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Rick_Hunter posted:Would asking for information about the New Orions ruin the lore posts or be spoilers? I've read some stuff but I want to be sure. I'm planning on posting a bunch of lore posts tomorrow, so hopefully we can get closer! The problem is of course, the "New Orions" show up near the end of the official history and I'm backlogged enough as it is. (I'm trying to wait until the Sakkra show up to get over all the dinosaur-races in one go, for example. And we're this close to meeting the other insectoids so I can put down the insectoid lore, too.) My idea was to surprise people who haven't played the games, because if you have played Master of Orion II or III yourself it's of course really obvious who those guys are. (Please don't ruin the surprise, guys!)
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Jun 12, 2016 00:32
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So is 50 Klackon ships a lot? I mean, how many are we fielding?
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Jun 12, 2016 11:43
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Libluini posted:I'm planning on posting a bunch of lore posts tomorrow Tomorrow is now! Lore 10: The Antaran Hegemony is Forged A small handful of Antaran systems remained outside of the trans-dimensional prison, cut off from each other and from Antaran Central Command. They worked hard to overcome the limitations of STL travel and find each other in an effort to rebuild the Antaran empire. The confederation of systems around the Dark Zone became known as the Antaran Federation, and over the millennia, they gradually shifted their focus to internal development, building up their planets and establishing defensive (albeit powerful) fleets to protect themselves. The Antarans trapped within the trans-dimensional prison, however, were free to plan and prepare without interruption. Strangely enough, hyperspace travel was completely normal within the bubble itself, and thus the integrity of the Antaran Empire was preserved. Furthermore, the Antarans had received most of the data on Trans-Dimensional Physics from their spies, and therefore had time to study the research in an attempt to free themselves. And finally, they could build up their systems to the height of efficiency and power, devoting their time to perfecting their environments and leaping ahead in research and technology without wasting time on conflict, for no one could enter their prison any more than they could leave it. Scientific Note: It was during this time that the Antarans made tremendous strides in the fields of Trans-Dimensional Physics, Wormhole Physics, and Genetic Manipulation. These particular subjects would later aid them in the domination of their corner of the galaxy. Around 6000 GC, the Antarans finally managed to engineer a breach in the trans-dimensional prison. Using a device they aptly named the "Trans-Dimensional Portal", they could theoretically send material (specifically, warships) from their dimension into the galaxy with minimal difficulty. The first prototype TDP was set up in an uninhabited system populated only by asteroids and tiny barren worlds (Antaran Central Command was slightly concerned that opening a dimensional field within their own dimensional prison could have disastrous consequences, and thus placed the portal as far from inhabited systems as possible). A specially prepared task force consisting of ships equipped with Dimensional Drives (another experimental device which would, in theory, permit the ships to return to the same TDP they had launched from) awaited the opening of the portal. The portal opened without incident, much to the relief of Antaran Central Command, and the Antaran task force that passed through appeared quite unexpectedly in the middle of the thriving Antaran Federation, much to everyone's surprise. The reunion was not pleasant, to say the least; almost four thousand cycles of divergent evolutionary paths had taken their toll, and the two groups of Antarans were completely unrecognizable to each other. Federation forces engaged the invading fleet and beat them back; this prompted Antaran Central Command to dispatch a larger fleet the second time. This war continued for several Cycles until Federation researchers discovered that their enemies were, in fact, Antarans like themselves. This discovery led to a cease-fire as each side weighed its options. Finally, they settled on a truce, reuniting as two different Antaran states under one banner, and the Antaran Hegemony was born. Further research allowed the Antarans to refine the TDP system, increase the efficiency of hyperdrives, and even undo the dimensional prison completely. But the forward-thinking Antaran leaders now looked on the prison more as a fortress protecting them from all outside forces, both Orion and otherwise. Only the TDP's would grant access to the Antaran Sector, and the Hegemony controlled them all. To protect their breakthroughs in Dimensional Physics, all their ships equipped with Dimensional Drives were also equipped with a Quantum Detonator, designed to self-destruct the ship should it take sufficient damage and thus prevent their capture by enemy forces. Though hyperspace travel was still unstable outside of the trans-dimensional prison, the Antarans built a number of TDP's to grant them access to a limited radius around the Dark Zone (a range equivalent to the diameter of the spherical dimensional prison; this limit was a side effect of the Long Night and, fortunately for other races in the sector, prevented the Antarans from raiding everyone into extinction). They launched raids into nearby systems once held by the Saiph and the Dubhei, former Orion League members, stealing their resources and technologies and blasting whatever empires had developed into atoms. By eliminating those potential threats, they knew they would be able to concentrate even more on the Mizara one day. The Antaran Hegemony then took more aggressive steps to improve their standing. Genetic manipulation was to be the next great weapon in their arsenal, and they practiced on numerous developing races within their own and the neighboring sectors. Two of the most noteworthy species that the Antarans "created" were the Ichthytosians and the Ethereans; however, it is suspected that dozens of other local worlds were visited by Antaran genetic engineers and manipulated via similar experiments. Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Jun 12, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 12:37
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Glazius posted:So is 50 Klackon ships a lot? I mean, how many are we fielding? I will talk about this a lot in the coming posts, but our total fleet strength is 69, the Klackons are wildly swinging between 120 and over 170. Since STL-ships and bases aren't counted, I'm guessing what we're seeing are either the Klackons taking heavy losses on other fronts, or they are throwing so many transports at the Psilon worlds they're attacking, it takes a lot of ships out of the circuit for a while. Strategically, about 30 of our ships are at the Deanton-front and a growing portion is stationed at Cokanuk to prevent a Klackon-incursion. The rest is transports, colony ships and reserve ships. The Klackons have 50+ ships at our border (because let's face it, the Psilons are dead at this point, it's not theirs anymore) and god knows how many on other fronts. As long as we can hold our tech-advantage, we're not really in any danger though. Do you want to know what is really dangerous? The Hunter-Killer species known as "Humans"! Lore 11: The Pax Humanica The Humans united the Orion Sector under the banner of the Pax Humanica, preaching the onset of an "age of enlightenment", in an effort to bring about a harmony among all peoples. This led to many positive effects -- a focus on making all colonies self-supporting so as not to rely on hyperspace and FTL-transported supplies, the promotion of trade within the boundaries of the Pax Humanica, and a devotion to culture and the arts that led to many great works being created by all races. The negatives to these developments included a lack of focus on scientific research, a reduced drive for expansion, with population control methods strictly enforced, and a tyrannical policy of insisting that all conformed to the "utopian" views of the Pax Humanica. The fascistic Humans ruled the Orion Sector with zero tolerance for aberrant behavior, monitoring and controlling the citizenry with brute-force tactics. As a result, though the Pax lasted for almost ten thousand Cycles, the civilizations within the Orion Sector did not grow much at all, whether territorially, militarily, or scientifically. A large part of this was due to the hyperspace flux that continued to hamper FTL travel, but the "artistic" progress toward a "utopian" society led to nothing but stagnation and Humanocentric socio-political elitism. Unbeknownst to them, the Antaran Hegemony was making constant strides forward in their ruthless goal to be masters of their domain. Even as the Pax Humanica restricted FTL travel due to the unsafe nature of hyperspace, the Antarans were studying ways of using wormholes to exceed hyperspace's limitations. This stagnation might have continued were it not for the fact that the Long Night finally ended. Ironically, those within the Pax Humanica barely noticed, having limited FTL travel so much that very few ever used it at all. However, pirates and traders and merchants all gambled with hyperspace constantly, and soon realized that the disruptions were all but gone. Their discovery was kept secret for their own profit, but idle gossip and boasting soon filled the ears of both the Pax Humanica empires and others nearby. Those other civilizations bordering the Orion Sector had developed to the point where FTL travel became a possibility, and some, having heard about the Pax Humanica from various travelers, sought to colonize within their borders. Elerians, Gnolams, and Trilarians entered Orion space with the same intent that all the younger races once had: expansion of their empires. Historical Note: The Evon also appeared nearby at this time, deposited there by Mizara colony ships. The Mizara had eventually developed the technology needed to genetically manipulate and engineer local races within their space, even as the Orions and Antarans had done. The Mizara, however, engineered a race for the purpose of scouting the galaxy and searching for the "threat" of Center One descendants. Their function was to colonize and expand and explore the galaxy in the name of their "gods", who had given them this divine mandate. Hundreds of colony ships loaded with Evon colonists and primitive technology (by Mizaran standards) were launched across the galaxy between 3000 GC and 3500 GC in search of habitable worlds to colonize. The Mizara could thus focus on expanding their local borders (still a gradual process due to the Long Night effect) and developing their own empire and resources for their great war: vengeance against Center One's descendants. When they expanded and came to a region of space that the Evon had dominated, it made it easier for them to assimilate that sector into their domain. When they came to a region of space where the Evon had been dominated, they knew that a potential threat existed there, and could concentrate more fully on securing that region through force. Historical Note: Mizara and Polarid expansion in the Galactic Core had eventually brought them into contact with each other. The Polarids had, by some incredible stroke of luck, settled in a system with a wormhole nexus similar to that which had orbited Center One, but far more stable and reliable. As a result, the Polarids survived and prospered during the Long Night, for travel through wormholes was not blocked, and their home system contained over a dozen wormhole endpoints. They managed to expand into a sizeable empire, and advanced quickly in the field of Wormhole Physics. Upon making contact with the hostile Mizara around 3900 GC, they began amassing their forces in threatened systems while launching an immense intelligence gathering operation. The Polarids learned of how the Mizara were using the Evon as advance scouts, and proposed their own project, the construction of an "Evon Killer" race, in response. It took several tries to succeed, and the Polarids dispatched many of their failed versions through a one-way wormhole that they had created. The endpoint of that wormhole was deep in the Orion Sector, and those failed "Evon Killers" ended up colonizing the first planet they found. They called themselves Humans, and would one day use the cunning and ruthless instincts the Polarids had instilled in them to dominate the Orion Sector. The Polarids themselves finally succeeded in breeding what they felt was the ideal hunter-killer race, whom they called the Varakesh. They have yet to be seen in the Orion Sector. Historical Note: It was toward the latter half of the Pax Humanica that the Gargantua rose into power on the outskirts of the galactic disk, not so far away from territory once held by the Orion League. The Gargantua were remarkable in that their species had developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields in lieu of physical contact, thus enabling them to handle tiny objects and components despite their tremendous size. Their FTL technology used similar concepts -- their ships were built as amplifiers to enhance their ability, allowing them to trigger the opening of pseudo-wormholes for interstellar travel. Their empire soon rivaled that of the Orion League or the Central Entente in their heydays, and boasted advanced technology and an impressive armada of battleships. However, they were consumed in a civil war almost as bloody as the Elders Civil War; though not quite as destructive, the Gargantua Civil War was nonetheless costly in lives and resources. The war lasted from 15995 to 17013 GC, ending only with the obliteration of the insurrectionist faction. The survivors set about rebuilding their shattered empire while vowing never again to wage such a brutal war. Their thoughts turned to pacifism and development, and many left the empire itself as nomads, seeking solitude and atonement by founding their own colonies far away from Gargantua space. Some of these colony ships made it to within the territory of the developing Orion Sector....
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Jun 12, 2016 12:51
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Lore 12: Antaran Domestic Politics and the Hegemonic Expansion Despite Antaran pride in their overwhelming technological and military superiority to the rest of the galaxy, the Hegemony was not the invincible bastion of power it believed itself to be. It had been divided into two factions since its foundation. Those Antarans who had been trapped within the dimensional prison formed the military "expansionist" faction (ruled by the cabalistic Antaran Central Command), and they constantly pushed for the expansion of Hegemony borders and conquest of neighboring rivals. Opposing them was the "internalist" faction, which had originated with those Antarans who had thrived outside of the dimensional prison (the former Antaran Federation). Their policies were more often focused on internal development, research, and a defensive military presence. Rivalry between the two factions was strong, and Antaran policies shifted constantly, depending on which group was in power at the time. Fortunately for the local Orion races, the two factions were occupied with other events when the Antarans re-discovered the Orion Sector. The end of the Long Night negated the limitation of the effective range of the Trans-Dimensional Portals, and as a result the Hegemony launched a program to re-chart the ancient space lanes of their region of the galaxy (the internalists hoping to gain new scientific and cartographic data, the expansionists hoping to discover new directions for conquest). They soon rediscovered their ancient allies, the Alioth and the Meissans, but both empires had long since forgotten the Antarans and had succeeded on their own devices. They reacted to initial Antaran attempts at communication with hostility, and so both Antaran factions agreed to spend their energy on conquering and assimilating the two rogue empires. Lord Admiral Xyphys N'rom took the Green Fleet (the defensive armada of the internalists, patterned with the color for strength) and challenged the nearby Alioth, while Grand Admiral Therion V'raak took the Black Fleet (the pride of the externalists, patterned with the color for conquest) and engaged the more distant Meissans. The Alioth proved to be far less of a challenge than expected, and thus the Green Fleet was quick to secure their space and begin integrating their worlds into the Hegemony. The Green Fleet ships were gradually cycled back to the fleet command center of Kathar, safely hidden within the Antaran Sector, for refitting and repairs. It was from these withdrawn Green Fleet forces that raiders were dispatched to probe and harass the Orion Sector, where they expected to find their ancient enemy, the Orions. Information had to be gathered on their fate during the Long Night. The raider squadrons were deliberately kept small to allow the Antarans a certain measure of deniability if the Orions proved to have somehow become far more advanced than the Antarans. It was much to their surprise that the Antarans were originally unable to find a trace of the Ancient Orion civilization. When they discovered the now indigenous races of Orion (from a respectfully safe distance; they were shooting at each other after all), Antaran paranoia and arrogance kept them from admitting that these puny civilizations were not, in fact, being actively manipulated by a secretive Orion civilization lurking nearby. Eventually, some digging around various ruins they found in the Orion Sector convinced them that these barbarian races were, in fact, all that remained of "the enemy." Although the situation was ripe, the Antarans could only send out raids against these Orion barbarians while their two fleets were engaged in serious actions against worthy opponents. Thus, the Antaran raiders met with only limited military success in the Orion Sector as they lacked the numbers and focus to act decisively. Nonetheless, the Antarans conducted far more raids into the Orion Sector than the local Orion races ever knew about. The Green Fleet, true to its "internalist" objectives, set out to find any Ancient Orion settlements left on worlds not yet occupied by these new "locals." The Antarans absconded with untold secrets and treasures from the lost Orion ruins they discovered and looted, bringing these cultural and technological artifacts back to the Hegemony for further analysis. Until the Green Fleet's victory over the Alioth could be completely consolidated, the Antarans had to play for time against their third front at Orion. And with the freaks of Orion busy killing each other, time was something the Antarans seemed to have plenty of.
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Jun 12, 2016 15:00
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So a bit confused about humans. They were simultaneously pax humanica and being bred as hunter killers? Or was there some timeline shifting and it was that they were bred, became an empire that constructed pax humanica?
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Jun 12, 2016 16:23
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Donkringel posted:So a bit confused about humans. They were simultaneously pax humanica and being bred as hunter killers? Or was there some timeline shifting and it was that they were bred, became an empire that constructed pax humanica? Humans being bred as hunter-killers are how they (us) came into existence. Pax Humanica happened later (after MOO1 before MOO2). These encyclopedia entries aren't in chronological order.
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Jun 12, 2016 16:29
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Yeah, the encyclopedia likes to put down "historical notes" as an excuse to jump wildly around in time. Chronologically, that particular lore-entry starts with the Pax Humanica, then jumps back in time thousands of cycles to explain the Evon (bio-weapon, made as scouts for the Mizara), then it explains how the Polarids reacted to that with wild experiments to create the Varakesh as hunter-killers against the Evon and finally jumps back to the latter half of the Pax Humanica with the Gargantua civil war. It would have been made more sense to explain how the ancestors of modern humanity got discarded by the Polarids through a wormhole first, but that's apparently not how those writers rolled.  I think in the future I will mark those notes somehow, to make them stand out more from the normal lore text. Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Jun 12, 2016 18:38
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Wait, that was in game lore?! I thought you were just randomly making stuff up that sort of fit into the game.
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Jun 13, 2016 05:33
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ashnjack posted:Wait, that was in game lore?! I thought you were just randomly making stuff up that sort of fit into the game. that'd be a lotta fanfiction
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Jun 13, 2016 05:39
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Libluini posted:
Hmmmm.
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Jun 13, 2016 05:50
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They ain't started glassing planets, and they're even actually united, so they're already better off than their source right now. Though I guess a blow-up is inevitable.
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Jun 13, 2016 06:42
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ashnjack posted:Wait, that was in game lore?! I thought you were just randomly making stuff up that sort of fit into the game. No, the game comes with a galactic encyclopedia. All that stuff is in there. What is made up is the story of King Almandin and his Democratic Silicoid Kingdom. The rest is text I extracted directly from the encyclopedia. Edit: Now we've finally reached the beginning of Master of Orion II! Lore 13: The Great War: Act One The Fall of the Pax Humanica Rumors and gossip by various raiders and merchants and pirates brought up stories of huge empires beyond the Orion Sector, civilizations that had mastered interstellar travel and warfare, and many other dangers and riches that lay nearby. Soon these stories took root in the people and the old dreams returned: all the stars were there for the taking. One by one, the local Orion races resurrected their old space programs, and the revitalization of the Orion Sector was underway. This blatant rejection of the Pax Humanica's enforced policies was met with strong resistance, but the Humans could not suppress the rediscovered dreams of the local Orion races. In addition, the new "threat" posed by previously unknown races -- the Gnolams, who saw profit in this new territory; the Elerians, who sought to test their strength against their neighbors; and the Trilarians, whose homeworld now rested within the bounds of the dying Pax Humanica -- challenged the authority of the Humans. By 17633 GC, the Pax Humanica was no more, as each individual race rejected the Senate's stagnant policies and rose up to claim what was rightfully theirs. Not every race within the sector made itself known: hiding in secret within the Orion Sector's gas giants were the Ethereans, who did not wish to be bothered by the other races' warfare, and developing just beyond the bounds of the Pax Humanica were the Evon colonies. As the local Orion races rose up and expanded their empires, they again faced conflict with their neighbors over borders and territories. The Orion Senate was convened to maintain diplomatic relations between the growing nations, and trade and discourse flourished even as war fleets were being built nearby. Libluini fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Jun 13, 2016 |
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Jun 13, 2016 11:30
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 27: Klackons Rising  The second Raas-planet which has entered the Kingdom of Almandin: Deanton II has a lot of upset dinosaurs. But that’s just because all their houses have been blown up by the fighting, that’s an easily solvable problem!  Some industry, some research and of course military, governmental and recreational facilities are needed. Now we have to just wait until everything is build. The victory of Silicoid Democracy is near!  On the other side of our empire, the young colony of Hughst I has been founded. Again some Imsaies found themselves involuntarily joining up together with our colonists.   Hughst was the Annalonian system on the other side of our wormhole. With this, we now have control of both our and the Imsaies-end.  To keep our friends happy, I ask again for some improvements in our trade treaty. We have to do this regularly because our diplomacy-skill is so lovely, every relation we have tends to go down over time. We need the constant diplomatic exchanges to remind our allies we’re good and cool and not vile and evil.  The Cynoids and their empire with the exact same map color as ours is expanding through the space beyond the Imsaies-borders. My scout is still searching for a way to get out of their space.  A map of our explored star lanes. As you can see from this perspective, while the Raas space in the lower right corner and the Imsaies and Cynoid space in the upper half are leading around the edge of the Orion Sector, the Klackon-border leads deeper into the core. At this point, huge parts of the map are already claimed, but with a bit of luck we can still uncover some hidden gems. We just need to remove roadblocks like the Raas or that guardian we found.  Our shortage of military transports made me lay down some more transport ships. Random fact of the day: Originally, there was no such thing as a “Heavy Cruiser”, the hull sizes went from Cruiser straight to Battlecruiser. But both the translation and I changed some things around for our tastes, so there are now four cruiser-sizes before we get battleships. The next hull size in our future was once the humble original battleship, but it’s now the battlecruiser thanks to all that renaming going on.  I stopped dealing personally with the Raas-transports trying to get into Innar for the most part. And oh, look at that: The Raas have built another ship for us to blow up!   A single LAC challenges our entire fleet. Even the fact it’s a carrier can’t change the outcome.  Some of our fighters bought it, but we have infinite numbers of them, so this is a flawless victory.  After that, another bombardment kills another 2/3rds of the population. After we push the population below 1.00, the Raas will risk losing control every turn.  Another enemy spy gets caught in turn 104, also there’s some unrest on our two newest planets.  On our border to Klackon space, we get some more bad news: Another Psilon-world has fallen. The Klackon-ship count is down to 17 again, but we can’t tell if it is because the other ships were all transports now back on their way to the reserves, or if the Klackons launched a fleet towards us. Our sensor range extends about 1-2 turns (depending on the FTL-engine) outwards, so we need to wait a while to see incoming enemy ships. This particular star lane is rather long.  Cokanuk has now 27 ships defending it. Thanks to our many carriers, this should be enough to hold in case of emergency.  The Raas War has to be continued, too: We have enough transports for another army, so I’m raising the 1st Imperial Army. It will be one of the forces I’m planning to throw at the Raas capital planet.  The new army is our largest ground army yet and eats up all three transports in our reserves. Now we’re back to waiting for the ships trapped in transit limbo.  Our military strength is at 69 star ships now. And the Vchiitri Empire got upgraded to worst enemy, while the Raas are now too weak to count.  The Klackons from the Vchiitri Empire face similar “trouble”: The Psilons got downgraded to irrelevant, while we are now their worst enemies. Even though we haven’t even fought yet! They have 119 ships to our 69, but they had more in the past. I’m guessing many of the missing ships are transports, which will only be counted after reaching the reserves again. If the Klackons could concentrate on us, this would be a rather scary discrepancy in force, but the Klackons have other enemies besides us and the Psilons and as long as it stays that way, we’re safe.  More statistics: We’re up to 23 planets now and our average tech-level is 24. We’re on sixth place overall.  Eating Psilon-space has made the Vchiitri Empire the strongest power of the Orion Sector. It has 41 planets, nearly twice as much population and could be a serious threat if not for hanging back full five tech levels. On average. We’re boosting our main three research fields a lot stronger than the AI would do if left alone, so our actual advantage is 1-2 level higher. If the AI had knowledge about the fact most weapons and ship-related techs are in Physics, Mathematics and Energy research, the game would be a lot harder.  Visitors to Innar come and go.  Another hastily built Raas-ship gets blown up in Deanton.  Besides from that, our scouts in hostile space reach Trax in Klackon space and Nilus in Raas space.  Deanton III is now broken. Even if the Raas retain control for some more turns, without at least 1 population the planet won’t really develop.  In turn 105, we get a new spy and some light-hearted diplomacy answers.  Colony control is often a bit wonky. You should only have control as long as you have the 1/1000 population points you need to establish a colony, but you won’t always lose control if the population falls below that. Sometimes dying colonies can drag on for multiple turns before they suddenly fail and turn feral.  But let’s be optimistic. As soon as the Raas lose control, I’ll send a colony ship to take over Deanton III.  Nilus I is a poo poo planet, but mineral rich. Since it’s a lot better suited for Raas than for Silicoids, I’m basically forced to invade this planet. Wiping out and recolonizing would take too long and end in me having a rather suboptimal colony.  After surveying the Nilus-system, my scout travels onwards to Amoenta. As long as the AI doesn’t learn to immediately assault scouts dropping into their systems, I’m willing to abuse this as much as possible to map out hostile space.  This is getting ridiculous. The AI should disband all those armies to re-route all those units back to defend their capital. It’s sometimes hard to believe that vanilla AI-behavior was even worse then this.  Transmission from Trax: Mostly Klackons, but one planet is settled by Phaigur instead. The Phaigur are one of the many non-playable races you can find exploring the Orion Sector. They’re fungoids and good at agriculture. Mediocre soldiers. That’s about it.  Our scout immediately continues towards Toliman-A. The way the star lanes are laid out here means if I can get a blockade force to Trax, the four Ex-Psilon systems (Munic, Foman, Dromos and Tali) behind it are basically at our mercy. Something I take note of for the future.  The Klackons prepare for another assault. Next: Fleet 4.0
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Jun 13, 2016 23:45
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6th? Ye gads, looks like Carbon is handily beating Silicone!
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Jun 14, 2016 12:22
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Lore 14: The Great War: Act Two The Antaran Menace It was inevitable that the drive for territorial expansion would bring the local Orion races into conflict with one another again, and the drums of war were dusted off and sounded throughout the sector. Legends and tales from this war still remain within the historical archives of the local Orion races. Stories of the vast legions of Sakkra, "as numerous as the stars in the sky," or the shadowy Darloks, "the hidden masters of chaos and dissent," or the Mrrshan, "proud and noble warriors" were still remembered thousands of years after the war had ended. Regardless of the literary license taken with the war, it was still a vast and terrific undertaking for all the races involved. Each race arrogantly claimed that it was the rightful master of the Orion Sector, and each race fought to the death to prove themselves right. Though the Evon and the Ethereans did not participate in the conflict, they did observe it from the sidelines, the Evon to prepare, the Ethereans simply to await the potential discovery of gas giant terraforming and take counter-action in such an event. One other race, however, made itself known during this time period. The first confirmed raid by the Antarans in the Orion Sector took place in 17863 GC. Numerous additional raids followed. At the time, they were seen as nothing more than mysterious raiders who attacked fleets and colonies, seemingly at random, and always destroying everything that they encountered. Their attacks soon came with increasing frequency and brutality, costing all races equally in ships and population. No race was spared a visit by the Antarans, and with each subsequent attack, the local Orion races grew a little more worried, a little more fearful: who was it who was challenging them, where did they come from, and what did they want? In the Senate, an intense study was conducted concerning the Antaran menace in 17878 GC. Its results were both disturbing and disheartening. The study correctly concluded that the Antarans were a very ancient race utilizing technologies both unknown and quite superior to those currently in use by the local Orion races. Worse, they were operating not from another sector (against which a counterstrike could be launched), but from another dimension. Somehow, a way would have to be found to invade their dimension if the Antarans were to be dealt with. In the meantime, the war continued, and the Antarans maintained pressure on the Orion races indiscriminately. Even as they fought amongst themselves, the young Orion races realized that if the war did not end soon, either through political or military means, then the victor would be the Antarans themselves. The unimaginable terrors that implied led the survivors to ever-greater lengths to end the Great War. But no race could gain a serious enough advantage to unite the Orion races. Suspicions and hatreds ran deep. Besides, it was repeatedly argued, uniting against the Antarans was a futile stance while they were safe and inaccessible in their own dimension.
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Jun 14, 2016 20:26
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Lib, this is MoO2 lore, correct?
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Jun 15, 2016 01:20
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Rick_Hunter posted:Lib, this is MoO2 lore, correct? Basically NONE of this lore is present in MoO1 or 2. Both 1 and 2 were pretty sparse on the fluff, all you really knew was that Orion was a (mostly) deserted treasure trove with a spooky Guardian, and that in 2, that the Antarans were launching raids from their own dimension and needed to have their alien nads kicked in.
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Jun 15, 2016 02:31
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PurpleXVI posted:Basically NONE of this lore is present in MoO1 or 2. Both 1 and 2 were pretty sparse on the fluff, all you really knew was that Orion was a (mostly) deserted treasure trove with a spooky Guardian, and that in 2, that the Antarans were launching raids from their own dimension and needed to have their alien nads kicked in. As it happens, I have my MoO II manual right here, and can quote the entirety of its lore below: Master of Orion II posted:(Excerpted from "Pre-Psilonic Galactic Civilizations" Vol. II, by Ectron Victor, retired Master Adjudicator, Psilon Central History Institute.) My take on what has been described so far is that in MoO I, the Humans won via either Conquest or Diplomacy and became the Pax Humanica. This then rotted which is why when MoO II starts you have all the same races as in MoO 1 (plus a few new ones like the Gnolams and Elerians and Trilarians) but none of them have anything beyond the rudiments of Warp tech (if that; MoO II has a "pre-warp" start mode where you have to research the ability to leave your home systems). The previous post has us in the late midgame of a contested MoO II game; the MoO II intro is more the late earlygame. (In MoO II in particular, the Psilons also evolved on a world full of Orion and/or Antaran artifacts, which boosts their tech output even more, and also gives an in-game excuse for them having storytellers who know about ancient pangalactic wars despite only having recently (re-?) achieved space.) Note that MoO II and MoO I did not set themselves up as sequels the way MoO III seems to be making out; MoO II was cast much more as a more sophisticated retelling of MoO I, much like Civ II was of Civ I. ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Jun 15, 2016 |
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Jun 15, 2016 05:46
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Rick_Hunter posted:Lib, this is MoO2 lore, correct? As others have said, this is basically Master of Orion II as presented by Master of Orion III. The third game tries its very best to create a coherent history from all three games. Too bad all that effort is wasted since there's now a reboot of Master of Orion coming. But eh, I still like this version of the story better, mostly because of what happens to the Antarans. (On the other hand, we got the Harvesters too. Yuck!) Lore 15: The Great War: Act Three Retribution Caught between the proverbial Silicoid and a hard place, the local Orion races could not find a political or military solution to the Antaran menace that was growing in strength, with larger strike forces coming through every Cycle. Once again, the answer would come from the scientific community. In 17914 GC, the Psilons accidentally discovered an ancient Orion research laboratory on one of their colony worlds, and with some effort deciphered the technologies therein. Most important among those technologies was a prototype for an Orion version of a Trans-Dimensional Portal, designed to go from normal space into the hidden Antaran Sector. With this key piece of the puzzle, the Psilons realized that the local Orion races would soon be able to avenge their losses. Knowing that they themselves did not have the military muscle to challenge the Antarans single-handedly, the Psilons wisely chose to trade the Trans-Dimensional Portal technology to all the local Orion races (profiting vastly from the exchanges), and soon TDP's were being constructed around every homeworld. The Psilons also studied the Antaran attack patterns and, using the new knowledge they had gleaned from the ancient Orions, determined that all the Antaran attacks were being launched from a single point in other-dimensional space. They hypothesized that that point would be the Antaran homeworld, and thus their best target. The local Orion races agreed, some of them even daring to send raiding parties through their portals to challenge the Antarans on their own turf. The Antarans were barely concerned with such raids; there were always enough refitted Green Fleet ships to destroy the Orion invaders long before they could threaten Kathar itself, and the Orions themselves proved to have technology insufficient to the task of actually hurting an Antaran world. The Antarans waited patiently, the Green Fleet finishing up with the Alioth Sector and the Black Fleet continuing the war against the Meissans. The Antarans' mistake was to miscalculate the sheer hatred the Orions had come to feel for them, a hatred that drove those races day and night in preparation for war with their greatest enemy ever. Next: Another regular update!
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Jun 15, 2016 09:11
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Libluini posted:As others have said, this is basically Master of Orion II as presented by Master of Orion III. The third game tries its very best to create a coherent history from all three games. Too bad all that effort is wasted since there's now a reboot of Master of Orion coming. But eh, I still like this version of the story better, mostly because of what happens to the Antarans. (On the other hand, we got the Harvesters too. Yuck!)  I find the MoO lore very interesting except for the handwaving of why news races showed up and/or everyone is starting from square one again.
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Jun 18, 2016 23:40
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 28: Fleet 4.0 OK, we had a lot of lore updates recently, so I decided to break up the story time a bit with regular posts.  One of our guys got killed! A perfectly planned strike against his command ship kills Nafia Jurete. Which would be bad, but I already forgot what that guy was doing, so I don’t really feel the loss.  With the exception of ancient super-robot Modoan Eud, our old guard is now gone. Assassinations took two of them, two others died of old age. I’m pretty sure good old Eud here is only still with us because he’s a giant robot computer thing. On the other hand, our Meklar-leaders all died too, so who the hell knows? Just in case, I’m mentally preparing myself to losing him soon, too.  For some reason I keep forgetting to show you our new agents: Agent Beigesang is one of the stealthiest motherfuckers we got so far. Cloak 6 is rather high. Too bad he is also one of the weakest. Seriously, Dagger 1?   The Imsaies are thanking us. It seems our newest trade treaty alterations have made them happy.  Some new techs are incoming: The Intercultural Reference Library helps our dumb rocks to remember etiquette, weird alien figures of speech and other stuff good for diplomacy. Our diplomacy points will be 10% higher after this tech is researched, which should help us a bit in the future. Sadly it’s not possible to see how much diplomacy points we generate. I will try to remember comparing our relations after this tech is finished. (Spoilers from the future: I totally forgot to do this That red-blue thing in the upper right is the Silo Freight Module. Every space port with it installed can regulate the automatic loading and unloading of freighters far better thanks to more computers. It makes our space ports generate more money.  Our strength fluctuated a bit because I scrapped an old ship behind the curtains. The Klackons are way down in strength. And they have a new worst enemy, besides us: The Dzazatar Empire. We haven’t met those guys yet, since they’re on the other side of the Vchiitri Empire. Let’s see if our scout can find them.  Thanks to our death grip on Deanton, the fighting is dying down. Two auto-wins this turn.  The cleansing of Deanton III continues.  Turn 106 gives us the Neutronblaster: A deadly beam weapon with high range and shield-piercing abilities. (Shields are counting at 10% reduced strength when hit by this weapon.)  Another insect-spy gets sprayed with pesticide. And another of our bad planets joins up as official colony.  The Imsaies are calling. This time they want to congratulate us for our good relations getting even better. Weirdos.  We’re filthy rich by now, but we need the wealth, too: Our military is drawing 2k Antaran Units per turn for our construction programs and the cost of our fleet has risen to 0,5k AU. Still, even our military-industrial-complex isn’t enough to let us lose money. We’re still getting richer every turn.  Deanton III is still controlled by the Dila Empire, but the Raas can and should lose control any time now. Something new I learned this turn: If you mark a planet controlled by another empire as a future colony, the game conveniently deletes your marker when calculating the next turn.  So, thanks to us having a new weapon to play with, I decided to go around upgrading my designs. First problem: Upgrading didn’t work. Why? See, in vanilla this doesn’t happen that often, if at all, but a design can’t actually be upgraded if you research upgrades to stuff that is automatically added, like bridges and crew quarters. This is because altering a design doesn’t automatically add the new stuff in, making it an invalid design because MO3. Some time ago we researched miniaturized crew quarters to get some extra space, but the game now things old non-miniaturized quarters aren’t complete, since every design now needs both the crew quarters and the “miniaturized”-modifier. Old designs don’t have the modifier and can’t get it. Not a problem for building, since the queues don’t check if the design you’re building is invalid and even without the upgraded crap the ships you build still function as normal. But you can’t ever alter a design anymore after an internal upgrade is researched. In this case, I have to make new designs entirely. So I decided to trash every single design we had and start over fresh. We will have to do this several more times throughout the game.  The best I can think of to explain this mess is maybe the ship designer getting confused by some of the extra-techs added in by the mod.  Did I say I trashed all designs? Well, turns out our two latest designs are new enough to already have the miniaturized crew quarters, so they can still be upgraded! Our Liberty-class point defense destroyers get some neutron blasters to aid their laser-based point defense batteries.  With the fighter shield generators incoming soon, upgrading our carriers right now doesn’t make sense, so I ignore Democracy for now and create a new long-range design: The Extinction-class heavy cruiser. Main armament: 10 spinal-mounted neutron blaster cannons.  Since our direct fire ships are all really fast compared with out slow carriers, I also need some fast escorts. This time I elect to make the fast escorts a hull size larger. Our new Topaz-light cruisers are as heavily armed as the old Liberty-destroyers, but way faster.  As fun as smashing everything with giant ships is, it’s also really slow and I’m guessing you want this LP to end before old age takes you all. So with this in mind, I started including designs for lighter, cheaper ships. Ships like the Nirvana-class light cruiser. This secondary fleet will allow me to create lots of task forces with light ships to penetrate enemy defenses, while my heavier ships siege down systems like we’re doing with Deanton right now.  Carriers are so over-powered, my light fleet will need some, too. The Very Light Carrier Opal is a frigate-sized carrier. It can only carry 6 fighters, but that just means I need more carriers.   The point defense frigate Rock > Flesh! This little thing is not really what you’d call heavily armed, I even had to take out ECCM to give it a non-silly armament. It is blindingly fast and makes a good match to small, light attack ships like the Nirvana-class. Interestingly, ECM makes your TF harder to hit and stacks, so the more you have, the better. ECCM only works on a ship-to-ship basis however: It unscrambles enemy ECM and allows your ships to target enemy TFs easier. Since missiles and fighters don’t have ECM (maybe, there could be some exotic late-game techs I’m forgetting), taking out the ECCM doesn’t really hurt a PD-ship. This ship also has a large-calibre sensor matrix, which is probably total overkill. It means I don’t have to integrate nearly unarmed scouts into my task forces, though. Sensors counteract ECM and cloaks by negating their stealth-bonus, but the execution in this game is a mess: At first sensors were bugged and didn’t work at all, then the devs tried with hotfixes and a last-ditch patch to make it work, then the modders making Ultima Orion found out that there was still some sort of problem bugging things up. But after what I’ve read about this I’m fairly sure it works now! Well, the modders at least think so. Eh, good enough. Before I forget: Sensor matrixes work at the TF-level, so to stop one of my fleets from using them, it has to lose every single escort.  Thanks again to having smaller engines and therefore more space, I can make the escort for the Opal-class carriers a hull size smaller: The Point-defense corvette Kiesel is even slightly heavier armed than our Rock > Flesh frigate. (Engines take a lot of space.) Sadly the ship is too tiny to cram a sensor-matrix in, but the Opal-carriers are meant to operate together with a LR-task force anyway, so the scouting will be done by them. Kiesel was one of the few non-goon names I threw in just because. It is rather tiny for a main fleet ship, after all!  Next step on the list: A new transport! To combine more troops and more weapons into one neat package, the new Medium Transport Ship Iridium will be cruiser-sized. The new Iridium-transports should be able to carry a full army between two of them. Our old transports meant I had to awkwardly squeeze in a third ship if I wanted enough transport capacity. Since this kind of asymmetry means less space for escorts in a TF, I don’t really like it.  Additionally, I take the chance to finally use the large colony crystal: The Colony Ship Small Jade carries slightly more colonists than our old colony ship, but it also carries a lot of armor and some UV-flash light for plinking at enemy scouts or something. Since armor tends to get obscenely expensive later on, medium armor will be the highest level you will ever see on a colony ship. More is simply ludicrous, my designs are already one step below overkill. Defense on a colony ship just means survival until the emergency jump kicks in.  The System Colonizer Small Quartz. Light cruiser sized, since otherwise I wouldn’t be able to put the large colony crystal in. On the other hand, thanks to the next hull size down being far too small, I had lots of extra space to put useless weapons in! I balked at putting medium armor on this thing, though. This ship shouldn’t ever see combat anyway, if you know what you’re doing.  The Light Attack Craft Point Defense Corvette Lime: A STL-corvette meant as an escort for larger system defense ships. Thanks to not having a giant FTL-drive taking up space, it has a ludicrous amount of weapons, including a heavy neutron battery just for the better coverage compared to a spinal mount.  The Light Attack Craft Representation carries the honor of being another goon-named ship. The Lancer is the second-smallest hull size (and was the smallest in vanilla) but as a system ship, you can still put a lot of stuff in there. Like two spinal mounted Neutronblasters. Alone this thing is harmless, but if it comes in a swarm it will blast apart smaller formations of more expensive ships with ease. Of course being really small, the Representation is really vulnerable as soon as the shields and armor give out. Until then it will be a great way to shove annoying pests out of our systems, though. This was another hull size I renamed because I didn’t like the German translation. In vanilla, the two smallest hull sizes were “Cutter” and “Lancer”. Since I liked “Lancer” so much, I renamed what was the “Cutter” to “Lancer” and invented a new name “Striker”, for the smallest hull. This was purely done because I liked the name but also wanted more space to put stuff in. (In case you haven’t noticed, two hull sizes share the same graphics, so the old Cutter and Lancer looked identical. All that renaming was the perfect way to make things as they should be.) And before you asked, all this was so long ago I can’t remember the German names anymore. If people really want to know, I guess I could re-download the mod and look into the files.  Anyway, after that boring and confusing explanation, here is the Light Attack Craft Point Defense Striker (thank god for abbreviations) Paleogene. It’s literally the smallest ship class you can possibly make and its only weapons are a bunch of point defense batteries (and one light neutronblaster mount, but that’s technical still point defense). You probably can already guess what I’ll do with this thing: They will be the escorts to the Lancer-design above. They’re basically moving ablative armor to make the flying space cannons survive longer.  Having the Klackons on our border made me antsy, so after all those other designs, I added a new fortress. The Orbital Defense Fortress Diamond can send out 140 fighters, has enough point defense and electronics to be basically a fleet on its own and is incredibly expensive. Thanks to me blanking out on the fighter-shield generator issue, it’s also outdated about 5 turns from now. Stuff like this is why not being able to retrofit is sometimes really goddamn annoying.  Anyway, at least they have fighter-armor and still pack a vile punch.  The Orbital Defense Station Polonium is a lot smaller than that doom fortress I just showed off, but it still has a lot of fire power. The ODS Polonium has a lot of point defense and some heavy batteries to give incoming fighters and missiles a nasty long-range surprise. This thing can protect some backwards colonies perfectly fine on its own, but it is really meant to be used together with the ODF Diamond, to draw fire from the more important orbital while giving additional weight to defensive fire power. OK, here’s the deal: You can only put a maximum of 3 orbitals per planet. If you have moons, you can add 3 more per moon. While some planets with lots of moons can be turned into real death traps for invaders, most planets are lucky to even have moons. So this means while I could put three gigantic Diamond-forts on every planet, this is obviously prohibitively expensive. With my system, important planets will have 1 large fort and 1-2 smaller back-up space forts as defense. This way I can turn a planet into a strong fortress 2-3 times faster than if I went the obvious route of always building the largest possible fortress size.  Recon Craft Small Bydo: Or the This-Hull-Reminds-Me-of-R-Type-ship. I really wanted more Lancers, so I made this small needle of a ship. The Bydo can’t even carry our newest sensor system and its only weapon is a single small “Quantus”-missile launcher. A launcher which can fire exactly two times before running out of ammunition. Next time I think I will start making larger scouts again. This is a rather silly ship. The missile launcher is only in there because the smallest possible launcher-size is even smaller than the smallest possible direct fire weapon I could have put in there. This should really have been at least a corvette hull. Also don’t worry, I’ll talk more about missiles after our next two missile techs, because until then our missiles are garbage. (Our RNG hated missiles, so we missed two upgrades.) After looking closer at our tech tree, it seems it’ll be a long while before we get the next warhead tech. As soon as I can make missile ships which are not completely helpless, I’ll talk about space artillery.  Just to show you the problem, this is a ship with the largest type of missile and the best warhead we have. After point defense and ammunition (3 whole salvoes!) is accounted for, we do about half damage compared to an Extinction-class heavy cruiser. And neutronblasters don’t need ammunition. Missiles, even in Ultima Orion, can still be a strong weapon. We just got hosed on this play-through, sorry!  After all this designing, it’s time to use our blueprints to build some of our new ships! To make this update shorter and less boring, please just imagine twenty almost identical screenshots of me putting new designs into construction across the Kingdom. Thanks. Next: Back to fighting a war. In space. Libluini fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jun 21, 2016 |
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Jun 20, 2016 19:43
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I can't wait to see these glorious crystal vessels obliterate other kinds of SpaceNazis.
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Jun 20, 2016 23:42
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_(boat) Cutter is a real ship classification and pretty apt for the smallest possible ship size, for anyone who doesn't feel like reading a wiki link: Cutters are small boats mostly used in boarding bigger vessels either to drop off personnel or to conduct customs operations. I'm only familiar with the term because my dad worked on these for the UK boarder agency for a while, it's not a common term at all.
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Jun 22, 2016 02:41
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This game seems impossibly slow. Is that due to the OPs play style or the game itself? Like, if we set up a tiny galaxy and played as the most warlike race possible, would it be everybody having one world and plinking at each other until a tech or production race managed to break through?
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Jun 22, 2016 06:31
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I am slowly working on another update. he is progressing faster than I am. Spoilers - it is turn 75 and I'm doing the shield and fighter fusion bomb refit of my fleet.
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Jun 22, 2016 07:29
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Shbobdb posted:This game seems impossibly slow. Is that due to the OPs play style or the game itself? Like, if we set up a tiny galaxy and played as the most warlike race possible, would it be everybody having one world and plinking at each other until a tech or production race managed to break through? Yeah, if you put all races into the smallest galaxy, you can get stuff like multiple empires starting in the same system. The drawback is of course, you could get another warlike race as neighbors and lose your first war. If you survive, it would still devolve in hundreds of turns of you slowly building up strength to conquer all the other races. If you want a short play-through, make a map with just one AI. That way you immediately win after your first war. But in normal play without gimmicks, even small maps will take a long time to finish. My shortest game was Humans on a small map with about 10 AIs and it ended after about 250 turns. And only because the Imsaies elected themselves leaders of the Orion Senate. Bullshit like this was the reason I switched diplomatic victory of for the LP. With the Silicoids and their very slow reproduction on our side, we would have risked a similarly embarrassing end. We're going for a conquest victory, so this will take a while. Don't worry though, I'm already cutting out unimportant poo poo like mad, future updates will steadily become more and more compressed. After a point we will get 20+ battles per turn and even just mentioning all of them would devolve into entire updates just recounting battles. Now that's just silly. All in all, I'm actually impressed of how fast we're progressing!
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Jun 22, 2016 10:36
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Wow, it seems like you have so many potential technology chassis to refit every time there's a new technology. Well, a new technology that miniaturizes or whatever some existing part.
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Jun 24, 2016 02:19
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Glazius posted:Wow, it seems like you have so many potential technology chassis to refit every time there's a new technology. And now think about all those technologies squished into half as many tech-levels. That is vanilla.
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Jun 24, 2016 14:02
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The devs discovered a miniaturized version of planned obsolescence allowing for twice the outdating in half the amount of time.
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Jun 24, 2016 14:05
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 29: Back To Space War  Time to put our new ships to use! But first we bomb Deanton III again. We also get our first new star lane inside our borders: Roch is now connected to Bungula-B. I know nothing about Bungula-B and will continue to ignore this system for a couple more updates. Be prepared by me noticing this system neighboring Roch and thinking it's the first time about a month from now.  Let’s ignore our backwater for now, our scout has reached another Klackon-system: Toliman-A is full of insects. Ugh.  Toliman-A is also another dead end, so our scout has to go all the way back to reach a new system.  Two Klackon planets and three Psilon-planets left. 82 ships concentrated in one system doesn’t look good, either. Hopefully the Psilons can resist some more!  Thanks to the AI being stupid, 29 ships should be enough on our side for now.  On the other side of the Kingdom, the situation is mirrored, with Silicoids taking the role of Klackons and Raas impersonating Psilons.  One of my other scouts reaches the system of Blamor. Lots of good planets, with slightly less than ideal gravity. Drawback: Blamor is halfway on the other side of the Orion Sector from us. I'm blaming Blamor.  Reminder: This red means Cynoids, not us. The way this long journey is going, I now expect this scout to somehow reach our space again by circumventing the entire sector.  Two battles so lopsided I leave the mop-up to the AI and the scout tasked with exploring Raas-space reaches another system without getting blown up.  By now our constant bombardments of Deanton III don’t find a lot of targets anymore: Most survivors are hiding in random caves across the planet. Still, if we continue for long enough, the population can drop to zero. Until we hit end-game level techs, it will always end like this: The first couple bombardments will wipe out nearly everything, but then a long hunt for survivors follows. This is especially annoying when fighting harvesters. You do not want surviving Ithkul on your future colonies. Every region infested by them will grow back to 100% Ithkul population if you let them. And thanks to how migration-mechanics work, a single planet with harvesters on them can spread those angry, hungry monsters across your entire empire.  Turn 109 has some minor spy-news: Agent Düster “retires” and we have a saboteur on Almandin VI, slowing down military production.  Sadly, we have to depend on the one, single saboteur we have. Agent Fissure has to fight the enemy saboteur on his own, since there’s still about 20 turns of agents in training to go through until we can add another saboteur.  Amoenta has some medium-sized Raas colonies. Not really a threat, unless we take too long liberating the other Raas planets, that is.  There’s still another Raas-system out here, so our lonely scout continues his journey.  OK, Deanton is now basically worthless, but the RNG still refuses to take control away from the Dila Empire. We have to wait some more. At least the Raas can’t do anything with this planet after we reduced everything to burning rubble, so for all intents and purposes, the Deanton-system only has one Raas-world left.  For some reason Cokanuk II is still not colonized. As toxic Red 2 world with poor mineral abundance it’s not a planet we could afford in the early game, but thanks to Silicoids not needing food and having a giant mineral surplus, this has changed. I’m thinking of turning Cokanuk II into a research center, since our main colony here is already geared for industrial production.  The mixed Tardig-system has some more lovely planets I decide to take before our allies take them. Tardig IV is a toxic hellhole so bad it has a pitifully low max population capacity, even though it has three moons to add more extra space. At least the high gravity is exactly how Silicoids like it, so we don’t have to worry about production being slowed down. By the way, three moons plus the main planet means we could theoretically put up twelve orbitals here. Too bad that kind of fire power would be wasted on a poo poo-tier planet so deep inside our borders.  The Klackons continue to build up fleet strength at our border.  Our first attack by insectoids: Two small transport task forces are closing in on Cokanuk. This attack is incredibly weak, but it’s also a wake-up call: The Klackons have begun their invasion.  Our largest colonies are still building a mixture of new ships and giant gently caress-off space fortresses.  By now you can probably imagine what happened here.  Agent Harpune (Harpoon) is ready for action! Oh, and spies stole our super-secret technology to build our old level 1 lasers slightly smaller. Good for them. The AI may be able to cheat, but they can't cheat the RNG! Master of Orion 3 isn't sophisticated enough to allow a spy to actually make sensible decisions. It's all luck, baby.  Another enemy agent creates some unrest, while one of our old agents retires. “Number 2” and his scatological reference is now gone.  Harpune is quite good actually: Dagger 9 is one of the highest attack-values I’ve ever seen on a spy. Cloak 4 is mediocre, though. I’m hoping his high dagger-value makes him better at defending our leaders too. That way I could wring some use out of his high attack attribute.  Our financial overview: For some reason our income keeps growing faster than our expenses. Not that I’m complaining, this is the exact reason why I never take bad economy-picks during race creation. Not having enough money is crippling in this game.  Some good news for fans of our old obsolete Rammstein-class cruisers: We will soon get the Inferno Cannon, a weapon which is basically an upgraded version of the old Fusion Cannons. More range, a lot more damage and high precision. The latter means Infernos make good close-range point defense. And this weapon is advanced enough it actually has more range than some of our earlier long-range options. So this means our new “short-range” ships will hopefully stop trying to hug enemy task forces.  To my annoyance, the situation on Deanton III remains unchanged this turn.  But I don’t care anymore. Next turn, we’ll take our first attempt at capturing the capital of the Dila Empire. After that, the rest of Raas space will fall in short order.  And soon we won’t be forced to wait multiple turns for reinforcements to arrive: Deanton IV is only four turns from finishing a mobilization center. Deanton II meanwhile raises some Dinosaur Shock Troops for our armies. I just thought it would be funny to liberate the Raas with their own people, OK?  One army will probably be not enough to take the Raas-capital, so I’m throwing together another one. Mostly mobile infantry, with some supplies, psy-ops and command centers thrown in for good measure.  This transport fleet will be the last forced to wander in from our side of the border. When it arrives in four turns, we can start raising ground troops right there in Deanton.  I tried adding a third army to the two now floating around, but welp, we need one more transport ship for a full army.  The new transport TF is on its way to the front. I decided to send another, smaller force with it. If a full army runs into trouble, sending a single corps with it won’t do much good either. Besides running up the casualty lists, of course.  Lots of things happening during our in-between-turns limbo this time! Our scout in Klackon space passes through Trax without trouble, some random Raas-ships get their obligatory whipping in Innar and two major battles: The Vchiitri Empire invades us at Cokanuk and the Dila Empire tries to defend their capital planet from our invasion.  The Great Klackon Invasion is a dud. The enemy transports immediately start re-charging their FTL-drives.  The Klackon-ships blimp out just as our fighter swarms reach them. Our fighters get close enough to be illuminated by the discharging FTL-engines, but not close enough to shoot. Too bad.  Oh well, onwards to the other battle. I decide it’s time to storm Deanton I. Three orbital bases, a fighter garrison, missile- and ground defense batteries. Even without any Raas ships, this will be brutal.  Capital Assault  Oh yeah, that was brutal. And now we don’t have any troops left to invade the planet. Oops!  On the other hand, now I have several turns to carefully bomb Deanton I into poo poo to prevent the Raas from rebuilding their defenses. This terror bombing campaign may or may not be funded in my frustration with those pesky little dinosaurs resisting so much. And with our reduced fleet we sure as hell don’t want the Raas to come back from total defeat. Next: The Siege I
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Jun 30, 2016 15:58
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Clear out the bulk of the enemy forces, then spend a small eternity hunting down the stragglers? How did they know what my favorite part of Warcraft was?
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Jul 1, 2016 00:18
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Those dinos just don't know when to quit! But our brave space rock troops shall win the day! Do future techs speed up the process of taking over planets?
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Jul 1, 2016 20:22
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RedMagus posted:Those dinos just don't know when to quit! But our brave space rock troops shall win the day! Yes. In so far they're making our troops harder to beat. On the other hand, our enemies are researching a lot of those techs themselves, so it's literally an arms race
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Jul 1, 2016 20:52
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Master of Orion II (and the reboot) had an infrastrucutre you could build/research called the Alien Management Center which was oriented towards rapid assimilation of colonies that you had occupied. I don't recall if MOO3 had a similar tech or not.
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Jul 2, 2016 09:47
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wedgekree posted:Master of Orion II (and the reboot) had an infrastrucutre you could build/research called the Alien Management Center which was oriented towards rapid assimilation of colonies that you had occupied. I don't recall if MOO3 had a similar tech or not. The third game doesn't have it and doesn't need it, since your empire policies and alien preferences determine how fast you can integrate an alien population. In practice, making sure aliens can relax, have a working government and some soldiers to shoot them if they get uppity is enough. Look at how fast we integated our first Raas-planets: They literally went from upset over slightly miffed to indifference in just a couple turns. Though you could argue that techs making DEAs dealing with population mood more effective are indirectly boosting our assimilation, since they make conquered aliens submit to our rule faster.
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Jul 2, 2016 11:05
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Libluini posted:The third game doesn't have it and doesn't need it, since your empire policies and alien preferences determine how fast you can integrate an alien population. In practice, making sure aliens can relax, have a working government and some soldiers to shoot them if they get uppity is enough. Look at how fast we integated our first Raas-planets: They literally went from upset over slightly miffed to indifference in just a couple turns. Cool, don't remember enough about 3 to have ever gottena feel for how integration and assimilation of captured provinces worked within the mechanics. Thanks for the explanation!
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Jul 4, 2016 09:08
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wedgekree posted:Cool, don't remember enough about 3 to have ever gottena feel for how integration and assimilation of captured provinces worked within the mechanics. Thanks for the explanation! Poorly. If it's a question about MOO3 and how something works, poorly is always the answer.
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Jul 6, 2016 21:01
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Veloxyll posted:Poorly. If it's a question about MOO3 and how something works, poorly is always the answer. To be fair, it totally works as intended. The problem just is, the system mindlessly strives for total optimization of your populace without taking anything except planetary environments into account. As long as you are some kind of deranged individual thriving on perfect mathematical balance, regardless of the total mayhem and unrest it causes, it works perfectly fine. As a reminder, always bomb Harvesters mercilessly down to zero population. Even the tiniest amount of surviving Ithkul can gently caress your poo poo up if you aren't playing them themselves. The migration system doesn't know and doesn't care that Harvesters eat most other people, it'll gladly send them everywhere they like. But apart from that there are no significant problems. 
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Jul 8, 2016 17:50
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| # ? May 25, 2024 21:11 |
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New Lore! Lore 16: The Battles at Orion and Antares The Orions eventually accepted the inevitable truth: only together could they defeat the Antarans, and then only with powers granted by ancient Orion technology. The Psilons had proven that where the ancient Orions had been, technological riches were not far away. And though it would be nearly impossible to predict where other Orion colonies may have been, there was one place in the sector where there was no doubt of past Orion presence: Orion itself. Protected by the seemingly omnipotent Guardian, the planet Orion had never been touched by the local Orion races. An immense battle group was constructed and assembled, consisting of the best of ships from all races, and placed under the command of the legendary Human Admiral Parvenarius Dalan. Their plan was simple- defeat the Guardian, secure Orion. They knew full well, however, that neither task was as simple as that. The casualties taken by the Orion fleet were enormous, but in the end, the massive firepower they brought to bear on the Guardian won out. With Orion secured, the second phase of the plan went into effect. Technologies taken from the Guardian and Orion itself were incorporated into the Orion fleets, and over several cycles a new battle group was constructed. Loknar, a mysterious stranger who greeted the landing parties when they arrived on Orion, helped the young Orion races understand the technologies they had discovered, and gave their leaders insight into the military mindset of the Antarans. And so, in the fateful cycle of 18012 GC, the local Orion races gathered another enormous fleet and entered a Trans-Dimensional Portal to challenge the Antaran homeworld. Historical Note: Interracial unity in this endeavor led to many joint ventures for fleet construction. The Humans and Psilons united and shared their shipyards and materials jointly. Likewise, the three Saurian races cooperated in rebuilding their warships, and the Klackon-Tachidi unity exchanged shipbuilding techniques freely. The end result of this cooperation was a distinct similarity in ship designs among all the races within each species. The Antarans stationed at Kathar were, to be fair, quite surprised at the number of barbarian ships that suddenly entered their space, but they were not overly concerned. The majority of the Green Fleet ships were on duty and ready for action, pending a final inspection by a senior member of the Hegemony's Defense Directorate and Lord Admiral N'rom himself. But the Orions had nearly evened out the technological edge, and fought with a singular unbending purpose: revenge. The Antarans at Kathar were completely annihilated, the planet bombarded, and every last Antaran vessel destroyed. The Orions still took heavy casualties, but the victory was theirs. The heroes of the Battle at Antares were honored throughout the sector, and celebrations lasted for Cycles on end. Loknar vanished shortly after their return, saying that there were other matters that still needed tending to, and finishing with the cryptic phrase, "Be ready." The Humans once again took a political leadership role, building a new capital city on Orion itself, convening the new Orion Senate, and getting themselves elected to the presidency. The Orions focused again on rebuilding and internal expansion, but the years following the Great War contained their own challenges for the Orion Sector. Historical Note: Perhaps the one positive venture initiated by the Orion Senate was a massive long-range exploration program to survey the sectors nearby, the Galactic Core, and even send probes to galaxies outside their own. The fate of these probes is unknown, but given what we know of the Antaran Hegemony, the galactic core probes were almost certainly destroyed long before reaching their destinations. The probes sent to other galaxies might still be operating, but there seems to be very little interest these days in re-establishing contact with them. These things would have been more nice plot hooks for a Master of Orion IV: Extragalactic threats! The Mizarans from the other side of the Core! But instead we get a loving reboot. Historical Note: No one knows exactly who Loknar was, where he came from, or what he wanted. Conspiracy theorists of the time concocted thousands of possibilities, ranging from his being an advanced android, a lost Orion, an Antaran defector, something from another galaxy or sector of this galaxy, and more. But the most heated question that was later asked about Loknar was why he never mentioned that the local Orion races had not crushed Antares itself during the so-called "Battle at Antares".... loving hell you weirdos slow down with the historical notes, OK? Historical Note: The false assumption made by the local Orion races regarding the destruction of the Antarans was understandable. The Antarans had wisely launched all of their Orion Sector incursions from the TDP at Kathar. Only Green Fleet ships were used for these incursions, which meant that the Orion races were completely unaware of the other armada the Antarans had at their disposal. Almost the entire Green Fleet had been destroyed in the battle, and therefore the Antarans had no more ships to spare for additional raids into the Orion Sector. The Orions chose not to investigate the creepy other-dimensional space of the Antaran Sector, and the Antarans played dead. None of the Orions realized that they had merely destroyed a single (albeit important) world in the Hegemony. Thus ends the update consisting of nearly 50% “historical notes”
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Jul 8, 2016 18:08
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