Remnants of the Precursors Succession Game?

[rgp151]

FWIW, for me the biggest adjustment to RotP from MoO is the lack of the MAX indicator when building factories. Generally, the optimal way to build factories is not to overbuild in the early game, especially on like your first 3 or 4 worlds. This is easier to manage with the MAX indicator, although you can't rely only on MAX because you have to plan for having less pop due to sending pop away in the future. And again, maybe its less of an issue with Sakkara anyway.

But generally having max factories on all you worlds in the early game is a bad thing and means you've wasted time/BCs that could have been put to better use on research or building colony ships. But again its more difficult to avoid this in RotP because without the MAX indicator its just harder to notice. Many things in RotP have a limit adjustor, like you can set how many spies you want, how many missile bases, etc., it would be very helpful to be able to set a limit to the number of factories to build, but alas its not there. Would be a good idea for a mod.

Also in RotP as one thing finishes building it will then automatically switch all production to something else to finish it out, so trying to prevent your planets from building max factories is very difficult.

So I just find that to be something to pay attention to for now. I typically plan for 70% population during the expansion phase and try to manage my populations to stay at around 70%. And once they get to about 70% I'll try to regulate the factory building to at least back it off to match population growth rate. So I'm not building unworked factories ahead of pop. But again, this is less of an issue with Sakkra anyway. But in terms of things being "slow", I think over building factories may be a contributor to this, as it means you likely under invested in research.

[Fenn]

Great turns so far. I'm a big fan of Auto-Repair and won't gainsay going in that direction but I wonder if having better Industrial tech for more ships in general wouldn't be better. Will defer to your experience though.

And very good news on Ion Cannons! We can finally start building some actually dangerous ships now. I don't regret building up the fleet during my turn - I'd hate to have to face an AI incursion with just the starting Fighters - but we were never going to conquer much with them.

[Dp101]

Damn, hadn’t noticed that we skipped NPGs, nuclear-powered NPG fighters always feel so good. I do like scatter pack, just because of how much damage it represents vs early-game designs. I forget, is this the tier for fusion bombs and we missed them, or is that next? Because there’s a tech that would make me feel confident in an offensive - my current projections for how I’d hope the game could progress: controlled toxic finishes, by the time we’re done colonising we get auto-repair/warp 3 and can make a good ship, but no fusion bombs makes the design we’d get then quite a bit less satisfactory. Getting flashbacks to my heavy fusion beams I put on one of my designs in the demonstration game as a bomb substitute, but with just heavy ions plain nuclear bombs are probably still better.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for all the thoughts on tech, everybody! I went with the consensus here, and also belatedly took the trade Dp101 proposed, and then ... things started getting very complicated very fast. (This is very much my fault, and was foreshadowed in my turn reports, though I didn't realize what I was foreshadowing exactly. Also, I'm loving it.) I'll try to cover everything in my report when I'm home and can finish the set later tonight. (Almost done - I'm up to T109!)

But in terms of things being "slow", I think over building factories may be a contributor to this, as it means you likely under invested in research.

Definitely something to pay attention to, but it doesn't apply to our early game for this one: Not only is it a different case for the Sakkra, as you mentioned, but if anything we under-built factories in the early game, starting the colship when we were (I think) below 50% of max factories on our homeworld. We may have over-built RC3 factories recently, but if so, our Sakkra quickly made up the deficit. When I said things felt slow, I didn't mean just in this game, and it's not just a feeling: RotP develops more slowly than MoO beyond the initial expansion phase (except possibly via war - as you and the Xilmil AI discovered). Spoilers for a lonnnnnng discussion of this point:

The basic BC-production economy is the same in RotP as in MoO, but some key costs that are higher: Though starting up a new colony with RC3+ is quicker (for non-Meklar) the need to refit existing factories at all already-developed core worlds means the total cost of upgrading to RC3 factories is significantly higher: Our maxed homeworld with Improved Industrial 9 and no terraforming had to spend 900 BC on industry before it could even start building the more-expensive factories or shipping population out without leaving factories idle. That's a lot of production that we wouldn't have to spend at all in MoO. It makes Robot Controls less of a poison pill from an artifact world, but far less valuable than in MoO when you get the tech with "normal" timing.

Then there's the techs themselves: A high-end tier-1 or low-end tier 2 tech costs somewhere around 1000RP in MoO on Impossible, and the costs at those levels were similar here in RotP (at least in this game; I don't know how or if they scale by galaxy size, difficulty, number of players, or anything else) - in Research Points. But the bonus for forward planning and consistent spending in MoO is eight times as great as the bonus for equalized spending in RotP, and up to 48 times as much when prioritizing research in a particular field. As a result, picking up such a tech usually means actually spending something in the neighborhood of 750BC in MoO (unless you spend massively to back-fill it ASAP in the late game or get bad die rolls and keep pushing it up toward 100% because of a critical need) - and almost twice that in RotP (or even more, depending on how heavily it's prioritized above equal spending; hitting 100% in RotP costs at least 4,000 for such a tech, again around twice what it costs to get there with steady spending in MoO).

There also appears to be a one-time cost for launching transports in RotP of 1BC per launch, which does slow expansion a little, but not enough to matter in comparison with the above, especially since the initial phase of standing up a new world is actually cheaper in RotP than in MoO once you have robotic controls tech though (for non-Meklar). The net result is that expansion is even more overwhelmingly important in RotP than in MoO.

Note that the slower pace is in no way a bad thing; given the size of a typical RotP galaxy, slower tech speed than MoO's is probably needed to keep games from blowing past the end of the tech tree. It just took me a while to recognize what was going on, so I was making outdated MoO-based assumptions that didn't apply to timing in RotP.

That said, there are consequences: Even with our new terraforming tech, even if we get all the hostile worlds we're hoping for, even with the extra expense of RotP RC3, II7 won't pay the cost of teching it until we max everything after getting several more worlds than that and/or more RC. Of course, it will also provide miniaturization and advance up the tree, but Autorepair does more of the first (at higher cost of course) and as for the second ... what would we be advancing up the tree for if not for the likes of exactly this?

And Finally: I'm with you, Dp101. No fusion bombs in our tree this time though; they (and Hyper-X rockets) were missing from the tier where we took Ion Cannons over NPGs. On the other hand, Scatters are the cheapest option in our current tier, and there's a chance that the next tier will give us Anti-Matter Bombs!

[Dp101]

We may have over-built RC3 factories recently

If you mean building them too early then maybe, but if you mean building them in excess, the only worlds that did do refitting were those who were already fully maxed i.e. maxed on pop as well.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the explanation of the costs issues, RefSteel. I knew RotP games just "felt" slower to develop, but had not nailed down exactly what was causing that. Nice to know I was not just imagining things. Overall I like the changes in RotP to research spending -- it simplifies things a lot and removes the need for a lot of micro-management of research spending to max the "seed" effect. But it takes some getting used to; I constantly feel like I am behind where I "should" be in tech.

I will have to rethink some of my assumptions as far as robotic controls upgrades. Do the machines still get free refit/cost savings on robotic controls, as they did in MOO? That would become a bigger advantage if true.

[RefSteel]

If you mean building them too early then maybe, but if you mean building them in excess, the only worlds that did do refitting were those who were already fully maxed i.e. maxed on pop as well.

Yeah, I figured that was most likely the case; just wanted to cover all bets by admitting of the possibility that for all I knew then it might have happened very briefly - but wouldn't have been significant even if it did. For what it's worth, I don't think it's possible to build them too early except in relation to other things: E.g. should we have waited for e.g. R6 and Toxic to hit percentages before refitting and building out factories? Maybe? But it can be argued the other way, and I'm liking where the game is taking us as-is!

Overall I like the changes in RotP to research spending -- it simplifies things a lot and removes the need for a lot of micro-management of research spending to max the "seed" effect. But it takes some getting used to; I constantly feel like I am behind where I "should" be in tech.

Oh, in case it wasn't clear, I like it too, even though I also really like MoO's, and I think the feeling of being behind where we're used to will fade if we play more and get more used to RotP's economy. I should note if RotP's bonus is very good right where it is: Smaller would be too easy to ignore; larger would risk swamping out strategic choice on how to allocate RP.

I will have to rethink some of my assumptions as far as robotic controls upgrades.

I'm trying to rethink my assumptions about RC too. When to refit is not a question with an obvious answer to me right now. I do think it's important to have key shipyard worlds at important points in the empire built out to max pop+factories when possible even if the economic number-crunching makes it look like a poor return: The ability to crash up ships ASAP, especially in Remnants, where placeholder reserves are limited per turn even more than reserves from the treasury. Part of the question is about what to expect from the AI too, which ... so far, I have no idea (and anyway there are three different AIs for this game!)

Do the machines still get free refit/cost savings on robotic controls, as they did in MOO? That would become a bigger advantage if true.

They should, yes, though I haven't checked. I'm interested in playing them at some point, but they should be quite strong.

And at long last, also....

Report through 2410:

- Foreign Minister Irridessi Rex, Galactic Standard Cycle 105 -

I can finally make this public: Thanks mostly to thankfully-persistent reminders from the head of the previous administration, we finally managed last year to make a deal we should have made when our own administration first took office - to acquire technology that we should have researched ourselves something like eighty years ago.




The Meklonar are still duly grateful for the industrial technology we shared with them in exchange, and some might grumble about making them stronger when their worlds would look so much better in lizard green, but we're still more advanced than the machine people, and we're better led - at least usually; we'll see about this new kid and the rest of the present administration ... like me - and if we're afraid of them, what would we say about the terrible Hive? Besides, with supposedly as many as nine interstellar powers in this galaxy, anything that benefits ourselves and just one of them has to be in our favor comparatively. So no, I'm not worried about what we're teaching the Meklar. I'm not afraid of them. And I'm putting my ministry's money where my mouth is on this one! No, not eating it; come on. I'm using it to train agents who will put their lives on the line to get us more Meklar technology without waiting for them to pick something they're interested in taking from us in exchange.




After our first spy with them was caught, bringing our information up to date, I hadn't continued my initial policy, but right now, the time is right. Not only here: Our bug reports are more than a decade out of date, and we're training another agent to have another look at them too - not in hiding, where the poor thing will just get accused of sabotage eventually, but to do a special agent's real job: Espionage, to try picking up their Hive technology!

So you can see that I had a lot on my plate as we headed into the new year - like just about everybody - but this hit me completely out of nowhere! I should have expected it maybe, if I'd been coordinating with the admiral of the fleet, but ... well, we're in for a wild ride in the not-too-distant future it seems.




Oh, that's not menacing at all. Not slightly. It's a good thing these erratic Mentaran diplomats are so suave and cool that their words aren't weighted with the implicit desire to dissect every lizard they meet or anything. But what prompted them to suddenly show up and talk to us, when (presumably?) their ships have been wandering around near our space for years on end? What changed this year that would...




...yeah. So apparently one of the stars our scouts were fanning out to visit once they got the new irridium fuel cells installed on them harbors Einstein, a fertile, terran Mentaran colony! It's fully populated, packed with factories, and apparently protected by such a powerful defensive force that when our ancient long-range twin-laser destroyer arrived, it immediately became the most dangerous entity in the entire star system, free to bombard the vital colony at its leisure. Of course it did nothing of the kind - we're not monsters out here, apart of course from the likes of the Gila family - and by the next time I got in touch with the Mentanar ambassador, the ship already has orders to leave for another part of space, but that didn't stop the ambassador from going on and on about the terrible "trespass" of our ship's arrival above their colony. I tried to assure them that the mistake wouldn't be repeated and to gently hint that the incident might have been prevented had our attempts to communicate up to that point - we knew someone was out there somewhere thanks to the unidentified fleets flying around, without knowing who or where - been met with anything other than stony silence and total rebuff they did. I even suggested the possibility that if they would like our scout ships to avoid their stars while out exploring the galaxy, it might be helpful for them to first give us some idea of which stars they actually consider theirs, but the ambassador only complained more about the terrible lasery death we failed to rain upon its people and the mistrust intrinsic to a new meeting between species and - in a hint of what we may expect in the future from the Mentarans - quoted their emperor or president-for-life or leader-flavor-of-the-week: "If quasi-veteran animus never delineates the undispatch of catatonic deception again, our feckless star snaps will acclaim ontological breem!"

The ambassador spread all four hands and said calmly, "Our wise leader often makes such deeply-insightful statements as these. No one can know the inscrutable brilliance of such an enigmatic intelligence, so when we can understand a word of it, naturally we always obey."

So figure our neighbor's neighbor and consequent natural ally will declare war on us for no discernible reason in a matter of a few years. It's not all bad news though:




That's a publicity shot of a Meklar scientist pouring glowing green goo because it looks cooler than a bunch of math, a succession of different engineered plant varieties breaking up rocks in the soil, grading equipment, and drilling systems all getting adapted from Meklar versions to ours over the course of the year with their help, mostly in big classrooms, greenhouses, and shop yards. Our scientists and the Meks' made so many flights back and forth between our worlds and theirs, visiting each other's planetology labs and materials engineering centers, that I started to suspect them of padding their schedules to take vacations while they were away, but it all worked out in the end: That deal we made with the machines last year has finally gone all the way through, and the habitable space on every one of our worlds is going to be expanding over the next few years!

I've got my work cut out for me too: The Mentarans might be - to put it as gently as possible - homicidally insane, but in case their semi-random flailings remain in some other direction than completely pointless maximum-extended-fuel-range war with our people, it's worth trying to have some kind of relationship with them. I open up with a trade deal for 125 billion credits per year - the smallest on which we could mutually agree ... and start preparations for another secret agent to be embedded with the merchant fleet. The one in Hive space is sending reports back already.




Honestly, they're doing okay in tech, but not with anything really startling. A big part of the reason for spying on them here is just to keep tabs on them this way though, and that's no small part of the reason our agent is heading for Mentaran space as well. As worried as I am about their leader's ... stability, at least now we know where all those unidentified fleets were coming from the last few years, so that's one less thing to...




...nope; guess again. We've got a brand-new unidentified fleet on the board, and thanks to Admiral Ssassafrass finally knocking some sense into our scanning teams' heads, we have at least some idea of what this - and each of the others - has to mean. The number of ships and probably size class is accurate, and maybe even the armed-or-unarmed thing, or there's no way we'd know these eight transports from just a blip on the scanning screen. There's a bunch more that we can't tell yet, but with another forward laser scout about to arrive where those transports are headed - it's the reason we can see them in the first place, thanks to the miniature deep space scanner every one of our ships is mounting - it looks like we're going to meet another new ... friend ... within the year! Maybe even two, depending on exactly what those transports mean....

Regardless, I have work to do: Now that our Klackon agent is embedded so we know what to even ask for - I was told the bugs otherwise refuse to even offer anything in case we "weird old aliens" might learn something that way, which doesn't make any sense but if any of these aliens start to, I want to be notified immediately - I can (to use their turn of phrase) extend some feelers to see what kinds of exchange might be possible with them.




So let's see how unpopular I can make myself with one trade! My ship designers were just bemoaning the primitive state of their battle computers, and the Hive's class-3s are the most advanced computer of any kind that they or we or the Meklar have ever seen. It'll mean we can build better combat ships, help our spies do their jobs more effectively, give our missile bases - should we ever upgrade them - a chance to hit the broadside of a superdreadnought, and save our own computer scientists from wasting several years on a weaker version someday moderately soon. I'm a big fan of it, and the insects are theoretically excellent at materials engineering, so they were sure to equal or surpass duralloy armor before too long if they bothered researching. Should we have traded our state of the art in their best field for theirs in one we're weaker at and need, when it makes us both stronger in comparison with the vast remainder of the galaxy? Well, I did it. As for whether it was right or wrong, you'll have to tell me.


- Commander Danssin Musstardsseed, Galactic Standard Cycle 106 -

Yes, I read you, planetary governor, and we would be happy to leave. We would have been happy to leave you alone and not ever come here in the first place if you'd have just told us in the decades we've been in contact that you were here! You've obviously been here for ages with your hundred-twenty-four completed factories and forty population. All I'm asking is that you identify yourself - pretty please?

...

No response. They won't even tell me the name of the planet or the system they're in - just sending the dozen destroyers of their war fleet after me! Right, well, if that's the way it is, we might as well find out some things that would have been worth keeping secret instead!




Check out this flying. I used the asteroids as cover and as much as confirmed neither ship is carrying missiles or heavy beams - otherwise they'd have fired on me by this time - and since they're all pursuing in the face of my few laser batteries, I can bet they do have short-range beam weapons ... and with so many of them in this fleet, I'm out of here. Fortunately, I'm not stuck waiting for my drive to warm up before I can retreat like they show in "The Orion Sector" and all those other old-school science fiction shows on screen and trid. Hit the warp escape, and zoom! I'm gone into hyperspace immediately - just hoping some of the other lizards out there are getting better news than me!




Oh, yeah, that qualifies! I want me one of these! Not the bug - I mean the computer design it's bragging about that our techies learned to build from it and its fellow buggies. Looks like the Hive was true to its word this time and the tech exchange that foreign affairs pushed across last year finished going through! Now the question is just how our other explorers are doing!





Oh ... oh ... OH! Okay, then that explains everything! I'll bet all those white-flagged fleets showing up on our scanners these past years haven't been Mentaran but Hanon ... or no, that's the star system; should be Ham Han or ... I've got it: Hunam fleets! Oh, and hey, what idiot sent this report and called that iceball an "enemy" colony? I'm pretty sure their ambassador showed up just before this and talked about being friends? And in spite of their unidentified fleets wandering evreywhere, none of us have been fighting or anything. Hanon's a pretty new planet for them - just ten million people there trying to share two factories - and although this report doesn't bother to say how far, they're roughly a million parsecs away from us, so obviously we're not bombing. But you can bet they'll blame us for ever having a fleet at what didn't know until this minute was their comparatively-new colony and nevertheless not shooting at them. Such is the life of an explorer in this galaxy.




Luckily, the human with the funny helmet on her head - or is that something like the Mentaran ambassador's whatchamcallit, hair? - is willing to trade with people she apparently hates for no good reason. Luckily for her people since trade is the main thing they're good at, I hear, and if they're really pacifists like they claim, they're going to be in for a rude awakening considering the way some of their neighbors seem to want to behave. 325 billion credits sounds like a pretty big trade deal to me, but something's fishy there actually: Surely we'd both have gone for the biggest deal we could get, with them pacifists, us remotely sane, them trade-loving, and the two of us so completely separated by Meklar space that there's no way we should be fighting for ages at least. But - I mean, I don't follow politics or economics that closely, but don't we have bigger deals with the bugs and the machines already? What gives?

I don't know. I'm off through hyperspace! But hopefully somebody's working on finding out what's wrong.


- Provisional Governor Ssaurak Ssneeratalar, Galactic Standard Cycle 107 -

All readings nominal. I don't believe it.




Sure, the place is barely habitable at all, with the dead-minimum atmospheric, temperature, and water requirements to support life, but when we saw the Klackon fleet had left the place four years back and set out from Avantador, I figured it was a last hurrah on a long-shot chance for our long-range colony cruiser before the thing got scrapped in favor of ships with better planetary survival technology ... and suddenly we have a reason to exist again, setting down on a planet where we can survive without any of the fancy new environmental shielding equipment! It's almost too good to be true, and too much to believe! This means we've actually caught the Hive again - for now - in total number of planets, and ... and ... what ... but ... I ... don't ... even....



(Also, just in passing, our Human trade agreement was limited in size because their empire is so pitifully small.)

No, okay, our four-armed diplomatic friends-until-their-leader's-personality-reverse-polarity-in-ten-minutes having the biggest fleet in the known galaxy, and the most planets and population ... all that I get. But ... they ... look, these are researchers. They are practically self-bio-engineered research machines. And their technology is less advanced, supposedly, than anyone but the hopelessly-backward Meklanars next door. It's so bad that on the strength of that and their middling production numbers alone, they rate out as in a tie with us, or maybe even fractionally behind, in the Hive-dominated total power graphs for the galaxy. And it gets worse! They got out to ... what is that, sixteen worlds? I'm going with sixteen - and they did it with, when we check our spy reports, no controlled environmental technology, and no fuel better than deuterium! Which means it's not just the Einstein system; the crazy Mentarans here lucked into the most-fertile region of the entire galaxy, and proceeded to expand across it like the absolute madmentarans they are, and if they're given time to consolidate, build factories all over their disgustingly lush slice of space, and start actually researching something, they're going to blow past the rest of us so fast, we'll be choking on their dust before we hear their engines roar!

Or ... they would do that, except ... we might have a little secret.




You see, in addition to this lovely planet here, we just discovered Dalbinth, way out at the edge of our range, with a nice, big barren world almost the twin of Parath 4. And it just so happened that some of our planets had been building up ship-building reserves to shave a turn or two off construction times whenever our lab techs come up with a way to live on toxic worlds. All the long-range lasers we can send are heading down to help hold the place - apart of course from the ones fanning out to explore the stars we just brought into range from here! - and Garuga, thanks to its governor's foresight, is going to have a long-range Hive-class controlled environment ship ready to hit hyperspace in that direction within a couple of years!

(You'll also notice someone whose head is on straight decided to change the official indicator frequency that indicates Ape people's worlds and ships to blue: When they were in white, we needed to bring up the useful but less-attractive-to-me "space territory" maps to know for sure which planets were theirs and which were neutral territory. And blue probably isn't taken for reasons that have to do with a spectator sport the now-blue-flagged people enjoy.)

But maybe I haven't talked enough about myself and this new fuel base of ours, or why I officially changed its name to Oviraptoria. Well.




Remember how the Mek Dominion and the insect Hive are at war? And how there was an armed bug fleet in orbit here for years and years? So when we showed up here, we found a bunch of new craters in the soil, and some archaeological artifacts of extremely recent mint referring to the system by one of those horrible names that start with a completely meaningless numerical designation just because the Mek have a fetish about numbers or something. So apparently what happened was something like this: They colonized this world and named it, spied on the bugs - or rather sent spies to hide in bug space a lot - got the Hive completely infuriated with them, and wound up at war. Then, as I think someone recently observed, this was the only planet not controlled by us that both of their war fleets could even reach, so they fought here, the far-more-powerful Hive obviously won, nuked the colony from orbit since an invasion would have taken ages, and left. I don't know what either side had planned for the place next, but it didn't matter since we were on top of things and got here first. And now, thanks to our planet named for an ancient lizard-like creature famous for stealing eggs, some of the Meklar are really upset with us: Not for doing anything bad to them! We didn't! (Yet.) But for daring to occupy a world that once, before they lost it for reasons that have nothing to do with us, was theirs.

They'll get over it. The actually more than got over it, thanks to this year's trade alone. But if we can help it here in this minimally-habitable world in the midst of a horrible nebula, they won't get over here!


- Dr. Esstra Tee, Xenostudies Specialist, Galactic Standard Cycle 109 -

Apparently this is what happens when you send an athlete with colorful stripes on a clandestine information gathering mission to the planets of the purportedly most-intelligent beings in the galaxy:




The athlete somehow gets away with their cheap methods of jamming missile guidance systems without leaving a trace - but also without ever bothering to figure out where the laboratory from which the plans were stolen is. Admittedly, predecessors of the Mentarans - the so-called Psilons - were famous for using spaces in surprising ways in their names, but I doubt if any of their research centers are located in the star system . Nor yet the star system "," nor " ," nor " " for the matter of that. Perhaps the lizard in question was afraid that if the location was named and the signal intercepted, the theft could be more easily traced. One never knows how a ... mind ... like that one works. Perhaps the Psi ... pardon me, the Mental ... pardon me, the Mentarans are rubbing off on our agent. On the choice of technologies, let me just add that is true that hand lasers would also have been a valuable addition to our ground forces' arsenal, but that on theother hand, discerning spies prefer computer technology, as it makes their future jobs easier.

So for that subject. Now let us discuss a somewhat more advanced form of xenotechnology.




The xenoforms now in question do not have four arms, nor any arms at all, for they are the extremophiles whose manner of living was teased out by our own planetologists in the course of discovering how we too could survive in even the most fiery or chemically toxic of planetary environments. Nearly half the Conclave's planets are building the new ships that take advantage of this technology - led of course by our homeworld, which if all goes well will produce a second soon after the first - to claim the six star systems suddenly open to us thanks to lessons learned from tiny extremophilic bacterioids. But there is yet more!




Although there is some advantage to be gained by advancing our too-long neglected terraforming technology, this would not move the state of the art forward by one iota, and it is hoped that the study of certain varieties of foundational microscopic xenoflora will allow us to enrich the soil of many of our worlds, greatly expanding their population capacities and planetary fertility at a comparably minor additional cost. Sadly we could find no samples of xenobiomes on irradiated worlds like Avrae Prime, nor of terraforming technology that would be comparably advanced to this notion of enriching planetary soils - but should we ever have cause to regret alien species' possession of death spore delivery systems, the antidote to the horrible biotoxins they contain will be a potential research target as well if needed. And if all goes well, that decision will be made by a very different saurian administration.


- Purp Beebot, Galactic News Network Correspondent, Galactic Standard Cycle 110 -

A most-dreadful tragedy has occurred in the vital field of interstellar propulsion. After years of research efforts throught Conclave space, often assigning sublight drives priority over other less-vital fields, an unexpected act of cyberterrorism has erased all existing electronic records of the results accomplished in the field to date...




...by the Hive. Fortunately, Conclave efforts in the field, conducted completely independently and stored on systems separated from the Hive's by several light years of unbridged space, were completely unaffected - but we mourn for our fellow researchers, powerful rivals though they be, in this all-important field, in which - to add insult to injury - the Hive's performance is slower than in any other, and their chosen research project was accidentally leaked, through the news release for this broadcast, to the entire galaxy. From all over the conclave, voices are united in the ritual words that convey the proper level of sympathy and anguish for our poor, beleaguered, over-priviliged Hive friends: "Ha-ha! Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-NA-na!"

Also in the news:

Solan fleets are now displaying normally and fully, leaving many observers doubtful of the future.




The nature and destination of the Vanguard cruiser just detected by Conclave sensors for the first time is as yet undetermined, but if it's headed for Dalbinth and is sufficiently well-armed, with the Conclave colony ship still four years out from the system as of today, only one long-range laser destroyer in the system already, and only one more due to arrive by next year, the people of Sol may well be on the verge of expressing their own ritual words of appropriate sympathy and anguish for their lizard friends and/or enemies. Asked about the possibility, Admiral Ssassafrass gritted sharp teeth and said, "Well, if it goes right by or turns out to be a twin-missile colony ship or a bomber, the words of sympathy might have to go the other way!"

Simultaneously, Ssslaurian ships are on the move in other directions across the galaxy: The first Toxhatcher lander produced at Sssla was recently directed to the large hostile world of Rhordrolth, with Tessith due to complete another next year for distant Barroth, and more anticipated soon at Sssla again, Heralth, Valstrath, and Jaruth to colonize Roluth, Shuvirth, Apophis, and Taenth, probably respectively. No factories have been built lately in Conclave space especially because of this anticipated colonial wave, except at the very new colonies in the Parath and Oviraptoria systems: The now-departing administration wished to be able to seed population on the new worlds without leaving any idle factories. Such was the plan outlined by the enigmatic young outgoing temporary leader of the Conclave, but the new administration about to take control of the government can still veto most or all of these decisions. How much of their current plans will actually be followed, and whether any of those plans are well conceived all remains to be seen in the course of galactic history-to-be.

Roster:

- Fenn (on deck)
- haphazard1
- Dp101
- RefSteel (just played)
- Brian Shannahan (UP NOW!)

Save is attached as an actual zipped-folder-with-the-save-in-it this time, in case that's easier to work with!

[Dp101]

Is it weird that the part of the turnset I'm happiest about is successfully predicting the exact turn controlled toxic would pop based on maths done during my last set? lol. Excellent stuff all-round. Personally I'd have probably nabbed NPGs over BCIII from the bugs, mostly because if we're forced to fight anytime soon I feel like we'd wind up with a more effective stopgap design, but I'm also fully willing to accept that that wasn't the right path, getting some kind of BC is nice both for direct purposes and spying purposes. Also approve of soil enrichment, and quietly terrified of the brains lol - hopefully it'll simply magically be Fine™ and we won't have to fight them.

Also, somewhat offtopic but related to prior discussions, I just realised that the bugs getting doubled population-based production is probably significantly stronger than I thought thanks to said production scaling with planetology, they probably fall off much less than I thought.

[haphazard1]

Looks like some productive turns, RefSteel. And an entertaining story, too.

Brains with lots of planets is not good news, but erratic brains that are likely to do something crazy is potentially worse. How they are doing so poorly in tech is a mystery. I guess they have been spending every BC they can scrape together on more colony ships.

The acquired tech will be useful, and I like the Soil Enrichment choice. We will need better terraforming, but hopefully we can get one at the next tier and advance the tree while we get it. Upgrading any missiles bases with the new battle computer tech is also something to keep in mind.

If we can colonize the various worlds Toxic has opened up and start them developing, we will be in a pretty nice position.

[Fenn]

Great turn report! Now with Controlled Toxic the game is about to open up in a big way.