OSG-35 - Social Distancing

[utwig]

It's been the same but 8 bases were able to take it out.

[Cyneheard]

So the dilemma for Keep Out is going to be "can we get Shield V + a couple bases up in time to hold". Probably not if it's getting bombed for 17M pop a turn. And if it takes 8 bases at Shield III, it probably takes 2-3 bases with Shield V against that armament suite.

I do not expect to be building Heavy Fusion Beam guns in sufficient numbers to take on that Devastator (I'll check our building options first, but am highly skeptical that it will make sense). We'd be spending a decade's worth of production to hopefully get there; Keep Out looks to be a spud world for the near term.

Haven't terraformed two of our worlds yet - I assume that's specifically because you wanted reserves capabilities? That's paying a very large economic cost for the option value. The default should be to spend on IT as soon as it comes in - I would say you need a very good reason NOT to use IT the moment it comes in.

[Bionic Commando]

Hey, cool; that sounds like a good update!  And the originator is sargon0 - he hasn't been around these parts in years, but he contributed a huge amount to our knowledge of the game, and also to variant-building tools (like means of editing tech trees, galaxy maps, and leader traits blindly so you can do it without spoiler information).  The existence of 1oom was possible (or at least more-possible) in part because of his meticulous save-file mapping too, and when he was still playing, he was one of the most-skilled Orion players I've ever seen.

Thanks for the name. I remember following some of his work. There was a lot of it!

Do you happen to recall a blog with many Meklar play throughs? I thought you may have actually been the author but can't find the resource via Google. They're my favorite race for RP-ish reasons and I'm looking for more materials on them as I'm still struggling to up my game playing them vs Kyrub's patch. That Planetology blindspot sure throws a monkey wrench in their early development!

[Cyneheard]

I'm stopping here. It's 2476, and things are falling apart. We weren't nominated for the vote, so that wasn't a concern.


Keep Out has fallen. My fleet was almost good enough to save it, but instead the fleet got 100HP short. Hyper-V 2x just don't have the firepower to damage anything; I built some Large Heavy Fusion Beam ships specifically to fight the Devastators and wish I'd had a few more turns to get more.

Sand Line just lost its bases and I don't know how to save it - a dozen bases behind Shield V only killed 2 of the 5 Meklar ships, and there's no way to get a fleet over there or build enough bases to chew through that. Waters Edge has Bulrathi troops heading in, and their Stinger missiles chew through our bases before they can get a second shot off. Our economy isn't keeping up, and we just have too many enemies.

I'm kicking myself for not starting Shield V at Waters Edge in time, since I had the turns. But Sand Line was unsalvageable - our missiles aren't doing enough damage and their guns are still getting through our shields.

The Sand Line fleet (I got 2 of the Devastators, so it's only one of each:

[shallow_thought]

I've not looked at the save, but I was already worrying that this was going to stop being any fun at all.

Earlier today, I was playinbg through a game as Psilons on Hard (yeah, yeah, but I wanted some practice playing on medium maps - I usually play on small - as I felt that had affected my decision making earlier in this game). It was oddly reminiscent of our current position in some ways. I had the Meklar on my border as an obvious first threat/target. I had no bombs between nuclear and OMG, so ended up trying to tackle them with OMGs on medium hulls, supported by a huge Fusion gunship - against PSV, shield IV, decent computers etc. So, close to our oppo, but weaker. And a lot weaker relatively - the Meks were also-rans, with decent tech but only 5-6 planets (the Rocks were the "runaways" and got up to 18+).

It didn't go well. I was able (at cost) to break through Meklon's missile bases, but had no chance to hold orbit agianst their main fleet. And this was from a relatively much stronger position (diplomacy, production) than our poor Darloks.

Of course, in my game I was able to instead tech some more (Psilons, natch), keep a couple of races onside diplomatically against the Rocks, pick on someone weaker (Cats), and steal their factories and their weapons tech, and snowball from there.

This game? Not an option . There just aren't any levers to pull. While I don't disagree that there were mistakes, I think we underestimated how hard this variant is. Every tech has to be hard-researched, and there is just no room for anything to go wrong.

[RefSteel]

I'm stopping here. It's 2476, and things are falling apart. We weren't nominated for the vote, so that wasn't a concern.

Are you stopping for discussion and suggestions or to hand the save off early? Either way, given the mess we're in, discussion would certainly be good!

So ... first of all, that Tornado design is basically Game Over. We have to do more than 270 damage per turn just to keep up with its autorepair, it moves as fast as anything we can build, its shields are enough to basically ignore anything we can throw at it except for fusion beams, its seven Heavy Blast Cannons are enough to take our ships apart at range, but it's even more deadly up close, and its BC5 (or BC4 plus a Battle Scanner if we're suffering from the special system display bug) can't be relied upon to miss even our fastest, smallest ships. Even if we'd built actual combat ships instead of a bunch of long-obsolete rocket boats, we would have no way to fight that.

So basically, my assessment from the last time I actually looked at the game was much more accurate than the more-hopeful outlook I had twenty years later, after Arnuz's turns. Our only hope here is for the Meklar to wander off and go bother someone else and/or decide that what they really need is Not More Tornadoes. Although in fairness, it's not like we can do all that much better against their other ships.

Cyneheard, in case you want me to play from here or comment semi-intelligently about possible desperate plans, do you know what (apart from Stingers) was on the Bulrathi cruisers you saw?

I would like to say that sometimes in MoO, all you have to do is keep on holding on. In this circumstance though, not even allowed to ask for peace, nor to try to steal tech, nor to (etc) and about to lose half our empire ... well, we can keep holding on as long as we can, but I don't expect to come back in this one. I don't think this variant was too much on Hard: With more discussion and planning between turn sets, for example, we might have recognized the strategic mistakes we made here before we made them; by 2430, we were about 50 years behind where I would expect to be at that point in an Impossible game, with or without using the tools forbidden to us by our variant - but one thing the variant does do is make it really, really hard to come from (far enough) behind, and we've been playing from behind for practically the whole game.

(Also, I do agree with shallow_thought; I certainly underestimated the difficulty of this variant: As can be seen earlier in this thread, I missed some of the restrictions, and thereby underestimated what the variant even was!)

I'm inclined to play this out to an actual loss, trying to stave off elimination as long as we can - I like trying to salvage lost causes in this game - but if no one else wants to go through that, I understand. And either way, I'd love to play another game, with a gentler variant or with more in-depth discussion or both, with all of you!

[RefSteel]

Oh! Also:

Do you happen to recall a blog with many Meklar play throughs? I thought you may have actually been the author but can't find the resource via Google. They're my favorite race for RP-ish reasons and I'm looking for more materials on them as I'm still struggling to up my game playing them vs Kyrub's patch. That Planetology blindspot sure throws a monkey wrench in their early development!

Yup! There have been several Meklar Imperia, where everyone played Meks on the same map, but if you mean my original Meklon Gambit challenge, it was here. Most of the images have sadly been lost, as from so many older reports, and it came long before kyrub's patch.

Much more recently, and with the patch, we had four participants in Imperium 43:
RFS-81, Ianus, shallow_thought, and Psillycyber

I hope these are helpful!

[Cyneheard]

I'm stopping here. It's 2476, and things are falling apart. We weren't nominated for the vote, so that wasn't a concern.

Are you stopping for discussion and suggestions or to hand the save off early?  Either way, given the mess we're in, discussion would certainly be good!

Cyneheard, in case you want me to play from here or comment semi-intelligently about possible desperate plans, do you know what (apart from Stingers) was on the Bulrathi cruisers you saw?

(Also, I do agree with shallow_thought; I certainly underestimated the difficulty of this variant:  As can be seen earlier in this thread, I missed some of the restrictions, and thereby underestimated what the variant even was!)

I'm inclined to play this out to an actual loss, trying to stave off elimination as long as we can - I like trying to salvage lost causes in this game - but if no one else wants to go through that, I understand.  And either way, I'd love to play another game, with a gentler variant or with more in-depth discussion or both, with all of you!

I can't play on for this turnset, I'm on tilt. I don't see how it's possible to come back, honestly - are we really going to turtle up in 4 worlds (Nazin is going to be next on the chopping block I fear) for 150 years until our tech slowly catches up?

The variant isn't impossible at all - but we wounded our economy too early and never recovered. So many games are lost by overinvesting in military early - avoiding conflict instead - especially in a game like this where the only way we keep pace with tech is spending 90% of our BCs on Research.

I ran the variant on a new map, and had no trouble at all, but it involved getting to 8-9 secure worlds and being able to turtle up. None of the AIs ever seriously threatened any of my worlds, and I eventually used HEF Megabolts and Neutronium Bombs to scour the universe. That was with Klackons being the Big AI, but they rarely threatened me. I'm fine with running this variant again.

[Bionic Commando]

Oh!  Also:

Do you happen to recall a blog with many Meklar play throughs? I thought you may have actually been the author but can't find the resource via Google. They're my favorite race for RP-ish reasons and I'm looking for more materials on them as I'm still struggling to up my game playing them vs Kyrub's patch. That Planetology blindspot sure throws a monkey wrench in their early development!

Yup!  There have been several Meklar Imperia, where everyone played Meks on the same map, but if you mean my original Meklon Gambit challenge, it was here.  Most of the images have sadly been lost, as from so many older reports, and it came long before kyrub's patch.

Much more recently, and with the patch, we had four participants in Imperium 43:
RFS-81, Ianus, shallow_thought, and Psillycyber

I hope these are helpful!

Thanks! This is great reading.

I'd also love to join in an OSG if you guys give #36 a shot. OSG-35 was extremely, extremely difficult. I shadow gamed it. Playing with regular rules (i.e. no variant) and this was a trivial map to win. Even with some early map and tech tree knowledge, this game really gets out of control quickly. Either you wind up a candidate for the council and lose that way or you aren't powerful enough and wind up getting steam rolled. I think this scenario shows just how important stealing tech via conquest, bribes, or espionage really is. Double that with no diplomacy. Yikes!

[RefSteel]

I can't play on for this turnset, I'm on tilt. I don't see how it's possible to come back, honestly - are we really going to turtle up in 4 worlds (Nazin is going to be next on the chopping block I fear) for 150 years until our tech slowly catches up?

100% understandable. And no, I don't expect to turtle on 4 worlds. My experience with kyrub's patch suggests that what we're going to do if we play on is fight valiantly and then get exterminated before we can do anything about it. I agree that we pretty much lost this one early, but I think we did have a chance or two to come back in there - just not very good ones, and chances of which we failed to take advantage. And I likewise agree that the variant isn't impossible at all ... unless and until we start falling too far behind, as we did early and often here.

So: What does everybody think? Since I might be playing the last turn set here, should we try this variant again on another map? Or try a different variant, e.g. with Espionage allowed, but forbidding any diplomacy: Not even accepting peace?

Also: Got it!

But I probably won't be able to play and post a report until at least mid-week, and there's no guarantee that there'll be a save to post even if we want to play it out....