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OSG-39-B - The Meklar Revolt (Again) for Freedom

(August 28th, 2023, 10:03)haphazard1 Wrote: I agree with shallow_thought. Given the tech situation, we can't turtle behind bases and shields. We don't have good enough shield tech, and the enemy has too good of bombs plus death spores.

Repulsor beams are at least out there, and could in theory be obtained. But have we seen any AI with Antidote (or the improved versions)?

Yeah, Repulsors could be very useful (as rgp151 suggested); I suspect that Dissipator might not work fast enough against Alkari fleets to stop them getting over the planet.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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I think it's a matter of playstyle:  If you want to build 40 bases over every world without even thinking about what you could be using the BCs for instead or whether the world is threatened, they will protect you against a fleet like the one coming to Furnace here:  Six hundred Hyper-V Rockets (thanks to our Scatter Packs) would stop a lot of shield-1 or shieldless ships.  But I don't know what rgp151 means by "this point in the game" - are you judging by in-game date or position on the tech tree or number of planets or what?  Either way, there's a really important reason to not have 40 bases on Furnace, without ever considering what we could (and did) build instead to get into this position:  If all our worlds were impenetrable fortresses how could I write a cliff-hanger for part one of my report?

...uh, let me go ahead and finish the report then.

Report, part 2:  2426-2430
- Reactor Orbital Shipyard, 2426 -

I just heard the grim news from the Furnace colony.  That fleet showed up fast - as fast as we feared, and it only had five missile bases!




Our defensive fleet there looks better than it is:  With no computers on those fighters, up against Alkari, they're little more than a distraction - and since the Warbirds were known to mount Pulsars, they were barely even that.  We could have built a better one, that could handle those ships and then go help protect our counter-attack fleet, but I guess we got a little cocky.

(Ahehehehahahaha - get it?  Cause it's birds attacking?  Right?  Did you get it?)




Aheheh right, so anyway one base is enough to keep them from ever taking orbit with those things, and a real ship with shields could ignore their Sparrowhawks completely and their Foxbats and Space Gulls almost completely since their targeting's no better than our little fighters' but they've got Death Spores sticking out all over the place.  It's like when 74MP-P057 stole the tech for those, the birds were like, "Oh, you want to know about Death Spores, do you?  Here!"

That's old 74MP-P057 every time though, robbin' them of the wrong thing we don't want and can't use.  (Ahehehaheh robbin' them!  Did you get it?  Did you?)

Funny thing is, their colony ships are the most dangerous ships in that fleet - to our planet, I mean - so we should have tried to hit them first, but the defenders thought maybe the fighters could handle those since they didn't have pulsars, and forgot or didn't realize how long it would take to wear them down that way.  Anyway, it went pretty badly.  By the time we blew up all their colony ships and Warbirds and the rest of their ships retreated, they'd worse than cut the planet's population in half!  So we'll fix that over the next few years as far as the colony, but think of all those lives lost forever to horrible choking, toxic spores!  Think of the pain and misery they caused!  Why it makes me sick just thinking about them crowing to their buddies about how they killed so many of us.  (Gnnnrxhahahaheheheh, crowing!)

Well, it cost them the most-dangerous fleet they had though - the most-dangerous they had yet - so maybe the joke's gonna be on them.




They do have some missile bases on Escalon - almost as many as RGP-151 advocates putting on every planet in sight - so maybe later we can show off why relying on one-dimensional defenses is a bad idea.  Or maybe not.  Because if it's the right dimension, relying can be a fine thing!  You see, we just got ourselves a new shield, hot off the design floor at the Friction field dynamics laboratory!




Now, you might be saying to yourself, what good is this?  Shields don't stop death spores, and that's not a planetary, and anyway if the birds build something with Omega bombs, one more layer of shielding - or fifteen for that matter - will hardly make a difference!  Well, you'd be right about all those things.  But I'm not talking about planetary shielding!




This here is the ship we're building right here and now, rerouting down to Friction to join the anti-matter bomber fleet we're already gathering.  Just one of it, you understand:  That's all we need.  Oh, we can make more later if we want so they can be in a few places at once; that's up to someone else.  But this'll be the first, and I'm proud of her, believe me!  That laser may seem gratuitous, but one more little beam weapon can make a difference in a long fight against little fighters, and as for missiles to help with maneuvering ... well, that's fine for those who like it, but I don't intend on this ship needing anything like that anytime soon.  It can take care of itself, if you ask me.  I said about one-dimensional defenses, right?  Well, this is a dimension I can get behind:  The dimension of really huge autorepairing gunship!  And no, I did not leave out an s at the end there, thank you anyway for asking.




You can see what happened to sad little Furnace here, and how Poverty's sending some people over to fix that.  A few others are going to help out too from closer by, but not many.  In the grand scheme of things, like I said, the loss wasn't that big a deal - it's the personal tragedy.  Well, the thirty-one million personal tragedies.  All I have to say about that is, these Alkari - these Alkari are for ... gznnnxsszheheheh - these Alkari war criminals with their death spores everywhere are for the birds!

- Growth Colonial Planetology Lab, 2427 -

Before I start, I just want to express my congratulations, condolences, and armchair-admiral censure to the  Nordia Bomber Fleet.




They were facing twenty-four missile bases with scatter packs loaded instead of stingers, and destroyed them all, leaving the Alkari fleet to flee in terror, at the cost of about sixty more ships than they needed to lose, trying to get fancy with asteroids and enemy ships instead of just taking the known path to safe and total victory.  Many brave crews were lost to the completely unforced piloting error that allowed a volley of scatter pack missiles to hit the out-of-position bombers, and for their lives, we grieve.  Also, Nordia is now defenseless, and the ARS dreadnought is on its way to make sure it stays that way.  We're going to want to take charge of the colony for ourselves, and we need people with whom to repopulate it, and that, friends and fellow Meklar, is where my lab team comes in.




We have finally successfully isolated the soil elements responsible for our world's immense fertility, and devised means of introducing them to the soil of every habitable world in our control - soon to include Nordia, we hope! - thereby, among other valuable things, increasing its population capacity.  Moreover, we believe that in the right atmospheric conditions, this project can be performed on any world - even at the shieldless colony - and we're going to work right away to work out means of introducing exactly those conditions and turning otherwise-hostile worlds to fertile paradises like our own.  I won't say this year is a turning point for our already-accelerating people - but it's a point of acceleration!

- Zortium Armor Foundry, Meklon, 2428 -

From what I hear over the network, the Alkari are trying to take the skies at Nordia again.  Mostly I think it's the fleet retreating from our Furnace, but they sent more to help them along.




It didn't matter.  They'd need well over a thousand of their Foxbat fighters and Space Gull destroyers to eventually force our ARS-47-4 to retreat.  It doesn't have the firepower to wipe out this entire starfleet in one engagement, but it could have pasted the Foxbats - it did get a bunch of them before they gave up and fled - and then made a decent start on the Space Gulls if they'd stuck around too, because they don't have the firepower to meaningfully hurt it in an infinite number of engagements.  So that was really of pretty small importance compared to my actual work!




We just got the order finalized today:  All the components of the new Zortium Battle Suits are designed, specced out, and being built en masse, and we're supplying all the material for them we can.  Later on, we'll be able to improve our industrial technology, but nobody's likely to work on that too soon:  These battle suits are going out to everybody because lots of us have more-urgent things to do than build or prepare for yet more factories:




Here, and at Canopy, and of course down at Poverty, transports are loading up for Nordia.  We're none too pleased with the way the Alkari went after Furnace, and the best way we can think of to stop them from doing it again is to take away the forward bases they use to reach the place!

- Nordia Colonial Spaceport, 2429 -

Begin burst transmission from Special Agent 1NF0-106.

No luck penetrating the labs here; the recent security upgrade was comprehensive, with advanced battle-hardened computer encryption and intruder detection subsystems.




Also detected a new pulsar, based on high-powered ionic transduction from engine systems, not yet installed on active ships; no chance to get a closer look.  Now departing Nordia, stowed away aboard an Alkari Birdseed Freighter; ETA to Escalon, one year.  No sign yet that the Alkari are aware of our attack timing, but they can probably infer it - and we've got other issues too.




It looks like the Klackons have spotted this planet's vulnerability, and have a fleet of their own incoming - we'll have to face that too.  Can't tell yet if we'll be fighting them before or after our transports arrive.  Hope for the first if those Pegasus destroyers have bombs or spores, but the die is cast either way.  Advise more fighter cover, just in case.




Klackon designs are believed to be at least a decade old, maybe much older, but current Klackon technology could make highly dangerous fleets, fortunately moving slower than congealed motor oil.

End Burst Transmission.

- Nordia Orbit, 2430 -

This is Captain XTR-5706 reporting.  We have another Alkari fleet on the board.




Nothing too scary:  Slagged both Warbirds and as many of the Foxbats as I could before they fled.  A third attack reached our Furnace again this year too apparently, with two more of each of their spore cruisers - the Warbirds and Colony Ships - but we're up to seven bases there now apparently, and it was more than enough; they never reached spore range.  As ordered, I've been destroying every Warbird I see, but leaving Colony Ships alone since they'll just get more for free.  I'm ready for the bugs to come in on us too; some are on their way, maybe, but I'm not worried.  And it's looking like they've got problems of their own lately.




Hard to know for sure, but that makes it sound to me like the Esperites are dead bugs walking, what with their star about to blow.




So maybe when you check this map, figure without one of those green flags, yeah?  There might be a colony left when the star goes, but not much of one.  And figure with another white one and one less blue while you're at it.  We've got this world.  And I heard a rumor of plans to build more bombers and take on Escalon too ... and see if we can go on from there!
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Handover notes:
- We have some transports in space right now:  Nine will reach Understory next year, and I dunno a hundred and something will get to Nordia the year after that.  I'd supplement the latter at least from Friction next year (it's still well below its factory limit, anticipating that it'll be sending pop places; all our newly-fertile worlds except for Rich Selia also have growth space beyond their current factory counts; Growth itself, which couldn't benefit from the new tech since its soil came pre-enriched, is the only Fertile world at its factory cap.  You can send more transports around and/or change all this, obviously.
- We still have some treasury to work with (I think a little under a thousand BC) but nothing like the Uncle-Scrooge-style money bin we were building up in the previous set.  I found some things to do with it.  (You may have noticed.)
- Our existing bombers can probably take any Klackon world once our conquest extends our range so they can reach if (unlike me, you'll notice, so it should be even more obvious than usual that I'm not blaming anyone for not doing this) you pilot them well enough to dodge their scatter packs while still bombing the planet repeatedly.  Since I don't want to count on that, I set Shieldless and Reactor to build lots more bombers with their existing prebuilds.  You don't have to do this either obviously, and there are multiple ship designs with zero extant ships (plus the old sublight NPGs with only ten or something left) you can scrap in favor of new designs if you want.  Have fun with whatever you do build, whenever you do!
- There's a Klackon fleet heading to Nordia (I assume).  We can probably get a NAP with the bugs, but I don't advise it:  If we do and their ships arrive after we conquer the planet, they'll attack anyway.  If we do and their ships arrive before we conquer it, we won't be able to fight them until we do conquer it, and then they will and (I think; I'm rusty on this) they'll send transports too.  I'm convinced our ARS huge can take out all the incoming Klackon ships if needed, but I'm a little worried about the possibility that they might be using spore ships or bombers.
- I think there's another bird fleet incoming to Furnace.  It has seven bases and is fine.  One volley of Scatter packs will take out about three of their colony ships, and two volleys will slag at least three of their Warbirds.  The fighters are all garbage outside of a nebula, except that the Sparrowhawks, in their immense numbers, can give our unshielded bombers fits.  (If you want to build a giant shielded bomber or whatever, beware their Stinger missiles....)
- Attachments are still down, so the save is linked here!

Roster:

- haphazard1 (on deck)
- RefSteel (just played)
- shallow_thought (UP!)
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Looks good, RefSteel. nod Maybe I am being too optimistic, but it looks like things are starting to tilt our way. If we can capture some useful techs from the birds, things could shift in our favor very quickly.

Atmo will be very helpful once we complete it. If we could just steal or capture some better terraforming tech, our planets will really boom.
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Looking good. Turns out that Antidote would have been nice at Furnace, I will keep my eyes open for any chance to acquire it. Let's hope I can keep this ball rolling!

Got it.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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Spores are a pain. Do the AIs get any diplomatic impact at all for using them? Or does that only affect the human player?

Good luck, shallow_thought!
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A note on how I make bombers, in case its of any value. If the enemy I'm targeting is not using scatter packs then I'll build lots of Medium bombers. If the enemy is using scatter packs, then I'll go with a few Large bombers or maybe even a single Huge. When making Medium bombers I go without shields, but include Internal Stabilizer and ECMs. With Large and Huge bombers I go all out for maximum defense, with Internal Stabilizer, ECMs and Shields. I'll either make two different bomber designs to split the aim of the bases, or do something like bombers and missile boats, depending on the missiles I've got. Anyway, at least two designed for taking out missile bases.

This of course assumes I have decent shields. If you don't have decent shields then I guess it makes sense to stick with Mediums. With decent shields then I think those work better against Scatter Packs with their lower per-warhead damage. Going against Scatter Packs with Mediums and Smalls tends not to work too well in my experience unless you build like Klackon size stacks of thousands of ships.

Against Scatter Packs also missile boats tend to work well with hit and run. They move slower, so you can often use two missile boat designs, fire them and then retreat without taking damage while scoring hits if your missiles are faster than theirs.
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Thanks for the questions and comments!  In answer to haphazard's question:  Only the human player suffers diplo penalties from using bioweapons.  The ancient MoO AI has no conception of balancing powerful weapons against potential diplo costs, so they use bioweapons with abandon and accept other AIs doing so because otherwise most games would reach a point where all the AIs are at war with each other constantly.

On bomber design:  Ship design and use is a huge part of Master of Orion, so here are some thoughts at some length:

The Alkari have scatter packs and stingers.  Large ships with good shielding would get absolutely shredded by their bases.  Small ships (including the medium ships I built) if they're present in sufficient numbers and flown correctly, take zero damage from the bases, because the bases fire scatters at them, and our ships have Doom Drives.  [EDIT:  Doom Drives was Maniac Marshall's name for any combination of maneuverability bonuses that gets a ship to 4+ moves per round, allowing a round-2 attack on a planet or back-line ship.]  In the report, when I said I got fancy instead of taking the guaranteed easy win, I meant that literally.  Here's an example of "taking the easy win" with smalls, from an earlier game:




That's without using the Wait button, and with only one stack of bombers.  (Using either Wait or multiple stacks makes missile dodging even easier, of course.)  You can even do more complicated maneuvers to avoid Scatters indefinitely and drop off your entire payload instead of just a fifth of it if necessary, which I don't expect everyone to be able to pull off successfully - that's the reason I left the save with lots of bombers being built to take on a planet with nearly-40 bases:  The ships we have left don't carry enough bombs to win in just the two volleys you get on the first pass.  Here's a case of complicated maneuvers like that when they work, with relevant text, from an even-older OSG:




Quote:...the area of space outlined in purple here, three standard units left of the planet in the image, was critical to the bombers' success.  Stabilized Impulse engines with near-maximum maneuverability, falling into the wider category of "Doom Drives," are capable of matching the speed of Merculite Missiles on any given vector, but taking advantage of this to hit the target from which the missiles are fired is a problem of much-greater complexity.  Since these armorless, unshielded cruisers could be completely destroyed by a single volley from the planetary missile bases even after most of them were destroyed, all of the crew's efforts had to be focused on avoiding the missiles, maneuvering to attack the planet itself almost as an afterthought, and only when they managed to create an opportunity - but one of the ways in which such opportunities could arise was by arriving in a part of space adjacent to the purple-highlighted zone just in time for another missile launch, then moving into the highlighted zone and thence on a diagonal course toward the planet but away from any missiles already in pursuit just long enough to change course and bombard the planet from an orbital position represented on this screen as directly "above" or "below" before maneuvering away from the incoming missiles again without regard for planetary targeting until it could be considered with some measure of safety again.  Other ships involved in the battle on the Darlok side helped by drawing some of the planet's fire, though lacking "doom drives" themselves, they each had to retreat as soon as this happened lest they be destroyed.  The Faradays did ultimately succeed in destroying all the missile bases without the loss of a ship, but the unimaginable risks the pilots took, weaving a celtic knot with precise sector-by-sector maneuvering over what must have seemed an eternity as ever-more-numerous missiles piled up enough explosive payload to instantaneously blast them into X-rays and dreams, never quite catching them in the event, but so near that one slight and barely-false move - taking a diagonal too close to them, or failing to take one away from them when needed - would spell instant and total doom...

Yes, those are large bombers with no shields!  Cruisers were the only efficient way to get enough bombs into space with good enough targeting computers to hit their high-ECM target, if I remember correctly.  The shields were left off because we didn't have nearly enough shielding to stop their mercs, so I knew I'd have to fly like this anyway.  Because, yes, they're dodging merculites, not the slower scatter-packs our medium ships are facing here.  (Stingers are too fast to dodge without Wait button shenanigans, although it's possible Thrawn found a path that would work at least long enough to get a couple bomb drops in.)  Oh, and the reason those bombers have no shielding is because shields take up a whole lot of space that would be better used for bombs if you can get away with it!  (Missile boats for hit and run are cool if you're willing to spend a lot of turns flying back and forth and attacking, and have advanced missiles in comparison with the target's shields and either slow engines or no good bombs.  Here, we have no missiles that can crack their shields.)

So with all of that, how come I lost half my bomber fleet attacking Nordia?  Well, it's like the imaginary Meklar character said:  I tried getting fancy with asteroids and avoiding enemy ships, hoping to take no losses and failed to plan ahead.  I should have realized I wouldn't lose many of my super-maneuverable bombers to their poorly-aimed ion cannons or even their big stack of laser fighters, so I could just dodge their scatters as usual and mostly ignore their ships.
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"The Meklar need to reprogram a war leader from time to time ... in order to encourage the others."
T2430
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So the plan is to invade Nordia, then push on to Escalon. Small problem with this is how to hold Nordia while pushing on, given that we have exactly one decent gunship. We will want more bombers, in case of "accidents", but I think we'll need to invest in another big ship. It's only 6 years for Selia, and that's without reserve spending. Plan is to start it there and then feed reserves from Reactor and Shieldless for a few turns once they've added in a few more bombers.
T2431
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The Alkari squadron that retreated to Nordia is driven off. As suggested, I send more invaders from Friction. I trade Inertial Stabilizer for Planetary Shield V from the Klackons. We don't desperately need it, but it knocks out a tech the Birds have and increases our chances of pulling something good from Nordia. Manipulators crossed ...
T2432
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The Klackons arrive at Nordia conveniently ahead of our troops. Their Knights hit pretty hard - good thing we have ARS and they are pretty fragile (and slow).


That leaves us free to drop in.


We get an OK but not spectactular tech haul: RIW40, BCV, Repulsor (very nice indeed) and anti-missile rockets (meh). It's not enough to let us fit an AM bomb on a small, but I design a shieldless Repulsor design for nebula use ... and then don't yet build any.


The Klackons are upset about something, but I don't get to see the message properly as I click around taking screenshots. I think they are angry we booted them away from Nordia. We've dropped to Neutral from Relaxed despite beating up on the Alkari.
Our second gunship will complete next turn and I can turn my attention to Escalon. Our conquest puts us in contact with the Bulrathi. They are Amiable - but also Erratic (and Ecologist), so I just start some gentle spying. I also trade them Stabilizer for Improved Space Scanner so I feel less blind ...
Furnace and Friction start building shields - they're our most exposed non-nebula worlds, and I want to be able to reinforce their bases if necessary.
T2433
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The Alkari send a lone large Warhawk against Nordia - and it's got Repulsor and Heavy Phasors. Ugh. No real danger, but a slow fight - except that it retreats. Nordia can get a base up ASAP just to be able to shoot at the damn things if they send another one.
With the clarity of the scanner I risk sending our first gunship to reinforce the defenses at Friction - there's a fleet incoming. But I need to be aware that the Alkari are probably fast enough to strike directly from the fog.
T2434
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Ouch. Friction takes a bunch of Death-Spore damage as I couldn't kill everything fast enough. I blow up a bunch of Alkari ships in revenge. There's more incoming, but fewer spore carriers in the next bunch.
T2435
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Battle handled without loss at Friction this time. Range 9 is in and I pick Star Gates over Range 10. There's an argument for going back for Impulse, but I decide to move forward. We do now have contact with both the Darloks and the Sakkra. The latter are not allied with the Alkari and are at war with everyone except us and the Alkari - I decide to ignore them, as I don't think we'll get on (they don't have any really juicy tech for sale). The Darloks I trade with, but they also don't have any exciting toys they are prepared to share. I start to spy on both. Status shows that we are a clear second to the Alkari.
I have tech visibility on the Bears. Amongst their other goodies they have Antidote - but won't offer it despite having a better tech. Boo. To make myself feel better I send an attack fleet to Escalon.


T2436
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An Alkari fleet hits Nordia without warning but their only spore ships are colony ships and the second gunship is there to meet them.
However, the attack on Escalon is a disaster. Their repulsors mean I can't get the bombers through, and - more importantly - I fail to notice when the planet switches missile targetting to our gunship, and lose that too (in one hit). I take this a sign to stay on the defensive for the moment, until we have enough tech to get AM bombs onto a small, and ideally better guns. That means it's time for factories at our core worlds.
(Later thoughts) I badly under-estimated just how much of a problem a couple of large Repulsor ships could be - I should never have tried to press the attack with them there, abut I thought I could still swing the bombers past the missiles if I could get them to focus harmless on our gunship ... but I was both wrong and too concentrated on those maneuvers and not expecting the planet to switch targets. The only good news is that the losses aren't actually that large relative to the size of our economy. I could plausibly have put together a new force before the end of the set, but was a bit rocked back, and wanted to get the turns played (I'm away for a few days over the weekend).
T2437
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The Sakkra are back in alliance with the Alkari.
T2438
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The Klackons build a Solar Rejuvenator. Good for them. The Bulrathi are coming for Nordia. Bad bears. I sign an non-agression pact (despite the erratic) but also build a repulsor ship to help out. So long as they are not packing a mass of Fusion Bombs and long range guns, we should be able to cope.


T2439
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Jammer V leads straight to Jammer VI, which is a bit disapointing. The Alkari offer a peace which I reject (despite the failure at Escalon)- I rather like the way that the diplo is going for us so far. They offer 2000BC as an incentive but I still say no. Should I have accepted? That's actually only about 2/3 the size of our reserve, and that was down to zero a few turns ago ...


T2440
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Our repulsor ship is useless against the Bulrathi, with their heavy guns, but at least I don't lose it (and it may yet prove useful if the Alkari send more fleets at us). Our scatter-packs kill the larges while our huge dances around, and the Punisher retreats.


We get a spy hit on the Alkari and I pick weapons. We get Ion cannon. Well, at least it would be a better long-range gun against those Warhawks, I guess.


Overall status is actually fine, despite the disappointments of all but the first few turns of this set; the Darloks and Sakkra look like also-runs in this game (just got tech vis).






Other than some transports moving to refill Friction, I don't think there's much activity going on. My view is that we're just short of being able to field small bombers and Megabolt cannons (11%) instead of NPGs and that should make a difference (although we could really do with a long-range gun to counter Repulsors - at a pinch, the Bears have offered to trade Fusion Beam, but it's expensive). I'd be tempted to try double bomber stacks if I were making another attempt - or just try to go where the Alkari fleet isn't. It is nice to have a proper scanner now, but remember that the Alkari are fast enough to hit some places without warning. We're due another economic boost once Atmo comes in too (18%).
Save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1My5XhsN...sp=sharing
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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If you aren't spying on the Sakkra, I think I would definitely go for that. They don't have high computers to counter and aren't much of a threat even if you get caught.
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