OSG-28

[RFS-81]

So...my computer shut down due to overheating again, and I lost the report for my earlier turns. Luckily, I didn't loose the turns themselves, thanks to patch 1.40m's obsessive auto-saving! But the write-up for the first half of my turnset will be very sketchy. If this keeps happening, I guess I need to check for dust build-up in the fan.

I sent 20 colonists from Tauri to Incedius, following RefSteel's advice of keeping planets within 1/3 to 2/3 population capacity. (I did a quick calculation, and if you keep within that range, you have more than 88% of the maximal growth, so that's definitely a good rule of thumb!) The scout ship from Incedius was already sent to explore the red star south of Ursa, which is now in range. I spotted another star that has now come into range (the green one south-east of Proteus) and thought about sending the scout from Yarrow there. Ultimately, I decided to keep the scout at Yarrow to delay the Darloks' expansion. I don't plan to colonize Yarrow, but slowing them down is still good.

When our scout arrived at the red star, it was greeted by a Darlok missile base and a large ship, so I retreated and rerouted the scout to the green star.

Meklar maxed out on factories after the first two turns and switched over to building more colony ships. I sent the first one off to Gion, and immediately started on the next one.

Industrial Tech 9 took its sweet time to finish; it went up to > 40% discovery chance.
   
I picked RW80% since it will quickly free up some production.

GNN ranked empire production as Darlok, Klackon, Sakkra, Silicoid, Bulrathi, Psilon The Darloks are beating the bugs in production! Amazing!

One unarmed Darlok scout came visiting at Obaca at some point. They also have a scout in orbit at Volantis. The Bulrathi sent an unarmed colony ship to Incedius which of course retreated.

2342: Tauri has 145 factories. Since we're going to send some colonists to Gion soon (the ship is two turns away), I stop factory construction and shift the spending to tech instead. It's producing 163 RP, so this seems like a good time to see what the other fields of research have in store for us. I still keep the bulk of spending on Planetology and Construction, though.

Force Fields only has Deflector Shields II. The choices in the other fields were as follows (with my pick highlighted):
       
I didn't put anything into Propulsion since we don't need the Inertial Stabilizer urgently.

2343: Mentar finishes the next colony ship. The previous one is one turn away from its destination. The only planet in range right now is at Volantis (60 pop, ultra poor). When Gion is colonized, Kulthos (65 pop) and Firma (80 pop, poor) will come into range. Kulthos is the clear winner here, in my opinion. Since Gion can support 90 pop, I think it is capable of seeding the northern part of our territory on its own. Otherwise, I might have decided to colonize Firma earlier.

2344: With Gion colonized, I send the next colony ship to Kulthos, and I send the scouts to explore the new stars that are now in range. I send 30 colonists from Tauri to Gion, dropping it to 55 pop.

2345: Nothing special.

2346: The scout I rerouted to the green star arrives and is chased away by a large Darlok ship. There's already a colony there. With nothing else to explore, I let it retreat to Incedius.

2347: A scout reached Argus (one of the yellow stars in our north) and reports a 60 pop Ocean planet. Mentar finishes the next colony ship which I send to Firma. It's going to arrive in 6 turns and then it opens up Argus for colonization. I shift some spending at Mentar to tech, so that the next colony ship will be produced in 6 turns.

2348: Everything just moving along. I noticed that, at some point, the Darlok have removed their scout from Volantis. Maybe they went to explore Orion?

2349: Our weapon researchers are slacking off, with Hand Lasers at 40% discovery chance. Maybe pacifist researchers are refusing to work or sabotaging their efforts...Other than that, no news is good news, I guess.

2350: Hand Lasers are finished, my next choice is Hyper-X rockets since I think that we're going to play defensively and will be using more missile bases than ships early on.
   
The scout ship finds a pop 90 Jungle planet at Paranaar in the north-eastern corner of the map. It definitely feels like a MOO2 map when you choose an organic-rich galaxy. Maybe MOO1 randomly makes a choice like that under the hood? The colony at Kulthos is established. Also, the game does the copy-protection dance and asks me to identify a ship that doesn't appear on GOG's reference sheet. WTF? I managed to pick out the right name by process of elimination.

Here is an overview of the map, and with that, I hand this game off to the next emperor!
   

I've reached my attachment limit, so the save comes in my next post. I should probably host those images someplace else. Some notes for the next player:

• Incedius will soon have 50 prod, so we might want to terraform it. But check how far along planetology research is. If Terraforming +20 is already in the percentages, we probably want to hold off.
  
• I didn't spend anything on trade agreements or spies yet, in order to not slow down our early growth. Maybe one of our more experienced players can decide when it's time to start with that.
  
• I think if possible, we should seed new colonies from Gion. For Kulthos and Firma, we probably still need to use Tauri, but after that, we should let it build more factories and fill up.
  

[RFS-81]

And here comes the save! Good luck and have fun!

It's frankly cheeky to try writing in-character stuff in a thread containing RefSteel, but the mood took me (and yes, the smug arrogance is intentional).

I don't think he'll mind. I have to try that too, but I don't have the energy right now.

The parts of the Mind that focused on that That Which Is would doubtless soon map the improbable path by which this had come about. More importantly, study of That Which Could Be had already begun to open possibilities - trade of goods, agreements on territory, a slow flow of ideas to help the Bulrathi better themselves . However, the Focus was feeling a strange resonance with a part of the Mind nearly forgotten, a resonance that found its strongest echos with those who had been most exposed to the aliens. Perhaps, he thought, there are Things Which Should Not Be...

Oh, are we feeling a bit Xenophobic Expansionist?

[haphazard1]

New worlds and tech and development. Looks pretty good, RFS-81.

Not surprised by the continued Darlok expansion -- they seem to have gotten a good early draw in this galaxy, and are making the most of it.

Did the bears get space superiority over Incedius? Or were they just retreated? Sounds like the latter, if their colony ship was unarmed. We certainly do not want transports loaded with bear marines heading our way.

I am unsure about diplomacy here. Would it be worth trying to sign trade deals with the bears and shifters, assuming they would agree? Try to improve relations over time? Spying...well, trying that against the Darloks seems unlikely to be helpful. But the bears are poor in computer tech, maybe some possibilities there?

Hyper-X rockets will take a while, but will give us some strong defensive options and advance that tree. Of course, we will need to actually build a missile base somewhere.....

When do we want to invest in a missile base on our core worlds? Having one to block attacks by basic weapons can be useful, although force fields II is necessary to make them invulnerable to regular lasers.

[RFS-81]

New worlds and tech and development. Looks pretty good, RFS-81.

Thanks!

Did the bears get space superiority over Incedius? Or were they just retreated? Sounds like the latter, if their colony ship was unarmed. We certainly do not want transports loaded with bear marines heading our way.

No, they simply retreated. I was a bit worried that it might be armed when I saw it on the map, but it wasn't so it simply retreated from our Bear Spray ships. If they had parked a ship in orbit, I'd have switched everything to ship production hoping to shoot down the transports. In my experience, when an AI has a ship on an unallied colony, transports are definitely going to come next. But luckily for me, nothing of that happened!

I am unsure about diplomacy here. Would it be worth trying to sign trade deals with the bears and shifters, assuming they would agree? Try to improve relations over time? Spying...well, trying that against the Darloks seems unlikely to be helpful. But the bears are poor in computer tech, maybe some possibilities there?

I'm not an expert, but stealing tech sounds like a bad idea right now. We don't want to piss of an Impossible AI that's getting all sorts of free bonuses. What I was thinking about was to send a spy into hiding (which has a higher success rate than espionage) just to see what tech they have. Also, in my experience, hiding spies don't come with a diplomatic penalty, or at least not a noticeable one. When they're found, they're still eliminated, but there are no hard feelings. Of course, against the Darloks, that will still take many attempts, but we aren't in contact yet anyway.

[haphazard1]

I am not sure spying right now is worth the cost, when we still have available worlds to settle. I was thinking of a bit further into the game; should have expressed my point more clearly. Yes, risking an incident with the bears right now is not worth it.

Looking back a bit on your report, the Darloks have more production than the Klackons? Sounds like the bugs drew an unfavorable start. This could help us in the long term, as the Klackons are usually a lot more dangerous than the shifters. Not that we want any impossible AI getting too many planets, especially right near our territory.

[Ianus]

A few thoughts:
In my experience signing minimal trade is almost always a good idea, even if it's just 25 BC. That puts us on a friendlier footing without a big investment. It really isn't about the money until our production is A LOT more developed than it is now. But it is the neighborly thing to do.
As for spies it is definitely not worth it to invest any fraction of our TOTAL ECONOMY into spy production. We aren't going to war any time soon (knock on wood) and no techs that they could have right now would be a surprise. We will definitely want spy reports on our neighbors around the time we finish our peaceful expansion phase and start thinking about going to war, but for now what's the point. ANY techs put them farther ahead than us and that's all we really need to know.

And nice turn sets so far. I'm glad to see us starting our expansion push. There are a lot of great worlds to grab!

[haphazard1]

If the bears would agree to a trade deal, it is likely worth doing I think. At this stage it will not cost us very much, and improving relations would be good. We want to avoid conflict with the bears while we grab some worlds and develop them, and then start pushing tech.

I think Ianus is right that spying right now is not very helpful; we know the bears have default tech, and are probably working on some stuff in the first rungs for various fields (range, planetology, etc.). Knowing which specific ones does not matter all that much until later.

Right now we want to grab some worlds, get them growing and developing, and then start putting a bit into tech. We are the psilons -- we tech more efficiently than anybody. So we need to get to where we can do some of that, and make use of our big advantage.

Would it be worth it to put some minimal spending into tech, enough to get trickle research going in more fields? Right now we can afford to trade time for resources, using the slow trickle to get out-sized results. Or do we want to wait until we have at least a couple more worlds settled?

[Ianus]

I would say that as we have seen with propulsion planetology and construction that trickle research is extremely efficient at the bottom of the tech tree, particularly with the super cheap techs (hand lasers). Since we aren't in a huge hurry for those and our production is pretty tied up at the moment I think that trickle research is the way to go. Granted we could knock out Hand Lasers in about two turns of dedicated tech spending, but we can't really do that right now. Until we get at least a couple of colonies able to devote their production to research let's do the most we can with the little we have available.

[RefSteel]

First: Great in-character stuff, shallow_thought! I'd just want to suggest a small change:

It's frankly cheekyterrific to try writing in-character stuff in a thread containing RefSteel because he loves that stuff!

Also: GOT IT! I'll post a pre-flight plan in a moment, but first, a roster:

Ianus
haphazard1
RFS-81 (just played)
RefSteel (HAS THE SAVE!)
shallow_thought OR DaveV (On Deck)
DaveV OR shallow_thought (next after that)

[RefSteel]

So, to start: We've got a good-sized empire for this point in the game, with most of its infrastructure concentrated on the homeworld and Tauri, which are also sharing the research load. Our tech is a bit unfocused - that is, I don't see any clear plan for what we want when and why - but going well in general terms. We're behind the 'loks in expansion, but we're working on that quickly, and they seem like the strongest race in the galaxy right now - and though we're dead last in production according to GNN, that's normal on Impossible at this point in the game. We've so far done no diplomacy at all, but the Bulrathi are neutral toward us. And our combat fleet consists of five laser fighters. That's ... not a military.

So ... what's the plan? Basically to try to juggle five competing priorities:
1) Keep expanding as quickly as reasonably possible until we run out of room.
2) Complete our current tech investments and start some new ones.
3) Get some terraforming done and infrastructure built, especially at Incedius.
4) Get some trade going with the Bulrathi for diplomatic purposes. Also work on finding out what kind of tech they've got. (They're unsurprisingly ahead of us, this being Impossible, and by the end of my set, it's going to be 2360.)
5) Figure out a way to defend the empire from the aliens.

And some extra stretch goals for myself, bearing in mind that these aren't going to be easy (and indeed may not be possible) to reach:
- Get Monch up to Relaxed relations and/or get a useful tech from him.
- Set up the colonization of Yarrow! (In the hope it can be accomplished by the next Focus of True Thought, First amongst the Transcendant!)

Thoughts and opinions are welcome, no matter how good you think you are or aren't at the game!