Sponsor: Catwalk
Opening Date: Monday, January 20, 2014
Duration: Four Weeks
Patch: Kyrub's 1.40M patch is OPTIONAL as usual.
Race: Mrrshans
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Large
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Map Generation: Random, with a few edits by the sponsor
Events: On
![[Image: rbo-imp-40-teaser1.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h5Kbcg8bYIU/Wjuw8Nx9ZII/AAAAAAAAEJc/rEwzqX3-anc2bb20K9D4OTPKYg5mnz7VwCLcBGAs/s1600/rbo-imp-40-teaser1.jpg)
![[Image: rbo-imp-40-teaser2.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VZ5GEdSLuwY/Wjuw8AUBQjI/AAAAAAAAEJk/YnC5nKJDOQcLkD3CT0ZYPTuL4H0J0CK-wCLcBGAs/s1600/rbo-imp-40-teaser2.jpg)
Scenario: The Mrrshan people have always been eager warriors - the pre-warp history of Fierias consists of little more than a litany of battles to the death between ruling clans - and now that the stars are open to them, only the fiercest can win the bitter struggles (against their many eager peers, of course) for a place on an actual starship. On most space vessels, with only a skeleton crew aboard, it's usually only necessary to include enough firepower to keep the crew busy preparing and test-firing them at asteroids and stray comets. Aboard colony ships, each carrying the two million cats who won the oft-deadly competitions to be among the first to populate virgin worlds, the very real risk arises that the stir-crazy Mrrshan colonists will tear their ship apart en route to their new homes.
Fortunately, Mrrshan scientists, driven by intense competition and the urgent necessity - that mother of so many inventions - of near-perpetual war, are far ahead of the curve for research in the modern galaxy.
![[Image: rbo-imp-40-teaser3.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aRrHfL7DsOs/Wjuw8Fb0zoI/AAAAAAAAEJg/UNgpIEfSsTARdDzBml7-ie1SDscMpML4gCLcBGAs/s1600/rbo-imp-40-teaser3.jpg)
They have found technological solutions to "The Colony Problem" that fall into two schools of thought: The Scratching Post School holds that if internal shielding can be strengthened enough, Mrrshan colonists will have means of expending their energies without actually - quite - destroying their ships. The School of Distraction holds that sufficiently powerful combat simulation computer systems might keep enough cats entertained long enough to - just - make planetfall before the rest rip the ship apart.
Most likely, the methods of both schools will be required: Mrrshans adapt rapidly, and no single combination of tricks is likely to work more than once. The first ship should manage to make it though ... just barely ... at least as long as it's not in transit for more than three years, but beyond that, some work will be needed.
It's a wonder in light of all this strife that anything could unite the entire Mrrshan people even superficially ... until you learn of the recent discovery by Mrrshan SETI scientists: Not only are there five other races with which to do battle, but the ultimate military challenge has somehow survived since the time of the Ancients themselves: The Guardian of Orion.
---
Variants:
1) All ships that lack colony bases must be armed. Anything that falls under the category of "Weapons" (rather than "Specials") on the ship design screen qualifies.
2) Limited Diplo: We are not permitted to trade technologies, [EDIT: to issue threats], to request declarations of war, or to request that alliances be broken. Trading hard-won military secrets (and to a Mrrshan, all technologies are military secrets) to a potential war enemy is unthinkable to the cats ... and they just don't have the patience or guile for third-party diplomacy. [EDIT: As for threats, any Mrrshan who has ever even thought about attacking long enough to talk about it at all ... inevitably wound up doing so without the talking.]
3) Each ship we build that does include a colony base must have at least as many combined levels of shields and battle computers as the total number of colony ships that preceded it (including the one with which we start the game). Thus, the first new colship may have either Shield 1 or BC 1, but the second must either have both, or have Shield 2 or BC 2 instead. It might be useful to include a number in the ships' names to track this. If more than one colony ship will be built across the empire in a given turn, you must decide which count as being built "prior to" the others, and include shields and/or battle computers accordingly. Note that Battle Scanners do not count toward the required total!
Scoring: The objective of this Imperium is to defeat the Guardian at Orion. Games that achieve this objective will be listed in order from earliest to latest success; it is not necessary to achieve an in-game victory condition once the Guardian is defeated (though of course you may if you wish to do so). In-game victories that occur while the Guardian is still at large will be listed separately, followed by in-game defeats.
---
Notes: The map was rolled randomly, but then edited by the sponsor, who advises the player as follows:
- Orion is rumored to lie "deep into enemy territory, in the NW quadrant."
- According to the automated probes that just returned with bare-bones atmospheric testing suites, of the stars within four parsecs (our current range) of Fierias, only the green star to the south (the one to which the cursor in the teaser images is pointing) holds a habitable planet.
- There are no Artifacts planets in the immediate neighborhood; if any were present, they have been removed.
- Our unarmed scouts have been deleted (not just scrapped, so no reserves.)
- We start with no less than 15 tier-1 and tier-2 techs. As the teaser image above suggests, they are visible on the tech screen, but a complete list is also posted in spoilers below.
I (RefSteel) also modified the starting save very slightly from what Catwalk posted earlier - but I do mean very slightly: I changed the save file to Save6.gam, centered the map on Fierias instead of a nearby red star, and adjusted the ECO slider at Fierias down to the minimum clean. (It was well above this level as a result of our free technologies.)
If you have any questions about the variant rules, please post them here or PM them to Catwalk (as sponsor, he gets to make those rulings).
For the overall Imperium rules, see the following:
Intro
Rules
Note that exceptions to the rules can be made for each individual Imperium, as in this case when we're allowing kyrub's 1.40M patch to be used instead of 1.3 by anyone who so wishes. I really ought to look into getting that rule changed on the original page.
Finally, please avoid the tactics banned in our exploits list (a list of ways we've found of taking advantage of bugs or massive and obvious holes in the AI which we've agreed not to use since they're not in keeping with the spirit or fun of the game).
Good luck!
---
Closing Date: Monday, February 17, 2014. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, February 18, your local time.
The starting save is attached to this post!
Opening Date: Monday, January 20, 2014
Duration: Four Weeks
Patch: Kyrub's 1.40M patch is OPTIONAL as usual.
Race: Mrrshans
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Large
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Map Generation: Random, with a few edits by the sponsor
Events: On
Scenario: The Mrrshan people have always been eager warriors - the pre-warp history of Fierias consists of little more than a litany of battles to the death between ruling clans - and now that the stars are open to them, only the fiercest can win the bitter struggles (against their many eager peers, of course) for a place on an actual starship. On most space vessels, with only a skeleton crew aboard, it's usually only necessary to include enough firepower to keep the crew busy preparing and test-firing them at asteroids and stray comets. Aboard colony ships, each carrying the two million cats who won the oft-deadly competitions to be among the first to populate virgin worlds, the very real risk arises that the stir-crazy Mrrshan colonists will tear their ship apart en route to their new homes.
Fortunately, Mrrshan scientists, driven by intense competition and the urgent necessity - that mother of so many inventions - of near-perpetual war, are far ahead of the curve for research in the modern galaxy.
They have found technological solutions to "The Colony Problem" that fall into two schools of thought: The Scratching Post School holds that if internal shielding can be strengthened enough, Mrrshan colonists will have means of expending their energies without actually - quite - destroying their ships. The School of Distraction holds that sufficiently powerful combat simulation computer systems might keep enough cats entertained long enough to - just - make planetfall before the rest rip the ship apart.
Most likely, the methods of both schools will be required: Mrrshans adapt rapidly, and no single combination of tricks is likely to work more than once. The first ship should manage to make it though ... just barely ... at least as long as it's not in transit for more than three years, but beyond that, some work will be needed.
It's a wonder in light of all this strife that anything could unite the entire Mrrshan people even superficially ... until you learn of the recent discovery by Mrrshan SETI scientists: Not only are there five other races with which to do battle, but the ultimate military challenge has somehow survived since the time of the Ancients themselves: The Guardian of Orion.
---
Variants:
1) All ships that lack colony bases must be armed. Anything that falls under the category of "Weapons" (rather than "Specials") on the ship design screen qualifies.
2) Limited Diplo: We are not permitted to trade technologies, [EDIT: to issue threats], to request declarations of war, or to request that alliances be broken. Trading hard-won military secrets (and to a Mrrshan, all technologies are military secrets) to a potential war enemy is unthinkable to the cats ... and they just don't have the patience or guile for third-party diplomacy. [EDIT: As for threats, any Mrrshan who has ever even thought about attacking long enough to talk about it at all ... inevitably wound up doing so without the talking.]
3) Each ship we build that does include a colony base must have at least as many combined levels of shields and battle computers as the total number of colony ships that preceded it (including the one with which we start the game). Thus, the first new colship may have either Shield 1 or BC 1, but the second must either have both, or have Shield 2 or BC 2 instead. It might be useful to include a number in the ships' names to track this. If more than one colony ship will be built across the empire in a given turn, you must decide which count as being built "prior to" the others, and include shields and/or battle computers accordingly. Note that Battle Scanners do not count toward the required total!
Scoring: The objective of this Imperium is to defeat the Guardian at Orion. Games that achieve this objective will be listed in order from earliest to latest success; it is not necessary to achieve an in-game victory condition once the Guardian is defeated (though of course you may if you wish to do so). In-game victories that occur while the Guardian is still at large will be listed separately, followed by in-game defeats.
---
Notes: The map was rolled randomly, but then edited by the sponsor, who advises the player as follows:
- Orion is rumored to lie "deep into enemy territory, in the NW quadrant."
- According to the automated probes that just returned with bare-bones atmospheric testing suites, of the stars within four parsecs (our current range) of Fierias, only the green star to the south (the one to which the cursor in the teaser images is pointing) holds a habitable planet.
- There are no Artifacts planets in the immediate neighborhood; if any were present, they have been removed.
- Our unarmed scouts have been deleted (not just scrapped, so no reserves.)
- We start with no less than 15 tier-1 and tier-2 techs. As the teaser image above suggests, they are visible on the tech screen, but a complete list is also posted in spoilers below.
I (RefSteel) also modified the starting save very slightly from what Catwalk posted earlier - but I do mean very slightly: I changed the save file to Save6.gam, centered the map on Fierias instead of a nearby red star, and adjusted the ECO slider at Fierias down to the minimum clean. (It was well above this level as a result of our free technologies.)
If you have any questions about the variant rules, please post them here or PM them to Catwalk (as sponsor, he gets to make those rulings).
For the overall Imperium rules, see the following:
Intro
Rules
Note that exceptions to the rules can be made for each individual Imperium, as in this case when we're allowing kyrub's 1.40M patch to be used instead of 1.3 by anyone who so wishes. I really ought to look into getting that rule changed on the original page.
Finally, please avoid the tactics banned in our exploits list (a list of ways we've found of taking advantage of bugs or massive and obvious holes in the AI which we've agreed not to use since they're not in keeping with the spirit or fun of the game).
Good luck!
---
Closing Date: Monday, February 17, 2014. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, February 18, your local time.
The starting save is attached to this post!
If anyone is in doubt about the colony ship rule, just ask and I can give you an even more confusing one 
