Remnants of the Precursors Showcase Game

[haphazard1]

Being on my first game of RotP myself, one thing I have no idea about yet is the quality of AI ship design. I also do not know what is different among the three different levels of AI that the game offers. So I do not know if the cats in Dp101's game coming up with a solid large design with heavy ion cannon is random chance, better AI, or something that would have happened in base MOO. Maybe it is just their best weapon and the AI stuck as many as possible on a hull. But in original MOO having an AI come up with a strong and/or tech era appropriate ship design could make a game much tougher than normal.

[Dp101]

Thanks for the encouragement, all. When deciding the difficulty for this game, my brain went "Ok, strongest race in the game, I should put the difficulty up a step" - > "but you haven't tried this difficulty in ages" -> "it'll be fiiiiiine" and I'm definitely on the edge of regretting the outcome of those thoughts! Maybe that's why things feel so close to being good, because I'm used to being just a bit more in control by being just one difficulty down.

Wait ... the cats control Altair? Is that just a random star name that doesn't mean anything special in this galaxy, or....?

On Plato showing a "+" next to its population: No, you couldn't see which enemy worlds were subject to potential terraforming in MoO, except when one of them had an "in between" pop limit like 42 instead of 40 or 45 (or if you notice it going up as it rises) suggesting that terraforming (well, or sporing if it's going down) is in process. I believe you only got this information updated when the planet was in current scanning range (of scouts or planetary scanners) as well.

Pretty cool that this showcase game has been so tense - but potentially winnable - all the way through! Thanks again for giving us the chance to read about it!

Regarding Altair showing up, I'm honestly confused by it myself. That's still the bird's homeworld in this game, so why it would be on the list of names cats can give planets is beyond me. And I checked, we've found 6 opponents, and there was no elimination message for the birds earlier, so there definitely were no birds in the game. I just hadn't noticed the world name, I wonder what's up with it.

Being on my first game of RotP myself, one thing I have no idea about yet is the quality of AI ship design. I also do not know what is different among the three different levels of AI that the game offers. So I do not know if the cats in Dp101's game coming up with a solid large design with heavy ion cannon is random chance, better AI, or something that would have happened in base MOO. Maybe it is just their best weapon and the AI stuck as many as possible on a hull. But in original MOO having an AI come up with a strong and/or tech era appropriate ship design could make a game much tougher than normal.

In terms of ship designs, honestly I've rarely seen a bad design from the AIs in this game, they do tend to still do the "spam highest tech gun" thing, but they seem to have safeguards to prevent e.g. disproportionate amount of bomber designs or death spores, so the result is generally pretty worrying. And they're much better about keeping up speed for everything and always having maximum map speed and combat speed. There's still holes in their logic (I recall one endgame scenario where their best weapon was the scatter pack X missiles, and that was 95% of the weapons on their ships, so I started throwing ECM on everything for the first time in my life) but generally speaking it works well.

[Dp101]

Seems like this accidentally posted early, so some might have seen an incomplete report early.

So anyways, new session new plan - for recapturing Teller I'm going to try building some bombers, while they'll only have nukes my goal will be to kill the population/factories so that a base can never be built, otherwise I'm pretty sure the Rich world will have multiple up by the time my troops arrive. Maxwell is just 2 turns away from Teller, so while I hate to have it on shipbuilding, it's the best option for getting bombs in space ASAP.

In a few turns of bombardment, Teller has produced no factories (going direct for a base, I wonder) and Pascal has been bombed out completely. I don't really mind this, while I want the planet back eventually it wasn't doing much at the time, and any distraction for the cats is welcome. Also Maxwell's base blows up.

A panther turns up on turn 145, and frustratingly blows up the bombers, but at least that distracted it enough for the Neutrinos to take it out, barely. Teller's population is left at 39, vs around 110 transports due in 3 turns.

On turn 147, Maxwell's base blows up.
A base finally completes on Teller the turn of the invasion, but 89 troops made it through, and the world is mine again. At the same time my techs stubbornly refusing to pop costs me, as the cats show up at Maxwell faced with bases that are still toothless. (then retreats for some reason after blowing up the base? I guess that base really is the AI's primary objective). I do at least get sublights, but that's not quite what I needed there, range 8 over pulsar next.

Merc missiles come in on turn 150, with a full range of choices afterwards - antimatter bombs, graviton beams, stinger missiles, hard beams, or fusion beams. I go with that last option, at the moment I simply need to win space superiority first and bombs won't help with that. A panther that comes calling at Teller the turn after swiftly learns the new order of things, taking on average 14 damage/base up from 3, while still just scratching in return (really glad they seem to have retired the heavy ions for now). Maxwell is less lucky, facing nuclear bombs and unfortunate accuracy issues, and unfortunately I discover class V planetaries this turn, meaning that I can't do the "rebuild bases in a single turn via reserve spending" trick there since they'll have to build a shield first. Improved space scanners also come in, with battle computer mark V selected next because my bases are way too inaccurate, and class V deflectors over repulsor beams for shield tech.

The cats take a step back after this, letting Maxwell finish its shield and teller gain back its pop. Interestingly, the *Kholdan* are the ones who nab Pascal, despite the, uh, interesting position:


I guess I need to be concerned about this enabling further targets for their settling/aggression, but I'm past caring at this point. It's not attacking me, so I'll take it.

The bears happen to be quite interested in the new shields, offering either controlled inferno, reduced waste 60%, or class 4 deflectors, and the lizards wanting either improved space scanner or mercs and are willing to offer any of battle suits, the same deflectors, scatter pack Vs, or enhanced eco restoration. From these I take the waste cleanup and enhanced eco restoration, considering the battle suits for that last one but that's 3.8k RP compared to 5.2k for enhanced eco, so it's less problematic for me to get it manually later. I'm not really worrying about trading away things, I figure the AIs will acquire everything via spying eventually and so I might as well get something in return from those not trying to kill me. In this new golden age, I even put the capital back to colony ships for the first time in ages, resuming the cleaning-up of the back corner. Something I do that I haven't seen much of is maintaining multiple colony ship designs - I actually remove the controlled dead colony ship in favour of a new vanilla one, because it's 2/3rds the price. If ship design slots tighten up again I'll reconsider, but for now I get to enjoy a little more efficiency.

Auto-repair then comes in on turn 153, with IRC3 transition largely behind me I go for Zortrium over IIT6, figuring that 8 is still "good enough". The council comes back around the following turn, with a new exciting development: relative parity!




Sure, it's only a 1 vote increase, but now equally my friends-ish at 7 feels much better than being down at 6. Once again everyone abstains and I vote for the cats. And then I see an announcement I've never seen before:




I saw the supernova announcement a few turns back and basically ignored it, figuring that it'll amount to nothing, and then I see this?? I wonder if it was a new world or something, only explanation I can think of. Brutal though. Of course the rocks call me up to yell at me about voting against them and the cats say nothing, but there's been 2 more frame jobs since this session started so overall I don't think it matters. I do get tired of only being able to fight at bases however, and throw this together:




This design suffered from the classic breakpoint - 2 merc-2s or 1 merc-v, a massive doubling of alpha damage at the cost of one later missile. I make the trade here since the incoming fleets are still pretty pathetic, hopefully I don't regret it. Teller can build 3 of these a year, Mentar 5, and on average it takes 8 of them hitting with both shots to take out a panther, so in a couple of turns I should have a fairly reliable force. Just as well too, since Buffon comes under attack and definitely can't make its shield in time to save it. This isn't the standard everywhere though - with some reserve spending Curie manages to pop out a base + shield at just size 31, leaving Kelvin my only vulnerable world... and then the game immediately tempts me to change that by having controlled toxic finally pop, opening up basically the whole map. I haven't shown this before, so this is an interesting UI quirk from going onto controlled radiated next (over bio-toxin antidote):




This yellow colour shows up when you can't colonise a world but are currently researching a tech that will allow it. Now watch what happens if I swap to bio-toxin antidote:




This amber colour means that there's a tech available to let you colonise a world but you *aren't* researching it. I just love this little aspect of the UI (and yes, I do immediately switch back to controlled radiated). The sigma finally sees service saving Buffon on turn 160, driving off their bomber design:




These things are honestly pathetic, but you do need *some* kind of actual ship to beat them. That 6 missile defence (the AI really loves its ECM) does almost manage to save them though, which is worrying. Overall though I feel.. good, about these turns? A lot of it is summed up by this screen though:




Look at all those 100%s. This'll be ruined in a bit as half the list becomes 3-5% when I settle a pile of toxic/inferno worlds, but for now I can look at this and be happy. At the end of last session I had 4 maxed worlds (well, 1 was missing IRC3 factories), before that I had 3. Compared to practically 8 now? Incredible. Hopefully not pushing my luck by going to a weird number will be rewarded with kindness from the game. And look, Maxwell's bases stopped blowing up! A joyous time indeed. Maybe next time I'll be allowed to, idk, actually go on the offensive! Imagine that.. I'll leave this with some overview shots, including one of the rarely-seen and quite boring western bit (and yes I am using the growth slider at that hostile colony, every other nearby colony is *also* hostile so this is the best option trust me):

[haphazard1]

Things certainly seem to be looking up. You have managed to hold on to your worlds, reclaimed the one that was conquered, and are still expanding with the new environment tech. Nice work.

The council votes are remarkable evenly divided. Most of my MOO games have at least a couple stunted AIs, even if there is not a runaway leader. Even the Nazlok are not all that far behind the rest of the pack.

The nova event hitting the rocks is interesting. In original MOO the AI was generally very good about preventing the nova event. Maybe Garnet was a very new, small world as you said. With the rocks' pop growth penalty it might have had very little production.

I have no idea about the 'Altair' thing. Maybe the game just grabs star system names from a set list, including races that are not present in a particular game? I will have to keep an eye on the names in my current game and see if there are any odd ones.

The AIs being better about speed in their ship designs would certainly be a large improvement from original MOO. I have played so many games where extremely advanced AIs had ships with tons of advanced armor and weapons crawling along at speed 1. Or mixed fast and slow designs together in fleets and wasted the faster ships' speed.

Thanks for the update!

[Cyneheard]

Things certainly seem to be looking up. You have managed to hold on to your worlds, reclaimed the one that was conquered, and are still expanding with the new environment tech. Nice work.

The council votes are remarkable evenly divided. Most of my MOO games have at least a couple stunted AIs, even if there is not a runaway leader. Even the Nazlok are not all that far behind the rest of the pack.

The nova event hitting the rocks is interesting. In original MOO the AI was generally very good about preventing the nova event. Maybe Garnet was a very new, small world as you said. With the rocks' pop growth penalty it might have had very little production.

I have no idea about the 'Altair' thing. Maybe the game just grabs star system names from a set list, including races that are not present in a particular game? I will have to keep an eye on the names in my current game and see if there are any odd ones.

The AIs being better about speed in their ship designs would certainly be a large improvement from original MOO. I have played so many games where extremely advanced AIs had ships with tons of advanced armor and weapons crawling along at speed 1. Or mixed fast and slow designs together in fleets and wasted the faster ships' speed.

Thanks for the update!

Max speed and shields/computer/ECM, and one weapon slot on Large/Huge ships for ground attack (bombs or bioweapons depending, probably "highest tech level") seem to be the default. So you'll win almost any fight that's equal tech + equal numbers - they're definitely wasting a decent % of their ship-to-ship power on ECM and the ground pounder slot, and their special choices are sometimes iffy (I've never seen High Energy Focus even when my games go late!), but it's a very safe set of design choices which is definitely what you want in an AI. You'd rather have them be 60-80% efficient consistently than constantly making exploitable mistakes.

This ship design philosophy is also another reason why missile bases are a much weaker choice to invest heavily in - the AI is both better protected from them than normal, and they're basically always able to crack them with sufficient numbers (and they do merge fleets effectively too); the other issue is that the game actually calculates the missile base cost correctly so they're a lot more expensive too.

[Dp101]

Things certainly seem to be looking up. You have managed to hold on to your worlds, reclaimed the one that was conquered, and are still expanding with the new environment tech. Nice work.

The council votes are remarkable evenly divided. Most of my MOO games have at least a couple stunted AIs, even if there is not a runaway leader. Even the Nazlok are not all that far behind the rest of the pack.

The nova event hitting the rocks is interesting. In original MOO the AI was generally very good about preventing the nova event. Maybe Garnet was a very new, small world as you said. With the rocks' pop growth penalty it might have had very little production.

I have no idea about the 'Altair' thing. Maybe the game just grabs star system names from a set list, including races that are not present in a particular game? I will have to keep an eye on the names in my current game and see if there are any odd ones.

The AIs being better about speed in their ship designs would certainly be a large improvement from original MOO. I have played so many games where extremely advanced AIs had ships with tons of advanced armor and weapons crawling along at speed 1. Or mixed fast and slow designs together in fleets and wasted the faster ships' speed.

Thanks for the update!

I mean to be fair, I did lose 2 worlds, Pascal and Bohr (seems I failed to mention the latter), but I'd gladly take 8 developed worlds over 4 developed and 6 hopeless ones. And I'm probably going to get Bohr back in a couple of turns. And the naming system for planets in this game is pretty consistent - each race has a list of names to use (you've probably noticed the brains all have science-themed ones, the rocks have, well, rocks, and the next most obvious naming scheme is probably that of the bots but they aren't in this game) and by default everything is named by the player's race, with names being overwritten by whoever claims a world, no generic list involved. I do have a half-baked theory though - maybe each faction has as part of its list of names, the capitals of its racial enemies, adding some flavour where worlds might be seemingly conquered ahead of time. Because the system prevents duplicate names these won't be used if the faction is actually in the game, only if it's not present will they show up. Just a theory though.

[Dp101]

Things certainly seem to be looking up. You have managed to hold on to your worlds, reclaimed the one that was conquered, and are still expanding with the new environment tech. Nice work.

The council votes are remarkable evenly divided. Most of my MOO games have at least a couple stunted AIs, even if there is not a runaway leader. Even the Nazlok are not all that far behind the rest of the pack.

The nova event hitting the rocks is interesting. In original MOO the AI was generally very good about preventing the nova event. Maybe Garnet was a very new, small world as you said. With the rocks' pop growth penalty it might have had very little production.

I have no idea about the 'Altair' thing. Maybe the game just grabs star system names from a set list, including races that are not present in a particular game? I will have to keep an eye on the names in my current game and see if there are any odd ones.

The AIs being better about speed in their ship designs would certainly be a large improvement from original MOO. I have played so many games where extremely advanced AIs had ships with tons of advanced armor and weapons crawling along at speed 1. Or mixed fast and slow designs together in fleets and wasted the faster ships' speed.

Thanks for the update!

Max speed and shields/computer/ECM, and one weapon slot on Large/Huge ships for ground attack (bombs or bioweapons depending, probably "highest tech level") seem to be the default. So you'll win almost any fight that's equal tech + equal numbers - they're definitely wasting a decent % of their ship-to-ship power on ECM and the ground pounder slot, and their special choices are sometimes iffy (I've never seen High Energy Focus even when my games go late!), but it's a very safe set of design choices which is definitely what you want in an AI. You'd rather have them be 60-80% efficient consistently than constantly making exploitable mistakes.

This ship design philosophy is also another reason why missile bases are a much weaker choice to invest heavily in - the AI is both better protected from them than normal, and they're basically always able to crack them with sufficient numbers (and they do merge fleets effectively too); the other issue is that the game actually calculates the missile base cost correctly so they're a lot more expensive too.

I wasn't aware as to any "incorrect" base cost formula, could you elaborate? And yeah I haven't seen HEF myself, but the AI will still throw on interesting specials when given the chance (the cats have had battle scanners on all their large designs, and in the lategame cloaking or displacement devices are common, as are subspace teleporters) as to not make designs *completely* monotonous. Bases seem to still be valuable mostly in terms of "shield checks", raising the minimum amount of damage necessary to get any casualties, but it does seem like most of the time the AI can beat any given number of bases if it's able to beat them at all.

[RefSteel]

I'm impressed by the way you've managed to develop your empire in the face of those persistent attacks! Good luck (eventually) turning the tables on the AI!

[Dp101]

Ok, new session, time for the customary staring at the insanity of past-me and questioning why on earth anything that did/didn't happen, did or didn't. I get back around to trading with the lizards, now having autorepair to give away in exchange for scatter pack Vs, followed by a quick wave of micro and taking Davy off of reserve duty (critical when reserve spending every turn was the only way to get bases up in the north) and back to researching. I also queue up a colony ship at Kraepelin for daVinci, and I realise I haven't shown off specifically how you can ensure that you build *one* colony ship and no more:




Obviously with proper micro-management this is unnecessary, but if you set a build limit like this, the planet will only build the specified number of ships, throw the excess into reserve, and notify the player/reassign sliders on its own, as if it finished building bases or something. This is on the shortlist of tools that I suspect are intended for anyone making the mistake of playing one of those ridiculously-large galaxies, since this feels very possible to track at any reasonable scale.

The bugs actually succeed in temporarily keeping me off one of the toxic worlds I was trying to claim, Joule. But sending any significant force sends them packing. A similar occurrence happens at Planck the following turn, though the bugs immediately leave, but I don't care because that turn also marks the refounding of Bohr (super glad the cats slowly bombed out these planets instead of ever sending transports, so much easier to retake stuff). May it never fall again.

Turn 164 sees daVinci (toxic 30) taken, as well as Bethe (rich toxic size 10) and Planck (ultra rich inferno 35). It seems that western expansion finally puts us in contact with the Nazlok, who immediately offer a 675-BC trade, which I match with 675 from the bears and lizards too. Ofc the shapeshifters are led by a Ruthless Diplomat - at least half of that combo is promising! And while we can see some fun stuff from the race screen (war with the bears!), there's one thing missing:




Yeah, that diplo visibility that sets this game apart from its predecessor entirely vanishes when it comes to the Nazlok, can't see current relations nor the impact of actions. Really cool, and also really annoying! Anyways, start up spying, and celebrate the current 1 colony/turn expansion pace.

Yallow finally maxes on population in the north, giving me a second maxed rich dead world to play with. I have it start feeding the reserve, not currently having a ship I really want to make (the Sigma missile boats are more stopgaps than real solutions) and cherishing the efficiency of rich + reserve. And it turns out the shapeshifters are the only ones in the galaxy with controlled irradiated so far, glad the east seems to be allergic to researching colonisation tech beyond controlled dead.

Joule gets finally founded with Sigma support on turn 168, that hoped-for colonisation rate left behind swiftly. I keep juggling my missile boats between worlds, trying to compensate for anything I see incoming on the scanners:




Some of the ancient NPG + hyper V Venom designs from the bugs were sent after Bohr here, but by rapidly assembling 15 missile boats in orbit, they turned back. Every turn there's a new thrust from the AIs, and every turn it's a gamble as to the result.

Mendeleeve and Watt come down the following turn, and I finally stop making colony ships, as the last one with a destination rolls off the assembly lines. The celebrations scheduled for turn 171 are delayed by the greatest spy result I've ever seen on turn 170 vs the cats - ECM 1, improved industrial 9, and controlled barren. That ECM is in fact an upgrade over my prior, nothing, so I nab it with more joy than it's probably worth. Vesalius is founded on 170, and Babbage on turn 171, drawing this wave of expansion to a close:




There's a minimal off in the east I could grab if I'd gone beyond range 5, but for now this is enough: 22 colonies, 4 being some variation of rich, and 1 artifacts, feels lovely. I'm definitely going to want to grab some kind of terraforming that's better than +10 given all these tiny hostile worlds, but I'm still glad I have them. And with the next wave of techs coming (honestly amazed by the degree to which they've been in relative lockstep) I'll have what I need to go on an offensive, mostly - missing any kind of bombs, but between Battle Computer V, Zortrium, Class V Deflectors, and fusion beams, there's the core of some kind of mean auto-repair gunship coming together.

Anyways, Maxwell's missile base blows up the following turn, and the turn after we get framed for the 11th time vs the rocks. The persistence displayed by everyone is admirable, I just wish they were doing literally anything else (other than invading me). The saboteurs come back T176, but I'm a bit less annoyed as every tech is in the percentages now. Granted, they're all refusing to pop, but maybe! Curie gets in on the fun too, also having its missile bases blown up exactly on schedule. Finally Zortrium comes in on 177, with exoskeleton vs reduced industrial 40% next, I take the exoskeleton as I'd like to capture some worlds off of the hopefully-soon good ships.

A council vote rolls around, yet more encouraging than before!




Middle of the pack, imagine that. The bugs surprisingly throw their weight behind the rocks, but there's no further shifts and nothing of note happens - I think the rabidly antisocial AIs this game have produced an environment where a council loss is highly unlikely because most everyone hates most everyone else.

And as it turns out, the shapeshifters lack zortrium, and are willing to trade IRC IV, repulsor beam, uridium fuel cells, or controlled irradiated.. ok, half those techs are already in the percentages, so IRC4 is the only option that makes any sense. It'll hurt the growth curve of the new colonies a bit, but there's no chance I can wait given spying prowess. Speaking of which, here's what my own spies put together:




My guess is that that white star they took in the middle of lizard space is radiated, so the combination of range 8 and controlled radiated is what allowed this contact. A brutally cramped position though.

Finally, on turn 180 the upgraded deflectors come in, with class 6 vs personal absorption being basically a non-choice given how meaningless an upgrade +1 deflectors would be. Nothing else happens to pop though, so I start about half my planets on the new factories and call it here:




And yes, Maxwell is selected for exactly the reason you expect. Honestly, really wish I'd picked up some kind of improved industrial tech at this point. If I'd been offered II5 I'd have taken it in a heartbeat, because I'm really pushing the limits of how high you can go in robotics controls with only II8. The good news is that I've basically caught up to the bears in computing tech, and will be ahead once BCV pops:




While I dearly hope this won't escalate to war (the bears are already busy which bodes well), I'm willing to take the risk to get access to those juicy bombs, engines, ion rifles.. ok not much beyond that, but that would basically fill the gaps in completely. Lets hope for some good luck, because with just a little, we'll have a design that can win wars and an empire with which to build it.

[haphazard1]

That is an impressive empire. Very nice job expanding that much with attacks and sabotage happening so often. And it sounds like the tech is coming together for some conquest in the near(-ish) future.

Thanks for the update.