OSG-38 - Renaissance Psilons

[shallow_thought]

Planets get a base defense level of 1 against everything before adding their ECM against missiles and bombs.

That would make sense - I just couldn't find a reference to it in the OSG while I was skimming it.

[haphazard1]

Apologies for the slow reporting -- life has been busy. I am most of the way through the turns (2468), should finish this evening and get a real report up. Quick summary so far:

- Repelled several rock fleets at various worlds
- Our spies have stolen a bunch of tech from various people
- Conquered Sol and cleaned out every tech the Human had.

Along with our own research, we have picled up a ton of new tech. We are now leading the galaxy in tech.

[haphazard1]

While settling into his new responsibilities, the latest member of the OSG-38 wondered how he ended up in this position. He liked working in the Ministry of Industry, developing the production capacity needed to support the Psilon drive to learn as much as possible in all fields of science and expand across the galaxy. So how had he ended up in charge of a war? Before the Human invasion of Paradise, Psilons had not really thought about such things as war. Science was far more interesting to think about, after all. But it sadly looked like most of his time as leader of the OSG-38 would have to be spent on war, rather than science. It was very disappointing, but he would do the best job he could.

2460 (inherited)

We have incoming rock fleets at Tao and Lonnglast. I bolster defense spending at each just in case, as we do not have ships to help cover them.
Numerous planets are still adding factories and maxing pop. This continues.
I do as RefSteel suggested and change some of our huge ship pre-builds into ApeHurt bombers that will RELOC to Anraq to join the upcoming attack on the Humans.
We have Force Fields (PSX) and Propulsion (range 9) in percentages, and Computers (BC upgrade) is nearly a full bulb.

2461

Rock fleet at Longlast retreats; our missile bases destroy one ship before it can leave; merculites, so no real threat
Rock fleets incoming at Nature and Longlast and Tao; Nature will need ships to defend, but fleet is 6 turns out so lots of time
Range 9 completes; choose Ion Drives for more speed, although Star Gates was an interesting possibility

One more turn for attack fleet to gather at Anraq

2462

Our fleet departs Anraq for Sol; some 630+ bombers and 2 huges; with no knowledge of the planet we can not start sending pop to invade yet

2463

Rock fleets retreat from Tao and Longlast, destroy a couple more Sharks (slowest ships)
Spies steal Hard Beam from Mrrshan, frame rocks
Spies steal Cloning from Meklar, frame rocks. Could have gone for Computers and maybe get their top ECM, but could have gotten older tech. Cloning was only Planetology tech and will be very useful for raising invasion forces
Plantary Shield X completes; choose Personal Absorption Shield over Cloaking Device for better ground combat

2464

Our fleet arrives at Sol; lose about 200 bombers, some older Meteors; clear the bases and destroy some of the human fleet before they retreat

Sol has 116/130 pop, so we will need LOTS of invaders; begin sending pop from all available worlds and cloning spend to replace them
Pushback heads to Nature for defense there; Ultimatum stays to control Sol

2465

Skirmishing at Sol, no losses for us
Spies steal ECM3 from Humans, RW60% from Meklar

2466

Battle at Sol, no losses for us, destroy some Human ships; new Human huge design with tons of NPGs could be dangerous but they retreated.

BC6 completes, select IRC5

Both Meklar and Mrrshan complain about our expansion
Next turn will hit Sol with 211 invaders to ~119 defenders
Mentar finishes another Pushback; it goes to reinforce Longlast which has more incoming rocks including a new(?) huge design

2467

Our forces conquer Sol; lose about 80 of ours

Capture all techs the Humans had: Cloaking Device, Impulse Drives, Shields6, Warp Dissipator, Stinger Missiles. Some very useful upgrades to speed, missiles, shields, plus some specials
Start terraforming Sol; will need to refit factories and build defenses. Uxmai will soon finish another Pushback which can handle defense while current fleet moves on Selia

2468

Repel rock fleets at multiple planets. They have some new designs:

Spies steal BC4 from Mrrshan, frame the Klackons
Send our bombers to Selia, where they will meet a Pushback
We would need to free up a design slot, but we should build a better huge design with our new tech

2469

Usual skirmishing with rocks at multiple worlds

2470

Our fleet cleaars the 27 bases at Selia with some losses; Selia is a Steppe artifacts world, size 80 (now). Compare to our start!
Should redesign a new huge (or other) ship. Have large pre-builds at Mentar, Uxmai, and Paradise. Make sure not to build old ships!
Rocks are at war with Meklar, Klackons. They probably have enough pop for a veto block, but we should be in no danger of losing a council vote and might win.

- DaveV (UP!)
- RefSteel (on deck)
- shallow_thought (waiting)
- haphazard1 (just played)

[haphazard1]

Forgot to mention for the next player: Our fleet has cleared Selia of bases, but no pop has been sent to invade yet. With cloning it is easy to replace them, so send lots.

Good luck!

[shallow_thought]

Oh, very nice indeed. Bold going for Sol first but payed off. I'm glad to see we got Cloning, some good cross-set playing there I feel.

If the diplo win is available (and with the Rocks at war with two other races still that feels possible) do we take it?

This now feels like a clear winning position to me - although that's down to us having kept tempo up and hitting the Humans before they could get better shields - but we're probably blocked on further expansion until we can get our hands on better bombs, potentially making for a slow game.

[RefSteel]

Great turns, Haphazard!  Claiming Sol and setting up Selia and picking up lots of tech (some of it, of course, at the end of a pointy stick...) is great news, and I enjoyed reading the intro and report!

It looks to me like neither we nor the rocks will have a veto in the upcoming election, but they won't win while they're at war with the Meklar (and us) and we won't win without Mirana's vote, which I don't expect to be able to get.  If the opportunity does arise, I'm content with whatever DaveV decides; regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing what the coming turns bring!

[haphazard1]

I would be content to take a diplo win, if it turns out to be possible. Probably we won't have quite enough votes, even with the rocks being at war with multiple races. But I agree with shallow_thought that we are in (or very close to) a winning position. The rocks can not seriously threaten us without better designs or tech, but we can not really break their worlds either. We do have IRC5 being researched, which would boost our production yet again. And our spies have been scoring regular hits, so we should eventually get better bombs. It might take a long time to grind out the win, though.

I am happy to go with whatever DaveV decides, assuming a diplo win is even possible. Good luck!

[DaveV]

Got it, although I don't expect to have time to play on US Independence Day.

Good job grabbing more tech and kneecapping the humans, haphazard.

WRT the election, I agree with shallow_thought that we are very close to or have already achieved a winning position. My thought is that I'll take an election victory if it happens, but won't go out of my way to set one up.

[RefSteel]

I hope you had a happy 4th, DaveV! No rush on my account, as I probably will again be unable to play and report at least until Friday (though depending on others' schedules, I can do a swap of course) - I hope you enjoy the turns, whatever happens in the 2475 vote!

[DaveV]

A pretty "meh" set of turns. Tech rolls were bad, no great new stuff revealed for the pair of techs we did research. Note that the Meklars have Neutronium Bombs as their latest weapon tech.

I sent a bunch of transports to Selia; they arrived in 2472.



Losses were pretty even, although I calculated we should have been +10.

2475:

Election. Klackons and Meklar voted for us; everyone else voted for the rocks. For now, we apparently have a veto.



2476:

Mrrshans complain about how well we're doing.



2477:

Mrrshans attack with some designs that can't get past our shields or repulsors:



Weapon research finally completes after reaching a percentage in the high 30s.





Pulsons aren't a huge upgrade but will get us to the next rung on the ladder.

2478:

Construction research completes at about 38%. I picked Andrium Armor because auto repair and better armor are a good combination. A case could be made for IIT4, so feel free to criticize.





It's the Meklars' turn to complain about our success:



2479:

The Silicoids attack with a huge Spore design. Fortunately, our missiles shred it well before it reaches bombing range.



And now we don't need to worry as much about bio weapons:

Notes for the next player:

For the second time, I missed a Kraken establishing orbit at Nature. I've sent a Pushback to chase it away, but feel free to veto. Their last invasion lost at something like 3:1 odds.

I switched Uxmai to reserve, to try to speed up the development of our new, formerly human, worlds. I think we have enough Pushbacks, and don't want to drive maintenance too high. I haven't allocated any of the resulting reserve cash.

It seems to me we're kind of stalemated until we get better options for attacking planets. Maybe when the Meklar research another weapon tech they'll trade away Neutronium Bombs?

I dialed back espionage spending on the Silicoids and Mrrshan, since they don't have much left to steal. I turned off spy spending on the humans, since they have nothing to steal.

Edit: oops, I just noticed that the Meklars have a couple huge and 18 large ships on the way to Proteus. You should cancel the movement of the Pushback from Proteus to Nature and send the ship from Mentar to Proteus instead.