OSG-38 - Renaissance Psilons

[DaveV]

More slow but steady progress. Sounds good, RefSteel!

It's amusing to see the Ultimatum still out there fighting all these years later. There must be a substantial group of sailors whose sole job is to move through the ship with steel wool and solvents, scrubbing off the rust.

[haphazard1]

Looks good, RefSteel. We are slowly chipping away at some rock worlds, while continuing to learn new tech. If we are lucky, perhaps we can get a council vote to go our way. If not, we can keep grinding out gains here and there.

Good luck, shallow_thought!

[shallow_thought]

Got it. Will see what can be done with Ref's new bomber design.

[shallow_thought]

At first, I was really disappointed when they cancelled the Nova and put the production into bombers instead. I mean, as an expert in repair systems I'm not much use in one of those flying eggshells (for which I am duly thankful). My first active post, instead of to a shiny new Dreadnought, was to the oldest ship in the fleet - the one and only member of the Ultimatum class. And boy, my first impressions were not warm. The dull grey of Duralloy instead of the sparkling, electric silver of Andrium. Pitting and scarring where the autorepairs had worked, but not been able to quite match the original material. The dull glow of the ancient, sluggish engines, the almost apologetic noise of the Ion cannons that would barely punch through wood let alone a planetary shield. There were only two parts of the ship that felt at all up-to-date. One was the racks and racks of Fusion Bombs, still our best way to drive back the spread of the aliens throughout the galaxy; the other was the system that was my special care: the auto-repair.

It should have been obvious, but I'd never really thought about. The design of the ARS was something that we'd just got right the first time, and never needed to change - I felt at home again.  As I spent the following years working on it, hearing it hum as it patched the occasional scratch from a Human missile (they kept building bases, we kept knocking them straight back down again), I grew to understand that, in a sense, this was true of the rest of the ship. It was still able to give good service, its design was still sound, and you could feel the history speaking to you from the walls (literally so in the case of some of the sub-sentient systems - they'd picked up some odd tics over the decades). I'm almost sorry to have to move on to the new Phasor 4 now I've been promoted (there was no question of moving the section chief - there'[attachment=26149] a rumour he was with the ship when it launched); I won't forget the true pride of the Psilon fleet.

Not a huge amount of meat here, so I'm going to summarize. I didn't rush, it just seemed a straightforward set.
- Put a lot of production into bombers (via pre-builds where possible) in the first few years, trying to get up to my "safe" estimate of about 1200.
- Once that was done, built factories everywhere.
- Advanced Soil came in towards the end of the set (I took IT60, which I think was the only choice to advance), so our non-hostile worlds are now Gaian and growing (and building yet more factories); shame we don't have Atmo.
- I got Phasors from a spy hit on the cats, so switched the dreadnought design to make use of them; the heavies can theoretically get through Silicoid planetary shielding.

Captured Willow for the loss of ~100 bombers and 25 pop; the pop came from Mentar because I wanted Nature to finish getting shield and base up at last (everywhere except Willow now has defenses IIRC), but pop is on the way from Nature to Mentar now to compensate. We picked up Tachyon Beam from the ruins.




Cats vote for the Rocks, leaving us at 23 against 18.




Denubius is set to build some replacement bombers and relocate them to Willow (note that it will take multiple turns to build 100 - they are small but expensive); our new Phasor dreadnought at Uxmai is hanging around to help against the incoming Silicoid fleet, but that's probably over-cautious and it could be moved out to start helping with more invasions. Hopefully the boost to production from IRC and Advanced Soil will kick in and let us build enough to walk over the rocks some more before they improve their shields ...

The save is attached (has the RB UI for doing this been updated, BTW?).

Roster:

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

[DaveV]

Scooter had a thread in the Administration thread saying he'd updated the forum software about 11 hours before this post, so it's entirely possible the UI changed.

Every planet we take from the Silicoids decreases their population and increases ours, and advanced soil enrichment should help pump up our population (as will +60 terraforming). It sounds to me like we're on a glide path to a win at the next election, or, worst case, the following one.

[haphazard1]

Sounds good, shallow_thought. We continue to chip away at the rocks, and as DaveV said each planet taken boosts us and weakens them. I will try to keep the momentum going, so GOT IT!

[shallow_thought]

Every planet we take from the Silicoids decreases their population and increases ours, and advanced soil enrichment should help pump up our population (as will +60 terraforming). It sounds to me like we're on a glide path to a win at the next election, or, worst case, the following one.

The lever to pull to try to make certain of this might be to manipulate the cats - it never occurred to me to try, but if we're genuinely at war with the Silicoids, we can try to bribe them in if we're in a hurry in 25t turns time.

[haphazard1]

Interim update after 5 turns:

Firma has been captured from the rocks, Zyro Shield looted
Centauri (115 pop) has been cleared of bases and ground troops are on the way
Accumulating new bomber fleet in south to open a second front against the rocks

[haphazard1]

The latest leader of the OSG-38 considered his time in office as he prepared to hand over control. The previous ten years had been difficult times of war and destruction, with terrible loss of Psilon lives. But the balance of power in the galaxy was steadily shifting in the Psilon people's favor. Hopefully all the warring would finally end soon, and the study of science could once again take priority.

(Unless otherwise mentioned, assume there are multiple skirmishes with rock fleets and repeated smashing of 1 or 2 human bases at Maalor every single turn. The rocks are certainly persistent....)


2500 (inherited turn)

Send our fleet at Willow to Firma to clear the rock bases there
Spend on terraforming at Willow as waste has current pop over planetary cap

2501

Smash most of a rock fleet at Uxmai, the rest retreat
Destroy rock bases at Firma, send invasion force from Mentar; spend heavily on eco to replace pop

2502

Rocks now have Zyro Shield
Shuffle fleets to hit Centauri in 2 turns while still covering Willow and Firma

2503

Our ground troops capture Firma, loot Zyro Shield; choose Deflectors 11 next (over Personal Barrier Shield)
Core planets begin maxing out with new pop, factory limits

2504

Our bombers clear rock bases at Centauri; major world, 115 pop, 39 bases; Mentar sends invasion force
Begin accumulating new bomber fleet in south to open second front against rocks

2505

Rocks have a new design, the Polaris; huge with lots of Tachyon Beans and a few heavy fusion beams; our Pushbacks can handle them, due to Repulsor Beam
Cats now have Particle Beam
Rocks get the wealthy merchant event, get 2000 BC

2506

Our ground troops capture Centauri thanks to superior tech; loot Mass Driver (only rock tech we did not have)
Our spies detroy 5 missile bases at Xudax and frame the Klackons

2507

Meklar complain about our expansion
Send Phasor6.0 to Ryoun to check situation

2508

Cats complain about our expansion
Meklar cancel our NAP; could be nasty if they come after us, as they have neutronium bombs
Ryoun is size 65 with 22 bases and a Monitor (huge with heavy ion cannon and merculites)
Send northern fleet to Kulthos (rocks)

2509

Our fleets clear bases at Kulthos and Ryoun; both are medium size hostile planets; send invasion forces to both
Our spies steal ECM Jammer 5 from Meklar

2510

Our ground forces capture Ryoun; loot ECM Jammer 6
Our spies blow up 2 bases at Xudax, which has 28 of them
Our spies hit the Mrrshan and steal Anti Matter Bombs! Also frame the rocks for the theft

Notes for the next player:

We have ground troops arriving at Kulthos next turn, should easily take the planet.
With our new anti matter bombs, we should create a new bomber design and stop building the old ones. LOTS of planets will need to be updated.
We have sizable fleets at both Kulthos and Ryoun. Keep the plaanets covered until they are secure, but can move on as ships are available.
Watch out for the Meklar, since they cancelled our NAP.
Computers, propulsion, and weapons have all entered the (very low) percentages. Construction is an almost full bulb. More tech should hit during your turns.
Good luck! I think we are now definitely in a winning position.


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

[shallow_thought]

AM BOMBS.

There were other words; they were also nice.