This is Team B's playthrough of our latest Orion Succession Game, OSG-29! If you'd like to sign up but your name's not on the roster, let us know in the SG planning thread!
Settings:
Difficulty: Impossible
Opponents: 5
Galaxy size: Medium
Race: Humans
Patch: 1.40m
Variant Rule: We may never use the "Audience" button to conduct diplomacy! (It's okay to agree to deals proposed by the AIs themselves; we just can't initiate our own diplomacy.) Moreover, we may never vote for an AI race at the High Council. It's up to the aliens to draw our charming diplomats of their shells; we won't initiate any diplomatic action with them!
Roster: (Order to be determined by first to "got it" the first time through the order.)
thrawn - (Just Played)
RefSteel - (Waiting so we can split up our vets) RFS-81 - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!") shallow_thought - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!") TheArchduke - (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
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Thanks for getting us started, Thrawn! You've gotten us off to an impressive start, exceptionally well reported and explained. I particularly love the way you made clear the ways the peculiarities of this map affect our opening moves.
Adding to your thoughts for the next player:
1) We can reduce tech spending for now in favor of more factories on Mentar, putting most of our research into Propulsion and just a bit into planetology. Since Improved Eco ("ER3") is well into the percentages and we don't need it right away (its value increases in proportion to the number of factories we produce, obviously) we can get away with spending very little per turn.
2) Note however that the game rounds research spending down in each field - so if you're only producing 20-25 RP, make sure you have at least three or four clicks in Planetology. (I actually tend to micro-adjust my research spending around the empire so that the percentage chance for a tech like this is increasing by at least 1% every turn while the LED for the other tech is either just barely lit or just one click short of being lit, but there's no need to get that obsessive about it as long as you make sure we're getting some research into Planetology and a good amount into Propulsion while building factories!)
3) I would have already spent more on factories and less on research in the very early turns, and especially focused on homeworld factories with much less spent on Darrian's. We'll want at least three colships for those great forward worlds ASAP (and depending on what we see in the way of enemy ships, we might need fighters before long too) and the longer we delay our homeworld factories, the longer it'll take for those to complete.
4) The pre-flight scouting plan in particular was brilliantly conceived and executed. That kind of in-depth logistical planning is one of my favorite things about 4-X games.
Like I did in OSG 28, I'm planning to wait and play third or fourth here just to spread out our most-experienced players across the roster, so the next player who's ready to play is UP: RFS-81, shallow_thought, or TheArchduke!
Thanks for the detailed explanation of your research and factory-building decisions, thrawn! I mainly wanted to highlight the fact that there's more than one good way to play an opening, as long as you set a good goal and aim for it (as you did) - and of course to get some discussion going. In the interest of the latter though, I'll explain why I still disagree about sacrificing factories at Mentar for factories on Darrian (by presumably doing some of the research at Mentar while Darrian was building some of its factories) and continuing to fund IER heavily even for another turn or two after this. Uh, in spoilers though, because it kind of got long....
- The idea of sending population from both worlds to seed new colonies is great for certain situations, and not something I'd previously considered outside of Meklar games. That has little or nothing to do with factories on your second world though; on the contrary, if we're going to start building significant numbers of colships before our homeworld maxes factories (thereby getting at least the first ship out sooner and gaining the ability to send population out from the homeworld without factories going idle) it's more urgent to complete the homeworld factories we do want ASAP, since our opening is delaying the third and later colships (and potentially even the second) already. Obviously getting factories on the second colony is great, but not (in my opinion) at the expense of homeworld factories.
- I'll take your word for the production bonus from Improved Eco. (For the other players: Thrawn is including both the effects of reduced cleanup costs, which right now would amount to 14 BC, and the production bonus for population as Planetology tech improves, which presumably amounts to about 19 with our current population.) By a similar token to the above though, only about 20 of the extra BC will apply to the homeworld - where all our colships will be built - and though that number will rise as our population grows and we build more factories, it will do so slowly with Mentar out of the "fat" part of the growth curve and with factories still getting delayed for more technology. Moreover, increasing our odds from 18 tp 24% this turn means we'll get the tech (on average) about one turn sooner - so an average of 20-30 BC extra points of production on the homeworld (TOTAL, not per turn, since we'd get the same per-turn rate an average of one turn later anyway) for which we're spending an extra 30+ BC now. That's not a terrible idea since we can fund most of that research from Darrian, but I think Mentar should definitely be all-out on factories - and I'd actually send population back to Sol from Darrian as well to get more production going (it'll put Darrian in the good part of the growth curve too, so we won't take a big hit to overall population).
- Note that Improved Eco doesn't start paying its investment back until it actually completes, while factories start providing extra production right away, so even though the payback from Improved Eco (empire-wide) with our current population and factories is ultimately worth about the same as 66 more factories without IER, the cost of those 66 factories is a lot less than it appears, because the newer ones are paid for in part by the ones that complete before them. Another point though: We were definitely going to get Improved Eco either way. Delaying it a little while (as long as it's done by the time we start our first colship) means we get 33 fewer BC per turn for that little while, but ultimately means that Improved Eco and our new factories both contribute more because there are more of the latter, producing more waste for the former to clean.
Note too that though this is a fun discussion, and hopefully a good opportunity to learn, thrawn and I are kind of splitting hairs a little bit. For me, the main point is the way wildly different openings can be effective if conducted well. In this case, we're in a much, much stronger position than a glance at our 71(!) homeworld factories might suggest. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the next player plays the next 15 turns; if you have any questions either now or during the set, please ask - and we'll get even more discussion going!
Got it! I and next player play 15 turns each, then we move to 10 turn splits, is that correct?
Excellent reporting and discussion so far. Only bad thing is that it keeps reminding me of how little I know. Speaking of which...
(May 19th, 2017, 17:49)thrawn Wrote: Don’t build any more scouts. Because of how rounding works, the ones we have are free, but 1 more will be very expensive to maintain. The 6 we have should be enough for anything you may want to do.
Do we have any details available on how maintenance cost is calculated? I've poked around the manual and the Internet (it is frustratingly difficult to separate out real MOO info from the sequels and remakes) and not found anything. I've certainly noticed it as a much bigger factor in the late game in my recent impossible games than it used to be back on hard.
(May 19th, 2017, 20:12)RefSteel Wrote: Note however that the game rounds research spending down in each field - so if you're only producing 20-25 RP, make sure you have at least three or four clicks in Planetology. (I actually tend to micro-adjust my research spending around the empire so that the percentage chance for a tech like this is increasing by at least 1% every turn while the LED for the other tech is either just barely lit or just one click short of being lit, but there's no need to get that obsessive about it as long as you make sure we're getting some research into Planetology and a good amount into Propulsion while building factories!)
So there are, I think, 50 "clicks" total, so each one is 2% of your available RP - is that right? I'll definitely keep an eye on the rounding costs. Is there an easily available table of tech costs somewhere? I think that the game only shows you them at choice time, and they're not in the manual. In this case it's easy to start a new game and have a look at the cost of range 5, but I'd like to know for future reference.
I'll try to balance the issues of wanting a colship and range 5 in 10t turns while not wasting BC through rounding errors, but it's unlikely to be perfect.
It's hopefully not going to be an issue for this turnset, but I'd appreciate some guidance on when we're likely to want laser fighters, in what numbers and (on this map) where. It's an aspect of the game I find hard to judge, effectively wasting production getting fighters to locations too late or in too few numbers.
Edit: another noob question. How do you judge how much RP is already invested in a tech through the interface? More generally, I'm interested in trying to estimate how long it will take to research Range 5 (800RP) and am struggling to do so. It's not critical, as there will be a decent-sized random element anyway, but if I'm trying to plan, I might as well do it properly...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(May 20th, 2017, 03:37)shallow_thought Wrote: Got it! I and next player play 15 turns each, then we move to 10 turn splits, is that correct?
Exactly right!
Quote:Do we have any details available on how maintenance cost is calculated?
Yes! Ship maintenance is equal to the total cost of all the ships in your fleet (in BC) divided by 50, rouned down! So six 8-BC scouts are juuuuuuust under the minimum neeed to pay for maintenance costs. Once costs hit 1BC, the actual maintenance costs at different planets in your empire are determined by an arcane series of formulae - I think first the maintenance cost is converted to a percentage of total imperial prouction and then that percentage is deducted from the production of each planet, rounding up - but due to rounding the actual cost often ends up significantly larger than the nominal cost early on. (Later, when all the numbers start getting large, everything more or less evens out to approximately the right total cost.)
Quote:I've poked around the manual and the Internet (it is frustratingly difficult to separate out real MOO info from the sequels and remakes) and not found anything. I've certainly noticed it as a much bigger factor in the late game in my recent impossible games than it used to be back on hard.
I've found that asking people here is usually the best way to get accurate answers to mechanics questions about MoO. Sargon was an invaluable resource when he was around, but there are others around (including Thrawn for a lot of stuff and in some cases myself now as well) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the game.
Quote:So there are, I think, 50 "clicks" total, so each one is 2% of your available RP - is that right?
Yes, exactly!
Quote:I'll definitely keep an eye on the rounding costs. Is there an easily available table of tech costs somewhere? I think that the game only shows you them at choice time, and they're not in the manual. In this case it's easy to start a new game and have a look at the cost of range 5, but I'd like to know for future reference.
I don't remember the formula for this one off the top of my head, except that it's all based on the tech's nominal level, difficulty level, and your race's tech ability in the relevant field. Pretty sure this is one Thrawn could answer precisely though.
Quote:It's hopefully not going to be an issue for this turnset, but I'd appreciate some guidance on when we're likely to want laser fighters, in what numbers and (on this map) where. It's an aspect of the game I find hard to judge, effectively wasting production getting fighters to locations too late or in too few numbers.
This is indeed hard to judge, and a lot depends on the races (ours and the possible interloper's) involved. Sending up just a few fighters can be worthwhile to stop the likes of Darloks and Klackons from claiming half the map with a raft of free colships esscorted by a single laser fighter, but I only send fighters in serious numbers when I want to defend worlds I already own (or attack somebody). LR combat ships are a separate and more complicated question, as they can be used to hold critical planets that you lack the range to reach until you can finally get there, but I don't think that applies here. When planets are in range, I'd rather send a colship than a serious fleet of fighters, as the two may end up costing about the same amount anyway!
[EDIT: There is one huge exception, and it might apply here if we don't get those three beautiful border worlds: Protecting hostile worlds for which I don't yet have the environmental tech, especially from the 'coids. That's not something we'll be able to afford - or hopefully need - in the next fifteen turns though....]
Quote:Edit: another noob question. How do you judge how much RP is already invested in a tech through the interface? More generally, I'm interested in trying to estimate how long it will take to research Range 5 (800RP) and am struggling to do so. It's not critical, as there will be a decent-sized random element anyway, but if I'm trying to plan, I might as well do it properly...
The approximation I use is that for each stage of light in the bulb (unlit = 0, bottom pixels only = 1, "stem" of the bulb" only = 2, etc.) you've completed about 1/7th of the nominal cost of the tech. When you've paid the full nominal cost, you "hit the percentages," and after that, I think you have to spend 4% of the nominal cost for each percentage point increase.
If you want to know precisely, you can check to see how many RP it takes to get the LED to light up red. That amount is 7.5% of what you've invested so far.
Have fun with the turns; I hope some of this helps!
Edit: Caught up, theorycrafting galore and most of it on point, thrawn.
It seems even with the variant if we play our cards right, this is not going to be as tough as other variants I remember.
I understand your reluctance on maintenance, but I always like to build 1 LR Laser ships to guard those outlying planets. Perhaps after our first colony ship though, who wants to the 2nd round btw?
