OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[Sullla]

This is a good example of why I prefer not to trigger a Final War scenario. We obviously won this game a long time ago, and Master of Orion has the best setup of any empire-building strategy game in avoiding endgame mopup work. The Council is extremely good at letting the player win when the game has reached the point of victory, and tacking on several extra hours of moving ships around usually doesn't serve much purpose. Still, this is apparently what our team wanted to go for, so I will polish this off today.

[Sullla]

Turn 0 (2550): We are in the final mop-up stage of a game that's been over for some time now. The Meklars have two actual planets remaining, Tauri and Anraq. Our mainline fleet will hit Anraq at the end of this turn. There are several other brand new colonies that the cyborgs keep trying to establish that we also need to stomp out. Their main fleet is hovering over Volantis at present, one of the new fledgling colonies that they recently reestablished. Our fleet strength is still rated as even with theirs, so I'll have to play whack a mole and dance around their ships, which shouldn't be too tough unless the AI has gotten smarter in kyrub's patch.

Inexplicably, despite owning the entire map, we have nothing in the planetary Reserve to redistribute to planets trying to stand up defenses. We never bothered to terraform a whole bunch of planets that have been in our possession for multiple turnsets, and lots of our planets have no missile bases or planetary shielding. We also apparently never invaded any of the Meklar planets, as they have dozens of techs that we still lack. Sloppy, very sloppy. I hate the fact that I've sounded like a grumpy old coot the entire time that I've taken part in this succession game, but it feels like we've cut corners at every turn throughout this playthrough. I take the time to run through all of our planets and tidy things up a bit.

One other note for ship designing in a succession game: it's a good idea to put the warp speed of a ship in the name to avoid potential confusion with ships moving at different warp speeds. The Snow Crash probably should have a "6" in its name somewhere as an example. We have over 8000 bombers and don't need more of them, so I swap our shipbuilding efforts over to the Snow Crash to help out if we need to face the Meklar fleet in a direct clash. Also, we have stargates everywhere... except on the front lines where we most need them, and as a result we're RELOCating everything to a planet with no stargate, thus rendering that huge capital investment pointless. Probably not enough time remaining for me to fix this, but I'll see what we can do.

Turn 1 (2551): I get a good look at the Meklar fleet designs in the first combat:



The Ajax design seems to be the core of their fleet, Hellfire Torpedoes and lots of Merculite missiles. Odd stuff for all those Large and Huge designs. Fortunately the Snow Crash is a good counter to this, with fast movement of 4 on the tactical combat screen and the High Energy Focus to shoot back at long range. I'm able to push back this attack with no problems, but we clearly need a lot more guns to stop the Meklar fleet. I think we overbuilt the bombers a little bit.

We take out the missile bases at Anraq at the cost of about 300 of our bombers. They performed beautifully, and the Cloaking Device was a great addition to that design. We then destroy Anraq and the fledging colonies of Stalaz and Volantis from orbit. Volantis was the location where the Meklar death fleet was located last turn, but I correctly predicted that it would move elsewhere on the AI's turn.

Here is what's left of the Meklars:



Tauri is the only remaining "real" planet with industry and missile bases. Hyades is a brand new colony, and that's where their core fleet is located. I order our best fleet to hit Tauri, and a smaller group to attack Hyades in case the Meklars move their own ships away. If we're lucky, this could be the last turn of the game, depending on how the AI moves its ships.

Turn 2 (2552): Chase a Meklar colony ship off Stalaz, although we aren't able to kill it before it runs away. I wish we had a Battle Scanner on the Snow Crash instead of that Repulsor Beam, that would give us enough initative to kill these ships before they retreat. At Tauri, we are forced to run from the Meklar ships and their endless missiles:



The bombers didn't have enough initiative to get out of there fast enough, and we lost about 500 of them to missiles hitting. Well, we still have enough of them to get the job done, especially once I bring over the 3000 of them off to the west. We only need a single turn where there isn't a fleet hovering over Tauri to end this game. Elsewhere, bomb out the fledgling colony of Hyades. Tauri is the only remaining Meklar world. They're trying to plant another colony at Iranha though; I will try to stop them between turns.

Turn 3 (2553): We successfully kill the colony ship at Iranha using the High Energy Focus on the Snow Crash design, then manage to retreat before the massive volleys of missiles from the rest of the Meklar ships can hit us. At Tauri, the Meklar have predictably moved their defenses off towards another planet, and that leaves our bombers free to assault the missile bases. The first load of bombs takes out 41 of the 74 bases; three more rounds of bombing are enough, and the result is a destroyed colony:



That was the last Meklar planet. Game over, Extermination victory in 2552.



Thanks all. Hope you had fun in this succession game.

[Ianus]

Thanks for finishing us off Sullla! And I appreciate your comments on my ship designs. You are absolutely right: I designed the Snow Crash to counter missiles and torpedoes and then put a Repulsor Beam on it. Old habits die hard heh.
Thanks for taking part! I think we all learned a lot in this one!

[haphazard1]

Thanks for wrapping things up, Sullla. We got the first chance to win the game via council a bit too early, I think, because the Meklar had offended every one of the AI races. One of the later possible victories might have been a better place to stop, once we had established a strong position and were clearly superior to all the races other than the Meklar and had more worlds/population than the machines. But it was interesting to see just what was needed to beat the Meklar directly.

There have certainly been some useful lessons from this game. I am trying to apply them in the current imperium, and lead my cats to galactic dominance.

[DaveV]

I'll echo the thanks to all participants. Pace of play was really fast (maybe too fast sometimes, in my case), and we seem to have finished well before the B team.

I had fun and learned some new things; that's what it's all about!

[Mardoc]

Thanks all. Hope you had fun in this succession game.

I certainly did Thanks all for playing and teaching. And for constantly showing me how much more we could get done with our empire than I was willing to attempt!

Now I've got to take a look at the Imperium and see if I can get it done in two weeks.