Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons

[Dp101]

We've got +15 over the rocks, so ground invasions probably won't be too much trouble, which'll probably be happening regardless of Orion as our bombers would be gathering dust otherwise. I wanted to get the small scanner ships some use and snapped a nice picture:

Honestly this isn't unimpressive - Scatter pack VIIs with a base attack level of 8 hit at +10, though our missile defence of 15 puts them to shame nonetheless (and 5-racks! Again!!!) and those torps are hitting at +9. But compared to our place in the game, it's nowhere near enough. I send off some invasions T212 to ensure we'll be winning the game, though my primary concern is seeing how many Surgeon fighters can be built at short notice after IRC re-maxing occurs.

Forces connect the following turn and I learn it is not safe at all to press the big "fire everything" button on the bombers, as I glass Bar accidentally. The new End-Seer design that got the scans above is immediately scrapped for a colony ship to rectify my mistake. For the invasion that actually *works* at Ajoite, we get a shiny new neutronium bomb as well as yet more ECM. The rocks strike back, forces fanning out from their UR colony of Herder in the south, and I'm rapidly reminded of why I really prefer building star gates on every frontline world, as I can only get saviour forces to about half these worlds... they'll have to be fine. We could make new bombers with the triple omega-V replaced with a neutronium, which would definitely be more damage against first-class shielding, but we're definitely not going up against that anymore and the resolution provided currently is much nicer (if I, you know, remember to use it).

Fighting goes smoother from there, another rich world falling, as we get pulse phasors, mauler device or stellar converter the only following choices, they both take 300 power so are probably equally possible to mount, and the mauler device is much funnier if we finish it in time.

Hilariously, colonising the ruins of Bar causes every race in the game to call us up complaining. I'm so sorry we "peacefully" took 1 world after having invaded several more over the past few turns, truly, what an offence... ah well, I'm sure the other actions also have diplo maluses.

Anyways, a couple more worlds fall in the intervening turns, council vote announcement right on schedule, population graph at a clean 67% of overall galaxy, some techs pop, but that's not what's important:

Honestly I'd have made things way easier on myself if I brought a bomber to bait shots, but I want to do this "honourably". I quickly see evidence of what I learned recently, high-energy focus reduces attack levels at further ranges, as the first volley by the guardian kills just 8 Surgeon 8.0s. The 6.1s close and deal somehow *exactly* 1.5k, then the 8.0s sweep around the back taking the faster missiles, and:

Well, if we needed further proof that this was barely a variant at all... There's a colony ship set to arrive next turn, but we get the goodies first - the customary Death Ray, the Mauler Device.. fusion beams, for some unknown reason, and class IX deflectors. We also research the subspace teleporter, not that it matters, and get confirmation that inertial nullifier was in our tree all along, I pick it even though either interdictor or displacement device would have been better because it *really* don't matter and it feels appropriate. The aftermath of this is... well. I forgot how big a diplo buff killing the guardian is, the humans want an alliance and the shifters and lizards offer us trade deals. In the aftermath I also see the humans are willing to offer complete terraforming for battle computer XI (yeah, we still haven't caught them in tech, amazing) which I suggest to the next player, but it's clearly irrelevant. We hit 68% population this turn and the game is basically in the bag.

Notes:

Just win lol.
(seriously though, if there's any concern at all grab complete terraforming and/or knock over a rock world or two, but it should be impossible to not win at the moment).

Think Brian is up now to take us home?

[haphazard1]

Very nice turns, Dp101. Kind of ridiculous that the humans still have tech that we do not. I guess they were getting huge trade income for much of the game, until we pretty much eliminated their trade partners. Also rather amusing that taking Orion caused races we put into zoos to sort of like us again. Given how large the penalties are for occupying their former worlds, that should wear off pretty quickly.

Not that it should matter for much longer.

[Brian Shanahan]

I have the save, but between crashing hard over the weekend after a great trip and being busy at work I didn't get to do my assessment for the promotion until about five minutes ago. I won't play the game tonight, though I have taken a sneak peek. Edit: I started maxing population at un-maxed planets and given that we're in the final stretch I'll just play this out carefully but relatively quickly. No notes, will get the council vote.

Going by pop stats we currently have 0.67661691542288557213930348258706 of the Galaxy's population with about 8 planets not at max pop. Cycle through the planets and refocus un-maxed to population as needed, spend reserve and when settled throw everything at Orion.

Be back shortly.

[Brian Shanahan]

First thing I did was to propose peace with the Rocks, no need to go to war when this game is cooked. I did turn on spies everywhere though to see if we could pull anything new. Edit I turned them all off again except against the Uomons as they were the only ones who have techs on us. Please, please, steal terraforming +100.

Saw that the Humens were willing to trade Complete Terraforming for Class IX shields. More terraforming ahoy! Then realise traded techs don't come in until the next turn, so no more terraforming for another few seconds.

On the next turn, after about forty bajillion clicks to make sure everybody was growing the 40 pop needed and everybody but Altair were putting the rest onto building factories I ended turn. In other news I colonised Orion and the Rocks weren't happy. Orion went onto terraforming, got half the reserved dumped into the planet and about 160 pop routed from various worlds nearby. Decided to stop spying on them bald monkeys. Don't want to break our alliance with the only party capable of throwing a wrench in the works.

In year 520 (turn 222) the rocks come looking for a trade deal (3050BC). In my infinite generosity, and to prepare myself for being galactic emperor, I say yes. Oomens want to go to war against the Sslaura, say yes but do absolutely nothing to prosecute it. Get 41 pop messages. Realise I over-sent pop to Orion (by about 100 pop because of no terraforming at 2 pop, D'oh!)

Now the damn, dirty apes want us at war with the brains in year 521. Ok, but again no moves made. I will be glad to be the emperor and just be able to slap everybody down to peace. We are now at 0.77766699900299102691924227318046 of pop with another 140 to grow at Orion. Maybe some birds will vote third party to spoil the election.

Election in November! Election in November!

It'll be very tight, may not quite have the votes.

Of course we have seven more votes than needed. Cryslonids give us their eleven votes (must be at war with those backwards primates). Everybody else either gives their pitiful one vote to the stinky Ummans or abstains. We win at over 80% of the vote, a close shave.

As usual for a victory I present the turn before save for your delectation (game is saved to the default name convention as it's an auto save). I ran it by again just to make sure that no micro is needed to be done to ensure victory and no, the auto save is at the end of turn 223 so all you need to do is click end turn. I note that if you go straight to the vote without looking at the summary the AIs vote differently than if you look at the summary first. Must be a bug.

Congratulations on the win everybody. Some great work done by all of you, and it's very nice of you to allow me to bring it home after fecking off on holidays for two weeks.

[shallow_thought]

Also for the reporting.

[haphazard1]

Nice work bringing us through the home stretch, Brian. And birds rule the galaxy.

Those crazy humans, going to war with one planet empires. Apparently exterminating the poor cats was not enough for them. I guess having all that tech and still losing drove them nuts or something. (Really, they got very unlucky drawing the assassination event that led them to genocide the cats. Before that, their alliance with the brains had them in a very strong position.)

This game certainly went longer than I originally expected, and we ended up with all the late game tech toys. As Dp101 noted, our 'only small ships armed' variant turned out to be a fairly gentle restriction in the late game; it was a tougher issue early on, when lack of tech miniaturization was actually a real problem. But it was a fun idea, and doing something other than my usual huge auto repair behemoth ships was a good experience. I have learned things from this game. And beating a very strong human/brains alliance as the birds is a pretty nice accomplishment, too. It has been fun playing as a team with all of you.

I think I need to try some games of Remnants with the space monsters turned on, just to see what they are like. Horrible devastation will probably result.

[Fenn]

Good stuff, everyone. I had a lot of fun playing through this set with you all, although I'd agree that the variant wasn't hugely impactful. I often find myself unable to express myself exactly how I want, and end up saying nothing at all, but I was following each update closely.

[RefSteel]

Great job wrapping this one up, everybody! (And trashing the Guardian into the picture!) That was a thoroughly decisive victory! I had a great time playing and discussing this one with everybody - players and lurkers alike!

I'm sorry I didn't get to take part in the conclusion, but as you can imagine, I've been a bit on the swamped side (and that'll continue through the weekend and beyond with family about to arrive in town, some of whom I haven't seen for years!)

So in spite of the fact that I'll likely disappear for several days shortly, I may as well ask for later on: Is there still interest in a Kinetic Weapons Only variant? It should certainly be more of a challenge since we'd be rendering the AI's obsession with ECM actually effective against our weapons of choice! I could see playing as any of several races:

- Mentarans for the best chance of getting the right weapons in our tree
- Cryslonoids for flavor purposes (e.g. FTL Rock ships and their love of missiles)
- Fiershans for the to-hit bonus to counter enemy ECM and weapons excellence to at least speed us up the tree to rungs that do have missiles in them
- 'loks to steal missile tech if we don't get it ourselves
- Meklonar for the production base to build big ships crammed with missiles and the computer excellence to get a

Any thoughts on what would be best?

And/or - do we want to try out the Fusion Mod, and see if one of its AI offerings turns out to be more challenging and fun?

[haphazard1]

There has been quite a bit of talk about the Fusion mod and the various advantages it offers. Perhaps we can give that a try? I am not sure what we need to do to make certain we all have the same version and avoid any incompatabilities.

For other items, I like the idea of playing as the Cyrslonoids. The rocks always play quite differently than any other race, so that would give the game a different feel even before we add the variant. But I am happy to try other races/galaxies/variants if the team prefers something else.

[Brian Shanahan]

Great job wrapping this one up, everybody!  (And trashing the Guardian into the picture!)  That was a thoroughly decisive victory!  I had a great time playing and discussing this one with everybody - players and lurkers alike!

I'm sorry I didn't get to take part in the conclusion, but as you can imagine, I've been a bit on the swamped side (and that'll continue through the weekend and beyond with family about to arrive in town, some of whom I haven't seen for years!)

So in spite of the fact that I'll likely disappear for several days shortly, I may as well ask for later on:  Is there still interest in a Kinetic Weapons Only variant?  It should certainly be more of a challenge since we'd be rendering the AI's obsession with ECM actually effective against our weapons of choice!  I could see playing as any of several races:

- Mentarans for the best chance of getting the right weapons in our tree
- Cryslonoids for flavor purposes (e.g. FTL Rock ships and their love of missiles)
- Fiershans for the to-hit bonus to counter enemy ECM and weapons excellence to at least speed us up the tree to rungs that do have missiles in them
- 'loks to steal missile tech if we don't get it ourselves
- Meklonar for the production base to build big ships crammed with missiles and the computer excellence to get a

Any thoughts on what would be best?

And/or - do we want to try out the Fusion Mod, and see if one of its AI offerings turns out to be more challenging and fun?

I'd be interested, but what exactly is the restriction in kinetic weapons? Is it missiles only, missiles and bombs or missiles bombs and weapons like NPGs?