OSG-38 - Renaissance Psilons

[RefSteel]

Ummm. So I got a look at the save file. There is an additional piece of news that must have just showed up this turn, and it's kind of a big one: There's more than one large ship in our scanners' range.




The second one is this Human Warship, accompanying two Colships and a single Fighter, and they have to be moving toward one of our new colonies - and I have to assume it's Paradise. If so, they'll probably arrive, coincidentally, at the same time as our transports.

So, what can we do about that? We could build and send up to three Popguns down from Stepstone via Reloc, but that won't do much at this stage. We have one popgun due to arrive one turn too late, which will do even less. If they don't have bombs and send in transports, we should have at least nine turns from here to put a real defense together, using three turns' shipbuilding, with reloc, from Mentar, four from Backwards, and Stepstone can contribute a few fighters too if we think it'll be close. Assuming most of the transports land safely, Paradise can also contribute, though I doubt it can build a base in six years even with all of them present.

If we do this, I would start prebuilding ships immediately, though I don't think we'll be able to tell what will work best against the enemy Warship (except by inference by watching it if we engage it in combat) in time to choose the best design with which to fight it.

Of course, there is another option: If we're willing to take the risk and regard the tactic as acceptable, we can threaten to attack the Humans just to stop them from hitting our world. Alexander is a Pacifist, so it's pretty likely to work, and would mean we can continue peaceful pursuits instead of pouring resources into starships that will soon be obsolete. (On the other hand, if we do build a fleet and it does defeat the Human one with enough force surviving, maybe it can also repel the Silis....)

What does everyone think?

[EDIT: And an updated...

Roster:

- RefSteel (on deck unless a lurker wants to jump in!)
- shallow_thought (got us on track for claiming Paradise)
- haphazard1 (brought Paradise home!)
- DaveV (UP! - to see if we can hold it now!)
- One slot's still open; if you want it, you're on deck!]

[haphazard1]

Good work spotting that fleet, RefSteel. I had not noticed it on my last turn.

The range from Sol is pretty long. Maybe the humans have better range tech, or they could be LR designs.

We do not have a lot of options as far as armed ships. Lasers and HyperV missiles are the only weapons we have. We have no idea what the humans have on that large, but it can not be all that advanced. There might be weapons on the col ships as well, although there were none on the human col ship a couple turns ago.

Most AIs will send an invasion force if they get space superiority over a planet. Would Alexander being Pacifistic change that? Would signing a NAP with the humans (assuming they would agree) make a difference? We could send more pop to Paradise from Backwards maybe? (Not sure it would arrive in time, and it would hurt Backwards' growth curve.)

[DaveV]

Yeah, I noticed that fleet when I opened the save. I'm pretty sure the AI will send transports regardless of personality, so we can expect ~50 transports from Sol. An alternative strategy, which has worked for me a few times, is to pour money into ECO for extra population and win the ground war while we build a counter fleet or tech up. We don't have any ground combat bonuses, but we do have defender's advantage.

[haphazard1]

Stepstone is only 1 LY from Paradise, which does give us some options to move pop or build/reloc ships in one turn. I don't know if the humans have range to get to Stepstone.

[shallow_thought]

Urgh. I have a memory that if we try "threaten to attack" and it works the AI won't send transports (technically they won't ever be "in orbit"?). But both my memory and the tactic are unreliable.

[RefSteel]

Urgh. I have a memory that if we try "threaten to attack" and it works the AI won't send transports (technically they won't ever be "in orbit"?). But both my memory and the tactic are unreliable.

Yes, if we threaten to attack, there are three possible responses:
1) They get offended and declare war. This is very unlikely with a pleased pacifist, but you never know.
2) They laugh at us, blow off the empty threat, and just keep doing what they're doing. This does degrade relations some.
3) They apologize, establish a virtual peace treaty. This means that (for ten-ish turns) their ships will retreat without combat anywhere they encounter ours, even if ours is just an unarmed Scout, except over their own colonies. Since they never end up in orbit, they won't send any transports. They may also give us a gift of cash or a tech.

Another note if we want to face them: I didn't check, but I think the small fleet of fighters that haphazard built can probably get to Paradise by the time their first wave of transports arrives too, which might make a difference if we try to put a force together to fight them that turn and it ends up as a close battle.

Note also that while we have no ground combat tech until Duralloy (a long ways off) the Humans might. (Not much, but Hand Lasers and Personal Deflectors may be possible by the time they reach the planet.)

The Humans shouldn't have the range to reach Stepstone right now: The AI never builds LR ships apart from Scouts and (later) colships, we didn't have contact until we settled Paradise, and they sent a Colship to Paradise before we had contact. I believe Paradise is 6 parsecs from their closest world, and their tech isn't much better than ours: They shouldn't have any tier-3 tech.

[DaveV]

I decided to go with operation pop boom, since it's hard to trade efficiently with the AIs.

I set Stepstone and Paradise to full ECO slider, sent 4 pop from Stepstone to Paradise, and turned on the Reserve slider at Mentar. On the interturn, the Silicoids hit the jackpot:



Two turns later, Improved Eco came in (at something like 35%).





I chose terraforming to improve our existing planets; Dead Environment doesn't open up a whole lot of new real estate, and I consider bioweapons a waste of research.

The humans arrived, fired a missile from their large warship (their colony ships retreated, meaning it is an unarmed design), and my single ship ran away to fight another day. I received the buggy message "your transports were all destroyed", although a bunch of them clearly made it through the gauntlet (the population increased from low teens to high forties).

The newsdroid had some good news about population:



Next turn, Nuclear engines came in, at a fairly low percentage that I didn't double check:





I picked 100% faster transports and 50% faster warships.

Next turn, the human invasion force appeared:



About what I was expecting.

Oh, and I did send some scouts to the unexplored worlds:



I scouted the red star NE of Firma, a rich inferno size 10. Didn't grab a screenie.

On the following interturn, the scout arrived at the red star in the corner:



And the human invaders arrived. After pumping population hard for my whole turnset, we had a significant numerical advantage, and tech parity. I don't understand why we lost 48 to their 49; it seems like the ratio should have been much more in our favor.





I'll stop here after ten turns, still on the final digit of 9.

[haphazard1]

Nice work defending our planet, DaveV!

Faster ships will certainly be useful. And better terraforming is always good news. Not being able to settle (or invade) hostile worlds is unfortunate, but maybe we can jump ahead at the next level. This galaxy certainly seems to have a lot of hostile worlds.

The rocks getting a rich world at Uxmai is not good news for us. A good event generally means they are a weak empire, though, and the pop numbers seem to confirm that. That all the other AIs except the Mrrshan have less pop than us is surprising, but I will take the good news. Maybe the cats have managed to stifle the other AIs, most of whom are probably in the galactic center?

Did we get contact with the rocks?

[DaveV]

Did we get contact with the rocks?

Yes, on my first interturn when they established the Uxmai colony. I signed a 25 credit trade deal and haven't talked to them since.

[haphazard1]

It is worth checking to see if the rocks have any interesting tech for trade. They would probably want too much for it, but there might be something worth it.