Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons

[RefSteel]

Our bombers could have destroyed the enemy bases, but we could not have cleared the system for space superiority.

Hmm - well, then I either miscalculated, miscommunicated, or both - my apologies either way!

There were no rock ships visible the turn before; I do not know if we just did not have enough scan range, or if they showed up that turn.

Not enough scan range - another of the reasons a long-range attack is so difficult. Our Improved Scanners only reach 7 parsecs from our colonies and (I think it's) 2 from our ships, and our ships tend to be 3-4 parsecs out the turn before they arrive given the galactic geometry.

The production gap is a huge problem.

Agreed; we'll just have to prove we can put ours to better use than theirs!

On the design slots: We only have two (medium, unarmed) Falcon's Eye scanners, and we more or less know what's on the enemy fleets for now. Those can be scrapped to make way for e.g. a stabilized short-range bomber (to attack the cats at either world or both - in case we find their second world is a better target after all!) Then, if our long-range fleet can destroy a colony and hold its skies long enough for our lone colship to plant a base of our own and our short-range defensive fleet to get over there, then first the Nest and then the rest of the long-range fleet can be scrapped as needed (at least once we're confident in the short-range reinforcements holding). As soon as the colony is planted, we can even send a full-strength short-range attack (perhaps including the bombers built for the cats) - and then transports; our groundpounding tech has increased a lot too - at another target on the far side of the galaxy where we might be able to get our defenses up quicker than a built-up-from-scratch colony. The whole (crazy, risky) plan (some of the risks of which were in fact realized) was to just get a toe-hold over there so we could send a real (short-range) attack from there.

[EDIT: Oh - and there is a lower bound to targeting accuracy. I've been assuming it's the same as Orion's: 5% to hit if their attack minus our defense is -5 or below. If I'm wrong and the minimum is 10% ... that would change the calculus drastically, especially for Alkari.]

Regardless of what you choose to do, good luck, Dp101!

[Dp101]

Ok. Scrapped the scanner as suggested, replacing it with a Raptor 4.0 bomber, the aforementioned AM + stabiliser design. Set Kuroki to build it while leaving Tsukushi on the Swift 4.1, and added Altair and Katsura to the effort since I'd really rather more than 2 shipbuilding planets if we're going to make a go of it. Rallying everything to Katsura, including the Talon fighters, currently 150 bombers are being made per turn so I reckon 2 turns of production from the backline worlds will be enough to finish the cats, even considering that we'll be hitting both planets at once (and Katsura's production will stay useful for longer so it'll make sure we've got enough, 30ish/turn should add up to an extra 120 when factoring in the 4 turns of travel time on the reinforcements from Kuroki). Also spent some reserve at Monte Arenoso to get the factories in gear more, going from 11/turn to 34, meaning it'll be done and contributing in 2 turns rather than 6. Just to make sure of space superiority I'm also going to produce about 100 more Talons from Hoshina, 265 isn't quite enough for me to feel confident chewing through that much HP with things still untested... I mean, it *should* be, but I really don't want to be wrong lol.

I'm also tempted to switch the spying off for the brains and the humans, but the hit rate has been drastically higher than I'd expect so I leave it... for the humans, I switch off on the brains because I *really* do not want them coming to attack us.

Press end turn and get a good screenshot:

Shipbuilding reports never fail to make me happy.

T142 we get a good rock spy hit, though they don't have much we want, class X planetaries is nice but I'd rather not need to use them. So I grab their best ECM jammer (IV) to help with further spying. They react to this by uh. offering a large trade agreement for 1375?? I guess current plans don't involve attacking them..

T144 sees a council vote announcement and an opportunity to steal a mass driver from the cats. At this rate they'll have no tech left to steal when we invade! We tell them the humans did it. We also get to steal from the bugs, I nab their armour mostly for a bit better ground combat.

T146 our fleet is finally assembled, around 800 ships in total, the majority Raptors. I see a new cat design, the Catamount, but there's basically nothing relevant it could possibly have with their computers being limited to mk 3s. Without a scanner they max out at -4 to hit, with it's -3, so 10-20% hit chance? Anyways, I send most of the talons to Achernar given their fleet distribution, and slightly more Raptors to Fierias given their base distribution. 2 years until I find out how bad an idea this was...

Anyways, the attack hits, and I learn the most important thing about Catamounts: A stack of 10 of them die in a single shot by 150 talons. I also realise that the cats are so backwards they're firing *hyper V*s, not even scatter packs, and 57 missile takes out 4 bombers - could have tried dodging more but it was really pointless. 265 raptors oneshot the defences, the local Panther misses every single shot into them and promptly explodes thanks to the Talons. Achernar promises to be a little more exciting, as they have *eleven* Catamounts so there's a nonzero chance they survive a volley. They *didn't*, but I mean, theoretically! We lose 2 bombers to the missiles and 3 to the 6 leopards and that's it for the entire cat fleet. And uh, damn I'm glad I thought about the possibility of a rich world:

Note, they don't have soil enrichment, this is a *naturally* fertile + rich world. It gets the reward of having around 50 birds sent at it, which is probably complete overkill but I want to be sure. The cats hilariously call us up to complain and I realise I forgot to declare war, so I correct that error, for symbolic reasons as much as anything else.

Turn 149 is the election, with uh, hm:

I wonder how the game decides who's nominated when there's a tie in population? Regardless, glad to not be on the podium given the 100% chance that the humans and brains would stack their votes. I abstain out of an abundance of caution, and the humans hit 34 votes, so voting for them would have lost the game, but in retrospect I absolutely should have gone for the brains.

I discover an amusing problem after consolidating my forces above Achernar: it builds 4 more missile bases and the combined weight of the bombers kills half the population! I send the majority back to Katsura to be safe, hopefully they'll be unable to even build more bases now. The caution is warranted, as even 99 bombers rather than the 400ish I had before knocks off another 10 pop after they build another missile base T150. I wonder whether the safest option would have been to stop bombing altogether? Regardless, the resulting fight isn't even close, and our scientists celebrate by giving us repulsor beams, with both class X and absorption available as followups. I select the latter since the former seems very stealable from almost everyone. Also the lizards show up! I start up spying on them before saving.

Notes for whoever winds up being next given the current environment of skips:

ER force currently mainly at Yonezu with around 1k ships, Akechi has 100 more swift 4.0s as well as the colony ship. Still very much in favour of attacking the bugs.
The cats are sending some transports to try to recapture Achernar. Absolutely nothing needs to be done about this, but there's a small chance the red line might cause nonzero panic, and I wish to calm all fears to the proper level.
Trades: The rocks will hand us class X shields for either range or ion stream projector. The bugs have class V deflectors and will accept fusion drives or hard beam for them (my vote: no!). Brains only offer us energy pulsar and warp dissipator and I frankly cannot be bothered to even check what they'd take for them.
Short-range fleet entirely above Achernar or a small component headed for Katsura.

Anyways, good luck with the ER adventure mk 2! Or whatever else happens to occur.

[williams482]

A bit late to be relevant for this game, but FYI: the cats kept retreating from their earlier attacks due to a known bug with the base/modnar AIs. If they are not currently at war, even if they intended to declare war, and a fleet entering orbit of a rival world encounters any resistance whatsoever (a single laser fighter is sufficient) then they will retreat their fleet instead of declaring war and attacking.

In other words, it's trivial to prevent the AI from invading you provided you don't do anything to draw a war declaration ahead of time (such as by bombing one of their worlds).

"Rookie" AI in fusion mod, otherwise functionally identical, does not have this limitation and will happily swat aside planetary defenses in a surprise attack.

As for a way to get both cat planets without genociding them, see if you can draw the humans into the war. Were the humans not pacifists they would likely jump in of their own accord (if, again, they were left with an unguarded planet to orbit). Most likely they will bomb out any enemy planets they can make orbit of, and if you are prepared you should be able to slip a colony ship in after. If they do try to invade, with clever timing you can probably shoot down their transports with minimal diplomatic repercussions.

[haphazard1]

Sounds like some solid militaristic turns, Dp101. Fortunate for us that the council vote was between the two alliance members. If we manage to finish/steal advanced soil, that will probably have us back as a candidate again. Taking one of the cat worlds will also likely do it, given how close the pop counts were. That will get the alliance voting together, and since they got other votes and almost won this time...that could be very bad news for us. We need to either avoid nomination or gain enough votes to reach a veto block before the next council meeting.

Hmmm, a rich 65 or a larger than 100? I am assuming the cats have already done some terraforming. Rich worlds are nice, but if Fieras is twice the size...not sure which one I would take. We should soon have advanced soil tech, so both will become gaia planets.

I guess Fenn is up on Friday, unless RefSteel wants to jump in and play a set before then.

[Dp101]

A bit late to be relevant for this game, but FYI: the cats kept retreating from their earlier attacks due to a known bug with the base/modnar AIs. If they are not currently at war, even if they intended to declare war, and a fleet entering orbit of a rival world encounters any resistance whatsoever (a single laser fighter is sufficient) then they will retreat their fleet instead of declaring war and attacking.

In other words, it's trivial to prevent the AI from invading you provided you don't do anything to draw a war declaration ahead of time (such as by bombing one of their worlds).

"Rookie" AI in fusion mod, otherwise functionally identical, does not have this limitation and will happily swat aside planetary defenses in a surprise attack.

As for a way to get both cat planets without genociding them, see if you can draw the humans into the war. Were the humans not pacifists they would likely jump in of their own accord (if, again, they were left with an unguarded planet to orbit). Most likely they will bomb out any enemy planets they can make orbit of, and if you are prepared you should be able to slip a colony ship in after. If they do try to invade, with clever timing you can probably shoot down their transports with minimal diplomatic repercussions.

Interesting to hear that it's a bug. Though from my experience it doesn't seem to prevent sneak attacks, as the AI will almost always only declare war the exact turn their fleet arrives, but maybe I've just experienced outliers and this only happens when attacking undefended worlds? This might be the best argument yet for fusion mod..... is Rookie equivalent to Base, or Modnar?

Also the humans continue to have a NAP with the entire game so getting them to help was never realistic or feasible, alas.

[RefSteel]

Nice turns, Dp101!  Achernar will be a great addition to our empire very soon - good thing you sent so many bombers away to keep from glassing the place! - and it looks like you gave their homeworld something to think about too, all on top of good tech choices.  (Including the espionage variety!)  Great to see our little fighters doing such good work too; I think we may have been underestimating them for an in-game century - but on the other hand it might just be that those Talon 4.0s are especially terrific - and that we're targeting the hopelessly-backward cats!

I'm not sure, but I think election order goes by actual population (rather than just the number of votes with player oder as a tie-breaker, as in MoO) as shown in the status bar graphs.  Either way, another level of terraforming tech (or Atmo if they lack it) for one or the other might decide who our next-election opponent will be.  Here's hoping it's the Brains!  Beyond that, we have 24 turns to do some electioneering!  If the bugs and rocks are still at war, that probably means picking one of them as our target, trying to use our long-range fleet to get a toe-hold in their space as discussed, and conquering all we can of our target while making friendly overtures to the other, to maximize the voting power most likely to go to us.  We won't get to a veto by then, but we might get a loss-proof voting bloc if that works out.  And at least we've met the lizards now!  Hopefully this game, unlike last time, we'll actually get a chance to interact with everyone in the galaxy!

On play order, I have a packed day tomorrow and a lot still to do tonight, and depending on timezones, it is or will soon be Friday already, so...

Roster:
- Dp101 (just played)
- Fenn (Up Now!)
- RefSteel (on deck)
- haphazard1
- Brian Shanahan (skip through July 12th)

[williams482]

A bit late to be relevant for this game, but FYI: the cats kept retreating from their earlier attacks due to a known bug with the base/modnar AIs. If they are not currently at war, even if they intended to declare war, and a fleet entering orbit of a rival world encounters any resistance whatsoever (a single laser fighter is sufficient) then they will retreat their fleet instead of declaring war and attacking.

In other words, it's trivial to prevent the AI from invading you provided you don't do anything to draw a war declaration ahead of time (such as by bombing one of their worlds).

"Rookie" AI in fusion mod, otherwise functionally identical, does not have this limitation and will happily swat aside planetary defenses in a surprise attack.

As for a way to get both cat planets without genociding them, see if you can draw the humans into the war. Were the humans not pacifists they would likely jump in of their own accord (if, again, they were left with an unguarded planet to orbit). Most likely they will bomb out any enemy planets they can make orbit of, and if you are prepared you should be able to slip a colony ship in after. If they do try to invade, with clever timing you can probably shoot down their transports with minimal diplomatic repercussions.

Interesting to hear that it's a bug. Though from my experience it doesn't seem to prevent sneak attacks, as the AI will almost always only declare war the exact turn their fleet arrives, but maybe I've just experienced outliers and this only happens when attacking undefended worlds? This might be the best argument yet for fusion mod..... is Rookie equivalent to Base, or Modnar?

Also the humans continue to have a NAP with the entire game so getting them to help was never realistic or feasible, alas.

Rookie is probably closer to modnar, although base and modnar are extremely similar in how they function. I found rookie to be a similar challenge to modnar when I started playing Fusion Mod. 

Amusingly, in randomized AI-only test games, rookie performs marginally worse than base and modnar (which are essentially even). The going theory is that the bug is actually beneficial to the AIs in that it prevents a lot of dumb war declarations on superior opponents. Naturally, though, you'd rather the AI be tougher to neutralize. 

As for the sneak attacks, they certainly try plenty, and if you don't see them coming in time or they target an undeveloped world with no defenses, they can reach orbit for free, declare war formally, and then proceed unencumbered. That was usually the pattern when they got me, before I learned about this bug.

Tragic that the humans are so unhelpfully congenial. Pacifists gonna pacifist, I guess. Except when they don't.

[Fenn]

Ok, I'm back to regular schedule. Should be able to take the turn tonight. Good work on neutralizing the cats - Achenar is a huge pickup and it's only a shame we didn't clear them off earlier.

Probably will go after the bugs next, if only to give all these ER ships something to look forward to...

[Fenn]

The war against the cats is winding down, as a much more momentous incursion begins...

There's no point in delaying; on turn 151, our first invasion fleet sets off for Acanceh, the Kholdan planet closest to our staging grounds of Akechi. The Altairi forces make no pretence of justifying their aggression; indeed I only bother to declare war four turns into the conflict.


The planet is lightly defended - only one Tarantula and six missile bases - and is easily overwhelmed. The colony is bombed into oblivion, which is just as well for our Colony Ship which stands up a new, avian settlement. With Acenceh secured we can bring over our non-extended range ships and, importantly, transports. Many of these set out towards Acanceh and Civiltuk


The same turn, we get the opportunity to steal from the Humans. I hem and haw a bit before choosing Propulsion, which gets us Dotomite Crystals. Then follows a series of diplo messages: the Nazlok sign us up for 1025BC trade, presumably because our capture of Acanceh brings us in trading range, the Cryslonoids cheer us on for attacking Kholdan, and the Humans turn up to complain about our spying - for this I have our spies all Hide for now. It would be rather catastrophic to provoke war with them just now.

Later our spies steal Reduced Waste 60% from the Kholdan, and somewhere in this we teched Advanced Soil Enrichment, whence I move to Terraforming +60 as our only choice in the next tier


Here we have the movements in the warzone; Kholdan itself is up next, followed by Civiltuk when all the long-distance transports get nearer.


Our first ground invasion - not moving in after a planet's been depopulated - is a success. A costly one for facing 11 defenders, but all's well that ends well.

We end up plundering Death Spores and Class X Planetary Shields from the factories, quite a find when we haven't even built up to level 5 shields anywhere!

On turn 160, we capture Civiltuk without incident, and finally pop Armored Exoskeleton, which should make future conquests less costly. Current options for Construction are Improved Iindustrial Tech 5 and Andrium Armor; I have us on IIT 5 but the choice is still open.


Our progress so far. We've dealt considerable damage to the Kholdan fleet and claimed a solid bridgehead, but they still possess many ships - the large Tarantula missile boats being the most troublesome. The Fiershan made peace with us during the Kholdan war so we can probably bid farewell to our troubles in that corner of the galaxy and send our Talons in the theatre off towards the Kholdan front.

I have Kuroki, Tsukushi, Altair and Katsura building ships - Katsura on Talons and the rest on Raptors, since our bomber losses have been far higher than among our fighters. Kaxuinic is the closest Kholdan planet now, but its complement of ships could inflict heavy losses on our small ships before we can punch through. Should be more than doable though.

Wanted to do some more creative writing with this one, but it's late now and I want to get the save posted tonight. Overall quite happy with how the turn progressed; I think we've turned the corner on this game, barring some sudden and unfortunate event.

  RSG-02-160.zip (Size: 110.07 KB / Downloads: 1)

[RefSteel]

Great job getting us purchase on the far side of the galaxy! I'll have a look at the save tonight and see what I can do with it over the weekend to try to keep our birds soaring!