Unhittable Alkari ships are fun

[Psillycyber]

In my most recent game on impossible difficulty, I got to experience the joy of unhittable Alkari ships. I actually like playing as the Alkari, even though many consider them to be a lower-tier race, because their bonuses actually factor in to your strategy. You play differently with them; it's not just a case of getting more of whatever you would normally be using faster like it often is with the races that have economy boosts. (I would also include the Silicoids, the Bulrathi, the Darloks, the Humans, and to a lesser extent the Mrrshans as races that actually offer different strategic opportunities, and not just economy bonuses that will help you do more of whatever you were going to do anyways).

I agree with the conventional wisdom that Alkari > Mrrshans. If you do the math, going from 50% evade to 80% evade or 95% evade (as one often can with the Alkari) ups your survivability and thus lethality by anywhere from 2.5 to 10 times, whereas going from 50% offensive hit chance to 90% offensive hit chance only ups your lethality by less than 2 times. Players of FTL should intuitively see how this works. Given 4 shield bubbles in FTL, going from 50% evade to 66% evade means that you go from being able to withstand 8 laser shots on average to being able to withstand 12 shots. Whereas going from 33% evade to 50% evade only means going from being able to take 6 laser shots to being able to withstand 8, an increase of only 2.

In my last run as the Alkari in MoO, I was able to leverage the evade bonus on two occasions.



In the early game, the sparrowhawk laser fighter design was able to chase away small armed escorts and armed colony ships, crucially slowing down the AI. In one fight, 6 sparrowhawks killed an armed Bulrathi colony ship while only losing 1 sparrowhawk. Sure, it took a while to plink away at the colony ship's 100 hp, but it only had a 1/20 chance of hitting my sparrowhawks, so it was only a matter of time. With other races, I would have needed to bring 15-20 laser fighters to have a decent shot at killing the armed colony ship, and I would have taken losses in the process.

Later in the game, after getting megabolt cannons and impulse drives, I went on the offensive and designed two seriously effective ships. The Paladin was just fantastic as a planet defender, stack neutralizer, and escort. I really only needed one of these things at a threatened planet to nullify whole stacks of tiny enemy death spore bombers. Warp dissipator + repulsor beam ftw!

And the Wareagle design was a nearly invincible bomber that leveraged the alkari evade bonus, along with impulse engines, the inertial stabilizer, and ECM V, to give it a ridiculous 15 evade against missiles (12 is the displayed value, +3 for the alkari bonus). Thanks to a battle movement speed of 4, I could close on missile bases by the second turn, and meanwhile a planet with 40 missile bases could kill, oh, maybe 1 Wareagle in those two turns, before I obliterated their bases (usually in about 1-2 turns if I had 15-20 wareagles in the stack).

With the Paladin and Wareagle having warp speed of 5, I was zooming from enemy planet to enemy planet, bombing out their defenses and trashing their fleets faster than I could send ground invasions. It was awesome.

The locust design that you see there at the bottom was my plan for killing the Guardian. Sadly, the game was decided by that point, and in the very next year I voted myself in as Galactic Emperor rather than deal with 25 more turns of micromanagement.

[Ianus]

What's up with the Heavy Lasers? Was that the only two range gun you had?

I fully agree about the Alkari though! They really make the early game a lot of fun since as you point out a small investment in defensive forces can hold a lot of planets for future colonization. It makes the early land grab even more exciting!

[Psillycyber]

Yep, my beam tech was non-existent before I got megabolt cannons. But I still wanted a range-2 weapon on those (especially the Paladin), just in case I encountered a really dangerous stack. Then I could freeze/repulse it in place and plink away at it with the range-2 weapon, and heavy lasers were the only thing I had for that. That came in handy once with an enemy ship stack that had mass drivers. It took a while, but I was able to plink the stack down to a safe level where my autorepair could deal with the damage.

I also wanted to throw a small bit of random beam junk on the wareagle so that it could mop up enemy laser fighters or colony ships if it got stranded on its own without the Paladin escort. Didn't want it to be a total sitting duck with just bombs on it.

Later on I picked up ion cannons in a ground invasion, and I would have gladly used heavy ions instead, but by that point I had already built a lot of the earlier designs, and I wanted to keep slots open.

[Psillycyber]

I've never heard the Mrrshans defended and their strengths explained so well, thrawn. Nice tips! So the trick is to consider using missile boats, eh? I will keep that in mind.

My least favorite neighbors are the silicoids and the klackons. They get out to such a fast start and gobble up all of the planets and weave their colonies into my backlines, making defense impossible. The Alkari have never given me trouble, but maybe because I've always managed to avoid early wars with them. Their default being honorable helps with that.

My favorite neighbors are the Bulrathis and the Mrrshans. Being poor in computer tech usually means I can strip their tech trees clean with espionage. The game I'm playing now as the Meklars, I have tech level 37 in computers, and I think the Bulrathis are still stuck at level 8 or so, and I have stripped every tech from them through espionage alone. I was getting techs like every other turn. Plus you can frame others for it and sick those beardogs on some other hapless neighbor, like the Psilons in my recent game.

[Psillycyber]

In reality I rarely use missile boats actually, just as I rarely use the Alkaris. When I do it's usually the x2 version because enemy ships don't dodge them so well and you can shoot the planet from further away and don't have to hang around long. You should definitely calculate how much damage your boats will do against the specific ships and bases you are fighting and make sure that you are able to destroy at least 1 per turn - otherwise they are useless. Also be careful when the enemy ships start getting fast in combat because if they can dodge the missiles it's also no good. It’s important in general and not just here to be aware of the enemy designs - I often use battle scout medium ships that sit at the planets of my neighbors with who I’m at war just to scan their new ship designs right away.

Looks like the favorite neighbor difference comes from the play style because I’m exactly the opposite – I don’t like Bulrathi and Mrrshan neighbors and love Silicoids. I usually play hyper aggressive - as soon as I have a neighbor I stop building colony ships and instead have a good amount of laser ships so when they create a colony I move in, destroy their incoming transports and invade it killing just the tiny initial population (not always though, early wars are often costly so it’s important to decide the best course of action for the specific circumstances). With the Silicoids, whose planets are half-full and easy to invade, I can keep capturing their older planets too until their very core planets that have managed to stand up plenty of bases. I often use nuclear bombers to break through the early 2-3 bases that the AIs have, depending on their missiles sometimes even 5-7 bases can be destroyed with little/no losses. Another generally important thing - the AIs usually assemble their fleets on their planet that is closest to you. When you put your fleet in orbit there, you get to fight the incoming ships one by one instead of all of them at once - an immense difference. Re enemy colonies in your territory - if it's a planet you expect to have a controlled tech soon, you can allow them to build it up and then capture it with the factories and the chance to steal technology. The AIs build much faster than you so sometimes I deliberately allow them to develop a planet for me and only then invade, even if I could invade earlier. If it is a size 50 ultra rich radiated planet I'd bomb the colony. This means war but I'm always at war with the Silicoids anyway. If you want to avoid war then blockade if possible or destroy at the first opportunity if not.

An example of early war and nuclear bombers - in my last game I had the Bulrathi on an impossible small map and I broke Mentar in about 2370. The Psilons hadn't developed any missiles that game but even if they had I still could have killed any of their colonies Correction: they had Hyper-Vs. I had only Controlled Barren in my Planetology tree and more habitable planets in range so I didn't do any early research. I built two colony ships before meeting the Psilons and the Alkaris and started spying on them immediately (4% allocation each). After not long I stole E2 (Nuclear engines) and built a huge ship on Ursa. The ship had E2, Titanium II armor, and DS1 (I didn't even have DS2 at the time) but this was enough to cross the gap against ~20 bases and drop 2 bomb loads. A few turns later there were no missile bases and a large load of Bulrathi troops were on the way. I normally send a few troops per turn from multiple planets (just as many as each planet can rebuild so they don't suffer a huge economy hit) and wear down the enemy over a few turns rather than send half the populations in a single batch, but this time it was important to be quick so I did half the population. The Psilons had personal deflector shields (and hand lasers but I stole those) so it wasn't a total massacre but they fell right away.

Wow, that IS hyper-aggressive play! I will have to keep that possibility in mind next time I play.

I recently got into master of orion from watching sullla's livestreams of it, and he tends to play pretty defensively at first, so I assumed that that was the only way to go. I've seen him build nuclear bombers like maybe once. But I guess they do get the job done. I think I tend to over-estimate how soon AIs will get their hands on class V planetary shields. It usually takes them quite a while, even if it is in their tree at all, so I could see how this could be viable.

I guess the real crunch-factor is to get your hands on nuclear or impulse drives ASAP. Because having your ships crawl along at warp 1 and moving only 1 space in battle per turn is excruciating. Too many turns for missile bases to pummel you. I can't imagine early offense working with just retro engines, unless you were going after brand-new colonies like you suggest. If you don't have nuclear engines in the tree, I guess impulse drives are a nice alternative in giving transports 2 parsecs per turn...although do you think impulse drives come a little late for a nuclear bomber rush?

Also, how then do you maintain orbital superiority over your new conquests so that the AI fleet doesn't just bomb it out or invade again? Laser fighters? That is usually the deterring factor for me. What's the good of a conquest if I can't use it and build it up?

Or do you just strike multiple planets faster than the AI can retake them, and accept that you will lose a few?

[Psillycyber]

If you haven't read it already check also Sirian's site, it has an amazing introduction and game reports - http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/

Impulse drives come too late indeed. My early warfare is often at tech levels 1-5. Up to 2350 that's totally fine, but in the second half of the century it starts becoming a problem. Don't build nuclear missile boats though, I think Hyper V is the lowest useful one or better Hyper X. Also NPGs are great as they get obsolete far slower than lasers.

The main problem with nuclear bombers is that they can become obsolete in the blink of an eye - often due to missiles rather than shields. That's why I generally prefer large or even huge ships if I was able to build one - because they can still be used against new colonies with 1-2 bases even when the AIs get better missiles and shields. For example a huge ship has no problem going against a single base even with PS5+DS3 - so it can just stay in orbit and destroy any bases they build one at a time keeping the space secure while your transports are coming at warp 1, and capturing a planet at this stage can yield a very nice technology or two. Ideally this is just the cherry after you've already used the huge ship to bust a homeworld before they got PS5 This mainly applies to the Bulrathis and the Sakkras - the others probably can't afford the troops for a homeworld invasion at that stage and glassing a colony with nuclear bombers takes some time...

Generally I intend to keep captured planets, but sometimes I'm happy to just steal technology and accept that they'll recapture it or glass it. Sometimes that's all that's possible if their technology is far superior. In the early game I usually have fleet superiority by good tactics and designs that specifically counter the ships I've seen they have - aiming for no or minimal losses each battle. Divide and conquer is also very important - if you wait for them to assemble a fleet and come for you this can be trouble, taking the battle to them and fighting their ships before they are too many of them together allows you to get the upper hand. However there comes a point where their ships and bases become too advanced. If I can't break their planetary defenses anymore I go into growth and military research with the goals to expand the economy and ultimately be able to make a ship that can destroy their missile bases to keep capturing, and once I can penetrate anyone's planetary defenses it's a quick game over.

That's of course only a general outline - many games have peculiarities that require tweaks or a completely different course of action. I can do a Mrrshan tutorial and hopefully it turns out a good demo of this style of play.

Oh, by the way, I meant "sub-light drives," not "impulse drives." (I always get them mixed up). Impulse drives come late indeed. But even sub-light drives are tech level 12.

Yes, NPGs are nice indeed. In my recent game as the Meklar, I built a couple of huge designs with about 40 NPGs on them for my frontline planets before they could get missile bases online. It was a durable and long-lasting design.

I've found that the other shield-halving weapons, however, like mass drivers are not very good, mainly because they are too bulky.

I like your idea of a simple medium fighter with a battle scanner to check out enemy fleet designs to counter them. Cheap, and they could chase away colony ships too, I bet. I wonder if one could fit a battle scanner + reserve fuel tanks on a medium ship with one laser early in the game...that would be a nice little scout indeed.

I suppose the nice thing with huge ships is, you can wear down their small ships, and then right before the hull goes out on the huge ship, retreat, come back, and do it again (even more effective if you allow yourself the rebasing after retreat exploit...but still effective if your planets are close together otherwise). This would work even better if one could park over a new AI colony that didn't have missile defense bases yet, and just draw their fleet there to wear it down.

I wonder, what would your ideal weapon tech path be? For me, it usually goes:
1. Missile upgrade ASAP. Hyper-V or Hyper-X. I start getting worried if I miss out on everything up through merculites...
2. A decent beam weapon so that I can field decent fighters that can guard uncolonized planets and new planets. NPG and ion cannon are good candidates. In some games I've had to tech all the way to fusion beams or megabolt cannons to get an upgrade to my beams. And some of the beam weapons that don't have the 2-range option are insufficient if the enemy is fielding ships with repulsor beams, so really I like the beams with the 2-range options the most (ion, neutron, fusion, etc.).
3. A bomb upgrade for when I wanna go on the warpath. Fusion bombs stay effective for a long time, it seems like, and are cheap. It seems like the AI takes quite a while to get to Planetary shield X, and even if some AI have it, there is a good chance that there is a backward or unfortunate AI that doesn't have it in its tree, so you can use fusion bombs to go after them. Of course, anti-matter bombs aren't bad either. And omega-V's are obviously really nice. Those can carry you to the end of the game, I've found.

Although, now with your advice, maybe I should go after beams first (assuming I'm not using missile boats) and not worry so much about defensive missile bases until slightly later. I guess, if you go after the enemy, they won't be targeting your planets, but will instead be busy trying to defend their own. I don't know...I'll have to experiment with this more aggressive style....

[Psillycyber]

Great advice! Yeah, when I was asking about the weapon tech path, I was assuming that research would be going into other fields as well.

That does bring me to another question, though: do you wait for your first two planets to max-out before getting aggressive with the AIs in the ways you've been talking about, or do you start even earlier? I'm guessing you wait to at least max those out, because otherwise building huge ships would take forever.

I agree about gatling lasers. I cringe every time they are the only weapon available for me to research at the start. So expensive, all for a bulky weapon that quickly goes obsolete. Hand lasers are great. In fact, I tend to pick the cheapest techs in each category at the beginning, except for range tech (which is dictated by the map) and perhaps planetology tech. Like you said, it is good to see what your options are.

No beam research, eh? I'm gonna have to experiment with missile boats for a change...