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At this point there's not alot of new material you're putting in here - it must be super tiring for you and not really interesting. Nor are you really close to any sort of 'victory'. I'd say just find a point you find a good stop and call it there. Amazing showing these last few years! Stop it when it's repettiive/not fun.
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Jan 2, 2022 00:57
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Slaan posted:Conquer Orion and call it. At this point its just the rocks slowly whittling down the others in attrition heavy stalemates. We all know you've won. This, really. You were always a madman to go conquest only - even max speed glassing, it's going to be hundreds of turns minimum for you to finish from here. Possibly not even then, since some of those chokepoints with thousands of ships in them may be effectively permanent blockades where you can't kill them faster than they can feed new fleets in. There was always going to be a point where you needed to say "Good enough" and if you're not enjoying things, that's the signal.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:03
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I don't really want to do this, but I have to put this LP on hold again. My good eye bled a lot over night and now I have a second blindspot in that eye. Even with the screen magnifier, reading and writing is loving slow work right now. (The eye strain is probably also not good for the bleeding) I'll have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, we'll have to see if I can continue working (on this and my RL-job) or if I'm now basically out of order until the ongoing surgery is finally done.
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Jan 2, 2022 09:07
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Good luck. I hope they fix your eyes 
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Jan 2, 2022 10:30
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That doesn't sound pleasant, I hope everything goes well.
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Jan 2, 2022 11:42
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LP lore says that Jadestar kept burning PCs for their LPs, but your eyes? Take it easy, Libluini 
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Jan 2, 2022 18:25
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Aw hell, take care man.
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Jan 2, 2022 18:35
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Yeah definitely take care of your eyes first. Yuck
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Jan 2, 2022 20:23
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Yeah, wow, take care of yourself. Feel better. And so sorry you're having such horrid health issues.
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Jan 3, 2022 01:52
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Yeah, get better!
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Jan 3, 2022 04:16
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This takes playing until your eyes glaze over to a whole new level. Health to you.
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Jan 3, 2022 10:24
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 130: Stars at War X Let’s make this a race to see what is finished faster: This LP or my eyes! (Second eye surgery is in March, so at least I can work on this for now. In pirate mode.)  VIDEOS Something I keep forgetting: The Ithkul and Sakkra. Ithkul Diplomacy Sakkra and Diplomacy? More like Diplodocus,  GC 789 – GC 801  OK, you now the drill by now. Unrest, spies, blah blah blah. Also space locusts, but only the boring standard variant that eats your space crops, not the interesting one that eats space people.  Time for another clean-up of our worst affected planets. First, new ground troops.  Then, I’ll help our building AI by setting down a bunch of government, recreation and military DEA. All development zone areas that can reduce unrest. Our AI would eventually follow our plans and build those by themselves of course, but I got impatient.  A short off-screen mobilization later, another set of armies is ready to continue operations in XEOL-space.  A short wave of space combats later, we’re ready to land troops on two planets: Another Cynoid one and one of our old friends, the Imsaies. The Cynoids seem to be hosed with that kind of strength difference, but holy hell, looks like the Imsaies put all the ground combat techs we traded them to good use and just raised giant armies on their planet. Still far weaker then us, but I do not like the sheer number of units present down there.  OK, that wasn’t so bad: Our army of tanks and battlemechs makes it into the atmosphere in one piece, and then occupies enough cloud cities to be worth approx. 2 planetary regions. The defenders, a wild mix of assault troops and mobile infantry, eat poo poo. Hughst II has held, but only barely.  Our pure battlemech army on Deli I performs far better, taking the entire planet and smashing the defenders while barely taking any losses. You’d think battlemechs against a mix of infantry should always end like this, but this is the RNG liking us. I’ve seen worse outcomes.  Turn 527! A barrage of bad red events! Luckily one of them is actually good: A new leader has appeared! The others are a war ending due to inaction and our spy defense collapsing in on itself due to infiltration. Ah, I remember the times when our spy agency roleplayed the actual loving TIA for a while and this event fired every 1-2 turns like some kind of demented clockwork. Well, gently caress. Clever & Smart are back.  Oh my loving lord, all this tiny text. gently caress, continuing this with my ongoing eye problems was a bad idea. OK, hammering down the +-key to get this to reasonable size now, it says: Ktasrsh Shamogh was/is a rebel bureaucrat who was part of the movement that launched the current ongoing uprising against the Antarans, which then led to the “New Orions” re-instating the Orion Senate and everyone dismantling their Antaran orbital guard stations to freely expand into space again. Basically, this is the first time since the intro video that we get a new bit of story, though as the “New Orions” saw this a little bit differently (see the lore-entries in the OP for more information about the backstory). Anyway, this person here is a genuine Silicoid-hero, who in the aftermath of the uprising unified the many different and competing Silicoid research programs on Almandin into a singular unified one. They’re the reason we have a single research interface and don’t have to juggle a dozen or more, some of which we can’t even control. Sweet! The unified planetary university they founded on Almandin is even still running. After over a thousand years in Terra-time, that’s impressive! (IRL, the university of Bologna in Italy, founded in 1088, is the oldest in the world and is now approaching its 934th year. But of course it’s just one of many, not the sole unified research body of Earth.) Thanks for this hero suddenly showing up at our doors, we get +15% research as long as they’re alive. This huge boost of course costs money, so we also lose 4% of our system taxes (the weird inbetween planetary tax and imperial tax, so it’s more than you would expect and less then you would fear).  After some off-screen hiring of new agents for our spy defense, the Cynoid-front moves forward again. Now there are actually only mostly Meklar-planets left on this front. But we’re at war with them too, so: Bonus!  The space battles this turn don’t show any surprises, and Hughst II falls to us with a whimper: Another mass-surrender by local Annalona-troops. Poor Imsaies! At least for them, the war is over.  GC 792: Another new leader shows up, slowing down the pace of this update with their need to be documented with screenshots and stuff. How inconvenient!  In the background, I’m omitting tons of spy stuff to make space.  For the first time in what seems forever we have a full council again! Coincidentally, among the new agents I’ve ordered to begin training are half a dozen assassins. Hopefully that’s enough defense to keep the new guys going for a while! Vezee’ Katarwi is a mod-only addition and a Klackon captain of industry. Every civilization employing him will see huge gains to industry and agricultural output (food production +20% and industry +15%). As if that huge boost wasn’t enough, terraforming costs are reduced by 15% as long as we have him. And considering how terraforming is automatic, we don’t even had to do anything to use that bonus! The reason this Klackon Koordinator is showing up now is easily explained: Before the Antarans overran the Klackon Union, by now over a thousand Earth-years in the past, he coldly calculated that the Klackons had zero chance to survive and so, because as a coordinator he was physically able to transform into a new Klackon queen, he decided to ask his Trilarian mad scientist friend to use his transdimensional abilities to shoot him into the far future, to re-start the Klackon species if needed. And now he is here, helping us wage war on the Klackons! Oops. Interestingly, Vezee’ has the nickname “Claw”, which I’ve decided to run with instead of chuckling at this very obvious oversight by the mod writers.  GC 792: We’re moving more fleets and troops around to scoop up more planets from our “allies”. In the background there are still bombs exploding in our factories and so many enemy spies are running around multiple of them get gunned down each turn. But of course with the number of our enemies, there’s always more spies finishing training and entering our borders each turn to replace them. “Fun”.  Two more planets of our “allies” face landings by liberation forces from our kingdom. There were also 12 space battles this combat phase, but nothing noteworthy.  Our armies of battlemechs land on Tardig II, but after fierce fighting, at the end our exhausted troops only control a couple minor cities around the landing zones. Both sides prepare for more fighting, but for now no-one is willing to continue.  Roch III is a harder nut to crack, as our commander manages to land all his mechs into a huge trap, followed by conducting what I can only describe as “the battle of Tukayyid, but with aliens”. He is the Clans. Not many of our mechs make it back into orbit, but at least a lot of our tanks can make it out of the trap intact. Though to be fair, only because the Imsaies’ firepower was concentrated on our mechs, but still!   Next, we receive a very calm declaration of war from the Sakkra. Very nice! I like to imagine the news of our disastrous failure on Roch III was the reason for the Sakkra declaring war, even though we all know better.  8 strategically unimportant battles and a turn later, we try this again.  The campaign on Tardig II sees the arrival of two full armies of assault infantry to aid the defenders. Sadly, our tank and battlemechs stomp them flat. Well, mostly. While floating inside this gas giant. Somehow. When the fighting dies down again, several more and larger cities have been liberated by us. The Kingdom of Almandin now controls nearly 1/3rd of the planet. Progress!  Another wave lands on Roch III. Extremely brutal fighting follows, and after millions of dead and nearly a cycle later, we control nearly a third of this planet, too! Late-game Master of Orion III resembles more and more how wars in Warhammer 40k are going.  GC 795: A hostile schemer warns other empires about our military mobilization plans. At this point though, we probably really have those. Considering that we are at war with every single neighbor and all.  While we’re playing whack-a-mole with the Imsaies, the other front rolls forward slowly: We managed to push the Cynoids into Meklar-territory, and have started to assault them, too. This is near Nazin, by the way. Just a little bit above. After we pushed through here, we have completely eliminated XEOL from this region, nearly eliminated the Meklar and have a newly combined force holding a united chokepoint against the Nommo, our tentacled friends. This means I’ll have a lot less to think about on this side of the map and can concentrate on our other fronts.  The Imsaies continue to resist, so more troops are raised. Luckily it’s often rather easy to immediately deploy troops, since we share so many systems.  Roch III is so annoying not only because of all that fighting, but also because the Roch-system is one of the few that were Imsaies-only. Until new mobilization centers are finished, we will have to send everything here the long way around.  Next combat phase: Both Almandin and Annalona have mobilized new armies and the ground war on Tardig II and Roch III is flaring up again. On the other side of the map, troops prepare to land on the Meklar-planet Uxmal II. We also had 8 more space battles. The only interesting one was a huge fleet of 280 ships arriving at Draconis, from the Ithkul-border. However, the Ithkul realized they were outclassed by our modern ships and immediately retreated, so it turned out to be a dud.  Both Imsaies-planets are finally liberated, as the exhausted armies on the planet simply surrender just days after our trops renew their offensives. The landing on Uxmal II however, is another gigantic clusterfuck. The general leading the force even has to be executed afterwards, as it became clear he was so ineffective, the only units doing some damage where from individual divisions losing com contact after some intense jamming and then being forced to act autonomously. I think our ground forces need some serious reforms, holy poo poo  The Imsaies counter our progress through their empire with threats and an embargo. Ironically, as interconnected as our civilizations are, there’s a good chance this will actually mechanically do something. It’ll probably hurt the few green planets in an ocean of red ones a lot more, though.  A bit off-camera, I suddenly realize with the fall of Tardig II, a huge gap in our lines has been closed and several modern fleet formations in this area are now no longer needed. The formations are dissolved, to eventually move the ships to somewhere else. Tech progress at this point is slow enough and our enemies backwards enough, doing this is now actually very useful. Especially since our borders grew faster than our FTL-tech did. Moving ships manually from one end of the Kingdom to the other would be nuts at this point, despite the time lost when the demobilized ships get stuck in the time-out zone of slowly crawling back into the reserves.  And even with our empire eagerly building hundreds of titans for our reserves, I feel safer knowing I can shift a couple armadas worth of ships more if needed. Case in point: The Ithkul keep poking our border at Draconis, several hundred ships at a time. To give a short check-up of our borders: Both the Nommo and the Trilarians are safely bottled up at choke-points, Cynoids, Mkelar and Imsaies are slowly squeezed out of the game and then we have the Klackon/Orion and here the Draconis-border. My current plan is to ignore the Trilarians and Nommo for the time, and re-direct our main thrust from Nazin after the borders meet up down there and send a huge fleet into Ukko to being cleansing the Ithkul-planets. Right now that’s tricky because Draconis is also the border to the Sakkra, who also hate us. So we need two fleets: One to cover the border, one to destroy the alien parasite menace. The Klackons then will soon see our major push towards Orion, after the Cynoids are finished. Still lots of stuff left to do!  During the next combat phase, I was trying to get a screenshot of the Ithkul-ships, but that turned out to be rather tricky: Again the Ithkul retreated immediately, and ships preparing for an emergency jump are constantly blinking in and out of existence. Also I had to do this one-eyed, thanks to my ongoing eye problems. And then the modded armada-formations and their stupid rings-of-doom ruined the shot anyway. gently caress!  Meanwhile, Roch IV fights hard, but after the capital falls, our troops manage to sever enemy communication lines. After that, it’s just a mop-up until the last stray unit has been forced to surrender.  Surprise! The Imsaies had one of the Antaran X-techs all along! And now, after plundering their computer systems, so have we!  GC 798 starts out surprisingly sweet. If a science victory was enabled in this run, we would now be just one step from legit winning!  This new X-tech is the “Antaran Riddle”, which is now solved. This mysterious secret boosts our efficiency in both mining and food production by 20%. It also boosts our industrial production by 20% while reducing pollution by 50%. Considering how big industry also causes big pollution, this is a tremendously welcome bonus! Not that a player would really notice this of course, since it takes a while before pollution becomes painful. There’s a minor race we haven’t met yet that has huge bonuses to industry and a painfully large penalty to pollution. Having them on an industry-planet was the only way I managed to get pollution high enough to cause actual trouble. Still, now we can truly ignore all pollution mechanics and just pile on the industrial DEAs. In combination with all our other bonuses, we now can easily compete with min-maxed Cybernetics on output, even with our invisible ship building speed penalty! Well, a human player competing with us could just pile on the science spies until they owned all those boosts too of course, but the AI has to try bit harder.   Around turn 532 several new techs showed up in our pipeline: The Military Design Center (+1 hull size for shipyards) and very heavy armor. Very heavy armor is just heavy armor, but better and more expensive. When this tech showed up I was like “Oh yeah, we didn’t have that one yet, huh”, as I had expected this very basic tech to drop a lot earlier then it did. Our next capital ship designs will gladly take this upgrade to armor hit points and damage reduction. With all our new boosts we don’t need to car about the higher costs, after all.  With enemy resistance on multiple fronts collapsing, the Almandian Fleet took the chance to reform the huge fleet besieging the Yed-system. Several older armadas are demobilized and replaced with new ones filled with modern ships. At some point our firepower should finally be large enough to break through this stupid deathstack the Cynoids have going on here.  Our new improved fleet in Yed then proceeds to pulverize 100 enemy ships during the next combat phase. Hopefully this ratio will continue.  A mostly uneventful turn later, our fleet demolishes another 100 ships in Yed. It seems like our reinforcement is working as intended!  Meanwhile, our fleet kills everything on Uxmal IV as revenge for our huge defeat last time around.  The people of Roch I however, are more lucky, as their defenders surrender after a short fight. With this, the Roch-system is now fully under our control.  After Roch has been liberated, a bunch of our fleets are converging on the Mula-system, now one of very few Annalona-systems still independent.  Our luck in Yed continues to hold: After the RNG put together an especially bad combination of Cynoid-ships for this battle, nearly two hundred of them die in fiery explosions. Our own losses: Zero.  During the same combat phase, Mula II falls. We have now gained a foothold in the Mula-system and soon our frontline will have reached Yed from the other side. Ugh, I forgot, there’s of course the other huge Cynoid deathstack still in the way, but at least this way we start early on cleaning it up.   GC 801: The usual bullshit happens, but with a twist: By now we’re so powerful and dangerous, even the New Orions have started sending spies to sabotage us. In fact, an Antaran spy is discovered on a planet near the Klackon-border and gunned down in a shoot-out near a local bar. Allied Dumbass-Decisions Counter Getting mad at us for beating their worst enemies: 2 Being unnaturally happy that billions of intelligent lifeforms are being atomized: 2 Trying to colonize planets in the middle of a war zone, and failing: 2 Moving huge amounts of transports around our backwater for no good reason: 2 Exchanging techs at a 3:1 ratio to our benefit: 1 (this is dumb, but I can live with it) Breaking all their treaties with the huge, galaxy-spanning empire they have most of their planets in: 1 Declaring war on the leading super-power: 2 Fighting GM mind-control to achieve a cease-fire after one turn of crippling fighting: -1 Securing free movement for their people, only to immediately threaten the new treaty with vile threats: 1 Total: 12 (This entire thing of our ally turning against us was so stupid I’m counting it twice, but the AI unexpectedly circumventing their mental domination to reduce the forced war back to a cease-fire counts as an actually smart decision, so I’m also reducing the counter by 1 just for that.) Antaran Expedition Status Expedition A2: Partial discoveries made (4) + WIPED OUT (TF1) Expedition B1: 3 ships in position (TF2) Expedition B2: WIPED OUT (TF3) Expedition B3: 15 ships in position (TF4) Expedition B4: 29 ships in position (TF5) Expedition B5: 15 ships in position (TF6) Next: Robot Wars I
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Feb 14, 2022 17:22
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Man I must be confused, I thought we already annihilated the Sakkra hundreds of turns ago? Am I getting confused about who we already beat up?
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Feb 14, 2022 17:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Man I must be confused, I thought we already annihilated the Sakkra hundreds of turns ago? Am I getting confused about who we already beat up? Close, but those were other Saurians. The Raas
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Feb 14, 2022 17:40
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Clever & Smart AND Battletech references? Dude, if you ever come to Vienna I'll buy you a beer.
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Feb 14, 2022 18:11
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Are we using nothing but Cicadas as our Mech frontline? 
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Feb 14, 2022 21:20
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Of course your weak rear end in a top hat 'allies' that you've been caring for all these years are the ones that had one of the antarian Xs you've been looking for. MOO's "AI allies are just enemies that are pretending to not shoot you" strikes again.
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Feb 14, 2022 22:40
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... Wow actual progress this turn! Glad you're feeling better and hoping that the surgery to your eyes helps! Good to have this going again. And I'm scared. Actual forward momentum! Some fronts actually being stabilized! A full council assembled with useful leaders!
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Feb 15, 2022 02:29
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Amazing how that happens. Also, I'd like to offer up that "once you win any kind of victory, even a science victory, even if not enabled, you win the game and can stop playing"  At this point, similar to Imperium, this feels more like an exercise in frustration management, but I'm still impressed.
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Feb 15, 2022 12:20
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Hiaturs Notice No, this thread is not dead. I just had some more eye surgery recently and I'm not in the shape to write lengthy posts right now. So this thread is on hiatus until I can look on a PC monitor for more then 1-3 seconds I'll probably pick this back up after Easter, no promises though
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Mar 30, 2022 18:30
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Good luck with becoming master of your eye on Easter!
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Mar 30, 2022 20:28
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Congratulations! Hope your recovery goes well! And like the rock and the hard place, this thread will go on! ... Probably with more spies.
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Mar 30, 2022 23:50
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Decoy Badger posted:Good luck with becoming master of your eye on Easter! This is amazing.
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Apr 3, 2022 00:02
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LP STATUS UPDATE Right now my eye has recovered enough to slowly get back into things. Slowly. To not overdo it, I've started setting up a new AtariST-emulator for my next LP and looking at where my two current LP-threads stand. 1.) Operation: Eastside Apart from a basically infinite resource of lore posts about Perry Rhodan, the game itself is about halfway done. We've reached the point were manually controlling your colonies becomes a chore, and the build-AI is awful enough to not make things easier on the player. Current plan is to keep posting until we're militarily able enough to defeat enemy fleets without having to "run away" and then launch Operation: ColonyCheat when playing the game stops being fun. Easy enough to do, if the doctors can stop themselves from dragging me into a hospital every six months. 2.) Master of Orion III The undead thread. Ironically, last time I played I realized I was slowly marching towards final and ultimae victory, just that I keep getting stopped by weird poo poo happening: My apartment flooding, repeated eye surgery, etc. OK, this thread is more cursed then undead at this point. Anyway, in May I want to press this forward again. My two main goals for this thread are: a) Stop writing entire novels for each turn, you moron and b) Finish it 3.) [REDACTED] Upgrading my AtariST-emulation made a certain older game suddenly a lot more stable, reducing the number of nasty crashes. Well, it's not game 3 anyway, I just tested it after I finished setting up the emulator (I'm using Hatari, if you want to know). This game comes with an interesting internal limitation: Even the longest campaign possible automatically ends after 100 turns. If we get through this fast enough, maybe I'll let people vote on some of the shorter story campaigns that come with [REDACTED]! Currently though, I'm looking at the nice, simple and very readable print map on the back of my [REDACTED]-manual and compare it mentally with the one shown in-game. Yeah, 100 turns can last a long time, I think. By the way, the only review I could find of [REDACTED] claims the game is very hard, because actually conducting a war demands an insane amount of logistics to handle! That sounds a lot of fun, actually. But let's wait and see if I an at least make two posts before falling into a hospital bed again.
Libluini fucked around with this message at 19:01 on May 2, 2022 |
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May 2, 2022 18:31
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Yeah this LP really is kinda cursed. Thoughts and prayers?
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May 2, 2022 18:59
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Just don't overdo it with the holy water.
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May 2, 2022 21:04
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In RNGesus' name, begone foul curse!
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May 2, 2022 22:34
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The thread that lived on! Taking nearly as long to play as the game spent in development! Or the mod, even!
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May 3, 2022 06:13
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I remember when it was all 'lol, I'm gonna finish my MOO1 thread before this thread ends'. Ancient history now, and yet the effort continues. Let it not be said that this LP did not continue for lack of trying.
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May 6, 2022 02:13
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Strategic Sage posted:I remember when it was all 'lol, I'm gonna finish my MOO1 thread before this thread ends'. Ancient history now, and yet the effort continues. Let it not be said that this LP did not continue for lack of trying. One time I joked to myself that fate itself would need to kill me to stop this thread from finishing while I was doing dishes, and one dumb, awkwardly placed glass immediately fell in a perfect 90° angle, hitting the rim of a bowl hard enough to burst in a shower of glass shards. Sometimes it almost seems like something is trying to communicate with me.
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May 6, 2022 20:38
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 131: Robot Wars I GC 801 – GC 826 Welp. Didn’t expect for my life to turn even shittier after the flooding + going blind issues of 2021, but here we are. But whatever, I’m not blind yet and the only way to stop this thread from finishing would be Putin launching all the nukes! And we all now that old bastard won’t do this, since in his sick mind Ukraine is a part of Russia and who would be stupid enough to nuke their own country??? Anyway, my point is only nukes can stop this train, so let’s build up some steam!  Back in the world of Master of Orion 3, we have still turn 534 and are both conducting massive wars of liberation plus cleaning up our allies (here in green) since game mechanics forced them to abandon their alliance with us. On account of us getting too strong. Since making good AI is hard, some older 4x-games have what I like to call (after how SEV named this) the “MegaEvilEmpireFunction” or MEEF for short. If your game is afflicted by MEEF, after the player empire has grown past a certain strength treshold, the MEEF will brutally enforce total enmity between the player and the AI-empires. In theory, this is supposed to make the victory lap after snowballing more “interesting” or “challenging”, but in truth it a) just adds mindless tedium and b) actually undermines other types of victory, especially those relating to trading and diplomacy, as you know, those two especially depend on friendly relations with other empires. MO3 has a really bad case of MEEF: Nothing will ever tell you what the threshold is that turns everyone evil, and if you e.g. were planning on a diplomatic victory, it may very well end with MEEFed off empires voting you out of the Orion Senate alltogether and then loving you over by voting for some other NPC-empire. Which of course automatically makes you lose. It’s the only case I know of a game punishing you for playing too well! Have fun!  Also this turn: The guys who are evil and fascist completely naturally, are declaring war on us. Huh. Apparently we’re doing something very right.   Later, there’s a hail of space and ground battles. Of note is only the battle on Uxmai I, where our army slowly marches forward in the face of the largest concentration of mobile infantry outside of Starship Troopers. Our tanks suffer, and even some mechs get taken out, but the 50+ units of mobile infantry are reduced to a mere 18. Shocking losses for the Cynoids!  The incredible thing of this slaughter is that we only took two of many regions on our advance. I’m guessing all those trashed APCs were clogging the streets or something. Also, turn 535 sees revolts, riots and some more colonies being founded. By now you can probably recognize the icons by memory.  XEOL (the Cynoid-empire) still has several systems with thousands of units piled up for us to plow through, a couple hundred at a time. Deepest sigh. From a certain view point, I wonder how hard all this upkeep is hurting XEOL, consiering we blasted/took most of their planets by now. Though at least they can’t get Game Overed since they’re AI. They’ll just slowly get less able to buy new poo poo as the crippling debts mount.  We have similar build-up troubles. We certainly didn’t need our AI-controlled planets to outbuild our carriers and artillery ships by a ratio of 5:1. That’s horrible, in fact. As a remainder, our “Titans” are what I’ve been calling what Master of Orion III would normally all “Behemoths”, the 2nd largest hull class in the game. (I just didn’t like the name “Behemoth” back in the day ca. 2003-2004 and this name change somehow made it through all later adjustments.) This means our industry is churning out unwanted miniature deathstars constantly. And is the reason our direct-fire Titans are already marked as obsolete, to discourage our AI to build even more.  Meanwhile, battles: This battle phase the only one worth mentioning is the stalemate in Yed: We continue to blow up 100+ Cynoid ships each turn, roughly at the same rate XEOL is hurling new task forces into the system.  GC 804: More brutal ground fighting on Uxmal I. The enemy isn’t even getting reinforcement, the surviving units from last turn just managed to evade total destruction somehow! Though at this time roughly half the planet is under our control, so it’s only a matter of time. Mula I, an Imsaies-planet, falls nearly without a shot fired, as our allies often really don’t want to fight us.* *At least that’s the thread lore version. In truth, the AI is just not prepared to fight us since it never planned or prepared for any fighting: It was forced into war by game mechanic fiat, and it shows. Fleets in the wrong position, important planets nearly undefended, planets near XEOL-space oddly heavy defended, etc. Oh, I nearly forgot: Taking Mula I gave us the Nano-Research Lab tech. Let’s go look at it!  Nano-Research Labs are a level 56 Mathematics tech. They’re neat little auto-buildings each research DEA will handle on their own. Each DEA with one of them works at 150% capacity. Sweet! Lorewise, they’re self-replicating la structures capable of spitting out streams of nanobots capable of building any kind of material, down to the last molecule, after precise specifications. Perfect for material, construction and chemical sciences! Which is a lie, it just straight-up boosts all research, not just certain categories. MO3 isn’t quite that advanced.  Three ground invasions at the same time now! Mostly because the fighting in the Uxmal-system has by now cost enough time the troops for the next target have arrived. But we finish both of them off this ground combat phase, so no big deal.  Mula III on the Imsaies-front falls too. There was some fighting this time, but gas giant dwellers aren’t too hot on Earth-like planets like this one, so it was mercifully short.  Turn 537: Three planets liberated in one turn. A new record! Also, we gain an ancient and fully obsolete FTL-tech we somehow managed to jump past: The Improved Portal Drive.  After cleaning out Uxmal, the Cynoids are basically done in our front down there. The rest is mostly Meklar, then we connect back to our most Eastern border. This little stretch next to the mega-stalemates of Theta Gru and Yed is actually all that is left over from the once mighty XEOL-Empire.  GC 807. Everything moves according to plan. Even our Antares-expeditions losing ships again can’t face me. Interesting fact: Since one Galactic Cycle is roughly 1,5 Earth years long, our empire has now existed for over a thousand years.  The next turn has, strangely enough, a new star lane, connecting two systems outside of our borders. A small reminder that yes, this function exists. MO3 vanilla had this function, too. But the devs couldn’t finish it in time, and like a lots of things Ulimta Orion switched back on, it was switched off and hidden in the original game as it was released. A short memory kick: When a game map is generated in Master of Orion 3, all star systems are connected with a net of multiple invisible star lanes. The game then just randomly reveals some of them. So if you target some random-rear end star that’s seemingly unconnected-, your ships won’t actually travel through “empty” space, but instead take one of those invisible star lanes. Task forces traveling down those invisible lanes are simply slowed down massively to simulate ships not using lanes. The “new lane”-function randomly rolls for an additional reveal after the game has already started. In this mod, you can set down some parameters to make the game roll more or less often to expand your map. A neat little thing that helps keeping things fresh. One of these new lanes connected one of our backwaters with the Trilarians, for example. Hilarity ensued.  Our old friends beg for a ceasefire. But what’s the point? It would just prolong the inevitable. The Kingdom of Almandin politely declines.  GC 810. Unbelievably, there are still some holdouts in the Uxmal-system. The battle rages on Uxmal II, this time against the Meklar. The uprising on Zaurak II is again, possibly caused by spies. It has been going for some turns now but I stopped caring. It’s not like one more planet matters at this point, and the planet is AI-controlled, so the buildings blowing up get replaced automatically anyway. And after the spy eventually bites it, everything will return to normal. For this specific planet, that is. Oh, and another of our intrepid explorers explodes.  Suddenly, our ongoing liberation campaign in Annalona-space stops dead in its tracks: We actually found an Imsaies-planet with willing defenders!  Turn 541 is rough. Not the military stuff, that’s just more tediously slow progress. But now we have more revolts! On the far away colony Vaht IV, the revolts get strong enough to destroy 3 buildings all at once. But since I can’t actually do that much, I just counter with more troops on the worst afflicted planets and move on.  At least we get a new weapon tech incoming! The Antimatter Beam is another weapon filled up with Perry Rhodan lore: In PR, beings called the Accalauries use this tech to blow up Terran ships real good. They work by first projecting a cover field around an enemy ship that works like a anchor for hyper energy. The actual weapon that blasts a complex web of hyper energy through hyperspace, towards the enemy ship. The cover field absorbs that vile poo poo and vomits it all over the trapped ship. All of this happens in nanoseconds. The effect is that part of the enemy shield bubble and even hull gets transformed into antimaatter. Yes, this means not only transforms part of the ship you hit into a huge antimatter bomb, part of the energy in the protective bubble around it gets converted into antimatter. So random lumps of antimatter replace parts of your shields, too! You may guess what happens next. It’s hilariously destructive. Sadly, it’s also far too much for a well-balanced space 4x like Master of Orion III, so this mod-weapon “only” does a shitload of damage, has good range, and has a 10% modifier to piercing shields. It’s kind of lame, but at least it doesn’t force you into many years of trying to research Ynkelonium to prevent your ships from just exploding if the AI gets this first. Man, that would suck. Ynkelonium by the way is an artificial metal that doesn’t exist in the standard universe. The Accalauries you see, come from another universe too, and this made the good guys think. Eventually, this blueish metal was discovered and alloyed with new ship hulls. Since Ynkelonium, being from another universe, has no antimatter-counterpart in our own, putting an alloy that’s mostly Ynkelonium on your outer hull negates Accalaurie-weapons completely. Since the real antimatter beams from the original lore work as I’ve described above, but they only work like that. Block their magic antimatter transformation power, and they’re just a huge waste of space. Eventually, the existence of Ynkelonium metal meant that Accalaurie and Terrans could meet face to face without blowing up (did I forget to mention the Accalauries are also antimatter? Their universe is basically the opposite of ours: Antimatter is everywhere, and matter left only tiny traces. I’d explain what this means, but including a Physics essay in this LP would probably be a bit too much. Peace reigned after the misunderstandings were worked out. Some more weird facts about our antimatter buddies: -They communicate with ultra sonic sounds, a bit like bats. -Their own name for themselves translates to something that sounds like “Shacks”. -“Accalauries” is actually an old mystical name for their strange UFOs that’s only in use in our galaxy.  Peace negotiations begin  OK, back on track. It’s now GC 813 and nothing really happens. AI-empires are angry at us, our two main revolts are still going, and the Imsaies are filling up Okda V just to annoy us. No progress on the ground this turn.  Okda V turns into a meatgrinder. Both sides throw in completely new armies to break the stalemate. Eventually, our armies of tanks and mechs stomp enough imperial guard and space marines to at least advance a single region.  The fighting is so gruesome, the Imsaies beg again for a ceasefire. We politely tell them: No.  So you can actually visualize what is going on, here’s a map: The Okda-system is one of only very few full Annalona-systems left. Apart from some irrelevant leftovers elsewhere, those three systems are it. After that, there’s the last remnant of XEOL below and the lone planet the Cynoids never took in Theta Gru. Essentially, we’re closing in on eliminating two full empires from the game! Progress!  To my eternal shame, GC 816 has me succumbing to orbital death again as the frustration of the slow progress on Okda V makes me blow up an entire world on the other end of the Orion Sector. Those billions of Meklar are now toast. Or should that be toaster?  Ironically, just one turn and two armies later, the defense of Okda V utterly collapses. Just a coincidence, or did the terror caused by the Kingdom destroying an entire colony from orbit undermine Imsaies-morale? You decide!  Next combat phase, our fleet in Meklar-space keeps on blowing up entire worlds. Here is Celox I. Zero survivors.  Back in the eastern edge of the map, the fighting moves to Okda I and the game immediately takes revenge for my many war crimes: A plucky planetary defense fort manages to nail the general commanding the landing in the early stages of the invasion, and the resulting chaos leads to a total turkey shoot. The surviving landing ships are called back and the invasion is called off. Well, that’s two immensely superior armies destroyed for no good reason. gently caress you too, game.  GC 819 starts out with another quick sucker punch: One of the many enemy spies plaguing us finally rolls high enough to get through and steal a tech. Luckily it’s “just” a way to make plasma guns smaller, not one of our unique techs. It still smarts.  In the next combat phase, I decide to just give the game the middle finger. Meklar-colony Celox III dies first.  Then Okda I gets sterilized. Looks like the people of Okda V were right to fear us.  The following turn, Okda III follows.  GC 822, turn 548. Man, this was a dark turn of events. Not much to report here, except that the burning Celox-system is now connected to another system via a new star lane.  Our brutal actions have the Imsaies begging another time for a ceasefire. This is just sad. They’re now down to 8 planets, most of them in the two systems left for us to take. It’s clear the AI doesn’t want this, but isn’t allowed to end the war so they keep spamming ceasefire-requests, as that’s the next best thing. I feel like torturing flies at this point. In later, more advanced games, empires have the option to completely surrender to you and get annexed, or to become your vassals which makes them ineligible for victory conditions until they break free. MO3 is too old school. To get rid of an empire, you have to stomp it flat. Here is the full list of alternative options the game gives you: … Yeah, that should cover eveything.  The Trilarians saw the giant space massacre we did recently, and want in on it. As victims! So they declare war on us. I think that’s just some serious depression. (In truth it’s more AI-brainwashing, of course. The MEEF stinks.  In fact, this turn sees us at war with everyone we’ve ever met. Annalona (Imsaies), XEOL (Cynoids) and PIUM (Meklar) are all close to getting dumpstered. Should clear up the clutter a bit. Also of course, it will remove three sources of spies.  At this point I remember to show a map update from the Meklar-front. Celox is now white since we killed everything in it. And since the game was nice enough to to connect Celox with another empire through Tarcuta, that fleet is now stuck to play border protection. Good thing our AI build so many Titans, all those tiny border fleets we need slowly start to add up.  Turn 549 and I suddenly realize that the map angle last time was maybe a bit hard to understand. So here is the Meklar combat zone again. The star lane beyond Uxmal ends in a last XEOL-system and beyond Deli lie Meklar and Nommo, then our border. The new star lane at Celox connects our space back to the Tachidi. Those spicy mega-bugs are already at war with us, so that fleet won’t ever leave that system now. At least not until the bitter end, when all other goals are met and I just steamroll all leftovers off-screen to spare you the tedium.  This is our “front” against the Trilarians. After taking the foothold in Hera, I haven’t been able to do much due to our many other fronts. Since the Trilarians aren’t exactly the Orion Sector’s superpower, I’ll probably use some of our surplus Titans to do some poo poo here at one point.  GC 825. And then I learn by looking at this screenshot that I actually had a fleet already on the move from Hera, since I apparently bombarded a Trilarian planet in the Mu Cancri system. Oops. The curse of not doing anything for the thread for months strikes again!  More maps! By turn 550, the Okda-system has been pacified and we turn around to clean up Matar-B, a little side-system I had forgotten about.  Celox is slowly getting re-colonized by us, while the fleet keeps station to blow up Meklar-colonizers trying to do their annoying suicide colony bullshit.  Some new techs drop by this turn: the Miniaturized Improved Localization System is just our current best sensor tech, but 1/3rd smaller. The Extended External Battle Module replaces an earlier version of this mod-tech and adds +7% instead of (trying to go by memory here) +5%. The EEBM is no big thing, but of course everything that allows us to add more weapons to our capital ships is nice. But cutting our (at this point loving huge) sensor suits by that much however, is very important for our scouts, since it often means the difference between completely unarmed recon ships and recons who can actually add some PD to their task force.  This screenshot only exists to show that yes, occasionally we’re still killing foreign agents. I’t just mostly happening in the background now, same as our expeditions bleeding more ships.  Turn 551 also sees the Kingdom of Almandin finally responding to the parasitic threat the Ithkul pose to our citizens. Well, some of our citizens at least.  Turn 552 drives by and leaves miniaturized versions of our current weapons at the doorstep. Though as antimatter beams have more range and shield-weakening abilities, this means some harsh decisions as to what our next main ship weapon should be: 1.) Keep Crystal Beam Cannons (anti-armor, when miniaturized slightly more damage, less range) 2.) Switch to Antimatter Beam Cannons (anti-shield, slightly less damage, more range) I think I leave this decision to you. It’s so close it almost doesn’t matter until our research gets even deeper into the tech tree.  The literal last thing I did before my life turned to full poo poo mode: An army of battlemechs lands on Matar-B III, takes a single region around the landing zone and then gets stuck because so many dead Imsaies soldiers clog their legs they literally can’t move anymore. At least this was what I assume happened to explain how nearly all the defenders died but we still made almost no progress. And that’s it: The last remnant of my last session done. Next up: Fresh updates from fresh play sessions! Antaran Expedition Status Expedition A2: Partial discoveries made (4) + WIPED OUT (TF1) Expedition B1: 2 ships in position (TF2) Expedition B2: WIPED OUT (TF3) Expedition B3: 14 ships in position (TF4) Expedition B4: 27 ships in position (TF5) Expedition B5: 14 ships in position (TF6) Next: Robot Wars II
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May 27, 2022 23:48
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Yay for this game continuing on! And uh wow the defenders of FREEDOM are liberating the enemies.. Of their lives. And antimatter cannons! It's not like we use our LR ships much. The most important thing of taking out empires at this point is fewer spies! This game gives weird priorities. Right as the Ithkul show up!
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May 28, 2022 00:09
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In pretty much every game I find having just a little more range advantage is a big help so I suppose we should pick that, so you can carry on freeing the galaxy of the curse of physical existence.
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May 28, 2022 05:55
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Congratulations, you're still alive and kicking! That alone by itself is a worthy accomplishment.
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May 28, 2022 07:17
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I say anti-matter, range is always king. I also never get over Perry Rhodan, it's still so alien to me, and deeply fascinating as a result. I don't think I ever want to read it, but I love reading your synopses.
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May 28, 2022 08:42
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Thread update! Yeah, I'm still not dead yet. The last two months I was basically absorbed into Stellaris and NMS and spent ridiculous amounts of time on these games. (Also Grandia II for the Switch in Hard Mode, because or some reason I got obsessed with finally beating the game. Still not finished though, I was mostly playing on my work commute.) To sound less than a lazy rear end in a top hat, I was also incredibly busy at work, and most of the days to mentally exhausted after work to do more than play with cat + play some random video game + listen to music + sleep. Sorry! I will try to get the thread(s) moving again, so you can get at least one fresh update before my next eye surgery in August. Edit: I checked into my save yesterday and oh boy, somehow I missed the AI dutifully building us hundreds of Titans all with now obsolete weapons. Oh well, I guess I know what I'm using for the less important fronts.
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Jul 31, 2022 09:19
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Libluini posted:Thread update! Someone's got to hold off the random colonisers. And at least you'll have ships, if not modern versions.
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Jul 31, 2022 12:00
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So, thread update: Yes, I'm still not giving up. There were just some more health-related delays, like my 3rd eye surgery this year. Seems my doctors also don't want to give up! But from next week onward I'm deemed fit enough to return to work, and so I'm planning to schedule some time to work on new updates. No promises, as the last couple months sucked balls and I have no idea what else can go wrong
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Sep 11, 2022 10:11
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Here's to hoping everything gets a little better for you! Even if the game commits the capital crime of not including my beloved kitties, I love reading about the game. Might even update the wiki. :P
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Sep 11, 2022 18:53
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Good luck! No need to rush on the game. It's just more 'and hten spies happened'! Thanks for hte update.
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Sep 11, 2022 22:26
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