While we're in between turnsets, I thought that I'd share some details on a Master of Orion game that I've been playing at home over the last few days. This is a Medium size galaxy with standard settings, played as the Sakkra on Impossible:
![[Image: OSG29A-31.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/MOO/OSG29A/OSG29A-31.jpg)
Sssla appeared just north of the center of the map near a midsized nebula. The planet was not actually in the nebula itself, although travel to the south would be a major pain for me in this game. There was only one planet within 3 parsecs, which turned out to be an Arid 65 planet just to the west that rolled Poor status. Argh, I always hate having a Poor planet for the second colony. You can use those things for research and sending population to other worlds, but that's about it, and the Sakkra don't even have that much of a need for population transportation with their innate growth bonus. (You should still do so, of course, it's just not as useful for them as with other races.) Just on the south side of the nebula was a Terran planet size 120 - wow! It was 4 parsecs away, and that would be my immediate first target for this game. Now why couldn't that have been the planet right next to Sssla? Reverse those two worlds and this game would have been an order of magnitude easier.
Further scouting revealed an unusual local neighborhood. There were only two other habitable planets within range, a Desert 40 planet at 5 parsecs off to the east and a Jungle 85 planet off to the west, also 5 parsecs away. Everything else came up Hostile, although this turned out to be a crop of potentially excellent Hostile planets down the road. There was a Rich Dead world to the south, another Rich Dead planet to the northwest, an Ultra Rich Tundra planet to the north, and an Ultra Rich Inferno world further to the northwest. Even better, a lot of these planets were large in size for Hostile planets: the Dead Rich world to the northwest had a base size of 50, and the Ultra Rich Tundra planet had a base size of 45. If I could research enough Planetology tech to colonize those worlds, I would be in an excellent position.
I built factories at Sssla for about 15 turns, then opened up Planetology and Propulsion with a single turn's worth of full research to seed the initial investment. I needed additional range to expand, and for the Sakkra, getting Planetology going early on is always a worthwhile investment. I had no choice on the research options: Improve Eco Restoration and Range 5 techs. Those were both highly useful here, and I researched the two of them alongside factory construction at Sssla. I made no attempt to build factories at the Poor second colony, instead pushing research into those key techs. While I do like to max out Poor planets on factories so that they can stand up some missile bases, it wasn't worthwhile to do so here while I clearly needed to get some research going while also building factories at Sssla.
By the time that research finished and factories maxed at Sssla, it was roughly 2330 on the calendar. Unfortunately, I had already suffered my first setback: the Silicoids had already colonized the Terran 120 planet to the south side of the nebula.
There was almost nothing I could do about this, as they settled there around roughly 2325 and I hadn't even had contact with them before that point. They simply appeared with a colony ship and laser fighter escorts out of nowhere and colonized the planet. That was a bad break. I cranked out one round of laser fighters and sent them to the Rich Dead planet in the south, just to stop the Silicoids from waltzing in there with a single colony ship and fighter escort. Then I built two colony ships for the Desert world to the east and the Jungle planet to the west. I just barely managed to get to the Desert planet ahead of the Humans, my scouts already chasing off some of their unarmed colony ships there. I had hoped that settling that planet would bring the Ocean world further to the northeast into range, but it turned out that the distance was still 6 parsecs. Argh, that would have been a huge help to reach those planets and open up the north for colonization, where it was clear by now that no one had started. Instead that area remained tantalizingly out of reach for the moment. At least I had a buffer zone of a lot of empty space over there. (The unscouted planet to the southeast of the Desert world is Orion.)
Over in the west, my extended range had revealed two more habitable planets further away, an Ocean planet and another Poor Arid world. I built a colony ship to claim that territory after settling the Jungle 85 location, only to see my scouts pushed away by the Alkari. The birds had brought colony ships plus well over 100 armed Small ships, and what could my scouts do about that? Not much while operating 10 parsecs away from Sssla, with a brand new fledgling colony at the Jungle world, and a Poor planet that had zero factories at the Arid planet.
Now this wouldn't have been too bad of a situation if I had been able to maintain peace, but that wasn't in the cards either. The Alkari kicked it off by declaring war on the turn after I met them. Ah, that classic birds vs lizards diplomatic relationship. We met on one turn, and then they declared war on the next interturn. Fun stuff. (This is the biggest reason why the Sakkra are only an average race in terms of power: their diplomatic situation is among the worst in the game.) An early game cheese alliance shortly brought the Klackons into this war on the side of the Alkari. Shortly thereafter, the Silicoids began their own independent war with me, and started targeting me from the south.
That was roughly the situation at the time of the screenshot above: at war with three of the four races that I had contact with, having essentially one fully-functioning planet to my name, and with little more than a promise of future strength down the road if I could managed to colonize additional territory. After getting out those initial colony ships, I had put Sssla onto research for a few turns, and fortunately did manage to research two very helpful techs in the second tier of Planetology and Propulsion: Controlled Dead (no choice) and Warp 2 engines (over Range 6 and Inertial Stabilizer). So now I had the ability to colonize three more planets, but Sssla was the only planet with any sort of production to turn out colony ships, and I also had to hold off the invading aliens at the borders with some mixture of cardboard cuts and space magic. Oh, and I still hadn't even opened up the other four tech fields, much less researched anything in them. I had no new weapons, no shields, nothing from the Construction field, nothing. My tech situation was beyond pathetic, and it was only going to get worse for the forseeable future.
Fortunately, the diplomatic situation wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. The Humans were nominated against the Klackons in the first Council election, and since the Klackson were already at war with me anyway, I could vote for the Humans and score huge diplomatic points with them. That took relations with the Humans up to "Affable", and with their Honorable personality, I could be reasonably sure that we would remain at peace. I signed the max trade agreement with them, and they eventually came asking for a Non Aggression pact, which I was happy to agree to. Having a calm border in the east was a huge help, and that allowed me to slowly max out the little Desert planet over there with factories over two or three dozens turns. It never came under attack until after I could get some bases finished. The Klackons were fortunately located too far away to do anything to me either. They had gotten into wars with a bunch of other races, including the Alkari and Silicoids, and they never sent a fleet towards me. Thanks goodness for that: they appeared to be the strongest AI, and I would have had a devil of a time stopping them. The Alkari similarly seemed more interested in clashing with the bugs than going after me. I had many nervous turns watching them move ships just to the west of my Jungle planet over there, and I couldn't be completely certain that they were heading somewhere else without an improved scanner. Still, I was measuring their movement between turns very closely, and it didn't look like I was the target. I kept my Jungle world on factory construction, and it too was never attacked until after I had maxed it out and begun missile base construction.
The Silicoids were therefore the only race that sent their main forces against me, but they were in full fledged hot war and I would face the full brunt of their aggression. My first colony ship after researching Controlled Dead tech had gone to the Rich world to my south, where my laser fighters (swelled in size to about 50 by now) had chased off a half dozen Silicoid colony ships already. I settled the planet and started building it up, but the nebula between that world and Sssla made movement very difficult. I also lacked any Reserve to stand up the planet faster, and I could not put Sssla onto feeding it, not when I was desperately building colony ships for the Rich Dead world and Ultra Rich Tundra world to the north. Less than half a dozen turns after colonizing the planet in the south, the Silicoids brought their main fleet and chased away my laser fighters. 50 Small laser ships don't win against a half dozen Large ships sporting Gatling lasers. Then the rocks immediately sent an invasion force: 65m pop (!) from the Terran planet that I had been unable to colonize early in the game. There was no way I could stop that either, and thus the Rich Dead world to the south passed into Silicoid hands.
This had bought me enough time to get out colony ships for those Rich planets to the north, however. Even better, settling the Tundra Ultra Rich planet brought the north corner of the map into 5 parsec range; there was another Terran 90 planet due north of the Tundra Ultra Rich. As it turned out, there was one empty star up there, but the other four planets in that cluster were all habitable: the Terran world, two Steppe planets, and an Ocean world (the last two already scouted in the above screenshot). So Sssla continued cranking out colony ships to claim that territory, even as my Arid Poor planet feed the Rich and Ultra Rich planets to the north with population to get them started. Just... need... a... little... more... time!
![[Image: OSG29A-32.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/MOO/OSG29A/OSG29A-32.jpg)
The Silicoids weren't interested in giving me that freedom of action. They went after Sssla next, and although I was able to get a missile base on my homeworld to meet their arrival, my pathetic tech situation made that missile base rather toothless. One base with Class I shields firing nukes doesn't stop much of anything. The Silicoids established superiority over the planet and then sent an invasion force. Fortunately it was only about 25m pop and I was able to beat that off without any trouble (the Silicoids only having Hand Lasers for gropo tech), but I was fighting ground combat on my homeworld, for heaven's sake! Not good. The missile base had revealed something important though: the Silicoids only had lasers and Gatling lasers on their ships. If I could research Class II shields, that would be enough to make even on missile base invulnerable to their current designs. I built a base to near-completion on my homeworld, then went over to research. I did manage to get the shielding tech discovered in short order, finished a missile base, and chased away the Silicoid ships. OK, one crisis averted for the moment.
Next the rocks shifted to targeting my Arid Poor planet off to the immediate west. There was no way that I could get a base finished on that planet any time soon with zero factories, and I tried to build a few ships to stop the Silicoid invasion. Since I was only interested in defending a single point and wanted to minimize attrition, I went with a Large design packing Battle Computer I, Class I shields, movement 2, a Battle Scanner, and about two dozen lasers. This was a solid design, but a pair of these was not enough to stop the Silicoid fleet that they had brought (a couple of Large ships with more of those Gatling lasers), and I retreated rather than lose the ships. That meant the invasion was on, as the Silicoids began sending transports against my Arid Poor world.
But you know what? That wasn't the worst thing that could happen! The AI will leave its fleet in place over a world that it's trying to invade, and while the Silicoids kept adding additional ships to that stack, it wasn't moving to threaten any other location. Because these ships only had lasers on board, they were unable to do any damage from planetary bombardment, only occasionally killing 1m or 2m pop from orbit. And if there's any race that can handle those kind of losses, it's the Sakkra. The nebula that had been such a pain in moving to the south in the early game now began my ally, slowing the Silicoid ships and transports as they moved north. The first rock invasion landed 19m population, and was easily beaten off. The second invasion landed 35m population, and although more of a threat, was still defeated without much trouble. I used the Eco slider to regrow population after each attack, which combined with Sakkra natural fertility had the Poor world back up at max population long before the next Silicoid transports could arrive. My Poor planet was acting like a character with a taunt ability, soaking up the damage and keeping my other worlds from being targeted. As I said, this was actually working out quite well.
Meanwhile, my new colonies were starting to max out their factories and population, thanks to the time that my Poor world had bought me. The Rich and Ultra Rich planets to the north of Sssla were immensely helpful here; if you haven't played Master of Orion, it's difficult to put into words how helpful having even a couple of those planets can be. They maxed out very quickly and then began feeding their incoming into the Reserve every turn, allowing me to turbo charge the growth curve of all those other worlds in the far north. I was finally beginning to get some actual research done, now closing in on 100 turns into the game. The Humans were willing to trade me Terraforming +10 tech, a major help since my Planetology tree had no terraforming techs on the first three rungs. (The third tech was Controlled Toxic, no choice.) Improved Robotics III was also available at the second rung of the Computers tree, and that would be a major deal too, arriving just as most of the planets finished up with their initial factory construction. I even managed to get the Alkari to sign peace, although the Silicoids and Klackons remained intransigent.
Finally, with the help of my Ultra Rich planet assisting Sssla with shipbuilding, I was able to put together 4 of my Large laser design and kill the Silicoid fleet over my Arid Poor planet. It had been under siege for almost two dozen turns before I finally managed to chase the rocks away. In the end, therefore, I lose the Terran 120 planet and the Rich Dead world to the south side of the nebula, but I managed to claim everything else to the north, including that big cluster of planets in the northeast. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with how I managed things.
![[Image: OSG29A-33.jpg]](http://www.sullla.com/MOO/OSG29A/OSG29A-33.jpg)
That's where my game stands right now in the year 2400. I have 10 planets currently and should be able to claim the two Inferno worlds (one of them Ultra Rich!) in the northwest when Controlled Toxic finishes in the near future. I was up against the Humans in the last Council vote, and had 8 out of 29 total votes (27%) to my own name. I had been pretty worried about this vote until I managed to get peace with the Alkari, who actually voted for me (heh) because they were at war with both the Klackons and the Humans. On the bar graphs, I'm surprisingly competitive in Production, and I should start to pull away in Population soon due to my lead in planets and with the Sakkra's excellence in Planetology research. Hopefully only one more Council vote to get through before being safe with a veto block. Note that my Technology rating remains absolutely pathetic; this is one of the worst performances I've had in a long time in a game where I wasn't simply wiped out in the first 75 turns. There were simply no resources to spare for research for a long time on end, with only my Poor second planet contributing 30-40 BC of trickle research for dozens of turns. It was what I needed to do to survive though, and my empire should be in a position now to catch up.
I thought I would share this partly because it's been a fascinating game thus far, and partly because I wanted to contrast this start to the builder's paradise that we've had here in this succession game. Master of Orion is a lot more difficult when your second planet is a Poor world, you're surrounded by mostly Hostile planets, and you're attacked by three different AI races in the first 50 turns.
And we have quite a lot of reserve cash if you want to speed things up a bit.
They are not strong enough to offer us much benefit as allies, but we still get all the potential drawbacks. We are already at war with just about everyone, though, so I did not think it would cost us much. Still, not a good move. 
The production of one of those planets must be insane, especially with Complete Eco and Waste Elimination so they are not stuck with clean up costs. 
