OSG-35 - Social Distancing

[Cyneheard]

The newest Chief Of Verifying Infinite Distancing, Cyneheard the Nineneeth of His Name, surveys the Darlokian Plague-Free Isolationist lands.

2360:
Nazin converted into a Colony Ship build. It’s a 3t build. One micromanagement trick that I like is running one tick LESS than the current build length (so the maximum spot that “builds it in 4t”), and building factories with the rest – I can always put that tick back in later, but more factories earlier = more BCs, and sometimes pop growth + factory production makes up the difference anyway.
Keep Out has 2 scouts at it and Gion has 0. Sending a scout to Gion, but it is too late to scare away the Meklar scout. Other Keep Out scout sent to Artemis. Scout pickets can buy a lot of time, and really should be in every world. If we could spend hundreds of BCs on large cruisers, we could have fit in 8BC scouts and put them everywhere.
About Time moved off of Factories to research – getting Propulsion will help greatly if we can get lucky. Set Propulsion to 15% and cut Weapons down a bit; I don’t care if Weapons takes 10t to mature, I’m not building a HyperX base or missile boat this turnset.

2361:
None of our distantly researching researchers were able to master the secrets of nuclear engines. I guess they need to actually talk to one another to get anywhere, and that remains a challenge. 26% to hit.
Mrrshans have 3 Medium Bobcats and a ColShip headed for Collassa, but the 1st Lzr Cruiser is going to arrive there in time.



2362:
We win, losing 2 Shortsticks, but wipe their fleet.
Spy destroys 1 factory in Keep Out (was there a factory to destroy?).
Nuclear Engines hits on the interturn! Start Sublight, we won’t need Range 7 for a while. Put About Time back on Factory production, and trickle a little bit of research into Planetology.
I MESSED UP HERE – didn’t switch the ColShip to Nuclear Engines. OOPS. Quite costly, we lose 3t for Gion and 4t for Hyboria because of it.





2363: 3 Pelicans from the Alkari chase our scout away from Phyco (Dead to the far east). This is annoying, but not a big deal. Colony Ship heading for Gion (scout is going to arrive to picket there in 2364).

Nazin set to Factory production for 2 turns, and slipping a scout in for Hyboria now; no reason to waste maintenance/opportunity cost on factories if we can’t send the next ColShip to Hyboria. Weapons at 20% to hit.


2364:

1 Alkari ColShip and a Mrrshan fleet – 2 Large Leopards and 2 ColShips (who have missiles) are headed for Collassa, ONE TURN before the COLAS would arrive.

2365:
Blow up the Alkari ColShip first (had to retreat the Longsticks midcombat to avoid them getting killed).
Fortunately the Mrrshans are loaded with Fusion Bombs. No losses for use, 2 ColShips lost for them.



Also get HyperV, and get Hand Lasers because I briefly forgot our variant doesn’t allow us to invade worlds, but it’s cheap miniaturization and invaders may happen at some point the way this game is going. Anti-Missile Rockets and Fusion Bombs were our options, so we’ll be getting Bombs next.

But THIS is ridiculous:



2366:
Retreat from the death fleet. 113 Laser Fighters and 13 Medium Heavy Lasers is way too many for us to tangle with. I sent a Scout from About Time to hope to find Collassa clear again, and we would be able to settle Collassa in 4 turns if their fleet can be pulled somewhere else (2t to retreat, 2t to return). They don’t have a ColShip so we have a chance.
Put AboutTime on ShortSticks because I think the fleet will need some reinforcements.


2367:
Good news: The Death Fleet left Collassa, just as I hoped. This happens a lot with the AI – they don’t like leaving fleets in place. About Time goes back to Factory production.


2368:
COLAS and company are redirected to Collassa
Because of my mistake with not upgrading the ColShips, and the fact that we’re at 6 designs, I can’t finish a Nuclear ColShip without scrapping a design. We’re about to settle Gion this upcoming turn, and then I can finish a Nuclear ColShip at Nazin.


2369:
We settle Gion. I meant to rename it So Alone but misclicked. Sorry.
Start 80% RIW in Construction.
Alkari have a Large Warhawk headed for About Time. I think we have 2t, but it’s going to take 3t to make a missile base naturally so I put the fully-factoried Nazin on reserve production to hopefully finish the About Time missile base before the Alkari arrive.
NAZIN IS VERY CLOSE TO FINISHING ITS NUCLEAR COLONY SHIP, about 50BC, but it looks like I need 100% reserve production to get About Time’s missile base finished in time.


2369-2370 Interturn:
We have colonized Waters Edge, formerly known as Collassa
Unfortunately, the Warhawk has arrived at About Time.
State of our empire:




Note: Be very very careful sending population from About Time to Waters Edge this turn. I have not spent the Reserves, but keep in mind that the game might lie to you about finishing the missile base in 1t if you send too much population away. There’s a medium ship that looks to be 2t out, and you can send ships back from Waters Edge if you want to spend 2t on missile base/fleet instead of 1t. I’ve reset Nazin to finish the ColShip and do some research – we may finally be able to start building factories in Keep Out, or we may have to build missile bases in Nazin because of the Meklars being right there.
 
Time for Cyneheard the Nineteenth to retire from these wars, and go stay the CENSORED at home.

[RefSteel]

Great report, Cyneheard! And it looks like in spite of the engine slip, we made a lot of progress during your turns! Of course, now that the Chief Of Verifying Infinite Distancing, Cyneheard the Nineneeth of His Name, is being replaced by a squabbling team of nineteen Community-Oriented Volunteer Imperial Directors, collectively known as the Teal Refs, there's no telling what kind of mess we're going to get into next - especially as our situation is still looking dire.

Looking at the map, I'm guessing that Alkari colship is about to hit Waters Edge next turn, the Mrrshan colship nearby will probably arrive the turn after that, the other Mrrshan colship, escorted by three large Leopard Fusion Bombers, will likely arrive the following turn, and of course there's the large Warhawk already in orbit at About Time, with a medium Space Gull en route (Cyneheard thinks it'll hit in about two turns and is probably right). And more (certainly including Alkari transports trying to take About Time) may well be coming too.

So, um. Got it?

Got it!

Here goes nothing....

Also get HyperV, and get Hand Lasers because I briefly forgot our variant doesn’t allow us to invade worlds

Our variant isn't quite that harsh, fortunately; we decided on just the original rules Ianus suggested:

Variant: No trade/espionage/sabotage/diplomatic overtures/ground invasion. We must Abstain from all galactic council votes unless we vote for ourselves.

This means we are allowed to accept peace if offered, as long as we make no overtures ourselves, and we are allowed to invade enemy worlds - as long as we maintain safe social distancing by blasting them, exterminating them from their world, and incinerating the bodies!

Also in the rules:

Is that a redirect after a retreat? If I recall, there's also a house rule against that.

The exploit rule only forbids the special case where the ship is redirected back to the same planet it just fled and the ship fired expendable weapons (i.e. missiles or bombs) during the battle. It's true that some of us prefer not to redirect retreating ships at all, but that's not a rule; it's just an extra handicap some of us take on.

...

Normally, I would post my plans and goals here, but right now, I think those come down to, "Hold on as best I can and try not to lose!"

Let's see what I can do.

[utwig]

Good play Cyneheard. We're in shape to hold on what we got and will be able to start pushing outward.

What is the consensus on colonizing Imra which is 7 parsecs away? Since our tech is only around 35/turn it will take a while for miniaturisation, while we have nice production on Nazin and can build huge col in around 10 turns. It wastes around 1000 bc but Imra can be a big benefit with either fleet or research. Is that good ROI?

There is a caveat to our variant as no espionage and no invasions means no techs from AI. We'll have to research everything ourselves so we need more worlds.

For retaking Jinga and Yarrow we need at least 50 medium missiles or 10 large cruisers which will take around 30 turns to build.

[Cyneheard]

Good play Cyneheard. We're in shape to hold on what we got and will be able to start pushing outward.

What is the consensus on colonizing Imra which is 7 parsecs away? Since our tech is only around 35/turn it will take a while for miniaturisation, while we have nice production on Nazin and can build huge col in around 10 turns. It wastes around 1000 bc but Imra can be a big benefit with either fleet or research. Is that good ROI?

There is a caveat to our variant as no espionage and no invasions means no techs from AI. We'll have to research everything ourselves so we need more worlds.

For retaking Jinga and Yarrow we need at least 50 medium missiles or 10 large cruisers which will take around 30 turns to build.

For Imra, I think it's "Get Tundra, colonize that, and then Imra" that's the most efficient for BC. I can confirm that will get Imra in range. That's why I put research into that and RIW 80%.

I'm just glad we got Waters Edge - we were very very fortunate that the Mrrshan doomstack did not show up with their colony ships, or after we'd colonized Waters Edge. About Time being a size 105 Fertile world means that a single ground invasion is manageable - that's assuming of course that we can clear out this Warbird before the first transport wave shows up.

Fusion Bomb is in our research queue, so we can clear out worlds efficiently if we need to, but I don't think we have the BC to spend on that any time soon.

[RefSteel]

Report from the Administrating Neutral Translator In Virtual Isolation while Remaining Under Surveillance (FOR) the Community-Oriented Volunteer Imperial Directors - 19 of them in all:

2370

So in theory I'm supposed to be translating the thought patterns of all these 19 'loks, but this turns out to be really difficult when they're all (probably) pulling in different directions, and (definitely) ... not communicating with me or each other or anyone else at all.  So by "translating," what my job title actually means is "running everything on my own."

...

Cool!

So, let's get started.  We've got a Warhawk cruiser already in orbit over our fertile About Time colony, with a Space Gull destroyer that looks like it's coming to reinforce.  We've got an Alkari colony cruiser that's either about to hit our newest colony or I'm going cross-eyed and can't read maps anymore.  And we've got two separate Mrrshan fleets coming to blow up whatever the Alkari leave alive.  So this looks bad.  How are we going to cover all of that?

I watch the patterns for a long time, observe the shadow-movements of various Darloks scurrying out of sight to avoid communicating anything - least of all if it's communicable - and finally decide we can't.  The Waters Edgians are still too few to help themselves, and our crippled economy can't protect them and the About Timers without falling even further behind.  We're facing a bunch of military monsters here:  Alkari pilots who've been prepared for space combat by eons of evolution on Altair, and Mrrshan gunners with eye-paw coordination twice as effective as the best computer targeting systems in our empire, even in combination with battle scanners.  If we finish the missile base the About Timers are working on, there's every chance it'll just get pasted by that nimble, dancing Warhawk while its pilot tricks our Hyper-V bottle rockets into premature detonations and we barely scratch its paint.  I don't know what it's armed with, but we've been using the same shields and targeting systems and ECM for eighty years!  Practically anything it's carrying would wreck what we've got!  So I'm going to have to let that thing stay in orbit another year; as far as I can guess, the alternative is trying to stop it, failing, and then crying about it staying in orbit for another year or more!  We definitely want that base up - Chief Cyneheard wasn't wrong - but not until we can support it with a fleet!  So I'll intentionally get the planet to almost finish the base inside its protected, hidden underground facility, and get everyone else building the specific parts of a LZR cruiser that - as if by a lucky coincidence - are actually going to be just as good for incorporating into actually up-to-date ships ... when we're ready!  We're going to be helping out here on the homeworld too, pushing everything we can into rebuilding our interstellar reserve ... except for what we need for the one more-important mission:  Finally finishing that colony ship for the last world we can sanely and peacefully claim without more technology!  (The Keep Outians - the ones I'm not sending down to Gion right away at least - are working on making that tech a reality though, now focusing some 80% of their efforts on planetology!)

So I mentioned we can't hold our newest colony, right?  We can't.  I know we can't.  Of the tens of millions of About Timers who want to go, I'm only letting a million head out to reinforce the place and create more social-distancing space on their own world, because we need everyone on the ground at the fertile world we gave up so much to acquire, building defensive installations and fleets, and making use of all the funding I'm sending them out from the treasury.  And I'm sending the main fleet down too, to help deal with that Warhawk.  Most of the main fleet.

But I'm going to keep a few ships back.  Maybe we can't hold.  I don't know how we can hold.  But I'm going to try.


2371
   

Well, I'm not too blind to read a map, apparently.  That Alkari colony cruiser just showed up as expected, and it's armed with ... holy heliports!  Twin heavy lasers, four more for close-in defense, and targeting computers as good as our most powerful warships!  Those guns will hit our LZR twice as much as we can hit them with that crazy Alkari piloting of theirs, and if they weren't such bird-brained morons, their wits dulled and diluted by their constant "communication" and "contact" with each other and everything, even this lone colony ship could pose a threat to our fleet.  Fortunately, they are all of that, and since our LZR has more than three times as many long-range guns as them, we win the stand-off battle they insist on, using the asteroids a little to help make sure.  The Longstick and Scout are in no position to help win this fight, but that's okay; that's not why they're here.  Once that bird ship is blown to atoms, it's time to set about the business of preparing for the next battle ... or ... I think?  I've got this nagging feeling there was something else that was supposed to happen here, but somehow it's escaping me.

Whatever; that can wait!  We've got a new colony ship in our skies, the first ship in Darlok history to mount full-powered Nuclear Engines!  It's heading down to Hyboria right away, where one of our Scouts just arrived and confirmed that even a fuel base there can't bring Imra into range, as it's 8 parsecs away, but I kind of suspected that anyway; that's part of the reason (but only a part) I'm keeping so many Keep Outian labs hard at work on Planetology!

So let's see.  Wasn't there another Scout arriving somewhere this year?  I ... wait a minute.  That's what that nagging feeling's about!  It was supposed to hit the About Timer skies and try to survive flying close enough for the Warhawk to fire on it, to learn what kind of weapons the cruiser was packing!  Why wasn't there a battle?  And weren't there two Mrrshan fleets heading for our front world?  Why am I seeing three?

   

...oh.  Okay, so good news first:  The Warhawk has left the ... planetary orbit ... thing!  It isn't visibe in this shot because our Scout is hiding its icon, but it's flying away toward the far rim of the galaxy, probably on a mission of exploration, and due to arrive in about ten million years.  There'll still be transports coming, and we still have to deal with that Space Gull, but this just got a whole lot easier!  Oh, and more good news:  The death fleet Cyneheard mentioned isn't all together anymore!  The 13 Bobcat heavy laser destroyers are no longer accompanied by over a hundred laser fighters!  ...  Um.  And the bad news?  Well, the reason I know that last bit of good news is that the Bobcats are heading right back to our newest colony, right in line with those other incoming fleets.  They react faster than our LZRs, mount nearly as many heavy lasers as we have on our entire fleet, and hit with them at pretty much twice our best rate against them.

Hooo boy.  Well, here goes.  All the About Timers switch over from missile defenses to all-out shipbuilding, still working on what we're pretending are LZR parts, but are secretly meant for other things.  Barring a miracle, we're going to lose our forward colony; I haven't analyzed it in detail, but it's looking impossible.  Just the same, if we start losing worlds, we might never stop venting our shadowy essences into the void.  I think I have to try.


2372
   

With the Warhawk gone, sending a fleet this large to protect the About Timers seems pretty silly, with our front world still under annual Mrrshan threat.  The twin-heavy-laser Space Gull here just retreats after the smaller fleet we left behind takes out a lone Mrrshan colony cruiser, but this fleet won't return in time to face the fusion bombers coming to wipe out our newest colony.  And meanwhile the Alkari are sending more force after us elsewhere:  Three more Space Gulls and 7 nimble Pelican fighters that by their facing and map position look like they're coming to our poorest world, refusing to Keep Out, plus a single Falcon destroyer heading somewhere in our back field - I'm guessing Artemis, but I can't be sure.  There's not much I can do about that - not right now, at least - with all the imminent threats on the Mrrshan front.  My plan for the LZR parts is finally unveiled as I order their assembly into Mask 2.0 nuclear laser fighters, fast enough to reach the front in a single year, with the relocation orders built into their nav computers as they come off the About Timer spacedocks, and the main battle fleet leaves About Timer space in the same direction, though those ships are much slower and won't arrive in time for the next battle.  I skew the little research power we have available even further toward planetology - if we just stay in place, we'll stagnate and die - but at this rate, we won't be able to defend ourselves and still even keep the labs open, never mind expanding anywhere.  The Meklar may come for our core worlds at any moment too, and one round of bombs from the incoming Leopards will cost us a colony by this time next year!  We simply can't sustain this three-front war!


2373

Okay - breathe ... this isn't working!  Breathe ... I can't...!  Oh ... wait, okay, shapeshift into something with lungs!  Now!  Breathe.  Okay.  Breathe.

So that was a bit of an intense few moments there.  I'm going to start with the latest:  We've kind of been building some fleets lately.  And we've killed a fair number of enemy ships.  And apparently...

   

Someone noticed!  Farseer of the Alkari decided that even though fighting his people is getting ours nowhere, it isn't helping him.  He declared a white peace with our people, and I certainly wasn't about to disagree!  I wasn't about to agree either - not verbally - but Not War is definitely a state we're happy to silently achieve.  Our homeworld will just build a single Mask with relocation orders for Keep Outian space, to meet the incoming Alkari fleet so it knows to turn around without anyone saying anything, and everyone else on the homeworld who can be spared from cleaning up factories goes to finally building research labs everywhere!  That's all I can do though ... at least, all I can do that I haven't done already.  I mentioned, right, about building starships and killing enemy fleets?

   

The Mrrshan colony cruiser emptied its rocket payload at our ships and escaped, but the Leopard fusion bombers never reached the planet!  They took out a couple of Masks with their rockets, but with our wisely-separated, socially-distanced sets of well-differentiated ships to block their path, in the absence of any beam weapons in the enemy fleet, we were able to keep them from ever approaching the planet's surface to unload their massive payloads of fusion bombs!  One hit might have turned the planet's surface to glass, but they never even got one hit before we turned their cruisers into blazing bonfires, lighting up the Waters Edgian skies from space!  Now I just have to hope those two fighters I lost won't be the difference next year between another decisive victory and a crushing defeat.  Heavy laser destroyers are a whole different problem for our starfleets than bombers like these.  My main fleet will arrive just in time, reinforced with yet more About Timer Mask 2.0s on relocation orders.  It's all I can do - let's hope it's enough!


2374

Yes, yes, I'm burying the lede here, but look at it this way:  I'm a Darlok!  If you're somehow privvy to this report, I'm already communicating with you way more than my culture could ever accept!  You can't expect me to communicate well at the same time!

   

I mentioned getting research labs built last year, and this report came in from one of the key ones.  We 'loks are great at computer research, and it's been almost three quarters of a century since we even started any!  Here, we have the option to improve our missile and bomb defenses, which we could accomplish faster than you could shape-shift into something with eyelashes and blink, or develop a better battle computer, which I consider a much better choice, even though it'll take a little longer.  Someday, we'll hopefully be able to scan things in space, but not anytime soon apparently.  We've also started work on improving our deflector arrays to make our bases - in case we finish any - immune to basic lasers, and started investing in our existing Sublight Drive and especially Shadowy-Pseudopod-Held Laser research projects, because our transports are slow, our ships could be faster, and we're in desperate need of a real weapon to mount on our ships.  (Hyper-V rockets are not real weapons.  They're better than nukes, but about the way forks are better than scalpels for eating soup.)

But let's get to that lede I was burying:  Do we still have a Waters Edgian colony?

   

That would be a yes!!  All 13 Bobcats burned at the cost of ten of our little Fighters, most of those obsolete!  We had to maneuver carefully to get an outcome this amazing, and they had to make some mistakes, like firing pointlessly on the planet when we gave them an opening, and insisting on falling back constantly to fire on us from their weapons' longest range, while still allowing us to close to optimal targeting range with everything in our fleet.  Even so, our losses are more than a fifth of our total fighter fleet, but we blew the Bobcats out of the sky, and now for the first time since I started ruling the Darloks with arbitrar...erm, translating for whoever, the Community something, there are no threats to our worlds incoming!  Not that it'll last, but there's one really, really helpful thing:

   

I of course was not going to admit that, no indeed, we do not want any more suffering, but I was secretly delighted that the Meklar saw no need to continue (by which as far as my reign was concerned, they meant start) hostilities and instead declared peace!  I learned moments later, checking on our colonies, that this was better than I supposed:  The Meklar had apparently decided that in case I told them we would have no peace (As if I would ever communicate that to them!) that they were willing to bribe us to change our minds with up to 550 BC!  I inferred this (we Darloks are good at inferring, since it's the only way we can figure out what one another is ever up to) from the fact that - having earmarked it for the purpose - they apparently just left the credits on our doorstep when we didn't do any (horrors!) haggling.  Rather than looking a gift pile of money in the mouth, I started spending it immediately on building up Gion and our front-line colonies, with the promised tens of millions of About Timers finally setting out to become Waters Edgians!

Our core worlds helped with the switch-over too:  The Keep Outians are actually taking a year out for factory construction, to get just two into place:  Thanks to our policy of social (and factory) distancing and our Improved Ecological Restoration techniques, the cost of clean-up for those two factories is so negligible as to be for all intents and purposes nonexistant!  This makes the return on investment for each of these two just as good as factories on other worlds used to be before we improved our restoration technology, and we do need more production around the empire desperately!  Since the spacing would be closer, and because of rounding artifacts in the imperial budget, a third factory would actually cost more than it produces until our waste reduction tech completes, so I wouldn't recommend building any more factories there, but I felt those two were at least better than nothing!  Our research in the meantime is being handled right here, apart from a few million people in the spaceyards putting out just three ships of a brand-new design, replacing the outdated, slow, and expensive Longsticks:  Fast-moving Scout 2.0s that will race out to cover planets we need fuel tanks to reach while some of our Masks are fanning out to protect or watch our colonies and certain other stars within their more-limited range.


2375
   

Our newest colony is named for what we're all doing in our places of residence, interrupted only for hurried forays into the outdoor world for Essential Activities.  Two million Darloks, now officially Shelterites, who didn't know what year it was apparently, disembarked from our fastcol ship and immediately cannibalized it for parts with which to build their new colony.  Gion, pushing up against its population limit with millions more Darloks about to arrive, launched its maximum possible 17 transports, all Shelterites-to-be, just in time to make room.  Almost (ahem) as if somebody planned it that way.  Our Scout 2.0s head out toward their destinations, though they won't all arrive during my - ah - translation period, our homeworld sends a token transport down to Gion since there'll be more departures there soon - although I just realized that it won't arrive during my reign either, and I feel a little bad about that since I'd rather leave my successor with a clean transport slate - and that's all!  No combat with arriving Alkari fleets - and best of all, no communication - as they just turned around as soon as they saw there were Darlok fleets in the star systems they were visiting, and nobody else arrived!  A peaceful year at last!  May it contin...

...

I can't believe I jinxed myself like that.


2376
   

So what we see here is the crowded space around our front-line worlds, including the latest Mrrshan attack fleet, following the same old, tired vector from Gorra to our forwardmost star. That means they'll show in three turns, and I can almost - but not quite get a missile base in place there in time to meet them. So here's the problem: Those colony ships are probably just missile boats like before, and I was able to prepare the best defense I could against previous Mrrshan fleets thanks to the excellent scanning reports collected by my predecessor, Cyneheard. but I've never seen a Sabretooth before, and neither has any other Darlok as far as I know. And the thing you have to understand is, even though we finally have a decent number of worlds, and even some population, and even though we're finally starting to get some infrastructure up on them, we are catastrophically behind in technology. This is mainly the result of failing to expand and build infrastructure early: The other races' investments have had plenty of time to pay off, and though that Sabretooth could be a pile of junk they've had lying around for ages, it could also have real weapons and advanced deflector shields that would basically make our entire starfleet obsolete. So it looks like we're back to square one again, defending the poor Waters Edgian people from whatever kind of nightmare that thing turns out to be, but flying blind now instead of preparing with knowledge of what we'll need.

Oh, and notice those yellow ships that also just showed up this year. Those are Bulrathi destroyer-class Claws - two in the fleet near my cursor, one near the bottom of the screen - and I can't tell where they're going or where they came from, but it looked like they were coming in fast, and from where they are on the map, my guess is the Waters Edgians and About Timers (respectively) are each looking at another incoming attack from unknown and more-advanced-than-us forces, maybe even within a year or two! So we've got more About Timers heading out to reinforce the front world, which is going all-out on defense, while the other About Timers get ready some more "LZR parts" to turn into Masks later on, we get rid of our old slow-coach Scouts to save a smidge on maintenance and design a Telescope scanner destroyer - though I'm not building any yet - so hopefully we won't have to face this again, and push our research as best we can into the fields that might help us in time: I calculate a 4% chance of developing Tundra bases this year, and half that chance of getting personal lasers out to the Darlok soldiers on the ground.

That'll have to do for now, I guess. Here we go again!

Continued next post....

[RefSteel]

Report, Part 2:

2377

I practically fall out of my magravitic containment rig when I decipher the movements among the shadows in our weapon laboratories!

   

One chance in fifty, and it hit!  Sure, I'd have prefered a planetology hit, at twice the tiny chance, but I am not complaining about this!  Three cheers!  This is cause for celebration!  I set the obvious course for Fusion Bomb research in lieu of various types of trash, all too well aware that we still won't have anything that can usefully fight enemy ships even after the tech completes, and then do an I'm So Lucky dance right where I'm sheltering in place in my holoroom!  We got a tech already!  We're the best!!!  There's even music in the background!  It has a catchy tune!  Who turned on the music?  It ... wasn't ... me.

That's the High Council Music!  They're starting the meeting!  Someone just pushed us over the two-thirds mark in the galaxy!  It ... it wasn't me!  My last colony was built two years ago!  But that's okay:  We may be backward and scrambling to catch up, but that's because we're small!  Because we ... were small.  We used to be.  We ... are nominated.  Against the Meklar who took the incredible worlds we were so sure of keeping, we ignored them completely for decades.  Um.  When did we get big?

The Meklar have 5 votes of 21 all on their own, and there's no way we have that many!  The Alkari - thank the silent void they declared peace four years ago - abstain with 3.  The Mrrshans, in addition to still sending fleet after fleet against us, throw their votes to the machines as expected, but fortunately just have 2, but then the Silicoids add 3 more votes, and even before I abstain with the 4 votes we must have ourselves, I realize with grim certainty that it's all in the paws of the Bulrathi!

   

Yes!  Yes, YES!!  Three hundred sixty five daily cheers for the beautiful Bulrathi bears!  They abstain with the 4 deciding votes and we're free!!!  No more elections until 2400!  No more trying to guess when the first one will be!  We made it everybody!

Now all we have to do is, you know, defend our stars from all these incoming fleets and somehow find a way to catch up and get out of the hole we've been digging ourselves for half a century!

We've got more Claws flying around, and they seem to be really fast, and I can't actually tell where they're going.  Maybe exploring far-away stars somewhere?  Search me.  At least none of them have hit our worlds yet, but the About Timers are going to finally complete their missile base just in case, while we push our Planetology labs all the way up to 18%, hoping for the production boost our new tech will give.


2378

Annnnnd ... still no Bulrathi attacks!  Whatever I said about beautiful bears last year, I might set it to music.  Nothing from the planetology labs either, so ... wait; something terrible is happening; I can feel it:  Someone is trying to communicate with me!  I swiftly shapeshift into a floor lamp, my cloak hanging from my lampshade jauntily, as the comm screen lights up - with the robotic face of the Bad News Droid.

   

Oops, no; I mistook it for the other droid.  This was the GNN guy whose initials stand for "Got No News."  The Silicoids losing 108 research points, in Force Fields or anything else, is less than insignificant at this stage in the galaxy.

Which doesn't mean there's no bad news; it may just be delayed.  The About Timers are sending everything they can, from relocation to their token fleet, because the Waters Edgians still can't finish their missile base in time and the cats' new Sabretooth, with twin colony cruiser escorts, arrives next year!  Planetology is up to one chance in three of a breakthrough, but it's too late to matter to the upcoming battle now - only to the battle thereafter, with another Sabretooth and colony escort on their way in!


2379

Holy hemispheres!  Did I mention we were behind?

   

That monster has three heavy blast cannons, and its Mrrshan gunners will practically never miss!  Toe to toe, this fleet could beat both of our LZR Cruisers on its own!  It's a good thing we aren't going toe to toe, and it's a good thing we've got Masks in the system to protect ourselves from infection by the dread contagion of heavy neutron incineration, but with shield class 2, our basic laser shots are barely going to do anything to them!  Fortunately, barely anything times 76 is still a pretty decent amount!  Our Masks dodge missiles as long as they can, but when the Sabretooth starts getting close, we eat the rest o the Hyper-X rockets and charge in to hit as hard as they can!  It's not exactly inspiring damage, but between everything we've got, it's enough!  We lose just six Masks, with plenty to spare, mainly because the idiot cats started firing on our LZRs when our damage output was still high enough to take their cruiser out before they could kill one of ours!  We even got one of the colony ships before its payload ran out, though the other managed to retreat just in time, its hull a smoking ruin but still holding together somehow, and our colony survived another year!

Now we just have to do that again when another Sabretooth and colony cruiser show up in 2381!  Fortunately, we can have a base helping out by then.  So it's back to infrastructure now, while our homeworld starts on a colony ship hull that we'll hopefully replace with a new tundra-landing design when the tech comes in!


2380

It looks like I've got a situation here:  There aren't any more Community-Oriented Volunteer Imperial Directors - 19 of the 'loks, and they all evaporated in separate puffs of aggression and fury!  So there's no one left for whom I can be the Administrating Neutral Translator In Virtual Isolation while Remaining Under Surveillance, and I'm basically out of office for the duration.  Oh, well; that's political power for you:  It comes and it goes, in a puff of ... but I explained.  Anyway, whoever picks up the reins can figure out what's next.  Here's what we're building up, and here's what's coming our way:

   

The planet can still be fed reserves if you can dredge some up from somewhere.  I ... may have spent them all on our defenses and infrastructure and things.  We should be able to hold with what we've got against that fleet though, at least.  Oh - you can also see those Bulrathi fleets I noticed were just on scouting missions to the asteroid fields at nearby stars.

And here's the planet all the fuss has been about:

   

I would have liked to build more factories here, but ... well, you know what happened.

I did get more factories built around the empire at least.

   

You should have seen what we were spending on ship maintenance when I took office - and on fewer, less-effective ships!  We now at least have something remotely resembling an economy.  We still don't have any tech to speak of though, and we're a long way away even from proper industrialization.  You can see our homeworld's working on a Fastcol; don't forget to switch that to a tundra colship when the tech comes in (or to an emergency defense fleet if something unexpected happens - I hope that won't be necessary!) - oh, and I should probably show off the fleet we're paying all those billions of credits to maintain!

   

As you can see, there are lots of options for design slots to choose if you want to create a new type of ship.  In case, you know, we ever develop any weapons better than lasers.  Note that the LZR Cruisers are old and slow now, so don't send them with a Mask fleet.  The Shortsticks too, but with only two left, they're not doing much anyway, and you can scrap them if you want for the five BCs.  The Masks are still okay for now, but they're quickly approaching obsolescence.  We might even need some warp-2 heavy laser cruisers before we develop any real ship-to-ship weapon technology!  I hope not, but ... we might not have a lot of options, depending.

And here's the map:

   

I'm a little bit focused on that tundra world.  I hear tell it's an important stepping stone or something.

Good luck!

Roster:

- Ianus - UP until 2390!
- shallow_thought - on deck to take us to the 2400 election!
- Arnuz
- utwig
- Cyneheard
- RefSteel - just played!

The Save:  Attached to this post!

[RefSteel]

Oh - and One More Thing[tm] for our next emperor: If any Alkari transports showed up at About Time during my set, I didn't spot them, even en route, but they were surely sent since as Cyneheard noted, they had a ship in orbit there in 2370. This might mean the 'sports were sent from halfway across the galaxy at warp 1, and might still turn up during your turnset. So ... keep an eye out for them, I guess!

Also, if anything in my report was unclear (or if anyone would prefer a bare-bones report to the fancy one I posted) - or if anyone has any questions about why I made the decisions I did or the like, please say so!

I think we have a chance here, but there's a long road ahead. Unless of course we just lose the next election!

[EDIT: Ack! And rereading a couple of posts above, I see that I contradicted myself, by misreading something! It looks like I was wrong, and we're not allowed to invade anybody! This certainly makes sense for the Social Distancing variant, but will also be that much harder, especially with our present tech deficit! My apologies for causing confusion there - I just missed "Ground Invasion" on the list! So ... cool! It'll be even more of a challenge! Good luck, Ianus!]

[shallow_thought]

Nice fleet-fu there Ref. I'm glad it wasn't me having to pull the tactical stunts to keep our hopes alive.

Overall status doesn't look too bad, and should get better if we can pick up Artemis and Imra.

EDIT: About Alkari transports - if they were sent before peace was signed, doesn't that mean that they get redirected / vanish? I'd have to look it up ...

[utwig]

Good Play fellow Star Control fan Refsteel.
We're in good shape to get Artemis and Imra.

We will have to go to war with Meklars soon so how do we prepare for that? What techs do we need and how many ships?

I have a few questions regarding fleet design and building:
Why lasers fighters (Mask 2.0)
I know 73 lasers can do something even without comp and they are hard to hit but should they meet a neutron blaster cruiser they will be decimated or even loose. I only build laser fighters in very early war if I have to contest a world right between me and AI home world. I'm not questioning your decision, I would only like to understand rationale and mechanics behind that.

In early game production is so scarce I tend to try not to loose ships and laser fighters will loose some numbers by design. They also have good price performance, so this is an upside.

Also why does Telescope 2 have 3 lasers in 3 different slots? Is it to get 3 rolls from RNG and avoid bad rolls. Also if they kill one stack, they can fire at another stack?

Another question I have is about factories on poor planets. I tend to slowly build them (.5-1/turn). Sulla also builds them. Rationale is that large poor planet can still have some production and it boosts it's research.

[Ianus]

Got it!

Great work Ref!  You have certainly started us down the road to stabilization.  I will do my best to continue what you have begun.  I'll let you all know how it goes.

Attached is the starting save just in case anyone wants to play along on their own somewhere down the line.