OSG 30 - It's just a number, nothing to worry about

[haphazard1]

Good luck, shallow_thought! Some time spent emphasizing our defenses sounds good to me. As you noted, we have been remarkably fortunate in the rocks not having any decent engine tech, but we can not count on that continuing forever.

I am finally back home. Damage is a lot less than the more dire forecasts, thankfully. But there is still quite a bit of cleaning up to do before things will be back to something resembling normal. I am much luckier than a lot of people.

[Ianus]

Welcome home haphazard1! I hope that everything cleans up easily and that life gets back to normal quickly!

[shallow_thought]

Arguably shouldn't have played last two turns after being out for celebratory meal but:
- Lots of GAIA worlds
- Lots of worlds with shield X
- Captured Firma
- Space superiority over Sol
- Humans cleaned out of tech, including Atmospheric Terraforming
- Hercular Missiles, Armour Exoskeleton and Advanced Soil researched
- HEF, Advanced Scanner and other good things under way
- 250 cloaked, medium Omega-V bombers gathering for next player to have fun with (that was my finger in the air estimate of what was needed to tackle Rocks - you may well want to check that)

Save and report to follow tomorrow.

@Haphazard1 - glad to hear that it's not too bad. Hope you're able to get stuff sorted soon.

[Psillycyber]

I wonder if we can clinch the victory by 2475? With all the Gaia worlds, glassing a couple of enemy planets might do it...

[haphazard1]

Thanks, everyone! There is a lot of cleaning up to do, and I need to help my brother with his place also, but overall things are not too bad. My neighborhood did not get hit nearly as hard as a lot of areas, thankfully.

Sounds like some good progress, shallow_thought. Atmoshperic Terraforming is a nice pickup for our few hostile worlds, and advanced soil will make all our worlds much bigger (and faster growing). We should be in no danger of a council loss, and may soon approach being able to win outright via the vote. And Planetary Shield X and Hercular missiles make me feel a lot safer.

[shallow_thought]

OK, time to build on all the hard work of those who killed the Alkari and took all their stuff.

First, a lot of planets get switched over to shield building. All other non-poor worlds focus on factory building where they have the capacity. That still leaves quite a bit for research; I dial construction back to "only" 35% and focus on our new missiles rather than planetology for the moment. All ship-building stops for a - hopefully short - while.

The big question is where to focus our fleet. We need to cover the new worlds (particularly Poor Tyr, which will probably never build a missile base), which makes an attack on nearby Silicoid Vega attractive, but it could well be too tough to crack - Firma is likely to be easier to take from the Humans. The incoming Silicoid fleets are weaker than the one that just retreated from Paranar, so I feel comfortable moving most of the fleet to Dolz to make a play against the Apes. In fact, the forces at Rha (one Oven Huge, three larges) seem just right to cover Paranar and Tyr, so the whole fleet can be shuffled around.

So, plan is to:
- cover Tyr and Paranar
- consolidate defences (build shields, tech Hercs)
- hit Humans at Firma
- build a rock-crushing bomber and start concentrating at Mobas

T2461: Set starts with some decent luck - Armoured Exoskeleton comes in without delay. I pick Andrium Armour without even checking whether IIT5 is on the same tier or not, given that we have IIT6 already.

Paranar's shield X is up, and I'll build a few more bases. Reserve spending completes the shields at Bootis, Mobas and Iranha as well, so they can back to teching or building stuff.

No new invasions en-route.

I look at ship design. A large bomber can get BC IV, Shield V, ECM IV, Zortium, Cloaking, Stabilizer and 5 bombs for 731BC. However, a medium can get  BC IV, ECM IV, Duralloy, Cloaking, Stabilizer and 1 bomb for 111 (note that Duralloy takes it to 27 rather than 18 - Pulsons do 20, so that's 2 hits). I think I prefer the slightly higher bomb density and higher defense rather than the shields and HP. Opinions welcome; I went with the Microwave.



So, Mobas builds the new design while Iranha forks out for another huge PsillycoidX. I can't see those heavy phasors going out of style any time soon.

Even with shield and factory building still going on (all relevant planets reconfigured to just build shields), Hercs are at 10% (LED just lit); the rest of the research goes into planetology.

T2462: Dolz suffers a major radiation accident! A load of pop I was going to send to invade Firma anyway has to go into space towards Celtsi - sadly I can't see Firma yet to invade. I decide to launch the fleet a turn earlier than planned - some of the new bombers are ready, and I want visibility. Next turn I can start the invasion, and Celtsi can refill from the refugees from Dolz.

No new incoming invasions. Paranar has five bases on top of its shield. Hopefully they will be Hercular real soon now (24%).

T2463: I don't play the battle at Firma terribly well and lose 9 of my new bombers. I need a bigger stack really, but wanted visibility ASAP to solve my pop issues I should have alternated strikes with my two bomber stacks but rushed it . Invasion forces are on their way from the more distant worlds of Celtsi and Mu Delphi.



Silicoids en-route to Tyr. I should have all the time in the world to concentrate some defensive ships there (mostly older Ovens).

Planets maxing out all over. Some get transferred to ship-building, others focus on tech (if they're not busy cloning the next wave of invaders).

T2464: While waiting for Hercs to come in at 41%, Advanced Soil Enrichment pops up at basically 0%. I'm not complaining. Oh, and Hercs as well . I pick Complete Eco (no other choice at next tier) and Pulse Phasor over Hellfire Torpedos (although both Hand Phasor and Gauss Autocannon at current tier were tempting - Gauss + HEF is a favourite of mine). Sadly, we're missing Disruptor and Neutronium Bombs, although we shouldn't actually need either.



No new incoming invasions. With Hercs in and PSX built I don't need ships at Paranar - they head for Tyr.

Everywhere that can is set to go GAIA next turn.

I'm actually a bit baffled as to what to set tech spending to. In the end I go for seeding Advanced Scanner - better invasion visibility and better spying would both be nice.


T2465: Lots of Gaia worlds. I send pop from Tyr to Bootis. Still concentrating bombers at Firma (transports will arrive next turn). Sol next, or Silicoid Spica?

T2466: Bio antidote, star gates, BC VI and VII, IIT5 and contact with the Mrrshans are the fruits of victory at Firma . Not bad at all for a size 55 - although I'm still greedy for Atmospheric Terraforming. I wasted 5 pop by sending too many troops though!

Ooh, I get to pick High Energy Focus for our next propulsion tech. Sorry, didn't even look at the other options . Advanced Scanner trickles at "just lit" while HEF seeds.

Some more incoming Silicoid invasions on their way, but all except the one for Tyr are going to run into PSX and at least 5 Hercular bases, and none are enormous death stacks.

Atmo is the Human's last tech, so looks like Sol is next on the menu after all. I reckon we need about 200 of the new bombers to take on 20 Pulson bases at Silicoid worlds (I'll try to do a less rough analysis at some point), so it will be a little while (more factories to come first as the Gaia planets fill up). I decide that I can split our 6 huges at Firma and both hold it against Human cruisers and escort the bombers to strike Sol. Let's hope I'm not being cocky.

Oh, and I'm ignoring the Mrrshans. I'm not even going to waste time spying on them.

T2467: 40 Hyper-X bases at Sol, but with plenty of asteroids and two bomber stacks I manage zero losses (much, much better performance than at Firma). Having the huges to distract (heavy phasors doing at least some damage) helped.

Mrrshans declare war. Aren't they adorable? 

Hmm. Humans are coming for Trax, albeit only with a pair of Cruisers. Two missile bases but no planetary shield. Meh. PSV will block the Humans - it might even be overkill - and even Trax can build that in the two turns before they arrive.

OK - invading Sol. I lost 15 troops killing 55 at Firma, Sol only has 120, so I only really need a first wave of 50-60. Ugly as it is, this is going to come from Radiated Dolz and newly conquered Firma, with replacements shuttled in from further back (actually Dolz can clone 20 million a year, so it's doable). Let's be honest, I might not do this if I could get enough force there from elsewhere before the end of my set, but I can't  . For the moment Firma is building a shield, with reserve help.

T2468: Umm. Sol's pop has fallen to 77? Huh. I can't see any human transports. Did I miss this last turn and only focus on the max pop? Anyway, half of Firma's pop leaves their new homes for even newer ones.

OK... so next couple of turns are being played after a family dinner out. Let's see how that goes.

Meklar will sign a NAP but won't break alliance with Silicoids afterwards. Next player should feel free to betray them like a hungry wolverine at first opportunity.

Wow - there are enough ships flying around that the interturn was actually slow. Fortunately, many of them were ours.

T2469: OK... so Trax didn't get a class V shield up (I must have miscalculated - 585 per turn, halved for poor, should have got V up in two turns, right?). So it's two launchers at shield 5 against two larges with Grav beams. The computer favours scatter V, I fire Hercs instead, we take 11 points of damage before both cruisers are dead. I leave Trax to finish its shield. The planet has suffered enough.

With a fine sense of irony, our spies steal Atmo (the Human's last tech) just before our troops reach their homeworld. Nice.

The "news" says we're no. 1 in pop. Duh.

All our hostile worlds get a nice dose of eco spending. Mobas should be a powerhouse after Atmo and Adv Soil hit, and it will be nice to fix Dolz and get more pop on the (current) front lines.

With HEF seeded, Andrium Armour gets some attention.

T2470: The lone Silicoid Whale that arrives at Tyr somehow thinks it's smart to stand and fight against our obsolescent Ovens, Chernobl-thingys and our Warp Dissipator ship. It doesn't last long enough to answer the question: why?

At Sol, the Humans somehow manage to build four missile bases in a single turn and have a huge Warship turn up. Might have been scary if we weren't lugging Heavy Phasors against their Heavy Ions. It runs away, so it's smarter than a Whale.



The humans defend Sol against the first wave of invaders . I think they've had a tech upgrade, but didn't take the screenshots to be sure. They are still behind on gropo, but not as ridiculously as results a few turns ago would suggest (later note: I wonder if I just wasn't paying attention at Firma and read max pop for pop - they may have had fewer than 55 mil actually on the planet, which would have made my "calculations" way off ; couldn't really have hit them with any more this turn though, so the impact of the error is limited). We have more troops incoming, and Firma can add another 20 mil (I should really leave this for the next player to decide, but nah - death to the Apes!).

I set tech to seed better force fields. This can be changed easily if something else is preferred.

Up to 250 Microwave bombers. That might be enough (along with the large bombers) to consider hitting rock worlds with 20 or so bases. I think that 40 might be a problem still.

We are clearly basically won. I'm only including the Silicoids in the tech view as none of the rest have anything that we want (or that remotely threatens the PSx + Herc + Scatter V Combo).







Diplomatically we have a NAP with the Meklar and wars with everyone else; as can be seen from the Silicoid screen they are allied with the Meklar, so the NAP won't last. We can probably take domination with a clear conscience if it's available at the vote, although I personally would be sad not to spend at least some time crushing the Silicoids. I don't think we've quite enough pop just yet, but we've five more turns to grow.

[Ianus]

Very well done! Looks like we have this one in the bag.

Can I hear opinions about whether to take the victory at the next vote or if there is interest in continuing to play? I don't mind either way. End it now or play to the next vote?

I should be able to play tonight.

[haphazard1]

Oh, and I'm ignoring the Mrrshans. I'm not even going to waste time spying on them.

....

Mrrshans declare war. Aren't they adorable? 

Poor kitties. No one respects them.

Some very good turns, shallow_thought. Thanks for the full report.

I would be OK with taking a diplo victory at this point, as we clearly have the strength to win this one from here. But if the team would prefer to beat up the rocks, I would be happy with that too. They do have some nice tech, including the repair special; if they build some decent huge designs they could provide some challenge. But I think our economic power is going to be overwhelming.

The key phase of this game was our struggle with the formerly mighty Alkari. I think that once we managed to gain the upper hand against the birds and started taking their worlds and tech, we were on the path to victory.

[Psillycyber]

I'd be okay with winning the council vote in 2475 if it can be done. As it currently stands, it looks like we would be just short (an easy way to eyeball it from the status screen is that our population bar needs to be at least twice as long as all of the other population bars stacked end-to-end). But I bet if we glassed some planets, it would put us over the top.

P.S. those microwave bombers look nasty! Imagine the horror of seeing an AI show up with hundreds of something like that in 2470!

[RFS-81]

Good turns, shallow_thought!

I'm ok with taking the victory next election, if possible.

Looking at the map, the empty yellow star near Fieras must be Orion, so I guess the Mrrshans really fed their colship to the Guardian and then got enveloped by the Silicoids.