OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[haphazard1]

Sounds like some solid turns, DaveV. Pointy stick work gets us the inertial stabilizer, very nice. And it is good to finally remove the rock intrusion at Crypto.

Definitely want to spend with the Eco slider to regrow pop. Sounds like that was beeing done, just missed a planet. Easy to do when there is so much going on.

Terraforming+50 will help us get more pop everywhere, and more factories, so I think it was a good choice. We may need the extra votes, too, with the diplomatic situation getting messy. But we may want to grab advanced soil as well -- the boost to base size is very helpful especially on larger worlds (like our homeworld ), and the increase in growth rate is also very nice to have with so much need for pop for invasions. Maybe we will have advanced soil and can just grab that later instead?

Energy pulsar...definitely need to watch out for that with our bomber stack. Polaris design has beeen noted for special attention.

Glad the neutron blasters are providing some value, at least. Probably would have been better to go for the hard beams and advance the tree. Charts will be checked more carefully in future.

[Sullla]

I see that I'm up now and I have the save. I've been traveling this weekend and therefore have only been reading, not commenting. Hopefully I'll get to this tonight, if not, then tomorrow. For what it's worth, I disagree with a lot of the decisions we've made and will try to explain why. It doesn't matter here, since this is a very easy game for Impossible difficulty, but since this is a learning game, I'll do my best to give some additional thoughts later.

[Ianus]

Sullla:  It seems a little out of line to imply very negatively that you think we haven't been playing the game well and then not offer up anything constructive. Not only are we here to improve our level of play at this game we all love (well I do anyway) but also to have fun and play together. I'm thrilled to see lots of activity in this forum and I hope that we can breathe new life into online MoO. I really like reading your reports and explanations and I can't wait to hear how you would have played the intervening turns as I can't think of any decisions we have made which harmed our gameplay.
That's all. This has been bothering me today and I just wanted to say it. And now back to our regularly scheduled game, already in progress!

[Sullla]

OK, I'm going to outline some of my thoughts about where we could have potentially improved our play for this succession game. Please don't think I'm aiming this at anyone on this team in particular. I wouldn't even go through the trouble of typing this up if this wasn't being styled as a training game of sorts, and it's a useful place to continue learning more about Master of Orion gameplay. Let's get started, and again, apologies in advance.

First of all, I have to stress an important point: this has been an incredibly easy game as far as Impossible difficulty is concerned. We spawned in a local neighborhood with no AI races on top of us, and with significant back lines to expand into. Many of our planets were very large in size (base planet sizes of 100, 100, 90, and 100 all settled with ease) plus an Ultra Rich world of decent size. We have no Poor planets or Ultra Poor planets to work around. None of the AI races made any attempt to pressure us in the early game, and we've faced only the lightest brush wars to date. There are no runaway AIs in this galaxy, and only the Meklars have posed any kind of danger whatsoever - and the Meklars have been content to stay up at the top of the map, making no attempt to trouble us thus far. The rest of the galaxy has been split between four feeble AIs, all of whom have been weak and posed zero threat militarily to us. We were offered a victory at the very first Council election, and have had a win at nearly all of the following ones since then. We've never faced military danger or the threat of a Council loss at any point in time. This is honestly as easy as this game ever gets on the top difficulty level.

I think it's important to point this out because it means we've essentially been in a sandbox situation this whole game. We've been able to do anything we wanted without being punished for it. The normal way to see if a decision was a good choice is to see whether it improves your standing in the game or whether the AI will come back and punish you for it. But in this game, the AI has been weak enough that we've never been punished for anything, and so therefore it's been easy to overlook potential mistakes. In response to Ianus' request, I will try to keep this as constructive as possible, but I feel like I wouldn't be helping the team if I didn't try to explain why I disagree with some of the decisions that we've made.

My biggest disagreement has been over our tech choices that we've made in this game. We've repeatedly researched multiple techs at the same rung of the tech ladder rather than trying to climb to higher tech levels quickly. This is very different from how I play Master of Orion; I almost never research two techs at the same rung, instead trying to push on to higher tech levels. On Impossible difficulty, research points are a limited and precious commodity. You're basically always behind in tech on Impossible; if you ever get ahead or pull equal in tech with the AIs, the game is essentially over. (In this game, we've been ahead of all non-Meklar races the entire game - which is a sign that it's been an extremely easy game.) Your tech rating in each field is equal to the tech rating of your highest tech in that field plus one point for all older techs. As a result, by climing the ladder quickly, the player is able to increase their tech rating much faster than by stopping to get the perfect assortment of techs from each rung of the ladder. Furthermore, since so many techs are duplicative in Master of Orion, you can often get a better version of the same tech by jumping ahead and taking it at the next rung.



Our Weapons tree in this game was a classic example. We started by researching Hand Lasers (the first rung) over Hyper-V missiles. Good choice there, with the missiles also being perfectly fine. Next we took Fusion Bombs over Hyper-X missiles and Ion Cannons at the second rung. Bombs have a very long lifespan, making this also a good choice. At the third rung, we had Ion Rifle, Mass Drivers, and Neutron Blasters available. That was a poor roll on the tech choices; Scatter Pack V missiles or Merculite missiles would have been our preference here. So we went back and researched Hyper-X missiles for our bases, which was a defensible choice and probably the right call, although it did not advance the tree. Then we researched Ion Rifles, which was not a good call since we already had Hand Lasers. What we needed was a better gun, and Neutron Blasters was available for us to take to advance the tree forward.

After that, we opened up the fourth rung of Weapons techs, and the only option was the Hard Beam. Tough roll again from the random tech draw, but that was the only choice, and Master of Orion is all about adapting to your circumstances. The Hard Beam does 8-10 damage and ignores half of enemy shields, which would have been a perfectly serviceable weapon. Instead, we went back and researched Blasters tech, which did not advance the tech tree, and then afterwards we still had to research the Hard Beam anyway. The net result is that we're 160 turns into the game now, our Weapons tech is only level 18, we've still barely started Hard Beam tech, and we have weak missiles (Hyper-Xs) and guns (Blasters) for this point in time in the game. If we were facing serious opponents, we would be in horrendous trouble right now.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you have bad choices available in a research tree, it's usually better to push to higher tech levels where you'll get a fresh roll on the options available. By repeatedly trying to get the best choice possible from a bad set of options, we made things much worse than they would have been otherwise.

Two more examples. We just finished researching Zortium Armor in the Construction field, and the only option to move the tree forward was Armored Exoskeleton. Instead of researching that tech, we went back and took Improved Industrial 6, which will not advance the tech tree. Now we definitely do need a better factory tech (we only have Improved Industrial 9 right now), but I would still question this choice. The Improved Industrial tech options are available at every single rung of the Construction tree. We will almost certainly get more of them down the road if we keep advancing the tech tree. Second, better Improved Industrial techs are common among our AI rivals. The Alkari have II8, the Silicoids (who are invading right now) have II7, the Bulrathi have II6 and II5, and the Meklars have pretty much every Improved Industrial tech on the tree. We will almost certainly get one of these techs via invasion, therefore not needing to go back and delay our advancement on the tree. Furthermore, we're actually invading enemy races right now - that Armored Exoskeleton tech would be quite useful!

Meanwhile, in Planetology, we just had the choice between Advanced Soil Enrichment and Terraforming +50. Like the Improved Industrial techs, there's a terraforming tech available at every rung of the tech tree (except one). Advanced Soil Enrichment is a unique tech that never appears anywhere else, and therefore I would have leaned towards taking that one, even though we already have Soil Enrichment. The fact that we have Atmospheric Terraforming and can therefore apply Advanced Soil Enrichment to every planet also leans towards that direction. We can also get +40 Terraforming from the Bulrathi, while only the Meklars (who we are unlikely to invade at the moment) have Advanced Soil Enrichment. The actual benefit of the two techs is similar, with +50 Terraforming slightly better on small worlds and Advanced Soil Enrichment slightly better on large worlds. However, we've got a 50/50 shot of having +60 Terraforming available at the next tech rung, which will be almost useless by taking +50 Terraforming right now, and would have been perfect if we had gone for Advanced Soil. Now we must go back and research a second tech at this same rung if we ever want to have Gaia planets - which we definitely do want. Again, it's not that +50 Terraforming is a bad choice necessarily, it's just that we could make a more efficient decision here in the wider context of the game.

We have also spent too much time doing research with only one click in each field (or even zero clicks!) and everything else going into a single field. Due to the way that the research mechanic works in Master of Orion, with the bonus research for steady progress, you usually come out better by dividing research among all of the fields roughly equally, as opposed to dropping everything into one field. RefSteel or Thrawn can provide the exact numbers, but I've certainly found that born out by empirical observation over time. One click in a field basically just preserves your investment there - you don't actually make any further progress. We've wasted a lot of potential bonus research by jumping back and forth from one field to another, rather than investing across the board and landing a lot of bonus RP. It's short-sighted to look only at the exact tech currently under research. All six fields are important in MOO, and you can't advance to the next rung on the ladder without researching the tech on the current rung. Of course sometimes you need one particular tech right now, but that's pretty much the emergency exception. It shouldn't be the general rule. I think we've been rather wasteful much of the time in this game in terms of how we were allocating spending.

I also don't like our ship designs very much:



That's our current fleet right now. The early scouts and laser fighters are solid, although the Laser 2 should have gone with combat speed 2 for greater tactical flexibility. The Bomber 3 design was something I threw together to deal with the Comet event, and if we've gotten any combat use from them, it was an added bonus. The Small fusion bomb design is also excellent; any time you can get Fusion Bombs or Antimatter Bombs on a Small hull, it's a great setup. However, I don't like the other two designs that we ended up using. Missile boats are generally useful for harassment and raiding, and good to design when you have an excess of missile technology over guns. Hyper-Xs are pretty terrible missiles and not something I would use for a missile boat except in a dire emergency. Now I do realize that our Weapons tech was pretty bad in this game, and so perhaps this was justified. My point is rather that this is a very weak design setup, and only had success in this game because our AI opponents were themselves so toothless.

I know we had some discussion in the thread about the Huge design sporting Blasters; here's my two cents. I'm well familiar with the idea of trying to load up on defenses and make your ship invulnerable to damage via the Auto Repair special. However, this ship only has Class V shields and a combat speed of 3; that's not enough to make it invulnerable in combat at all. The Meklars have Megabolt Cannons and Auto Blasters, either of which would easily shred this design to pieces. This would also fare poorly against the Fusion Beams that the Bulrathi have, or even the Hard Beams of the Silicoids. To shoot back against the AI, we have... 8 Heavy Blast Cannons. On a ship that costs 4643 BC to build?! That's an extremely expensive price to pay for a ship that packs zero punch whatsoever. We're lucky that we haven't faced any AI fleets of significance to date, and the few Bulrathi ships that came our way had no guns worth mentioning. Just Gatling Lasers and Fusion Bombs in the one screenshot that I can see. If we're having success with this design to date, it's again because our opponents aren't putting up any resistance.

In order for a gunship to be effective, it needs, well, guns. Our DPS with this design is not enough to work against anything other than outdated / poorly designed AI ships, and literally anything will work against them. I also don't like going with the all two-space version of weapons unless you have a Repulsor Beam or Warp Dissipator to slow down the other ships and stop them from closing. The heavy version of the guns just takes up too much space otherwise. Again, we can't count on the AI always designing terrible ships with 1 movement point to dance around on the tactical screen. Our problems are also compounded by our low Weapons tech level, which is why we don't have much miniaturization to make our weapons cheaper and smaller. Finally, when designing a Huge Autorepair gunship, it's pretty much always worth it to slap a Battle Scanner on there for the extra +1 attack level and initiative. On a Huge hull, it takes up little space and boosts the performance of every shot fired.

I'm also not a fan of our laissez-faire approach to base building. We pretty much built one or two bases on each world and then relied on crash-building them with Reserve spending after an attack was underway. That's a very risky way to play Master of Orion, and not one that I encourage. This is not Civ4 where you can sit back and rely on drafting and slaving units in an emergency to stop an invasion. Master of Orion emphasizes seeing threats ahead of time and planning before they manifest, not afterwards. This has worked OK in this game because the Meklars have never come after us and everyone else has been too weak to mount a threat, but it's not a practice that I can support as good strategy.

I hate to come off like a grouchy old curmudgeon here. As I said before, I'm only going through this since we've been viewing all this as a learning game for Master of Orion. Some of these thoughts also reflect my personal preferences, especially on the missile base counts where I tend to be more defensive than a lot of other players. And I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to criticize any one individual here, only offer my thoughts as a group. The good news is that we are easily winning this game and it's a good place to try out different ideas. There's no need to worry about screwing things up - everything is going just fine.

Now let me get to playing the actual turn...

[Sullla]

Turn 0 (2460): The galaxy map looks a lot different from the last time that I had the save file. We're at war with the Meklar and Silicoids, but effectively only fighting the rocks because the Meklar are out of range to the north. For the immediate future, it looks like we should grind the Silicoids into the dust, and then consider going onwards with the Mrrshans and the Bulrathi. There's no need to struggle against the Meklar when we have easier targets elsewhere. There's an attack incoming against the Silicoid planet of Guradas, where we've already bombed out the defenses and population transports are on their way. In terms of combat, everything looks good for the moment.

Economically, things are a bit rougher. Many of our planets that have been used for invasions are well below their population maximums. I know we've been having some discussions on this, but there's no way that having Sol at 83/155 population is anywhere near efficient. We're only using 332 out of our 620 factories right now, and waiting a dozen or more turns to grow that population back naturally is not going to cut it. I immediately dial up Eco spending to regrow population on our worlds that were used for planetary invasions. Celtsi and Phantos are both recent conquests that need to be stood up with factories and missile bases; I begin using Reserve spending to speed up their development. Our Ultra Rich planet goes back onto Reserve feeding for the moment since I'm not in love with our current Huge ARS gunship. Fortunately, no dangerous attacks incoming at the moment. Let's hope for more good news there.



Turn 1 (2461): Combat between turns against the Silicoids over Guaradas. I don't know what's on this design due to a lack of a Battle Scanner, but it appears to be missiles of some kind. A full volley of shots from our Huge design deals all of 43 damage, which is really sad. I stand by what I said earlier in the thread about this design. I retreated our Fusion bombers because the AI design had some kind of pulsar on board, and the Silicoids retreated after I did that. Three full volleys of shots failed to kill even one of their Large ships. Again, this design simply has no damage whatsoever, and if the AI puts together any design that doesn't suck, it's going to rule the skies with ease.

On the planet surface, we land with 185 soldiers against their 65. The Silicoids have Armored Exoskeleton to our nothing, and Personal Absorption Shield to our Deflector Shield for a total bonus of +35. As a result, they hold the planet with 11 rocks surviving. We'll continue the attack and take the planet in another turn or two; if there's one thing the Silicoids can't do, it's grow population quickly. Also: Armored Exoskeleton sure would be a helpful tech right now.



Darrian, Sol, and Endoria are all still nowhere close to maximum population. I won't hit them up for more of an invasion until they can finish regrowing their decimated populaces. Instead, I will send 20 pop from Uxmai, which is about the max I can regrow in one turn right now. Uxmai spends this turn going 100% Eco spending, which will immediately remax the planet next turn. This is a more efficient way to do invasions, having planets regrow back to the maximum immediately rather than limping back over a series of succeeding turns. Phantos and Celtsi are still frantically standing up factories with max Reserve spending. I would be sending more population to Celtsia (which is only at 45/70 pop) but there are no eligible planets nearby, since we already had so many planets below their own maximums.

Turn 2 (2462): Uxmai remaxes population as expected; I'll keep sending 20 pop along to Guaradas for the time being. Even if I end up with an excess beyond what's needed to take the planet, that's OK because we'll want to bring in immigrants to stand the population up post-invasion. Darrian, Sol, and Endoria will finally be back to full strength next turn and ready to launch more invasions with fresh new population.

Turn 3 (2463): All of our core planets are finally back to full population once again. Our total income from planets went from 6276 BC on my first turn to 7384 BC this turn, largely based off of regrowing all that population. I queue up another 70 population from the Darrian/Sol/Endoria trio, which hopefully will be enough to capture Guaradas along with the 45 pop already coming from Uxmai. No change in the wider diplomatic picture of this game since I started my turns.



Turn 4 (2464): Planetary Shield X finishes; I'll be building these on our planets for the next turn or two. Our only option to advance the tree forward is Cloaking device, which isn't a bad tech anyway. I don't see a need to backtrack for the Class VI deflectors. We landed 20 Humans this turn against 19 Silicoids at Guaradas; they inflict 10:1 casualties as we kill two of them while losing all of our invaders. Gotta keep sending more population there and keep grinding down the rocks... Another 70 pop sent there should help out.

Turn 5 (2465): We have 160 pop en route to deal with the 19 remaining Silicoids. I think that should be enough, even with our disadvantage in gropo tech. This turn it's 95 Humans against 19 Silicoids, and that proves to be just barely enough:



We pull Terraforming +20 and nothing else. Blah, what a rotten haul there. With that many factories, I would typically expect at least two techs, and more often three or even four. On the plus side, we did add another planet to our empire and there are still more Silicoid worlds to go after where we can pull additional tech. Guaradas begins terraforming immediately. Meanwhile, we have a new thread incoming:



Here comes the full Mrrshan fleet straight after Phantos, no previous turn of warning. I've been spending the maximum Reserve amount at this planet every turn, and we'll be able to get 3 missile bases plus the Class X Planetary Shield in place to meet this attack. Also two of our Huge gunships and all of our Hyper X missile boats; we'll see how useful they prove to be. Kitty has some legimiately good Weapons tech, so this could get interesting depending on what's sitting on those designs. I swap us over to active Espionage against them since this is a declaration of cold war by the Mrrshans. We may as well take advantage of their poor Computer tech to go after some good Weapons for ourselves. The Silicoids are also attacking us at Celtsi, but as a Rich world we have that situation well in hand.

Turn 6 (2466): Here's what the kitties have on their ships:



With 15 points of shielding, we should be safe against anything they're fielding. It's a good thing we finished the Class X Planetary Shield and were able to build one in time, or some of these guns would have been strong enough to hurt us. I fire on the Lynxes, as the design that seems the easiest to hurt and the one that is the strongest from a space superiority standpoint. Our Huge gunship plays around with the Bobcat design and manages to kill most of them before having to retreat; we also killed about half the Lynxes via missiles from the planet. The Leopards and Panthers remained untouched. The Ferrets ran away instantly at the start of the battle, and are too weak to be much of a threat.

At Cygni, I get a scan on the Silicoid "Shark" design: 5 Hard Beams and a Merculite missile on a Large hull, plus 5 points of shielding and a combat speed of 2. That's a very solid ship design, and I hope we don't see too many of them. Our Hyper-X missiles are not going to be very useful against those ships. It can't hurt our planetary defenses of course and retreats. The Mrrshans give us another population warning but remain at "Affable" relations for the time being. I'm shifting our Fusion Bombers over to Phantos, where we'll be in range of a whole bunch of Mrrshan planets.

Turn 7 (2467): GNN says we are second in fleet strength behind the Meklars, which is kind of amazing considering how little fleet building we've been doing. The Mrrshans pop up with a message about espionage; we were apparently framed by someone else who stole from them. Relations are amazingly still "Relaxed" despite all the conflict that's been happening with the cats.

Turn 8 (2468): Nothing much going on right now. I could ready our fleet to strike at the Mrrshans, who are the logical next target for attack. However, we have a Council vote coming up in a short period of time, and I don't want to flip the cats over to our enemy column just yet, not with diplomacy turned off for this game. Let's get through the 2475 vote and then go whole hog after them, just to be on the safe side. I think we have a veto block at this point in the Council but it's close enough that I don't want to take even the small risk of a loss if everyone would vote against us. (That shouldn't happen because the Bulrathi are still at war with the Meklar, but I've seen enough weird stuff in this game not to want to risk anything.)

Turn 9 (2469): Guaradas, which was a size 40 Inferno world, has now become size 110 thanks to Atmospheric Terraforming, Soil Enrichment, and +30 Terraforming. Every planet is very much worth having. Our point worlds are standing up some more bases; I want at least a dozen there to be safe. Mostly right now, we're doing research: about 4100 BC/turn currently. I don't want to build more ships since I don't like our current designs that much. Just teching along:



Turn 10 (2470): I chase away a Silicoid colony ship that tries to establish a colony at one of the Radiated planets in our neighborhood. Another one manages to found a colony deep in our territory; I have our Hyper-X missile boats heading to bomb it out of existence. Otherwise our fleet is concentrated at Phantos right now, aside from one Huge gunship moving to Guaradas to protect it while it builds factories. This last turn was pretty quiet overall.



Notes:

* There is an attack incoming to Sol which our missile bases should easily be able to fend off. Make sure to stop spending on bases at Sol next turn.

* Guaradas is stacking up factories quickly but will still need to be defended for the time being against random Silicoid incursions.

* Construction (II6), Propulsion (warp 5 engines), and Weapons (Hard Beam) are all about to pop. I would look to design a new ship once those techs arrive and go on a new ship building spree. I suggest a gunship with more firepower using the new warp 5 engines.

* The Mrrshans are our obvious next target. I'd make preparations to hit them as soon as the next Council vote is over. Once we have their juicy Weapons tech, we'll solve our one big weakness and then can prosecute war against anyone we want. I would likely take over the kitties, then use their range to annex all the Silicoid planets in the west. That gets us about half the galaxy, and we can win any victory condition from that point on.

Good luck! Savegame file is located here.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for explaining your thinking, Sullla. I am trying to learn to be a better MoO player, so this kind of discussion is helpful. (Several of the mistakes highlighted were mine. )

OK, I have the save. Taking a look around....

- Rocks have the doom virus. Have we seen any sign of it on their ships? That could be a problem if they actually put it on a decent design.
- Rocks have planetary shield X, plus deflectors V. Our fusion bombers can still be effective, but much reduced. What kind of numbers would we likely need to crack their bases? (I see we do have over 1100 of our small fusion bombers. )
- Kitties have pulson missiles. Could make hitting their worlds painful. But they lack planetary shields, which will help.
- Once the new techs do come in (assuming it does), what are our priorities for designs? We can currently design a small bomber with one fusion bomb, inertial stabilizer, and combat speed 4 plus just enough space for a Mark I computer. Not sure what might be possible with some more miniaturization and faster drives. But with our existing bomber fleet, I guess a new gunship is a bigger priority. To get more fire power from a huge ARS design, how much speed do we want to emphasize? Inertial stabilizer is bulky on a huge hull but more combat speed can be very useful.

Goals for the turnset:

- Do not lose the upcoming council vote! So no war with the kitties until afterwards, and then only if we are ready. (Thinking we will not be during my turnset, but see below.)
- Defend against Silicoid attacks at Guradas and Sol (and anywhere else they threaten).
- Eliminate the Silicoid colony planted on the radiated ultra rich in our core (Crypto).
- Keep teching so we can get a new generation of gunships ready for service.

Questions for the team:

- Do we think our existing fleet has enough strength to crack the 15 bases at the Silicoid colony of Gieneh (radiated world right in the center of the galaxy)? 15 bases, merculite missiles, 15 points of shielding. They have a couple of their Shark design, plus one Whale (a huge with who knows what) incoming. But our speed means we could hit Gieneh before the Whale arrives. Since it is radiated no need for an invasion, just glass it to cut way back on their range into our area of space. (Once the new colony at Crypto is gone, anyway.) Keeping the rocks and their doom virus away from our worlds would be a good thing.
- Since the council vote will take place half way through the turnset, should I be thinking of offensive action at all? Or just defend, tech, and leave going on offense for the next player?

[Mardoc]

Sullla, why did you keep our current designs all in place?  Couldn't you have scrapped something ancient (like the laser 2's and the comet buster bombers) to make room for something more relevant?  I see that you don't like our current designs; why not build something more useful?

Anyway, I agree with some of your criticism and disagree with others.  In particular, I see the Hyper-X missile boats in the same position as your Comet-bombers.  They had one job: getting Phantos from the birds.  Any extra use from them is gravy; they weren't intended as a general purpose design any more than the bombers were, but instead were a one-time thing.

I also disagree on the balanced research criticism.  We've mostly balanced research, but most of the exceptions seem to be warranted by the game situation.  I had to focus research on range 5 for us not to be stuck at three worlds.  DaveV's focus on Controlled Toxic was a recovery from my error in not researching it earlier - but it was warranted by the time he made the decision.  We couldn't have invaded any of the Silicoid worlds without that tech; our window against the Rocks is already almost closed so it had to be fast research.  I agree that I don't think Planetary Shield X was as urgent; that one I would have researched in a more balanced manner.

I do think it would have been better to focus more on climbing to new rungs, as you mention, with the exceptions of Hyper-X and Controlled Toxic.  And in general to select our research with more care - wouldn't have had to crash-research Toxic if I'd deferred Atmospheric Terraforming a bit.

- Rocks have planetary shield X, plus deflectors V. Our fusion bombers can still be effective, but much reduced. What kind of numbers would we likely need to crack their bases? (I see we do have over 1100 of our small fusion bombers. )

...

- Do we think our existing fleet has enough strength to crack the 15 bases at the Silicoid colony of Gieneh (radiated world right in the center of the galaxy)? 15 bases, merculite missiles, 15 points of shielding. They have a couple of their Shark design, plus one Whale (a huge with who knows what) incoming. But our speed means we could hit Gieneh before the Whale arrives. Since it is radiated no need for an invasion, just glass it to cut way back on their range into our area of space. (Once the new colony at Crypto is gone, anyway.) Keeping the rocks and their doom virus away from our worlds would be a good thing.

5-20 damage from a fusion bomb, IIRC, so we'd have to hit the high end of the range to deal damage.  Assuming equal odds of each number in the range, 1200 bombers would average 375 rolls of 16+, for a total of 900ish damage.  Derated somewhat by not guaranteed hits, but I don't know how much so I'm ignoring that.  Meanwhile 15 bases are killing presumably 45 bombers/turn.  Running those numbers (and assumptions) through Excel, I would expect to win the fight on the fourth turn of bombing, having lost ~100 bombers.

Key assumption is that the miss rate on both our bombs and their missiles is insignificant.  I'm also assuming here that their ships are dealt with by non-bombers, and don't have a chance to interfere with the bombers.  I don't think any of our ships except bombers can damage missile bases at all.

All in all: we can probably kill that world with care, if we're willing to accept some casualties.  I'm not confident of being able to press into the Silicoid core without a better bomb, though.

- Kitties have pulson missiles. Could make hitting their worlds painful. But they lack planetary shields, which will help.

I think pulson vs merculite doesn't much matter to a small bomber swarm.  One missile still equals one dead bomber.  Fast bombers hitting on turn 2 of combat is the best way to handle that: only give them one launch of missiles then smash the bases.

To get more fire power from a huge ARS design, how much speed do we want to emphasize? Inertial stabilizer is bulky on a huge hull but more combat speed can be very useful.

Honestly, I wouldn't go with Huges at all, after thinking on Sullla's critique.  I think Huge ARS is the wrong way to go in the current situation; we can't soak enough damage to be legitimately invincible, and it costs too much firepower to try  Aim to win the battle quickly, and then we don't have much damage to soak.  That calls for a design based around Medium or Large ships, with speed and guns designed so that we get to shoot first, and only have to shoot once.  Pay attention to keeping the cost down so we can build a lot of gunships, more than to survivability per se.

Assuming the kitty fleet looks like what we saw on Sullla's turnset, they're pretty much glass cannons without shielding, so Hard beams don't buy us much of anything compared to Neutron Blasters.  I'd probably stick with Heavy Neutron Blasters so we can get the first shot (their beams all look like one-range versions) and set up the design to simply put as many guns in space as possible (with decent speed and battle computers).  Also bring our bomber fleet for the missile bases.

The biggest downside to that proposed design is that it's probably not nearly as effective against the Silicoids and is probably toothless against the Meklar.  I'm not sure we can build anything that will stand up to the Meklar just yet, though, so maybe we plan this fleet to be a cat-killer only.

Our highest Weapon priority has got to be a new missile.  We're on the verge of having Hyper-X's be totally impotent against the Silicoids and Meklars both, which means we might as well not have any missile bases.  Maybe we can capture or steal a missile tech, but if we don't, then we need to research one.

- Since the council vote will take place half way through the turnset, should I be thinking of offensive action at all? Or just defend, tech, and leave going on offense for the next player?

I think we can probably manage some progress on 2476...our fleet appears to be obsolete against the Silicoids but still ahead of the Mrrshans (well, maybe technologically behind but with enough numbers to win some fights).  If you'd rather defer it to me, that's probably fine too; I don't think expansion has to be quite as fast anymore. That said: I think we're in a race against time with the current fleet. It's not the perfect tool for the job, but waiting too long will make it perfectly useless. You should probably either use it or scrap it (once our newest worlds can defend themselves).

Also, I'd be inclined to scrap the Laser-2's, the Medium bombers, and maybe the Hyper-X missile boats. I just don't see much value in any of them anymore, would rather not pay for them. Perhaps keep the scouts around still.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the input, Mardoc. I would like to eliminate that centrally located Silicoid world (plus the brand new colony they planted in our core). They do not currently have any alliances, so losing that will make it much more difficult for them to reach our worlds. Just in case they do start showing up with ships loaded with the doom virus.

We will take losses in our bomber stack, but as you  said that design is rapidly nearing the end of its useful life. If we can use them to glass Gieneh, that is a bit more value for our investment in them before they get scrapped. My guess on why Sullla left the designs in place is that the new tech is not ready yet, and there might still be some value (like hitting one or two more planets) in them.

I am tempted to eliminate those two rock worlds, and defend againt our current incoming threats, and then see what happens with the tech. If everything pops early maybe I will look to create some new designs and start building; otherwise probably better to leave that to the next turnset. Depends on just when the techs come in, will have to see. Or maybe we will get lucky with some of our spying and steal something useful? Could happen.

I have several things I need to get done this afternoon, so I will aim to play in maybe 6-8 hours. Still plenty of time for advice and comments.

[DaveV]

5-20 damage from a fusion bomb, IIRC, so we'd have to hit the high end of the range to deal damage.  Assuming equal odds of each number in the range, 1200 bombers would average 375 rolls of 16+, for a total of 900ish damage.  Derated somewhat by not guaranteed hits, but I don't know how much so I'm ignoring that.  Meanwhile 15 bases are killing presumably 45 bombers/turn.  Running those numbers (and assumptions) through Excel, I would expect to win the fight on the fourth turn of bombing, having lost ~100 bombers.

Unfortunately, most of our bombs will miss. Silicoids have ECM 3 vs. our attack level of 1, so only 30% of our bombs will hit. So, based on your numbers, about 270 damage per turn, or 2.7 bases. We'll also have to absorb two turns' worth of missile volleys before we can drop our first bombs.

Edit: On the flip side, our ships have a missile defense of 6, vs. battle computer V for the rocks. I think Merculites are +1 or +2 to hit, so only 50-60% of their missile volleys will hit. Each hit is a guaranteed kill.

[Mardoc]

5-20 damage from a fusion bomb, IIRC, so we'd have to hit the high end of the range to deal damage.  Assuming equal odds of each number in the range, 1200 bombers would average 375 rolls of 16+, for a total of 900ish damage.  Derated somewhat by not guaranteed hits, but I don't know how much so I'm ignoring that.  Meanwhile 15 bases are killing presumably 45 bombers/turn.  Running those numbers (and assumptions) through Excel, I would expect to win the fight on the fourth turn of bombing, having lost ~100 bombers.

Unfortunately, most of our bombs will miss. Silicoids have ECM 3 vs. our attack level of 1, so only 30% of our bombs will hit. So, based on your numbers, about 270 damage per turn, or 2.7 bases. We'll also have to absorb two turns' worth of missile volleys before we can drop our first bombs.

Edit: On the flip side, our ships have a missile defense of 6, vs. battle computer V for the rocks. I think Merculites are +1 or +2 to hit, so only 50-60% of their missile volleys will hit. Each hit is a guaranteed kill.

Adjusting for those miss factors, two turns of being shot at (and Silicoids have Zortium so a base is 200 hp), I get a result of killing 12 of 15 bases, with 1030/1200 surviving bombers when we run out of bombs. 1030 bombers can finish off 3 bases with fairly minor casualties (~30) after a resupply run. We still win, but lose double the bombers I initially thought.

Hitting Mrrshans should be easier, because without planetary shields, our bombers will do a lot more damage per volley, while each missile still only kills one bomber.