Remnants of the Precursors Showcase Game

[Dp101]

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.

What you posted and what was said the bug was don't quite line up - the post says it's about upgrading missile bases being cheap, whereas you talk about the cost not going down from miniaturisation. Is it both? Some combination of the two? If it's just the upgrade cost then it seems relatively low-impact, but if it's miniaturisation then that's very fair.

I assumed Cyneheard was referring to Sargon's discovery that original MoO's missile base costs do not adjust correctly. If I remember correctly, adding ECM increases the costs of the bases, leading to "UPGRD" costs appropriately, but other base-related tech (missiles, deflector shields, armor, battle computers) does not contribute to the bases' costs - whereas any tech gain in a relevant field (especially construction) "miniaturizes" bases the way it would a ship, thereby reducing the cost of building them. Thus, unless your ECM is high, early bases would cost more early in a MoO game than later bases with more-advanced toys.

Fascinating, thanks! Definitely haven't delved enough into the numbers to notice this myself lol.

[Dp101]

Anyways, I'd rather end today's turns on a positive note, so gonna try another session today. Main priority is getting the bugs Out and hopefully taking more of the cats' planets. I already assigned basically every move I was going to do, so hit end turn with trepidation, and immediately am flung into the fight over the cats' capital:




That Warcat design is the quad heavy fusion one I mentioned before. I spend a turn hanging back to ensure I get the first hit in, but I still lose a trio of Novas for the first time ever - those stinger bases *hurt*, and that number of Panthers with 3 heavy ions apiece can deal a worrying amount of damage. Still, I was in no actual danger of losing the fight, so clean up easily. Shedir is then retaken the turn after it was captured, but daVinci in the west lacked the same modern ships to come clean up (and it turns out I sent transports too soon and a bunch will be lost on the way in), so it'll take a bit longer. Battle computer 7 comes in, and I grab hyperspace communications over yet more ECM. With the new cloning + gaia environments, population can be regrown in just a couple of turns, so I can send a few hundred transports on either front each turn, though I'll have to slow at least a little shortly.

The mass invasion of Teller results in only 26 of 394 bugs making it down, and that was the biggest outstanding concern remaining. I don't think further invasions by the AI will meet with success now that I'm properly on the defensive. And only 20 troops get shot down over daVinci, the orbital coverage clearly insufficient, so I'm back to where I started, plus another cat world I took out in the meantime (the cats then ask for peace again, which I assume they'll do every turn from here on out, and I have no intentions of giving it to them).

One of the main things helping out seems to be the ship size bias of the bugs:




Clearly they like mediums, and clearly the AI likes putting missiles on mediums as their auto-blasters gather dust. I can only assume that the stingers at least will be rolled out soon, but for now, there's very little threat from their fleets. On the other hand, almost every planet they have has 20-40 bases, so it's not like I can do much offensively vs them for now. I'm likely to design a new mainline ship once high energy focus comes in, we'll see what miniaturisation has done for us then.

And we get an expansion warning!




Exactly the kind we want to see.. these seem less frequent in this than the original game, but I think that's not unwarranted, they did feel a little too frequent. Still, I feel like there should be 3 per game, rather than the current two, since there hasn't been an update between this and the six-system one.

I spy a worrying new trend:






Pretty sure that if this fleet gets to any planet not defended by actual ships, it'll be squashed flat immediately. Hopefully the rocks don't send too many of these! I kinda forgot that they too hate me. Anyways, I decide to test the weakest bug planet in terms of bases:




The tooltip says 14 even as the numbered inputs cover it. Anyways, this planet is only the weakest in bases, and otherwise is the main rallying point for bugs, the world of Pascal that the cats bombed out and the bugs swooped in to take. This... was an awful idea. I can outrun *most* of the missiles, but the last few squash my stack, with no damage done in return. Message received, lesson learned, considering going back for Zyon shield after the new deflectors come in. This is only about 2 turns worth of ships at the current rate, so it wasn't as costly an experiment as it first seems. And that same turn the transports that were sent to retake daVinci were shot down, marking the end of any of my worlds having transports heading for them.

Herculars come in, marking the first point the whole game that I've had missile superiority, with Disruptors, Pulse Phasors, or Hellfire torps up next. Honestly tempted by the pulse phasor since it might be better against the medium-spam than the disruptor, but that range is too juicy to pass up. The bugs then ask for peace again, sure?? Whatever you say.. I wasn't the one who went back to war last time! I want to say this signals the end of the cats, but I said that last time, so who knows. I'll certainly be more paranoid this time around. And once again I'm immediately framed, lovely.

The cats offer up a prize from the corpse of their artifacts world, planetary shield X. My own shield tree has lacked upgrades beyond V, so this is a welcome gift indeed. I wonder if there's a modifier to the chance of capturing techs for artifacts worlds? Probably not, but could be interesting.
Turn 251 is the greatest turn in the history of this entire run. *Finally*, I get what I need to turn around newly captured worlds faster, improved industrial 3, fully halving the cost of factories. ofc the top of the line IIT2 is an option next, but so is the much more fun advanced damage control. Maxing these worlds should be trivial now, now if only I could find improved robotics controls of any kind to make it useful for my own worlds.. but the bugs would rather research ECM, so there's not much to see.

Making their final stand at their last 3 worlds, the cats unveil an incredible innovation in their designs:




Look at the ECM! Or rather, lack thereof. Finally they figured out spamming it in a defensive war vs an opponent largely not using missiles anymore might be a bad plan. Too little too late though. Class 9 deflectors along with complete eco restoration *and* high energy focus all pop the same turn, and given that the next shield tech is the relatively-useless stasis field (it might be interesting with cloaking and/or torps?) I feel comfortable quickly going back for the zyro shield. Planetology holds two bioweapon-related techs and terraforming +80, since the AI no longer compulsively commits war crimes I grab the population, and finally propulsion presents a choice between anti-matter engines, ionic pulsar, or.. sub-space teleporter. I really do want the new engines, but if I could teleport next to missile-using ships? A dream. So I take it and embrace hope for the future, a future where I need not fear over a million missiles flying at me. Then again, with class 9 deflectors, Mercs are largely useless against me, which represents most of what the bugs have. Bases still have stingers, but regardless it feels appropriate to put together an upgrade:




Feels so good to see that high energy focus on the design. The Quasar should be able to walk over most everything it comes across, though it'll be much better vs the merc-spamming bugs than the heavy fusions of the cats.

Another council meeting, and that's more like it:




I feel like I've said some variation of "and now we are in a winning position and victory will be swift and assured" so many times now, and it keeps feeling true, and it certainly is about this pic, but I wish it was just a little swifter lol.
Of course hyperspace communications comes in the turn after we make our new design so we'll not get much help with miniaturisation, but I don't care much, as the next tier has the full spread of choices, and I set research to IRC VI immediately. 4 to 6 factories will be, well, a 50% productivity increase, and that should *really* end the game. Hopefully. This time for sure.

The rocks finally get around to declaring war on me on turn 255, with hardly any offensive move to speak of correlating with it. Just a bomber sent to Alkes, a world captured from the cats that still hasn't had enough time to put together a base. The first Quasar has been built though, and is right next door, so it'll be a nice test, assuming the bomber doesn't take the most likely option of running immediately. They too favour missiles, coating everything in stingers with a few heavy ions for spice, not super concerning. My spies seem to get all excited about the new war, and steal from them... Energy Pulsar. Well, clearing out the backlog is never a bad thing I suppose. And unfortunately for the rocks, this turn marks the end of my campaign against the cats:





Reduced them to one world and signed peace to avoid the genocide penalty. We'll see if anyone eventually puts them out of their misery. For now I resolve to go after Datol, which was the inferno world the rocks opportunistically grabbed all those turns ago. The situation there is a tad concerning:




The Mica uses antimatter torps, Lava stingers + heavy ion, Magma stingers, and Feldspar is still the bomber. Still, unlike last time I attacked what was clearly the rally point for the AI, I've just gone through a defensive and offensive upgrade, and so while I do lose one Nova, the ability to shoot ships before their missiles impact makes a huge difference in being able to delete some volleys, and that was the only loss. The invasion comes down the same turn and steals the brand-new torps right out of the smoking remains, and with BCVI taken as well there's very little tech the rocks have that I lack, and none that is quality (well, fine, better ECM, but that doesn't count).

And as swiftly as they came on the scene and conquered, the Quasars are rendered obsolete by advanced damage control and disruptors. I go for industrial waste elimination (60% to zero!) over the second best armour and in terms of guns, plasma rifles over both endgame missiles, proton torps, and the tri-focus plasma cannon (a weapon I'll always detest because the first time I saw it, the description tricked me into thinking it fired 3 times, rather than each shot representing 3 beams hitting at once). I hold off on making a new design for the moment, as I'm about to get sub-space teleporter which would be loads of fun (if dubiously-compatible with this design pattern) and the quasars are doing fine for now. A galaxy-wide overview and a tech comparison, since its been a while since either:






I'd stopped doing as many galaxy-wide overviews because there's not much to talk about, lots of inconclusive wars between basically-even AIs. Those Kholdan weapons are somewhat concerning, but they lack high energy focus so I'm confident I'd be able to outrange any problematic designs. Just more of the same for now... debating whether I'll start skimming more in the lategame because the cleanup of hapless AIs is more tedious than interesting, and I don't really know how to make it interesting. Still, much happier leaving things here rather than where the last update was.

[RefSteel]

Wow, looks like you turned this one around and have it in the bag! Great game, Dp101! I'm sorry to hear the cleanup phase is likely to be tedious; the virtual absence of a tedious endgame is one of my favorite things about MoO - but I suspect this is in large part a function of the galaxy size: I think MoO's ruleset works best in a galaxy of (say) 20-50 stars with 3-5 opponents (I very rarely play on large or huge galaxies even in original MoO...). Removing some of the micromanagement can help make larger galaxies easier to deal with, but there are limits to this before you in effect start just removing gameplay. That said, there may be some things that could have been done here: I have a suspicion that the AI's eagerness for and success rate with sabotage and framing, in addition to leading to repetition and frustration in themselves, make Council votes more difficult to win even when you've effectively achieved a winning position. This may be a case where a "better" AI in certain areas of gameplay makes the game less fun (whereas more variation in AI ship design, even if the different designs might appear less-optimal in a vacuum, might make the game more fun and more challenging, especially for repeat playthroughs).

[Dp101]

Wow, looks like you turned this one around and have it in the bag! Great game, Dp101! I'm sorry to hear the cleanup phase is likely to be tedious; the virtual absence of a tedious endgame is one of my favorite things about MoO - but I suspect this is in large part a function of the galaxy size: I think MoO's ruleset works best in a galaxy of (say) 20-50 stars with 3-5 opponents (I very rarely play on large or huge galaxies even in original MoO...). Removing some of the micromanagement can help make larger galaxies easier to deal with, but there are limits to this before you in effect start just removing gameplay. That said, there may be some things that could have been done here: I have a suspicion that the AI's eagerness for and success rate with sabotage and framing, in addition to leading to repetition and frustration in themselves, make Council votes more difficult to win even when you've effectively achieved a winning position. This may be a case where a "better" AI in certain areas of gameplay makes the game less fun (whereas more variation in AI ship design, even if the different designs might appear less-optimal in a vacuum, might make the game more fun and more challenging, especially for repeat playthroughs).

Thanks! Honestly I do think part of the tedium is with having a reporting structure where I limit myself to a specific turn count largely regardless of length - finishing the game is a simple matter of moving around Quasars and sending transports, but transports take 3ish turns to arrive, ships 2 turns (most of the time), about every 6 turns I get a new fleet large enough to move out (usually 4), it's not actually that slow I'm just running into latency issues, the time between getting an advantage and having that advantage arrive at enemy worlds is still a bit long. I've also had many games before where I've won a council vote far before this position, this game has had some unusually hostile diplomacy and usually there's more risk of both a council win and a council loss than there has been this game. I also personally find the AI designs to be generally still pretty varied, I can't recall a prior game where I saw so many heavy versions of weapons being used, and the ship size biases of different races helps out there too. No game is ever truly representative of the full spectrum of gameplay, so this game was always going to wind up showing a more narrow perspective on the game than might be truly fair. Kinda an unsolvable problem with a game like this.

[Dp101]

Anyways, once more unto the breach. I expect to have taken out most of the rocks and/or bugs within the next 20 turns, but am not quite sure whether that'll be enough population to win at the next vote.

My fleet hits Ajoite and I'm reminded of something else I haven't showcased yet - when firing weapons like auto-blasters, if you press 1 to just fire all, the game will fire all 3 shots from each weapon slot at a time, so if it takes 4 individual volleys to take down a ship, you'd waste 2 shots, so in those cases you need to fire individually. But on the flip side, if it's the case that you know you need to sink a full volley into something, you can just fire all and not have to wait out for triple the animations to play. The AI... always does individual shots, and so every time I see a ship with 4 slots of gauss autocannons I lose the will to live, because waiting for 16 shots every turn is.. a lot. You can also do things like press the corresponding key for bombs and then press 1 hovering your own ship if you've got one bomb slot and several non-bombs, and save the time of having to watch all your shots play out (I do not recall whether this was in the original game). Anyways, with the rocks only having stingers, there's no real threat here, only this exciting learning opportunity. Both Lapis and Ajoite have ships overhead now, with transports following, and I feel confident enough about this war to send transports alongside the military vessels.

A red line pops up on the map from a bug vessel on 261, seems like they're indeed going back to war as quickly as I expected. Not actually worried anymore though, with star gates built everywhere relevant I can reinforce any point as fast as necessary.

Ajoite gives me IIT5 and anti-missile rockets, a bit late on both counts! Meanwhile, the bugs are not exactly being subtle:




Hopefully it'll just be an amusing aside and not an actual issue. Still no combat transporters, I pray no one will learn from this game what the AI starts trying to do when it gets those (hint: you can no longer defend worlds, ever).

Lapis falls T263, giving me ECM V (the last of the rocks' goodies) and a plea for peace: No. And now some excitement!




Honestly I'd been expecting this sooner, will have to prepare. Stromatol and Amethyst fall this turn, followed by some techs popping, zyro and sub-space teleporter into stasis fields (still no choice) and interphased drives (also no choice, probably what I'd have picked anyway).

In a complete shock, the bugs declare war T264! And promptly lose 527 billion invaders over Fierias, good job. Agrell falls, marking the end of rock presence in the north-east:




This colour is just so much prettier to look at anyways. I then get improved robotic controls VI the turn after, on to ECM9 (no choice). After this wave of factories will come the new design, probably (maybe after the new engines too). I clicked through without thinking so I lack a pic, but the game offers a nice way to deal with the new factories, the ability to reassign up to 75% of sliders on all planets to industry to mass-upgrade. Still, I want to be a bit more precise this time, so I ignored it and went about doing it manually instead, which at 45 worlds was undoubtably a mistake. At least scrolling through the colonies screen is a relatively-painless way to ensure that I get every planet without missing any.

Space crystal shows up, promptly blows up in a single turn's volley from 10 quasars. Glad that's over.. and apparently I'm not doing enough economic stuff this turn, terraforming +80 comes in, on to advanced cloning over terraforming 100 (I never grab the latter because the next tier is always complete terraforming for +120).

The lizards come round next turn offering to swap star gates for ion drives, sure? I'll be getting warp 8 in the near future, but I also doubt the lizards are ever going to be a threat to me, so I see no reason to refuse. To test the need for a new ship, it's back to Pascal:




227 of this new Poison design is somewhat concerning, but it turns out high energy focus is pretty good. I do lose 2 quasars to being overconfident about Mercs (even at one damage a missile you can't tank over a thousand of them without at least some difficulties) and the Novas make an undignified retreat, but I finally take the planet's skies back. Any invasion will have to wait until after the new terraforming though. And the lizards come around with another trade, a new battle computer (VIII) for HEF! As much as this galaxy has generally been a ball of hatred, the lizards always manage to make me happy. This reminds me of an interesting diplo quirk that is either new to this game or only made clear with the new visibility:




People seem to really really like it when you kill space monsters. If I wasn't occupying the territory of several races here I'd have quite a few friends! As-is, well, I don't, but in another game you can sometimes win a diplo victory just by taking out a space monster right before an election. Everyone wants peace now, but none of them like me so there's no real point accepting now that the temporary reprieve isn't actually useful.
Bears then want to flip that battle computer I got for gauss autocannon, which would ordinarily be tempting, but I'm about to capture a bunch of tech from the bugs and I feel it's likely to be grabbed then. And sure enough, it's among the prizes from Pascal, along with a pile of junk (controlled inferno II7 doom virus megabolt cannon ECM VI)

Plasma rifles come in on turn 276, revealing what my so-far-outstanding weapons tree with all the options will give me from the last tier... Neutron stream projector and plasma torps?? No Mauler device, no stellar converter... whatever. I start going back for the missiles I skipped, not wanting to have to think about defence ever again.

The shields tree then continues to be disappointing, giving me only black hole generator, meaning I'm missing personal barrier shield and both planetary shield XV and XX. I'm glad it doesn't seem to matter, but in a closer game this would be really frustrating lol.

And then, the turn I was finally going to recapture Margulis, the world I lost so long ago:






Everyone who I didn't invade voted for me, multiple for the first time?? The power of the crystal I suppose. I click accept ruling with the knowledge that this could mean final war, and.. it does, both the bugs and the rocks won't throw in the towel. Fine, I wouldn't accept an end to this game that doesn't involve wiping the bugs out, but I do kinda wish the rocks wouldn't also have been necessary. Maybe I should have taken those peace offers anyway! Or maybe turning off the ability for final war to occur would have been smart, but then again if I want to showcase the game, might as well show what happens in about half the games of it. Capturing Margulis offers up more than just useless junk too, reduced waste 40% and 20% are about to be completely obsoleted and IIT4 is already, but battle computer IX is very welcome, makes me feel less bad about missing it earlier. I then get every tech I was missing from the lizards bears and shapeshifters, but none of it amounts to anything. At this point it seems worth it to go for a dedicated teleporting bomber to end the game sooner, and new engines coming in makes designing that now appealing (since waiting to fit ECM on it too will be unnecessary). Hyper drives over inertial nullifier or displacement device next, along with neutronium armour to finish up the construction tree. I put together this gremlin:




The game wants to call it the Electron again since my old electron design is long since scrapped, but that's not particularly interesting, so I grab a different particle for the name and go with Positron. These should be capable of teleporting next to bases and wiping planets out instantly. I pair it with a twin just in case I actually need space superiority at any point:




The Galaxy-class should be basically invulnerable to everything like this. A couple overviews at this point, since it happens to have been another 20 turns:






Unfortunately I have to stop for now, but I expect to finish this tonight. From experience, there's not much that can survive thousands of these bombers, and that's exactly what I have to work with. At the very least I plan to enjoy the devastation that this promises (so long as no sub-space interdictor shows up).

[haphazard1]

Lots and lots of fighting and conquering. Getting to the late game tech is always interesting, and you have some very fun designs at this point.

Thanks again for posting about this game. It has been a good show case of the game, and very entertaining.

[Dp101]

Glad to hear it's still interesting! On with the show:

First thing's first, lets recapture the last world that I demand from the bugs in this grudge match:




They beat us to this rich world so many turns ago, and now via the precise application of extreme violence it is part of the empire it was always meant to belong to. I reallocate shipbuilding resources neat to the bugs, using a different filter than before: "Has rally point". Whenever I'm building 2 kinds of ships, it's the most useful filter, as generally only shipbuilding planets have rally points. With star gates, the travel time is no different, so this'll only speed up deployment. I also notice 22 quasars at the prior rally point when just 10 is already approximately a death fleet, so this'll be fun. Perks of upgrading a design late, the older version gets mass-produced a *lot* as your production catches up to your ambition. Unfortunately advanced cloning still refuses to pop at 66% as I get scatter pack X at 10% odds, I keep going with the missile upgrades. Kholdan has 51 bases protecting it, I wonder how that'll do into my new bombers?




Yeah that's pretty good. It's kinda a shame these are so effective, previously I'd been up against tougher shields using them and I had to do multiple volleys of baiting missiles and teleporting around the map forcing them to run out of fuel, here I just jumped next to it and pressed button, though I did still get to show off the kind of tactics I do with these regardless:




Note how I'm out of movement and have teleportation still available. I ran to this corner to get the missiles to chase me as far as possible from the planet, and then can teleport back, letting me get back within point blank range with zero risk at any moment. I press the button once more and the capital is gone:




Building a thousand of these per turn, it should hopefully be becoming clear why this design heralds the end of the game. This was definitely the best case scenario for them, no beam weapons meant I was literally untouchable, but that's a trend with a lot of bug designs, so it'll work out great vs them at least. Final tier of computer technologies lacks any spice, so it'll just be IRC7 followed by BCXI and ECMX, not that I expect to finish any of those before the game is over. The impact of these bombers sure is a thing:




This was *one turn* of the ships existing, turn 283 (designed 280, moved to gates 281, arrived at planets on 282). Chojom is only left standing because I felt like invading. I change my rally points again, the bugs are clearly already done. Some Galaxies have even started popping out, but they'll probably be unnecessary. Several hundred Stinger boats at Cuello show why I really shouldn't be using conventional ships more, they take out 7 of 10 quasars before I order the retreat. That's the bug's extinction date pushed back a turn.. an almost identical setup at Naachtun looks more like this instead:




Those bases started at 48, and not a single missile has connected. The fleet is just unable to deal with this, even the megabolt cannon on the stinger-wielding Poisons (AI ship naming is confusing sometimes, that Stinger design is actually a bomber) can't reach and so fail to do a thing. Eventually a volley goes at my Quasars who do lose one, but I honestly could have retreated them, I just wanted to also blow up the bug fleet, an objective largely achieved:




Anyways, I get the unnecessary black hole generator and move to the even more unnecessary class 15 deflectors (why yes I would like to take zero damage from stingers) along with advanced cloning (making invasions far more feasible, shame I'm largely beyond that) into complete terraforming. I consider putting together a colony ship to take Naachtun for myself (it's artifacts!) but honestly it's not at all worth it. The death of the bugs was delayed a turn, but on 285, well, here's their last planet...




I wish I could say that all it took was that one volley in the first round of the final battle, but 36 billion bugs refused to die obediently, so it took a second. Not exactly difficult with 1k bombers coming in. Before they even get to die properly, the Galaxy debuts (ofc I lose screenshots on the last update...). High maneuverability + high initiative leads them across the halfway point of the map before a single enemy moves, and half the rock's antimatter torp Mica designs are gone in an instant. I feel like I should have to show updated designs for these things, or describe them again, but that's only because my tech has advanced so much in this time that a part of my brain can't accept that the rocks haven't also upgraded since then. And immediately after that "honourable" combat, I glass the adjacent world with pristine untouchable Positrons - have I mentioned I love this design yet? Because I love this design, it's just so unfair that it can't not spark joy. Anyways, the bugs lasted a grand total of 3 turns. I wonder how long the rocks will be?

They get a turn of quiet, but this promises very much not quiet:




If every fight is won, the war will be over in 2 years. Lets see if that happens, shall we?

They couldn't even kill the most outdated ship I have, still armed with nothing better than heavy fusion beams:




I sent it forward too! And it killed like, a ship! Feel so validated for not scrapping it earlier and removing the colony ship design over it.

Anyways, here's how the first turn of the full-on assault went for the rocks:




And on the second turn, well, I did lose 17 positrons over not leaving some movement spare to retreat after bombing out a planet, but those were the only losses the rocks inflicted in the whole conflict:




Anyways! The important bit!




That game was both easier and harder than I thought. Easier, in that there was a huge backlines area that you can see clearly on the replay:




Harder, in that the bugs were right on top of me from the start and quite aggressive. This kind of setup basically perfectly mirrored the standard play pattern of the brains, a lot of suffering early followed by a near-unbeatable endgame, and so both aspects were amplified greatly. I think overall this was an excellent starting position and most games would result in victories, but it was quite touch and go for a while.

Anyways, I'd attach the final save if RB's attachments were working. Thanks everyone for following along!

[haphazard1]

Congrats on the victory! It was an interesting game, and made a good showcase for lots of RotP features and UI. Thanks for posting aabout it.

[shallow_thought]

Good game, great thread!

[Brian Shanahan]

Thanks for the write-up, very interesting and well done.

Having bought the game recently myself, I wonder is there enough interest for a noobie SG?