OSG 32-B: Two birds with one game

[RFS-81]

Nice report, haphazard1!

RefSteel, if you need an excuse not to build factories, why not research IIT8? Wouldn't it be a waste to build them before making them even cheaper?

More seriously, what do you think the optimal time for starting this tech would be, if this were Impossible?

[haphazard1]

Well, if we are lucky enough to have IRC3 in our tree, then IIT8 would still pay off longer term. Not sure if it is a priority right now, though.

[RefSteel]

More seriously, what do you think the optimal time for starting this tech would be, if this were Impossible?

That's very dependent on the game situation (and I don't really expect to ever have a game situation quite like this one on Impossible difficulty!) but the general idea is to try to get each tech to come in a little before you need it (not exactly when you need it - unless you plan to push it to 100% - because you can't guarantee when it will actually hit) - so for instance, it's great to get II8 shortly before Improved Robotic Controls 3, or shortly after you finish a Controlled Environment or Fuel Cell tech that will open up some new planets for colonization (like Controlled Toxic for us here, or maybe Dotomite Crystals; I'd have to check the range to different worlds to be sure) - but that can get complicated if you're researching II8 in large part to open up the next tier of the Construction tree - or as in this case (as I understand it) when you have a bunch of worlds with very few factories already.  But it ends up being a much more complicated question because of the way it competes with other priorities.

(In our actual game situation, I'm pretty sure I would seed the tech ~immediately at this point if I were playing it straight - which I still might be - or shortly after Computers and Weapons at least. I feel like we've got a lot of factories still to build. In spite of my joke about II9 in my report above, using the start of the research project as an excuse to delay needed factories until it's complete would be kind of a backward way of responding to our dearth of factories ... so I may have to come up with some other excuse!)

[EDIT: Got distracted and then cross-posted with haphazard, who knows the current situation a lot better than I do. It may be that we now have more factories than I think! Either way though, we're going to want some more Construction technology. And Computers. And Weapons. And Force Fields. And...]

Of course, that's all about when you want to finish a tech, which mainly informs when and how much you want to seed it.  My tendency these days on starting techs, once the empire can afford to ignore the rounding loss, is to get them started ASAP, even if it's just with a single click, partly on the theory that this saves BCs when I eventually seed them (since I'll be getting the 3x bonus on more of the early BCs) and partly because it helps prevent me from forgetting about a tech field entirely for decades on end.  Not that I would do this otherwise!  Probably!

[DaveV]

The Klackons ask for a larger trade agreement on the interturn. I accept, even though it's going to cost us a lot before it will make a profit. But a larger trade deal also means a larger relationship bonus...

Is this really the case? My (many, many years old) recollection from the OSG is that there is a bonus for having trade, and the amount doesn't matter.

[haphazard1]

Interesting question. Maybe it is just subjective bias and seeing what I expect to see, but it seems like larger trade deals provide more/faster shift in diplomatic relations than smaller deals. Would love to hear from anyone who knows for certain.

[RefSteel]

Okay, GOT IT! And actually looking at the save, no, I'm not seeding any new techs right away, and I think I'm going to have to build a bunch of factories after all, but I'll try to set something up for a little later on....

[haphazard1]

We do have a tremendous amount of internal growth and development that we can do with our existing 8 worlds. Only Altair is maxed out, and several of the rest have almost no factories built yet. Plus we have two colony ships en route to claim Toranor (size 90) and Seidon (don't recall,, smaller, maybe 50-ish?). I hope that I slowed down the rocks a bit, killing two colony ships plus a large, but they were pushing pretty steadily into our space.

Good luck, RefSteel!

[RFS-81]

The Klackons ask for a larger trade agreement on the interturn. I accept, even though it's going to cost us a lot before it will make a profit. But a larger trade deal also means a larger relationship bonus...

Is this really the case? My (many, many years old) recollection from the OSG is that there is a bonus for having trade, and the amount doesn't matter.

I just looked it up, and it is! Or at least the strategy guide says so. You gain a random amount of diplo points between 1 and X where X depends on how large the trade deal is compared to the other empire's economy. More precisely, the formula is

Code:

X = 1 + 20 * trade_deal_value/gross_income

[haphazard1]

Interesring info, RFS-81, thanks! If I am remembering correctly, trade deals are limited based on the size of a race's economy. So the fractional trade deal/gross income portion would usually be no more than maybe 15-20%, except in rare cases where you signed a deal and then a race's income fell because someone else was conquering their planets or random events hit them or whatever. So the factor of 20 would put the overall result into a range of like 1-4 or 1-5 at most.

Not that I have any idea how meaningful one diplo point is.

But the key point is that bigger trade deals do (at least potentially) offer more diplo benefit than smaller deals. Useful to know.

[RefSteel]

but I'll try to set something up for a little later on....

Not setting up for war - not with the way we'd been teching - but I did try to set up the next emperor for some pretty cool stuff anyway (hopefully)!

Report:

-2370-

"Not again..." Planetary Governor Fiith Starstone dropped onto a perch in her Rigelian Center Command Chamber and ruffled her wings in exasperation. "Two decades with sane acting emperors at the helm, and then just when I'm starting to hope we might end unemployment finally, who do they foist on us?"

Lriss Windsong, a bright young bird Fiith was grooming to be her successor, groaned. "Not your old boss again?"

"The same," Fiith told him grimly. "And can you guess what old Steelbeak is going to do here?"

She was answered by a chime from the holographic projector. The imperial insignia appeared. Fiith balled one talon into a fist and kicked the activation switch almost hard enough to dent it, and the Acting Emperor's image appeared. "Hi there, Governor Starstone! Nice seeing you again and everything!" His head bobbed nervously. Fiith grimaced. Lriss, outside the range of the holoimager, winced. Clearing his throat, Ref Steelbeak went on, "Just thought I'd give you fair warning about the new imperial budget. Can't afford to take a break from all our critical research, you know. Those toxic planets aren't going to colonize themselves!"

Hopelessly, Fiith asked him, "How many new factories are going to be in our budget? They don't build themselves either, you know...."

"Oh, as many as you like, eventually," the Acting Emperor answered, gesturing vaguely with one wing. "Just, you know, not right now. Not yet. Other priorities. Altair's spaceyards are going to be busy with another colony ship, you see..." He bobbed his head again. "Anyway, good seeing you again. Off on other business. Busy empire to run and everything!" The connection died. His image faded.

Lriss Windsong softly groaned. "He didn't even answer your question."

Grasping her perch with one claw as if to try to score it with her talons, waking a datascreen with a punch of her beak, entering the once-familiar zero once again, Fiith answered grimly, "Yes, he did."


-2371-


Alkari scout ships lanced across the mind-bending dimensions of hyperspace, skirting and sometimes crossing the eerily empty galactic core, arriving at long last, years after their departure, at the stars beyond the lifeless Vega Nebula, deep in Mrrshan space.

The locals weren't friendly. War ships shone in the golden light of Fierias, where its people's homeworld, still unterraformed, was armed with sixteen missile bases; more orbited the red star of Talas just beyond, its second world harboring some seventy million cats and rapidly-developing industry; they hung suspended in the sky above the cold steppes of Simius VI, whose fifty-five million feline people, still hard at work developing their early infrastructure, looked skyward past their battle fleets at the distant, pale-green disc of their sun. Battle cruisers and swift-moving destroyers policed their every world, and even their colony ships were armed. Their only response to the Alkari scouts' hails was to advance at maximum speed and launch a series of missile salvos, forcing the scout ships to give up on communication and beat hasty retreats. Only at the burning white star of Regulus, out at the galactic rim beyond Klackon space, where only the dead world of Regulus VIII was large enough to potentially support a colony, were the Alkari able to complete a scouting mission in peace.

The Silicoids took a different view when a pair of their colony ships arrived in the Zhardan system: In spite of their civillian purpose and four million civillian inhabitants, both ships were armed with laser weaponry, and when they saw the fleet of twenty EarlyBirds that held the star, neither colony ship retreated; they approached, seeking an engagement, and as soon as they got in range, opened fire with their heavy laser cannons. This time however, the Alkari did not retreat: The agile avian pilots of the EarlyBird point-defense fighters had no intention of being bullied, and closed to engage the enemy. The Silicoids only managed to bring down four of the little fighters, but they fought on regardless, reckless of their lives, until the reactor cores of each of their ships were breached, casting what remained of their rocky bodies amid the rest of the debris into the vaccuum of space.


-2372-


"Governor Starstone!" Lriss hurried into the central command chamber enthusiastically. "They've finished that starship at Altair! It's already a third of the way to Volantis by the shortest hyper-route!"

Fiith looked at him despondently. "I'm glad you're excited about it," she told him morosely.

He spread his wings wide, a frank appeal. "But Governor Starstone, they're not building another! They're not even adding to the EarlyBird starforce! They'll be able to take up the research effort!"

"Oh," she told him with bitter irony. "You probably think that'll persuade old Steelbeak to let us build some factories." She slashed at her perch with the talons of one foot. "He's creating an espionage budget - an enormous one, up around 4% of the entire empire's GDP, and funding toxic colony research more heavily than ever - enough that he's claiming there's a 12% chance of a breakthrough by year's end. And at Altair, apart from research, they're also funding an imperial reserve to help with the rimward colonies we'll be founding in the next few years! So, how much funding for factories do you think that leaves?" She paused. "No, of course it does. Of course there are factories going up; silly me. But how many do you think we'll get to build on this, our very first extra-Altairan colony?"

Lriss hung his head. Fiith had trained him well, and he knew the answer as well as she.


-2373-


The long-planned Toranor Colony Mission, launched years before Acting Emperor Steelbeak took office, arrived according to schedule, and many of the Alkari set out on missions of colonial aid, from supplies and equipment levied for the purpose at Altair the year before to tens of millions of immigrants setting out from Herculis and Phyco who would bolster the fledgling colony's population. Even the fertile fields of Dunatis contributed, sending foodstuffs and further immigrants down toward Phyco in anticipation of the Seidon colony-to-be. Meanwhile the espionage budget had dropped significantly after its initial start-up costs were covered, and were soon to drop again - though not down to the previous high of literally nothing - but the impact of all these changes were small in comparison with the new scientific project just being launched: A project that would give Steelbeak yet another excuse to delay Rigelian factories. "Why build them today," he was heard to ask, "when you can bulid them someday, in theory, with still-more-improved industrial technology?"

Having asked it though, he darted his head left, then right, quickly adding, "Don't answer that, okay?"


-2374-


The first Alkari espionage reports from Silicoid and Klackon space weren't terribly surprising, apart from the Klackons' focus on propulsion engineering - where they equaled the Alkari already - and weapons technology: A field the peaceful Alkari had neglected entirely while the warlike insects were engineering advanced rockets, ship-based ion weaponry, and a neutron blaster more advanced than any Alkari development in their people's history. The espionage project had a second purpose however, and as Alkari agents began to penetrate deeper into Silicoid space, the rest of the empire made ready to assist them - and lest some defense against the arachnid xenophobes be needed, to begin cutting into the Klackons' edge in military technology.

-2375-


A deep space scanner to detect incoming threats at greater range and hand lasers to defend Alkari worlds in case of another invasion like the Klackons tried at Denubius in Steelbeak's first period as acting emperor some decades before would each be useful if they could be quickly deployed, but each was also critical simply as a means to advance the state of the art. The Alkari scientists presented no other choices for projects in either field, but the acting emperor didn't complain: They were the exact projects he would have chosen given any wider choice.


-2376-


Steelbeak's fears focused increasingly on the Klackons as he aged, focusing on their productive people and their development - before his Alkari could - of the technology necessary to exploit Thrax's mineral riches, at the red star out beyond Yarrow. The Silicoids refused to let up at Zhardan or Beta Ceti, but in spite of the Acting Emperor's refusal to spend any further resources on Early Birds - and in spite of the advanced shields on the Silicoid military cruisers that severely reduced the effectiveness of Alkari lasers - both system defense forces held as fighters were dispatched across space from system to system to be sure the most-threatened worlds would have the defenses they needed. Increasingly, the imperial research budget was being turned to surpassing - or at least keeping up with - the Klackons in propulsion technology again. Another important change resulted from Steelbeak's focus on the Alkari as well: Recognizing that Rigel was sort of, kind of, more or less on the front, he actually approved factory spending at Fiith Starstone's colony[b]!


[b]-2377-


In the 7th year of Ref Steelbeak's return to the Acting Throne of the Alkari, the race to control toxic planetary environments ended - and the race for Thrax began. It was almost certainly not a race the Alkari still could win - but Old Steelbeak scoffed at near-certainties.

In between this important discovery and the preparations for its use within the Alkari empire (though not before Ref Steelbeak approved another terraforming research project of course!) somebody or another called a meeting. The galaxy was growing crowded with the young species that once had been guided by the Ancients' hands: With the formation of the new Alkari colony at Seidon, two thirds of the major stars in the galaxy had been claimed. Various busy-bodies who thought this was a significant benchmark started complaining that some better method should exist to determine the fate of the remaining stars in the galaxy, and the result was an assembly of the six galactic leaders, via holodisplay, in the audience chamber whose framework the Ancients had created long before. Simple people that they were, the six races came together with a simple purpose: To choose a single High Master to rule the entire galaxy.



It turned, as might be expected, into a total farce. Since voting power was based on population, the Alkari controlled as many votes as both of the next-most-populous empires - the Mrrshans and Bulrathi - combined, and were barely shy of holding a veto over all proceedings. Everyone abstained from the voting, apart from the Sakkra - who voted for the Alkari's 32nd Oligarchy of Serial Governors, apparently just to spite the Mrrshans' Yalara - and of course the two candidates, who each voted for themselves. Asked by a news reporter why he hadn't voted for Yalara as a token gesture, with no chance of either being elected, the Acting Emperor said, "Come on. They're going to hate us forever no matter what - or if they don't, they ought to. If I resorted to vote-trading at a time like this, what fun would that be?"


-2379-


The first three Pitohui* Colony Ships, designed to protect their passengers from toxic environments both during landing and at the colonies they would produce, were completed at Altair, Denubius, and Rigel - the latter having somehow, against all odds and probability, been allowed to almost complete its factory infrastructure prior to launch - and immediately sent on their way. The Silicoids had attacked Zhardan again that very year with an armed colony ship and a Mako missile cruiser, but had failed to destroy a single EarlyBird before the Colony Ship was destroyed, and the Mako - perhaps the worst possible design to use against nimble Alkari fighters - fled, and so the Pitohui from Altair was sent directly there to claim the system's lone barren world. The second, launched from from Rigel, was sent to the small, toxic planet at the blue star between Alkari and Klackon space to bring Regulus into range - and therefore, perhaps, eventually, Thrax. The final ship, from Denubius, was dispatched to the neutron star next door, to recharge its fuel cells in the local asteroid field, take advantage of the new colony-to-be at the blue star nearby, and proceed from there, perhaps to Regulus. More ships were in construction, at Volantis, Dunatis, Denubius, and Rigel, to claim all the other visible planets the Alkari could claim as well, in case it should prove possible to do so. That would ultimately be up to the next Acting Emperor though; Ref Steelbeak was getting very old, about to be termed out.


-2380-


He left a legacy of nearly-complete research projects, and some token pre-seeding for Dotomite Crystals...



...an empire that inexplicably seemed to finally have some actual factories - except of course at the new worlds and Poor Herculis - though a couple of the back-lines rimward worlds had still been oft-neglected.



His espionage policies had as yet borne no fruit, unsurprisingly, apart for information that might indeed prove highly valued. Whether to continue the policy would be a question for the next Acting Emperor to decide.



His only additions to the imperial fleet were four different colony ships, all already en route, though one would need to be redirected more usefully when it reached its asteroid-filled waypoint...



...and if they reached their destinations and planted their colonies successfully, the it would become more obvious than ever that the Alkari were well on their way to ruling the galaxy.

* - On Pitohui, see also this pdf in particular, from the bibliography of the wikipedia article I linked above. ... If you're into that sort of thing.

Notes for the next emperor:

- We have four colships en route: The regular one is going to the desert in the south (the only unclaimed "habitable" currently in range) and two "Pitohui" Toxic Colonies are headed for Zhardan and that blue star between us and the Klacks. (I forget its name.) The last one is headed for the neutron star (and its asteroid field) just so it'll be closer to some interesting places when the blue star gets colonized. (It should arrive on the same turn.) Up to you what to do about it, but don't forget it's there!

- There are still more Toxic colships (Pitohuis) in production! I'm hoping we can claim basically everything!

- The Council has met, so there's no need to worry about it until 2400.

- Barring complete catastrophe, we'll have a veto, so actually no worry about it ever again.

- We are currently spying (Espionage selected, not Hide) on both races we know. You can change this if you want to, obviously.

- We've got three techs in the percentages and just a few hundred or so RP invested in Dotomite Crystals (Range 7) - no investment yet in IT+40. No investment yet in force fields, and I recommend leaving it that way until we win the game, just for kicks.

- There are some scouts at or approaching the edges of our range, so when we found new colonies and get more planets into range, we should be able to send some more scouts out soon if not immediately.

- The Silicoids have Nuclear Engines (Warp 2) on their ships, and have been trying for Zhardan and the blue star just beyond Volantis repeatedly. Our EarlyBird popguns have held them off so far, and hopefully we'll be turning them into colonies during your turns!

- I probably missed something, but whatever. It's not impossible to lose this, but we're not going to. I should have just gone with one bullet point - the next one:

- Have fun with it!

The save is attached!

ROSTER:

RFS-81 - UP!
Coeurva - on deck? (We're getting close to mid-March! If you're still interested, let us know; you can slot in wherever you like!)
haphazard1 - (on deck if Coeurva still isn't available by the time RFS-81 has played)
RefSteel - Just played