Wellll ... it's steep if you're trying to go from never-seen-the-game to cruising on Impossible in a short time. Also, I'm not helping by using confusing terminology and mixing up the names of everything!
Quote:How come you traded them Ion Cannon instead of controlled Toxic?
Ion cannons are just guns - stronger lasers; the Mrrshans will have more (and better) ship design options with them now, but it won't be long until they're obsolete - our missile bases will be immune to them once we have planetary shields, for instance. Controlled Toxic is also a more advanced tech (tier 3 instead of tier 2) so we might be able to get more for it in the future, but that's a relatively minor consideration. The main thing is that, while ion cannons are an important tactical upgrade, Controlled Toxic is a major strategic upgrade! Right now, most of our worlds (including our colony-to-be in their back lines at Thrax) aren't even really planets to them - just uninhabitable rocks in space. They basically ignore these worlds completely. Giving them Controlled Toxic would give them much better strategic options. In comparison, Ion Cannons are insignificant. (Of course, if they get Controlled Radiated tech themselves in the next few turns and swamp us with ion fighters or something, this will be a retroactive "mistake" like sending our starting colship to the wrong star, but I'm not expecting that to happen ... and if it doesn, it'll be fun to overcome that!)
Quote:Firstly, any chance you could get an animated GIF for these battles with something like LICEcap so we could see precisely what moves you make for the whole battle?
No chance, I'm afraid. I could describe them in pretty good detail though (and they weren't especially great moves). The Gecko fleet was targeted by all their missiles, though I didn't know that until each set of missiles actually moved because this is one way in which 1oom's interface actually coneys less information than the original game's. There was a better way to play this, but what I did was to just move that fleet up the screen in the back row until it got to the top - this effectively dodged one round of missiles (if I'd used the "Wait" button with that fleet, moved the other ships forward, and then moved down the screen, I think I'd have gotten better results) - but there were still incoming missiles, so I tried moving "down" one tile (taking a hit) and back up to the corner (successfully dodging another set of missiles) and finally just retreated the stack (taking the last hit in the corner before the ships could successfully retreat, so that was useless, but so would any other move have been by that point). I could have played it better, I think (even without using "Wait") and saved perhaps 20 more ships than I did, but it wasn't the end of the world either way. These are just tactics; we're winning this game on strategy.
Quote:Secondly, how did you figure 7 missile volleys? Looks to me like 9 + 1*5 which would be 14?
The others explained this correctly. Each of the Bobcats had one missile tube, with enough ammunition for 5 "volleys" - meaning it can fire a single missile on each of five different turns. Each Sabretooth carries nine missile tubes, with ammunition for 2 "volleys". All the ships in a stack fire all their missiles (or all those for which their chosen target is currently within the two-turn range) at once, and all at the same target. The battle scanner displays the amount of ammunition left for each missile tube, which in the case of the Sabretooths was just one because they started with two and had already moved and fired by the time I could take a picture. (The Bobcats had moved too, but hadn't fired since 5-racks of missiles are slower than 2-racks and they were still out of range.) So the number of missiles was 2 Sabretooth cruisers * 9 missile tubes each * 2 ammunition per tube (one already fired) + 33 Bobcat destroyers * 1 missile per tube * 5 ammunition per tube = 201 Hyper-V rockets! But they'd be launched in five volleys of 33 each and two volleys 18 each, for a total of seven volleys, so I knew they couldn't win: Even with unusually good luck and no "dodging" at all on my part, it would take four of their big Bobcat volleys to wipe out our entire Gecko stack, and that would leave them with only three volleys left, with more than three targets to shoot at. I should also note that one volley from the Sabretooth cruisers wouldn't be enough to destroy the missile base no matter how lucky they got.
Quote:Thirdly, and this is one that the manual is abysmal at explaining clearly, is there any fundamental difference between Hyper-V Rockets and Hyper-X Missiles at all other than the name? Can the missiles do something fundamentally different than the rockets, or are they literally just the same weapon type with one having a different name and improved stats? The manual distinguishes anti-missile rockets from missiles (and torpedos), but these appear to just be plain old 'rockets'. Could they just have been called Hyper-V Missiles, in order to be a heck of a lot less confusing?
The manual apparently clouds this issue by concentrating on Anti-Missile Rockets for some reason. It's intuitive to me that "rockets" and "missiles" are ~synonymous, and the tech description for Hyper-Vs and Hyper-Xs identify them as types of "missiles" in-game, but even before the manual gets confused, the problem is with the Anti-Missile Rockets' name. It's actually just the first of three special systems designed to stop missiles, but the others aren't rockets at all: They're the Lightning Field and the Zyro Shield, on different tech ladders altogether! It would be less confusing to call the AMRs something like "Anti-missile array" - but in the game itself, if you ignore the manual, it's easy to tell that an "anti-missile" weapon is a defense against missiles and every other tech in the weapons tree is ... a weapon.
Quote:I forget; although some techs are skipped over, once a tech appears as an option for research, does it continue to stay there forever once you research newer techs? In other words, if we never researched soil enrichment, would it stay there as an option forever? Or would it disappear immediately after advanced eco was discovered? Or does the game have certain later techs (such as advanced soil enrichment) marked as 'obsoleting' this tech, which would make it disappear?
Yes, it's there forever until you research it. As you can see, we still have Controlled Dead and Controlled Inferno available for research, even though they're virtually obsolete, and Soil Enrichment will be there even if we get Advanced Soil first (making the basic version completely obsolete). If we sandbag this game all the way through the tech tree and finish something in tier 10, we'll have to research all the techs in our tree that we haven't yet acquired, obsolete or not, before we can start on Advanced Planetology I. This ... isn't going to happen though; we'll win the game before then.
Quote:Did you mean Bulrathi ships, or did I miss something?
Yes, I meant Bulrathi ships. I'm the one who missed something! And likewise...
Quote:Actually, I'm afraid I don't get the idea. Did you mean Kulthos here? Looks like that's the one that's more at risk from Ursa and where you're moving the ships to. Maybe planets in future should be named to ensure they all have very different names from one another as these two sound irritatingly alike.
Yes, I managed to type Kronos when I meant Kulthos. Sorry about that! One thing I'm amazed 1oom never made available is an option to change the name of a star once it's already colonized (unless that option does exist and I've just missed it) but it's definitely fine to rename planets; I even did so with our homeworld! The base game doesn't have quite as long a hissss as Sssssla!
Quote:Aren't planets like Thrax, being deep into the heart of Mrrshan (and presumably other potential enemy) territory, extremely vulnerable to attack? Presumably once you get faster engines such as fusion drive, this problem is somewhat ameliorated, but until then is the plan just to build a ton of missile bases and keep a permanent defensive fleet stationed there?
See above about Controlled Toxic: I don't expect the cats to bother us here until we can make it safe by either building lots of missile bases and putting tons of BC into a huge placeholder as a virtual fleet ... ... or by conquering enough Mrrshan territory that it's not isolated anymore, partly with ships built at this world.
Quote:This being sub-optimal because you'd want to boost the Obacan population first as it's a mineral rich planet?
Exactly right! Reticuli is right on the Bulrathi front, but until they have Controlled Something tech, that's not a big worry.
Quote:Is this purely because of the limited ammo of missiles?
Yup - that and the rules of engagement with missiles that DaveV and I mentioned above. If we have more stacks (including bases) than they have missile volleys and they have no other weapons on their fleet, they can't win. I don't think this has ever really come up for me in a game of Orion before; the AI always builds something with beams on it in the base game and kyrub's patch. This might just be a really weird situation because of crazy tech tree rolls though. We might see Alkari neutron blaster ships and/or Mrrshan fleets with ion cannons, or other weapons later on.
Quote:I see the 9, but where are you reading 'payload of 2'? All I see is "1c" (what is that 'c' supposed to mean anyway? Or the 1, for that matter... missiles are frigging confusing in this game. Or should I say rockets? Rockiles? Missets?)
As mentioned, all (real, non-AMR) missiles in the game have a payload of either 2 or 5; the 1 is just the amount of ammo each launcher has left. Here as in real life, "rocket" is a subcategory of "missile."
Quote:Is there a 'find planet' shortcut in MOO1? Seem to remember using something like that in the past but I may be thinking of a different game.
Just realized that I cross-posted with DaveV's report! Way to get us back on track with quick turns after the delay! And speaking of speed, great job getting us some real engines finally!
No worries about missing the colship; that's the reason I try to include a short "notes for the next emperor" with immediately-relevant info at the end of my egregiously-long posts - and it's actually possible the new sublight colship will still reach its destination faster than the old warp-1 sluggard would have done, depending on what the nebula does to it. I don't think gambling on Planetology with the first spy hit was necessarily a bad move either, though I agree it's best to know in advance what you're hoping to steal - and when you followed up by gambling on Weapons, you won that die roll handily! I'm really disappointed in the Brains and Bugs here (though at least they remembered to put beams on some of their ships!) - it's looking like we have this game in the bag ... so it'll be fun to see if it's got any more curveballs to send our way!
(I admit I never accede to an AI's bribe demand unless what I'm getting in return is a peace treaty I need or something equally game-changing, exactly because I don't trust them to stay on-side for long, but as you said, it's only money!)
(April 5th, 2022, 18:34)jez9999 Wrote: Am I up next?
Yup! Let us know if you have any questions etc. Roster:
Could someone give me an overview of the keyboard hotkeys in MOO1? The only thing I can find is on strategywiki, but bizarrely they seem to have the F4/F5 and F6/F7 reversed as far as I can tell. Is that a mistake on the wiki or does it differ between the base game and 1oom?
Nice turnset, DaveV! Faster drives, better weapons, and we now know that the Psilons and Klackons are tiny empires in this galaxy. If we can deal with the Bulrathi and Mrrshan separately and not fight both at once, we should be well-positioned to win this game. Interesting that there still has not been a council vote.
(April 5th, 2022, 15:30)DaveV Wrote: Ref seems to have all the sliders set optimally (how do you get the half-click on the tech screen, Ref?), so I hit Next Turn.
Oh! 1oom works a little differently (and better!) than the base game this way: On the tech screen, when you hit the "=" key, instead of equalizing all six sliders and ignoring your slider locks, it equalizes only your unlocked sliders! So if you have just one click in one slider, no clicks in another, and the other four sliders locked, you can hit = to get half a click in each of two. (For uneven distributions, the higher sliders on the screen "go first" - e.g. if Plan, Prop, and Weapons are unlocked with five clicks distributed between them, "=" will give you 2 clicks in Plan, one and a half clicks in Prop, and one and a half clicks in Weapons.)
Also:
(April 6th, 2022, 02:40)jez9999 Wrote: Could someone give me an overview of the keyboard hotkeys in MOO1? The only thing I can find is on strategywiki, but bizarrely they seem to have the F4/F5 and F6/F7 reversed as far as I can tell. Is that a mistake on the wiki or does it differ between the base game and 1oom?
I think 1oom inexplicably reversed each pair of F# keys (F2 and F3, F4 and F5, F6 and F7, F8 and F9 ... although the only ones of those I ever actually use are F2/F3 and - when I have Improved or Advanced Scanner - F8/F9, so I'm not completely sure). Other than that and the above, the wiki page you linked is accurate. 1oom also adds some hotkeys that I can never remember - I think a-e and 1-5 adjust sliders on a planet by one click each, though I don't remember whether the letters increase the slider and the numbers decrease it or the other way around, while a-f and 1-6 (I think) do the same on the tech and diplomacy (espionage) screens. There are others on other screens too, e.g. "T" on the Planets screen to transfer funds, "S"ave "L"oad and "Q"uit on the Game screen (and the same ones plus "C"ontinue and "N"ew on the title screen) and "D"one, "A"uto, "S"can, "P"lanet, and "R"etreat on the space combat screen (Beware: Though "Esc" exits the Scan display, it also is equivalent to Done on the main combat screen!) "B"omb works on the orbital bombardment screen, and I believe "C"ontinue works on e.g. Scouting reports. "Esc" can also be used in Espionage in a couple of special ways: When you get a spy hit and can choose a field, if you don't think any of the choices are worth the potential diplo hit (e.g. just one field where they have nothing you want) you can just hit "Esc" to abort the attempt. And when you do steal a tech, if you have the option to frame another race, you can also hit "Esc" to refrain from doing so (i.e. framing neither side and not alerting the AI that something was stolen at all) ... I think.
(April 6th, 2022, 11:05)haphazard1 Wrote: Nice turnset, DaveV! :thumbsup: Faster drives, better weapons, and we now know that the Psilons and Klackons are tiny empires in this galaxy. If we can deal with the Bulrathi and Mrrshan separately and not fight both at once, we should be well-positioned to win this game. :) Interesting that there still has not been a council vote.
Good luck, jez9999!
I entirely agree with Haphazard here; this has been a really weird game, with seemingly none of the AIs researching Controlled Anything technology throughout the game!
(April 6th, 2022, 14:23)RefSteel Wrote: I think 1oom inexplicably reversed each pair of F# keys (F2 and F3, F4 and F5, F6 and F7, F8 and F9
I think it reversed F4/F5 and F6/F7 too, with my tests showing that the former in 1oom switch through the entire fleet, and the latter just switching through new fleets.
New speaker's leadership log follows. Any answers people could give to my various ponderings contained therein would, as always, be greatly appreciated.
2410:
Am wondering whether to get round to retiring the scout design. We seem to be actively using several of them still around various planets but they are using up one of the fleet slots. I've seen people in long-plays of the game scrap the scout design by this point in the game. New monitor designs to have a dual role as both scouts and enemy fleet scanners?
Anyway, to that end, I've decided to scrap the slow Monitor 1.0 design which we only had 2 of, orbiting local systems, and create a new monitor design with fast engines and reserve fuel tanks for extra long-range exploration. With the name 'Monitor 3' annoyingly already taken, this will be 'Monitor 3X'. Kronos will be tasked with building 5 of these over the next few years with the aim of exploring the unexplored stars to the north-east of the galaxy.
As part of the empire-wide planet review, most seem to have sensible sliders set; Xengara is set to build a planetary shield as it apparently doesn't have one right now.
The other major change made was that Thrax was spending equal on defence, industrial, and eco. Have changed spending to terraform about 4 million extra population per year, as that's the maximum likely growth rate, and the rest on factories. Defence will be built too slowly right now.
Also, we seem to have a current report on all alien techs now. The Bulrathis now have Controlled Radiated, so perhaps this changes the outlook rather for the likes of planets such as Hyades? The Bulrathi can just land on them now and take them. I guess maintaining good relations with them is pretty important.
2411:
A Monitor 3 engages the Klackons at Kholdan, allowing up-to-date scans on their ship designs.
2 new planets, Whynil (dead, hostile, 40 max pop) and Rana (inferno, rich, 35 max pop) are discovered to the south. I'd imagine we want to colonize these as well, starting with Rana, because - well - we want to colonize everything?
The Paladia-bound colony ship is built on Obaca, and I'm continuing production of a couple more for colonizing Denubius and Collassa, even though this will annoy the enemy races, on the basis of received wisdom saying that "more planets is always better."
I'll probably send the next colony ship, in fact, to colonize Rana, as it's a rich planet.
Tech spending is being kept at all sliders equalized - not sure there's anything to prioritize there particularly.
Should Kulthos, poor as it is, be building its factories up anyway, or spending on tech (where it's only giving us 117RP per turn)? Despite all the advice thus far, I'm still not at all sure. As we already have a lot of tech coming in from Rayden anyway, I've switched Kulthos to building factories - 3.8/year.
Laan, being ultra-rich, continues to contribute most of its excess to the planetary reserve. Boosted Rayden's production this turn, upping its tech spending to 1000RP.
2412: (is this the first High Council of the game? I think so. I'm getting the exciting stuff!)
Bulrathis, Mrrshans vote for Bulrathis (10 of 31 votes).
Klackons, Psilons, Alkaris abstain.
We get 10 votes. As we can just barely vote for Grunk without him winning, we vote for him. They like us a bit more now.
Mrrshans declare war. We live in interesting times. They're allied with the Psilons and Alkaris (Alkaris look pretty dangerous! Psilons less so.)
Asked the Alkaris to declare war on Mrrshans. They wanted Controlled Toxic so we refused.
Needed to free up a ship design slot, so scrapped Hydrogen 1 (only 2 of them, around local planets, seemed rather weak).
Crocodile 3 - as it would seem that the time has come to build a proper mean fleet in earnest, with the Mrrshans about to descend, have tried to create a large design decked out with good armour, maneuverability, shields, and weapons. As I totally lack experience and instinct here, I've no doubt made an inefficient design. But I'm assuming the Mrrshans will throw some new ship designs at us that are an unknown quantity, so we want something pretty strong. Maybe someone can give me a breakdown of what's good and bad about this design given the current situation. A whole book could probably be written on the subtleties of designing these ships. Actually, I seem to recall this was one of the things I really hated about GalCiv2 - the level of customizability in ship design. Some people love it, but personally I prefer a Civ-style setup where you just have certain units given to you. At least then you can't screw up too badly. With customizable ship designs, you totally can. And presumably will, until you have a lot of experience. The AI, however, will already be programmed (or should be, if it's competent) to knock out efficient, sensible designs. Pretty intimidating.
Guess I can see now why we're not boosting Rayden every turn to produce tech faster - emergency boosting several planets to build these ships quicker has knocked down the planetary reserve by more than half.
2413:
Psilons sent a colony ship and (small) fleet to Whynil, so our Monitor had to retreat. They were able to colonize it as they now have Controlled Dead tech. We should beat them to the neighbouring Rana though, which is the rich one, not least because it's an inferno, and I don't think the Psilons can colonize that yet. Looks like they are getting close, though, so many the AI will soon start to see these planets as fair game for an invasion.
As predicted, the Mrrshans immediately dispatch a fleet of 101 Bobcats and a Leopard to Kulthos. Bobcats only have missiles, but there's a lot of them. Not sure whether we've scanned Leopards before. One thing that really shows this game's age is the lack of any kind of interface to show you stats on ships you've already scanned. Or can our scientists not afford the hard drive storage space it would take to, ya know, remember past scans?
Dispatched the 2 x Crocodiles built at Sssssla and Celtsi to Kulthos, and all the Geckos and a Monitor 3X from Kronos too. The monitor will get there before the Mrrshans arrive, the Geckos will only arrive 1 turn later becuase of their slow engines. Crocodile production with boosting continues.
Also set Kulthos to building a planetary defense shield, and boosted it (production at 277(298)). Don't know whether it'll be ready in time. How many BC does a class V planetary shield cost? Amazingly, the manual never seems to say. Just says you need to allocate 'adequate resources' to build one.
Noticed that the Bulrathi are now allied with the Mrrshans. Tried to get them to declare war, but they refused outright. If they attack too, it'll be fun. The NAP with them is, however, still in effect.
2414:
An additional Mrrshan fleet is now on course to Kulthos with Warcats, lots of Bobcats, and a Puma. ETA 7 turns (which means fighting it is the next speaker's problem!)
2415:
New colony founded at Hyades. 37 million sent from Reticuli to boost population, and Reticulu eco spending increased to build it back quickly (10 per turn).
Our four Monitor 3X ships were sent to explore systems to the north-east of Hyades, now that they're in range. Kronos is now switched to building Crocodiles.
In addition, a Monitor 3 got into a scrap with Mrrshan ships at Xudax, giving an opportunity for some up-to-date scans on some of their ship designs, before retreat.
2416:
New colonies at Paladia and Rana. Population sent from Reticuli to boost these - 20 million each. Full eco spending to build back the Reticuli population quickly (14 per turn).
2417:
New colony at Denubius. 15 million sent from Reticuli to boost pop.
Obaca sends 15 million to Paladia as a pop boost.
2418:
Finally the combat with the first-sent (very slow) Mrrshan fleet - consisting of 101 Bobcats and a Leopard - begins at Kulthos.
(had to host this on my server as it's 14MB! Nothing else was interested...)
The Crocs held up relatively well although in hindsight I think I should've held them back to avoid losing two thirds of them to the Bobcat missiles. Then again, if I'd done that, the Bobcats would probably have just run away before I could get any laser hits in, so I wouldn't have taken many Bobcats out. Not sure what the best tactic is. The 63 remaining Bobcats retreat back to Crypto.
Selia is scouted to the far south of the galaxy. Ultra rich, but radiated.
Kulthos finally finishes its planetary shield, ready for the next Mrrshan battle.
The Mrrshans are suddenly no longer allied with anyone!
2419:
Nitzer is scouted to the south-east of the galaxy. The system has no planets.
The Mrrshans are allied with the Alkiris again (*sigh*).
2420:
Escalon (toxic, rich, pop 20 max) is scouted to the north-east of the galaxy.
Rhilus (barren, hostile, pop 40 max) is scouted to the north-east of the galaxy.
Notes for next speaker:
And that's this speaker's time in the sun over. Mrrshan fleet is inbound next turn at Kulthos, various Crocodile 3's are on the way. Relations with most races aren't bad. Several newly-founded colonies are waiting for colony transports to arrive before they can start building anything in earnest.
Hot war with the Mrrshan...should be interesting. A few thoughts:
- We definitely want to colonize whatever systems we can, unless we think we will lose them immediately to the AIs. (Having the AIs grab techs from new, defenseless worlds can be very bad.) More planets means more lizards, which means more votes in the council. Now that voting has begun, we will have council votes on the multiples of 25 years turns. With 10 of 31 votes in the initial meeting, we are very very close to being able to block even if everyone else goes against us. Making certain we have enough vote share to block is a critical goal.
- Factories at poor planets can be built, it just may not ever actually pay off since it takes so long, If we had better IIT tech to reduce factory costs that would help.
- Spying. With open war, we should boost espionage against the kitties and see if we can steal anything from them.
- Alliances are something to keep an eye on, but as we have already seen the AI will make and then break alliances almost at random. So there is only so much that diplomacy can do.
OK, I believe I am now up. Life has calmed down a bit (thankfully!), so I will try to get the turns in tomorrow morning about 16 hours from now. Thoughts and suggestions from other speakers are most welcome.
Faster drives, better weapons, and we now know that the Psilons and Klackons are tiny empires in this galaxy. If we can deal with the Bulrathi and Mrrshan separately and not fight both at once, we should be well-positioned to win this game. 
Interesting that there still has not been a council vote.![[Image: moo1-1.gif]](https://game-point.net/misc/moo1-1.gif)
So there is only so much that diplomacy can do.