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Glazius posted:Seems weirdly late-game for a food tech to be showing up, but I suppose it makes sense for race-specific stuff to be a little more advanced. Or are you just backfilling your tech tree? Backfilling is only possible by stealing or trading techs from others, so nope. If you don't get a tech in your tree, you can never go back to get it. There's no choice, the techs advance linearly. (Exception: Some techs have odd requirements, like they need research area 1 at level 22 and research area 2 at level 33, so you'll have to wait until the second research area catches up to get the tech. But true backfilling does not exist.)
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Sep 11, 2018 22:19
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OK, time to revive this poo poo before I get distracted by other games again. New screenshots are recorded, next update should arrive on Sunday.
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Oct 6, 2018 20:04
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Yay! Glad to see this is still on
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Oct 7, 2018 06:13
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 87 B: Raas’ End III Yes, we’re still doing this.  We are back in turn 285, or GC 427 as the people imprisoned in my computer would call it. We’re still bombing our way through the Souchis-system of the soon ex-empire of the Raas and the terrorist organization called the Sons of Dila blow up a factory on the planet Daegwin I. Business as usual. Our engineers complete shooting trials with the Gauss Cannon, a new type of rail gun using gravity instead of electromagnetic energy for propulsion. The AFC isn’t really interested in actually using this weapon, though.  Since it has been a while between updates, I declare it map time! First map shows the new sector of the Kingdom of Almandin that once was the southern half of the Dila Empire. Now it is the newly renamed Arcturus Sector. It borders an Antaran Guardian, which is blocking off further progress. We will eventually do something about this.  The main front line: Souchis is actually getting re-bombed instead of just bombed, since the Raas re-colonized the system behind our backs. Toliman-B has just been cleared of all resistance and the Mensa-system is rapidly atrocitied down to the same state. Iras, the last remaining system, is “just” blockaded. We’re approaching the end here, truly. With the Dila Empire growing weaker and weaker, we’re blasting our way through faster and faster. In fact, too fast! Since we aren’t taking developed colonies and are just re-colonizing dead planets, we are running farther and farther away from our mobilization points. Colonizers have to run farther and farther to the new, emptied planets and if we wanted to use ground troops, they’d have to slog through multiple systems to reach the front by now.  The situation on our border with the Klackons of the Vchiitri Empire is mostly stable. New Orions and Klackons continue to have a weird stand-off, but even without them, our fleets have roughly the same size. And with the gap in tech between us and them, no way in hell could this particular fleet be a threat to us.  With the extermination of the illegal squatters on the first planet, things return to normal in the Souchis-system.  Still, turn 286 begins with a warning that one of our colony ships tried to land on Souchis I and couldn’t. This is because colonizing happens in the turn order before our bombardment takes effect, apparently.  Welp, that will rectify itself next turn, and we re-colonized the other two planets already. Souchis is now ours. And our friends, the Psilons from the Soriane Union, declare war! How sweet, they want to give us their planets!  The Psilon ambassador explains to us in a meek voice that the Psilons are screaming for our crystalline bodily fluids, so they have no choice but to declare a clearly suicidal war. Our diplomats assure him they understand, as the Kingdom of Almandin is a democracy, too. The very next day, many planets in the Kingdom are hit by renewed protests against our atrocities. “We won’t forget the Raas!” is the main slogan this time.  Welp, Souchis I has been brutally cleansed. With us holding the system, next turn this planet should be colonized, too.  The next system down the chain has incredibly lovely planets, but we don’t want the Raas to revive their lovely empire behind our backs, so we’re forced to hold and colonize this planet. Tiny, wrong environment, too weak gravity. Luckily our tech is now good enough we can mostly ignore all those bad things. Also, this planet has archaeological ruins, neat! (And then I forgot to take a look at what this is later on.  )  One of our ships already hangs around in the Mensa-system. Our main fleet will be there, shortly. Enemy defense is remarkably lacking in ships, but with only two systems left the Raas don’t really have the ability to change that now.  Meanwhile, the war between the Imsaies and the Cynoids is still stalemated. The only thing to do for us is to continue declaring war on the Cynoids, to keep our allies satisfied.  And then, the battle for Mensa begins. Our strongest fleet can dish out nearly 10k damage, while the strongest enemy fleet sits by 2,2k. And everything else didn’t even need to be here, they’re just there to soak up some hits from our fighters.  Less then a minute later, all defenders except this lonely space citadel have been turned to space dust.  Suddenly, the planetary shields collapse and seconds later, the last orbital detonates as all our ships and fighters change targets to it.  A violent orbital bombardment later, everything, including 100% of the colony’s population, is destroyed. Mensa I is now a tomb.  Turn 287: The improved spinal mount is now ready, if we wish to use it. Our problems with illegal Raas colonists in the Souchis-system are over, as the last free planet is colonized by us. There’s also the obligatory spy shenanigans. Fake news are spreading unrest, while an enemy agent uses the Sons of Dila as a cover to destroy a system seat of government on Trourmi VII.  Woops, looks like the fight for Mensa isn’t over yet! The Dila Empire still has control over the first planet, thanks to some new colonists being delivered via background sim migration. This also tells us migration comes after the bombardment takes effect. Good to know. So it’s basically Colonization → Bombing → Migration in the turn order.  Luckily there are already colonizers on their way to Toliman-B. In three turns the system will be secured and we don’t have to fear any setbacks anymore.  Since this also means we have some time until we can take control of the Mensa-system anyway, the fleet shifts bombardment to Mensa II next turn. Irritatingly, some survivors are left, so there’s at least one turn left take care of the planet.  GC 432 sees the Kingdom of Almandin legalizing a series of food additives that were deemed to destructive to organic life until know. Since most of the population, and therefore most of the members of parliament, are anorganic Silicoids, the legalization goes through with 74% of the votes. Democracy in action! Together with fake news and vile rumors being spread all across both the Galactic Cybernet and conventional media, the Kingdom of Almandin sees an alarming surge of unrest during this cycle. There’s also another terrorist act by a new group calling itself the “Red Kingdom”, taking out several captains of industry by blowing up their meeting. And the AIA finally unravels one of the many anti-government plots to find an Evon-agent at the end! The agent successfully escapes, but the shuttle he commandeers turns out to have a hidden bomb inside. The Sons of Dila take responsibility, not knowing they actually did something good this time. The last thing is important because we can’t see the Eadinel Empire, but apparently they still can see us? We have to investigate this!  Well, the Evon haven’t turned up again in our diplomacy screen, and I can’t target them with agents. We still don’t have any contact with them. So we can’t harm empires we don’t have contact with, but they can! gently caress.  More out of frustration then anything, I decide to send two of our agents (Exacto, the espionage hacker and Spike, the assassin) into the Soriane Union. Because of the stalemate on that front our fleet isn’t moving anytime soon, but spies can still harm them! Spike especially is slowly running out of luck/life, and he isn’t that good to begin with. Since using spies offensively is often quite deadly for the spies, this is more like an elaborate way to get rid of him.  Speaking of stalemate, what has our reserve to say about maybe changing the stalemate in Tali? Not much, really. Dreadnoughts are hard enough to build already we only have 11 (carriers and direct-fire ships combined) so far. Our AI-controlled planets have built swarms of the lighter units, though. In fact, with 58 transports in our reserves and god knows how many sitting in our queues, I’m forced to pull the trigger and set our transport design to “obsolete”. Believe me, we probably still reach triple-digits before our queues have emptied out.  Surprise! The Klackons, emboldened by the ongoing political troubles in the Kingdom, have decided to send a probing attack into Tali. The system defense jumps into action.  Two enemy flotillas have come to contest our space. Our fighters take a lot of fire on the approach, but there are far too many to do much. The Klackons are already dead.  And that’s it. 24 dead enemy ships in exchange for some auto-replaced fighters. On the other hand, this battle is a nice reminder of why I don’t move that fleet of ours in Tali into Psilon-space. That probing attack could have done some damage if our fleet hadn’t been there.  Another surprise: Both Exacto and Spike enter Psilon-space without a hitch. All those spy techs we have researched through 289 turns of game time have finally payed off! It also probably helps that the Kingdom of Almandin has over a hundred planets, while the Soriane Union only has 6, all concentrated in a single system. This makes their spy defenses a lot weaker then they should be. Of course being large also has drawbacks, as it’s hard to defend borders that large effectively. Spies from other, less confined empires walk all over us. Research, unrest, exploding buildings. We get them all this turn.   Diplomacy news for this turn: Our allies want some more tech help. In exchange for the orbital topographical scanner (more minerals) they want to give us ECCM III (good, even though we’re on the way to get the level IV version soon), the combat suit (infantry upgrade we didn’t have in our tree, also nice) and a mod-missile we didn’t get. We’ll have to test this one later, but as we can use all three techs and giving our allies more minerals to play with isn’t really game changing, the Kingdom graciously agrees to the exchange.  Soon turn 290 rolls around. News arrive that Agent Spike poisoned the famous governor Soriane of the Soriane Union. He will die a slow and painful death. Success!  Turn 290/GC 435 has some more news down the line in our increasingly voluminous situation report: Fake news are followed by fake currency, so we get economic damage to go with our unrest. Also, another clone of Didi Hallervorden hits the dust. But it’s not completely one-sided this time! Our espionage hackers slows down research in the Soriane Union. I mean, as a one-system entity they don’t have much research to begin with, so that must have hurt them extra-good, hopefully?  This turn also saw Toliman-B being re-colonized by us. In two turns, our fleet shuffle will see a second fleet arrive in-system, freeing the fleet sitting in Toliman-B to move up the chain towards Mensa. And as soon as that one arrives in Mensa, it’s time for the final assault of this campaign!   With our long conflict with the Raas drawing to a close, I decide it’s time to assault our first Guardian! Two of our new lighter units are formed into armadas to reinforce the fleets we already have stationed in the Arcturus-system.  156 ships stand ready for our attempt. Will this be enough?  Oops, 3-5 turns flight time is a bit uncoordinated. Especially as the Guardians use a smarter AI which relentlessly intercepts all fleets in-system, instead of just letting enemy ships sit around unmolested (looking at you there, Dila Empire)  After a bit or reorganization, the oldest task forces are disbanded and the next best one are send out first. Our modern ships have to wait for next turn, since they are faster. Like with transports, it pays off to think ahead so your forces are all properly coordinated.  The rest of this turn is a bit of diplomacy (we have to declare war on the Cynoids again, for our allies’ sake)  ...followed by a bit of shooting. Some Raas-transports remind us why we have to keep back some fleets for protection in our offensives. Then they blow up. Antaran Expedition Status Expedition 1: Expedition Completed Expedition 2: Partial discoveries made (4) + 2 ships lost Expedition 3: Expedition Completed Next: Raas’ End IV
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Oct 7, 2018 13:57
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You sure that it's clones of Didi that are being assassinated? At this point I'm thinking it's more likely some horrible reality show where he gets himself killed in thousands of different ways via clones for entertainment, and our citizens are mostly just protesting the fact that there is nothing on space tv anymore except reality shows because of Didi's early success
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Oct 7, 2018 15:55
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JC how is endlessly colonizing such a decent survival tactic??
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Oct 7, 2018 19:24
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Oh my God, it's finally happening. The Raas are FINALLY GOING DOWN.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:30
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Deceitful Penguin posted:JC how is endlessly colonizing such a decent survival tactic?? That's the thing, it's not. Those colony ships are costing significantly more to build than those one-turn colonies are getting the Raas back. It's serving zero function other than distracting our ships and forcing us to leave a rear vanguard. It's purely a delaying tactic and an ineffective one at that.
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Oct 7, 2018 19:46
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Yay! The war with the Raas is finally coming to an end! Just a few more desperate planets to clear (Well to hold and then to clear). Also good luck with the Guardian. Make sure you have a colonizer so you can hit all the planets there ASAP before another species gets there. And given that it's a front line system, be sure and have a fleet ready that can defend it and you're willing to be stationed there long term as a garrison. Good luck! (Nothing quite like spending the blood, servos, and tears it takes to punch through a Guardian then realize someone else colonized the system first) And will it be a war of total liberation for the egg-headed Solarian Union? To show them the true power of getting their democracy on?
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Oct 7, 2018 20:59
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wedgekree posted:Yay! The war with the Raas is finally coming to an end! Just a few more desperate planets to clear i feel like this has been the mantra of this entire lp "just a few more years and the Raas War will be over!" repeat for a few centuries
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Oct 7, 2018 21:27
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If not for the fact that we know that the Dila Empire's entire galatic history has been fighting a neverending war with space rocks, I'd almost joke about this just being some bizzare exclave of the actual Empire on the other side of the galaxy or something.
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Oct 8, 2018 00:19
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This war honestly isn't even taking that long in MoO3 terms. What slows it down is that you can only invade/bombard one planet a turn and generally you're only going to be launching attacks on 2-3 systems at a time. Since a system can have up to 9 planets (average is 3-ish, I think) and you've probably got 2-3 turns of travel time between systems, conquering a small 10-system empire is going to take you 50-100 turns if nothing goes wrong and there's no resistance. Larger empires can take a thousand turns of slow, methodical, dull bombardment. With human players, this is actually a good thing - it gives the defender time to rebuild their losses and reform a defense fleet so losing one battle isn't a death sentence. The problem is that the AI is unfathomably bad at building up and will instead throw ships piecemeal as fast as they're built. Or build 10,000 transports and 2 combat ships. Or go "I see a neighboring system with an open planet; spam colony ships". So as soon as you break their initial fleet they'll never rebuild a defensive force again. See that Cynoid fleet? If we go to war with them and break that, we'd never see a fleet larger than a single Task Force again unless we actively pulled back and let them build. And this one's only that large because the AI has almost certainly glitched out and probably 2/3rds of that fleet is transports and colonizers. MoO3 is an incredibly slow game that even in this extremely modded form has a difficult time to give a human player a decent fight.
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Oct 8, 2018 00:38
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Sounds like they have to come up with minimum fleet sizes for the AI. Like "if this is smaller than X in relation to my opponent, hang back until we have X". I'm guessing you can only conquer planets you border too, right? Because otherwise there should be little stopping you from sending even more fleets down the lanes to capture more planets while they suffer rebuilding.
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Oct 8, 2018 01:33
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MoO 3 is not a great game. The modders have done some amazing things - but there's only so much they can work around the AI and the UI.
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Oct 8, 2018 02:04
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Ysengrin posted:I'm guessing you can only conquer planets you border too, right? Because otherwise there should be little stopping you from sending even more fleets down the lanes to capture more planets while they suffer rebuilding. Nah, you can conquer wherever you want, it just gets harder and harder to keep track of your fleets, since every place you go needs a covering fleet to protect freshly conquered planets, prevent enemy colonizers from slipping through to cleansed planets, to protect your own transports coming through and so on. Also, the farther you are away from your mobilization centers, the longer reinforcements will take, so deep strikes aren't necessarily faster, as counter-intuitive as it sounds. Insta-teleporting a fleet across the universe is hard to beat.
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Oct 8, 2018 07:55
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This game is very, very spreadsheet oriented. Combined with only being able to launch a specific number of attacks per turn.. And only one per system.. It can take awhile. Even if you somehow are isnane enough and have a big enough fleet for a pan galactic offensive.
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Oct 8, 2018 08:36
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Yup. There's two problems with spreading your forces out. The first is that because of how the reserves work your opponent can instantly create fleets basically anywhere at will (so long as there's ships in the reserve). Have them on the run but leave a single isolated system uncovered for one turn while you shift fleets around? Surprise, that system that's entirely cut off from the rest of their empire has 500 battleships in it now. Even if you were in the middle of a major land war conquering it and the population was 1. The second is that because of how retreating and travel time and sequences of events work, you can't leave a system unprotected until it's well into your own territory. The AI absolutely LOVES to spam colony ships at unoccupied planets in neighboring systems - so if you leave that system open for one turn, it's quite possible for the AI to plant 4-5 colonies in it before you can react. And chasing down a fleet in your backfield is frustratingly difficult: you're usually better off disbanding and redeploying the fleet ahead of them rather than pursuing. Maintaining a front line requires you to keep a fleet on every system you're attacking, every unoccupied system (so they don't recolonize it) AND every system connected to those (as a backstop to prevent them from getting a fleet into your territory). And all of them have to keep station for several turns after you're done to catch any in-transit stragglers. With multiple fronts or striking multiple systems at once, that spreads your fleet power out a LOT. And remember if you don't have your bombarding fleet large enough you won't be able to wipe out the planet's population in a single bombardment and that multiplies the time you take by even more.
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Oct 8, 2018 15:13
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Libluini posted:
I shudder at the thought of what kind of comedy Didi Hallervorden would unleash at an silicoid audience. Didi Hallervorden posted:
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Oct 8, 2018 17:35
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So is it possible once we get some reserve fleets we can Liberate the Solarian Union? Also how much does an egghead head sell for on the open market?
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Oct 9, 2018 04:31
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wedgekree posted:So is it possible once we get some reserve fleets we can Liberate the Solarian Union? Also how much does an egghead head sell for on the open market? I really don't want to fight the Psilons, but the AI in this game apparently gets off on staging suicidal wars
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Oct 9, 2018 06:58
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Libluini posted:I really don't want to fight the Psilons, but the AI in this game apparently gets off on staging suicidal wars Fair enough on that. So are we enabling thier tendencies then if we do this or just presume that friends don't help friends engage in destruction pacts so they can please off themselves in thier own time? ... Also we should never, ever try nad help the Imsies break the blockade of Theta Gru. I'm sorry excellent space gas friends! we will helpfully declare war to assist you.. But two thousand ships even if fifteen hundred transports an dcolonizers is still two thousand ships. wedgekree fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 9, 2018 07:04
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The only appropriate idea is to protect the Psylons from themselves by democratically nuking them from orbit.
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Oct 9, 2018 08:17
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Val Helmethead posted:The only appropriate idea is to protect the Psylons from themselves by democratically nuking them from orbit. We can probably stage a grueling land war across Psilon worlds. To mix things up a bit. Or just wait a few turns then demand peace and some techs we don't have
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Oct 9, 2018 08:39
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Kodos666 posted:I shudder at the thought of what kind of comedy Didi Hallervorden would unleash at an silicoid audience. *Loud rock grinding noises* "Uh...is that laughter or booing? I don't speak Silicoid."
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Oct 9, 2018 09:04
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wedgekree posted:But two thousand ships even if fifteen hundred transports an dcolonizers is still two thousand ships. Additional slowness fun: keep in mind that only ten (a dozen? I can't entirely remember) fleet-formations can be in a battle on either side at once. Frequently, colony/transport forces will consist of a single ship; maybe 6 on the outside. That counts as part of the per-battle limit. So breaking that blockade will likely take fifty or so turns of battle. More, in fact, because the AI will likely retreat rather than fight. Which means they'll fall back to the previous system and then move back again. It's very possible that we will be unable to kill those ships faster than they can retreat/regroup/replace. That blockade is actually about the most effective tactic the AI can use against us: the ships are obsolete and effectively defenseless. But even half-assed play can render that system impassable for two or three hundred turns without investing additional resources. (The downside is that it's probably playing havoc on their maintenance costs, but it's the AI and they're absolutely cheating on that front anyway.)
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Oct 9, 2018 14:18
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Tempest_56 posted:Additional slowness fun: keep in mind that only ten (a dozen? I can't entirely remember) fleet-formations can be in a battle on either side at once. Frequently, colony/transport forces will consist of a single ship; maybe 6 on the outside. That counts as part of the per-battle limit. With this in mind, is it worthwhile to make some super long range direct fire ships to kill retreating chaff before it can escape or is the combat scale such that there is no way to get in range in time.
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Oct 9, 2018 17:49
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terrenblade posted:With this in mind, is it worthwhile to make some super long range direct fire ships to kill retreating chaff before it can escape or is the combat scale such that there is no way to get in range in time. Carriers and missile ships. And even then enemy ships might spawn too far to get them. At the point were direct-fire ships have the range to just lash out from their spawn points, enemy ships will either be capable to take a couple hits and still escape, or so weak in comparison you can just ignore them.
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Oct 9, 2018 18:04
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Ah, I almost forgot: I got inspired today and wrote like 6-7 pages of dumb bullshit for this thread. So the next couple updates are safe. In fact, tomorrow is the very next one! Will I keep October hiatus-free? Let's find out!
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Oct 9, 2018 19:11
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terrenblade posted:With this in mind, is it worthwhile to make some super long range direct fire ships to kill retreating chaff before it can escape or is the combat scale such that there is no way to get in range in time. Libluini posted:Carriers and missile ships. And even then enemy ships might spawn too far to get them. Yup. It basically has to be missile boats. Even fighters are often too slow to get there, because the transports/colony ships will immediately hit the Retreat button once the battle starts. And because of how targeting works, the whole cluster of missiles will focus on the first target; then retarget to the next nearest after the first has been destroyed; and so on down the line. So in practical terms you'll blow up 3-4 before travel time allows the rest to jump out. Then they arrive at the neighboring system in 2 turns, the AI goes 'oh look, uncolonized worlds!' and sends them right back en masse. As I said, a player half-assing reinforcing a chokepoint like that can clog it up for hundreds of turns if not indefinitely just by piling in single ship detachments that immediately retreat again. MoO3 is really, really stupid.
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Oct 9, 2018 19:46
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Ironically, one of the mod changes was to make the AI retreat more often, because Vanilla AI could often be tricked into attacking vastly superior forces if it thought they are "outdated" enough, regardless of actual combat capability. Another problem was combat ships attacking piecemeal and getting killed because they only started retreating after taking losses. Or they would not retreat at all and the AI would just lose all their ships forever. Since a lot of the behavior was hardcoded, the modders upped the values for the AI retreating by a lot, to force the combat AI into retreats. The idea (I think) was that this way, the AI would slowly collect more ships and task forces, instead of losing them one by one. Theoretically, the AI can collect larger fleets this way until the threshold is reached and the fleet is large enough: Then the task forces keep hanging around for the fight. In practice, it often ends in ten turns of retreats or no attacks, then 44 ships sacrifice themselves to your carriers, instead of Vanilla's 4 ships attacking and getting killed each turn. 
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Oct 9, 2018 20:20
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Yeah, I had a system blockade where each side had 2-3000 ships in it. Each turn ten random armadas would clash (sometimes transports, sometimes actual combat ships). So we'd each retreat when we were outmatched, send in more.. Since we could only put in like 5% of our task force each round, attrition became kind of impossible as we couldn't grind through to actually hit th eplanet, they couldn't do enough things to break our blockade. So we would each end up building generations of new ships, sending in reinforcements dribbling in from the nearest mobilization center.. We couldn't kill thing fast enough to wear down the other side given in the 20-30 turns it'd take to slog through most of the force, we'd each have sent in dozens of more TF's. One time I tried to seige the New Orion system. It took about 500 turns.
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Oct 10, 2018 01:27
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 88: Raas Death Intermission I: The Spy Who Infiltrated Me  Turn 291 surprises us with something new: A dangerous red event telling us our counter-intelligence has been compromised. This is dangerous, as it makes our spy defense weak as gently caress for a couple turns! And we get Tinele Eineerarer as a new leader for our council. He is probably a spy.  But not all news are bad! We struck back and assassinated the most popular entertainer of the Soriane Union. Their population is demoralized! Hopefully that wasn't a clone of Hallervorden, too. Oh, and we send the researchers of the Soriane Union for a loop with some faulty data. On the other hand, 15-man teams have been sighted "disappearing" many of our own scientists into pieces. The spy war rages on.  For the first in a long time, our High Council is at full strength. Too bad the new guy isn't as terribly good as the others: +5% spy mantle for -1% imperial tax. This Alkari dude teaches our Silicoids how to spy on people from high ground and from the air. I poo poo you not that's actually his whole deal. If it weren't for our spy troubles, I'd have already thrown this guy out. As things are going rapidly to poo poo, hopefully he can at least serve as a meat shield for our other council members.  To prepare for the future, I'm starting to train new spies. Ominous music starts  Our own AI can be as excessive as the enemy one. Tons of colonizers have been launched towards the Mensa-system. Soon Iras will be the only Dilarian stronghold left in the Orion Sector.  Guardian-time! Now our faster task forces hurl themselves towards our closest Guardian-system. Three turns until our fleets clash with this beast of metal!  Another look into our reserves: Ten more transports are scrapped since our AI-governors laid down tons of them all across the Kingdom. So many keels! Theoretically I could order all queues (or just one random one) to stop building a design, but I don't like to do that since that's a good way to miscalculate and run out of ships later.  Wombat time! The Klackons probe Tali, Iras is blockaded and the Raas throw themselves at us in the Mensa-system.  But instead of some kind of last-ditch effort, it's just some boring transports.  gently caress off already, goddamn!   In GC 438, the AIA notices more signs that counter-intelligence is hosed: Spy defense is so ineffective, assassins could just walk into the High Council in broad daylight and shoot Councillor Nonuzi Rovice multiple times. Jammed and hijacked defenses meant that the assassins could also just walk out again unseen. The AIA only noticed the attack when local news ran headlines like Nonuzi Negated, Rovice Ravaged and the really bad Councillor Cilled in Council Chambers!!!.  More spy shenanigans: We kill some Psilon-trading partners, then our espionage hacker plays a prank by mixing up planetary build queues in the Soriane Union. Then enemy spies strike back by injecting even more counterfeit money into our economy.  Something has to be done! This is something: All spies working for home defense are clearly spies for the enemy, so the AIA purges ALL OF THEM. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if this will actually work, as the "Your Spy Defense is Worthless You Suck"-event could be entirely random. I'm just paranoid because it suddenly keeps showing up, while the rest of the game had nothing like this. Anyway, for the next 30 turns the AIA will be stuck training replacements for the spies we "retired".  Raas-front: The Mensa-system is cleared of all enemy activity, both military and civilian. As soon as we can, the assault on Iras will begin.  Next combat phase: The Raas retreat some more. But I don't give a poo poo anymore, there's only one place they can retreat to and then it will be over!  Turn 293: Our counter-intelligence really makes good on its name, as it has gotten infiltrated again. At least the Psilons got bored of waging war with the no ships they have, so the war against Soriane aggression ends.  A long list of "retired" agents follows. Sad, isn't it? So if we're still infiltrated, is it maybe one of the new trainees? If so, we MUST KILL THEM TOO. Ahem.  Then a long list of spy events follows: Some are good, as we kill another "most popular" Psilon entertainer, then our second spy sabotages one of their planetary stock exchanges, leading to an economical crash for that planet. Others are bad: Some rear end in a top hat stirs up unrest and a bomb kills yet more captains of industry. Yikes, have those guys never heard of Skype?   As life has been lovely the last couple cycles, our scientists have started work on the Entertainment Centre: It is basically one giant VR-palace with guests being put into an artificial coma. The EC even allows several people to travel into their virtual worlds together! As their advertising claims, home VR is often limited by the amount of hardware one could theoretically buy and cram into it, but this new planned chain of giant VR-castles promises everything! Simply, everything Dismay World is the future. (When built, the unrest level on that planet is reduced by 1)  The Imsaies-ambassador is a bit sad this turn. Apparently, one of the larger scientific organizations of the Annalona Empire recently took a poll among the populace to find out what they think about their nation's research efforts. 85% of the people surveyed just recorded a short bit of derisive laughter and send that in instead of real answers. So now the Imsaies are begging the Kingdom of Almandin again for an improved research treaty. Since the Imsaies are our only allies, we gladly agree to help them out. Even though technically, at this point our research lead is so large, we're really only helping them with this, not us.  It's happening: Our old fleets have arrived back in the reserves, and hundreds of ships are now scrapped. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel are cashed out and send back home. The largest military cutback in centuries takes place!  Next turn: Guardian assault.  In four turns: The assault on the last Dilarian system begins. One positive thing I can say about those bastards: They have nothing left, are down to their last system and have a huge, overwhelming fleet bearing down on them. And yet they are still determined to fight, down to the last man, woman and child. Scrappy little lizards.  Some more uplifting news: We are now in control of 123 planets and have an average tech level of 51. (Which is by the way, more than what Vanillas has to offer in total, since Vanilla tech levels cap out at 50.)  It has taken us a while, but the Raas are now down to only 4 planets, all in that one system left over. Thanks to stealing so much techs from us, their tech level is 42, which is almost the same level as the Cynoids, our largest rivals at the moment.  As always when nearing victory, I turn my rear end in a top hat level up to eleven: In addition to our dealings with the Imsaies, I add a brazen message to the Raas, demanding all their colonies left (except for the capital, which you can't take) while being as pointlessly aggressive as possible in my tone. Obviously they'll immediately see through this charade and notice we can just take their last planet afterwards anyway, so there's no point in making concessions. Or in other words, the AI is stuck on "bitter enemies" and would rather exterminate themselves instead of giving us anything.  Suddenly, Klackons: The Klackons launch a surprise attack on Tali, with half a dozen task forces. Is this the end for our fleet?  Nope. They've send mostly obsolete ships and receive only an immense trashing for their boldness.  The murderizing happens so fast, only two out of six task forces can complete their emergency jump.  The lopsided battle ends with dozens of Klackon ships destroyed. Our losses: Zero. CLIFFHANGER TIME! Since I didn't want you to read pages and pages of stuff before getting to the good part, I stop this right here. Next update will immediately start with our Guardian-assault. Antaran Expedition Status Expedition 1: Expedition Completed Expedition 2: Partial discoveries made (4) + 2 ships lost Expedition 3: Expedition Completed Next: Raas Death Intermission II: Guardian Boogaloo
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Oct 10, 2018 17:42
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What the hell is up with the site? At first I thought this was just the coding loving up, but everything taking together (posts broken, renamed subforums, disturbingly lovely advertisements) let's me think this may be because of Halloween.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:47
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The forum renames are for Spooktober, but the broken encoding and lovely ads are just because Lowtax is dying and the forums are dying with him.
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Oct 10, 2018 19:17
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Libluini posted:[...] You know what this reminds me of? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNBJ5o-b7s&t=77s Only here, the Lizards are humanity. Please tell me won´t suddenly surrender because of religious reasons?
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Oct 10, 2018 20:30
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I fear that particular question has to wait until Sunday, as the Friday-update is 100% Guardian time, all the time.
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Oct 10, 2018 20:43
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Nice to know that you were as fugged up by being a short term member of the Council by spying as most of us get! is ti worth cranking up the repressometer for a few turns to try and see if you can whack some spies out and then deal with the unrest after? Also good luck with the Guardian and have some colony ships ready
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Oct 11, 2018 02:48
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so if i'm reading this right, nobody except us and the people we're eating have changed their number of planets almost at all in what looks like nearly 100 years? (aside from that white squiggle going up a bit who you had contact with for a while i guess) is that normal in this game? and what a game it is
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Oct 11, 2018 03:05
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At some point you run out of room to effectively colonize/claim new places without war, and war is a slow grind. Or it's not as cost effective - it takes a couple centuries to get a new colony up and going, when you run out of 'good' places and you just have to start mass terraforming it's no really economic and you get little gain from it. So at some point borders roughly stabilize. At least, for the player. I have no clue on the AI. And most of the places we've gotten are Raas worlds. And only then really as we don't want them to be recolonized and have to glass them again rather than getting a big benefit from them
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Oct 11, 2018 04:45
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The AI, as noted, is also really really really bad at war.
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Oct 11, 2018 04:47
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