OSG-38 - Renaissance Psilons

[haphazard1]

2336

GNN reports Mrrshan now have 6 systems. Somewhere in the galaxy the cats are going wild. Better than the rocks or bugs, but still disturbing news.
Timing of col ship at Mentar is poor, can not reloc to Yarrow since we do not own it yet, can not send it to T120 yet; so spend one turn building factories, then will be able to reloc to Yarrow to regain the turn; will need to remember to send it onward to T120 though.

2337

Nothing, but rock ship near Proteus vanishes from our scanners; going where??

2338

Hyper-V missiles comes in at ~11%. Choices are Fusion Bomb and Ion Cannon, take Ion Cannon.
Another turn of factory building at Mentar to get timing right, will have delayed colship for T120 by 1 turn net but have 25 more factories.

2339

We colonize StepStone in the Yarrow system. A human scout was present but retreated.
Rock col ship arrives in Proteus, but retreats from our scout. This blockade will not last for long.
Mentar shifted back to col ship, which will reloc to StepStone; remember to send it on!
Nature sends some pop to StepStone, will take a long time to get there.

[haphazard1]

2340

Mentar finishes col ship and it is reloc towards Stepstone.
Mentar shifts spending to finish industry, but uses overflow for some Popgun fighters which will reloc to Nature on way to Proteus; not much, but might discourage rocks.
Send scout from Anraq (radiated) to the yellow that is now in range due to StepStone.

2341

Nothing; force fields at 18%.

2342

Nothing

2343

Rock col ship at Proteus again, retreats from our scout. We have gotten lucky to delay them this long.
Pop guns arrive at Nature, keep 1 there and send rest to Proteus; only 8 but might deter?
Mentar will max industry, can shift some to research; this allows Nature to finally terraform; also take chance to terraform Backward as pop is at 2/3.
Scout arrives at yellow, inferno world; at least the humans do not have it.

[haphazard1]

2344

Human col ship arrives at Vulcan (T120). Retreats from our scout.
Col ship arrives at Stepstone, moves on to Vulcan next turn.
Nature and Backward continue terraforming.
Force Fields at 37%.
Computers enters percentages.

2345

We colonize Paradise in the Vulcan system.
Nature sends a max slug of pop to seed the new world.
Nature and Backward have finished terraforming, back to normal spending.
New colony puts us in contact with humans, who have 3 worlds and are relaxed towards us.
Humans drew Pacisifstic Ecologist personality, very odd.
They have less pop but much more industry and tech than we do, and of course more fleet and total power.
I sign a max trade deal (75 BC) to boost relations; maybe an error with humans? They are dismissive of our tech, so no trades to be had.
Force fields at 50%.

[haphazard1]

2346

Pop finally arrives at Stepstone so it can develop.
Force fields at 61%.
Spot a rock large warship (Shark class) between Proteus and Uxmai (tundra east of it). We will not stop that with popguns.

2347

Force Fields finally completes. Deflectors 3 is only option.
Rock warship appears to be heading for tundra Uxmai. It will chase off our scout easily, nothing we have can stop a large right now.
Plantology enters percentages, Computers is 26%.

2348

Battle Computer Mark 2 completes. Choices are ECM Jammer 1, Deep Space Scanner, IRC3, aand BC3. Take IRC3. It will make factories more expensive on new worlds, but we need the additional industry at Mentar since it is our only productive world.
Rock Shark chases our scout away from Uxmai. And a rock col ship is on the way. Nothing we can do about it.

[haphazard1]

2349

Nothing much.
Improved Eco is in mid-20s.
Handing off here, as next turn will presumably bring contact with rocks. Will leave decisions to next player.
Backwards has ~40 factories, Nature 1, Stepstone and Paradise are brand new still. We are almost a 1PE in terms of industry, even though we have five planets.

OK, that seems to work if I keep it really short. That is very annoying, but at least the report is posted. Good luck to DaveV!

[shallow_thought]

Hey we got Paradise (solid name choices there)! Now we can perhaps stop distorting our empire and build factories like a sane player .

The rock large is a great example of why I personally don't like pouring production into fighters early (which is not what has been suggested in posts - it's very different from building enough scouts to cover every available world). Sometimes it works, but the AI generally has more production (and tech?) at this stage (on Impossible), so you're sinking resources into a gamble they won't bother sending a proper escort. Still doesn't make it good that we're going to be up close and personal with the Silicoids .

[haphazard1]

Now we can perhaps stop distorting our empire and build factories like a sane player .

We did not finally max out our homeworld until 2344, which is ridiculously late for a more typical game. But I think going for earlier col ships did pay off, as we managed to grab that amazing Terran 120 system. (And also StepStone, which is not bad.) With a human col ship showing up one turn before we got there, we were very lucky that it was not armed and could not drive off our scout.

I agree that trying to use laser fighters to stop the rocks would have been useless, and just a waste of production. I produced a small number using overflow from the col ship, but otherwise did not produce any fighters. And now it looks like the rocks have bypassed Proteus (for now, anyway, they will certainly be back soon) and are going to grab Uxmai first. So a laser fighter blockade would not have worked anyway.

If we had Controlled Tundra in our tree, things might have gone differently. Or maybe not -- Improved Eco has not completed yet, plus time to actually build a tundra col ship and get it to Uxmai...I don't think we would have beaten the rocks there.

We are going to have to think about defenses of some kind soon. With the rocks about to colonize Uxmai, they will have range to reach Nature and probably Mentar. Do we want to try to industrialize Nature? Poor planets can be built up, but they are always tough to defend and having factories gives enemies an easy way to capure tech.

Having our first colony world be poor has certainly made this game a lot tougher. Backwards is starting to get enough factories to hit the "build more faster" part of the development curve, but it still has some time before it maxes out. Only Mentar has any real production right now, so we are badly lagging the AIs in production even when they have fewer planets (like the humans).

[DaveV]

Got it, I'll plan on playing Tuesday night my time (about 24 hours from this post), giving everyone time to offer advice.

It sounds like a good set, haphazard. I definitely agree that it's rare that the human player can outbuild the AIs, with their huge production bonuses and free colony ships.

[haphazard1]

Good luck, DaveV! Maybe check to see if some scouting could be done, as per RefSteel's comment. I did not think about new planets in range from events before my turn set started. And Stepstone and Paradise are out on the rim and did not bring anything new in range there, other than human-controlled worlds. I did not think it would be diplomatic to scout them, but maybe I should have tried just for future invasion purposes?

I also did not start any spying, even just for current info. We might want to consider it to get a better idea of what the humans have. And the rocks too, once they settle Uxmai and we have contact.

[RefSteel]

Looks like good turns, haphazard! I hope the forum and screenshot issues fix themselves - they sound really frustrating!

I'm not at a computer that can look at the save right now, but it sounds like we're going to have our work cut out for us against the 'coids! I'm curious about what's on that large ship, but agree that a small group of laser fighters (i.e. the number of fighters we can even afford) won't be able to take it unless they decided to load it with bombs and maybe a few missiles or something, and a bigger fleet of fighters would have been far too expensive to build. As y'all have pointed out, we're already stretched thin thanks to our poor second world and the tech and colship gambit that claimed us Paradise - and a five-planet empire that's going to keep growing and become extremely strong if we can hold onto it! (On fighters, I do like what haphazard did here: I've too often seen AIs grab a bunch of worlds in a row with free instant colships and just a fighter or two as escort. Our overflowed shipbuilding just ensured they had to send actual force if they wanted to grab our hostile worlds. Which, unfortunately, it looks like they did.) Even if they do nothing else, our fighters should be able to free up some Scouts to actually scout as well!

On tech: I'm especially glad now that shallow_thought put us on track for IER in Planetology! Depending on how the Silicoids play this, it might even be better to advance quickly with IT20 instead of waiting for Controlled Dead! Also, it's good to know we'll have Stabilizer in our tree when we want it (way down the line, most likely). And having RC3 in our tree is great news: We should hopefully have time to build up our three rimward worlds' factories (it's great to hear they've been working on it and that Mentar's are now complete!) in time to turn them into real powerhouses when that tech comes in!