Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons

[haphazard1]

OK, I will just play on. Hopefully none of the AIs will grab the system before we can get another col ship built and sent. And it sounds like the general preference on weapons is for Stinger missiles next. (This matches my own preference -- we may need some bigger punch to our bases.)

[RefSteel]

Really wish there was an easy way to check what will fit on a hull before we unlock it and how much miniaturisation we need to change that, I feel like in a modern game there'd be an online/out of game shipbuilder set up but even as a modernisation, this doesn't have quite the community for that I think.

To the extent it mimics MoO (which I think is not 100% but still fairly close) there's Sargon's ship design spreadsheet. It does have one or two bugs (e.g. it throws a warning for Maneuverability Class greater than the engine's best possible combat speed, but I don't know if its cost/space reflects the actual maneuverability class selection or the minimum class for the combat speed) but otherwise works great for MoO. With RotP, the biggest issue is that (as far as I know) there's nowhere that shows your current Tech Level in each field, so you have to do the calculation for yourself. (In MoO, it's [Tech Level of your Highest Tech in the Field] * 0.8 + [Number of Other Techs You Have in the Field] per the OSG. I formed a suspicion at one point that RotP actually leaves out the "* 0.8" but I haven't confirmed it, and there seem to be other changes too...)

[haphazard1]

This turned out to be a mostly development-focused turn set, with lots of fantories built and BCs invested in research.

Inherited T90

As previously discussed, I design a dead colony ship and start building it at our home world. As there is not going to be any regular habitable planets around for us to colonize, I scrap the existing col ship to save the maintenance costs.

I also start spying on the cats. This may have negative diplomatic effects, but

a) Cats are xenophobic
b) Cats hate avians
c) Cats are boxed in with nowhere else to go but through us
d) Cats will not sign a trade deal which might give us hope of better future relations

Conflict between us is all but inevitable. We may as well see what they have and plan for war coming sooner or later.

T91

Our security teams shut down a cat spy ring.

T92

Altair completes the new dead colony ship and it sets out for Satake.
Our own spies provide a report on the cats:

The cats do have NPGs, which is not good. They also have personal deflector shields, which we would love to get our talons on.

The overall picture:

The cats have a BIG fleet, despite their small size and production. Hopefully at least some of it is armed with older tech (lasers and gatling lasers) rather than NPGs.

T93

The brains show up with a pair of huge ships at inferno Adachi in the NNE, and drive off our scout. The Constellation and Sunfire designs both fire missiles at our poor unarmed scout, who retreats.

A question: I thought once you had a spy network in place, you could see the worlds of an AI race? The cats only show up with one world, Fieras. There is a blue star we have not explored east of the cats' home world -- shouldn't it show as a cat-controlled system? (I am assuming it has to be their second world.)

T94

And now that second world shows up as cat controlled. No idea why it took a turn longer than Fieras.
The cats also shut down our spy network. I stop spending, as we have info on them now and do not need more diplomatic trouble.

T95

Satake is colonized. Our poor world sends some seed pop, and some treasury spending is also allocated. No new stars are brought into scouting range.
Altair and Monteverde max out and begin pushing research.
We also get the notice from GNN of an upcoming galactic council meeting. Should be interesting to see how the rest of the galaxy is doing.

T96

Our scientists complete development of Fusion Bombs. Not that we can fit one on a small hull, even with absolutely nothing else (2 space short). Stinger missiles is selected as the next project.

T97

Shut down another cat spy ring. Persistent, aren't they?

T98

Seed pop arrives at Satake, which can finally start making some progress.
Our southern worlds are maxing industry.

T99

The council meets:

Most of the races do not have strong reasons to vote for either candidate. I gamble on being able to cast our vote for Dynalon, and almost end up losing the game when the rocks, cats, and shifters vote for the brains. But it works out with the brains falling just short of winning, and we get a large boost to diplomacy with them. Their ambassador delivers a message of thanks for our support, and relations are up to Amiable.

T100

BC3 research completes, not that we are likely to have space for them on our hulls. But maybe an older BC could now fit? Improved Space Scanner is our only option.
GNN reports that the Humans and Mentarans have formed a full alliance.
The Mentaran ambassador drops by for a friendly chat, and expresses interest in our Controlled Dead tech. The brains are offering Inertial Stabilizers, Death Spores, or Personal Deflectors for it. I consider going for Inertial Stabilizers, but we may not be able to fit them on our hulls any time soon (if ever). Death Spores are not useful to us, and we are in the percentages on Personal Deflectors. And the brains may have colonizable worlds to their east that we would prefer they not add to their empire. So I refuse. But these deals are probably still available if the next player wants to take them.

Notes for the next turn set:

- Harada and Katsura are set to finish upgrading their missiles bases. Otherwise our southern worlds are maxed out.
- Shangri La and Satake need more factories; Satake also needs some more terraforming (partly done).
- Personal Deflectors and Fusion Drives are solidly in the percentages (22 and 18 percent, respectively).

Good luck!

Brian Shanahan - UP!
Dp101 - on deck
RefSteel
Fenn
haphazard1 (just played)

[Dp101]

Honestly surprised you didn’t take the stabilises, given that (to me at least) they’re basically synonymous with small ships. Looks like good turns though! I’m glad the mishap with the colony ship didn’t cost us.

[haphazard1]

I did strongly consider it. I just was not sure about giving the brains Controlled Dead. There are no more worlds it would open on our side, but there may be some in the east and the brains are already very dangerous. Since it was the last turn of the set, I thought the next player could decide and probably get the same offer if we want it.

[Dp101]

That's fair enough, though I've had it be the case before that the AI will propose a deal that it won't OK if the player initiates it, so who knows.

[Brian Shanahan]

Hi I only now saw the save, sorry for holding it up.

Will have it back to you in a few hours.

Sorry for being a bit inattentive the last few goes round, am busy at work and am also preparing for my holiday the week after next.

[Brian Shanahan]

Inherited: took a look around, spun up base construction on a few more planets.
Decided to put another tick from everything else & dialled down force fields and propulsion a good bit and tucked the research into planetology, controlled irradiated will give us a lot.

T101: Mentarans want a NAP - say no. I want to keep the hostiles at least semi defendable

Deploy a medium battle scanner and order one built at Katsura, Cats are building a couple of new designs, the Feral and Oncilla and the Oncilla at least could be scary.

T102: We're not top 5 in tech Human>Mentaran>Kholdan>Nazlok and I accidentally clicked out before spotting no 5
Wastefully build four battle scanners because I forgot that our production is good enough. Disperse 3 around the border planets and the fourth goes to [strike]Archenar[/strike] misclick Fierias.
Fusion Drives come in> Reeajax (range nine) only option to advance.

T103: notihing of note. There is a Humen combat ship floating around, think it's going to Seki.

T104: Our scanner gets to Fierias get's it's pics and bugs out.

Equalise tech other than Force Fields (37%) Both Construction and Planetology (both 8% are in percentages now)

T105: Nothing. Map watching sees the Mentarans with one Ellipse hanging around Pascal, but they've only a Tundra base on it.

T106: Personal Deflectors come in. Irradiated comes in!!!!! Pick Class V Planetary shields (over IV deflectors) and Atmospheric Terraforming (over Cloning). Force fields is a no brainer, but Cloning may be worth going back to.
Altair, Monteverde, Yonezu and Katsura all get on col ship duty. Change mind, see Cat fleet go to Katsura - move col ship build to Hoshina and diall up Talons

Put a big hike in Planetology spending (two from everything but Force Fields), a smaller one in Force Fields (3 from Construction still at 17% despite big spending drop), and take from everywhere else.

T107: Shangri-La maxes factories. Katsura builds 26 Talons.
Send ten pop from Monte Arenoso to Shangri La (which hadn't been fully terraformed). Monte Arenoso will be on full Ecology for a while

T108: Shangri-La goes back to factories. Col ships get popped out and sent to planets. All the ship building planets except Yonezu (we've a fifth we can colonise) and Katsura (kitty fleet) go back to science.
Give a check to Satake and finish off it's terraforming too.

T109: The Cat fleet retreats from us. The crash build of about 70 Talons was effective. A second fleet of Catamounts is approaching, but I'm not worried about those.
Hineno (the southern inferno gets colonised by the hoomens on the interturn so I retreat my colony shipt to Yonezu for Kawguchi the last irradiated planet (currently showing red on the expand screen because of Homan and Mentaran war ships)

T110: Kuroki is colonised

Tsukushi is colonised

I leave it there then, live.

Thoughts: probably should think about rolling over the Kitty Kats once we've our irradiateds on line and after that who do we go for? The Hoomins seem to be another juicy target. Mentarans have planetary shields at least and probably good guns too.
Luckily we don't have a runaway in the other half of the galaxy to contend with, though we still cannot see anybody.
Not taking the NAP was probably a mistake. Aside from doing a bit of exploratory talking I did no diplo with the AIs this set. I also refrained from any espionage, probably a good idea to run a round of spies on the Mentarans and Humons for intelligence gathering.
I was probably being paranoid about the Fiershan ships but better safe than sorry.

EDIT to say: I think we're actually in a much better position now than we were even fifty years ago. We're ahead in planetology and have a number of stronger systems coming on line and with Atmos Terraforming in the works we will have a strong economy to build on. The only issue is converting that into a winning position, hence my thinking about going after the Cats and Humans in the medium term.

The Roster:
Dp101 UP!
RefSteel - on deck
Fenn
haphazard1
Brian Shanahan done.

[Brian Shanahan]

I decided to keep this separate, I'll have time for one more set next week (possibly two if the turns go around quick), but after that I'm AFK until the 12th July.

[haphazard1]

Looks like some nice turns, Brian. A bunch of new colonies, some nice tech, and some info on our troublesome neighbors. Future development of Planetary V and Atmo Terraforming will be very helpful.