The pre-war turns are definitely taking a lot of time here; I may have overextended a little with my planning! I've played a bit further than this, but to give you some idea of what's going on (without, quite yet, a full view of all the complexities) here's what I've actually written up so far:
Report, Part 1:
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...2...
Barroth Bluegrass Spaceport, 0600 hours
"Launch window is in nineteen minutes! Tau squads, go! Go! Go!"
We're charging into the transports like they're the first outside cover on an enemy planet's surface just after the air support's had its way, our training telling, keeping the rush orderly and smooth, because our window's so tight there's barely time to breathe. There isn't enough room for all the transports on the tarmac at once, and our whole battalion have to be on-board and ready for launch in the time between our ride's arrival and its departure time to clear the runway for the next 'sport. Why they have to run everything so close and sharp, I have no idea, unless it's another drill for an assualt someday, wherever we're deployed. We have to be moving forward for that somewhere anyway - we can hardly help it, starting on the far side of home space from the machines. Amd it's not like I don't understand the logistical nightmare: Every tarmac is as crammed as this! Half my homeworld's population is heading out together in one giant transport fleet!
Onboard, into my crash web, and I tie myself in, ready as I'll ever be, triple-checking all my gear's in place right here with me: Duralloy helmet and body armor, energy deflection field projector, field rations, water pack, my mess kit, emptied of everything but the spoon to make room for my letters from Clessar, and the new Solauran toy they issued to each of us just before we set out.
I don't understand what the anthros use all that head-stuff they call "hair" for, but it must be good for something, because this one has a lot of it, and you can tell at a glance she's well into the genius category. She's demonstrating the ion rifle's assembly and operation, hand-manipulating the holodisplay with virtual controls, showing us sample planetary approach vectors to give visual learners a visceral sense for the timing of all the prep while she explains. High budget used to good effect, and I'm liking the looks of this fancy new rifle already, in case I ever have to go head to sensory and processor suite with one of those Dominion machines. Word is, she's the same Sol native who went over the technical details with our research and engineering teams, and the insights she gave them about ion-weapon miniaturization made it possible to build the next key piece of our puzzle: An upgraded gunship to help hold the skies for our fleet!
They tell me the Charge 3.0 is pretty much just a Glitcher with a battle computer added and some extra maneuvering thrusters in case of incoming fire and other emergencies. The old missile cruisers have all hit the scrap heap by now, and that leaves nothing but weapons for going to war with the machine-enemy. I notice we're pretty reliant on short-range weaponry up there since the Tempests are still a fantasy, but we'll have to hope there's a chance to fix that if we find out it's necessary.
What I'm not so sure about is the deal we made for all this. Word is the monkey ambassador came to us with a proposal to let their scientist up there teach us about their hand-held ion weaponry, but we would have to pay them handsomely in peaceful technology: The only deal they were willing to make was for our latest terraforming techniques. If the Solars had more worlds, we might have balked a lot more, or if they were more advanced or powerful or anything, and I would worry what would happen if our silicon-based rivals get their rocky claws on that technology through the simians, but that's not a concern since they have it already! We'll deal with that when we must - and if. Right now, I'm happy with the friendly weight of my new ion rifle and the thought of a Charge 3.0 flying interference for me!
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...1...
Avantador Weapons Testing Facility, 2200 hours
We've got research funding coming in again - maybe the last gasp, but it feels good: Just an invitation to luck, maybe, but hard work has payed off that way before! This is our last chance to get graviton beams ready to deploy in time for the first-wave Meklar engagement, so we'll be working overtime here at the lab, still skimping every other research budget except for the computer geeks clawing their way toward a big battle computer upgrade down on Rinnenth or wherever their favorite spot is these days. Bahamut knows they're nowhere near the front - not like us!
It doesn't feel like a battle front, hidden in our top-secret labs and subterranean testing grounds, with robotic merchants still trading with our live ones at the main orbital spaceport. Of course there's so little mineral wealth to fight over here on Avantador, that's hardly surprising. It probably feels different elsewhere - and almost everywhere else maybe: We have more new fleets and transports launching from all over space, all timed to within a single hour for eight different starfleets across the vast reaches of space, not counting the score or more racing to our various worlds on slightly-looser timetables. As for those vital eight ... this is their time. None of us know how the robot Dominion is going to react ... but like it or not, we're about to start finding out! Here's hoping we can get these grav beams ready in time to meet them!
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...CONTACT!
Deep Meklon orbit, 0400 hours
That's a hard confirm: I've reached the enemy homeworld. Had to wait around an Askook asteroid last year, sharing the space with one of those "Sentry" Scouts our non-aggression pact partners like to spam all over the place so I wouldn't tip anyone off. Had my hyperdrive ready and plotted in for days before those transports out of Barroth crossed the enemy's scanner threshold and I launched. So here's what a machine-made homeworld looks like when they put up a dozen defensive bases and don't bother to upgrade them to their latest technology!
We know they've got scatter-pack rockets literally five times as effective as the garbage those bases are too slow to even throw my way before I can retreat: Their Nexus cruisers in orbit are packing twin five-racks of the things! If our bombers were positioned for it, I'd be begging StratCom to pivot and make this place their primary target! If we take advantage of Askook again the way I did.... Well, that's old eggshells now anyway. Obviously my ion cannons aren't taking on their homeworld, even when its defenses are as useless as this, so I'm hitting hyperspace ASAP. Just a couple of transmissions passing by on my way out - may as well have a look and see....
Ha! I'll just bet Meklon's military leaders want to get their servos on our ion rifle technology! No way we're biting: Much as we'd love to have planetary shields eventually, I know how we want these 'bots to get their first introduction to those miniaturized little beauties: Via the particle streams bursting out of the business end!
The really fun thing though? Those rifles used to be our state-of-the-art weapons technology! But guess whose invitation to luck was accepted with a flowery RSVP!
My ship's little ion guns are looking less and less impressive now that lady luck brought a gift basket full of graviton beams to the party! Mainly because with the new tech in our engineers' teeth, they can use some of the gravitic principles involved to build even smaller ion guns that pack the same punch as these! Someone might put grav beams on a warship someday too - just, you know, probably not against these machines.
I'll say I'm a little surprised we didn't step back and start looking into neutron pellet guns on the super-cheap, just because they're great, or Anti-Matter Bombs for real base-killing power ... but even though they're twice as difficult to pick up, I guess I can see why our crazy leader went for the Omega-Vs: We'll hopefully have fusion bombs soon in case we need them, but Omegas will basically future-proof our bombers, and they're the best way of actually advancing the state of the art ... maybe. Or the old lizard's just crazy!
Anyway I'm out of here, hitting hyperspace before those slow-as-molasses bases or ships manage to launch any scatters or hyper-Vs. I'll just send in the specs to combine with all four of the other scanner ships that hit other Meklar worlds simultaneously, in hopes of getting a complete picture of their fleet!
Believe it or not, this seems to be it for the moment: Slow and stupid and about as dangerous to a fleet like ours as a major sneeze. There's just one problem: They've got more upgrades available for their bases than just the scatters they forgot to stick on their homeworld here! Not the hyper-X rockets, which honestly won't matter, but the very thing they must have just acquired before they tried to trade it to us for our cool new rifles: Class-V Planetary shields! Those ... um ... those may put a bit of a crimp in our nuclear-bomber-based battle plans!
You can have one guess at whether the Chief Loon in Charge is scuttling the plans on account of them. This is the year - the year our plans stand revealed, with fleets visibly incoming right at the enemy - and in five cases, actually doing a flyby, like me! It's too late to turn back - at least, it's too late to turn back unless you're sane!
I'll try to finish the set and post the rest of the report tomorrow - um, hopefully with some kind of good news? On the weapons discussion: Yup, I should probably have gone back to pick up cheap NPGs. I can definitely think of use cases for heavy beam ships, but they're situational. (And even more so than in original MoOO, unless the special works differently in this game, there's no reason a repulsor ship can't be effective with short-range weaponry!) It's nice to have the option for Heavy Ions in case we want it, especially with neither Neutron Blasters nor Fusion Beams in our tree, but they aren't needed right now as far as I can see.
(May 14th, 2024, 02:11)RefSteel Wrote: The pre-war turns are definitely taking a lot of time here; I may have overextended a little with my planning! I've played a bit further than this, but to give you some idea of what's going on (without, quite yet, a full view of all the complexities) here's what I've actually written up so far:
Report, Part 1:
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...2...
Barroth Bluegrass Spaceport, 0600 hours
"Launch window is in nineteen minutes! Tau squads, go! Go! Go!"
We're charging into the transports like they're the first outside cover on an enemy planet's surface just after the air support's had its way, our training telling, keeping the rush orderly and smooth, because our window's so tight there's barely time to breathe. There isn't enough room for all the transports on the tarmac at once, and our whole battalion have to be on-board and ready for launch in the time between our ride's arrival and its departure time to clear the runway for the next 'sport. Why they have to run everything so close and sharp, I have no idea, unless it's another drill for an assualt someday, wherever we're deployed. We have to be moving forward for that somewhere anyway - we can hardly help it, starting on the far side of home space from the machines. Amd it's not like I don't understand the logistical nightmare: Every tarmac is as crammed as this! Half my homeworld's population is heading out together in one giant transport fleet!
Onboard, into my crash web, and I tie myself in, ready as I'll ever be, triple-checking all my gear's in place right here with me: Duralloy helmet and body armor, energy deflection field projector, field rations, water pack, my mess kit, emptied of everything but the spoon to make room for my letters from Clessar, and the new Solauran toy they issued to each of us just before we set out.
I don't understand what the anthros use all that head-stuff they call "hair" for, but it must be good for something, because this one has a lot of it, and you can tell at a glance she's well into the genius category. She's demonstrating the ion rifle's assembly and operation, hand-manipulating the holodisplay with virtual controls, showing us sample planetary approach vectors to give visual learners a visceral sense for the timing of all the prep while she explains. High budget used to good effect, and I'm liking the looks of this fancy new rifle already, in case I ever have to go head to sensory and processor suite with one of those Dominion machines. Word is, she's the same Sol native who went over the technical details with our research and engineering teams, and the insights she gave them about ion-weapon miniaturization made it possible to build the next key piece of our puzzle: An upgraded gunship to help hold the skies for our fleet!
They tell me the Charge 3.0 is pretty much just a Glitcher with a battle computer added and some extra maneuvering thrusters in case of incoming fire and other emergencies. The old missile cruisers have all hit the scrap heap by now, and that leaves nothing but weapons for going to war with the machine-enemy. I notice we're pretty reliant on short-range weaponry up there since the Tempests are still a fantasy, but we'll have to hope there's a chance to fix that if we find out it's necessary.
What I'm not so sure about is the deal we made for all this. Word is the monkey ambassador came to us with a proposal to let their scientist up there teach us about their hand-held ion weaponry, but we would have to pay them handsomely in peaceful technology: The only deal they were willing to make was for our latest terraforming techniques. If the Solars had more worlds, we might have balked a lot more, or if they were more advanced or powerful or anything, and I would worry what would happen if our silicon-based rivals get their rocky claws on that technology through the simians, but that's not a concern since they have it already! We'll deal with that when we must - and if. Right now, I'm happy with the friendly weight of my new ion rifle and the thought of a Charge 3.0 flying interference for me!
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...1...
Avantador Weapons Testing Facility, 2200 hours
We've got research funding coming in again - maybe the last gasp, but it feels good: Just an invitation to luck, maybe, but hard work has payed off that way before! This is our last chance to get graviton beams ready to deploy in time for the first-wave Meklar engagement, so we'll be working overtime here at the lab, still skimping every other research budget except for the computer geeks clawing their way toward a big battle computer upgrade down on Rinnenth or wherever their favorite spot is these days. Bahamut knows they're nowhere near the front - not like us!
It doesn't feel like a battle front, hidden in our top-secret labs and subterranean testing grounds, with robotic merchants still trading with our live ones at the main orbital spaceport. Of course there's so little mineral wealth to fight over here on Avantador, that's hardly surprising. It probably feels different elsewhere - and almost everywhere else maybe: We have more new fleets and transports launching from all over space, all timed to within a single hour for eight different starfleets across the vast reaches of space, not counting the score or more racing to our various worlds on slightly-looser timetables. As for those vital eight ... this is their time. None of us know how the robot Dominion is going to react ... but like it or not, we're about to start finding out! Here's hoping we can get these grav beams ready in time to meet them!
Conclave Military Strategic Command Wrote:...CONTACT!
Deep Meklon orbit, 0400 hours
That's a hard confirm: I've reached the enemy homeworld. Had to wait around an Askook asteroid last year, sharing the space with one of those "Sentry" Scouts our non-aggression pact partners like to spam all over the place so I wouldn't tip anyone off. Had my hyperdrive ready and plotted in for days before those transports out of Barroth crossed the enemy's scanner threshold and I launched. So here's what a machine-made homeworld looks like when they put up a dozen defensive bases and don't bother to upgrade them to their latest technology!
We know they've got scatter-pack rockets literally five times as effective as the garbage those bases are too slow to even throw my way before I can retreat: Their Nexus cruisers in orbit are packing twin five-racks of the things! If our bombers were positioned for it, I'd be begging StratCom to pivot and make this place their primary target! If we take advantage of Askook again the way I did.... Well, that's old eggshells now anyway. Obviously my ion cannons aren't taking on their homeworld, even when its defenses are as useless as this, so I'm hitting hyperspace ASAP. Just a couple of transmissions passing by on my way out - may as well have a look and see....
Ha! I'll just bet Meklon's military leaders want to get their servos on our ion rifle technology! No way we're biting: Much as we'd love to have planetary shields eventually, I know how we want these 'bots to get their first introduction to those miniaturized little beauties: Via the particle streams bursting out of the business end!
The really fun thing though? Those rifles used to be our state-of-the-art weapons technology! But guess whose invitation to luck was accepted with a flowery RSVP!
My ship's little ion guns are looking less and less impressive now that lady luck brought a gift basket full of graviton beams to the party! Mainly because with the new tech in our engineers' teeth, they can use some of the gravitic principles involved to build even smaller ion guns that pack the same punch as these! Someone might put grav beams on a warship someday too - just, you know, probably not against these machines.
I'll say I'm a little surprised we didn't step back and start looking into neutron pellet guns on the super-cheap, just because they're great, or Anti-Matter Bombs for real base-killing power ... but even though they're twice as difficult to pick up, I guess I can see why our crazy leader went for the Omega-Vs: We'll hopefully have fusion bombs soon in case we need them, but Omegas will basically future-proof our bombers, and they're the best way of actually advancing the state of the art ... maybe. Or the old lizard's just crazy!
Anyway I'm out of here, hitting hyperspace before those slow-as-molasses bases or ships manage to launch any scatters or hyper-Vs. I'll just send in the specs to combine with all four of the other scanner ships that hit other Meklar worlds simultaneously, in hopes of getting a complete picture of their fleet!
Believe it or not, this seems to be it for the moment: Slow and stupid and about as dangerous to a fleet like ours as a major sneeze. There's just one problem: They've got more upgrades available for their bases than just the scatters they forgot to stick on their homeworld here! Not the hyper-X rockets, which honestly won't matter, but the very thing they must have just acquired before they tried to trade it to us for our cool new rifles: Class-V Planetary shields! Those ... um ... those may put a bit of a crimp in our nuclear-bomber-based battle plans!
You can have one guess at whether the Chief Loon in Charge is scuttling the plans on account of them. This is the year - the year our plans stand revealed, with fleets visibly incoming right at the enemy - and in five cases, actually doing a flyby, like me! It's too late to turn back - at least, it's too late to turn back unless you're sane!
I'll try to finish the set and post the rest of the report tomorrow - um, hopefully with some kind of good news? On the weapons discussion: Yup, I should probably have gone back to pick up cheap NPGs. I can definitely think of use cases for heavy beam ships, but they're situational. (And even more so than in original MoOO, unless the special works differently in this game, there's no reason a repulsor ship can't be effective with short-range weaponry!) It's nice to have the option for Heavy Ions in case we want it, especially with neither Neutron Blasters nor Fusion Beams in our tree, but they aren't needed right now as far as I can see.
Honestly I'm totally fine with no NPGs at this stage, as mentioned they're starting to hit the limits of their usefulness. Really I want something like an autoblaster or fusion beam, but as-is, gravitons may well be good enough? I need to do the maths on how good they actually are tbh. Good luck with the set! And might I suggest doing whatever's necessary to try and acquire some fusion bombs in the near future if our first wave doesn't work out (since I'm assuming we'd capture them in that case) just so that we have *some* kind of good tool against planetary shields... what unfortunate timing on those popping up. Nuclear bombs just went from 4.5 average damage per hit to, uh, 1. I *really* hope I did my maths wrong.....
Horrible timing for the machines to get Planetary Shield 5. Hopefully they will not have them actually built, at least not everywhere. Their bases being less than state of the art is a good sign there. As Dp101 said, if we can take a planet or two with the initial wave, hopefully we will acquire some tech and then have a way around the problem.
(May 13th, 2024, 16:53)williams482 Wrote: I was also surprised by the choice of ions over NPGs a while back. I'm curious what the logic behind that was; NPGs are cheap, space efficient, and have a very long operational lifespan. Was the idea to secure something with two space range?
I think that choice was mine, and if it was it's basicly because I don't like NPGs in original MOO.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
In RotP I think NPGs are a little better than in MoO1, if for no other reason than that as RefSteel said, you seem to progress through the tech "tree" more slowly. So there will be a longer timeframe when those early weapons are useful. I will sometimes use NPGs to just fill out any given design, so I'll put on like 2 sets Heavy Neutron Blasters, maybe 10 and 10, and then fill in the extra space with NPGs. Or maybe I'll even go with 8 hNBs + 8 hNBs + 15 NPGs, or something like that.
But for sure, I have seen the AI lean heavily into Repulsor Beams before. Not always. Sometimes they do go heavy on missile boats. Sometimes not. Then again I've been playing a lot of different types of AI, but still a lot of Modnar. I'm pretty sure I've seen Modnar do this too.
Sorry this took me so long. (This is in no small part an apology to myself for staying up this preposterously late...) Here, at last, is at least...
Report, Part 2: T154-156
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 4 -
Gentlelizards of the Admiralty ... something has gone terribly wrong.
I don't mean Agent Gilsskit, showing off on Sol 3 - where I must say the camouflage is working a lot better than it did on a nameless Mentararian world. Deciding to pass up a chance at fusion bombs with neutron pellet weaponry as one of the fall-back possibilities just to make future spying easier and - as it turns out - pick up another subclass of countermeasures to electronic targeting systems is in pretty questionable taste considering the shields the enemy is presumably starting to deploy everywhere, but that's no catastrophe. I'm glad Gilsskit was able to lift anything from those labs at all without creating a diplomatic incident. No, the problem I'm seeing is this:
We gathered our fleets, prepared our transport swarms, with snowballing advances toward the front from all over Conclave space, without any hint of direct approach to the enemy except for the one far-off fleet that wouldn't show up on their long-range scanners until last year - and then, all at once, when that first and only fleet would inevitably be detected, we launched everything - or everything we had to if we were going to make the timing sing. We advanced our fleets, arranging them with care, making the Askook asteroid belt a primary rallying point, along with Taenth for the nebula-adjacent sector, sending fleets to Apophis and Avantador - and Dalbinth when we could - instead of directly to their destinations, never stopping ship construction, as indeed we haven't yet, all so we'd have a secondary response ready for whatever the enemy did. We knew once they saw everything happen at once last year, there'd be a massive response: They'd be scrambling to assemble defenses at our putative targets, launching starfleets across space in response to the danger, preparing to deny us our attack vectors or to retaliate. We prepared to fall back to a less-ambitious opening salvo if necessary, to concentrate our forces in response to what they did. We even sent a feint toward a star we can't hope to hold yet, where they've been gathering their main fleet, in hopes of pinning a part of it there. We prepared, and we awaited this year's scans, everything as ready for a rapid response as we knew how to make it, and then...
...my fellow lizards ... I think we broke them. Maybe they scrambled to get those advanced new shields at a moment they knew we would see as "unlucky" without knowing whether they'd planned it and traded for them with someone the way they tried to trade for our ion rifles, and maybe they did some other things, and ... honestly, with the pile of discarded monkey wrenches and bent drill bits they think constitutes a combat cruiser, there wasn't much of a useful response they could make with their giant starfleet ... but in the end, their response so far has been to belatedly beg us to trade them things they needed long ago to pull together a meaningful defense. They tried to trade the new shields to us again this year, for sublight drives this time, and we laughed them off the holosuite.
I want to take credit: I want to say when they looked at our fleet positions and operational preparedness and strategic depth, they just threw their gripper servos in the air and didn't know what to do except just hope all the too-obvious signs were illusory. But I submit to you that machines don't do that. Either they haven't figured out yet that they're under attack in spite of all the red lines on their scanner screens, which seems a little hard to believe, or they are responding as best they can, and know they don't have real gunner ships or anything with strategic speed, so they're crashing shields and soon bases up as hard as they can and maybe putting a new fleet of cruiser gunboats together in their enclosed shipyards, ready to meet us when we arrive. We're spreading ourselves too thin, following the existing plan, whatever the Prime Magister says! We have these fall-back options; I say we use them, and make sure of the battles we can win!
Our Earthling friends are helping anyway: Their ambassador turned up wanting our graviton beams, which ... ah ... apparently the Prime Magister said she was welcome to, and their brilliant scientists showed off all the plans for their repulsor beam design so we can build those too in case we have to face someone in battle who uses - just for instance, unlike our current enemies - graviton beams. In fact, one of their scientists sent her part of the exchange from what looks like the same lab suite so soon after Gilsskit sent the jammer plans our way that I was half afraid they bumped into each other in the corridor, but it looks like that camouflage worked out pretty well after all - or they have a lot of labs that look about the same. Cool demonstration of repulsor tech either way though, I have to say!
In the long run, with their tech and ours combined, we've got this! We can win this war the sure and steady way. You know that fable, right? From the same world Gilsskit sent the message from, and presumably their scientist too: The story of the hare and the tortoise is a good one not just because the reptile wins; it has an important moral, and it ... you ... I know, I know, but the next election isn't for another six years! Just because the Prime Magister says to do it the daring, dangerous way doesn't mean we ... it doesn't ... ... oh. So it does then? I'll ... I'm going back to my suite and try not to bash my head too far through the wall.
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 5 -
[Begin Connection]
This is the Avantador Interstellar Comm Station. How may I direct your call?
You say you're the Dominion Ambassador? And you have a major complaint to make? That sounds very grave. I'll make sure it goes straight to everyone who needs to know. Please go on.
Oh, surely not! Spying on you? And we stole important technological secrets? That's funny - I don't remember hearing anything about any Meklar tech getting stolen. Are you sure? Did we get anything good?
What? Of course it's no subject for jesting! I totally understand! And just between you and me, you might want to check those Dominion security protocols of yours. I'm pretty sure they've got ... bugs! I'm just saying: Somebody must have broken into your secret laboratory, but believe me, it couldn't have been us!
No, no, I see why you wouldn't believe me; truth is stranger than diplomatic equivocation sometimes, it seems. So listen, I'm as disappointed by this as you are - hearing about a theft from your top secret labs when it wasn't us! I'll make sure your message gets to our highest diplomatic authorities, and as many other of our people as it can reach! Over a billion of us will be seeing your message within the day!
[End Connection]
I think we're over a billion subscribers to our interstellar comedy network anyway.
[Begin Connection]
This is the Avantador Interstellar Comm Station. How may I direct your call?
Certainly, Ambassador Hissauriyiss. I'll raise the Mentaran Minister of Technology for you right away!
[Begin Secondary Connection]
Minister Lykafalks, I have Ambassador Hissauriyiss here. She says she is empowered to negotiate an exchange of technology.
Holy herpetology, we're doing this, then? Our materials engineering experts are going to put their heads together across space so you brainy folks can build ships that repair themselves and our lizard troops can go into combat with strength-boosting battle suits? Well, it's ... I'm sure that will ... wow. That's a lot to take in! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, Minister.
[End Secondary Connection]
Ambassador, I thought it was just the Prime Magister who was crazy - is it catching? I mean, granted, if the Mentarites are anything like the Meklonoids, they'll just put auto-repair systems on missile boats and we can have a good laugh at them, but isn't that really important, top-secret technology? They're brainy! What if they actually know what a fleet-anchor flagship is?
Okay, I'll grant it's a price to pay for saving millions of our soldiers' lives, but a small price? Considering how fast we breed, can that possibly be true? Although I suppose the Mekloniot worlds are a little far away from most of our prime breeding centers.... Well, what's done is done. I hope this pays off for you.
[End Connection]
[Begin Connection]
This is the Avant...
Yes sir; right away, sir. Now patching your orders through to the fleet!
...and done! Uh ... sir? That seems like kind of a lot going on all at once. Do you think...
[End Connection]
...well, if I don't get to finish my question, maybe I'll just add a question mark and let it stand as-is. And here I was hoping things were going to get less complicated!
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 6 -
Your prime magesterialness, I have a report from the front: Our fleet just arrived at 53 Aquila, and sir - we were quick enough! They haven't had time to finish their planetary shield! Those missile bases are unprotected except by their old class-3s and one of those glorified suicide cruisers they call a Dynamo!
Yyyyyeaaaaaah! Sssssshow meeeee!
No surprise here. Those Dynamos pack ECM-2 and class-3 shields onto a missile ship! Our bombers did a little dodging just for practice as long as it didn't slow them to the planet, but with only three scatter packs coming out of that cruiser at once - and only a mark-2 computer for guidance on top of everything else! - it never got the chance to fire off its fifth volley before we slagged it. We should go in and change "Dynamo" to code-name "Sitting Duck." But we took the skies at the cost of just fourteen fighters - almost half of them the ones without targeting computers! This is a great victory!
Not enough! Not enouuuuuuuuuugh! Moooooooooooore!
Ah, yes, well there's the feint at their staging star. No planetary shield there either, but we only have forty bombers present with one cruiser and scanner destroyer in support, and they do have their main fleet of 17 cruisers hanging out there. Plus, most of them are Nexus and Tornado cruisers that carry actual heavy lasers. You ... we aren't going in through that are we?
No, no, go awayyyyyyy! Ssssssssssssssssssstop it! I don't meeeeeeeeeeeeeeean the feint! I want moooooooooooooooore!
Of course; of course. Because, ah, we're also set for attack runs on the Aries and Crater systems - the ones we'd scouted already long ago.
Um, you were warned, right, that we might be spreading ourselves a little thin here, attacking all these stars all at...?
Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore!
Em, yes, yes, your most-prime magisterialness. Yes. Well, here we go. So Aries is ... actually - it's looking like almost a repeat of that first fight at 53 Aquila! We own another machine-world's skies!
Right ... right, well, wow, it's great we acted so fast here, before they could ... oh no. Your ... um, Prime Magister, we are too late! It's as we feared! Crater is a much larger world than the others we've gone after so far ... and they've had time to finish their shield!
Boooooooooooooooo! How many more misssssssssile bassssssssses did they build? How many defensssssssssssssssssive ssssssssssssshipsssssssssss?
More ... miss... No, no, they're still just on three - less than the others; less than they had a few years ago, actually. We suspect the bugs were sabotaging them ... and maybe framing us while they did. And the only enemy ship in orbit is another of those Dynamo garbage scows. But it doesn't matter: They have a shield up! Even when we hit our target, our bombs will only penetrate the shield maybe 40% of the time, and then when they do, they'll do about as much damage to those bases as a basic laser would to a ship! We can't beat that! We have to...
Attaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!
Wh...what?
........ !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heeeee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee! We've been asssssssssssuming they'd build new defenssssssssses and get sssssssome kind of new technology between the time we ssssssssssstarted preparing and the time our attacksssssssssssssssssss hit! We exsssssssssssssspected ssssssssssssomething to change! We planned for it! We ordered a big enough attack on that planet to take out nine bassssssssssses and a small defensssive fleet! A little old ssssssssssssshield barely matters compared to those thingssssssssssssss!
But to only lose twenty-two fighters, and none of the new 3.1s...
That'ssssssssssssss why I'm not eeeeeeeeager for ssssssssssssshields! There's no point building them unlesssssssssssssssss you have the offenssssssssssssssssssssse to back them up or they give you total immunity! All we needed here was numbers! And we had them from all over our sssssssssssssssssspace! We made sssssssssssssssssssssure!
Um ... when ... when people say you're...
Moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore!!!!
Wait, you mean there's... Oh ... okay, we have a fourth attack like these that just hit the Pisces system out on the galactic rim? It ... went about the same as the others. The machine people don't stand a chance against these fleets! At least ... not at their peripheral colonies with small single-digit base counts. Still, four doom fleets striking at once, on top of the feint? And they're all winning in walk-overs?
Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore!!!! Ssssssssssssssssshow me the fighting at Aries!
But ... we can't have a fifth ... or, wait, I told you about Aries already! It was...
...we invaded!? We had 62 transports riding the tail of our fleet!? And wow, our general handled that poorly. We outnumbered them, with better technology, and barely scraped by for the win!
I thhhhhhhhhought I ssssssssent more like a hundred. But where are my battle sssssssssssssssssuitssssssssssssssssssssssssss?!?!?!?!
Um ... I think the Mentarans might be, um, dragging their feet. I know you thought we'd have the designs in time to fit on all our soldiers, but...
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss - I know who our nexsssssssssst target'ssssssssssss going to be if it'sssssssssssss up to me!
Ah ... (thank goodness it won't be) ... oh look! A priority transmission from Earther space!
Yessssssssssssss - I like NPGs! - but that'sssssssss a dumb sssssssssssssssspy. It might have gotten lessssssssssssss lucky and only ssssssssssssstolen gatling lasers, and a little more productivity for over a billion lizards from ssssssssssstudying one of their redundant kinds of planetology would have been better than a tiny bit of miniaturization for future fleetsssssssssssss. We're done making sssssssssshipsssssssssssss for a while. We have enough already!
Wha ... but aren't you the one who ... or is the point that you have lucid moments ... maybe like this, in between your ... um, your...
What about the other invasion?!?!?!?!
...the other...
...you're saying we just declared war by dismantling the defenses of four different machine worlds and actually conquering two of them ... virtually simultaneously? And ... and they seem to have come with a lot of factories. Our troops are finding all kinds of things to reverse-engineer, apparently. Here, I think this is the first...
That reverse engineer is a total jerk. Fire him.
You ... you mean how he's side-blinking?
Sssssssssssssstupid sssssssssssssshields. I mean, they're good to have, but...
Um ... um, this should cheer you up: We have new scouting reports! See?
Ooooooooh - ooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Look at 53 Aquila!
You ... what's so good about a mid-sized, arid, resource-poor...
I think we jussssssssssssssst found a forever-home for the machines.
That ... they're going to hate us until the end of time.
Or until sssssssssomeone elsssssssssssse commitssssssssss xenosssssssssssssscide againsssssssssst them by accsssssssssident. Do aliens do that much in thisssssssssss galaxsssssssssy?
I ... don't know?
And what about all that reverssssssssssse engineering??? What elsssssssssssssssse did we get at Aries??
Mostly a lot of junk, I think. Nothing to color your throat any - and then just one new blueprint from Crater and all its 475 factories!
Hssssssssssssssssssssssssssss - which one?
Ahem - the one, I believe. So ... I presume you'll be burying yourself in the design labs again, preparing a new fusion bomber?
No, not now. That would be too easy. I told you we have plenty of fleet. What are these incoming comm requesssssssstsssssssss?
Let's see - one from the Mentar Republic, and one from our neighbors in the Hive.
Let's take them in reversssssssssssse order then. Jusssssssssssssst to be contrary.
Um ... yes, your prime-ishness.
Well, the pundits who predicted that the Hive would be our best buddies seem to have hit the nail on the head. Maybe xenophobes get along with cra... with ... creative leaders like you more than machines?
No, itsssssssssss not a ssssssssssssssssmart bug. We can't attack CB-715 together because it can't reach itsssssssss bitter enemies acrosssssssss the breadth of our sssssssssssssspace, excssssssssept maybe if their sssssssssssssssspies keep ssssssssssssssssssabotaging things. And I want something to remain - on 53 Aquila. I'm not a xenosssssssssssssscidal monsssssssssssssssssssssssssster: Jusssssssssssssssssst inssssssssssssssane!
Ah. So ... on that note, would you like to hear from the Mentar delegation?
No, but sssssssssssssssomeone sssssssssssshould. Thisssssssssssssssssssssss had better finally be...
...that, yessss.
They are clever, teaching us to use battle suits moments after our soldiers finish the last fighting of the year and come through with the last scrap of enemy technology from the ruins.
Hssssssssssss ... when you say lasssssssssssst...
I mean last! The reason we only picked up one new tech from Crater is that the garbage we found on Aries already cleaned out all the rest of what they had! Our spy on Meklon is switching over to looking for ways of sabotaging their missile bases since there's no tech left to steal down there that we don't already have!
Oh, and they figured out they're at war with us - finally - and their diplomats all took off. They didn't even send us a message about it. I guess our message came through loud and clear.
(May 14th, 2024, 02:29)Dp101 Wrote: Nuclear bombs just went from 4.5 average damage per hit to, uh, 1. I *really* hope I did my maths wrong.....
I have good news and bad news about that. Bad news: You did your maths correctly.
Good news ... in due time.
Report, Part 3: T157-160
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 7 -
We got a real battle to sink our teeth into this time: Not another of those little four-base skirmishes around the perimeter. This star system's got a dozen missile bases, a finished shield, and eight defending ships - half of them cruisers!
That's why we brought practically the whole coreward fleet. Sadly, the battle itself was pretty boring. The Dynamo is still worthless, the Byte scouts did nothing but float around in the way until we got around to destroying them, and the Tornados are slow-crawling bombers. Four heavy lasers does not a combat vessel make. There weren't even any interesting tactics: Just fly in, avoiding missiles if it's convenient, but flying through them if not since they can't hit much of anything, and then just drop bombs until the last base goes down, while our cruisers clear the skies of the enemy "combat ships." It was much harder fought than all our other battles of course: We lost nearly the whole flight of 50 outdated Sweepers and of the 39 quick, new Splitter 3.1s - not to mention more than ten percent of our main Splitter 3.0 attack fleet. The attrition doesn't matter though: We want these worlds, and our entire starforce is already out of date.
Our spies haven't done anything to Meklon's defenses so far, and the ones who are having success aren't even bothering with military tech.
In fairness, of course, it would only have been a gatling laser array if they did. That might have caused bigger problems too: The Dirt people - I think their homeworld's called Dirt; it's something like that anyway - complained last year about the way we stole their pellet guns, and now that we just took their plans for barren environmental controls, they called up again ... but luckily, they missed the spy. They just wanted to trade us an anti-matter bomb for the secret of creating fertile worlds. If we needed anti-matter bombs for something ... but we haven't even built any fusion bombers yet, and we're starting to seriously research Omega-Vs!
Anyway, this was fun, but it's time to get a move on. I'm leaving a token force here to deal with any ships or bases the enemy builds in the next two years while our transports are en route, and dispatching another small fleet to help with our next project, but me? I'm leading the bulk of our surviving fleet up to the Teeth of Aries to join our retreating feint fleet. We have unfinished business in that part of space! And a penchant for renaming systems we conquer that have uninteresting numbers to lead off their names. You might also notice the machines think they have the first of those things. They're sending a couple of cute little retaliation fleets crawling up through the nebula toward our coreward poor colony. Considering what its neighbor is, I'm not too worried.
Oh, and we did get some cool new military technology. Not that we'll be putting the new mark-five computer on anything right away, but our fleet is now even more obsolete than it used to be - and before too much longer, with the advanced scanners the techies have planned, we'll be able to see planets from up to nine parsecs away, and coordinate invasions at more worlds simultaneously!
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 8 -
All the breaks went against us. We knew it was going to be tighter than we wanted it to be - that's why the relief transports are coming in next year - but this was way too close for comfort. If not for our strenght-assist battle suits, this would have been a slaughter the other way.
It's starting to feel inevitable that nothing will go our way on the ground, but this type of fighting is horrible even when you win - at least when you're part of one of the two surviving batallions of a fight with over a hundred and twenty involved across both sides. It makes the appeal of peace all the more obvious ... and the hive mind's proposal all the more ludicrous in its phrasing ... and attractive in its content.
Neither quarrelsome nor violent, we, according to the bug brain. Has it even been paying attention to the way worlds have been changing hands? The answer is yes, of course: The whole reason it's proposing this is exactly because it likes the way we've been smashing our mutual enemies in space and on the ground. In particular, it probably loves the way most of our rimward fleet's been dropping nuclear bombs on 53 Aquilae from orbit more or less continuously - to give the enemy living there a nice, long rebuilding project to carry out when we finally reduce them to that single world. But I'm more than happy our leadership has seen fit to agree to its non-aggression pact. One less giant front on which to prosecute war ... for now at least.
The front we've got, ever-advancing, is more than enough, it seems to me.
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 9 -
On the streets, they speak of this as a year of war ... and of victory.
Well might they: It opened with the capture - decisively, for once - of a planet as rich in minerals as Bevurth itself, but with a naturally-habitable surface and breatheable atmosphere. The passing of this world from the Dominion's control into ours would be a turning point in our conflict ... if it weren't effectively over already. As witness the other reason the year is remembered for its warlike implications:
We own the skies of Meklon now: The very world for which our enemies are named. It will not be conquered during the present administration, but with a very little patience, in the fullness of time, of course it will be.
Yet to me, this date is notable for an entirely different reason: A reason of learning and discovery! For I learned that the factory counts at captured worlds really do appear to be zero ... only because they are not yet our factories! A very little refit cost - on the order of maybe 2 BC per factory, weirdly represented as though the factories in question were being "built on the cheap," makes these existing factories usable for our scaly, clawed limbs, and soon restores the planet's original level of industry. This, more than anything else I have encountered, gives me hope for our future beyond the wars with our present - and, yes, I suppose now virtually eternal - enemy.
That, and the way our besott... beloved ... Prime Magister elected to name that gorgeous ultra-rich world, "Not Extant," perhaps in a misguided attempt to hide it from somebody.
- Reign of the Crazed Prime Magister, Year 10 -
We've arrived at The Other Aquila now: The primary muster point for enemy starfleets.
Its shield is up over four bases, and no less than fourteen Tornado cruisers orbit it, outnumbering our cruisers by nearly three to one. Of course, theirs are bombers, and they don't seem to be aware of it, thanks to the egregious tri-fire heavy lasers they've crammed on. That's still a lot of heavy lasers - 56 across that fleet - but not enough, nor accuate enough to actually worry me.
Of course, this was also the year Meklon reassembled two of its bases while a dozen Nexus cruisers showed up to interdict our fleet.
It did not go well for them. It amuses me to think that we just wiped out twenty-six cruisers in battle at two worlds, with no capital ship losses of our own, while also conquering world after world from the machines, and we'll probably still rank below them on the official fleet strength charts our spies create. Speaking of whom...
I know one lizard who has way too much fun stealing new battle computers from one of the Earth faction's worlds. Makes you wonder what else the agent saw down there. Not much to be done about it now, naturally.
I fear the new administration will have something of a mess on its hands: Depopulated planets scattered everywhere, fleets and transports moving around them, some with a veto still possible, enemy fleets inbound all over the place....
Fortunately, the highlighted fleet of Spark fighters should be sufficient to tear apart all three of the enemy cruisers incoming to our poor world one year apart - probably sparing only a single shot for each! Worse, I'm probably missing something important anyway. Another time though ... it's high time I and the rest of the crazy administration leave!
Apologies for the mess as well; the save, at least, is hopefully attached in a zipped folder again! Good luck, Brian!
Damn that was ambitious, but looks to have been well worth it! It's interesting looking at how it seems like you were sending transports to worlds closer to the front while waiting for space superiority to allow the invasions to be launched, decreasing latency without decreasing (by much) the force. At least I think that's what I'm looking at?
I'd suspected that the whole 0 factories thing was stuff being refit, it's neat to see that that's correct. Wish it was a little more obvious in the UI
Now that we have graviton beams, I've been wondering, how does the damage carrying over interact with shields? If you hit a target with class 3 shields and 3 hp left with a shot that deals 9, would the shields be applied to both the initial hit and the carrying-over, leading to 0 damage on the following ship, or are shields only applied once so it's 3 damage? I hope it's the good way, but I could see it being the bad way given that these weapons are basically only meant for taking out swarms of smaller ships that probably lack shields.
Any particular reason for making the Spark design to go along with the existing fleet? Ion cannons are growing outdated, and the current conflict seems well in hand, so personally I wouldn't have started on a new ship design with the current generation of tech (at least, if I did it would have been a fusion bomber just in case) so it's a bit puzzling to me. Not to say it's *wrong* or bad or anything, just different.
Crazy or not, those are some impressive results. Nice turn set, RefSteel.
The factory refit thing is a bit confusing, but good to know what is happening. Some of those invasions were a bit close for comfort -- good thing we have those ion rifles.
A bunch of new worlds, a bunch of new tech. Lots of cleaning up and rebuilding/re-populating to do, but we should be in a much stronger position overall once things settle out. The machines can be left with one bombed-out poor planet to avoid xenocide penalties, and we can begin planning our next big expansion.
Wow, that was very well done! Taking heavy losses on the ground battles is a shame but shouldn't be a big deal given our pop growth bonus. I'm surprised at how well the spying is going - I need to make better use of it in my own runs seeing how much it's been doing for the SG run.
Hopefully they will not have them actually built, at least not everywhere. Their bases being less than state of the art is a good sign there. As Dp101 said, if we can take a planet or two with the initial wave, hopefully we will acquire some tech and then have a way around the problem.
Lots of cleaning up and rebuilding/re-populating to do, but we should be in a much stronger position overall once things settle out. The machines can be left with one bombed-out poor planet to avoid xenocide penalties, and we can begin planning our next big expansion.