklars declare war.

Notes for Sullla: watch out for the Polaris ships if you go after more Silicoid planets. I was just lucky in my first attack; later attacks required some careful maneuvering to avoid those bomber stack killers.

The diplomatic situation isn't nearly as good as at the start of my set: we are at the "too many planets" threshold, and should pass it on your first turn. That's why I prioritized planetary shields research.

[Mardoc]

Yay for expansion!

2457 - The Silicoid fleet at Celtsi flees from our single ship, which then chips away the missile bases to nothing. Orbital bombardment glasses the planet.

At Celtsi, I sent too many transports because I didn't do the math, but the odds were against us. We find Inertial Stabilizer in the ruins. Silicoids declare war.

This has got to be a typo though, right? You didn't glass a planet we were about to invade, did you?

The diplomatic situation isn't nearly as good as at the start of my set: we are at the "too many planets" threshold, and should pass it on your first turn. That's why I prioritized planetary shields research.

Fortunately, the naval situation is much better than the start of your set, so we don't have to care what the others think about us, nearly as much.

At the moment, I think we could improve our planets' defense more by getting a missile upgrade than by building more shields. Although I admit the shields were a sure thing, while the only way to get a missile is to roll the dice and hope to get lucky.

One other nitpick: I glanced at the save, and I see a bunch of our worlds are getting depopulated, presumably because they're moving into Silicoid housing. I'm confident that with four factories per pop point (and reduced Industrial waste) that it's worth regrowing population with the ECO slider. That's even before accounting for the upcoming Council vote.

All that said: definitely progress .

[DaveV]

2457 - The Silicoid fleet at Celtsi flees from our single ship, which then chips away the missile bases to nothing. Orbital bombardment glasses the planet.

At Celtsi, I sent too many transports because I didn't do the math, but the odds were against us. We find Inertial Stabilizer in the ruins. Silicoids declare war.

This has got to be a typo though, right?  You didn't glass a planet we were about to invade, did you?

Yeah, I meant Crypto. I edited my report to reflect that.

One other nitpick:  I glanced at the save, and I see a bunch of our worlds are getting depopulated, presumably because they're moving into Silicoid housing.  I'm confident that with four factories per pop point (and reduced Industrial waste) that it's worth regrowing population with the ECO slider.  That's even before accounting for the upcoming Council vote.

Yes, I was using the Eco slider after the Celtsi invasion, but forgot to regrow the guys sent to Guradas.

[Mardoc]

Also, @Haphazard: I'm starting to think that Neutron Blaster was the right choice for us, despite it seeming otherwise at the time. Sure, it didn't advance the tech tree, but a modern beam weapon was the final ingredient we needed for those Auto-Repair Huges. Without that, we probably couldn't have kicked off the war on the Silicoids yet. One of those situations where an OK weapon today is better than the perfect weapon in 40 turns...