OSG-37 - 1ooming Lizards

[DaveV]

That same year, Sakkra scientists complete research into Class 2 Deflectors. Our planetary bases will be safe from regular lasers.

Does that mean they'll take zero damage from regular lasers?  The class 2 deflectors are meant to absorb 2 damage per hit, but can't lasers do up to 4 damage points?

All beam weapons, and torpedoes, are halved in strength when attacking a planet.

Our choices are Deflectors 3 or Personal Deflectors -- with powerful bears in the galaxy I choose the gropo tech.

What is gropo?

Short for ground pounder: techs that improve combat performance of ground troops.

In 2359 our spies report that the Bulrathi have developed Merculite Missiles. The bears are going to be very dangerous.

I've seen various people expressing concern over Merculite Missiles.  Why are they in particular so dangerous?  They just seem to be one in a long line of missile and torpedo upgrades, from the manual.

Merculites are good, obviously not the best. The AIs tend to put lots of missiles on their ships, and Merculites are very effective against planets until we discover planetary shields. They're also pretty effective in ship-to-ship combat, especially in the quantities usually produced by impossible AIs.

[haphazard1]

Thanks to DaveV for already answering questions. I was not fast enough.

On Merculites, I will add that they are essentially 3 upgrades over the default start of game missiles we (still) have. Default nukes -> Hyper V -> Hyper X -> Merculite. So Bulrathi bases will be firing much more powerful missiles than our bases currently do. Missile tech is critical since it is effective for both offense (ship to ship battles) and defense (bases). If I remember correctly, merculites are also faster than default missiles and get a bonus to hit. It is a pretty nice tech.

[RefSteel]

Good turns, Haphazard!  The empire is looking strong! 

(Until I can get the problems with picture size worked out, this will be a written report only. :( Sorry for the problems.)

I don't mind the small images, even though I like the size I use.  I always end up using system screenshots and resizing/cropping in GIMP, so I don't know what to recommend to get your pictures working the way you want.

And I've successfully loaded the save, but won't be able to actually look around in earnest until later tonight or tomorrow, so I'll turn to The Usual Suspects for some further commentary, to present some analysis and alternate viewpoint(s) based on the latest report:

Ssssstah Deessssscho, 11-year veteran Governor of Rayden:

Still still waiting for those transports to arrive!  I understand not wanting to deplete the homeworld, but remember:  Back then, Sssssla still had unemployed people waiting for new factories to be built!  That was probably the reason the previous Speakers took so long to finish its infrastructure, in fact:  With new planets needing population sent to them all the time, even Sakkra like us would be hard pressed to supply them from just little Kulthos, and until we claimed Xengara a few years back, our homeworld was the only planet we had with neither the mineral wealth of Celtsi nor amazing artifacts like ours nor a hostile environment to slow its population growth.  Bringing the homeworld to full population and factories definitely has value, because it lets us concentrate production in one place, to assemble large ships more efficiently or to feed the planetary reserve in case of need.  But everything's been different since we colonized Celtsi!  It can do either or both of those things faster and better than our homeworld can, which left Sssssla free to pause factory building for a long time while sending the unemployed population off-world each year to help get the colonies up to speed.  Once all our new planets had a good amount of transports on the way, of course, it was time to complete Sssssla's infrastructure so it could contribute at to the empire at its full potential.  What the Fourth Speaker did there made all the sense in the galaxy - it's just that I'd have liked it even better if some of its people could have come here first!

On another subject dear to my heart, the Fourth Speaker did the right thing with our technological priorities:  Vital though deuterium fuel cells were to our future while we were researching them in the Third Speaker's early years, and important though propulsion technology will be if we ever hope to discover better engines - and believe me, we do hope so very much! - once we had the all-important deuterium fuel cells that helped us get out here and to other worlds like Xengara, we needed to make sure we didn't fall behind in other areas, and the Fourth Speaker got us moving in the right direction, and kept pushing us that way.  I believe every choice made for future research projects was the right choice for the time it was made, and I hope the Fifth Speaker continues to push technology in the right direction that way!

...

Oh, uh ... and, er ... I'm ... I'm sorry!  If I'd known I was virtually jostling the Fourth Speaker's elbow all those times when I adjusted spending on my planet the way I thought I was supposed to, I would never have ... er ... you know, done that.  I ...  ...  I'm not about to lose my job, am I?  Because it's sounding like I'm maybe about to lose my job.  Please, Fifth Speaker, can you ... can you maybe just put me back in a purely advisory role or something where I don't get my hands on the controls during your reign but I still get to call myself Governor of Rayden?  Pleeeeeeeease?  And convey my heartfelt apologies to the Fourth Speaker for me?  I'm really, really sorry!

Nohssssk Annar, 23-year veteran Governor of Obaca:

Hsssssssssssss I can't believe it!  Everyone keepssssssssssssss consssssssssstantly disssssssssresssspecting my colony!  Jusssssssssssssssssst because Celtsssssssssssssssssi is better in practically every way, the Ssssssssssspeakers keep acting like I'm a nobody!!!  Maybe I got in the Fourth Sssssssssssspeaker's way by readjusssssssssting ssssssssspending from what I had ssssssspecifically told to do the year before, and that was better than what I ... ah ... hsssrrgrrrum, AHEM!  BUT NEVER MIND THAT!  Lissssssssssten!  I have a grievance again, sssssssssso everyone lissssssssssssssssten to me!!!!

Did you see?  The Fourth Speaker focused spending from the Imperial treasure mostly on Reticuli and Rayden!  Just because Reticuli is right on the front with the most powerful rival we've yet encountered in the galaxy, and just because Rayden has all those incredible arifacts of I don't know, the forgotten golden age of the galaxy or something that we want to start seriously researching by yesterday or sooner, they ... ... I'm not selling this very well, am I?  Ahem.  But what I mean is, my world is full of mineral riches!  If we can build factories quite well on our own, imagine what we could do with a little extra funding!  If our factories are threating to go idle for lack of Sakkra to work them, we could have some more sent over from less-rich planets until we're full up, and then we'd be adding to the treasury, and everyone comes out ahead!  I mean, okay, we've been expanding so fast even our Sakkra people have had trouble keeping up with their population needs, but I say me first!  Me first!!!  What if the Mrrshans come calling?  Pick me!!

Anyway, I have to admit the Fourth Speaker did a great job with some things, like pushing out to all these planets and making sure we were covered against the unarmed Bulrathi probes that were trying to claim worlds ahead of us or find openings where they could call in transports full of their super-soldiers, and generally assigning our planets to better projects than ... er ... ahem ... than certain governors were trying to fund ourselves.  THEMselves!  Definitely not talking about me!  Ahem.  And, you know, everything.  I have to admit that, but... ...  I ... don't have a good way to end this sentence.  You see what you did, Fourth Speaker???  You left me with too little to complain about!!!  How dare you???

And a word from Admiral Ssssslin Kaway, Governor of Kronos, lately appointed to the post from the old Sssssu Issssadran's Island military colony and pilot school back at Sssssla:

These popguns might not look like much; they're the weakest beam ships it's even possible to build - pretty much one basic laser welded to a retro engine and a cockpit, with nothing else onboard but the titanium that holds it all together, spread so thin it might as well be tinfoil packaging - but they can do wonders in a pinch:  It's all about the numbers.  Even this little fleet can hold off small-scale probing attacks from the Bulrathi, and if they send a real fleet after us ... well, that's where intelligence - both kinds - comes in.  We can talk more about countermeasures, combined arms, and the rest of our defenses as emergencies arise to illustrate them; for now, the key is finding out what we're likely to be facing, and preparing accordingly.  If the enemy's really fielding a lot of Merc boats for instance, these little popgun laser fighters of ours are about the best defense we can get with current technology!

Oh, and:  Got it!

Roster:
- RefSteel (now playing!)
- DaveV (on deck)
- jez9999 (still asking lots of good questions)
- haphazard1 (just played)

[haphazard1]

Good luck, RefSteel!

I forgot to mention it, but I did send some pop (from Kulthos, of course! I really am trying to empty out that world ) to Obaca to max it out faster. Rich worlds are amazing how fast they can develop. I was hoping to start feeding reserves into research at Rayden, but the transports never got there. When I sent them the game claimed they would get there in 2358, which obviously did not happen.

The governors seem like they work pretty well for normal planets -- not rich, not poor, following normal industrialization. But I like to lock sliders to remind myself at a glance what I intended to do with each planet. And the governor unlocks everything every turn, which I find frustrating.

[DaveV]

Those racial stat graphs look amazingly good, being more or less even with impossible AIs is a rare thing at this point. Of course, we can't see what the other three AIs are doing, and those three include some of the most dangerous AI races.

[RefSteel]

[EDIT: The second part of the report is now added to this post!]

The governors seem like they work pretty well for normal planets -- not rich, not poor, following normal industrialization. But I like to lock sliders to remind myself at a glance what I intended to do with each planet. And the governor unlocks everything every turn, which I find frustrating.

I think the governors are mostly fine, even for rich and artifacts worlds, as long as you set them up for each planet accordingly:  Rich worlds put excess into reserves, most worlds put excess into research, no one force-grows population, etc.  If only there were a "leave my locked sliders alone!" option, they'd be pretty helpful generally, as long as the player knows when to turn them off.  One weakness is that they don't seem to understand terraforming very well, unless I missed something, so it may be necessary to override them a lot when certain new techs come in.  In any case!

I've played, but won't have time to finish and post the full report tonight, so I'll just post the beginning and the save for now, with some notes for the next Speaker; I should be able to get the rest up tomorrow.  The report is spoilered just to make it easier to scroll past; it's fine for anyone to read it.

I don't see why they had to elect me as Fifth Speaker!  I was perfectly happy in my place as Governor of Inssssniggif Province here on Sssssla and serving on the OSG-37 as a glorified clerk!  I don't want my claws on the controls of anything!  All the huge, looming officials and functionaries who carry my orders out are contrary and frustrating to deal with, nothing like the simple, elegant stylus I'm used to using to make notes and record what other ill-informed lizards are saying in response to incomplete reports!  Other Sakkra love the post and everything, I'm sure, but it's not for me!  I hate telling hulking subordinates like those what to do!  I'd rather stand aside and just listen!  So now that they've put me in charge, what am I supposed to do?

I guess the first thing has to be considering my strategic priorities.  All the care and detailed instructions in the world aren't going to help if they're in service of a plan to keep lazy Sakkra from sunning themselves on rocks by refrigerating all the boulders we can see.  So maybe I'd better start with a big-picture look at the galaxy.


(We've been doing some scouting I didn't read about!  Some of it seems to have run into - and from - enemy fleets, but this is a find I shouldn't have missed!)

We've colonized everything we can reach with current technology, but we're right in the middle of improving our environmental habitation domes so they can protect us from frozen, dead, fiery, and toxic worlds as well as they do on barren ones already.  That could allow us to build at least two new colonies into our sphere of influence even within our current range, including one just beyond Orion, on a planet whose entire surface appears to be covered in a thick, fine dust of pure neutronium!  Surely claiming this world should be among our top priorities!  It won't be enough just to plant our flag though:  We have an extensive empire already, with a strong core, but most of our colonies remain small and only partly developed if at all - Kronos, a vulnerable front world with the Bulrathi, is so new that it lacks even a single factory! - and we'll need all our worlds contributing if we hope to take our rightful place in the galaxy!


(You can see we have 405 BC in the treasury, and I'm transferring some of them to Rayden.  At most, reserve transfers can double the production output of a planet each turn - sending more in effect just pre-commits the funds for spending at the same planet on the following turn(s) until it runs out - and hitting the = key on the keyboard while choosing the amount to transfer will roughly match the amount to the planet's normal production for the year.  For some reason it rarely gets this exactly right, and I had to increase the amount by a click to actually match Rayden here.)

There's no better use for our imperial reserve as far as I'm concerned than to get those new colonies all up to speed.  By the time I'm finished here, I'll be spending all 405 billion credits in our treasury to help our various planets along, doubling the productivity of every world except the two that are fully mature:  Celtsi - which is feeding more into the reserve for next turn - and Sssssla itself, which does get some boost because just for the moment it's going to be carrying virtually the entire load of our research.  I'll get to the reason for that in a minute, but there's one other thing I noticed here:  Our trade agreements with the Mrrshans and Bulrathi are finally just beginning to turn a net profit between them each year - still a long way from paying back our early investment, but more importantly, they've contributed to the peace:  A peace which, if it lasts, among other benefits, will ensure they eventually do repay our work handsomely!

Now about those research plans...


(Here we see Sirian's "measuring cup" in action.  At this Artifacts world, we get two research points instead of one for every BC we put into tech, but the principle is the same.  With ten factories and no clean-up tech, Rayden needs 5 BC (so 10 RP) to handle its factory waste, plus 5 BC (another 10 RP) for each point of terraforming it'll do.  Since it only makes 44 production, the best we can do is 7 points of terraforming with a little bit of factory spending on the side, so we do that, "measuring out" exactly 40 BC = 80 RP, then locking the Ind slider with the leftovers and dumping all 40 BC into Eco.  All spending on terraforming gets rounded down to the nearest full +1 to max population, so it's best to finish it quickly if you spend anything on it at all.  Here, with more than a third of the job getting done this turn already and lots of transports due to arrive "next turn," we should be able to finish in just two turns with minimal waste - or three if the nebula delays those late, late transports even longer! - which is fast enough for me.)

We have tens of millions of Sakkra on transports heading for forward worlds and Rayden, and those worlds could all be made much more hospitable places for the newcomers to live and thrive, with plenty of room for all of them - and the many hatchlings sure to come soon - to spread out and breathe.  Some planets aren't ready to do much terraforming yet, and have to stick to early factories, while a couple of our most-important worlds are fully terraformed already, but most of them, including Rayden with its artifacts - which we'll want as many Sakkra as possible to study - and Kulthos, whose mineral poverty makes the importance of raw Sakkra-power on its surface all the more important for its future, especially as a source of future transports for our colonies!  All this terraforming work does mean that nobody's doing a lot of research outside of Sssssla, but the plan is to get it out of the way as quickly as we can, build our colonies up rapidly, and then really get our teeth into some raw technology!


(All those unlit LEDs are only just barely unlit, and Planetology's is just barely lit as well:  I'm getting just about the maximum investment bonus to my research this way, and getting there was a big part of the reason I decided to boost Sssssla's tech spending this turn - but I'd have done this differently if the spending choices you see here didn't also reflect my immediate priorities!)

Every project our scientists are working on is hugely important right now - which is definitely a good thing! - but some of them can safely wait, and others can't:  As long as this peace holds - and even afterward, as long as we can defend our skies, if we launch no offensive of our own - no one's going to be fighting our people for control of our colonies, so there's no need yet for personal shielding.  Once our planets are all mature, with plenty of factories, we'll be eager to build out more with the help of better robotic controls, but if it takes a little longer to get there from here, that's still better than rushing for them before we're ready.  Ion cannons will be a huge upgrade for our fleets, but the project just started this year, so we have no investment in labs to maintain, and creating one would be one mayfly too many:  No matter how fast you can launch your tongue at them, it can't catch four at once!  Our highest-priority projects are therefore the other three:  Waste reduction technology can't arrive too soon:  Our factories are generating far too much toxic sludge and smoke, and cutting down on that would free up some of the Sakkra who now have the painful job of cleaning up the mess to perform a host of other duties on every one of our worlds.  Irridium fuel might seem like a small step forward from deuterium in itself, but if you were following our imperial logistics, observing the speed - or lack thereof - with which our ships and transports cross the stars, you would agree that we desperately need to forge forward and try to find means of improving our engine technology!  And as for the new colony bases ... well, I think I've mentioned what those are going to be used for already.  We have enough good worlds already that two or three more won't make or break our future, but with the unthinkable mineral wealth to be had at Laan and the logistical utility of Misha, this might be our most important upcoming technology.


(This is the kind of encounter where it does make sense to try to dodge missiles.  Sadly, it didn't work for me either!  I guess the Admiral told us it was dicey!  It's also possible that either fixbugs or the Classic+ AI (or the combination of the two) actually takes missile and ship movement into account correctly and doesn't fire until it can be sure of hitting, at least with a speed-1 ship.  I don't know all the details of what 1oom has changed.  It's still worth taking a chance against a non-cat early missile boat or two even if that's true, especially if you can use asteroids to increase your odds to dodge, but these missiles were at least Hyper-X and potentially Mercs, and 6+ of them weren't likely to all miss.)

I did dispatch a couple of Scouts forward in the distant anticipation of irridium fuel, since it was going to be a long trip to their staging stars, but I left the Scout at Vulcan patrolling where it was for pretty much the same reason:  When the new fuel refining techniques were ready, it could explore ahead from the tiny, radiated world it had been orbiting, content in the feeling that, to paraphrase the Third Speaker, "The Bulrathi can have this one!"  Yet when a fleet of three Star Streak missile destroyers arrived in the system this year, their call signs were not Bulrathi but Psilon, from somewhere on the far side of the galaxy.  Our Scout pilot tried to evade their missile fire, but luck was against her, and her Scout wound up as scattered debris spread out across the radioactive surface of Vulcan II.  The Star Streaks were mounting titanium armor with minimal maneuverability, and their missiles were at least two generations ahead of ours, but nothing else about them could be discerned.  We mourn for our brave pilot, but if the Psilons want that star system, they're welcome to it too!

[EDIT: Part 2:

We've gotten off to a pretty good start, but building up new colonies into powerful core worlds isn't a one-year job, so it's a good thing my predecessor was with me on this: Transports are arriving all over the place: They've reached Kronos, Obaca, and Xengara, and they would finally be at Rayden too if not for that nebula! Our planetary maps show a weirdly-shaped purple cloud, but the Pan-Sssssdirg Electromagnetic Threshold Function ensures that the edges of a nebula's engine-retardation and shield-nulling effects are always perfectly rectangular - in fact, I think even perfectly square, though it's been so long since my college field mechanics courses that I don't remember for sure - and alligned with the same axes we use for our maps of the galaxy. Here, our poor transports for Rayden have had to go practically straight across the diagonal, the longest possible nebula route - whereas from Kronos, I think they can skirt the nebula and avoid it entirely - with Rayden itself either just beyond or (I think more likely) just barely within the nebula effect: I can't tell yet for sure, and didn't realize it was so close to the edge until I saw the transport delays again this year. By next year though, they really should arrive, and we're still feeding them reserves in the meantime, along with our front worlds, thanks to the good offices of Celtsi and now Obaca, which finished its factory infrastructure last year!


(I usually slow down research on a project when it reaches the 20-40% range, depending on the nature of the tech and its urgency, but there are times for immediately-critical techs - or very cheap ones later in the game - when I'll push them as high as they'll go until they come in.)

We don't have as much available of course, but with Obaca now helping to generate more and no longer needing any in turn, we're still able to keep our funding up for everything but Sssssla's research. We're making up the difference by cutting the construction project's funding to the bone, to keep our investments going in propulsion and planetology: This close to a breakthrough, our construction engineers just need enough of a trickle to keep the project alive, with the chance of success barely growing but still pretty good every year. For something as vital as our current planetology research, I might keep investing even more, but with reduced waste here, on a tight budget, we're approaching a point of diminishing returns, where the amount we'd gain from getting it earlier is unlikely to surpass what we'd have to spend to speed our progress again.

In the meantime, everything's going about the same way: Celsi and now Obaca are providing the minerals we need to boost Rayden - the transports do show up there eventually - and the newer worlds, with Sssssla providing research with help from Kulthos as its terraforming completes. Our new worlds are building factories until they can afford a good burst of terraforming, after which they'll get right back to more factories - but all the while, we have to make sure these worlds stay ours, and that starts with diplomacy.

***


(Here you can see that Hyper-V Rockets are indeed "improved missiles" - slightly upgraded versions of the default nukes. They're not great weapons for our bases, but they're a lot better than nothing. Gatling lasers are actually a good weapon for the cats, with their pilots' targeting skills, but they're worthless against shield-2 bases and not much better against well-shielded ships, so I was very willing to make this trade. Increasing their range or population potential wasn't attractive to me since I didn't want them getting more potential targets in our space in case they turned on us, nor to give them more voting power if a cheese alliance led them to vote for our Council opponent - and I avoid trading computer tech like Deep Space Scanner to any rival on whom I might want to spy as long as there's a better option on the table.)

I had a long and fruitful conversation with Shandra, Imperial Queen of the Mrrshan people, where among other things we agreed to arrange a scientific exchange in pursuit of mutual protection: We would teach them to mount gatling laser arrays on their cruisers, the better to shoot down - just for instance - Alkari smallcraft flying in to bomb their planets, and they would teach our military engineers to use their Hyper-V rocket designs, to give our missile bases slightly-less-blunt teeth. Of course, we might not have been able to reach such an understanding had we mistrusted each other's motives, but ruthlessly though she treats her enemies, Shandra has lived up to her reputation for open and even friendly diplomacy with those - like us - she has learned to trust, and by the time we agreed to exchange these defensive secrets, we had already publically established our intentions of long-term mutual peace.


(This is a measure of my confidence in our planetology research more than anything else. I'd noticed that the Mrrshans were Relaxed with us and therefore likely open to a NAP proposal, and though they'd picked up Improved Eco before my set and could therefore be researching Controlled Dead potentially, I gambled that we'd be able to colonize the potentially-contested Dead UR before the cats could get there, so they wouldn't be able to claim it out from under our fleet.)

I'm not naive enough to imagine our pledge of mutual non-aggression is an ironclad defense against future Mrrshan attacks, but under most circumstances - short of egregious provocations like an all-out attempt to conquer one of their worlds or an assassination attempt - we can expect her to honor the pact at least so far as to officially dissolve it before she tries to launch an attack on us. The symbolic power of the deal is likewise important, allowing us to establish an even closer relationship than before. I might even have asked for a larger trade agreement if I felt I could spare the start-up costs of such an investment from our innumerable critical strategic needs!

By now, our colonists have finally - finally - reached Rayden, and we're set to finish its terraforming project and get to work in earnest on building up its factories, still with full reserve funding thanks to Obaca and Celtsi. Indeed, most of the empire's worlds will soon be fully terraformed shortly, pushing up toward their full capacity. Kulthos can get back to helping with our research as its terraforming completes, which is a very good thing: The number of scientists who can effectively be employed in our ongoing projects grows each year as more discoveries are made and more experiments are needed, and Sssssla can't keep up with the growing demand alone! Our research is vitally important though, and I'm willing to take even more-extreme measures to keep it going if I have to!

***


(This was actually a really tough choice, and I would have chosen differently in a solo game! I was hoping for Improved Industrial Tech 8, which would have been great to get in advance of our robotic controls and also advance the tree, but duralloy - the only other second-tier construction tech, and the only one in our tree this time - is always a strong choice, improving ground combat, missile base hitpoints, and large ship survivability, plus the best miniaturization available at this tier. I considered going back for II9, even though it wouldn't advance the tree, since the research cost is cheap enough to get it before IRC3 relatively easily, and to pay for itself with the reduced costs of new robotic factories. I decided against it mainly because I knew I couldn't afford to start it right away and didn't want to commit my successor to the plan to rush it to completion before our big computer tech came in.)

Getting our new waste cleanup technology is a tremendous relief: Our research program remains vitally important, and as its development creates ever-greater numbers of scientific employment opportunities, I'm looking everywhere for ways to fill them! These new advances will free up tens of millions of Sakkra even here in the Sssssla system alone, plus millions on Kulthos and many millions more around the empire, from toiling away in sanitation engineering, and I can set them loose building factories, mining the riches of Obaca and Celtsi, and helping to keep our laboratories running at full speed! One day, we can build more labs as well, to develop duralloy armor for our bases, troops, and fleets, and to miniaturize our starship components for long-range versions of our most-advanced colony ships, but for now - like weapons labs these past four years - they're going to have to wait: We need every Sakkra we can get, and every laboratory, focused on the other projects we're pursuing!



One result of freeing so much labor is that we can actually keep the labs staffed without squeezing every last drop of effort from the entire population of Kulthos - so I finally permit eight million of the eager applicants there to board colony transports for Reticuli. I could have sent a few more, but I didn't want to risk underestimating just how quickly we Sakkra breed, even on a hostile world. Reticuli will be at full population before we know it even like this - but I thought it was important to speed its development with the Bulrathi so close, even if they don't yet have the technology they'd need to invade.

***



Don't get me wrong: I'm not letting my guard down on the Bulrathi front for one instant - but it's better to have an agreement in place than otherwise, I'd say, especially since there aren't any unclaimed planets we're trying to contest with them. Our new non-aggression pact may not be worth the holoparticles it's recorded in, but it's a little more protection for our people and our long-standing trade agreement, and that's all right with me. If you think I'm going to slow down reserve spending on a planet like Kronos though, you're way more trusting of huge, aggressive, expansion-minded bear soldiers than I am.

***



The GNN newsdroid was so amazed this morning that its mechanical jaw was hanging open: It had good news for us Sakkra, incredibly! The merchant who made this donation to our cause must have been very wealthy indeed: Six hundred billion credits is more than half of our total annual GNP! Needless to say, this was a welcome addition to our treasury, and I'm not going to be sitting on it, hoping it lays an egg: As the demands of our research projects and colony infrastructure increase, it will help immensely in keeping everything running smoothly! Lest anyone think we're only seeing good news though...


(This is a silly bug in 1oom that I don't remember seeing in the base game, with or without kyrub's patch: Grunk claims our trade agreement is broken, but he actually means our NAP, as you can see by checking the diplomatic screen, where our 25BC per year trade is going strong, but the NAP is gone along with the Bulrathi diplomat.)

...we just also got a dose of the opposite variety. For the Bulrathi, it seems that "times change" very quickly: We just agreed to our non-aggression pact last year, and already Grunk has decided its people "are in dire need of new star systems" - and therefore that it must break the pact. (Ignore the automatic translator; the new model is kind of glitchy.) Now, the thing to understand here is that if he does need new star systems, our pact allowed him to claim any neutral ones we might both be orbiting without interference from us already. The only way the pact he just tore up could stop him from getting new star systems ... would be if he plans to take ours by force!

Fortunately, the bears still don't seem to be able to live on barren worlds, so our Reticuli colony should be safe for now, and in any case is becoming better-developed by the year, approaching full core-world status, and Kronos is much further from Bulrathi production centers, and - thanks to my constant efforts to get the place developing as quickly as possible - is starting to grow capable of fending for itself too, as well as supporting virtually our entire extant combat fleet. The bears could definitely be threatening, especially with their horrible death spores, but I believe we'll be prepared to meet them if necessary!

***


(Once again, this should give you some idea of my research priorities. Propulsion is important, but I'm willing to slow spending way down now that it has a decent chance of completing every turn, because the most important thing about it is advancing in the field, and I won't be able to afford to properly side the next tech (hopefully sublights!) for a little while unless we get a lucky early hit on planetology.)

It hasn't been easy keeping up with our research and development needs at the same time: There have been years when even Obaca has devoted some or even all of its efforts to research instead of reserves - since any reserves it did provide would have had to be plowed right into research anyway, with a one-year delay! - and even Xengara, whose developing colony is our furthest, not counting the artifacts of Rayden, from any known alien world, has paused its infrastructure to contribute when necessary! Now though, with propulsion so close to a breakthrough that I feel we can cruise to success over the next few years, I have a little more budget leeway to work with again. Obaca still isn't on reserves though: It's building starship parts instead! When our planetologists can build colony domes to keep us alive on worlds like Laan IX, I want this, our closest shipyard world to Laan itself, to be ready to knock out a colony ship to carry one there within the year!

***


(At this point, our trade agreements are basically paying to maintain our fleet. Spies and missile bases are more expensive though.)

My ten years have finally run their course, and I can settle back in to recording the wisdom - or whatever it may be - of the other 36 governors again! Incredibly, I even seem to have some kind of a legacy: Fully-terraformed worlds, almost three hundred new factories, Rayden in particular ready to turn into a research powerhouse pretty much immediately, and the technological advances closest to my heart now on the brink of being achieved! We even have a lasting non-aggression pact with Shandra and her Mrrshan people - eight years in force now, and going strong, along with our maturing trade agreement - and good reason to hope our expansion can resume shortly! There's just one small concern I'm leaving for my successor:



Those bears don't look very friendly.

(Added a day after the first part and the incomplete notes below!)]

Notes for the Sixth Speaker, this time actually spoilered in case someone wants to wait for my full report to find out about the rest of my turns:

- I don't like the way the visible Bulrathi ships just appeared on our screens.  The inherited turn is the first year we have visibility on their movement, so I don't know where they're going, but based on where they are, the direction they're facing, and the fact that they just canceled a NAP with us a few turns ago, I suspect (at least in the case of the two Warbears) it's toward us.  It's possible they're just heading down to explore their Mrrshan allies' space, but I wouldn't count on it.

- Admiral Ssssslin Kaway was wrong about our popgun design:  He assumed they matched the "popgun" ships in his cadet school training sims.  Our Pop1 fighters are actually shielded laster ships.  These will survive longer against basic lasers (and gatling lasers) than the bare-bones laser fighters the Admiral was talking about, but get killed just as quickly by missiles (and almost as quickly by heavy lasers and other weapons that the bears fortunately don't have).  We have forty up at Kronos now - pretty much our entire fleet - but if we build any more fighters, either there or elsewhere, I would recommend the Gecko 1.0 simple laser fighters instead:  Each is more vulnerable, but the price to build and maintain them is just 3/4s of a Pop1, so for the same price, you can get more lasers - and more hulls, which is important since missiles don't care about class-1 shields on a 3-hp ship - into space.

- We have an ongoing NAP with the Mrrshans, and they've been surprisingly friendly in general thus far.  They also traded Hyper-V rockets to us several years back, so our bases do now have actual weapons and shields.

- A couple of Scouts are still in transit.  One is heading to a blue star we've yet to explore in the south, due in two turns.  (I think the other unexplored stars in range around there are defended Alkari worlds, based on previous reports; the blue star might be too, but I wasn't sure.)  The other is making its way through the central nebula (so its "3 turn" ETA may be wrong) to Collassa, a smallish inferno with a Scout already in orbit.  It's meant to help explore a little farther once R6 comes in.  I could probably have sent more Scouts out this way, spreading our Pop1s a little thinner to compensate, but was daunted by the sheer number of turns it would take, especially with that central nebula in place.  Finally, there's a Scout at Obaca that isn't needed to cover that rich world since it has a missile base, so that's at least one you can send wherever it seems most useful.

- We have 240 BC in the planetary reserve for you to spend.  None of our planets have been reserve-boosted yet unless with whatever dribs and drabs might be left over from last turn.

- Remember, the unexplored white star nearest our core is unexplored because it's Orion!

Good luck; the save is attached, in normal (i.e. Not-DOS) format this time!

Roster:

- RefSteel (just played)
- DaveV (UP!) (unless you want to wait for my full report tomorrow...)
- jez9999 (on deck)
- haphazard1 (persuading picture formats to cooperate)

[haphazard1]

Lots of positive info and planning, RefSteel.

So we see our first signs of the brains. Hopefully they are not too strong. Our small trade deals have done a surprisingly good job of improving relations with the bears and especially the cats. The Mrrshan drawing a diplomat personality rather than their usual militant one is also helping there, I suspect.

I had missed the info on that ultra rich dead world. We certainly want that system.

[jez9999]

We have an ongoing NAP with the Mrrshans, and they've been surprisingly friendly in general thus far.  They also traded Hyper-V rockets to us several years back, so our bases do now have actual weapons and shields.

I'm really quite confused about all the different weapons in MOO1; it just kind of presents them and gives a cursory description, but no real advice. The manual says that missiles are anti-ship and rockets are anti-missile; we already had nuclear missiles, so these rockets merely add an anti-missile option? How come that's giving us "actual weapons"?

[DaveV]

We have an ongoing NAP with the Mrrshans, and they've been surprisingly friendly in general thus far.  They also traded Hyper-V rockets to us several years back, so our bases do now have actual weapons and shields.

I'm really quite confused about all the different weapons in MOO1; it just kind of presents them and gives a cursory description, but no real advice.  The manual says that missiles are anti-ship and rockets are anti-missile; we already had nuclear missiles, so these rockets merely add an anti-missile option?  How come that's giving us "actual weapons"?

Yes, that is very confusing terminology. All of the missiles/rockets are offensive, except for level 6 Anti Missile Rockets. I have never spent a weapons slot on those and am very disappointed when they are the only option in the second tier. Of course, one of Ref's opinions is worth at least ten of mine, so take that with an asteroid-sized chunk of salt.

[DaveV]

I had some time today, so I played, hoping it won't disrupt the story.

Alarm bells went off when I read that the Bulrathi had cancelled the NAP. That almost invariably means they're going to send a fleet to one of our worlds and try to invade it or bomb it to nothing and re-colonize. As I said in my first report, the Bulrathi are probably the only race against whom we can't win a ground war of attrition. So I cranked up the defense spending on the only two worlds the Bulrathi can reach:





I also sent some Geckos to Reticuli, for combined arms defense.

This required some readjustments in tech spending:



I'm trying even out the odds on planetology and propulsion, and keep the bonus on all the other techs.

Next turn, I dialed back the spending on the two nearly-ripe techs. I'm sure someone has done an in-depth analysis, but my seat-of-the-pants tech is to back off on spending once I'm above 30% or so. From my point of view, any tech spending above the amount to finish off the tech is wasted, and I don't think either of these techs is urgent enough to keep plowing beakers into them.



At this point, my eyeballs told me that the fleet of two large Warbear warships was heading to Kulthos.

We finished ECO research on the interturn, giving me these choices:



I picked +40 because that will benefit all of our planets, including our Rich all-stars. Soil Enrichment is a very good tech and is amazing in conjunction with Atmospheric Terraforming, but I think we need growth on our big producers as opposed to our normal planets.

Toxic Colony tech meant a new colony ship design:



I saw someone use this naming scheme for colony ships in another succession game, and really liked it. The first letter indicates the colony type, the final number indicates warp speed.

The first colony ship finished two turns later thanks to some reserve spending, and was sent off to ultra-rich Laan.



In 2378, the Bulrathi fleet arrived at Kronos:



Sigh of relief. Five nuclear missiles can do at most 20 damage to our missile bases, and the gatling lasers can't scratch the bases' shields. On the other hand, those weapons would tear our Pop1 ships into tiny pieces, so I retreated them immediately. The Warbear ships fired their missiles and then retreated; crisis averted (I did ~75/150 damage with my planetary missiles).

Usually the AIs will re-sign an NAP after their attack fails, but in this case the Bulrathi declined. The malus from refusing a deal lasts for three turns, so we should re-offer in 2381. A NAP would at least give us warning if the bears decide to get feisty again.

In 2379, Personal Deflector Shields came in, and I had these choices:



I picked planetary shields because I like our position here. We'll soon have ten solid worlds, with potential expansion behind the Mrrshans once Duralloy armor comes in (which should allow us to combine Toxic Colony and Reserve Fuel Tanks on a Large design).

Here's our position as of 2380:



The two colony ships are each one turn from their destination.

Current tech progress:



Notes for the next player:

1) As said above, the colonies will be established next turn. Laan should be filled up with lizards as quickly as can be managed; even if it leaves factories unworked, they'll do much more for our empire on the ultra-rich world.
2) As also mentioned above, offer a NAP to the bears on 2381. If they accept, it gives us more time to build factories and population.

Edit: changed Tooth to Warbear. Not sure how I got the wrong name stuck in my brain.