Looking good, Haphazard and Brian! Looks like a couple more good sets - landing those Rich and Ultra-Rich worlds already is terrific, and it sounds like we're turning the corner toward taking the fight to the enemy already! (Fusion bombs will definitely fit with room to spare once we have Stingers, but a couple of small weapon and/or construction techs might do it too if we can get them by espionage or trade.) I agree with Brian that things are looking much better than just one turn cycle ago, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Dp101 does with this! Still lots of super-hostile worlds to claim and build up, and new tech to pursue; lots of balancing acts still to manage here - let's see how we do!
|
Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons
|
|
June 21st, 2024, 13:03
(This post was last modified: June 21st, 2024, 13:07 by Brian Shanahan.)
 (June 21st, 2024, 01:42)RefSteel Wrote: Looking good, Haphazard and Brian! Looks like a couple more good sets - landing those Rich and Ultra-Rich worlds already is terrific, and it sounds like we're turning the corner toward taking the fight to the enemy already! (Fusion bombs will definitely fit with room to spare once we have Stingers, but a couple of small weapon and/or construction techs might do it too if we can get them by espionage or trade.) I agree with Brian that things are looking much better than just one turn cycle ago, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Dp101 does with this! Still lots of super-hostile worlds to claim and build up, and new tech to pursue; lots of balancing acts still to manage here - let's see how we do! Pity I missed out on the southern Inferno world by the interturn. If I'd spotted a col ship going that way I wouldn't have looked to colonise it. Ah well, them's the breaks.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Ok, staring at save. Very sad that the inertial stabilisers trade wasn't acted on given that we can't do it anymore (was it possible to initiate at all?) but obviously very happy about overall situation. I will say that military action feels a bit.. weird, at the moment. Sure, the cats are our eternal enemies. At the same time, they have 2 worlds, total, and we can only take 1 without doing genocide, so a war there would be spectacularly unproductive. Looking at other alternatives.. well, our spy reports on the humans and brains are both almost 40 years old, it feels quite fraught to consider either of them, and I'll risk a bit of spying on the cats given how backwards they are. I'm also, well, vaguely horrified to see Monte Arenoso still with less than 50% factories? I know it's poor, but reserve spending can overcome that, and I'd rather get it fully operational ASAP rather than lurching along half-industrialised, and even if it's just being used for sending population, if it's going to be running ecology then more factories would help it do that too. I'm probably out of step with the rest of the team on this, but I've really never been on board with the plan of never fully maxing factories on a world just because it's poor.
Honestly at this point I'm just gonna play the first turn now even though I don't expect to play the whole set immediately, because I just want to get enough info to ponder between now and whenever I play the full set (maybe later tonight just to keep things moving). Humans immediately call us up wanting controlled irradiated.. hm. There's only one unclaimed irradiated world in the north (Kawguchi, whose name puzzles me since the standard Altairi names seem to all be japanese, but you can't write that one with japanese phonetics, but anyways) and it's size 25 with a huge Mentaran ship sitting on top of it, so I don't think we're getting it regardless, or at the very least, the humans aren't in a great spot to take it anyway? They'd give energy pulsar (lolno) zortrium (probably no) or BC5 for it (useless if we're gonna be on the offence given that we probably can't fit it) so I figure declining is probably costless. This is the moment that I notice that the brains and the humans have an alliance so we really can't fight one without fighting the other. ...oh no? This feels dramatically less doable, and for a few reasons, here's the techs: So look, on the plus side the brains have exactly zero guns over us that'll help with ship to ship combat, so that's something, and the humans having gatling lasers in addition really isn't a real consideration. On the other hand.. repulsor beams on both leads to a potential no-win situation if they start mounting those (we can't fit even a heavy *laser* on our fighters) and both ground combat and orbital bombardment look to be rough vs the brains (+35 ground combat to our +15, 9 shield points) and impossible vs the humans (+50 to, again, +15, as well as 14 points of planetary shields, which we'll be trying to crack with... fusion bombs) which largely negates any reasonable method of catching up via invading for tech. And lets not even mention the hilarious futility of trying to get anything from them by spying given the computing techs... and in terms of actual fleet size, the brains have enough to make our current forces look like a rounding error: Obviously this is prior to any significant buildup, but still. My inclination is from this that we should basically not consider war at all until not only are our new planets built up, but until we've sat on them for a while, as our planet count and population are the only stats we're leading in and should let us pull ahead *eventually*, but I'm kinda worried if that'll be enough, and I know in the past I've lost many games to just being too complacent and thinking I'll catch up in the lategame and never doing so. So yeah, for now I think this'll be an entirely economic set from me, but that might also be true for the following one as well at this rate, those humans are scary. Really wish we could get a hold of that IRCIV that they're sporting, as I'd feel much more comfortable in an economic race with that in hand, but oh well.
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
June 22nd, 2024, 01:03
(This post was last modified: June 22nd, 2024, 01:03 by haphazard1.)
With the shields, bombs, and ground combat tech the brains and humans have, war does not look at all attractive. Especially with them being allied, we would get smashed. So playing for the longer game is pretty much our only option.
I would definitely not trade irradiated tech to the humans. Without it they can not invade our radiated worlds. They could bomb us to oblivion, of course, but if we do not start the fighting hopefully they will not hate us enough to do that. The overall situation does not look promising, but we can try to build up our economy and tech and see what happens. (June 22nd, 2024, 01:03)haphazard1 Wrote: With the shields, bombs, and ground combat tech the brains and humans have, war does not look at all attractive. Especially with them being allied, we would get smashed. So playing for the longer game is pretty much our only option. Well, I already said no to the trade because I couldn't keep playing otherwise, but yeah that's a good point regarding safety. Both the humans and the brains like us decently well so I'm not anticipating we'll have to defend from them, but can't hurt to think about it.
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
All of that makes sense; I'll just present a couple of alternative ways of looking at some of it:
(June 21st, 2024, 23:42)Dp101 Wrote: I will say that military action feels a bit.. weird, at the moment. Sure, the cats are our eternal enemies. At the same time, they have 2 worlds, total, and we can only take 1 without doing genocide, so a war there would be spectacularly unproductive. The value of war with the cats would be: 1) Gaining one very strong world (presumably their homeworld) 2) Perhaps picking up some more tech (even if obsolete, it helps with miniaturization etc.) 3) Severely weakening the cats' ability to hurt us in the future, especially if we also destroy their fleet and the defenses and most of the factories population at their last world (which admittedly would require some care) thereby giving them a lot of rebuilding to do before they can try to tech further or build a fleet we care about. Whether that's worth it might mostly depend on how costly it would be. Quote:I'm also, well, vaguely horrified to see Monte Arenoso still with less than 50% factories? I know it's poor, but reserve spending can overcome that, and I'd rather get it fully operational ASAP rather than lurching along half-industrialised, and even if it's just being used for sending population, if it's going to be running ecology then more factories would help it do that too. I'm probably out of step with the rest of the team on this, but I've really never been on board with the plan of never fully maxing factories on a world just because it's poor. So, never-fully-maxing factories on a poor world isn't a plan in itself; it's just the result of always having something more productive to do ... as long as there are such things. Note reserve spending doesn't really mitigate the costs of industrializing a poor world; it just moves the inefficient factory production around (in effect, e.g. Altair and Monte Arenoso are each building double-price factories for the latter rather than Sandy Mountain doing it alone) until we have a rich world that can add BCs to the treasury at 1:1 (or a UR at 3:2) - and even then, reserve spending for facs at the poor world is inefficient in comparison with reserve spending at a normal world because the poor world has to build double-price factories in order to also get "normal-price" ones. And if it's running ecology to send transports off-world, more facs will only help with that up to a certain point: Population leaving the planet in transports can't work the factories (mostly? maybe? - I'm not completely sure about RotP turn processing order) so we might not get anything from facs we build if their workers are just going out to new worlds all the time anyway. That said, pre-refit factories with our current tech aren't a bad investment in the future even on a poor world (and reserves do help to get them built and actually contributing stuff we want faster!) once we'll have enough population to work them consistently. It's the gigantic refit costs there (and the likelihood that it won't be at max pop for a while) that make actually maxing the facs there seem so unattractive to me. Regardless of what route you take though, good luck with the turns! I'll look forward to seeing what you can do with them! Quote:Population leaving the planet in transports can't work the factories (mostly? maybe? - I'm not completely sure about RotP turn processing order) This seems to match my observations. For the record, we are lacking factories even with the half-full planet, so the population being sent could be working. Also regarding destroying the cats, that last point is kinda a lot of it - with a technologically advanced fleet of large+ ships we'd take 0 losses, or close to. With a bunch of smalls? It's impossible not to take some losses, especially going into the cats with their bonus accuracy. I don't think this shifts the numbers *that* much, but it does add a certain reluctance to going after any potentially unnecessarily rough fights. If the cats are stunted and irrelevant with a current massive fleet investment, I'd rather wait until we've outteched them a bit more because that's inevitably going to happen and will drastically reduce losses. Especially if we can somehow get a stabiliser!
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
Ok, continuing on. I sent a scanner out to get a handle on that Nova design, and, well.
Pls no! Potentially 105 dead fighters per volley... well, that's not the worst thing that happens this turn. The humans beat us to the inferno at the top of the map: This seems to suggest they'd definitely go after the irradiated world in the vicinity if we let them. Losing any world is sad ofc, but this is a size 10 inferno, I can live with it. The humans ask for an 875 BC trade T114, I give it to them, if we're trying to stay peaceful there's really no reason not to. T115 Improved Space Scanner comes in, so we'll get lovely red lines every time the AI rushes some ships at us to make us put our guard up.. following options are ECM IV and IRC IV, even though we lack any ECM whatsoever I pick the latter, since it's not like we can fit ECM of this quality on our ships. I bump up spending in both construction and computer tech just a bit in response, since the II6 will really help out in affording the refit. Not sure when I missed it, but the Mentarans stole the irradiated world in the north from us. We really couldn't challenge them for it regardless, but it still stings. Stingers come in T117, following options are... unexciting. Ion stream projectors or anti-matter torps, neither of which will be practical any time soon given the immense power needs. Ion stream projector is cheaper by 2k RP so I go for that, I know that means a correspondingly lower tech level so miniaturisation won't be as good but I figure if the next tier is equally sad and we do want to miniaturise ASAP, we can knock out a bunch of old junk and it'll make up the difference. Could have gone back for antimatter bombs here but didn't think about it until later, with the current timeline of industrialisation I'm not sure whether it would have helped significantly. Humans want stingers T118, offering the same selection as before. Honestly it's tempting, as stingers would be massive overkill and probably not useful against us, even if the increased accuracy is significant... idk. I accept, take BCV for our bases, considered zortrium but that would basically only be useful for ground combat and protecting said bases, and the latter.. well, I've never seen an AI vessel with bombs successfully make it to a planet and *not* oneshot the bases. Council vote warning comes in T119, along with planetary shields. The only possible follow-up is the repulsor beam... dammit. Personally I wouldn't consider a gunless repulsor ship to be in the spirit of the variant so this'll be useless. Could go back for better shields, but once again it's a case of can't fit on our ships and probably not good enough on our bases. Maybe next tier. Given that they're developed frontline worlds (and not our lovely artifact world) I set Katsura and Hoshina to make the new shields ASAP, considered Harada too but I didn't want to crater the tech pace too badly. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay... Why couldn't that have been us! Ah well... On the last turn, terraforming finishes on the UR world, the size 10 rich one was a bit too pathetic to be done in time. Atmospheric terraforming is at 0% so they'll take off even more shortly. Overview: Notes: Firstly, tech trade (important): The Mentarans are willing to offer any of IRC IV, antimatter bombs, or repulsor beam for our stingers. The former we'll get soon enough and the latter is largely pointless unless we're looking to push shield tech ASAP, but the bombs would allow us to actually scratch human bases.. once we can fit them on things, and who knows when that will be. Still, it would save us the time to research them ourselves, and in my mind Stingers are still fine to trade away, but I'm not everyone else lol. Aforementioned situation at Harada where it could arguably use a shield but is currently not making one. Might be a good idea to change that, also might not be, up to you. Spying - I left the same spy allotments as I started the set with, and I've seen no diplomatic maluses, but I also haven't seen any successful steals from the cats and it is a nonzero drain on our resources. May want to adjust the sliders, but our spies are also lasting long enough such that it's not that significant an expense. I also notice at this time that the cats actually have a NAP with both our other neighbours, which feels slightly concerning. Now that Kuroki has terraformed, it might be worth shipping in population rather than growing it directly on the hostile world. Don't ask why there's waste at Satake, because I couldn't tell you. I wonder how it happened.
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
The rocks get the derelict event....
 That scatter pack ship....  It is like the AI knows we use small ships or something.Stingers trade....hmmm. Total overkill for our small hulls, but it would improve their miniaturization and let them tech other things. We could save the time to research AM bombs, and we get much-needed miniaturization. I could argue this one either way; fine with whatever happens. Hopefully the council vote will not have any unpleasant surprises. That NAP with the cats worries me a bit, with the brains and humans already allied. |
