OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[Ianus]

I know! Even so we suffered enough attrition that I couldn't finish them quickly. I'm curious to see how my Ghost design fares. 117 missile bases is serious business!

[haphazard1]

That is some amazing tech the Meklar have. It is very helpful that they have a few holes in their tree, especially the missiles. But the rest of it...wow. Not sure there is any real point to trying to capture any of it, since we are down to final war with them anyway. Just finishing them off will be enough.

[DaveV]

Got it. I'll probably wait for the weekend to play this, since I expect the turns to be pretty time consuming.

[DaveV]

Sorry, guys, I couldn't finish off the bots. I bombed out most of their core worlds, but my garrisons weren't enough to keep them from resettling a few. Their fleet is still better than ours, but the game is at the whack-a-mole stage now. They have two core worlds (one of which should fall next turn), and a couple brand new colonies.



For Ianus: the ghost bombers were very effective; 100 Meklar bases could only kill ~150 of them per turn.

[haphazard1]

Looks like very good progress, DaveV. If we can finish off their core worlds, the fleet may disappear due to maintenance costs being more than their new colonies can sustain. If not, we will just need to chase down and stomp their new worlds as they pop up -- tedious but possible.

[Ianus]

This looks like a prime chance to encounter the Negative Fleet Bug! That would make the end a bit more exciting! Bringing colony ships along might help to slow down the Meklar resettling as the AI won't hold a fleet over a world once it has been bombed out long enough to resettle it. Ah well. This game is O-V-E-R over!

[Ianus]

Oh and how did the Snow Crashes perform? I'm curious to hear how I did countering the Meklar designs!

[DaveV]

Oh and how did the Snow Crashes perform?  I'm curious to hear how I did countering the Meklar designs!

If the Meklars had enough of the Ajax ships, the Snow Crashes had to retreat or die. Everything we have seems to die instantly to their Hellfire Torpedoes. If the Meklar fleet was small enough, I could win, but they still have enough ships to chase us away from several different systems at once.

I should have kept better notes, but this was looking like it would end quickly at the beginning of my set. The first four or five planets went like this:
1. I move in my consolidated fleet.
2. The Meklar bases fire a round at the Omega V bombers.
3. My ships advance, except the Omega Vs, which retreat.
4. The Meklars fire another round of missiles at the retreating Omega Vs, and retreat all their ships.
5. I bomb out the planet, usually requiring several rounds to do so.

When the Meklar fleet moved forward instead of hanging back, I retreated. Because their initiative is so much better, they were able to vaporize the Omega V stack with their pulsars.

This looks like a prime chance to encounter the Negative Fleet Bug!

... and here I was hoping that was fixed in kyrub's patch.

[Mardoc]

Wow, it looks like I underestimated how fast we'd be able to make progress (again)!

I'd be comfortable just declaring this a win at this point, honestly. Although I admit there's no in-game way to claim that victory until we achieve complete extermination.

[Ianus]

Maybe it was a mistake for me to eliminate the Alkari. Then we would have had a puppet state to use to win the election. I also underestimated how resilient the Meklar would prove to be. Let's see what Sullla can do though. If we glass all of their planets there won't be anything the Meks can do.