OSG 29B - The Socially-Awkward Diplomats

[TheArchduke]

Sorry, busy days, I am happy enough I managed the PBEM 2.

I will do mine today.

[TheArchduke]

Guys, please switch me out in the roster, somehow I do not manage to get a sufficient time window. I will not be able to play the weekend.

[shallow_thought]

Guys, please switch me out in the roster, somehow I do not manage to get a sufficient time window. I will not be able to play the weekend.

Sorry to hear that. I can only imagine how much time PBEM 2 is taking at the moment - I have trouble finding the time to simply read all the threads about it.

@RefSteel - do you want this turnset? I have family commitments this weekend, which will preclude me having the time / being sober enough to play and report properly. I've had a look at the save (we're still at at the 2410 save, right?), and it's a bit too lively for me to want to rush it.

I'm going to do some planning as if I were going to pick it up (my in-laws are currently stuck in British summer traffic, so I've a window for that at least), and will post thoughts if I get a chance.

One thing I do note - we urgently want to grab the Alkari colony of Simius (partly for tech, mostly because of location), and to prevent the Bulrathi getting it (they have a pair of larges en-route). It currently has no bases. Could we consider diverting the huge that we have on the way to defend Artemis, and either cover Artemis with another ship (delay Soil at Exis?) or scramble a shield and a couple of bases up with some reserve spending? The Alkari ships en-route are not that scary (two or three mediums?) and I don't think they will be able to mount a real invasion even if they get into orbit. I'd trade a bit of damage at Artemis for a grab of Simius before the bears can get it, I think.

EDIT: Further thoughts - subject to change

T2410
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Hmm. We have incoming Meklar at Cygni and Alkari at Artemis.

IIRC, Planetary Shields V takes 500BC to build. Artemis can therefore build one in  a couple of turns, with a little help from the reserves. The first Alkari won't arrive for three, so I would be tempted to get the shield up and build a couple of Hyper-X bases and see if that is enough to hold off the initial attack. This would free up the ShutUp to head for Simius. We should send in troops as soon as we can to head off the Bulrathi (although they will probably still send in transports - we can't stop them getting into orbit).

Questions:
 - We have NAP with the Bulrathi: does this mean that we won't fight them if we encounter them over Simius? If so, we need to get hold of the planet ASAP and get ships in place to defend it.
 - How effective is the ShutUp design going to be against transports and (small / medium) Alkari ships? It looks like it should be effective against the Meklar and Bulrathi (large / huge) for the moment.
 - Is it worth building some more Shy 3.0s to help hold Simius (once we have it) against the (likely) Bulrathi transports?


 General question:
 - What's the good way do manage invasions from mature planets? Assuming that you don't have an overwhelming need for a quick win, how much pop should you send and to what extent should you use force-growing to replace it?
 
Notes:
- We're a few years out of date with espionage against the birds and rocks, and spending hard against the borg. I'm not sure that we're ever going to get anywhere with the latter - they're computer tech is too good.
- With the possible exception of the Meklar, everyone looks weak. The Alkari in particular have a scattering of ships, but no real stacks. Probably a result of the ongoing everywar. This smells like serious opportunity.


Tech:
- Advanced Soil and RCIV are very nice techs which will give us significant production (and available pop for invasions). However, do we need to focus more on getting direct military tech? ARS is coming along and will let us re-design our huges. I don't know that we desperately need better weapons. Fusion Rifle is nice and we will want Omega-V at some point, but Fusion bombs and beams will cut through the birds, bears and even the borg for a while to come (unless they steal our PSV); the only reason to push here is to try to get a better missile tech (scatter VII or Pulson) at the next tier. However, we do want better engines. I would consider switching spending to propulsion and powering on through until Impulse drives (it's very useful that the available techs were clearly shown in the report). I'd even delay PSX - it's nice, but I expect to be on the offensive, and it doesn't help against Meklar death spores (and we have PSV).

So, my sketch plan is:
- Swap tech spending from Adv Soil and (to an extent at least) PSX and push propulsion
- Build a few more Shy 3.0s near Simius and send them over
- Redirect the Shutup that's leaving Paladia for Artemis to Simius
- Invade Simius from Tyr and Paladia (if the Bulrathi glass it before we get there, so be it)
- Reserve build a shield and bases at Artemis
- Finish Soil at Exis
- I would consider an intermediate design (large with fusion beams?) to build while we wait for ARS to come in. I don't know how many more Shutups we actually want. Also, we'll get something to the front lines faster with a large, and we can transfer the Shutup to the Meklar front where it really belongs. May depend on what the Alkari and Bulrathi actually have.

Of course, if Refsteel picks this up, he is welcome to ignore any and all of these ramblings!

[RefSteel]

@RefSteel - do you want this turnset? I have family commitments this weekend, which will preclude me having the time / being sober enough to play and report properly. I've had a look at the save (we're still at at the 2410 save, right?), and it's a bit too lively for me to want to rush it.

I just played right before RFS-81, and I won't have much time to play over the next few days. My inclination is to leave it to you and then take the next set if TheArchduke is still swamped with PBeM2 etc.

Could we consider diverting the huge that we have on the way to defend Artemis, and either cover Artemis with another ship (delay Soil at Exis?) or scramble a shield and a couple of bases up with some reserve spending? The Alkari ships en-route are not that scary (two or three mediums?) and I don't think they will be able to mount a real invasion even if they get into orbit.

Absolutely. Don't delay soil at Exis over a couple of mediums split up three and four turns away; that's a UR world, and it should be getting reserve spending to finish its soil and build new factories and getting transports sent up from Uxmai. Endoria can get some medium or large fusion beam ships up there with time to spare, or even Collassa could send down a few of the former - won't take many; you just have to design the ships - in spite of not being rich, and maybe send the Shy 3.0s from Crypto or whatever. Sending a huge ship would be massive overkill there.

 - We have NAP with the Bulrathi: does this mean that we won't fight them if we encounter them over Simius? If so, we need to get hold of the planet ASAP and get ships in place to defend it.

Correct: We won't fight them over Simius unless/until we or they control the colony or they cancel the NAP.

- How effective is the ShutUp design going to be against transports and (small / medium) Alkari ships? It looks like it should be effective against the Meklar and Bulrathi (large / huge) for the moment.

Our spy reports on the Alkari are six years out of date again (please fix this) but I'm still confident that none of their fleets can even scratch a Shutup. That one dread can take out every Alkari fleet that is currently visible to us on its own in a single battle. The only worry with the birds is that they'll hav fusion bombs that might damage our planets before we can destroy them all.

As for transports, the Shutup is hopelessly slow in combat, but it'll still wreck a good number of transports, absolutely. That thing has a lot of well-aimed heavy fusion beams. Bulrathi transports though? They've got some big worlds, and they always send half, so...

- Is it worth building some more Shy 3.0s to help hold Simius (once we have it) against the (likely) Bulrathi transports?

No - but it's definitely worth building some war ships for the purpose! A modern fighter would have a better computer or twice as many lasers! A medium or large combat ship would be even deadlier if well designed, with fusion beams.

 - What's the good way do manage invasions from mature planets? Assuming that you don't have an overwhelming need for a quick win, how much pop should you send and to what extent should you use force-growing to replace it?

This is a trick question. You always have an overwhelming need for a quick win - or rather, if you have time to optimize, do it by sending smaller groups of transports from each world, starting from further away. Don't use my invasion of Cygni as an example, as that was a pretty special case. For regrowing population, see thrawn's thread on the subject for theoretical optimization. Once you're invading regularly though, I tend to send ~20% of a (fully-populated) planet's max population and regrow all of it if I can immediately, not to optimize production but to get more population ready for the next invasion ASAP. Realistically though, if we have time to wait, we can seed RC4 (I know we've invested something already) and Advanced Soil heavily and much-more-efficiently send our unemployed population to the front, as Thrawn suggests upthread.

We have some planets that aren't maxed on factories though, so if we're sending 'sports from maxed-out planets, we can at least back-fill from the ones that aren't maxed.

- We're a few years out of date with espionage against the birds and rocks, and spending hard against the borg. I'm not sure that we're ever going to get anywhere with the latter - they're computer tech is too good.

Agh. Sorry. When I handed off the save, I set spending this way because we'd just lost our Meklar spy and had one with all the other races. I should have warned RFS-81 to change spending the following year - or just left it more spread out in the save.

- With the possible exception of the Meklar, everyone looks weak. The Alkari in particular have a scattering of ships, but no real stacks. Probably a result of the ongoing everywar. This smells like serious opportunity.

Yup!

- Advanced Soil and RCIV are very nice techs which will give us significant production (and available pop for invasions). However, do we need to focus more on getting direct military tech? ARS is coming along and will let us re-design our huges. I don't know that we desperately need better weapons.

We do, actually: For miniaturization, and so we aren't scrambling to get something better after our fleets go obsolete.

Fusion Rifle is nice and we will want Omega-V at some point, but Fusion bombs and beams will cut through the birds, bears and even the borg for a while to come (unless they steal our PSV)

On Impossible, especially against these Meks, "a while" may not be very long!

[shallow_thought]

@RefSteel - do you want this turnset? I have family commitments this weekend, which will preclude me having the time / being sober enough to play and report properly. I've had a look at the save (we're still at at the 2410 save, right?), and it's a bit too lively for me to want to rush it.

I just played right before RFS-81, and I won't have much time to play over the next few days.  My inclination is to leave it to you and then take the next set if TheArchduke is still swamped with PBeM2 etc.

Got it.

Shame we couldn't get it to Thrawn before he headed off, but this is a fun time to take over. Should be able to play a few turns tomorrow and finish up on Monday.

Will read (carefully) the advice before playing, but this is a tasty opportunity to get on the offensive.

[RefSteel]

- Swap tech spending from Adv Soil and (to an extent at least) PSX and push propulsion

We need two full Propulsion techs before we can get better engines, and though that means we want to get started soon, it also means this isn't an immediate priority. We want to press our present advantage, which means RC4 and Advanced Soil are very important if we can get them quickly, as they free up lots of pop for invasions and allow it to regrow quickly, respectively. PSX isn't as urgentt, but it'll help miniaturize our existing shields and therefore make better cruisers and dreads. In any case, I wouldn't reduce spending on it much below putting out the diode until it hits percentages at least.

- Build a few more Shy 3.0s near Simius and send them over

As mentioned above, better to build something modern instead. These can be scrapped if needed (unless they're about to interdict a Sili colship, but I don't think that's the case) - we only have thirteen.

- Redirect the Shutup that's leaving Paladia for Artemis to Simius
- Invade Simius from Tyr and Paladia (if the Bulrathi glass it before we get there, so be it)

Good plan! And Bulrathi rarely glass planets under kyrub's patch, if I remember correctly: They know how good they are at invading.

- Reserve build a shield and bases at Artemis

I mean, if you want. It'll be good to have if someone eventually sends a fleet we care about. One destroyer at a time though? The ships you're planning to build anyway to interdict transports at Simius will be way more than enough to deal with that.

- Finish Soil at Exis

Definitely! Remember to use reserve spending here and send transports up from Uxmai too. URs should always get all the help you can give them to get them up to speed ASAP. (And keeping its production doubled is more efficient than failing to do so even if it's just building more reserves!)

- I would consider an intermediate design (large with fusion beams?) to build while we wait for ARS to come in.

Good idea. I'd even consider mediums.

I don't know how many more Shutups we actually want.

I'd say the total number we want is the number we already have. (Is that one? Then one.) Especially with ARS this close, and many other good options, I wouldn't want any more Huge ships until it's in.

Also, we'll get something to the front lines faster with a large, and we can transfer the Shutup to the Meklar front where it really belongs. May depend on what the Alkari and Bulrathi actually have.

All excellent points.

Of course, if Refsteel picks this up, he is welcome to ignore any and all of these ramblings!

No way! But - y'know - feel free to ignore mine if you want!

[shallow_thought]

Mid-point reached in turns. We briefly held Simius, but enough of the 60 incoming bear transports got past our huge ship that we lost it again (it was close). No tech changed hands, but we lost the BC we invested in pop for the invasion. Bah. The bears love us, because we invaded their enemy. This wont last as I intend to be back with colships and bombers before the end of the set. I need to try to calculate how many small fusion bombers we need to beat the 28 nuclear missile bases (class II shields only) on Quayal (we have 91 currently).

EDIT: I think that an ARS huge with heavy fusion can actually take down the Bulrathi missile bases if required, and I have a couple of those under construction...

[RefSteel]

Depends on what tech the bears have now, but if it's still the junk they were using in 2403 (the most recent info we have in the save) and we use the things I threw together for Cygni, we'll need something like ... ten per base, I think? For minimum attrition; we could get away with a bit less if needed.

I wouldn't build any more of those old bombers though: We can build 'em with a Mark III computer now even if no new tech has come in, and those are better per BC even against the Bulrathi - way better against the Meks - once they get close enough to start bombing. One option is to send in two stacks, too: Maybe 150 of the old bombers, plus maybe 100 of the new ones. Let the old bombers go in and smash the bases in a couple of volleys while the new ones get fired on, evade the missiles, and retreat if necessary. Again though, these numbers are assuming the bears haven't gotten any new defensive tech in 12 years....

[EDIT: And yeah, if the bears still have that 12-year-old tech and you're building Huge ships with our best shields and Heavy Fusion Beams, unless and until they get way better tech, their planets are toast. You don't even need bombs for them.]

[EDIT2: But you might want to send in the old bombers anyway and just retreat them from the combat screen so they can help with orbital bombardment.]

[shallow_thought]

[EDIT:  And yeah, if the bears still have that 12-year-old tech and you're building Huge ships with our best shields and Heavy Fusion Beams, unless and until they get way better tech, their planets are toast.  You don't even need bombs for them.]

[EDIT2: But you might want to send in the old bombers anyway and just retreat them from the combat screen so they can help with orbital bombardment.]

Pretty much what I did - (although I did build a few more of the old bombers).

Summary:
I conquered and lost Simius twice in one turnset. We are at war with every race we have contact with - but I meant to do it this time. Our ships are having fun bombing bears, so I hope we can pick up Quayal in the early part of next turnset, in addition to re-re-capturing Simius. Sadly, because we are mostly fighting bears, we're not getting any pointy-stick research.

I messed up our construction tech choice with pure , so it's going to be expensive to implement RC4 (in the percentages). We have ARS and one design that uses it - we may want a second, bomber design. Our front-line worlds have PSX built. Advanced Soil and Warp Dissipator are towards the top of the bulb, so we should be able to push for Impulse drives.

T2410
-----

Hmm. We have incoming Meklar at Cygni and Alkari at Artemis. We have decent (ship) defenses at Cygni, and are about to send a huge ShutUp to cover Artemis. However, I have other plans for that vessel.

Plan is to make an immediate play for the Alkari colony of Simius. It has no bases, and the Bulrathi (with whom we currently have a NAP) are about to put two larges over it. This means that we can expect waves of bear-carrying transports there, which we need ships to interdict.

So, send available ship there, break NAP if necessary to start killing bear transports, re-inforce with other ships, send troops in from other nearby worlds.

That leaves the question of how to defend Artemis. The incoming ships are only a handful of mediums, but I am going to struggle to get any new ships there before the birds arrive. It can build a shield and a missile base in time with reserve spending. We do have 6 Shy 3.0s available to meet the birds, but I'm not sure they'll be at all effective.
 
Looking at ship design, we can't get a fusion beam or even a neutron blaster on a small. A medium can pack a pair of Fusion Beams for 98BC, or I can put 6 beams and 2 heavies on a large for 570BC. Both are designed as transport killers, so BC III but no shields. I think I prefer the large (even although it's a glass cannon). Endoria's pre-build can get five of the larges out next turn, but it will take them 3-5 turns to get anywhere useful.



I think we can afford the risk of a handful of mediums over Artemis. If the Shy 3.0s can't handle them, I'll fall back on diverting one of the new larges or building defenses.

Shutup heads for Simius, and I send as much pop as I can force-rebuild from Tyr and Paladia (18 and 12 - Simius has 30, so I'll need another round). It's all about speed here rather than efficiency.

I send out bombers from Cygni to be nearer the new front (Tyr), and our scanner ship to Artemis to get a look at the incoming birds.

Exis (UR) gets reserve spending to finish soil and a small pop infusion from Uxmai. I may have overdone this and need to ship some pop back, but better than letting UR factories be idle.

On tech, I look at Ref's advice and switch spending from PSX to Adv Soil. Once this is seeded, I aim to split between this, RCIV and ARS as efficiently as possible, trickling elsewhere.

I shuffle spying to be a trickle on everyone and hit Next turn.

T2411
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Crush incoming Meks at Cygni. Could actually have done this with just the missile bases. The Meklar's big fleet is headed away from us, and only moves at warp 1, and the bases can handle the incoming transports, so I can move our defender to Artemis. I think that 10 bases is enough for now and Cygni can start to contribute to our research.

Endoria spits out a squadron of the new larges and I put it back to pre-building huges, waiting for ARS.

A second round of invaders heads out from Tyr and Paladia for Simius. A sixth will be built at Exis next year - I can't efficiently faster build factories there until the pop arrives there from Uxmai, so production is diverted to ship building.

Similarly, Artemis is about to finish ATMOS, so excess production is diverted to start a shield.

Tech gets shuffled around for maximum efficiency, with a bit of seeding still going into RCIV and Adv Soil.

We get up-to-date information on the Alkari tech - no changes. I'll put a set of pics at the end of the report, but they have shields II, lasers and nukes. Ho hum. I doubt that the 13 factories on Simius are enough to drop their Fusion Drive tech - shame.

T2412
-----

We get sight on an Alkari Sky Hawk over Simius (the ships on the way to Artemis are the same design). I am not impressed.



Some spy destroys three missile bases on Cygni, which is actually inconvenient with transports incoming.

ARS comes in! That was nice and fast (9%). Zortium Armour or IT6. I remember Ref's advice to always have a plan ready and kick myself... I'd love to have IT6 to go with RCIV, but for some reason I hallucinate that we don't have Duralloy, so Zortium it is. . THIS IS WHY YOU PLAN .



I may have over-sent invaders to Simius - the Alkari are down to 17 pop (bears bombing?). We capture it with the first wave, so I can always send some back. No tech, but this takes us to 12 planets.



Now, do we have incoming bears?



Hell yes. 60 of them. In my classic style, I have probably managed to get the timing wrong on this and will end up losing the colony and being at war with the bears. However, I accepted this risk deliberately - we want to be at war with the bears soon anyway. I just couldn't get enough ships here fast enough. Time to free up a slot for a colship and think about building more bombers (actually, our 91 fusion bombers are probably enough to do serious damage). Pro-active revenge planning...

T2413
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At Artemis, our single GoAway has some trouble against a Sky Hawk - it's just so hard to hit! But we get it before it can escape in the end.

At Simius, 12 Bulrathi kill 30 Humans (6 bears left). We have Duralloy and Hand Lasers, but that's not enough edge. I've burnt a load of BC here failing to hold this - we just needed to kill a few more transports. We no longer have contact with the Alkari.

It will take the bears some time to get Simius up and running again. Our capture (and then loss) of Simius has made them love us even more. I'm going to gather a better force at Paladia and come back, but there's no point in taking any action until we have colships, which will be a few turns away.

On the tech front, I start to push propulsion. I'm really feeling the lack of good drives here - it's like wearing thick gloves, actions just don't quite work because I can't get ships around fast enough (for example, I'm having to delay Colships for a turn or two because I need to get GoAways over the uncolonised hostile worlds that the Shys are currently guarding). I'm actually going to hold off on any ARS designs for the moment - we're short on slots, we need new engines and our close enemies (birds and bears) have poor defenses that our small bombers can handle.

T2414
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Alkaris flee at Cygni.

PSX is in. The only tech at the next tier is cloaking. I'll take it. I rather like putting it on small or medium bombers.



I start building shields at our frontier worlds - Cygni, Tyr, Paladia, Darrian and Sol. None other than Cygni have many missile bases, so I want to complete the shield and be able to build more death-spore killing missiles on demand. Artemis leaves its shield part-built, as it's further back.

Tech fills computers and planetology to "just not lit", with the rest going into propulsion.

I scrap the Shys and start building Colships. Exis can pump out two next turn. Then we're going bear-hunting. I scrap our scanner ship and put together a fusion ARS gunship. It's still slow, but will handle anything the bears or birds can throw at us. Once we've got a couple we can scrap our existing huges.



I start pushing some reserves through Endoria to build the new ARS huge - after a look at the bear's tech (class II shields, nuclear missiles) I think that we could use it to punch down missile bases at a push.

T2415
-----
We drive off another Sili colship. For the first time in the turnset, F8 doesn't show any incoming bad guys.

Colships en-route to front, switch Exis (now maxed) to the new ARS huge design. Keep pushing ship builds with reserves.

T2416
-----
Alkari are bombing Simius very slowly. If they can kill all the bears I would be happy, but am not betting on it.

Still waiting for our colships to get to Tyr. We need better engines so badly...

T2417
-----
The bears dial us up and ask for an Alliance. As they (albeit accidentally) invaded us and I intended to wage a terrible genocidal war against them even before that I say no. I would be polite and end our NAP before invading, but we don't do that sort of thing.



First of the new huges rolls off the line. I'm only going to build a couple. Tyr finishes its shield and I build a round of fusion bombers there as reinforcements.

T2418
-----
Fleet heads for Simius, including new colships.

T2419
-----
The Bulrathi don't take the destruction of Simius well. War it is! Oh, and the Silicoids weigh in as well. I think that this makes two games in a row where I've triggered war with the entire galaxy (although we're currently not in contact with the cats or birds, I think we're at war with them)! At least this time it was deliberate.

I realise that I've messed up and left the "PleaseNotMe" hanging around Artemis. I decide to scrap it, as the first of our SlowSssh ARS design has reached the front, and the second is on the way.

The bombers and our ShutUp head for Quayal with one colship. That leaves the GoAways and an incoming SlowSssh to hold Simius.

RC4 is in the percentages, Adv soil is getting there.

T2420
-----
At Quayal, the bases target my bomber stack. Rather than lose them, I retreat. The ShutUp, with its class V shield, rumbles slowly forward, sits over the planet and slowly destroys the missile bases with its heavy beams.

Various fleets hassle us at Simius - Meklar and Bulrathi. The Meklar are still running around with Merc missile ships, the Bulrathi have Neutron blasters.



I bomb half of Quayal's pop away.

I found Simius. Enough Alkari transports get through that they capture the fledgling colony ! I didn't see that there were any incoming transports - they were masked by the ships. I didn't see any incoming bears last turn, or I would have delayed colonisation. Not happy! I don't quite see how they all got past my huge and several larges.

The Meklar are happy that we are simiting bears. They are still wary and at war with us though.

I restart espionage against the Alkari and set tech to sensible (I hope) levels.













I strongly suggest re-invading Simius, but have not set it up myself!

Overall, we're on the offensive, but I think it could have been handled better. I could have got Shys or a new medium design over Simius fast enough to prevent the bears taking it. I was still underestimating what it takes to kill transports at the end of the set. I was also a bit lucky at Quayal - I was never convinced that the fusion bombers could do the job unless the planet targeted the escorting huge first, and was prepared to retreat. We could then have come back with the huge ARS beamers or a new heavy bomber design, but as it turned out the ShutUp was enough to get through.

I'd consider a huge ARS bomber design; it would certainly keep us going (in the absence of more speed) against the birds, rocks and bears, but might not be enough against the borg.

Apologies for the choice of Zortrium Armour - it's not like it's a bad tech but we could really have done with IT6, and I could have confirmed that we already had Duralloy if I'd gone more carefully back through the reports.

Also, I have been acting on the assumption that we have a veto block. If we don't, then life is going to be fun in a few turns.

- Thrawn (away)
- shallow_thought (just played!)
- RefSteel (UP!)
- RFS-81 (On Deck!)
- TheArchduke (busy fighting hard in Civ VI PBEM II  )

[RefSteel]

Not a "got it," as I can't actually look at the save until I get home, but I see it, and things are looking good!  Some notes:

- Check out the "Population" bar on the status graphs you just posted!  Not only do we have a veto, if the Silis ask us for peace, I'll bet we can win by Domination in 2425!  ...  In case it comes up, do we want to, actually?  Or should we play on either way?

- Great selection in Cloaking Device, for exactly the reason you stated!

- Picking Zortium here isn't the end of the world, but I agree II6 may have been better ... ... for a slightly different reason.

- I find it amusing that the SlowShhhhh ships are currently our fastest-moving dreadnoughts.

- Those Skyhawks are just about impossible to hit.  Too bad for the birds they're also incapable of doing any damage to anything.

- I'm hoping to get us some better engines during my set.  Sublights just aren't cutting it anymore, and going after the Meks is going to result in a lot of attrition if we can't get our hands on Doom Drives[tm].  (Doom Drives is Maniac Marshall's name for any combination of Stabilizers and engines resulting in a combat speed of 4 or more:  Fast enough to reach a planet in two combat turns, and to dodge any missile worse than Stingers.)

- On Simius:  Well done identifying a time when "It's all about speed here rather than efficiency."  That was an excellent call!  What missed here was the execution:  Regrowing all the pop you sent isn't really efficient, as Thrawn's formula shows, but sending only what you can regrow on the same world in one turn also isn't really speedy!  When I send just enough to immediately regrow, I'm doing it on most or all of the non-special worlds in my empire at once to support continuous invasion across numerous targets in a small number of turns.  This game, I set a bad example with Cygni because I felt there was a ticking clock (Meklar war fleets showing up) and I was near the end of my set (so didn't want to leave too many transports floating all over space and wanted to leave the two front worlds in decent condition) but in general you want to send massive overkill on ground invasions:  Enough to wipe out the enemy and immediately fill it (to whatever population level you want to establish there in the short term) simultaneously!  (As long as you're not sending more than 300 anyway....)  If you want to do this quickly, you send huge rafts of 'sports from the closest worlds, and backfill them from more-distant colonies so you can still spread the population growth around more efficiently without delaying your invasion - and if you're going to be invading continuously in massive numbers, you send huge rafts and back-fill to spread the pop-growth spending around, so that you will be able to regrow it all in a turn or two in spite of sending half of each front world's population!  When transports - especially Bulrathi transports - are incoming, I also tend to err on the side of "enormous clouds of gunships in orbit, even if I have to build them from non-rich planets inefficiently" - I figure I'll find a use for all those gunships afterward anyway.)  Not really a major setback though - not with the position we've achieved.  My hope is that my explanations here will help make my strategy more transparent, provoke discussion, and/or help other players in future games!