OSG-37 - 1ooming Lizards

[DaveV]

I couldn't remember the traditional number of turns for the second player, so I went with 15.

Initial reaction: things are going very well. Our rich planet of Celtsi is at max population and three turns from being maxed out on factories. There are three planets reachable with our current propulsion and ecology tech, including another Rich world (only size 35, but soon to be 55).

I made some changes that are probably sub optimal but that I view as cheap insurance: as Celtsi was finishing its factories, I put the extra production into a bunch of scouts, sending most to the rich world of Obaca, which will open up some more planets for exploration, but also putting a single scout garrison over almost every reachable planet. These scouts can chase away enemy scouts or unarmed colony ships. If the AIs are able to achieve orbit over one of our planets, the space marines will inevitably follow. Since we're fast-breeding lizards, we can probably win a ground war against anyone but the Bulrathi, but at the cost of a lot of damage to our economy. Also, I put a couple ticks into planetary defense on  Sssssla. Missile bases will cost us maintenance and aren't needed when no one can even reach us, but it's usually too late to built the defense when the enemy fleet is en route. In the same vein of planning ahead, I created a huge design called Wallet that I could use to store some production for future use.

Here's Sssla before I adjusted the sliders:



And here's the colony ship on the way to our new rich planet.



There's another barren colony ship en route to Kulthos. The next player will need to reroute it to Reticuli, the blue barren size 45 world to the east. We need to finish our Planetology research before we can settle any more worlds. Here's the tech situation; our research is low because terraforming +20 just came in and a lot of our spending is going to ecology (and some should be put into industry so those extra lizards have a place of employment).



Notes on tech choices: I picked reduced waste 80% over IIT9 since we don't have any waste reducing techs in our planetology tree. I picked Controlled Toxic over Controlled Dead and Controlled Inferno because it gives us more planets to settle (I hope; we only have a Dead and Radiated on our screen at the moment). I also picked Deep Space Scanner over ECM 1; I never put ECM on warships, and I'm hoping we don't have to use our missile bases for a while. The only weapons tech was Gatling Laser, my least favorite of the starting three possibilities. In Force Fields, I made the Hobson's choice of Class II Deflectors.

For the next player: don't forget to reroute the colony ship! I can't tell you how many times I've done this, and the ship has just sat in orbit around the waypoint planet. I haven't adjusted any sliders other than Celtsi.

[haphazard1]

DaveV, I checked and was able to load the save without any problems. (Any immediately obvious ones, at least. I did not do anything but load it and look at the galaxy map.)

[jez9999]

Wow, RefSteel, glad you clarified that the in-depth writing wasn't required.  I'm not sure I could've matched your Tolkenian prose! 

I'll call "got it", then, and give the next 15 years a go.  I'm using base 1oom patched with a few UI changes for my benefit and the cheats disabled.  No functional differences.

By the way, do you guys use the 1oom planetary governor feature?  I've found it can be quite useful in dealing with a lot of mind-numbing micromanagement and setting industry/eco sliders to just the right amount to grown the population and build factories such that you have exactly the right number of factories for the grown population to use.  But maybe there's a disadvantage I'm missing?

Also, can you guys give recommendations for an easy image-hosting solution for these things? I take it you can't just upload images to the Realms Beyond board...

[haphazard1]

DaveV -- bigger planets and more lizards is good news. For us, anyway; the rest of the galaxy might disagree. More colony ships in motion is very good news. And I have forgotten about re-routing colony ships in more games than I really want to admit.

I like going for the clean up tech since we did not have the first better eco in our tree, but we may want to go back and grab IIT9 if we do not have IIT8 or 7 available. It is cheap and we are going to be building a lot of factories (hopefully).

jez9999, being new to 1oom I do not have any experience yet with the planetary governor. It is something I am planning to experiment with in a personal game before I try using it in the SG. Hearing others' thoughts on how best (or if) to use it would be helpful.

Good luck with the next turn set! Is this another set of 15, and then the rest are 10 each?

[jez9999]

The Third Speaker - being the grandson of the Second Speaker - was suddenly catapulted to power after the untimely death of his grandfather, and some complex political wrangling by members of his powerful family ensured his succession.  He was, however, young and inexperienced.  He nevertheless vowed to do the best for the lot of his his lizard brethren during his time in office.

After a tour of the starmap that had been hung on his wall since early childhood, he decided that tech needed to be poured into propulsion to allow the quick colonization of some of the additional worlds around Sssssla.  Extra research was therefore diverted to that purpose.



As he was not particularly proficient at managing the spending needs of worlds, the Third Speaker decided that for the empire's two main worlds - Sssssla and Celtsi - he'd do what he did best: leave well enough alone.  Spending for these worlds was kept as before.  It was decided that for Kulthos and all new colonies founded during his time, though, the use of a planetary governor to manage the resources was the decision with the best hope of peak efficiency.  So for these worlds, a planetary governor was assigned and allowed to determine what they decided to be in the best interests of the world, within reasonable limits outlined to them from the start of their administration.



Time marched on, and in the year 2336, a colony ship finally reached the planet Obaca and a Sakkran colony was dutifully formed, being assigned a planetary governor with similar duties to the one managing Kulthos.



To no-one's surprise, this immediately prompted first contact with the Mrrshans, whose opening diplomatic salvo was surprisingly accommodating by their standards.



The Mrrshans were revealed to have colonized 3 planets to the centre of the galaxy; perhaps not too many, but likely to be very large and hospitable given their star type.  "It is the galaxy's eternal joke", once mused Speaker the Third, "that we Sakkrans are blessed with a high birth rate, yet cursed with small planets not capable of holding the fruit of our loins.  Such planets are, however, gifted to less fecund races."



Obaca's colony expanded the scoutable area of the galaxy, and scouts were quickly sent to explore 3 new planets to the south, one of which had now been revealed as already containing the Mrrshan colony 'Crypto'.



The Third Speaker had heard from his predecessors that low-level trade with other races was almost always a good idea in order to keep them sweet - the Mrrshans were diplomats, yet ruthless - and so a basic 25BC/year trade agreement was signed immediately upon contact.  A small degree of funding was also allocated for spies to infiltrate their empire and determine their technologies.



Aiming to boost the Obacan population, The Third Speaker ordered that 15 million citizens be shipped immediately from Celtsi, which by this point had maxed out its factories.  Its population would soon recover, of course.

By the year 2340, the Reticuli colony had been founded.  Again, a standard planetary governor was assigned.



One of the two new southern planets, Proxima, was also scouted and determined to have no planets.  That scout would later be moved further south-east, not needing to hang in the system and prevent enemy races from colonizing... nothing.



Events were moving on apace at this time for the Sakkrans, however, and the Reticuli colony had put them in contact with the Bulrathi empire, which had colonized to a similar degree as the Mrrshans.





As with the Mrrshans, a basic trade agreement was also set up with them, and minimal spy resources assigned.  By this point, spies had also uncovered the Mrrshans' technological extent.  Notably, they had discovered some impressive industrial building technology, as well as some pretty cool rockets.



It did occur to The Third Speaker that having these two neighbours at war with each other might be a useful diversion, limiting their ability to attack the Sakkras.  Both, however, declined to declare was on each other.  This disappointed the Sakkran elites, but they could do nothing to change the situation.

In 2343, deuterium fuel cells were researched, finally allowing extra planets around Sssssla to be colonized, as the Third Speaker had dreamed of since childhood.  The next tech breakthrough in this department, though, was somewhat limited.



Sssssla got to work immediately building a colony ship for one of its back-line planets - Rayden - which (it was presumed) would provide an excellent technological base for the empire, containing artifacts as it did.  The ship was soon finished and sent off to colonize Rayden.  Sakkran researchers also determined their relative strategic strength in the galaxy compared to other races they had encountered, at this time:



In the year 2345, a Sakkran scout stumbled upon a Mrrshan fleet whilst trying to explore a new system.  The Third Speaker had ordered scouts to attempt to engage such fleets, relying on them only having missiles for weapons.  He was sure he'd heard in a dream that these devices could be outrun and therefore neutralized, given the right tactics, and all scout captains were ordered to attempt just this.







This tactic didn't turn out too well, and the scout was destroyed by the missile (seriously, what IS that tactic about outrunning missiles?  When I watch longplays they always seem to know exactly how to do it, but they never take a second to explain it).  Oh well, at least the Mrrshans probably wouldn't hold this against them.  They probably considered the target practice a generous gift from the Sakkran people.

Shortly after, another scout bumped into an Alkari fleet, revealing their general location in the galaxy:



By 2348, Rayden had been reached by the colony ship sent from the home world, and at least part of the Third Speaker's childhood dream had been fulfilled.



To his surprise, he was immediately informed that this also put the Sakkrans in the lead on this front (and, probably, only on this front).



The Third Speaker was thrust into power at an unexpectedly early time, and he was to leave power early too, dying from an unusual illness... although given his unpopularity with the general population, it could just as easily have been an assassination.  Just before his hissed his lass hiss, he was informed by his military generals that a scout had penetrated deep into the heart of the galaxy and discovered a new hostile inferno planet called Collassa, boasting a max. population of 25 million.  "Damn small planets.  I'm glad I went for Rayden," he smiled, before passing away.

[jez9999]

I'm attaching the save file to this post.  As you might have noticed above, I really still have *no* instinctive feel in MOO1 as to what I should really be setting planetary sliders to, what tech to go for, which weapons to put on ships, how many defensive ships to build and where to put them, and how many missile bases to build where, etc.  I don't think I've ever come across a game before where I've had a harder time developing an instinct for what I should really be doing optimally.  Most turns I pretty much shrug and hit the next turn button.  So I'd appreciate if you guys could go into pedantic detail about what you're doing with everything each turn and why you're doing it!  If you can be bothered.

[DaveV]

@jez - for your information on future turns, asking for a war declaration against a race with whom you aren't already at war is considered an exploit, and is generally avoided in these games. For example, if you were at war with the Bulrathi, you could ask the Mrrshans to declare war on them. You also need at least Amiable (IIRC) relations for the request to be accepted.

I built all of my colony ships at Celtsi, since its production into ships, shields, and factories is doubled because it's a rich planet. The most basic advice on sliders is that you should emphasize the category where the planet gets bonuses: Technology for Artifact planets, ships or reserve for Rich and Ultra Rich planets, Technology or Ecology for Poor and Ultra Poor (in the last case, those planets avoid a penalty on technology or ecology spending rather than receiving a bonus). When population is stabilized and factories are built up, I will put extra production into Research on all planets except Rich ones, with those latter worlds cranking out my fleet.

[haphazard1]

Our empire is growing and we are learning more about the galaxy. Good stuff. We are still open to having an additional player join us, if anyone is interested -- feel free to post a 'got it' and join our quest for lizard domination! If no one does, then as the last member of the team I provisionally have the save and will play probably tomorrow morning (maybe 12 hours from now).

A few thoughts:

- We do not yet know where the Psilons and Klackons are. At least one and maybe both are in that triple yellow cluster southeast of galactic center. If one of them is instead at the far east yellow, they may have a lot of room to expand. Since we got the GNN 6 planets message, we do know that no one else has as many planets as we do.
- Our propulsion tree has been very sparse. While more range tech will be useful, some better engines would be nice.....
- No planetology tech at all for the kitties? Ouch.
- Our racial stats look pretty good for this point in the game. Fleet strength is non-existent so far of course, but that is not unexpected.

[RefSteel]

Wow, RefSteel, glad you clarified that the in-depth writing wasn't required.

Yup.  This one in particular was especially long for an early-turns report because I was trying to describe what I was doing and why in some detail, but I still missed some things!

By the way, do you guys use the 1oom planetary governor feature?  I've found it can be quite useful in dealing with a lot of mind-numbing micromanagement and setting industry/eco sliders to just the right amount to grown the population and build factories such that you have exactly the right number of factories for the grown population to use.  But maybe there's a disadvantage I'm missing?

I've never used the Governor, partly because I like taking a "tour" of my empire every turn, checking in with my planets to make sure they're doing what I want - which, except when there's a major change in the strategic situation, they generally are - and to keep myself familiar with them.  I should still have gone into a bit more detail about what I did with the sliders.  Generally speaking, I left everything in Ind to build factories though, with Sssssla contributing a small and growing amount to research - apart from one turn when I zeroed the capital's Ind to throw everything into Tech, to start off our two then-new research projects with the kind of "lab-building" I mentioned early in the report.  Cygni was all-out Ind all the time once it was founded:  Factories on rich worlds are extremely valuable.  That's all early-game stuff though; later in the game, as planets max factories (or when you have a Poor or especially Ultra-Poor planet, since I rarely build factories on the first and ~never on the second) these choices get more complicated, depending heavily on a star's strategic position, size, and mineral wealth.  I'll try to talk about that a bit more in a moment, but one thing:  It's almost always a bad idea to let the governor spend on "Eco mode" because force-growing population outside of a definite, immediate strategic need (and apart from intensely micromanaged growth tricks that Thrawn has described but that I don't use because it's not a kind of micro I enjoy) is almost always wasteful.  Even though new pop units "cost" less for us Sakkra, it's actually more wasteful to force-grow Sakkra than other species because we grow so quickly naturally, for free, that there's much less time for the new pop you grow to "pay for" the cost of growing them before the planet would have maxed out pop on its own.  Asking the governor to keep factory growth up with pop can save some time at certain points in the game, but it's almost never a big deal to build a few factories a couple turns sooner or later than the population grows to work them, so I tend to dodge the micro by just ignoring it outside of special cases.

Also, can you guys give recommendations for an easy image-hosting solution for these things?  I take it you can't just upload images to the Realms Beyond board...

I use my google account, but you can upload images to the board; it's just a little bit of an involved process:  The same way you posted the save as an attachment, you can attach pictures to your post and then use the "Insert Into Post" button to the right of the attachment, next to "Remove," like this:

   
From a totally different classic space game.

...or like this:

   

I really still have *no* instinctive feel in MOO1 as to what I should really be setting planetary sliders to, what tech to go for, which weapons to put on ships, how many defensive ships to build and where to put them, and how many missile bases to build where, etc.

DaveV's general tips are good - relatedly, when deciding whence to send colonists to new worlds, it's best to consider the qualities of your "source" world:  At Celtsi, being mineral Rich and having max factories, everyone on the planet is incredibly productive when building new ships, defenses, or industry for the reserves.  It's Fertile and we're Sakkra, so lost pop will grow back quickly, but it's still better to send most of a new colony's population from someplace like Kulthos, which is nearby, has few factories, and will never contribute as much to the empire since it's mineral poor.  I'll try to go into a bit more detail on this on my next turn set:  During my first set, I tried to talk about my tech choices, and the number of missile bases, defensive ships, and weapons to put on them were all "none," because it was early and we had no close contacts.  (I can talk a bit about what I mean by "close contacts" if you'd like.)  I doubt if that will hold true for much longer!

So I'd appreciate if you guys could go into pedantic detail about what you're doing with everything each turn and why you're doing it!  If you can be bothered.

When my next set comes around, I'll see what I can do!

[haphazard1]

Good point about going into more detail on what we are doing and why. I will try to elaborate a bit more when I report my turnset.