OSG-30 Report - Turns 2440-2450 – Psillycyber
(For the full report with pictures, download the PDF file below).
2440: Time to roast some birdies! And it looks like Ianus has left me just the perfect tools for the job: a complete cooking set consisting of The Oven and 5 Drip Trays for only 19.99 BC!
But wait, there’s more! I decided to cash in some scrap parts for a few more Drip Trays, just to make sure that our birdies were cooked nice and golden-brown through-and-through.
In anticipation of partaking in the great feasts to come, LOTS of our population transports were on the move—some to invade the mineral-depleted Alkari world of Rha, some to top-off Altair’s population. It was worse than Thanksgiving Weekend on the Jersey Turnpike over on Earth! The only difference was, our turkeys weren’t a bunch of hormone-injected Butterballs. Ours were tasty, free range ones—well, not free range for long!
I saw that the Silicoids were meddling with our war against the Alkari over at Tyr. Silly Silicoids!
I designed the Ectotron and Chernoegrad designs to go team up with an Oven battleship to teach them a lesson and take air superiority over Tyr before Silicoid transports arrived. That way, we can reserve the seating at the Grand Banquet Hall in Tyr to ourselves, and not have to offend the Silicoid ambassador with a formal declaration of war.
As for research, I de-emphasized propulsion (Range 9, which we can “acquire” via “pointy-stick research”) and left research in everything else.
On another note, at Imra the humans have 3 large "battleship-class" cruisers to meet 4 silicoid cruisers inbound. Should be fun to watch!
2441: Our Klackon agents brought home a very nice birthday present from their “vacation” at the Silicoid Research Center at Vega for the Grand Tlak-Tlak of Imperial Engineering at Kholdan. She will be so pleased! It’s really quite difficult to find many gift shops that sell improved robotics controls, much less a 3-part set for only 29.99 BC! What a deal!
Wait, I’m getting my receipts mixed up. It looks like the 29.99 BC was for three Silicoid prostitutes and some magma-be-gone thorax cream. Ewwwww. Well, whatever our agents paid for the robot parts (if anything), I’m sure HR will be happy to approve this acquisition, and others in the years to come.
I’ll put in a word to agent Blik-Blik to try to bring back some high-energy-focus lenses next time he’s out and about. I hear it’s the latest technological innovation for cooking birdies from up to 4 or 5 arcsecs away, hands free! You can simultaneously talk on your android device and grill your orbiting birdies to perfection, all from the comfort of your own planet!
It turns out that our force field researchers were also busy last turn:
It turns out that the secret all along was garlic! Drives the birdies away like a Bulrathi deathjam concert. What is Bulrathi Deathjam music, you ask? You don’t want to know….
So, how are those Human battleships doi….
…Yeah, that’s about what I expected.
2442: Another year, another research project completed. Even better robotic controls are up next!
Meanwhile at Tyr, it looks like the Silicoids lost their huge Monitor-class battleship, but they kept a sizeable force alive. I can only ASSUME that, since they are in orbit of Tyr, that they succeeded in bombing out all of the pathetic Alkari nuke missile bases there. Better rally our interdiction force there pronto!
2443: Our plucky pioneers finally arrived at Rha, and a great turkey feast was had by all to celebrate our “discovery” of Planetary X shields and Reajax Fuel Cells.
Note that I had no intention of actually building any of those tacky-looking planetary shields. Our fleets and existing missile bases were doing just a fine job of repelling the occasional bird aiming to fly into our windows.
In order to top-off our factories and techs before starting another round of ship-building, I swung some trades with the Meklar. First: class V shields for IIT7.
Secondly, warp dissipater for fusion beams.
As for trading away warp dissipator tech: don’t worry ‘bout it homies, I ain’t concerned. Our ships are too fast to really be bothered by warp dissipator tech at this point…especially in the hands of the Meklar, who don’t even have the range tech to reach our planets at the moment.
Now for a true mystery: what happened to the Silicoid fleet at Tyr? It wasn’t disbanded because they still have the designs flying around elsewhere. Did the Alkari destroy it? How?
Checking out the planet with a small fleet the next turn, I discovered the answer: the Alkari still had 13 missile bases on the planet! Now the only question is, how did the Silicoid fleet maintain orbit and not have to retreat the previous turn? In any case, we don’t have to worry about those Silicoid transports getting through. Dealing with Tyr can wait...
2444: A quiet turn. The main Alkari fleet finally arrived at Bootis, but it was not a threat. Only the hard beams on the larges and the heavy ion cannons on the Sky Hawk mediums could theoretically damage us, and it only took a few volleys to rough up the Alkari cruisers and persuade the rest of the fleet to retreat.
2445: We had some minor success spying on the Meklar. RW80, fair enough. Every little miniaturization helps!
2446: A very quiet turn. Well, quiet for us on our worlds, where we were finishing up the new round of level-3 factory construction. It was NOT quiet on remaining Alkari worlds such as Kronos, where our Drip Trays were collecting the remaining birdfat by the giga-gallon.
2447: We finally made a clean-sweep of all of the Alkari tech with the capture of the beautiful Terran world of Reticuli.
But my thirst for technology was not yet sated! I thought of the advice of the great Hu-man salesperson Glen Glengarry Ross, who had a slogan that he always reminded his sales team about: A.B.C. Always. Be. Cussing. No, no, that wasn’t it. It was…let me think…ah yes, A.B.M. Always. Be. Miniaturizing. Yes, a true gem of wisdom there!
So, first: warp dissipator to the Humans for Personal Absorption Shield (actually, quite nice not just for the miniaturization, but for the ground combat bonus itself over our previous personal deflectors!)
Then, graviton beams to the Humans for Improved Industrial 8.
And finally, Reduced Waste 60% to the Meklar for Neutron Blasters.
I was really aiming to get the Meklar to trade us Soil Enrichment, but they simply would not offer it, despite it being not their top-tier tech in that field. I’ll bet that once Improved Robotics IV comes in, they’ll be willing to talk.
2448: We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1!
Ooooh, techsteal time? Drats, no option for propulsion tech for HEF. Maybe some cloaking devices?
Dang! Maybe next time…
In other news, another glorious turkey dinner at Kronos:
And our fleet arrives at Tyr. Our bombers aaaaallllmost get tripped up by one of the Alkari ships with a warp dissipator on it, but we take out that ship just in time to leave our bomber with 1 movement point per turn to finish closing with the planet. The rest of the ships were not a factor, although they did manage to take out 2 of our Drip tray bombers.
Meanwhile at Imra:
What?! The Humans are still holding on there, despite being patrolled by both a Silicoid AND Meklar fleet in orbit? Yeah, I looked into it, and it turns out that the Humans totally trounce the Meklar in ground combat by something ridiculous like +35. So the Meklar have just been sacrificing wave after wave of invasions at Imra to no effect. On the other hand, the Silicoid ground combat tech is no joke, so maybe their incoming transports can turn the tide.
2449: Queuing up yet more transports for Tyr, the last Alkari world. (I considered letting the Alkari live a caged existence with 1 planet so that we could techsteal more techs from them as they clawed their way further up the tech tree at a snail’s pace. However, if we did that, the Silicoids would just take the planet instead, so there’s little sense in not taking the planet ourselves). Otherwise, a quiet turn.
2450: Cloning tech has been around 30% for a few turns and still not popped, but we got a lucky early breakthrough on phasor weapon tech.
As for where to go next, I considered hand phasors, but with cloning tech coming in, getting enough oomph for ground invasions will not be an issue. The main problem I saw was, if the Silicoids show up with class IX shielded ships, our current missile bases would be useless. I considered backtracking for stinger missiles, but that might go nearly obsolete any day now as well if the Silicoids continue on to class XI shields and beyond. So, what the heck, Hercular Missiles it is! If we really need it in a pinch, we can probably get it in about 8 turns if we make it an exclusive priority.
With phasor weapons now in, I decided to experiment with some new designs, finally retiring our ionizers and our energy pulsar ships (irrelevant now that the birdies are about to go bye-bye). The next player is, of course, free to change these designs. None of either have been built yet, although Mobas is scheduled to complete a PsillycoidX this turn (in fact, all planets with relocation orders have been working on ship parts and have substantial ship construction progress saved up).
I considered a huge bomber design with class V shields since, last time I had checked, the Silicoids only had Hyper-V missiles. But now all of the sudden they have pulsons:
Note that we also still have our Drip Trays and Ovens available to help out, although if we want to build more ships to take on the Silicoids, I would recommend putting that into new designs since we have such better miniaturization now than even 10 turns ago.
Oh, and by the way, there was an election. How did we do?
We have more than enough now for an exclusive veto, and with a few other votes we were up to 60% of the vote. I predict that we will win the 2475 election at this rate, especially if we can take some worlds from the Silicoids.
The map. Note that some Alkari ships are headed towards our new acquisitions in the upper-left, but the tiny attack aimed at Rha has a fleet waiting for it, and the other tiny attack aimed at Kronos will not arrive in time before the Alkari will be wiped out. In other words, I wouldn’t worry about missile bases for these worlds. Even the Silicoids are not a threat to them. Their ships are still warp-1, and if we take some Silicoid worlds along the top edge, the rocks won’t have the range to threaten those planets at all.
And meanwhile at Imra….
What?! The Humans continue to hold on and have, in fact, gotten new transports past the dual enemy orbital blockades to reinforce their ground garrison. Bravo, humans!
![[Image: 1v0i99.jpg]](https://i.imgflip.com/1v0i99.jpg)
via Imgflip Meme Generator
So many techs we would like to have: scanners, planetary shields, robotic controls. Oh well, hopefully we can take some of them from the Alkari -- if our conquest luck is a little better than it was during my turnset. 
