I guess I've got it, although I may well wait for the rest of Ref's report to get a better feel for the position. It still looks better than at the start of my last turnset though!
(May 27th, 2020, 13:47)utwig Wrote: Well our question from the get go remains. Will we go quiet into the gentle good night and become hidden part of Meklar deep state or will we be able to counter them. The Meklar ships incoming at the end of the turn are high tech with zyro shields and we have 90 Ventrils. Our Poulson bases are not enough we need to come up with a plan.
Do we know what is on those ships? I've not seen any reports on the Devastator class. Did they already turn up in an earlier set and I missed it?
If I read the OSG correctly, Zyro shields have about a 50% effect on Pulsons (75%, -29% for pulson level, giving 46%). So we just need double the number of shots .
There's not much else we can do in the very short term. Fast heavy fusion gunships may be able to help, partly by drawing missile fire, but if the Meks have put Disruptors on their ships we may have serious issues. They still lack a good bomb though, at least. There's no way to get PSX that quickly, and it's not clear it would have much effect. We don't have Warp Dissipator, or Repulsor Beam (the latter would be of dubious value anyway given their weapon systems).
If I get any peace offers that would make a diplo win in 5t more likely I'm going to be tempted to take them.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Our old pulsar cruisers weren't of much use against the enemy fleets we encountered in the 2560s, but at least they carried battle scanners, so they could be used as big, expensive recon craft.
Wasn't that really inefficient? Wouldn't it have been better to get rid of them and build small scanners from part of the scrap metal instead?
...I think our ancestors were hoping they might still be good for something in combat? Maybe you should have been in charge.
That would have needed some real magic time-bending abilities.
Way more than waiting anyway. But in 2566...
...one of them was able to scan the latest Meklar dreadnought. The Devastator's disruptors, cloaking, and autorepair seem likely to make it exceptonally dangerous, so that any defense against them would require combined arms, careful use of lure ships, or both. Fortunately, they move very, very slowly in space - and fortunately as well, the Meklar missile bases appeared to be firing class-X Scatter Packs: Devastating cluster missiles which ... were almost equally slow!
But we couldn't fight them there with that giant fleet!
Especially not with that outdated cruiser, no. But it suggested future possibilities! In the meantime, our people were still trying to expand through the heart of the galaxy, beginning with a planet that had been heavily terraformed by the Bulrathi before we wiped them from its surface with omega bombing, rather aptly named:
Instead of preparing to turn the surface of Meklar core worlds into glass-filled craters, our ancestors tried to claim a distant reach colony at Rhilus, thereafter to be known as Greed. The Alkari from the stars nearby didn't see it in the same way, mostly because they were still so pleased about the way we had treated the Meklar back at what oncee had been their avian homeworld.
It was only much later, reviewing the historical record in the aftermath of Ascention, that we fully understood the full horrors of the unsanitary union they proposed between our peoples. At the time, our ancestors knew only that the birds were trying to talk to them - but that was enough to know the right thing to do: To reject whatever they said without hesitation.
But parent! Of course the bad aliens kept talking to us! What about the war? What about our fleets?
Well, we were consolidating, or trying to, you see, at the same time we kept trying to expand into the middle of the galaxy. We had to keep fighting off alien fleets that were trying to conquer our newest worlds, or bomb out their newly-founded colonies that one or another of them usually conquered right away with transports that had been on their way to a previous colony on the same world! At least we were catching up a little bit on research, with another breakthrough in 2567, but it wouldn't do much to help us against far-more-advanced enemy fleets.
A little more deflector shielding doesn't look so great when your enemies are flying around with disruptors, but at least we could someday double our planetary shield strength if we could afford to research and build the upgrades.
Were the scientists who did that very disappointed that their new deflectors weren't very exciting?
Not that year, no. "Exciting" was the last thing scientists wanted from their research after the discovery at RocksStink2.
It was probably very exciting to learn that their star would to blow up in 12 years, but not what they wanted to hear exactly! A lot of resources that could have been spent on defenses or infrastructure or other pressing things had to be poured into the effort to reset the star's doomsday timer. And all the while, our ancestors remained just as greedy as ever, going so far as to colonize the birds' old homeworld, renaming it as we Darloks do, in 2568.
I don't understand: What's a Scarecrow?
Why, what else would it be? A deception perpetrated on birds in the hope that it will keep them from noticing that the crops you own - and that they want to eat - are virtually unprotected!
By the next year, 2569, the Bulrathi - after repeatedly thanking us for our good work blowing up machines - finally remembered they were at war with us and should maybe stop doing that.
There had been more fighting in the meantime, including an attack by another Rhino dreadnought, but we had prevailed. Research was progressing nicely in all the fields that didn't need to practically start from scratch after recent breakthroughts.
So it was that in 2470, we reached the culmination of the decade's long wars over the worlds we knew for our own, in and around the center of the galaxy ... by reminding the Meklar one more time to Keep Out of what had been our first interstellar colony!
That's funny. At first, it looks like you're right about the Meklar, but when I look more closely, I mostly see lots of dead transports instead.
Very perceptive, child. The Meklar colony had actually been worn down by Bulrathi ships by that point, and they had a huge number of transports on the way. Being Darloks, we felt honor-bound to do the most underhanded thing possible: Meet them in orbit above the Meklar colony, so that in honor of the peace they had established, their ships would fly away, and then blast all vestiges of the Keep Out colony out of existence so that all their transports would crash instead of conquering the world! No doubt the bears were very pleased with the destruction of machines, not noticing the secondary consequences of what we did - at the same time that our heavy fusion destroyers were blowing up a bunch of Silicoid transports as we tried desperately to defend our nigh-indefensible claim to the Scarecrow colony.
In the meantime though, while we played around with spud worlds, The Meklar were approaching our worlds with serious combat fleets. 2570 would be the last year before we would have to face one at one of our worlds! The deceptive galactic map, showing only who had most lately staked a questionable claim to which planets in space, looked great in 2570, but much of that was smoke and mirror and many, many deceptive shadows.
Wow, it's just getting exciting! Did we beat them? Did we lose some worlds? Did we strike back and dodge their scatter packs to destroy the Meklar worlds? What came next? What happened then?
Ah - what indeed? You well may ask - but that ... is another story.
Roster:
- Ianus (Skipped until we hear from you - I hope all is well!) - shallow_thought - UP!
- Arnuz - on deck!
- utwig
- Cyneheard
- RefSteel - just played
(May 28th, 2020, 03:46)shallow_thought Wrote: I guess I've got it, although I may well wait for the rest of Ref's report to get a better feel for the position. It still looks better than at the start of my last turnset though!
Hopefully it wasn't too long of a wait!
Quote:
(May 27th, 2020, 13:47)utwig Wrote: Well our question from the get go remains. Will we go quiet into the gentle good night and become hidden part of Meklar deep state or will we be able to counter them. The Meklar ships incoming at the end of the turn are high tech with zyro shields and we have 90 Ventrils. Our Poulson bases are not enough we need to come up with a plan.
Do we know what is on those ships? I've not seen any reports on the Devastator class. Did they already turn up in an earlier set and I missed it?
In part 2 of the report: The Devastators were scanned a couple turns ago; if they do have Zyro shields, they're hidden in the bugged display of the third special slot. (We should try using SDragon's patch update for our next SG...). Either way, we can probably beat them with good tactics, fast ships, and enough missile bases (or time them out good tactics and fast ships) - those Devastators are really slow. They do have autorepair and disruptors though, so definitely very dangerous.
But if we can't defend against them for any reason, we can just build a bunch of fast antimatter bombers, hit them where their fleets aren't, dodge their scatter packs, and blow their planets to smithereens. I'm kind of sorry I didn't go for that option myself....
We have some reserves; I haven't spent any this turn - not even at RocksStink2, where the Nova event is ongoing (we have 9 turns left). Up to you how you want to proceed. I believe we also have a pretty significant prebuild available at Waters Edge if you want to use it for something. The design slots for the Handwash (just two destroyers, so no great loss if they disappear) and the pulsar-armed cruisers (also just two and I don't think they're much good anymore - except that they're fast and sort of tough and good at flying circles around enemy ships) are certainly available if needed, and could provide some more reserves if desired immediately. The defensive situation is obviously very complex - lots of decisions to make there!
Lovely reports, RefSteel! Frankly, speed 1 dreadnoughts do not scare me much... It looks like we've bagged this one.
(May 28th, 2020, 02:39)RefSteel Wrote: Um ... ahem ... well, you see ... I know it seems like magic, but remember that it only works that way when we react faster than they do, which of course in a fight like this we would, but ... well, calling it magic, you know, isn't very dignified, and since the aliens don't know how to do it...
You seem oddly distressed, Parent! Why can that be?
Eh eh! "Nothing that the AI cannot do" as the next OSG??
The request form followed standard Darlok bureaucratic procedure. That is, it was translated into and out of various crypto-languages and processed to remove all possible personal affect and emotional content. All of this took some time, so it was a while before anyone actually saw it. When they did, it raised a few eyebrows (or the equivalent in the reader's current shape). If it hadn't been filled in by a former senior coordinator it would probably never had made it out of the automatic filtering. As it was, it reached a mid-level officer before it was finally rejected; at least it got a personal response.
"Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, the idea of making 'friends' with the rest of the galaxy by sending them all 'cuddly darlok toys' fails on several points:
- We don't recognise the word 'friends'; the only references we have found to it are in academic psychological literature, which we are far too busy to read.
- We don't believe your claim that you have already prepared billions of these 'toys', nor that they each have their own, heavily minaturised sub-space teleporter with built in warp capability. Your refusal to include details of the technology for fear that 'nasty people would use it to hurt those nice bears' was considered quite odd by our military and technical advisors.
- You are bonkers. We have certificates to prove it.
Your request for access to the control room is therefore denied."
Unlike his predecessors from a few decades ago, the officer did try to make sure that the control room security codes were changed. Unfortunately, he did so by raising a standard bureaucratic request form ...
T2570
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I burn through Ref's carefully hoarded reserves to boost defenses at worlds with incoming Meklar. As an afterthought I also boot research into solar rejuvenators with what's left. I switch a couple of back-line worlds to over-pushing on factories so that they can also contribute to the reserve sooner.
For research I prioritise the Megabolt/HEF combo. I think we're going to need it.
If we keep peace with the bears and birds, can we win the vote without the rocks? Probably not.
T2571
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Vetrils handle Meklar larges OK at Scarecrow. I probably lose more than I should have done.
At OnceUponACat there are an annoying number of asteroids. I try to clear the large ships first so I can then start to work on the Devastator once it's out of the asteroids.
That's not great. I don't note the damage first time round, but the second time it's at 1277/1500. Which it can repair. I switch to other targets for a couple of rounds.
Damn I messed that up. Wasted a couple of rounds. That ARS is going to kill us. We are doing much better damage without cloak though (I should have had some ships here for it to fire at, but where would I have got them from?).
Nope. Once we're down to 10 bases we start to fall behind. I kill off the remaining larges and try to wait out the hits. That will be a Borg world soon.
Except - what's this? The Meklar offer peace. Ugh -- yes! Erratic goodness for the undeserved win?
Hmm. They are allied with the rocks. So probably not quite. Still, a break is good. PSX could have made a lot of difference there. Try and get that soon.
T2572
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As backline worlds fill their factories I set to them to pumping the reserve, waves of credits rolling forwards to help rebuild at OnceUponACat (now working on factories!) and to get other new worlds up and running. Ideally we want to get this done and start pumping from Rich to Artifacts.
T2573
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We clash with Alkari somewhere - damn, I was so focused on "F8" that I didn't realise we had a fleet in orbit outside our territory. Their colships are better armed than our old Thornmail, and outnumber it 8-1. We retreat. Oh, it was Keep Out. With the pre-builds at Waters Edge I could probably have stopped that!
We get Advanced Space Scanner, and a solar rejuvenator. Hyper-comms was the only option; a shame, as I would have taken ECM VII, and it would have been cheaper.
I look at the status screen, but I don't think that pushing pop growth for two turns will let us beat the Meklar-Rock veto block.
I scrap our large bombers and Thornmails - the only thing we can hit is rocks and they are a long way off. We need the cash, to come back with newer ships.
T2574
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Megabolts are in. All of Plasma Cannon, Particle Beam and Hercular Missiles are tempting. But we have a lot of bases already, and the broad upgrade across the empire is too tempting - Hercs it is.
I switch back-lines back into research. I start seeding PSX.
T2575
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Vote time! It's us against the Meks, as expected.
Meks: 13 for Meks
Birds: 2 for us
Rocks: 3 for Meks. Thats 16/49 which is one vote short of a block.
Bears: 10 for us
Darloks: 21 for us.
We win. By one vote. I'm taking it.
Frankly, I can't believe my luck in this set. I think it's an honest win - we're clearly second, and making progress. We can squeeze a megabolt onto a small - although not while getting any speed on as well! - which could have given those Devastators a nasty surprise in numbers. A little more miniaturisation and we could have been on terms. We also had the production to tech on further. However, getting peace and therefore not losing the odd world in the meantime was huge - I think we take at least another 25 years without that.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
GG all. I have to say that I was really impressed with the gains that the more aggressive players were able to make between my last two turn sets. I guess it's worth bearing in mind the AI's ability to spend all its production on endless, pointless warrring if the powers are in balance; if the human player can stay on the edge of the whirlwind there's always a chance.
And yep, the luck of the Meklar peaceing out, meaning that we kept OnceUponACat, was a justified reward for all the hard work, IMO .
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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