*Pant pant pant*
Did I make it? I spent all month trying to find a chance to play, and even gave up hope, and then on closing day I carried out a marathon game, foregoing sleep and sanity to get a result to submit before the close. Let me apologize up front and say that I don't have a report OR any screenshots to post right now, and I didn't even take notes while I was playing, so I will have to cudgel my brain to remember as much as I can. I haven't even finished the game. I conquered Orion and came straight here to post. So here we go:
I defeated the Guardian TWICE, in 2530 and 2531. How you ask? By exploiting the bug that if a space monster happens to attack Orion it triggers a battle with the Guardian instead. This required some planning because although the Space Crystal took almost 30 turns to cross the galaxy and approach Orion I couldn't be sure where it was going until fairly late. I initially planned to divert my anti-Guardian fleet to deal with the Space Crystal before tackling Orion but it kept bypassing all of my planets. Then when I was sure that it was actually going toward Magrathea and I knew that I could exploit the bug I had to plan my fleet to be able to survive two encounters with the thing. This made the battle even more exciting as I had to minimize attrition which meant dodging as many Scatter Pack X shots as possible. I wound up with three roughly identical stacks of ~1500 speed 4 Megabolt fighters which I used to dance around as many missiles as possible while whittling down the monster's 10,000 health. I doubt that I could have fought it a third time as two of my stacks took a volley (one in each battle) with the result that I lost more than half of each stack hit. It got dicey at the end. My overall tech was very low in this game, although I was developing some late game toys toward the end. It didn't help that my stacks had BC2, 3 and 5 respectively as I was able to miniaturize while building up for the attack.
Lets see, my overall game:
I ran a complete Farmer's Gambit at the start and got a ridiculous number of worlds. I hit every single Colonization notice and had 13 planets after researching Controlled Dead fairly early on. Oh and I terraformed a Tundra world in 2387. I had the entire string of Rich/Ultra Rich worlds around our start after being the first to Controlled Radiated, but in spite of this the game felt very slow to me. Maybe its because I tend to play the Klackons for fun because I love how fast they play, but I was still fielding NPG fighters up to around 2500 or so. Then I was finally able to fit Megabolt Cannons on a small hull and from there I built up to attack the Guardian. I originally planned to build a stack of 32000 fighters for style (the most it is possible to build of a single ship design) but exhaustion and lack of focus killed that plan. I struggled to tech early as I basically built nothing but Colony Ships from the time I maxed Fierras until roughly 2400. I didn't bother to research Nuclear Engines so it took a long time to grab all of those worlds. I was frankly amazed that I was able to grab as many as I did.
The early game was very quiet. I didn't see a single enemy ship until roughly 2350, and by luck I voted for the Darloks when the Council met in 2374 and again in 2375 for MAJOR brownie points. They were the leaders for the early game until the Meklar got their 8 or 10 planets up and running and blew past them into the lead. I had a NAP with the 'Loks for roughly 100 years, and we left each other alone for the entire middle of the game which allowed me to focus on running my massive empire. Because I played all night in one sitting I definitely didn't pay as much attention as I should have with the result that my empire ran very inefficiently at times. Sullla would not have been happy with me.
Still I was able to make opportunistic attacks against various enemies, and I stole some key techs. The Sakkra never got beyond four worlds and were easy pickings for some really strong terraforming and cleanup techs. The Alkari were the same; I got two worlds, the Meklar poached a third while I was organizing an invasion, and I left them on their homeworld after I got all of their techs. I cracked three or four Meklar worlds and cleaned up a lot of their advanced toys, and when the Darloks finally broke our NAP I took all but three of their worlds and cleaned them out. They had RIDICULOUS Computer techs but not a whole lot else. They had IRC6 which I really wanted as I couldn't get anything better than IRC4, but it took capturing ALL of their technologies to finally land it.
I had the Super Nova event hit a brand new size 2 colony, and apparently it rolled 0RP to fix as the event resolved itself the following turn with no research spending at all. I wasn't worried about it as I had colonists en route and I wanted to see what the news droid would say about how many RPs I needed if I ignored it for a while only to see it resolve. I never got the Assassination event and one of my Toxic planets became Poor soon after I colonized it which didn't hurt very much. The Meklar got the Rich event which was the only Rich planet in the galaxy I didn't control by the time I took Orion. The Plague event hit a mature Rich colony and took a while to resolve so that hurt, but could have been worse.
As of 2531 I control 25 planets (not including Orion) and lead in Total Power by a very large margin. This game would have been MUCH harder if I had experienced more pressure early from the AI but everyone seemed to expand toward the NE and left me largely alone. And when wars were declared lack of range seemed to limit their scope so that my missile bases could keep me safe.
Thats about all I can think of. I'm really sorry I don't have pictures and a more detailed report, but I just can't manage to find the time right now. Maybe I'll be able to come back and grab some from my saves at a later date (I'll definitely save the records from this one, it was quite a fun game to play) but I can't promise anything right now.
Cheers!
Edit: If you want to see if you too can defeat the guardian twice in a row using my motley collection of ships (or look around my empire) I'm attaching the 2529 save file. Just move the stacks from Trax (heh) to Orion. The Space Crystal will arrive in two turns, so don't dawdle!
Did I make it? I spent all month trying to find a chance to play, and even gave up hope, and then on closing day I carried out a marathon game, foregoing sleep and sanity to get a result to submit before the close. Let me apologize up front and say that I don't have a report OR any screenshots to post right now, and I didn't even take notes while I was playing, so I will have to cudgel my brain to remember as much as I can. I haven't even finished the game. I conquered Orion and came straight here to post. So here we go:
I defeated the Guardian TWICE, in 2530 and 2531. How you ask? By exploiting the bug that if a space monster happens to attack Orion it triggers a battle with the Guardian instead. This required some planning because although the Space Crystal took almost 30 turns to cross the galaxy and approach Orion I couldn't be sure where it was going until fairly late. I initially planned to divert my anti-Guardian fleet to deal with the Space Crystal before tackling Orion but it kept bypassing all of my planets. Then when I was sure that it was actually going toward Magrathea and I knew that I could exploit the bug I had to plan my fleet to be able to survive two encounters with the thing. This made the battle even more exciting as I had to minimize attrition which meant dodging as many Scatter Pack X shots as possible. I wound up with three roughly identical stacks of ~1500 speed 4 Megabolt fighters which I used to dance around as many missiles as possible while whittling down the monster's 10,000 health. I doubt that I could have fought it a third time as two of my stacks took a volley (one in each battle) with the result that I lost more than half of each stack hit. It got dicey at the end. My overall tech was very low in this game, although I was developing some late game toys toward the end. It didn't help that my stacks had BC2, 3 and 5 respectively as I was able to miniaturize while building up for the attack.
Lets see, my overall game:
I ran a complete Farmer's Gambit at the start and got a ridiculous number of worlds. I hit every single Colonization notice and had 13 planets after researching Controlled Dead fairly early on. Oh and I terraformed a Tundra world in 2387. I had the entire string of Rich/Ultra Rich worlds around our start after being the first to Controlled Radiated, but in spite of this the game felt very slow to me. Maybe its because I tend to play the Klackons for fun because I love how fast they play, but I was still fielding NPG fighters up to around 2500 or so. Then I was finally able to fit Megabolt Cannons on a small hull and from there I built up to attack the Guardian. I originally planned to build a stack of 32000 fighters for style (the most it is possible to build of a single ship design) but exhaustion and lack of focus killed that plan. I struggled to tech early as I basically built nothing but Colony Ships from the time I maxed Fierras until roughly 2400. I didn't bother to research Nuclear Engines so it took a long time to grab all of those worlds. I was frankly amazed that I was able to grab as many as I did.
The early game was very quiet. I didn't see a single enemy ship until roughly 2350, and by luck I voted for the Darloks when the Council met in 2374 and again in 2375 for MAJOR brownie points. They were the leaders for the early game until the Meklar got their 8 or 10 planets up and running and blew past them into the lead. I had a NAP with the 'Loks for roughly 100 years, and we left each other alone for the entire middle of the game which allowed me to focus on running my massive empire. Because I played all night in one sitting I definitely didn't pay as much attention as I should have with the result that my empire ran very inefficiently at times. Sullla would not have been happy with me.
Still I was able to make opportunistic attacks against various enemies, and I stole some key techs. The Sakkra never got beyond four worlds and were easy pickings for some really strong terraforming and cleanup techs. The Alkari were the same; I got two worlds, the Meklar poached a third while I was organizing an invasion, and I left them on their homeworld after I got all of their techs. I cracked three or four Meklar worlds and cleaned up a lot of their advanced toys, and when the Darloks finally broke our NAP I took all but three of their worlds and cleaned them out. They had RIDICULOUS Computer techs but not a whole lot else. They had IRC6 which I really wanted as I couldn't get anything better than IRC4, but it took capturing ALL of their technologies to finally land it.
I had the Super Nova event hit a brand new size 2 colony, and apparently it rolled 0RP to fix as the event resolved itself the following turn with no research spending at all. I wasn't worried about it as I had colonists en route and I wanted to see what the news droid would say about how many RPs I needed if I ignored it for a while only to see it resolve. I never got the Assassination event and one of my Toxic planets became Poor soon after I colonized it which didn't hurt very much. The Meklar got the Rich event which was the only Rich planet in the galaxy I didn't control by the time I took Orion. The Plague event hit a mature Rich colony and took a while to resolve so that hurt, but could have been worse.
As of 2531 I control 25 planets (not including Orion) and lead in Total Power by a very large margin. This game would have been MUCH harder if I had experienced more pressure early from the AI but everyone seemed to expand toward the NE and left me largely alone. And when wars were declared lack of range seemed to limit their scope so that my missile bases could keep me safe.
Thats about all I can think of. I'm really sorry I don't have pictures and a more detailed report, but I just can't manage to find the time right now. Maybe I'll be able to come back and grab some from my saves at a later date (I'll definitely save the records from this one, it was quite a fun game to play) but I can't promise anything right now.
Cheers!
Edit: If you want to see if you too can defeat the guardian twice in a row using my motley collection of ships (or look around my empire) I'm attaching the 2529 save file. Just move the stacks from Trax (heh) to Orion. The Space Crystal will arrive in two turns, so don't dawdle!
