OSG-38 - Renaissance Psilons

[shallow_thought]

Oh FFS. Something keeps adding blank lines to my post and when trying to edit it I either save and there's no difference or it just makes it worse .

[haphazard1]

I was wondering what was going on with all the extra spacing. Weird.

Looks like a solid turn set, shallow_thought. Consolidation of our position, more BCs into research, and nothing really bad happened. With as many enemies as we have, that is a good outcome.

The upcoming council vote is my main concern. Hopefully at least one AI will abstain. I am a little concerned about the Humans haiving warp dissapator; if they actually put it on a decent design it could cause trouble.

I am not sure exactly when I will have time to play the turns. I will try to get started later today, but it may be tomorrow before I manage to play. Plenty of time for comments and suggestions!

[RefSteel]

I loved the intro and the report, shallow_thought!  Good turns, too; I definitely agree with your tech choices especially.

The forum software's been causing all sorts of problems this game; grr.  For what it's worth, I always edit my posts in "view source" mode (with white text on a dark green background) instead of WYSIWG mode (with black text on a white background?) and that seems to work for me ... at least so far.  (You can toggle between them using the the white page icon on the far right-hand side of the formatting toolbar above the text box where you type your post.)  I don't know if that helps, and if you're not used to it, it can look weird (and lead to accidental unclosed format marks) to see formatting codes around plain text when you e.g. change something to bold instead of seeing the bold text as you type.  (That, and you might already be doing the same thing, or it might not fix anything!)  I just took the liberty of editing your report post to delete all the extra spaces; hopefully that's okay with you and looks more like what you intended!  (Using "view source" mode, this was easy:  Edit post, copy/paste into my text editor, search/replace triple line breaks into double line breaks, "replace all" a few times until there are no triple line breaks left, copy/paste back into the forum post.)

More relevant to the game:

- Great call getting peace with the Silicoids, shallow_thought!  That was absolutely the right call under the circumstances, greatly reducing the risk of a dogpile war and certain Council loss!  Since the Meks have no contact with the Humans and we don't have contact with the cats or bugs, they can't call in a war ally before the High Council, and we should have a good chance to survive the vote even though there's no way we'll have a veto yet.  We'll presumably be facing the Silis again, so if they're allied to the Humans in 2324, it would be worth asking the Humans to break the alliance; I'd ask the Meklar for peace that turn too if their diplomat is back - worth a try, at least!  Well have seven or maybe eight votes in the election unless something drastic changes, and the Humans will have no more than three, so there's not a whole lot we can be sure of, unfortunately:  We might need more votes than the two of us have between us!

- In case (as is likely) we can't get peace with the Meklar, I'd advise sending one of the Learn 3.0s to Arietis to scan the Meklar fleet (hoping it stays there for the next three turns).  Keeping two unarmed scanner ships over a world with a missile base (Proteus) is kind of a waste.

- Paradise shouldn't need any more bases; we've seen all the ships in that Human fleet, and none of them carry anything that can penetrate the planet's shield.  I'd have it start a prebuild for a toxic colony ship instead:  If we can colonize Laan and get some more population there and grow our existing worlds (including Nature) close to full all in the next five turns, we can get up to eight votes, which might even make the difference between winning and losing the game!  I realize that's a pretty tall order though (and would require a good share of luck even with maximum dedication)...

- Once the Council is out of the way - if we can survive it! - it might be worth conquering Sol and Selia, leaving the Humans with just Maalor (where they had the industrial accident event) at the edge of the galaxy.  Our Ultimatum alone can't handle all of Sol's bases, but they are still apparently firing only Hyper-Vs, and we should hopefully have Fusion Drives by 2425.  Speaking of which...

- I think after Fusion Drives, I'd go back for Stabilizer unless we think we can get it from the Meks somehow.  After Toxic, thats a tougher call, but I think I'd pick something like IT+40 > Soil > Radiated > Antidote.  There'd definitely be an argument for swapping at least the first two on that list though....

- Good luck with the turns, haphazard1!

[haphazard1]

Have played half the turns. Sorry this is taking so long, life has been busy.

2420 (inherited)

Send a Learn3.0 to Meklon to see if we can learn about the cyborg fleet

2421

Computers edges into percentages
Send a few million from Nature to Longlast to help max it out

2422

Get a scan at Meklon before retreating; 46 Stonger bases there

Controlled Toxic comes in; take IT+40 although Enhanced Eco was tempting; we do have Radiated

Fusion Drives comes in; take Range 9; [pic]

Design a toxic col ship with Fusion drives, start building one at Paradise for Laan
Meklar have just learned IRC4

Move our Ultimatum from Uxmai to Nature due to incoming rocks
Nature shifts spending to eco to grow pop; might need every one

2423

Drive off Human fleet at Paradise
Meklar diplomat back; attempt to get peace but rejected, diplomat gone again
Rocks have learned BC5

2424

Toxic col ship on way to Laan with some spare Nimbus 3.0s from Stepstone

2425

Colonize Laan, which I rename Toasty; send pop from Nature
Survive council vote just barely
34 votes total, so 23 needed
Humans (3 votes) actually vote for us!
Rocks (10 votes) for themselves
Klackons (3 votes) abstain
Mrrshaan (5 votes) for rocks
Maklar (6 votes) for rocks
Rocks have 21 votes, do not win
We have 7 votes and abstain

If either of the Humans or Klackons had voted for the rocks, the game would be over. But we survived the council, and the game goes on. The Meklar are looking very scary, especially with IRC4 -- their worlds are going to be ridiculous. And with Radiated, they could claim any world if they go on offense. And that huge ship of their is very nasty.

[RefSteel]

We made it through the Council vote!  Nice!!  No worries as far as I'm concerned on taking a little longer this time around; it feels like it's been a busy week or so for all of us, and war turns sometimes take a lot longer than peaceful building - even when we're not launching offensives of our own!

Comments in case they help - or in case they encourage others to add their thoughts:

- One on one, that Meklar Nemesis can't stand up to our Ultimatum; if they send enough though, it starts getting dicey - and we still don't know what's on their other designs.

- Interesting choice choosing Range 9 as our next Propulsion tech.  Was the idea to hopefully get diplomatic contact with the Cats and Bugs?

- IT + 40 will be great!  If we can finish it in the next ~20 turns, we could have ten votes just from our existing worlds, I think - and hopefully we'll swap ownership of some others over the course of the next 25 years!

- I'm still celebrating making it through that Council vote!  Now to see if we can turn that into a veto by 2450!

[shallow_thought]

The forum software's been causing all sorts of problems this game; grr.  For what it's worth, I always edit my posts in "view source" mode (with white text on a dark green background) instead of WYSIWG mode (with black text on a white background?)

- Good luck with the turns, haphazard1!

More software trouble - somehow I managed to to lose my subscription to this thread. I thought it had been a bit quiet! That may have been user error though .

FWIW, I normally write in view source mode - in fact, I draft in Notepad++ with manual markup and then paste (partly so I have a backup). My problems started when I tried to do a quick edit to add the player list in after I forgot it.

I'm disappointed that there are Silicoid troops on the way to Nature, although I'd hope that the waste of pop will be a net gain for us. I was sure that making peace would cause them to turn their fleet around and never make orbit - an assumption reinforced when they didn't trigger a fight over Laan.

But the big news is getting through the vote - that had me worried. And getting us back on the expansion path again.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the thoughts, RefSteel and shallow_thought. I will try to finidh up the turns during the day Tuesday.

For propulsion, I should have gone back for inertial stabilizer. I was hoping the increased range would give us some more options, either diplomatic contact or at least more Human and rock worlds in range. Both have longer range than we do, so they can reach us while we can not easily respond.

Any thoughts on IRC4 and timing? IRC4 is in the percentages (about 10%, I think it was) while IIT6 is not quite a full light bulb. If IRC4 comes in, should we begin adding factories immediately or keep pushing research for aa few more turns and hope to get II6 first to cut costs?

[DaveV]

I'm back after a long weekend visiting my brothers. It sounds like we're making good progress; surviving the election is great news.

[SpaceOWL]

Any thoughts on IRC4 and timing? IRC4 is in the percentages (about 10%, I think it was) while IIT6 is not quite a full light bulb. If IRC4 comes in, should we begin adding factories immediately or keep pushing research for aa few more turns and hope to get II6 first to cut costs?

I'm writing in a spoiler button as I'm not sure whether I should comment on a game I'm not playing. Please delete the comment if you find it inappropriate.

As IRC4 comes in you will free up 1/4 of your pop, and can invade with only a small hit to your production. 
Having Controlled Toxic, now it's time to push the Silicoids back as much as you can. 
The other decision is wheter to take down Sol and the other habitable Human colony.

[shallow_thought]

Any thoughts on IRC4 and timing? IRC4 is in the percentages (about 10%, I think it was) while IIT6 is not quite a full light bulb. If IRC4 comes in, should we begin adding factories immediately or keep pushing research for aa few more turns and hope to get II6 first to cut costs?

I'm writing in a spoiler button as I'm not sure whether I should comment on a game I'm not playing. Please delete the comment if you find it inappropriate.

As IRC4 comes in you will free up 1/4 of your pop, and can invade with only a small hit to your production. 
Having Controlled Toxic, now it's time to push the Silicoids back as much as you can. 
The other decision is wheter to take down Sol and the other habitable Human colony.

Personally, I see no problem with lurkers commenting / making suggestions on an SG - in fact, I would probably encourage it. It's perhaps polite to put it in a spoiler, but probably not strictly necessary. The only thing is that it shouldn't be based on any "alternate" playing of the game that might leak info, but that's already been covered.

As for the specific suggestion, yeah, that's something to think about. I think Ref may already have mentioned it when commenting on the tech choice ...