OSG-35 - Social Distancing

[RefSteel]

I like sucession game format so we can compare notes and learn new things.

Likewise, definitely!

Also: Cyneheard, do you have the save? If you need a skip or swap (or haven't posted by then) I'll take it tomorrow night.

[Cyneheard]

I like sucession game format so we can compare notes and learn new things.

Likewise, definitely!

Also:  Cyneheard, do you have the save?  If you need a skip or swap (or haven't posted by then) I'll take it tomorrow night.

Sorry about that. Ref, I can definitely play Wednesday evening. Tuesday evening is difficult but may be possible. If you want to swap, that's fine, just obviously post here if you do.

[RefSteel]

Sorry about that. Ref, I can definitely play Wednesday evening. Tuesday evening is difficult but may be possible. If you want to swap, that's fine, just obviously post here if you do.

No worries as far as I'm concerned; just want to make sure we don't lose momentum. I might not be able to play and report in time for your Wednesday evening even if I take it now (especially as time zones are a factor) so I'll just wait eagerly for your report!

[Cyneheard]

Sorry about that. Ref, I can definitely play Wednesday evening. Tuesday evening is difficult but may be possible. If you want to swap, that's fine, just obviously post here if you do.

No worries as far as I'm concerned; just want to make sure we don't lose momentum.  I might not be able to play and report in time for your Wednesday evening even if I take it now (especially as time zones are a factor) so I'll just wait eagerly for your report!

Ok, time for my socially distant walk + call the quarantined grandparents, and then let's smash some bugs! Or at least not get outvoted by them.

[Cyneheard]

Quiet set of 9 builder turns - taking the last save is the best practice for good or ill, otherwise we'd be getting two bites at the RNG apple.

Thoughts reviewing the situation:
REALLY REALLY good thing we have peace with the Meklars. Those fleets were potentially pretty scary, and we’ve also got a nice reserves collection. Since the Meklar fleets aren’t going to be attacking, let’s switch to builder mode.

Imra and Sand Line are switched to 100% factory building. Keep Out is maintained as a split missile bases/factory production. Gion and Shelter are on research, redistributing spending a bit to be a little more efficient. Keeping Nazin, About Time and Waters Edge on bases – I want all three of them to get to 15 bases because wars will come again and that will keep them safe.

Gion and Shelter should be fine with 1-2 bases each when we’ve got those three settled. I would much rather spend BCs on missile bases than rapidly obsoleted ships, especially since those ships aren’t going to invade worlds – Meklars have Planetary V, so we’ll have to have a significant bomber fleet to do anything to them.

Our tech tree has had some holes so far – no IIT with IRC3 coming in is a little annoying, and the lack of Improved Terraforming so far is an actual problem I’d love to fix.

2422: Meklars steal Nuclear Engines. We’re at the same bar as them on the Population screen, so I’ll be shipping people between Nazin and Keep Out, and About Time and Waters Edge, on 2424 to ensure we aren’t up for the vote.

2424: IRC3 comes in, start Improved Scanner over ECM III (ETAs and extra visibility make defense so much better), cut research spending to build more factories and shift spending to Con/Planet. Put close to 200 pop on ships between the 4 big worlds, that should be more than enough to avoid being nominated.

Vote comes in. We have 6 votes, 7 for Meklars, so it’s a really good thing we had those guys on boats:





2428: Still pretty quiet. Just building some factories, getting research to just barely fund Con/Planet (taking it from all over – building factories pretty broadly).

2430: Parting gift for RefSteel:




Overall situation:






I see 4 Ajax that are flying away from Keep Out, but no incoming fleets yet.

[utwig]

Good quiet turnset. What is our plan for dealing with Meklar?
We could speed up scatter pack V.
Keep out is vulnerable and we can't take war to them but with equal number of planets they will start to pull away.

[Cyneheard]

Good quiet turnset. What is our plan for dealing with Meklar?
We could speed up scatter pack V.
Keep out is vulnerable and we can't take war to them but with equal number of planets they will start to pull away.

Scatter V helps us only a little with ship-to-ship combat somewhat, but that does more for the missile bases for defense. They're going to have 40+ bases on Jinga by the time we're ready to strike, and they already have Planetary V. Scatter V might not even hurt their ships much by that point, honestly.

Meklar already have a large tech lead. We really want IT+40 or Soil Enrichment with the next Planetology tech to get the economy going, or else it's going to get much, much worse.

Tech needs for going to war:
A decent Computer - BC II won't cut it. This also means we'll have Improved Scanning, which helps with timing our strikes.
A real gun. If that means doubling back on Neutron Blaster, so be it.
Shield 3 (barely in progress).
Fusion+ would be really helpful because combat speed is essential for bombers getting through bases.

But our fleets will be mostly Bombers, and hitting the Meklar pair when they're under-defended. We'll also need to get a tech status on them when we're planning to strike.

[RefSteel]

Okay, got it!

Great work building things up and getting us through the vote intact, Cyneheard! It looks like we finally have a proper interstellar empire going here! The only problem is that we're basically working with bronze age technology and aren't allowed to do anything to catch up except research harder. So I'll try to do something about that while building factories and defending things as best I can. I'm not willing to build anymore factories at Keep Out though - not when we have good worlds on the front lines diverting resources to research! There's no way I can get us caught up here, but at least I can try to keep us moving in the right direction - as long as the Meklar don't just run over us here!

Scatter V helps us only a little with ship-to-ship combat somewhat, but that does more for the missile bases for defense. They're going to have 40+ bases on Jinga by the time we're ready to strike, and they already have Planetary V. Scatter V might not even hurt their ships much by that point, honestly.

Remember this is only on Hard! They aren't likely to stack up quite that many bases, at this difficulty (at least not soon) - but apart from that, I agree. The advantages of SPV are that they'll help our bases shoot down things like ion fighters, they'll miniaturize our Fusion Bombs so we can go on the offensive, and they'll hopefully let us start research on an actual space weapon.

Meklar already have a large tech lead. We really want IT+40 or Soil Enrichment with the next Planetology tech to get the economy going, or else it's going to get much, much worse.

Tech needs for going to war:
A decent Computer - BC II won't cut it. This also means we'll have Improved Scanning, which helps with timing our strikes.
A real gun. If that means doubling back on Neutron Blaster, so be it.
Shield 3 (barely in progress).
Fusion+ would be really helpful because combat speed is essential for bombers getting through bases.

All of this is true, and with Construction needed for miniaturization, what this basically means is that we need everything! So if an opportunity presents itself, we may have to strike before we have what we think we "need." I don't think I can get that started during my turns, but I suppose I'll have to see what I can do!


Roster:

- Ianus - on deck!
- shallow_thought
- Arnuz
- utwig
- Cyneheard - just played!
- RefSteel - Now playing!

[Cyneheard]

Ref, Jinga already has 21 bases - we have visibility on them. I'm not sure how we're building a large enough fleet to chew through the existing defenses with the tech we've got.

[utwig]

What if we build two bombing fleets each with around 60 medium missile boats and +2 speed 2-rack missiles.

You come in, hit them once, retreat and rotate 2 fleets between them and your nearest system. You add to fleets as they rotate and whittle down their bases at 3-5 per turn. Once bases are whitled down, you take planet. With both fleets present we can probably hold it if we pump pop and reserves to get missile bases going.

This is closest to CIV3 3-legion army + 100 catapults that bombard units to minimum health that you used to fight advanced tech armies.