Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons

[Fenn]

Happy to take part in another tagteam, and with the Fusion mod too, but having played around with it a little I will say it's one of those mods that throws a blizzard of options at you, some hidden in context-dependent submenus. Once you have the settings you like you don't have to revisit them much, though, and most settings are stored with the savefile so only the starting player has to do much tinkering.

For the kinetic weapons variant, the idea was to only use missiles, torpedoes and probably bombs on our ships. A variant like this probably depends on how much fighting we have to do more than our race choice, so all of the above sound cool to me. Cats or brains would be my vote. If we go for the Mentarans, maybe we could add an additional rule like "Weapons research must always have more spending than any other field" to offset their general strength. Or just enjoy the power!

[haphazard1]

just enjoy the power!

Now there is a fun theme for a game. Power, power, and more power.

I do like the idea of Mentarans if we go for a higher difficulty level.

[Dp101]

Well, we've already maxed out the difficulty within the base game, so yeah I'd suggest fusion, if only to get a stiffer challenge. Kinetics-only sounds fun (torps are in a weird space since lorewise they're made of energy but in terms of gameplay they function like missiles but they should probably be included), as for races.. well, the suggestion of rocks is one I'm deeply split on - on the one hand I really don't like them or their gameplay as they "ruin" the natural pacing of expansion gatekept by planetology tech, in return for a lot of annoying micro and/or pop growth being less satisfying, and I haven't played them at all in ropt as a result.. which probably means that playing them would actually be refreshing, lol. And the FTL-related theming is also neat. I also like the cats as an option, mostly because they feel like the natural counterpart to the birds, so going from one to the other feels nice.

Also on the mention of space monsters earlier, I wouldn't be scared, they typically make the game *easier* in my experience because I've rarely seen the AI successfully fight them, whereas for the player they're much easier (ok the Amoeba is easier, the space crystal can be problematic) and so it tends to just function as a random AI (or bunch of AIs) getting a swathe cut through their empire. Might be fun to enable next game.

[RefSteel]

Well, it's still going to be a bit before I have a computer that can realistically run Remnants (hopefully in the next week or so) - interrupted by the big family gathering, but it was great to see everybody again, and they're all off to their next destinations now It sounds like there's interest in trying out Fusin mod - is there a chance that someone who's played it can recommend some settings and/or describe what they're meant to do? (Or if someone wants to try it out and report on an introductory game the way Dp101 and Haphazard did for base Remnants, that would be amazing too!)

Space Monsters might be interesting as Dp101 suggests if we play against one of the more-challenging AIs (which I think I'd like to do, at least to try them out, but my vote hardly counts as I won't be able to play either way for at least a week!) but I admit part of my reason for wanting to disable them in the past was that Ray F's description seemed to suggest that they de-facto cheat in the player's favor (i.e. the AI is forbidden from actually defeating them) - I'm curious about what range of AI options exist in Fusion mod; my computer went down before I ever had a chance to try it.....

[Ray F]

If you play with monsters, understand that they will often come out when you are not technologically ready for them. And if you are winning the game at the time, they will most likely target you. They are intended to be disruptive and a lot of 4X players prefer to systematically build their empire and conquer the galaxy. That's why there is an option to turn them off.

Particular ship strategies are required to defeat the monsters (they are not like MOO1). You need fast, mobile ships to defeat the amoeba and large ships to defeat the crystal. Good luck. It's not uncommon for players to rage about the monsters! If you cannot defeat them, then you can abandon colonies before they arrive to save your colonists and then recolonize the destroyed planets. Sometimes it's easier to take the L and build the necessary colony ships to restart your destroyed colonies.

[RefSteel]

Okay, I've got my new laptop actually working (mostly) the way I want, and I'm hopefully just at the stage of asymptotic approach to removing that "(mostly)" -- I still want to test the battery a bit more, but that won't get in the way of playing Remnants (quite the contrary!) so hopefully all will be well and I'll be back to my usual (hilariously unpredictable) schedule. So!

Is there still interest in another SG here, or did I kill it by disappearing for so long? If we're still on, the sense I get from reviewing the post-game discussion seems in favor of trying out Fusion mod, and as someone who's never played it yet, I'd like to defer to others on what settings to use for our first game with the mod. Does anyone (even someone who'd rather lurk than play) have any suggestions on that - or if you've played under different settings and can see arguments for each of several, then a sense for what they do so we can make an informed decision about what game we'd like to play?

Also, thanks for those tips on the monsters, Ray F! My suspicion is that if we're winning when the monsters come along, they'll pose a welcome challenge, even if that challenge is, "Try to maintain your lead when your planets are getting slagged by space monsters against which your combat tech is completely inadequate!" My concern with them was mostly about their impact on leading AIs they may target instead. (And I have no idea if Fusion mod changes the rules around them, or if so, how....)

In the meantime: I hope everyone's been well and enjoying the summer!

[Fenn]

I'm still interested in a third SG - taking a little break suited me fine, too.

I can probably start us off with settings for Fusion if we go that route, although with so many different options it'd be a pain to list them all. Would suggest starting with relatively normal settings to reduce confusion for the players (and lurkers) who aren't familiar with the mod.

[RefSteel]

Sounds good to me; I haven't had a chance to even look at the mod yet, so I don't know what "relatively normal" settings are! (Nor what AI are options are on the table, nor what they mean.)

[haphazard1]

Glad to hear you are getting the computer situation back under control, RefSteel.

I have zero experience with the Fusion mod, so any suggestions or input from people who do is certainly welcome. Did we want to do another variant? It seemed like there was some interest in a missile-focused game, which could be interesting; it is not an approach I take very often. And what race did we want to play?

[Brian Shanahan]

I'd be interested but won't really have the energy until mid September, I'll be balls to the wall this month at work (due to holidays, we'll be down to two doing the work of five for at least two weeks) and then my brother and his partner are visiting the second week of September.