Game: 1oom dev build
uiextra enabled
Mods: fixbugs.pbx
AI: Classic+
Race: Mrrshans
Difficulty: Impossible
Map size: Medium
Opponents: 5
With the Mrrshan thread going on, I wanted to see if I can win with them on impossible. Since I tend to play better when I have to tell someone what the hell I'm doing (like in succession games), I figured I'll do a written Let's Play. I'm not great at this game, so don't expect to see any wizardry, but hopefully there will be some amount of suspense for whether I win or lose. I'll also show off some of the UI improvements in 1oom ... and ask some questions about whether some of the stranger things I see are bugs in 1oom or exist in the original game too. (Last time, the first two races I encountered were Erratic Industrialist Sakkras and Meklars. I thought for sure this had to be a bug, but actually, Sakkras can have that personality.)
Everybody reading this probably knows this, but the Mrrshans are one of the weakest races in MOO because they lack any economic bonuses and instead get a +4 on their to-hit rolls. In a sense, that can be seen as a bonus to ship production: You save space and money by leaving out the battle computer! I'll let the Mass Effect humans explain how we're not going to do things:
(this is not a variant though; I may allow my pilots some heavily miniaturized battle computers at some point)
Let's get started with a view of the map:
Fast-teching Psilons, Fast-breeding Sakkras, and the Mrrshan's arch enemies, the birds. What could possibly go wrong? All yellow stars are far enough away to be possible starting locations, so I have some elbow room for a time. Some AIs will start on top of one another. That can be good or bad depending on whether they wear each other down or whether one just eats the other. Lots of red stars with (likely) habitable but poor planets and a few blue stars which are the other way around.
There are only two stars in colony range, one red and one blue. The colony ship goes to the red one because it is the one most likely to have a habitable planet, and I'm sending a scout as cannon fodder in case they meet the Guardian of Orion there. (If that had happened, I'd probably have given up on this game though - I'm not going to play the Meklon gambit with the Mrrshans!)
The other scout goes scouting the blue star, just in case it goes against type. I also open up Planetology research with precisely one point on my first turn and get Terraforming +10 as my only choice. Damn it, Improved Eco Restoration is so great to have in the early game, so research is cancelled again in favor of more factories on the homeworld. Three turns later, I find that I was lucky for a change: In orbit around Obaca is a jungle world with room for 90 pop and it's not mineral poor. The blue star, Selia, has a toxic, mineral-rich planet with room for 15 pop once I have the colonization tech for this planet type. Unfortunately, settling Obaca did not bring any more stars into colony range. Propulsion research is going to be a high priority soon!
I next send out a wave of scout ships. There's a time and place for being stingy with scout ships, but this is not one of them. I find Orion just 4 parsecs from Fierias, among other things.
Gion is fertile but poor. Useful for populating the planets around it, but a bit out of the way unfortunately. Also look who else is snooping around:
I open up Propulsion research in 2309 with Range-5 tech as my only option. I don't know what I'd have picked if I had both options, so thanks for taking that burden from me, I guess!
I pour in seed spending from both colonies for 2 turns and then trickle in more from Obaca. Fierias focuses on industry in preparation for building more colony ships.
I chase off some Sakkra scouts at Capella and Psilons at the newly discovered Rayden, Keeta and Crypto:
Another planet I discover is the barren Talas. The two red stars west of Fierias are desert and arid with 45 and 85 pop capacity. I'm basically walled off from the center of the map with a bunch of hostile planets and have to start settling with my backline.
Around 2317, I produce another round of scouts at Fierias and move them to the frontier in preparation for range-5 fuel cells opening up new star systems for exploration. A pretty nice feature of 1oom's uiextra mode (stolen from Dominus Galaxia I think) is that if you send exactly one ship somewhere, it automatically selects another (single) ship of the same type to send to your next destination.
With propulsion research nearing completion, I start constructing my next colony ship in 2324.
Range-5 pops on the interturn (at 40%) and I get the following choices:
I was hoping for engines...
That's for the first 25 turns. I've played 25 more already, but I'll finish the writeup later.
uiextra enabled
Mods: fixbugs.pbx
AI: Classic+
Race: Mrrshans
Difficulty: Impossible
Map size: Medium
Opponents: 5
With the Mrrshan thread going on, I wanted to see if I can win with them on impossible. Since I tend to play better when I have to tell someone what the hell I'm doing (like in succession games), I figured I'll do a written Let's Play. I'm not great at this game, so don't expect to see any wizardry, but hopefully there will be some amount of suspense for whether I win or lose. I'll also show off some of the UI improvements in 1oom ... and ask some questions about whether some of the stranger things I see are bugs in 1oom or exist in the original game too. (Last time, the first two races I encountered were Erratic Industrialist Sakkras and Meklars. I thought for sure this had to be a bug, but actually, Sakkras can have that personality.)
Everybody reading this probably knows this, but the Mrrshans are one of the weakest races in MOO because they lack any economic bonuses and instead get a +4 on their to-hit rolls. In a sense, that can be seen as a bonus to ship production: You save space and money by leaving out the battle computer! I'll let the Mass Effect humans explain how we're not going to do things:
(this is not a variant though; I may allow my pilots some heavily miniaturized battle computers at some point)
Let's get started with a view of the map:
Fast-teching Psilons, Fast-breeding Sakkras, and the Mrrshan's arch enemies, the birds. What could possibly go wrong? All yellow stars are far enough away to be possible starting locations, so I have some elbow room for a time. Some AIs will start on top of one another. That can be good or bad depending on whether they wear each other down or whether one just eats the other. Lots of red stars with (likely) habitable but poor planets and a few blue stars which are the other way around.
There are only two stars in colony range, one red and one blue. The colony ship goes to the red one because it is the one most likely to have a habitable planet, and I'm sending a scout as cannon fodder in case they meet the Guardian of Orion there. (If that had happened, I'd probably have given up on this game though - I'm not going to play the Meklon gambit with the Mrrshans!)
The other scout goes scouting the blue star, just in case it goes against type. I also open up Planetology research with precisely one point on my first turn and get Terraforming +10 as my only choice. Damn it, Improved Eco Restoration is so great to have in the early game, so research is cancelled again in favor of more factories on the homeworld. Three turns later, I find that I was lucky for a change: In orbit around Obaca is a jungle world with room for 90 pop and it's not mineral poor. The blue star, Selia, has a toxic, mineral-rich planet with room for 15 pop once I have the colonization tech for this planet type. Unfortunately, settling Obaca did not bring any more stars into colony range. Propulsion research is going to be a high priority soon!
I next send out a wave of scout ships. There's a time and place for being stingy with scout ships, but this is not one of them. I find Orion just 4 parsecs from Fierias, among other things.
Gion is fertile but poor. Useful for populating the planets around it, but a bit out of the way unfortunately. Also look who else is snooping around:
I open up Propulsion research in 2309 with Range-5 tech as my only option. I don't know what I'd have picked if I had both options, so thanks for taking that burden from me, I guess!
I pour in seed spending from both colonies for 2 turns and then trickle in more from Obaca. Fierias focuses on industry in preparation for building more colony ships.
I chase off some Sakkra scouts at Capella and Psilons at the newly discovered Rayden, Keeta and Crypto:
Another planet I discover is the barren Talas. The two red stars west of Fierias are desert and arid with 45 and 85 pop capacity. I'm basically walled off from the center of the map with a bunch of hostile planets and have to start settling with my backline.
Around 2317, I produce another round of scouts at Fierias and move them to the frontier in preparation for range-5 fuel cells opening up new star systems for exploration. A pretty nice feature of 1oom's uiextra mode (stolen from Dominus Galaxia I think) is that if you send exactly one ship somewhere, it automatically selects another (single) ship of the same type to send to your next destination.
With propulsion research nearing completion, I start constructing my next colony ship in 2324.
Range-5 pops on the interturn (at 40%) and I get the following choices:
I was hoping for engines...
That's for the first 25 turns. I've played 25 more already, but I'll finish the writeup later.
Psilons, Meklars, and the arch-enemy Alkari is quite the mix. And with that stretch of toxic, no planet, and Orion systems to your east initial contact is going to be rather delayed. Those barren worlds are going to be critical battlegrounds, I think.
