Remnants of the Precursors - Initial thoughts

[rgp151]

So one thing I finally figured out is that you can't store up production in RotP by prebuilding, so this instead forces you to make a lot more use of Reserve spending. I'm not entirely sure yet of the best way to manage the reserve.

[rgp151]

What exactly is the purpose of the "Prototype" slot?

[Dp101]

Lets you design a new ship without scrapping a slot, so you can decide whether it's worth it to make a new one without having to give up a design first (because if it turns out what you're making is bad/unviable, you get to keep the slot you would have scrapped, which can be nice in certain circumstances).

[Brian Shanahan]

Lots of interesting discussion. Thanks for the explanations and details on how spying hits work, very useful to know.

Life has been busy, so I have not had a chance to play more yet. I thought I would post a couple screen shots. My humble little lizard empire at turn 51:

Hopefully this will grow into a glorious huge lizard empire. But right now it is not very impressive. Sssla is the only real production, with the other three being a size 35, a poor world, and a recently colonized planet which has barely started developing.

The wider galaxy:

My lizards are pretty isolated out on the galactic edge. The bug scout which gave sort-of contact is visible along with my scout at Quenth in the east-northeast. I very much want to get that terran 95 before the bugs do. Sssla is building a barren colony ship for Nveryll, which should give me range to reach Quenth. I don't know if I can manage to get there before the bugs, though, and I can not get any fighters there much before a col ship anyway. Will have to see what happens.

Two of the other worlds in that area have no planets, so Quenth is the only path to expand in the north. Kennioth (east of Sssla) is habitable but needs range 6, or a huge hull to get reserve tanks on a col ship. Expansion that way is going to take a while.

Current goals are to colonize Nveryll and hopefully Quenth, while building more industry and working on some tech with a trickle of BCs from the small and poor worlds. I am not feeling confident about this start; if the bugs cut me off at Quenth I am going to be in a pretty poor spot.

Speeches about holding the line come to mind with that empire.

[rgp151]

I've won on Hard/Modnar, 70 systems, 5 opponents with Sakkra, Meklars, Silicoids and Psilons now. In some ways I feel like the races are more balanced in this game than MoO. However, I think Psilons are pretty dominant. Just because there are so many key techs that you are much likely to miss out on with them.

There are certainly some intangible differences that I don't fully understand that just make things different, but I'm not really sure how or why.

Repulsor Beams are certainly not the uber device they they are in MoO. But Auto Repair is still a key tech. The Tier 4, 5 & 6 Planetology techs are just so friggen powerful and key that being Psilon so that you usually get all or most of them is by itself a massive advantage and it seems like even more so in this game. It seems to be at this pint that you can often win by vote, cause if you get Gia planets and have Atmospheric Terraforming your pop just explodes so much. I haven't been hit with bio-weapons yet in this game, but in MoO of course getting Antidote is often huge. And of course Controlled Radiated gives access to all planets.

To me its is this set of Planetology techs that often is the real game changer for Psilons and what really makes them worthwhile. Most other stuff is redundant or can be worked around, but this cluster of Planetology techs is just too good and there are games where none of the other races gets some of these so there is no way to acquire them unless you can research them yourself.

Having said all that, I did just win with the Meklars and liked them pretty good. My starting map was interesting because I was down in a corner, where I assumed I had a small backfield to myself. But instead I had Silicoids right on top of me. See screen shot.
   

What worked well is that I was able to get Meklon up to full capacity and was also lucky cause I got both Reduced Waste and Eco Restoration so I had a decent economy (note the screen shot is from before either of those techs had poped), so I was able to just start churching out ships really early and just powered over the Silis early on, like with just Lasers and Nuclear Bombs. And they were pumping out lots of ships too, so it was hard fought. Maybe Klackons could have done it too, but I suspect that really only Meklars or Klackons could have pulled this off, at least in the way I went about it.

In MoO Impossible I often fall too far behind with the Meklars early on for them to be really top tier. This was only on Hard, so maybe that's still an issue. But they somehow felt better in this game, like getting their factories up wasn't as much of a problem for some reason. BTW, what's better if you are Meklar, to open with Reduced Waste or Tech 9? Saving 10% of construction when building so many factories is good, but I kind of feel like taking Reduced Waste and hoping for Tech 8 is better.

[RefSteel]

The best early construction tech for Meklar is situational in MoO. Industrial 9 is usually the call if you want to reach the second tier faster e.g. for LR tank miniaturization, especially if you're already teching Improved Eco Restoration and/or expect to have significant expansion room. If you don't have IER in your tree, Reduced Waste is a lot more valuable than it otherwise would be!

I'm not sure about the way Remnants changes things, but its tech incentives definitely have an impact. The best case I can see for II9 over RW80 in Remnants is if you want Terraforming +10 and/or Range 4 Fuel Cells ASAP (i.e. before you even get close to 200 homeworld factories) but do have IER in your tree. Note that's best case though, not only case (and probably(?) very uncommon). I'd have to play to get a better feel for the game.

(On the high-tech Klackons case above, it sounds like others have offered some good possibilities, and I can't tell more than that since I don't know what game turns Silicoid Calendar Years correspond to, and the bar graphs present only a snapshot of current relative numbers, some of which can be quite volatile. If the graphs have remained consistently like this for say 20 turns or more, my best guess would be that the bugs lucked into multiple Artifacts worlds and have been focused on tech.)

But back on topic for this thread: Good luck getting out of that corner, Haphazard - preferably through Quenth! In case that fails though (or in addition!) bear in mind that Kennioth may be reachable for your Planetologically-Excellent lizards even without Range 6, depending on (whether RotP's miniaturization works similarly to MoO's and) what's available in your planetology and construction trees!

[rgp151]

I just won on Harder, Modnar, Small (70), with Psilons. I guess I'm getting the hang of how expansion goes in this game.

I still don't understand why when I invade a planet the factory count goes to 0, even though it was not bombarded and it showed as having factories prior to the invasion.

Tactically, movement is huge in this game. Especially with a Subspace Teleporter, since you can teleport, fire and then move. I'm not really even sure that HEF is that necessary. I kinda like just loading up with Tachyon Beams and getting in their face, then moving away. GAC is still good. Ion Stream and Tachyon Beams is pretty good too though.

I build a lot more colony ships with extended fuel tanks in this game as opposed MoO.

[RefSteel]

Yeah, the ability to move-shoot-move without "maneuvering missiles" would lean even more heavily into tactical speed than the base game did - and then adopting MoO2's "teleport then move, potentially firing in between" would push it even further that way when you reach that tech (which, barring interdictors, was incredibly strong already). Glad to hear you're getting to know (and apparently enjoy) the game!

[Dp101]

Yeah, the ability to move-shoot-move without "maneuvering missiles" would lean even more heavily into tactical speed than the base game did - and then adopting MoO2's "teleport then move, potentially firing in between" would push it even further that way when you reach that tech (which, barring interdictors, was incredibly strong already). Glad to hear you're getting to know (and apparently enjoy) the game!

It’s beyond teleport than move btw, it’s move/teleport/shoot in any combination/order. You can move a bit on one side of the screen, teleport, and move more on the other, dragging missiles back and forth however you wish. How did it work in base MoO? I don’t think I had too many games come down to teleporters there.

[Ray F]

Cool - thanks for sharing your thoughts on the game!  As for the weird date, there's actually a different weird date for each different race:  Remnants includes a little story of how each race developed and went to the stars, with their own arbitrary calendar.  You probably clicked right through the screen, as I would, because the stories we tell ourselves about the game are a thousand times better than anything baked in, but RayF hired a writer to write up an official story for each of them, plus dialog appropriate to his vision for what each race would be like.

For humans, the date of their introduction to space flight is 2300. For other races, it's different! The year has also been cosmetic. If you click on the date on the main map, it switches to a Turn display. And this ripples throughout the game, changing year references to turns.

The intro backstory lore for each race is fluff, intended to add interest for those players who enjoy it. It also sets the tone for their dialogue responses and for the writing for their endings. Having the races use different phrasing and express different motivations is just part of them feeling distinct from each other.