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When can we start designing and sending huge deathfleets? I remember fleets with a ton of carriers vomiting what seemed like an endless cloud of fighters.
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Dec 11, 2016 17:44
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Deadmeat5150 posted:When can we start designing and sending huge deathfleets? I remember fleets with a ton of carriers vomiting what seemed like an endless cloud of fighters. We are already have those. In fact, if you go back a page and read the last update, there are multiple battles with endless clouds of fighters. Fake edit: And it will be a while until the next design contest, simply because it takes me a lot of work. Also the LP basically treads water for multiple updates during a contest and it's already somewhat of a slog. Do you really want to slow down progress even more? I'm trying to think of something for you guys to do in the future, though.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:04
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So the Klackons are actually offering a moderate challenge? That's a relief.
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Dec 11, 2016 18:07
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Some errata: Last update contained an error, it has been corrected. Shipdesign posted:
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Dec 12, 2016 20:52
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Lore 30: The Orion Sector Rises Again The New Orions had made an example of their detractors, and their point was crystal-clear to the remaining civilizations in the Orion Sector. With hostilities finally at an end, the New Orions and the indigenous Orion races met in the Senate to debate, and occasionally even decide, on matters of sector-wide importance. One of the most important of such legislations was the NBC Ban of 19110 GC, being a simple ban on the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. This item of the Lex Galactica was beneficial to both sides- the indigenous Orions wished to appear less threatening to the New Orions and keep civilian casualties to a minimum should another Orion Civil War be in their future, while the New Orions wished to keep their own limited population safe. Although the Senate was a place for debate and communication, there was no doubt about who had the true power. The New Orions remained firmly in control over the part of the Orion Sector within the Senate's military range (the Senatus Imperium Ultimum, a radius of several jumps from Orion). They played the ethnic Orions against each other, protected their positions of power within the Senate, and continued to offer the threat of military retribution when it served their interests to do so. Their influence remained strong, and their will frequently set the tone for policy throughout the sector, but the natives were getting restless. With the waxing indigenous races of Orion before them and the waning Antaran Hegemony behind them, the New Orions were sitting very uneasily on the fence between the two. As the Senate brought the Orion Sector together once more, the reestablished contact enabled many of the indigenous Orion races to remember the past, times before the New Order, times before the Dark Age, when they were masters of the sector, and their empires spanned the skies. The embers of an Orion renaissance were beginning to glow again. And their questions drove them harder, faster, higher, for they knew that knowledge would give them power. How strong were the New Orions? What happened to the true Antarans themselves? What secrets lay buried in lost Antaran and Orion colonies? What of the stories of the Orion races' glories during the legendary Pax Humanica? And was there something even before those ancient times?
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Dec 12, 2016 20:54
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As promised, the first lore-entry dealing with the minor races! Lore 31: Phaigur While most of the minor races are just older races recycled as destitute survivors after the death of their homeworlds, there are some unique races, too. Too bad this post is about the Phaigur, one of the newest entries into the Kingdom of Almandin. The Phaigur are so unknown Google Search only gave me back screenshots from my own LP when I typed “Phaigur” into the search window. To my horror I also learned my transcript of the Galactic Encyclopedia was missing any references to them, so this post very nearly ended here. But then I remembered to search through the readme.txt in my game folder! And found nothing again. Welp. Some manual searching revealed there were some stats, but listed under “Fungal”, which is weird considering the Phaigur are the only fungal minor race anyway, but gently caress it. Here is their stat block: Fungal (Magnate only) Max Oppressometer 4, Military Maintenance 85%, Population Growth Bonus 15%, Ground Combat Rating 3, Ground Combat Initiative +10, Ground Combat Evade +120 (Magnate is MO-speak for “minor race” and by the way, searching through the Galactopedia with “Fungal” also revealed nothing.) To put this into words, the Phaigur are dainty little mushrooms who can take less oppression then Humans (without modifications, that would be a 5), which makes them really unhappy even in our rather freedom-loving state. gently caress. Military Maintenance for them is only 85%, but it’s not explained what that actually means, it certainly doesn’t relate to ships, so I have to assume this relates to their ground units’ maintenance. So they’re cheaper soldiers. They also procreate rather fast, with a 15% bonus to population growth. They get a Ground Combat Rating of 3, which is better than the unfixed vanilla GCR of 1 for every race, but in fixed vanilla and here this is atrocious. A later people will have a GCR of 9, which is the best you can get. 3 is basically milquetoast ineffectuality. Their military secret bonus power is acting fast (+10% initiative) and ducking (+120 evade). So even though the Phaigur can’t really take a hit, at least they are rather hard to hit. This means the Phaigur won’t be a total waste on the battlefield. If they get hit, they’ll go down fast though, being squishy mushrooms and everything. The lore blurb the Phaigur get in-game doesn’t really explain anything beyond “they are mushroom people and like peace”. Looking them up in the planetary overview you can find out that they prefer Earth-like planets, similar to the Saurians (like the Raas for example). The sad thing is until we get some Phaigur-leaders and their background lore to hopefully give us something more (there are some, I remember getting one like 10 years ago in an older playthrough), this is it.  But don’t worry, sooner or later we will have some military units build from them, so I can at least look up which terrain they prefer! (I want to say “caves”, since they’re mushrooms, but that’s just guessing so take this with a piece of salt.) Edit: Over time I'll add more info to this post if I can find it. Libluini fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 12:48
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So basically we've got a bunch of tiny fungus-folk that we can throw at the enemy in weepy waves to distract them while the artillery gets its aim in. And then no one will mourn their inevitable and wholly unavoidable casualties from the artillery barrage. Are they the first minor race that Almandin has recruited?
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Dec 14, 2016 15:02
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PurpleXVI posted:Are they the first minor race that Almandin has recruited? I don't know. MO3 doesn't have an easy accessable overview of our population, I'd have to look up all regions on all planets manually. But let me try to finagle with the settings in my planet overview menu, maybe I can cut that insane task into something more managable...
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Dec 14, 2016 19:59
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Also are the Phaigur at least happy with some different environmental conditions than Raas and Silicoid?  Something that might make them useful to colonize some new categories of planets?
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Dec 14, 2016 20:31
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PurpleXVI posted:Also are the Phaigur at least happy with some different environmental conditions than Raas and Silicoid? Different then Silicoids, but similar to Raas. They prefer Earth-like planets. The Imsaies we got are far more different, since they prefer huge gas giants. (Silicoids can tolerate higher gravity better and won't suffer as much as other races from colonizing them, but most gas giants are all Red 2 (deathworld) to them in terms of habitability.) Besides the Raas and Imsaies we got filling out some worlds, our empire doesn't have really found many minor races yet to absorb. There were some Darloks, but they were too far away from our borders and the Cynoids living in that sector snatched them away. Using the planetary overview menu to find planets with foreign races on them, I found 3-4 planets with Phaigur living on them. I know we colonized a planet with Phaigur on them and one of the most recent Raas-planets we liberated had them on it, but the other two planets got Phaigur into their regions because of the background simulation migrating them over there. Since many Earth-like planets are too cold and too small for our tastes, having the auto-migration slowly shovel Phaigur and Raas over to them is annoying, but also helpful. Our Silicoids may be min-maxed to the 11th grade, but they are also Silicoids, which means incredibly slow population growth. At least the future will probably add the Psilons as a second researcher race to our population, so we don't need to fear falling behind in tech when the endgame rolls around. (Both Raas and Phaigur are about average in research, so at least they aren't a millstone around our neck like the Klackons will be.)
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Dec 14, 2016 22:03
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 47: Planning Atrocities  Turn 163: We get a precision-upgrade for our neutronblasters and some diplomacy happens.  And we gain two new colonies: Maia II and Vela II. Both are part of our non-standard lane-less sector. Wait, two new colonies?  Maia is the system we just explored this turn, what the hell? Looks like we found a “magnate” race of our own species. If that happens, the survivors of your old pre-game civilization immediately rejoin. This is not always without minor drawbacks, since every “magnate” version of your race will be slightly different. If you remember back to the beginning of the game, we found a minor version of our own right next to our starting position and their drawback was “they are your people, but different enough to make integration slow and difficult”, which was no drawback at all, considering how stony Silicoids are. We absorbed them without trouble and probably will absorb this offshoot of our species just as fast. Essentially we got a colony for free!  Maia II is a good, nearly perfect world with two small problems: The gravity is far too low for us and the planet is rather tiny with just four regions to build over. Luckily the AI already has a Mass Synthesizer planned to reduce the production penalty somewhat.  The gimmick of this version of our species is: They’re a traditional warrior culture and make better militia units then our standard race. This makes them better able to defend planets. Just in case I’ll be making some military ground units here in the future and compare them with our other Silicoid troops to see if there are any differences.  Well, this was a nice surprise. Time to bring our scout back. Or not, 24 turns is kind of hefty. Yeah, getting back into our star lane network is kind of hard from Maia.  Welp, time to take a shortcut via our reserves. This recon task force is disbanded, the single ship send into transit back to the reserves. Luckily the reserve mechanic doesn't take missing star lanes into account, so we're saving tons of time this way.  Vela II is yellow and not as good as our bonus world, but at least the gravity penalty is a bit smaller: A single Mass Synthesizer is enough to neutralize it completely. Still, only four regions like the other planet. The planet is also toxic, which is irrelevant for our mineral-eating Silicoids and the mineral abundance is average. Which means, thanks to our 400+% over-production in minerals this planet will never see a single mining DEA constructed.  After the Vela Sector is done, let’s head over to see what our scientists are doing. And what they’r doing is good work! The Engulfing Inferno Cannon / Umhüllendes Inferno-Geschütz is the same type of thing we wanted to get for our Fusion Cannons: It engulfs the entire shield-surface, flooding into every weak point. This dramatically weakens the shield-structure: All shields are reduced to 50% HP for this weapon. Additionally, the weapon also raises the armor-piercing ability of the Inferno Guns. Finally, we’re getting lucky with our short-range techs! With this upgrade our Inferno Guns are soon both armor and shield-piercing!  For a moment I wondered why I haven’t yet surveyed Arcturus then I remembered: Ages ago I ordered a scout to move towards the system. Well, now there are two scouts moving to Arcturus! That empty system to the left was a system with a Guardian in it, so if there isn’t another connection out from Arcturus, we have finally mapped this part of the Dila Empire.  Our unrelenting new offensive already starts paying off, even though our new armies haven’t reached their target systems yet: The Dila Empires never-ceasing growth has stalled and we’re gaining ground again. Still, until we block off all systems with empty planets and close the borders from the other side the Raas will keep colonizing new planets to survive. It’s on us to stop those shenanigans.  During combat phase, our scout in Sleipner observes three different empires moving around in the system, including a small division of New Orions’ ships. Also another small unit is assaulting JustGniess, like always.  And again, both ships of said force jump out as soon as our fighters launch. This battle’s only special point is our colony ship accidentally joining up. But thanks to our enemies immediate flight it’s safe now and can colonize one of the scourged Ex-Raas planets.  In Trourmi, we see a little bit more resistance when we assault the 7th planet again to keep it nice and clean for our incoming military transports.  For some reason this time the enemy squadron refuses to jump out and all four ships die to our endless swarms of fighters.  With this, the first army of our Midnight Offensive lands! Multiple regions are overrun in the landing and the defenders nearly annihilated. Good! Bad: Since we didn’t take the planet in one go, the Raas can and probably will now raise new ground troops to throw us off again. Hopefully our reinforcements can get here fast enough!  Galactic Cycle 246 sees Agent “Grosser Connan” entering the halls of the AIA. Odd, that should be “Großer Conan”, I’m sure. Weird that the modders found a way to encode Umlaute into the game, but couldn’t find a way to do the same for the “ß”? Also why Conan with two “n”? Maybe it’s in truth a reference to the stage musician Connan Mockasin? Edit:  Anyway, our probably Space Irish new agent is a schemer. We now have three of those, which should give us a lot of protection against enemy schemers, even if we lose one of them. Our oddly named new agent is quite good with Dagger 10 and Mantle 6. Too bad our other schemers are either poo poo or near death. Also too bad none of our neighbors warrants some guy who can only seed unrest. Our spy hackers are also slowly aging to death. Hopefully we still have them in 14 turns when our reinforcement arrives.  Still more news from this cycle! One of the messages is about our combat phase battle on Trourmi VII, the rest is about our ongoing colonizing efforts. The ship which survived the combat phase lands on JustGniess VII to replace the dead Raas-colony with our own and one of our colonizers finally reaches the dead end system of Ohrekionni. The first planet of that far-away backwater is colonized.  The rest of what happens this turn: We kill two Raas-spies at once and capture a third one! That’s a setback the Raas will chew on for a while!  And both JustGniess VII and Ohrekionni I got enough population from that one colony ship to become new colonies instantly! Our Kingdom continues to grow.  New combat phase! This time, our liberation fleet targeting the Klackons has reached Tali and some serious action is going down! The fleet immediately assaults the oddly undefended planet Tali II to draw out the mobile defenses. Will the Klackons fall into our trap?  Yes, ten task forces are waiting for us in orbit around Tali II. The Klackons have indeed been outsmarted by rocks. Missiles and fighters launch our way, and our fighters answer in turn.  The RNG has a good laugh this battle: Most of the enemy task forces are randomly chosen transports, only a couple of those fleets are actually combat ships. And one combat task force has already been overwhelmed by our fighters. The Klackon ships are burning in the endless night of space. Don’t worry, the fleet here is large enough there will be multiple battles. The Klackons still have a chance to beat us next time!  Our forces have some trouble reaching the remaining combat ships through the large mass of transports waiting in orbit. They opt to shoot their way across the huge enemy fleet.  Luckily after only two full task forces with soldiers are massacred, the rest jumps out and leaves the system defense force behind. The old, aging ships are so outclassed I can’t even find this funny. The battle ends. Salvage crews go out to search for survivors. The attack was a total surprise though and not many Klackons had the time to even put on their emergency space suits. Also the crews have to work fast, because the surprised Klackon fleet has already begun reforming in deep space…  Welp, looks like we overestimated the Klackons. But what is our old nemesis, the Dila Empire doing? Still trying to hold the Trourmi-system. This turn the Royal fleets in-system are ordered to clear Trourmi V from its sizable defenses, including a huge orbital fortress.  The planet itself tries its best, but the fighters and missiles launching from Trourmi V can’t penetrate our defensive perimeter.  The few ships around the planet die fast and hard. And after a short bombardment by our fighters, so does the fortress.  Trourmi V is slated for destruction. It would be a nice world to have, but as an Earth-like world with a huge population it’s also a tough nut to crack. So instead our fleets will hose the planet down for a couple cycles until the colony ceases to exist. Also I arranged total overkill to arrive in orbit around Amoenta III: With two full armies, this should be an easy liberation. Edit:   This was a honest mistake: Only afterwards did I remember this Klackon-planet was just occupied by them, most of the population are part of the Psilons we came to free. Welp, thanks to an overeager admiral there are now 21% less Psilons we can free on this planet. You could say we freed them from the hardships of life! This is bad, but hilarious thanks to no consequences modelled by the game. In fact, the Psilons gain diplomatic relations with us because we’re beating up Klackons. Thanks to bad programming, they see no problems with us bombarding their people because their ex-planets are now owned by their dreaded enemy, the Vchiitri Empire. So killing their people gets interpreted as killing the enemy, case closed! For role-playing reasons I’ll of course not do this again. The Ex-Psilon planets will be carefully not bombarded in the future.  Trourmi V is no accident: Yes, our orbital bombardment just wiped out every single construction and 71% of the population in one go. And only a quarter of the tiny defense force got hit. Tali II got lucky. If your hand slips during a later phase of the game, the colony will be just gone. Master of Orion III doesn’t joke around with orbital bombardments.  The combat phase is still not over! Our army on Trourmi VII now has to confront the even larger army raised by the defenders and our transport ships in orbit of Amoenta III attempt to land their two armies on the surface, where a desperate but undersized defending army awaits them.  The new Raas-army on Trourmi VII launches itself into the Silicoid-lines, but our forces are too experienced to give ground that easy: Both sides take losses, but in the end, Raas-losses are heavier and their offensive stalls out. Nothing changes this turn.  Amoenta III however, ends up being blindingly short. The Dilarian forces on the ground do their best to prevent the Almandian armies from landing, but with 3:1 numerical superiority, the effort is wasted. For every landing zone denied, there are two others where the liberation armies can land unopposed. After several sub-cycles of fierce fighting, the Raas-commanders find themselves encircled by their own efforts of denying the enemy landings: The Almandians have landed around them, on them and even inside their lines. When the Almandian armies start coordinated attacks to secure their landing zones, the defending force is simply destroyed. In less then a sub-cycle of vicious fighting, the battle for Amoenta III ends. This was surprising, but I’m not complaining: That’s a lot of Raas now safe from my bombardments! Next: Freedom for Tali Libluini fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 22:02
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I suggest replacing the lost screenshots with clumsy MSPaint drawings. Or maybe go grab some rocks from your garden to stand in for Silicoids, and some plastic dinosaurs for the Raas, and pose them dramatically.
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Dec 16, 2016 22:25
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PurpleXVI posted:I suggest replacing the lost screenshots with clumsy MSPaint drawings. Or maybe go grab some rocks from your garden to stand in for Silicoids, and some plastic dinosaurs for the Raas, and pose them dramatically. This idea is good and I'd like to try it sometime, but in this case we're lucky: I managed to restore the missing screenshots from the word-document I wrote my update in. Now I'm glad that I always include the screenshots in my manuscripts to make sure I can place every picture where it belongs later!  Service Announcement The missing screenshots have been replaced. Libluini fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 00:15
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Wow, nice set of turns! Well played. Forward progress against the Klackons and managing to slowly grind down the Raas!
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Dec 17, 2016 07:02
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Will you... gift Psilon's planets back to their owners, or, as they aren't quite capable of managing themselves, they are yours as liberator's? Or split, with tasty ones staying in Rock Democratic Empire and useless ones going back home?
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Dec 17, 2016 09:39
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NHO posted:Will you... gift Psilon's planets back to their owners, or, as they aren't quite capable of managing themselves, they are yours as liberator's? I'm kind of torn on this. While our relations with the Psilons seriously improved (from -39 to ~ -05) from just a couple fights with the Klackons, there's no guarantee we can actually convince them to ally with us. There are basically three possible courses of action: 1. Taking all "liberated" Psilon-planets for ourselves and still getting tons of relationship bonus from just beating up the Psilon's enemies. Drawback: The Psilons could get pissy again when they notice they just exchanged one overlord for another. 2. Giving back some of the planets, but take 1-2 for ourselves so we have a base to launch attacks further into Klackon-space. Drawback: The relationship gain could not be enough to make the Psilons into reliable allies, forcing us to take all their planets sooner or later. 3. Give back all planets and gamble to gain enough positive relations to make the Psilons join our alliance. Drawback: If it doesn't work out, the Psilons will still drag us into a war with them because they will get seriously annoyed about our warships travelling through their space all the time. (Tali is their system and would be between us and the Klackons.) The "drawbacks" are honestly just potential problems which could arise if we go that route. It's stuff that's possible to happen, but not inevitable! If you want to help me decide, just give me a vote in bold!
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Dec 17, 2016 13:47
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What is the Psilon's government system? If it's some kind of democracy, go for 3, otherwise 1
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Dec 17, 2016 13:58
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Go for 1, our democracy is the only moral democracy.
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Dec 17, 2016 14:03
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Let's go with 1; ancient Silicoid proverb says, "finders keepers, losers vibrate and hum atonally in their sorrow"!
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Dec 17, 2016 14:41
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Rappaport posted:Let's go with 1; ancient Silicoid proverb says, "finders keepers, losers vibrate and hum atonally in their sorrow"!
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Dec 17, 2016 15:21
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sheep-dodger posted:What is the Psilon's government system? If it's some kind of democracy, go for 3, otherwise 1 Yes, it's actually literally "Democracy". (The Raas are the Federation, their government-type is Federation/Planetary Union. The Klackons are just the ominously sounding "Swarm".)
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Dec 17, 2016 17:00
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Voting for 1.
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Dec 17, 2016 17:20
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Rappaport posted:Let's go with 1; ancient Silicoid proverb says, "finders keepers, losers vibrate and hum atonally in their sorrow"! Quoted for the truth of it.
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Dec 17, 2016 17:49
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Rappaport posted:Let's go with 1; ancient Silicoid proverb says, "finders keepers, losers vibrate and hum atonally in their sorrow"! This rock knows what's up.
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Dec 17, 2016 18:05
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I am for middle ground between 2 and 1 - give them some of the planets, but mostly preserve them for war against the SWARM. No more than half of recovered Giant Space Rocks should be given, third at best (for psilons)
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Dec 17, 2016 20:06
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The Psilons only have a couple planets left, right? It's only only sensible to ensure the safety of the Psilon population under the gentle care of the Kingdom of Almandin. 1 The time for consideration of turning over formerly Klackon controlled colonies to the Psilons should be after the war is over, and no new Almandin citizen should be forced out of the empire against their will.
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Dec 18, 2016 13:32
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1, the Psilons got punked by the Klackons and they'll just get punked by someone else if we leave them with independence.
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Dec 18, 2016 14:58
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Friend Commuter posted:1, the Psilons got punked by the Klackons and they'll just get punked by someone else if we leave them with independence. That's true, they're so far behind the power curve theyd be better off as pur subjects than independent. As least their species will be able to live on in our glorious empire.
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Dec 19, 2016 04:47
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Voting for 1. The Psilons don't have the capacity to really defend themselves eitehr from furhter aggressions, we're more advanced than they are so as part of our collective they can have a higher quality of life and further contribute to us. If they are in turn capable of defending thier remaining borders more effectively we will of course honor our alliance and their territory! But also theys eem in no condition to otherwise incorporate liberated territories back itno their empire either.
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Dec 19, 2016 06:52
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All you guys who voted for 1 are in luck, turns out the Psilons are horrible space racists who would rather die then ally themselves to dirty, dirty minerals
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Dec 19, 2016 15:24
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Libluini posted:All you guys who voted for 1 are in luck, turns out the Psilons are horrible space racists who would rather die then ally themselves to dirty, dirty minerals Spacists?
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Dec 19, 2016 15:51
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Libluini posted:All you guys who voted for 1 are in luck, turns out the Psilons are horrible space racists who would rather die then ally themselves to dirty, dirty minerals It's like the VUX and humans, only Silicoid crystals bear an uncanny resemblance to traditional Psilon fertility symbols 
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Dec 19, 2016 18:07
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1 unless they ally, then 2. Fake edit: and it looks like we're staying with 1 So, are these psilons actually better at research then our noble rocks?
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Dec 19, 2016 23:38
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Hard to say, they've been punched in the face by Klackons for the entire game now. Since we can't look up other races like we can ours, we can't gauge how well they would have done without losing most of their worlds. Right now they're the worst technologically from all our neighbours. They're like two full generations behind us and at least one generation of techs behind the Klackons. I guess we will find out soon. Edit: Considering that when min-maxing I made every research-related setting to "the best ever" and even collected some "drawbacks" giving us even more research-output, I'd guess that we are actually better at research. I can't imagine the AI taking tons of bad picks just to squeeze out even more research points. The Psilons are naturally good researchers though and we can always let our Raas produce poo poo and our Imsaies (also good at research) and Psilons do the thinking. It's certainly less work then wiping them all out and replacing everyone with extremely slow growing crystals. One Silicoid may be a better researcher then one Psilon, but thanks to differences in population growth, the actual equation is more like 3 Psilons are better then 1,2 Silicoids.
Libluini fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Dec 20, 2016 |
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Dec 20, 2016 00:05
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So basically if you don't pull off a ground game victory in one go, there will always be guerillas rising up to slow your advances? Kind of makes sense.
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Dec 21, 2016 09:31
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Glazius posted:So basically if you don't pull off a ground game victory in one go, there will always be guerillas rising up to slow your advances? It's a side-effect of the AI getting utterly surprised by ground invasions again and again. Where a human player would go: "Wait a minute, there's a giant transport fleet arriving over my besieged planet, better raise some armies in defence!" the AI often doesn't get the memo until your troops land. If your troops then can't immediately take over the entire world, the AI triggers a panicked response next turn. The good news however is, sometimes your troops land on planets so under-defended you will take them over in one turn. A human player on the other hand has the tools to make every ground combat a giant headache. (So I'd imagine back then when there were enough players around to do multiplayer, the most efficient method of taking planets would be orbital bombardments + your colony ships 100% of the time.)
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Dec 21, 2016 15:12
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The obligatory Christmas hiatus is over, so let's get this thread rolling again! Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 48: Freedom for Tali  Turn 165 brings us messages from the various fights we just resolved: Amoenta III is liberated, the Raas keep our armies bottled up in their landing zones on Trourmi VII and we accidentally bombarded Tali II. We also bombarded Trourmi V. (But that one was on purpose.)  With Amoenta III in our hand, Almandin HQ disbands the 2nd New Army to reuse its veterans in other conflicts. The 1st New Army stays as garrison for now.  With the victory on Amoenta III, the Midnight Offensive is almost over for this system: Two out of four planets have been taken over and the other two have been bombarded into rubble. The fifth planet can’t even be targeted anymore, since the Dila Empire lost control last turn. The first planet has even less population left though and will be properly scourged next turn. Have I mentioned this yet? If an empire loses control of a colony, you can’t target the rest population anymore. If you don’t want your empire infected with certain races, this represents a giant headache: You have to essentially wait until the colony is back into enemy control and then try again with more firepower. Even then, sometimes remnants of the old population survive. Luckily we haven’t met the one species we want to avoid like the plague yet, or I’d have already broken my keyboard in frustration while typing this.  Last time the Psilons didn’t want our Any bets on how the AI will react?  Well anyway, this was bad. In just one tiny misstep we annihilated billions of Psilons and destroyed most of the infrastructure, while somehow missing nearly every Klackon soldier on the ground. To make things better, the Kingdom of Almandin will send in ground troops to apologize in person. Also to clear the Vchiitri-forces out, of course. The admiral responsible for this really dumb decision has been suspended without pay for a cycle and replaced with someone less mental. He also has been placed under a promotion ban for ten cycles to teach him a lesson. If he does something like this again he will probably be tried and executed, so don’t think he has gotten of light here!  To make sure we can indeed free Tali II from the Klackons, the Kingdom forms up two new armies. Both the 1st and the 2nd Freedom Army will be tasked with landing on Tali II and removing its insect infestation.  With now two fronts demanding ground troops, the CoA decides it’s time to remove the constant transport-bottleneck: For some reason there are never enough transports for our ground troops. Multiple of our second- and third-tier shipyards suddenly get orders for building more military transports. Military transports are always a pain, thanks to the reserve system. Generally, you always need more than you have, because after you land all your armies you have to wait a lot until you get your ships back. If you want to keep up the pressure of major ground offensives, you need not only lots of troops but also lots of transports. Of course this means in peace time you tend to have 2-3x as many transports as you reasonably want. And I guarantee you that the moment you start scrapping your unwanted transports, some jackasses will suddenly declare war and then you need the ships you just scrapped back again.  Case in point, after forming our two new armies and giving them transports, we don’t have any anymore. Sure, there are older transports still stuck in transit from our last landings, but until they get back to our reserves we can’t form new transport task forces. With the new transports I’m building, I should be able to scrap some of the oldest ones and still be able to form 4-6 task forces for our armies. Still, I will rest easier after that stupid dead end sector behind Amoenta is gone, because liberating the planets of two systems is easier on our logistics then juggling three different ground forces, like we’re doing now. Attacking multiple systems to make wars shorter sounds awesome on paper, until you actually have to execute your multiple ground assaults.  GC 249 sees the media-storm over our accidental orbital bombardment finally die down and business as usual returning. Our regular bombardments work like clockwork, but our forces on Trourmi VII still can’t make any ground. It looks more and more like our troops on the planet need reinforcements to break through the defense lines of the Dila Empire.  The rest of the news is less of a mixed bag: The Raas on Amoenta III are already assimilated enough to resume working. There are some unrests, but the colony can deal with them without needing to resort to gunning protesters down in the streets. Our scouts meanwhile survey Arcturus, Iota Gruis and Sabaki. Three systems at once! It’s like the early game again!  Sabaki is a system from the other side of the Orion Sector, from the part cut off from us by the Klackons. The system is controlled by the Eadinel Empire. The first planet has a large Audrieh-population living on it. (The Audrieh are plants.)  The third planet instead has a mostly Phaigur-population.  The other two planets have similarly mixed population, but with the Evon as dominant majority. From this we can conclude the Eadinel-Empire must be the Evon star nation’s name.  Now our scout in this region is kind of stuck. We already lost one in that white star system below Woronock on the right and Sabaki was another cul-de-sac. So our scout gets to explore the other star lane near Sleipner. We hope for the best. One of these days I should remember to write down notes about the systems I lose my scouts in. At least I know exactly where two of the Antaran Guardians are, but the more remote corners have enough other dangers I already forgot where we met the third Guardian.  Iota Gruis is part of the sprawling Dila Empire. Iota Gruis II is so perfect for Silicoids I’m thinking about just wiping out the Raas here to make space for our colonists.  And with this, the northern half of the Dila Empire is mostly done. Only Souchis and Toliman-B remain un-surveyed. Let’s solve this problem!  Arcturus, the last system we explored this turn, has tons of planets. Some of them are even really good -for us, that is. For the Raas, this planet for example should be a hellworld, since it’s not only toxic but also nearly paradise-level for Silicoids. Most of the colonies here are rather young, so if we can get here fast enough, there won’t be any serious resistance. Something I haven’t mentioned yet: The solar system overview shows planet habitability only for your own race, not for foreign races actually on the planet. If you want to find out what other races prefer, you have to go fiddle around with the planetary overview menu. In this case it’s easy to guess the habitability from the Raas’ viewpoint, considering we know they like more Earth-like planets and “toxic” isn’t normally an attribute associated with Earth. At least not yet. No way in hell would a toxic planet be considered Green 1 (second best you can get without terraforming) for a race needing food to eat.  And now the scout has to travel to Gemma-B to finally reach the border of this part of Raas-space. (We know that other nameless system has a Guardian in it, so Raas colonizers will stay the hell away from the two star lanes leading there.) When the last bits of Raas-space are mapped out, I can finally deal with their retarded colony spam by parking light forces everywhere around the edges.  Now this is cute. Apparently some poor bastard didn’t get the memo of us slowly trampling down Raas resistance in Amoenta: The Dila Empire wants to re-colonize the bombed-out planets. This colonizer better prepare for an emergency jump next combat phase.  With Amoenta nearly in our hands, it’s time again to move ships: With Verdune being behind the frontlines now, I can send the three ancient task forces guarding the system to Amoenta. By the time the ships arrive, I’ll be done with the Amoenta-system and our modern ships will move on to the next target in this sector: The Alphecc-system. Normally the ships’ purpose in Amoenta would be throwing out visiting Raas military transports, but in this case it’s also a good shield against enemy colony ships trying to slip through.  During the following combat phase, we see again a tiny little squadron trying to fight our entire armada parked in the Trourmi-system. Of course the Raas commander immediately orders his ships to turn around and jump out. Probably while cursing his dumb outdated orders the entire time. Sometimes I’m wondering why the AI always makes so obviously braindead choices. Still, it’s kind of funny to see one part of the AI making the decision to send in 4 ships against nearly 50, followed by another part of the AI immediately triggering the auto-retreat when entering combat against those same 50 ships. It’s like the AI suffers from schizophrenia (or politicians really bad at decision making ).  And that is the combat phase. The Klackons in Tali wisely decide to not attack us. Which means next turn we have to start forcing them into battle again. I don’t want a clusterfuck happening when our transports arrive.  The systematic destruction of the Raas-colony on Trourmi V continues. Another 80% of the population dies.  Something similar happens to Amoenta I, just slower and with less mass death. Ironically, the army getting destroyed here is nearly two times the size of the Trourmian defenders.  On Trourmi VII, our armies evade the main enemy forces to gain some more ground. Or at least they try: Purely on accident some of our mobile infantry crystal spiders march into the rear of a large Dilarian formation. The skirmish soon escalates into a major battle. The Raas can defeat some frontal attacks, but the growing Silicoid presence in their rear soon becomes overwhelming. They retreat into another region, leaving tons of supplies and soldiers, who are taken by our advancing forces. Still, after a full cycle of fighting, both formations are nearly depleted. On both sides there are questions raised over how long their units will be able to continue fighting before they are too degraded for combat.  At this point I decided I had enough exploration-ships to form an Antaran Expedition. I selected a (large) squadron and hoped I could declare that task force a Recon-TF to fill it up with our many, many explo-scouts. They have the point defense weapons, after all. To my surprise the game handled everything automatically. As soon as you click that button, the game automatically takes your largest ship size with labs on it and tries to form an expedition out of it. It also doesn’t allow you to cancel your expedition. One click, and the ships are forever gone. So what happened here was, the game took our large exploration ships, saw that they were carriers, saw that there were more carriers and then mushed them together to see how large a TF it can build from them. The game then decided to build a carrier task force, since you know: Carriers. It happens so we had 4 of our large Pyerite-class explorers ready and 2 more Freedom-class carriers. Then MO3 put two of Friendly Commuter’s Feldspar-class escorts into the task force and called it a day. We still have all our Gypsum-class scouts, with their heavy point defense. The game ignored them when making the 8 ships sized exploration task force. See, in all those years of not playing the game, I totally forgot that you have zero control over your expedition-task force. In fact, I could have selected any size above “Flotilla” (the size the game chose for me) and it would have all resulted in the same task force flying out. Next time I have to either make a version of the Gypsum-class pretending to be a carrier (wasting all our scouts already built), or clear out the entire reserve from non-exploration ships to avoid a repeat of this. Anyway, hopefully the tons of fighters from our real carriers “escorting” the explorers against their will, will make up for having zero real point defense.  After that disaster, turn 167 arrives with some diplomacy: The Soriane Union sends us a message. They still don’t want an alliance. The Psilons must be in the hands of some sort of cult preaching suicide or something. Anyway, at least our first Antaran Expedition is underway now! Slightly different as planned!  The rest of the news isn’t as happy: Still some minor unrest on Amoenta III, two more Raas-spies wreaking havoc. An assassin kills Did Hallervorden yet again and a schemer tries sabotaging our diplomacy. I’d like to think this enemy schemer was the reason why the Psilons refused help from the one superpower on their side.  Psilon ambassador (darkly): “We congratulate you to your wisdom to trade with us, but we think it is inadequate and have to refuse.” The news that the Psilons refuse to cooperate with their saviors hits the Almandian media like a bomb: Everyone, from the King itself down to the lowliest citizen reacts with bafflement and consternation. Some choice headlines: “Crazy Alien Eggheads Refuse Help?”, “Of Pride and Prejudice”, “Stonefaced Psilons”, “Minerals of Diplomacy Dissolved in the Acid of Stupidity” and “Psilon Ambassador Claims: Extinction Is Just What We Want!”  Just to show you again how stupid this is: I select (large) squadron again and click the button. There are only the four scouts from Friendly Commuter left now, but the game has no way of identifying them as exploration ships.  And nothing happens! The reason: Without a single ship with a lab on it in our reserves, the game just shrugs and refuses to do anything. With no way of manually assembling a task force, we have to wait until more explorers are build! Edit: Apparently the escorts and scouts are selected by other criteria then the core ships, with escorts having priority and the game simply taking the heaviest armed escorts first. Friendly Commuter's escorts don't have labs, so the game is apparently less fussy here then with core ships. Of course in this case this is irrelevant since the game never does anything as long as you don't have core ships with labs ready. Interesting observation: Since this mod changed the task force rules so it's not strictly necessary to take scouts for the picket ring, the game could still gently caress us over by not taking any scouts, even in a larger fleet. Let's hope thought that's not what will happen.  Not all is lost, though! As soon as we have more Pyrite-ships, I just have to make sure to transform every single ship not meant for our expeditions into a task force before ordering another expedition. Also I of course have to disband all those superfluous task forces immediately after sending the expedition.  On the Klackon/Psilon-front our transports are now two turns from reaching Tali.  On the other side of the Orion Sector, Trourmi VII actually build another orbital defense fortress. Which we immediately blow up of course. The good thing about abstract imaginary shipyards, I suppose: As long as you have control over a planet, you can still build things and put them into orbit. The only game which did this a little bit more realistic was Space Empires V: Generally, your production capacity with only your planet is somewhat basic, but you can go absolutely apeshit with building space shipyards directly in orbit. And if an enemy reaches them, he can destroy them. On the other hand, orbital bombardment in this game achieves the same thing, just not in a visible way. I just think it’s kind of funny that your orbital shipyards can’t actually be hit in space combat. Next: It's always the Raas Libluini fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 16:56
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Just wipe out all the drat aliens.
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Dec 28, 2016 18:56
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Just wipe out all the drat aliens. Even the Humans?! Your are cruel
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Dec 28, 2016 19:15
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| # ? May 1, 2024 19:14 |
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All of them
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Dec 28, 2016 23:06
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