OSG-34: Rollin' with the Rocks

[Bionic Commando]

Go ninja go ninja go!

[Bionic Commando]

Oh yeah, I totally overlooked the whole “Sakkra clearly have a council veto” part of your story I was so engrossed in the action! So unless we can dent the Sakkra right NOW the game will go on at least a bit longer.

Which partly answers my question about future strategy but also brings up correlary questions. It would certainly be worth taking some Sakkra worlds right now just for the techs we could get, although if the cost of each world is too high we might stall out. So it would probably be good to consolidate our forces and hit the Sakkra, AND do what we can to run over the lesser powers at the same time. I personally think that Durash IV has been asking for a poke in the snoot all game long, and I would very much like to be the one to give it to him, but I’m getting distracted. My point is that continuing to build our fleet and continuing to sweep the galaxy seems to be the best course moving forward.

This game has been a really fun challenge so far!

EDIT: That was a very long winded way of saying “Go get ‘em, RFS-81!

I poked around the save file a little over lunch. FWIW, anti-matter bombers should be strong enough to crack their shields, assuming the spy report is up to date. Most of their Huge ships look intimidating but should be no problem for the Asteroid 6.0 fleet that is amassing.  Unless there's something I'm missing, you should be able to build up the fleet a little bit and perform some rolling death. At this point it's a choice between glassing the rest of the galaxy and invasion. Their gropo is +5 on account of armor and also have advanced cloning, so whittling the Sakkra down by invasion looks like 20+ year project, but they obviously have some nice tech that would be good to grab.

Psilon fleet looks pathetic. It's about the same size as during my 2450-2460 series of turns and I think the ships are the same builds. Humans aren't a big issue either with the shield and antidote. All to say, I wouldn't worry too much about being flanked. I might recommend pushing the edge on the Sakkra quickly before they can pull something off to reverse fortunes on us. 

I feel like we're in a winning position, but I suppose the Sakkra could pull something wacky off. Let's put it this way: the only way we LOSE is if the Sakkra rally somehow.

[Bionic Commando]

Quick question: What's the theory on the Ion Cannon in these ship designs?

[Cyneheard]

Quick question: What's the theory on the Ion Cannon in these ship designs?

Uses all available space - it's worth more than Nothing At All, which is the real alternative in this type of design.

[Ianus]

Hi everyone! A quick update, I’ve played 5 turns so far but am having a difficult time finishing because these turns are REALLY complicated and take a really long time to play, AND are so complicated that I can’t just click through quickly without devoting a lot of focus and thought. I’ll get a report up tonight and in the worst case I’ll pass on the remaining turns to our next Chief Advisor. I’m sorry to delay the game as this has been a great game and I’m looking forward to chalking up a win on the back of Ref’s brilliant save at the last election!
More this evening...

[Bionic Commando]

Hi everyone! A quick update, I’ve played 5 turns so far but am having a difficult time finishing because these turns are REALLY complicated and take a really long time to play, AND are so complicated that I can’t just click through quickly without devoting a lot of focus and thought. I’ll get a report up tonight and in the worst case I’ll pass on the remaining turns to our next Chief Advisor. I’m sorry to delay the game as this has been a great game and I’m looking forward to chalking up a win on the back of Ref’s brilliant save at the last election!
More this evening...

No problem! I can't even begin to tell you how much I've learned by Shadow Gaming side-by-side with your write-ups. This is a key set of turns and those Sakkra are tough!

[Guiness]

No problem! I can't even begin to tell you how much I've learned by Shadow Gaming side-by-side with your write-ups. This is a key set of turns and those Sakkra are tough!

Agreed. My last set of turns, invading the Bears were some kind of time consuming, and things have only gotten more complex so I totally understand this is taking a while.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the update, Ianus!  These are certainly complicated, interesting turns, and may continue to be so until the game is (at least very nearly) over.  I certainly took longer than I hoped to finish my set as well, and I'm looking forward to reading about your turns!

As for the election results, everything I was able to do there was set up by the great work of the rest of the team; the entire last turn through the rotation was RFS-81 laying the groundwork so you could set up Bionic Commando for a major assault so he could start taking the hammer to the Bulrathi so Guiness could take nearly all their worlds and all their technology, giving me the tools necessary to finish the veto push and start taking back our long-lost colonies!

On the Asteroid 6 cruiser:  Cyneheard's explanation is exactly right.  A single ion cannon is extremely cheap, still does a little extra damage (and provides an extra gun to help whittle down swarms of smallcraft) and is especially cheap in comparison with its impact on a battle when you consider it's being added to a ship that already has +9 attack level built in (especially since it also has armor + shield + autorepair to keep it going in a long battle and give that little ion cannon a chance to score many of its little pinprick hits).  There are many cases when you don't want to cram every possible system and weapon onto a ship (e.g. for most situations, armor or auto-repair on a fighter is just a waste of BCs since the enemy's weapons are going to one-shot them either way, though I considered both on my recent turns for the extra staying power against stream projectors) but that rarely applies for a (large) cruiser or (huge) battleship.  More generally, the critical systems on the Asteroid, in much greater detail, spoilered for length:

1) Best available engines (with rare, emergency exceptions, this goes first on every ship)
2) Best available shields and (single-layer) armor because this is meant to be a fleet anchor that can hold its own in a long battle
3) Auto-repair for the same reason as 2 above; it's most valuable on a huge ship of course, but with Andrium armor and our current opponents, I expected it to have a lot of value on a cruiser like this one as well.  Some of my large designs (like the DeepMantle) will lack some or all of these defensive toys, but if so, it probably isn't really a fleet anchor at all, but a big gunship (like the DeepMantle) that's meant to survive (if at all) by killing the enemy first, or a special-purpose ship like a repulsor cruiser that doesn't expect to see enough missiles, torps, or heavy beams to get through its armor.
4) Battle Scanner and best available targeting computer because if after cramming all this stuff on board, there isn't also enough room for enough guns to make these better than just Even More Guns, I probably need to rethink the whole design.
5) As many of our best guns we can mount (meaning the best for dealing with known enemy fleets).  That means Gauss Autocannons of course in this situation.  If the enemy were mounting repulsors with heavy beams, I'd have chosen something else though.
6) High maneuver for defense and closing speed, deciding whether to sacrifice some of the guns for it, and how many.  This decision can be very situational; high maneuver levels (or even maneuver above one!) are not always needed on a fleet anchor, which can sometimes get away with crawling around like a tortoise (especially if it's a huge ship with high-tech armor and advanced damage control behind its shields) but I valued it here.  Maneuver 6 in particular has a handful of advantages:  It's just barely enough for what I call "cutting out" maneuvers (hitting lower-initiative retreating ships such as "defending" bombers and ill-armed colships, before they can escape to hyperspace) and to hit a planet on the second round of combat (as the Lava cruisers have demonstrated, six gauss autocannons can indeed inflict some damage against bases that lack a planetary shield).  It's fast enough to outrun a lot of missiles, and even dodge ship-launched Pulsons at least briefly.  It allows closing from just beyond High Energy Focus range to "regular" range in a single round, which might become relevant before the design goes obsolete.  And it has as much cushion as I could give it without an expensive inertial stabilizer against Sakkra warp dissipators, which can be deadly in combination with Sakkra heavy fusion beams against a ship with short-range weapons only.  The defensive bonus won't matter at all against the known Meklar fleets, which rely on torps and missiles that get no damage bonus from "too-high" hit percentages and basically can never miss, but it makes an enormous difference against the last-known Sakkra fleets.
7) As many of our best still-small-enough-to-fit guns as will still fit after all of the above is in place.  (The lone auto-blaster here, but sometimes this means e.g. a handful of NPGs.)
8) Any non-useless guns we can still cram aboard in the little remaining space.  (The ion cannon.  There have been times in the past when I was facing clouds of shieldless fighters that couldn't meaningfully hurt me but wouldn't retreat, in which case I've even considered sticking a last laser or two on an anchor ship like this, just to get rid of a few dozen more of the things in the course of a fifty-turn battle.  Case in point:  Alkari small bombers when I have a repulsor screen.)

As noted under a few of them, many of these steps can be skipped or modified for specific ships, and this is specific to the specific mission that I like to call the "fleet anchor" - a space superiority ship that can survive prolonged battles, dishing out heavy damage along the way.  Hopefully the insight into some of my ship design considerations will be useful, even if a lot of it will already be familiar to most of you!

[Ianus]

Excerpts from the journal of Ianus, 16th chief advisor to the OSG.

2480
How did this happen?  How am I, a littoral nobody come to assume the mantle of de facto leader of the Silicoid people?  Perhaps I should reflect on the unlikely events that led me to be here; that way when this document eventually falls into the hands of, ugh, historians there will be someone to tell my side of things.

Growing up on the campus of B.U. in the early days of empire I never aspired to more than following in the footsteps of my parents and working in the research labs there.  My mother was on the team that finally cracked the secrets of crystalline structural manipulation that made possible the rapid crystallization of new Silicoid lifeforms.  Having been raised from a lattice the old fashioned way, I didn’t take part in the protests that rocked the B.U. campus more than a decade ago.  At least social reform appears to have settled over the Silicoid people in the wake of Refinery Sludge’s period of leadership.

Ah, Refinery Sludge.  The savior of our people and the bane of my existence.  He accomplished so much, and propelled our empire to a position of dominance in the galaxy, able to challenge even the mighty empire of the Sakkra.  How could I resent and fear him as I do?  Just LOOK at the position he has left me in!  Propelled to power, when the only position of leadership I have held until now is head of security of the Bootis Missile Defense Force.  To be honest with myself that was as high as I had planned to rise, especially after it became evident that I do not have the flare for research my parents have enjoyed.  Even my brother has made a name for himself as a theoretical physicist back home.  He is currently experimenting with new valences to develop improved material density based on the Andrium material we stole from the Meklar so long ago.  I hope he succeeds!

As for me, I have been content to get by as a cog in the BMDF machine, but it turns out that when I caught those Meklar saboteurs last year trying to blow up our launch facilities I was brought to the attention of the Advisory Henge.  Even so I should have been left in obscurity, but from what I have been able to gather since arriving at the imperial palace that was what started the avalanche that swept me here.  Then after Radical Ferric Strand 81 was forced to refuse his nomination after the… no, I shouldn’t mention that here; anyway, I understand that there were such fractures within the Henge that my name was put forward as a safe alternative, and no one could suggest a better candidate.

And so now here I am, a political compromise, following in the footsteps of the greatest leader our people have ever known.  Its pressure enough to cause me to twin!!!!  The impossible position of sending our most majestic Silicoid people off to fight and die on worlds we can delude ourselves to think are ours by right, but that are soaked in the blood of sentient beings much like ourselves, however soft and squishy they may appear.  Still, just because I am seen as a nobody expected to serve out my term without accomplishing anything of import and then step aside so a REAL leader can take over, doesn’t mean that that is what is going to happen!  I am in control now, and I will accomplish much before my time here is over.  Enough of this actinolite-gathering!  There is work to be done!

Now that I am in command of our war fleets and have access to the espionage reports on our enemies I believe that our course is clear.  Given the state of our fleets I do not believe that we can go match the Sakkra in a direct confrontation.  At least not yet.  I am going to turn all our shipyards over to building Asteroid battleships, and use our existing bomber fleets to attack and destroy the Humans, Psilons and Meklar.  Or at least crush them so thoroughly that they will not be able to trouble us in the future.  That will leave the way clear to throw our full might against the Sakkra, and then victory will be ours.

There are a LOT of fleets flying around, some of them incoming at OUR worlds.  This is not something that I am prepared to tolerate!
   
That should deal with those red ships approaching our defenseless worlds.  I have bigger fish to fry:
   
But before I do I could really use some tech upgrades!  Advanced Cloning will do nicely!  Notice his angry red throat.  That is because he had previously stated that he had no interest in my technology.  Except it turned out that he REALLY wanted Improved Space Scanners, and how could I refuse a a request like that?!  I’m no monster!
   
That was the only tech trade I could get out of Saurak the sourpuss unfortunately.
   
Just look at that tech tree!  Pay particular attention to that Advanced Space Scanner there.  

Now for some shipbuilding:
   
The Pebble may not look like much, but I plan to throw a LOT of Pebbles around!  I wish that I could fit an Autocannon on a small hull as that is my all-time favorite way to purge the galaxy, but we are not there yet.  I’ll conquer a few Sakkra worlds and then see how things stand.

[Ianus]

On the previous note I see that we have vision on two Sakkra worlds.  Intel is UP and only has 5 factories on it, but Willow looks ripe for the plucking!
   
Aside from that minor inconvenience currently in orbit.  Nothing a few thousand Pebbles won’t be able to fix!

A postscript to the year: So there I was, immersed in work redirecting our fleets to amass at Ursa before the big push on Willow, when I discovered that I couldn’t efficiently send troops out for the invasion because very few of our worlds are fully populated!  Then in directing our new Advanced Cloning labs to repopulate our worlds I discovered that very few worlds have full factories either!  How am I supposed to build an armada without a decent production base?!  I admit that Refinery Sludge saved our boudins, but he certainly neglected some basic infrastructure.  The Sakkra invasion is currently on hold until I can get our empire truly purring along!

2481
   
Look out Emperor Zygot!  Those smarmy Humans are up to no good!  I'll send some ships over to Mentar to keep something like this from happening again!
Elsewhere my fleet is coming together, and most worlds have maxed population and will start maxing factories next turn.  THEN the invasion can begin!

2482
   
Look out Emperor Durash IV!  Those brainy Psilons are up to no good!
Elsewhere we resettle Regulus.

And whose idea was it so sign a NAP with the Psilons?!  That let them slip in and colonize Drakka!  I’ll fix that!  With bombs!
   
Oooh, I’m SOOOO scared!  Even if you ARE allied with those big dumb lizards!  I guess while I am waiting I may as well do something productive…