Looks like some solid turns, RefSteel. Shieldless is safe (for now) and we are adding more worlds. I don't know if we can get more pop in time for the council meeting, but if we can get through this next one I think we will be in very good shape for the future.
Always a bit tense when the AI sends in larges at this stage of the game - especially with no shields in play. It's awkward that the best generic defense of a nebula world is probably small fighters, which are exactly what we probably don't want to field against the Alkari.
If you need to mail me the save, it's my username (with underscore) at the old mail service that was bought by a monopolistic software company a couple of decades ago (I think my account may pre-date the purchase).
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Thanks, both of you! It's past midnight here, I have to work in the morning, and the report isn't done, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. In case you'd like to look at the save in the meantime, it's here.
For once, the following sitrep is spoiler-tagged because of actual spoilers, in case you'd rather wait to read the report before reading about what's going on with the hand-over save.
As you'll see, the situation is still kind of a mess; I did a bunch of complicated transport chaining while Sublight Drives were in the percentages and taking their sweet time to come in. Furnace in particular will need to send transports out (I've already sent some forward to Reactor in the save file, plus another from Friction, but left all other transport sending to you - plus you can veto those two if you want to) and/or get some terraforming done to avoid overpopulating. Friction is a different case: It's being evacuated because I'm >95% sure that Sakkra Dragon is heading straight for it, taking advantage of an alliance with the Alkari, and I don't know if our starfleet can both get there in time and defeat it. The tiny new colony itself certainly can't help! The new sublight fighters I have Shieldless set to send down are a brand-new design, so you can design something different in their place if you prefer, even if you do elect to fight!
(August 22nd, 2023, 02:28)RefSteel Wrote: Thanks, both of you! It's past midnight here, I have to work in the morning, and the report isn't done, so it'll have to wait for tomorrow. In case you'd like to look at the save in the meantime, it's here.
For once, the following sitrep is spoiler-tagged because of actual spoilers, in case you'd rather wait to read the report before reading about what's going on with the hand-over save.
As you'll see, the situation is still kind of a mess; I did a bunch of complicated transport chaining while Sublight Drives were in the percentages and taking their sweet time to come in. Furnace in particular will need to send transports out (I've already sent some forward to Reactor in the save file, plus another from Friction, but left all other transport sending to you - plus you can veto those two if you want to) and/or get some terraforming done to avoid overpopulating. Friction is a different case: It's being evacuated because I'm >95% sure that Sakkra Dragon is heading straight for it, taking advantage of an alliance with the Alkari, and I don't know if our starfleet can both get there in time and defeat it. The tiny new colony itself certainly can't help! The new sublight fighters I have Shieldless set to send down are a brand-new design, so you can design something different in their place if you prefer, even if you do elect to fight!
Cheers. Got it, but won't really get around to a serious look until tomorrow; hopefully that will give a chance for the rest of the report to come in, if not no worries.
EDIT: this is assuming it is my turn, and no-one else wants it!
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
That's a hard positive: Confirm detection reading on long-range scanners. The Sakkra have a pet Dragon, and it's an all-out dreadnought-class ship. We're reading it on long-range scanners now - it just appeared - and it's going to take time to track its vector. Unknown warp class; unknown destination; unknown everything - but it wasn't on scanners until now, and that means it's moving closer, not further away.
- Shieldless Colony, 2397 -
I guess it was bound to happen, the way we industrialized the place. Every factory we could fit on the surface, all of them running all-out, non-stop, every day and night for years, with all the unpredictable interactions of technology in the interior of the Orion nebula. What's most shocking is really the completeness of the catastrophe: The radiation levels are so high, no one who's not already trapped here will even be able to approach the surface, and nothing we do to clean it up will make the planet livable for more than about two thirds of our present population.
We're doing what we can, scrubbing the radioactive waste, rebuilding what we can of the ecology under the horrific new conditions, terraforming what's left as best we can, and evacuating the young, the sick, and the elderly - everyone our world can no longer support - sending them off through the nebula to help settle the Reactor colony. If only we had better engines - we've been emphasizing propulsion research for most of a decade, with promises that the new drives were "right around the corner" for years now, to the point where chances of finishing them by next year are supposedly around two to one! - they would make the trip more quickly ... and we'd be able to attempt a proper response to other threats too. The Bulrathi colony ship we've been tracking for three years flew right past the Toranor asteroid field at something like Warp 3, making a direct beeline toward the Blue Screen colony, and if you look closely at the image of our evacuation plans, you can see the signature of the Sakkra dreadnought we just picked up last year: It's slow; we should have time ... but it's almost certainly heading for one of our worlds. We knew there would be Friction there at the heart of the galaxy....
- Blue Screen Orbit, 2398 -
The colony is just so new, and we had so little warning that the ship was heading all the way out here, there was almost nothing we could do. Even with all the help we could get from the planetary reserve, we were only able to build two fighters - new NPG-01.1s - to keep the Bulrathi from taking our skies and sending their invincible ground soldiers across space to conquer us before we even have formal contact with their people. We can dodge like maniacs in these things, and I thought there was a chance, if the colony ship was unarmed or just carried missiles, that we could chase it off.
Well, no such luck: It was coming in with beams. I thought it was hopeless; I almost despaired. I asked aloud what we could possibly do - and my amazing wingmate answered: "We've got this! We can win this! We're better than that bear ship anyway! Just pump some tunes, take the controls, and get rid of the enemy!" He punched the audio player, took the lead, and we flew.
The colship came at us, and we flew away. It swept around to get at us, and we flew away some more! It tried to get an angle on us, but it didn't have any heavy guns, we were twice as fast, and its pilot couldn't close with us even once thanks to apparently being an incomparable imbecile who'd never attended flight school. He'd have been hard pressed to hit our ships even if he got close enough to try, with all our maneuverability, but it didn't matter: He never did, and when emergency energy stores were depleted, he was forced to retreat! All thanks to BENN-E-H111 and his incredible courage in the face of Bulrathi idiocy.
Then, after we sent the colship packing, our scientists came in with sublight drive designs, finally! Also an automated repair system, but I was too eager to see if we'd get the drives too to take a picture of that one. One year sooner, and we'd have ... but you know. We managed without them anyway! Next up, our propulsion engineers are having a look at fusion drives while the construction teams want to double down on the value of autorepair with an armor upgrade to Zortium, so that part's all good. Still not all the news though!
In case Blue Screen here wasn't far enough in our back lines, its twin is way out at the far corner of the galaxy. The new colony is definitely named in tribute to the valuable and convenient old electromechanical tool from before the days when everything was integrated into our phones and then into our bodies - a tool known as a "remote control" and nicknamed a "Remote" - and definitely not for any other reason.
The other news is ... the news. Shieldless may never be what it once was - it's mostly a question of whether we can someday figure out how to terraform its atmosphere into something other than a series of radioactive storms - but they've done the best with the place they can. And then there's the other other news.
Yeah, this colony ship we ran circles around was nothing. That Dragon is coming to Friction - not in the next two years; it's fortunately as slow in hyperspace as all the ships we've been able to build until this year - but soon.
- Friction Colony, 2399 -
We just got word from the Meklon labs that if we had the time and resources to build some defensive bases, they'd be a whole lot better than before: Five times as many missiles to a base, each with time and a half the megaton yield of the old nukes, protected by a double-strength shield. Doesn't matter: None of that helps a colony as young as this. By the time we could build a single base, no matter what we did from the moment of founding on, the Dragon would be in orbit and the invasion would have come - I'd say an invasion or three or fifteen, except that taking us over would barely take one. If we're going to weather this storm, it's going to be with help from other worlds ... so it's a good thing we've mainly been protecting them not with stationary bases but with mobile fleets. Well ... for some meaning of "mobile" at least. The unarmed scanner ship on its way down here is the only thing any Meklar world has built yet that can move at warp 3. We're hoping that'll change soon, and that the retro fleet that launched this way from the Shieldless colony last year will get here in time. Oh, and those Meklon lab teams? Apparently the field mechanics engineers are looking for yet another new improvement to their deflector screens as the only new design they can think of, but the weapons labs are going to be running anti-matter experiments instead: Graviton beams would have been of limited use even against the Alkari - the only people who've refrained from sending attack fleets our way so far - and just a mess against the rest of the galaxy, but if the others keep trying to kill us, anti-matter bombs will let us take the fight to them!
It's a good thing the Alkari aren't coming after us - yet at least - with the edge they've got in technology. We're even with them in shielding right now - because they are bad at it - and maybe even a little ahead in computers, depending on what happens in the next few years because we know those like the backs of our brains, but apart from that they're a full generation ahead - and even further in the critical field we struggle with the most: Planetology. As you probably know already though, that's not the most important piece of information on our report screen.
This is what Farseer looks like when he's angry. It's also the way he looks when he's hungry, sleepy, contemplative, or channeling his inner cockatoo. There's actually this really fascinating subtlety where it's kind of obvious to me when he's angry by a glance at his face even though it's practically just a look in his eyes, but seriously, I think the last time this guy was legitimately happy was some time in 2367, and it's been so long now, he forgot how. Oh, also the reason he's so upset is that we asked him to please, please not be allied with the Sakkra who are taking advantage of his fuel bases to send a massive dreadnought to attack us here, outside their normal range, and he doesn't like being asked nicely to do things. Also, he may think his alliance is going to help get him elected dictator-for-life of the galaxy.
- Meklon, 2400 -
I am pleased to announce that our battle computer research has been a stunning success. Or rather ... that is to say ... with apologies to RTS-1998, the former research director who was stunned and nearly killed last year by an electrical discharge while testing the high-yield energy storage media necessary to run the thing, it has been a great success completely unrelated to stunning. Sadly, with RTS-1998 still recovering in the hospital/repair complex, all we could come up with for a project to move forward was a new kind of ecm jammer, so hopefully that'll be useful to us as time goes on. Really, even considering the emphasis we put on good research this decade - and pointedly ignoring the debacle with sublight drive delays - our laboratories have had st... ah, surprising success up and down the boards. I just hope that holds true for the new terraforming techniques our friends in the planetology labs are getting so close to. And, you know, I also hope there's a chance to research anything as free Meklar and not as slaves to the Alkari or the smoking remnants of a Dragon's wrath.
At least the first one seems to have been handled successfully - thanks in large part to Grunk's surprisingly-fertile Bulrathi. We've still never encountered that mysterious people officially, but it would appear that their empire has grown to enormous size somewhere out on the far side of the galaxy while one of their colony ships was over in our space chasing a pair of our NPG fighters around Blue Screen like a cruiser-load of Keystone Kops. In spite of the dozen worlds he'd helde for a third of a century, Farseer still didn't have a veto over Council proceedings, and his Sakkra allies only pushed him up to twice our Meklar vote total, currently underestimated slightly by these vote numbers since our recent acquisition of sublight drives finally gave us the opportunity to send significant population to our more-distant worlds in a timely fashion. With the Darloks and Klackons both abstaining, we were in no danger, but it was a real surprise to see Grunk show up with as many votes as both of them combined. Of course we abstained ourselves, likewise well short of a veto of course since we weren't even nominated, but with real hope of correcting that by the next election, when all our worlds might well be populated beyond the range of what's even possible today ... if we can hold them all.
The map looks a lot prettier right now than it will if that Dragon has its way, but if we can keep it off, build up all these worlds, and find a way to claim more, we'll be in excellent shape to execute our master plan ... for lots more peaceful research and development, followed by building more factories!
(August 22nd, 2023, 10:21)SpaceOWL Wrote: Wouldn't it be better to trade DSS instead RW80 or NPGs?
I think the AI doesn't actually make use of it, it would only get +1 computer tech level...
Arguably. Klackons are rated Excellent in Construction and Poor in computers though, and we're Excellent at the latter. One fifth of factory waste is a small fraction of Klackon production, and the bugs aren't especially scary - and as I mentioned in the report, they already have weapons they'll likely use ahead of NPGs. Getting and staying ahead of them in computer technology will make it easier to spy on them in the future though, and I value that - perhaps overvaluing it - pretty highly. In effect, I'm not worried about what the Klackons will do with our technology; I just want every opportunity of doing smarter, more-effective things with theirs! If they come at us in the future with seas of highly-maneuverable NPG smallcraft though, I might end up regretting my choices here!
I've posted my report above, and the save is linked as well, still hoping the forum issues get fixed soon. Good luck, shallow_thought! (And if anyone else wants to play a round, in rotation or as a one-shot, now or later, you'd be welcome as always!)
* - Unless someone not yet on the roster wants to (and has a chance to) step in first! Please just say so if you'd like to - it's always great to have more players on the team!
** - Unless anyone else wants to play and will have a chance before tomorrow - in which case, please post to say so here!
Thanks for the report, RefSteel. Nice work on running the bears in circles. Surprising that they have that much pop; the Darloks must be pretty small.
Trading NPGs to the bugs looks like a good move, since they already had graviton beams. Not sure why they have so much weapons tech; we have not seen aa derelict event, but maybe they got a weapons tech from an artifacts world?
Poor Shieldless, getting the industrial accident event.
Dance with dragons! Yeah yeah yeah.
Dance with dragons! No no no.
Dance with dragons! Where where where?
What no dancing? Go go go.
Gone.
(Lyrics to a novelty hit inexplicably popular on Meklon in the year 2402)
T2400
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So, the immediate question is can we dance with a Dragon? It can't be too fast, so can we run rings around it until it goes away ...
Alternatively, can we run it out of missiles, if that's what it has? A large stack of fast fighters covers both cases. We've already got a scanner ship en-route, so, yeah, looks good.
I scan through all the pop movements, tweak tech a little (I'd probably be concentrating a little more, but looking back at the report the only field without sunk beakers is computers), hit next and hope. Although I note we're actually pretty competitive on the status screen.
T2401
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I do a second round of fighters out of Shieldless, but send them to Furnace. Furnace does some terraforming to (hopefully) make room for the incoming pop.
T2402
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IT30 is in, and I pick Soil Enrichment over Enhanced Eco. No Radiated I note ...
In other news, looks like the Dragon is going past us. Perhaps to empty Seidon, where a Bulrathi colship has just rudely interrupted our scout's doze? I sigh, and start moving individual speed 3 fighters to replace the old speed 1 ones over planets - I'll sell the obsolescent designs once cover is in place. I decide we need a new long-range design to cover a couple of places, and that it might as well be a medium with a scanner, replacing our existing scouts.
Planets start terraforming.
The Klackons are in alliance with both the Darloks and the Bulrathi suddenly.
T2403
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Terraforming and shuffling pop. The Klackons are now allied to the Alkari - we really, really need to not be at war with either of our contacts come the next vote at this rate. I scrap all of our out-dated designs.
I'd love to be doing some expansion, but without Toxic or Radiated there's nowhere to go. The web of alliances precludes war even if we had a plausible target, so for the moment it's build up tech and see ...
T2404
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And that is why you try not to let reserves build up too much. Plague at Reactor!
Once our latest worlds hit a certain point we'll be able to massively accelerate them, but right now a trickle from our overflowing vaults is all they can absorb. If only we had an artifacts world ...
T2405-08
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Quiet growth
T2409
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Build a few more fighters at Shieldless as there's a (quite fast) Bulrathi colship heading there.
T2410
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The Dragon turns up at the Selia asteroid belt. My scanner ship is a turn too slow, but our fighter has a quick play and results suggest the ship has no missiles, FWIW.
The Bulrathi are heading past Shieldless for the Toxic in our back lines I'd left uncovered. I send 20 fighters, but wasn't expecting them to have range - I'm not sure they will get there in time. Hope that doesn't come back to bite us ...
I mindlessly do a round of reserve spending again, forgetting I should leave that for the next player.
Strategically, I feel we're doing fine right now but are at risk of falling behind when our relative Meklar bonus falls off as others discover better RC tech. Not having Radiated or Toxic means we have no further peaceful expansion prospects - and we have a backline world to defend from other races (assuming I haven't already shot that pooch ). The tight but extensive mesh of alliances makes the prospect of war pretty grim, even if we can pick up key techs, and the next vote could be interesting if it ends up being us and the Alkari, who seem a lot more popular now than they were.
I felt almost as if we have more production than we can use, although that reserve will be useful once we can get some of our newer worlds bootstrapped to the point they can absorb it. Not helped there by events though . There's a load of pop on its way to help out at Reactor.
Shieldless is safe (for now) and we are adding more worlds. I don't know if we can get more pop in time for the council meeting, but if we can get through this next one I think we will be in very good shape for the future. 
Surprising that they have that much pop; the Darloks must be pretty small.
). The tight but extensive mesh of alliances makes the prospect of war pretty grim, even if we can pick up key techs, and the next vote could be interesting if it ends up being us and the Alkari, who seem a lot more popular now than they were. 
. There's a load of pop on its way to help out at Reactor.
)
