OSG-35 - Social Distancing

[Cyneheard]

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.

Firing at another stack is usually the reason.

For factories on poor planets: Usually yes, but right now we're at such a research deficit I think we're better off pushing research now instead of paying functionally 20BC a factory. If we've got 2-3 worlds on full research, then it's probably time to start those factories (I know I definitely do build factories on poor worlds and even UPs, although that's questionable in some contexts).

[RefSteel]

Good questions, utwig!

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?

We definitely will need Fusion Bombs and Sublight Drives, and realistically we'd really want a real ship-to-ship weapon, better computers and shields, and Inertial Stabilizer, Fusion Drives, or both. We could try a desperation move sooner, but we're really behind right now. We'll know more about what we'll really need when we can afford to place a spy (on Hide, per our variant) and (eventually) do a battle scanner fly-by.

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.

Just the opposite, actually; they did meet a Neutron Blaster (actually Heavy Blast Cannon) cruiser, and won at the cost of just a few cheap ships - (our LZR Cruisers helped but couldn't have done it alone without getting very lucky) because big, advanced, high-damage weapons are great for fighting other cruisers but extremely inefficient for fighting small ships, which they can only kill one at a time. Now, if our Masks ran up against a Gatling Laser cruiser, they would have been in trouble - but our LZR Cruisers would have been okay against one of those, so the Masks could have just avoided the thing.

Now, if that ship had Shield 3 instead of Shield 2, we would have stood no chance - but that would be true no matter what we built! We really, really need a real weapon!

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.

When production is scarce, it's better to build 300 BC of fighters if they'll get the job done, even though some will be lost, than a 600 BC cruiser that will overkill the problem and then sit around forcing you to pay maintenance on top of its sticker price. But that's not the main reason I went with fighters. The main reason was that there wasn't enough time and production to build a cruiser before the enemy fleet arrived. A few dozen fighters in time to win the battle will always be better than a cruiser that arrives too late!

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?

The latter, as Cyneheard said; the 3 lasers all get separate RNG rolls even if they're all in the same slot. That said, I don't think the Telescope is a good design (you'll notice I didn't build any). Its whole reason to exist is to carry its battle scanner. If I did build one, it would either have a single heavy laser (which takes longer to go obsolete) or no armament at all. (And probably Reserve Fuel Tanks.)

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.

This explanation got very long, so I've spoiled it so people won't have to scroll past the whole thing. Fair warning! The executive summary is: It can indeed be worth building facs on poor worlds, but usually there's something better you can do with those BCs instead. The rest is mostly details, examples, and elaborations.

Factories are an investment in the future of the world where you build them. They have an up-front cost that takes a long time to pay back. It can definitely make sense to build them even on Poor worlds if the circumstances are right, but you have to consider the opportunity costs. If you're building factories on a poor world while doing research on a normal world that's still missing factories, that's a mistake; your empire will be doing much better if you do it the other way around. Once your good worlds have enough factories, you can think about building them on poor worlds too, and that's a question that's decided by strategic considerations: What do you need to focus on most in your empire right now? How can each planet contribute to that, and how soon will it come to fruition?

Right now, factories on our normal worlds pay for themselves after an average of 15 turns (thanks to Imp Eco; without it, this would be 20). If a planet needs to contribute to a strategic goal like "building defenses for a critical, threatened world" or "building colships for each of two vital new colonies" and it can and will need to get that done before the factories' payback horizon, then you should get to work on that and delay the factories. And because it takes so much longer for facs to repay their investment on Poor worlds (because they cost twice as much there) and because you can do so much less with the factories there once they're complete (because Poor worlds are bad choices for shipbuilding even when they do have factories) it's really hard for them to ever really pay back the investment: Instead of building facs there and researching on a normal world, you could have been doing more research to speed up a tech that helps all of your worlds - of which the Poor world is among the least important, no matter what you invest in its future.

Now, I built two facs on poor Keep Out during my set. It was a turn when I had enough research from the homeworld to maintain all my existing tech investments and do a little more seeding, and I didn't think it was worthwhile to do any more seeding at that time, and because they were the first two facs on that world, they generated no waste (thanks to Imp Eco) and would pay for themselves within 20 turns. But I now think I was wrong! The right thing to do would have been to let Keep Out do research while our homeworld reduced its research spending accordingly and got started on a placeholder for its eventual Tundra ship, which was sure to be needed in less than 20 turns. It can be reasonable, but it is very difficult to find a time when putting resources into Poor factories is the best move.

Then there's the issue of rounding errors. If you invest anything in Poor facs at all, it should be at a time when the planet has a lot of production and factory costs are low so you don't end up wasting an important fraction of the planet's production - e.g. spending 7BC to get just 0.3 factories - but also there's the clean-up issue. As mentioned, those first two facs I built at Keep Out will pay for themselves in 20 turns, because they generate no waste. But the third fac (until RW80 comes in to cut waste costs further) generates 1 point of waste, so we have to spend 1BC to clean it up - the full amount the factory makes - and on most turns, we'll also lose 1BC to rounding because our sliders are split into two fields instead of concentrated in one. This means our next factory there will actually make the planet worse, at a cost of 20 BC! We would need three more factories to increase actual research funding by 1RP per turn from the planet now, which means we have to find 60 BC to get a return horizon of basically 60 turns! Of course, something similar applies with regular worlds just starting their factories, but it's not as bad because the cost per fac is less, and the real reason you're building those 3rd through 5th factories is so that you can build a bunch more factories, with a much better average return horizon each. For a large number of factories, the extra cost for the slider rounding error more or less disappears in the noise - but with a Poor world, it takes a lot of time and expense to get a large number of factories - and you're paying up front with that negative-value third factory (third given our current technology) not for later factories that will pay for themselves in 15 turns, like at a normal world (again, given our present tech) but for poor factories that take 30! All of that combined with the reduced flexibility makes it pretty difficult to justify the expense.

I hope some of that is helpful!

[utwig]

Thank you for very in depth reply, much appreciated.

[Sullla]

Regarding factories on Poor worlds: everything that RefSteel mentioned is correct. Building factories is an investment into the future economy of each planet - an investment that's almost always worth making, mind you - which takes a certain amount of time to pay off. Poor and Ultra Poor planets are slower to build factories while getting full benefit on research spending, thus it takes much longer for them to make the investment into factories worthwhile. So why do I always try to maximize factory count on Poor worlds regardless, even knowing the inefficiency involved? It's because Master of Orion is not simply a spreadsheet exercise about maximizing efficiency, it's a strategy game where the AI is very good at finding weaknesses and exploiting them. And a Poor world with no factories cannot defend itself, period. I have a very defensive mindset and I don't like to lose planets, so I'm happy to trade some economic inefficiency in exchange for having a Poor world which can build its own missile bases and defend itself. Not everyone likes making this tradeoff and they aren't necessarily wrong to keep a Poor world at zero factories contributing population and research and nothing else. Still, keep in mind that there is an ultimate economic loss from doing this as well, particularly if the game starts running over 200 or 300 turns. If you're sitting around with a planet having zero factories hundreds of turns into the game, you're coming out behind from an economic perspective as well as a tactical one.

Now with that said, I absolutely would not have built factories in this particular situation either. Keep Out definitely needed to carry the research load while the homeworld worked on colony ships and military production. I would only have a Poor world start on its factories once there were other planets maxed out on factories and able to conduct research for the empire. Big picture plans always need to be adapted to the circumstances of the moment, and in a tight squeeze like this one, building factories on a Poor world is a low priority indeed.

Good luck with the rest of this game! It's been a good example thus far of demonstrating which planets are worth fighting over and which ones aren't, which can be a tough thing to grasp in Master of Orion. Just because you can contest a world doesn't always mean that it's worth the expense and diplomatic hit from doing so. Sometimes the unexciting move of colonizing nearby planets and building factories is the strongest one.

[shallow_thought]

Good luck with the rest of this game! It's been a good example thus far of demonstrating which planets are worth fighting over and which ones aren't, which can be a tough thing to grasp in Master of Orion. Just because you can contest a world doesn't always mean that it's worth the expense and diplomatic hit from doing so. Sometimes the unexciting move of colonizing nearby planets and building factories is the strongest one.

Given what has happened, I look forward to going back to the end of my turnset (or even back to the start, before sinking BC into Range 6) and trying that sometime .

Need to focus on the current timeline first though!

[Arnuz]

Good job fellow distancers!

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!

Uh, how did that happen exactly?

[Cyneheard]

Good job fellow distancers!

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!

Uh, how did that happen exactly?

When the AI approaches you for peace, they sometimes have a bribe that they don't tell you about but give you anyway. It's a nice bonus sometimes that can really change games.

[Arnuz]

Wow. Never noticed that!

[Ianus]

2380
I return from my staycation to find the Darlok empire in rough shape.  Our economy is stunted, our tech levels are backwards, and we are hemmed in on all sides by rapacious AI who hunger for our prime planets.
       
The only blessing we have is that two of our three wars have just ended.  Unfortunately relations with our neighbors are still strained.  We will need to make the most of this period of relative stability to build up our empire in anticipation of the next round of incursions against us.  So lets get to it.  I don’t see any major changes required to the settings my esteemed predecessor has set up, other than shuffling a couple of wayward Mask 2.0’s around.  Lets see how things break at Waters Edge.

2381
Very well it turns out! 
   
That Sabretooth packs a wallop, hitting our defending LZR Cruiser for ~56 damage in one shot, but can still only destroy three Mask 2.0s per shot, which it did the one time it fired on our stack.  Still those were our only casualties, as the Colony Ship chose to fire all of its Hyper X rockets at our two Shortsticks, which I parked behind a fortuitously placed asteroid field.  We traded three smalls for two larges which I feel pretty good about.

As a reward for good tactical play Controlled Tundra comes in at 35% odds.  Yes!  I select Enhanced Eco as our next Planetology project over Controlled Inferno, as there aren’t any Inferno planets in our neck of the woods.  In fact, barring some discoveries from our advancing Scout 2’s we won’t need additional environmental controls until Radiated.  Ugh!  And lets not forget that there are still Silicoids out there somewhere.

I immediately design a new U Colony 2, scrapping our valiant Shortstick design for it and the 5BC salvage fee, and switch Nazin over.  ETA 3 turns.   I readjust planetary spending and equalize tech allocations across all fields.  Right now we just need tech, and it doesn’t particularly matter what comes in first.

With the map centered on Nazin I am able to sit and contemplate the galling Meklar presence on Jinga and Yarrow.  Those should be OUR planets.  Just wait until Fusion Bombs come online!  Then we will see whats what.  I have to suspend all communications and spend a year meditating just to calm myself down.

2383
I return to bad news.
   
The question then becomes do they have Controlled Tundra and will attempt to run us off once we colonize Artemis.  I mean if they do then at worst we will still be able to jump down to Imra which is the real goal all along.  Our next colony ship is due out of the Nazin shipyards next year.  Currently our entire empire is generating 91RP per year.  This is beyond pathetic, as over half of THAT is coming from poor Keep Out which has all of two factories.  Lets not go more than a year between SGs in future, we get rusty!

2384
Wow this hurts!
   
The bears are Uneasy with us, and it would be such a boon to shore up relations on our eastern flank while we focus to the north where most of our enemies are, but just think of all the yucky bugs hiding in that furry pelt!  Ugh!  No thanks!

Our tundra colony ship rolls off the assembly line and prepares for the two year trip to Artemis.  Nazin will build a Fast Col in three years, and then its all research all the time at Nazin until our other colonies get up and running.  Oh and more good news there is an Alkari medium moving slowly toward Artemis.  This in itself is bad enough, but it leads me to check the diplomacy screen where i find that the birds are allied with everyone (except the Meklar it turns out, they aren’t allied with anyone).

2386
Our colony ship arrives at Artemis, and I refuse to permit the pilot to land on the planet.  What madness is this?  Well that Alkari scout is almost there, and I’m not sure that our three Masks can run it off, so I don’t colonize this turn.  I’m not sure whether the ship will arrive next year or the year after, but better to allow them to scout an empty planet than a fledgling colony.  Plus the birds have lost the alliance that allowed them to launch this scout, so it should evaporate upon making orbit.  Plus our Fast Col isn’t due until next turn so this isn’t delaying anything important.

2387
The Alkari ship isn’t due to arrive until next year, so I delay colonizing again.  But whats this?
   
Yeah I was too smart for you there Farseer!  Your ploy didn’t work!  Farseer is so annoyed that he scraps the incoming scout ship, leaving the way to colonize next year clear.  Ha!

But there is something new on the map.  A large Silicoid Mako has appeared north of Waters Edge.  It looks like they are scouting the asteroid fields along our border.  Just in case I will build a new batch of Masks to reinforce Artemis now that Nazin has finished building its last colony ship.  Oh and speaking of Waters Edge a new Mrrshan fleet is due there next year, including some new designs. Should be fun!  Oh and finally About Time has maxed factories (about time!) so our research rate has doubled.  I use the opportunity to FINALLY switch Keep Out over to factories.  Lets see, divide 2.7 into 190… ugh!

2388
And here we go at Waters Edge.
   
Nice to see the Mrrshans are advancing the state of the art.  Lets see what I can do about this…

Flash!  News from the front!  Mrrshans routed at Waters Edge STOP.  Fleet victorious with minimal losses STOP.  53 Masks remain STOP.  Enemy fleet destroyed STOP.  Reinforcements needed but not critical repeat NOT critical MESSAGE ENDS.  

All Mrrshan ships destroyed with the loss of ~8 Masks.  Waters Edge can build about that many per turn now and is continuing to build factories.  Watch for incoming Mrrshans and build accordingly.  

It isn’t all good news however.  Appartently the Alkari didn’t scrap that scout after all so it arrived at Artemis and chased off my colony ship, meaning ANOTHER delay until I can settle there.  How frustrating.  There is also an unescorted Silicoid Colony Ship incoming at Artemis sometime in the next few years.  I have 15 masks due there in 2 years and I’ll build another 15 just to be sure.

2389
We finally colonize Sand Line, which means I can send the colony ship off to Imra.  Also Silicoid colony ships pack Hyper X rockets; in unrelated news the Silicoids have colonized Phyco.  At 20 radiated they are welcome to it.  STILL no techs despite 3 in the percentages.  Nazin to research.

2390
And my turn set ends with a whimper.  Nothing at all to report.  Good luck!

[RefSteel]

Great turns, Ianus! We're nowhere near a strong position yet, but if we can keep up this steady improvement - and can avoid a council loss in ten turns! - we'll be able to come back and win this!

On poor world factories: Sullla's points are very good ones (which should not come as a surprise to anybody!) - a weakness of the way I tried to explain my thoughts on the subject was that I focused too much on specific numbers instead of the most important aspect: Your strategy for the game. The question isn't really, "Should I build facs on a Poor world? What's the return on the investment?" The question instead is, "Is there something I could be doing with these BCs instead that's more strategically important than Poor world factories?" The answer to that question can change from game to game and also within the same game as the strategic situation changes. Numbers like those I cited can help inform the strategic decision, but that's all. In this case, I think neither Sullla nor I would be building facs on Keep Out (at present, given the state the rest of the empire is in) but in cases where we would disagree, it would be because of differing preferred strategies, including not just the way we value the planet as a whole (and therefore the risk of losing it) but many other considerations, like the methods by which we prefer to defend our colonies generally.

I don't think I've ever yet actually played in an SG on the same team as Sullla, but if we did, part of the fun would be adapting to and discussing one another's decisions so we both could help ensure that the team as a whole would emerge with a coherent strategy!

More to the immediate point however:

Roster:

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