Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons

[haphazard1]

Poor size 35 for our third world, ouch. Usually poor planets at least have some size. Oh well, we needed it as a stepping stone. Glad to see we got to the artifacts world in time. Nice work, Fenn.

We might want to open everything (except Force Fields of course) just to see what our options are. But most of them are probably not worth investing a lot of BC quite yet. Construction maybe, depending on what we have.

Humans and cats in the area, along with the brains. Pretty busy region of the galaxy. How many AIs total for this size galaxy?

I am busy this evening, so the save is up for grabs. If no one else takes it, I can probably play some turns tomorrow. Feel free to jump in.

[Brian Shanahan]

Poor size 35 for our third world, ouch. Usually poor planets at least have some size. Oh well, we needed it as a stepping stone. Glad to see we got to the artifacts world in time. Nice work, Fenn.

We might want to open everything (except Force Fields of course) just to see what our options are. But most of them are probably not worth investing a lot of BC quite yet. Construction maybe, depending on what we have.

Humans and cats in the area, along with the brains. Pretty busy region of the galaxy. How many AIs total for this size galaxy?

I am busy this evening, so the save is up for grabs. If no one else takes it, I can probably play some turns tomorrow. Feel free to jump in.

I can play the turns tomorrow evening (GMT Summer Time) at around 6:00pm. If anybody gets to it first I'd like to slot in after then.

[RefSteel]

Great job claiming our bridge to the center of the galaxy, especially protecting our Artifacts world from Mentaran incursion, Fenn! Keeping up our factory counts on our first two worlds and continuing our vital propulsion research so we can (hopefully!) claim even more worlds is terrific too. I'll note the pictures seem to have stopped working though - maybe your image host doing something weird? They looked good earlier when I was able to see them though!

Also: I've added a much more complete scenario description to account for our variant to the first post of this thread for anyone who wants to read it, fleshing our my brief intro at the start of my first turn report. I hope it's enjoyable!

And our updated roster:

- RefSteel (played first)
- Fenn (just played)
- Brian Shanahan (UP to take us to Turn 50 - unless someone else thinks they can play and get it posted sooner!)
- Dp101 (Can be UP if you want to take it before Brian plays around 18:00 Irish Time!)
- haphazard1 (Likewise can be UP if your tomorrow play window's ahead of Brian's.)
- Whoever Else Wants to Join the Fun (Can also potentially be UP, on deck, or slotted into the order wherever!)

[haphazard1]

I have some time this morning, and should be done easily before Brian's window. So GOT it! (Hopefully not ninja'd this time. )

We have range 6 in the very low percentages, and three lovely habitable worlds to our south. Grabbing those as quickly as possible is the priority, and maybe get some scouting done in other areas if possible. I would like to get more factories at our home world, which is not maxed out. But we just don't have anywhere else with enough production to get colony ships out quickly. And seed pop will need to come from the home world as well, so I guess it is OK. I dislike not having at least one maxed world, though.

Away we go, report to follow very soon so Brian can play later today.

[Fenn]

Thanks for the heads up, RefSteel. I'd tried to use the old Dropbox method that had served me well back in the X-COM run....seven years ago, egad....but either I've forgotten how to do it right or it won't work anymore. Going to look at alternatives.

Yeah, getting our worlds maxed out is tough. I'd like to use the Poor world as a seed but it's too small to do that effectively and so we have to send pop from our more developed worlds to get our new ones stood up. Terraforming tech would help a lot there, whenever we can find time to squeeze it in.

[haphazard1]

OK, grabbing more worlds is the goal for this turn set. We are waiting for range 6 tech to complete, so for now there is not much to do. I would love to get more factories at our home world and second world, but they are pushing research to complete the tech. I do shuffle a couple scout ships, and order our three Chaser 1.0s to head for the three future colonies to provide a very limited guard against AI scouts.

After a couple turns, our scientists report a break through! Our new options are nuclear engines or sublight drives. I choose the more expensive option rather than doing warp 2 followed by warp 3. This will delay a speed incease by a bit, but avoids the wasted effort. We will just have to manage at warp 1 for a while longer.

Our home world and second world start building Nest colony ships. The homeworld will be able to build two with our second world producing one in roughly the same time. I also move our scouts forward to check out some of the stars that are now in range. Our artifacts world gets its seed pop and is building factories, with a little help from our reserves.

On turn 39, GNN announces that the Kholdan Hive has 6 star systems already.

I put a small trickle of research into the other fields to see what options we have.

Computers: Deep Space Scanner is our only choice.
Construction: Industrial Tech 9 and Reduced Waste 80% are available. I pick IIT9 since it is very cheap and we have many factories to build, but we will want both of these.
Force Fields: Do I even need to mention it?
Weapons: Hyper-V rockets and Gatling Laser are our options. I take the rockets as being cheaper and giving us defense and missile boat options.

I do not actually put any research spending into most of these fields yet. I focus our research on IIT9 to get it quickly, as it will save us a lot of BCs developing our new worlds.

Our scouts start reaching new star systems. We find what is almost certainly Mentar to the ENE (size 110, 4 missile bases). We also scout another tundra 45 in the NNE. Dead environment tech will be worth getting, with several barren or tundra worlds now scouted. Completing Terraforming+20 is going to take a while, though, before we can even start more environment tech.

On turn 46 ur solitary Chaser 1.0 drives off a human scout from Katsura. This world is going to be ours, humans!

On turn 47 IIT9 finishes. The cost reduction will certainly help. We have IIT8 and Duralloy available, but I go back for RW80% and more savings on our clean up spending.

On turn 49 we scout another tundra system south of our three new worlds. It is only size 25, but a world is a world. We also scout a size 55 steppe owned by the Mentarans in the NE, possibly their second world (or maybe third?). Our nest arrives at Katsura, adding a fifth world to our growing sovereignty. Our poor world sends some seed pop.

This brings us into formal contact with the Humans, who immediately show up asking for a 150 BC/year trade deal. I agree, it will help relations a lot even if the humans benefit more than we do. I note that the Earthers are in contact with the Kholdan Hive and the Ssslauren, as well as the cats and brains who are more local.

I check with the cats, but they are unwilling to sign a trade deal. Xenophobes, what can you do, right?

On turn 50 our Nest arrives at Harada, giving us six worlds. (Which the bugs had a while back). Our home world sends some seed pop.

The human ambassador drops by for a chat and offers a non-aggression pact. I decide to accept to improve relations. Hopefully this is not a mistake.

And done! Notes for the next player (presumably Brian):

- Our Nest will reach Hoshina next turn, finishing colonization of all the habitable worlds in range. We have scouts on the way to a couple other systems, but there is more scouting that could be done.
- RW80% is at 9%, so hopefully a couple more turns will see another drop in our clean up costs.
- The home world might want to regrow some pop, but that is up to you. More seed pop will be needed for Hoshina in any case.

Things seem to be going fairly well for the moment. Good luck!

[RefSteel]

Sounds like great progress toward claiming our side of the galaxy, Haphazard!  And that leaves us with an updated...

Roster:

- RefSteel
- Fenn
- haphazard1 (just played)
- Brian Shanahan (UP to take us to Turn 60?  Were you able to get the save?)
- Dp101 (on deck? - or UP if you want and Brian hasn't been able to get to it?)
- Whoever Else Wants to Join the Fun (Can also potentially be UP, on deck, or slotted into the order wherever!)

[Brian Shanahan]

I have the save. Sorry for the delay, just been up the walls busy the last few days.

[Brian Shanahan]

And the turns:

Interturn: we should have gone with Controlled Dead not +20 TF. Hope we have planet colonising tech next rung, but that's potentially four colonisable systems gone.
Change focus to Const Planetology but keep some spending in all fields. Queue up 6x scouts at Monteverde, we're desperately lacking

T51: Found Hoshina

send five per turn for 3 turns from Altair. Fan out the scouts

T52: scout hits Fiershan colony Sth of Hoshina

, Akechi N by NE of Yonezu has no planets

Rebalance research again, balance techs construction @ 13%, thus give it no spending and put allocation to planetology. We need to push planetology for colonising

T53 get RIW 80%. I take 2 ticks from everything but planetology to start on Duralloy over IIT 8. Realise I forgot I was meant to be seeding Hoshina (sorry for the blunder) and restart.
Change Monte Arenoso to all growth as I'm skimming off there as well.
Scout by Akechi is forced to retreat

T54 Nothing

T55: Discover Yoshii 85 Jungle in North

Great site but too far away. Am really wishing I was pushing Controlled Dead

T56: Nothing

T57: Yonezu maxes. Put on research. Monte Arenoso sends 5 pop to fill out.

T58: A Scout I sent to Adachi to fog bust was pushed away by a Mentaran combat ship. They are parking mediums over the red flagged planets in the north.
Computers, Forcfields, Planetology and Weapons all in the percentages. Rebalance tech again and take two ticks out of everything and put into propulsion.

T59: Combat at yeller star in East. Only facing three nuke bases but still retreat as we won't get a scan

Drop everything from weapons it's at 18% (hopefully will pop as quickly as construction earlier)
Let Monte Arenoso go back to building factories. Will be long enough before more pop from there stolen.

T60: Yesssssss! My zero science gamble works again! get Hyper Vs. Pick NPG over Fusion. Remember to rebalance research.
Hand off

End of the set overview with locations of non-flying colonies (shudder) marked in.

We're very much boxed into this section here everybody. Hence why I consider it a big mistake that we didn't go for Controlled Dead when Planetology last Popped. There are four systems we can colonise with it plus getting the range for Yoshii. This may be a hard hole to dig out of if the Mentarans especially start colonising those worlds.

[haphazard1]

Looks like some solid turns, Brian.

I am not sure I would call Terraforming+20 a big mistake. At the time we did not know how many tundra worlds were in our region. And adding 20 pop to each of our 7 worlds is 140 pop, which is easily as good as several smaller hostile worlds. Hopefully we can still manage to get some of the hostiles, depending on how quickly our neighbors move.

For that nice jungle planet in the north, could we get an extended fuel tanks colony ship built? Duralloy is some ways off yet in research, but we could always build a huge hull one to jump the gap and grab that planet. Most of those other systems are hostiles, so maybe the AIs will not get there for a while?