RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

Ok, here's how things look at the start.

Remember what I wrote earlier in SG1 about how to figure out who is nearby your start location based on star names, it might be helpful.

The first thing we need to do is gate as many worlds as possible. This is literally more important than anything else we could be doing right now. There are a couple ways to do it:
1. Send gate/tanker pairs everywhere and expect to lose some at neutral worlds before we can get the gate set up (note: we can immediately retreat from colonized worlds -- use this ability!)

2. Send an ER scout one turn ahead of gate/tanker pairs. This will save us the cost of replacing gates that die at neutral worlds and menaces that we can't avoid, but incur extra up-front costs for the ER ships. Lasers for stripping derelicts could be useful on such ER scouts.

Either approach can work well. Just don't send more than one escort destroyer for each gate/tanker pair as the costs tend to add up quickly if you do. Note that we are on reduced economic/research settings (75%/75%) so we can't really afford to be replacing a lot of lost gates or building a lot of extra non-gate ships.

Remember that you can use established gates to ferry new gate-tanker pairs closer to the front lines before exploring further, but don't rely too heavily on this at the start. Some locations will undoubtedly contain menaces that we can't easily take out just yet, so you'll need to move past them by sublight.

Once we have a gate up, make sure to protect it! At this point, a few armour DDs is tougher than any enemy scout.

If a new colony world looks really good, then grab it straightaway, but don't be gulled into grabbing just any old colony because we are slow. With reduced economic settings it's even more important than normal that we only take the best possible worlds, as we can afford to colonize only a couple at a time until we can get some more income.

Working on some cheap techs like waldos, pulsed fission, gene manipulation, suspended animation would be useful, but this is relatively low priority compared to getting gates out everywhere ASAP. If you have to pick and choose where to spend money, spend it on maximizing our gate network! Once we have a lot of gate fleets out there, our gate network is growing rapidly, and we have a couple new colonies growing, there will be more time for tech.

[Mardoc]

First things first - we're the Hivers, in an 8-player galaxy this time.


2 each of Hivers, Liir, Tarka, and Morrigi. We're bound to be outmanuevered more or less all the time.

It's a dumbbell shaped galaxy, so probably our first goal has to be conquering our half, and second goal is taking on whoever's dominating the other half. As the Hivers, I expect advancing up the connecting bar to be slow and painful; in the unlikely event it's not settled by the time we get there, we're still limited by gate fleets speed, but more than likely we have to fight our way up the whole thing at sublight speed. Meanwhile, if the Liir get sufficient fuel, they can probably easily zip through the big open spaces away from the central axis.

I look around at star names, but I'm only able to place a few of our competitors; I probably just don't know the naming conventions well enough yet. In particular, I can't seem to find the Morrigi homes.

Also worth noting - the triangle at the top of the screen with the 3 - our current gate network can handle up to 3 destroyer-class ships/turn. Of course, there's only one gate, so they can't actually go anywhere, but this will start to matter as we get gates set up.


We start with 3 Gate ships, so priority #1 is to build Tankers to go with them and ER Scouts to scout ahead; only it turns out that I can't build all of the above in one turn. Given the choice, I'd rather send out Gates blind and early, at least for the first wave. I will probably go for the ERScout approach after the initial free ships, but I don't want to waste a turn on our initial push.

Nothing is within range without Tankers, even 1-way. So we'll just have to wait for the tankers to be built. And...here's the *fun* part - the closest star to our home, Rozokor, at 5.1 units away (yeah, our range was 5.0 - thanks Zed!), will take 11 turns to reach. I'm tempted to play until T15 or so just to find out what happens as the Gates start arriving.

Meanwhile, I start on Waldos as a place to dump any excess cash we might have. As Zed says, not a priority by any means, but better to work on something than nothing. We can tell it's a low priority by the way it says 132 turns to completion . But hey, maybe in a few turns the shipyards will be maxxed but we'll have cash to burn. And Waldos do make ships cheaper and output grow, without requiring we build anything to use them.

What's my goal for the near future? Primarily, to build Scout/Gate/Tanker sets and ship them off in all directions. Secondarily, to research. And when the first set gets close to its destination, to sneak in some picket forces to hold the gate after it's set up. In the unlikely event that we find a nice world, we can always interrupt our plans to build some colonizers, but I won't build those on spec; it's not worth paying maintenance on them until we know we have a world worth grabbing.

And, after all that, I hit End Turn.

[Mardoc]

T2 - send off our first three gate/tanker pairs, to the three closest stars (fortunately they're mostly in different directions). They'll arrive in 11, 11, and 13 turns.



And, we're mostly in for a waiting game now. Next turn I'll have ER scouts available to go in different directions, followed by gates; we're limited to 3-4 ships/turn, so I expect on average to send out no more than one Gate set per turn. For the time being I bump up research to a respectable rate. We can actually afford research for now, it'll be when we have Gates heading in all directions that we have to pay for, that research will fall to nothing.

T3-4 - Build 3 Gate/Tanker/ER sets and send them off. We now have 6 gates on their way.

T5 - Remember that there's such a thing as Von Neumann attacks, and build 3 Armor ships for a homeworld picket. I design an all-laser ship, since VN's are capable of blowing up missiles (and because I expect to only fight these ships where we have a colony). Is that a reasonable design, Zed, or should we go for Gauss or missiles on our early pickets?

T6 - Back to ER/Gate/Tanker sets.

T8 - Sending off more gates. I'm trying to focus them toward the middle of the globe cluster, so that once we get the first one, all subsequent travels in that direction (where there are stars) is easier. With an ER range of 29, we can afford to go up to 14.5 away from home, although that's a 30 turn trek so hopefully gates get established before I need to send anyone that far.

And...Waldos goes overbudget. I'm hoping that we have the cash to finish it off before the Gate network costs force us to shut off research.

Our set of outgoing Gates looks like a Spiderweb:


Things ought to look somewhat more organized once the first few are built, but I do expect to have an explosion of outgoing ships from now until the end of the game, either gates or conquest (well, actually, wouldn't we want to combine the two?)

Also, once the gates start arriving, we'll probably have to divert our production for a while to pickets and (hopefully) colonizers/colonies. On the bright side, Tankers are reusable.

Continued...

[Mardoc]

T9 - more gates

T10 - Waldos come in, finally! That kicks us up to 4-5 ships/turn

I start us on Pulsed Fission, although with 10 turns until it comes in and our tech rate continually falling, I have no confidence we'll get here in any reasonable timeframe. Still better than going for something expensive or just banking the money, though.

Bad news? I sight a Tarka ship in orbit over one of our Gate destinations, Ir'idan. Hopefully it's a scout we can Dove or keep away from long enough to set up the Gate and bring in a picket force. Or even better, a scout that moves on by the time we arrive .

I give in, I need to find out if any of the Gates will work. Playing 5 more turns.

T11-12 - More gate fleets sent out

T13 - Gate arrives at Totochic, and find something interesting!

We auto-peace and they leave us alone. If I remember right from the first game, we can research Incorporate Morrigi and get this colony for free? That seems like a good idea to me, jumpstarting our growth with a second profitable colony instead of a money-pit like anything we'd found. It's a nice place:


We deploy gates here and at Rozokor:


I think we want to colonize Rozokor right away; 200 Hazard is managable, and size 9 is extremely desirable. It's kinda low on resources, but big ought to make up for that. Right? Or am I mixing up early-game and late-game desirable locations?

[Mardoc]

T14 - Gates deployed gets our per turn usage up to 9! I send a guard force and colonizer to Rozokor. And a picket to Tototchic. Which ends up using up most of our transport capacity! Hopefully this will improve once we get a backlines planet or two that can supply capacity without needing to use it.

T15 - The tarka fleet at Ir'idan also doves us, so we scout it and discover a pretty nasty planet, Hazard ~700. I'm deploying the Gate on general principles; we should send a guard force next turn for it, but I'm not sure if we want to try to chase away the tarka or just play defense. Can we afford a war straight away?

So, in summary:

• I've got a dozen gates on their way, three of which are established. We can start reusing tankers and sending out gate pairs from outward spots on the network now, and we ought to put an escort force by each gate, since they'd be such a royal pain to replace if we let Von Neumanns or a hostile scout kill them.
  
  
• Main focus should still probably be building more gates and sending them forth. There will be a bunch of arrivals in your turnset, all of which should be preceded by an ER scout. If you find something nasty with the scout, turn the gate around or head toward another nearby star, and MARK the spot you found so a later player doesn't blunder into it.
  
  
• We've found an iceball, a decent planet, and an independent colony. I think we should just picket the first, colonize the second, and try to research the third into the empire.
  
  
• We've found a Tarka empire and an independent Morrigi, but so far have fired no shots. I think we should probably continue that policy for the time being while we get our transport infrastructure in place and build a couple colonies.
  
  
• Researched Waldos and half of Pulsed Fission, but most of the emphasis has been on getting our transport network going. Research path from here? I'm thinking Incorporate Morrigi (that is, up the path from Trade Creole), and then on to more of the cheap but useful techs like Gene manipulation and suspended animation.
  
  
• You'll have to auto-peace Tototchic every turn, I'm afraid, but establishing a Gate is more than worth it in my opinion.
  

And, the save: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/RBSotS1-SG2%20T015.sav

Zed? How much of that did I get wrong?

Who's next?

[haphazard1]

And we are off!

Looks like a good starting set to me, Mardoc. But I am a complete noob to playing Hivers, so what do I know?

Looking at that initial race location shot, I will guess that we have one of each race in each half of the barbell. So we will need to deal with a Tarka, a Liir, and a Morrigi in our half, then whoever ends up dominant in the other half.

Reduced settings...ouch. This will take some getting used to. Should I assume the other races are at full settings? Are we at normal or hard difficulty? Hopefully ZedF has not drastically over-estimated our abilities.

T14 - Gates deployed gets our per turn usage up to 9! I send a guard force and colonizer to Rozokor. And a picket to Tototchic. Which ends up using up most of our transport capacity! Hopefully this will improve once we get a backlines planet or two that can supply capacity without needing to use it.

Is the gate capacity shown on the bar in terms of ships? Or is it some other value and ships all have a set cost? How do cruisers and dreadnoughts rate in terms of capacity required? (As I said, Hiver noob here.) I understand that eventually we will be able to build cruiser gates (6 capacity per, I think) and that there is a tech to increase destroyer gates to 6 per from the current 3 per. Still does not seem like very much capacity, though.

T15 - The tarka fleet at Ir'idan also doves us, so we scout it and discover a pretty nasty planet, Hazard ~700. I'm deploying the Gate on general principles; we should send a guard force next turn for it, but I'm not sure if we want to try to chase away the tarka or just play defense. Can we afford a war straight away?

I thought that we are already at war by default, since no one has xeno techs to do anything else yet? And no one really has the IO to fight serious actions yet. I am more worried about how close the Tarka may be -- they only move 2 LY/turn at the start, although an ER will have a range of 20 LY. So seeing a scout this early means they are not all that far away from us. Gate fleets sent to this region are going to need ERs ahead of them, and defenders once they are in place. Assuming we can get them in place.

I've got a dozen gates on their way, three of which are established. We can start reusing tankers and sending out gate pairs from outward spots on the network now, and we ought to put an escort force by each gate, since they'd be such a royal pain to replace if we let Von Neumanns or a hostile scout kill them.

We probably can not afford it just yet, but should we plan to have some backup gates in key locations? If the deployed gate gets blown up, a quick deployment and we will be back in business. This assumes whoever wipes out our gate is not capable of killing everything we have there, of course.

Main focus should still probably be building more gates and sending them forth. There will be a bunch of arrivals in your turnset, all of which should be preceded by an ER scout. If you find something nasty with the scout, turn the gate around or head toward another nearby star, and MARK the spot you found so a later player doesn't blunder into it.

Notes are very helpful, yes. Are we following a standardized naming policy with fleets, etc? As I was not in the first SG, any info on this would be helpful.

We've found an iceball, a decent planet, and an independent colony. I think we should just picket the first, colonize the second, and try to research the third into the empire.

I agree on the colonization -- 200 hazard isn't all that horrible, and size 9 will mean lots of income down the road once population grows. I could wish the resources were higher, but it is a decent prospect. One decent prospect out of the first two worlds found is not bad at all.

On the independent Morrigi world...I don't know. Incorporate Morrigi is a long ways off at our current research rate, and that rate is only going to go down for the immediate future. I would assume that our local Morrigi faction will find this world long before then and it will become theirs.

We've found a Tarka empire and an independent Morrigi, but so far have fired no shots. I think we should probably continue that policy for the time being while we get our transport infrastructure in place and build a couple colonies.

I agree we have no real reason to fight right now, unless we have to defend ourselves. Other priorities are much more urgent.

Researched Waldos and half of Pulsed Fission, but most of the emphasis has been on getting our transport network going. Research path from here? I'm thinking Incorporate Morrigi (that is, up the path from Trade Creole), and then on to more of the cheap but useful techs like Gene manipulation and suspended animation.

As noted above, unless getting to Incorporate Morrigi is a whole lot cheaper than I am thinking, I would not favor this. We are going to have some colonization projects soon (hopefully!), and getting those cheap early boosts like Gene Manipulation and Suspended Animation will be valuable.

What do we have in our tree? Any of the early random techs available?

Also, I am curious about the Pulsed Fission choice. I can see it gives a small increment in strategic speed (useful for us) and a bit of extra range. How important are techs like this for the Hivers? The speed, yes, since we are crawlingly slow. But range can be dealt with via additional tankers if necessary.

What about weapons? At some point not too far away we will want something better than gauss canon and red lasers.

You'll have to auto-peace Tototchic every turn, I'm afraid, but establishing a Gate is more than worth it in my opinion.

Absolutely. Gates everywhere we can put one, especially this early when we need every capacity point. Just remember to auto-peace it, so we don't get blown up.

Edit: Forgot to mention, the screenie of the independent Morrigi world shows their climate hazard is bit less than 60 to our right. Very close indeed. Can we see the Tarka CH yet, since we have met their scout? Or do we need to find one of their worlds first?

[Mardoc]

Can't answer all of these, but I'll answer those I know:

Is the gate capacity shown on the bar in terms of ships? Or is it some other value and ships all have a set cost? How do cruisers and dreadnoughts rate in terms of capacity required? (As I said, Hiver noob here.) I understand that eventually we will be able to build cruiser gates (6 capacity per, I think) and that there is a tech to increase destroyer gates to 6 per from the current 3 per. Still does not seem like very much capacity, though.

It's number of destroyers. Cruisers cost 3 and Dreadnoughts 9 (I think). It doesn't feel like a lot now, but I think the big thing that will help is once we get enough of a network up that we have no reason to go to every site every turn. For instance, Tototchik, now that it has a gate and picket, will only really need to host an occasional new gate ship and/or tanker, but will contribute 3/turn to the network. This is the biggest reason I think we should put Gates anywhere and everywhere, even if we have no other desire on a system - Backlines 1200 Hazard planet? Gate the sucker!

I thought that we are already at war by default, since no one has xeno techs to do anything else yet? And no one really has the IO to fight serious actions yet. I am more worried about how close the Tarka may be -- they only move 2 LY/turn at the start, although an ER will have a range of 20 LY. So seeing a scout this early means they are not all that far away from us. Gate fleets sent to this region are going to need ERs ahead of them, and defenders once they are in place. Assuming we can get them in place.

Well, yes, technically we're at war. I think 'not shooting' is a universal language, though, and as long as we don't have something they want, they'll probably not shoot either. Keep in mind we only saw their scout at T11, though, so they could be as far as 22 LY from this site. Although I don't think they are, this is directly toward the Ke' and Kao' stars.

I think every gate will need defenders, though, from random events at the least. And of course the nice thing about being Hivers is that so long as we pick up incoming baddies on sensors, we can always shove in a large garrison the turn before they arrive (well, assuming the ships are built)

We probably can not afford it just yet, but should we plan to have some backup gates in key locations? If the deployed gate gets blown up, a quick deployment and we will be back in business. This assumes whoever wipes out our gate is not capable of killing everything we have there, of course.

I'm not sure on this one. I don't think it'll happen too often that we have a battle won but gate destroyed, and it'll happen less often if we spend those resources on extra fighting ships.

Notes are very helpful, yes. Are we following a standardized naming policy with fleets, etc? As I was not in the first SG, any info on this would be helpful.

Not completely standardized yet, but some pieces. In front, put a P for picket, T for tanker, G for garrison, or name for who it's invading. Put the name of the place it 'belongs' after that - so G Ir'idan is the garrison for Ir'idan. As humans, we also put speed in the name, but I don't know that makes any sense for Hivers.

I agree on the colonization -- 200 hazard isn't all that horrible, and size 9 will mean lots of income down the road once population grows. I could wish the resources were higher, but it is a decent prospect. One decent prospect out of the first two worlds found is not bad at all.

Oh, definitely 100% agreed here. I fully expected to actually lose a gate ship and find nothing much of consequence with the others, but we've actually done pretty well.

I have the colonizer in place, but haven't ordered him to settle (partly cause I haven't found the 'cancel' command), so assuming we agree, next player needs to hit colonize before ending turn.

On the independent Morrigi world...I don't know. Incorporate Morrigi is a long ways off at our current research rate, and that rate is only going to go down for the immediate future. I would assume that our local Morrigi faction will find this world long before then and it will become theirs.

As noted above, unless getting to Incorporate Morrigi is a whole lot cheaper than I am thinking, I would not favor this. We are going to have some colonization projects soon (hopefully!), and getting those cheap early boosts like Gene Manipulation and Suspended Animation will be valuable.

Well, you could be right. Trade Creole's only 4 turns right now, but I do suppose they get more expensive as you climb the tree. Maybe once someone finds the Morrigi-named stars and we know how close/far they are, it'll be an easier decision.

Actually, upon reloading, I think I found at least one Morrigi, partway up the connecting bar (on our side), with the Tarkas in between us and them. Which does put us in between them and the independents, as well. I still couldn't tell you how long it'll take to research to Incorporate, though, compared to them just flying through our empire.

What do we have in our tree? Any of the early random techs available?

Also, I am curious about the Pulsed Fission choice. I can see it gives a small increment in strategic speed (useful for us) and a bit of extra range. How important are techs like this for the Hivers? The speed, yes, since we are crawlingly slow. But range can be dealt with via additional tankers if necessary.

What about weapons? At some point not too far away we will want something better than gauss canon and red lasers.

I'm afraid I'm still a bit of a noob; doesn't pulsed fission give us extra tactical speed, too? Useful for running away with Gate ships until we can establish the gate and bring in a fleet. And strategic range is handy for maybe letting us send out Gates without tankers.

I'm not sure which weapons are random and which are guaranteed, but we have access to the following right now:

• Plasma Cannon
  
• Green Lasers
  
• Particle Beam
  
• Sniper Cannon
  
• VRF Technology
  
• Mass Drivers
  
• Nuclear Mine
  
• DF racks
  
• Shaped Nuclear Warhead
  
• Deflectors
  
• Photonic Torpedo
  

[Mardoc]

Edit: Forgot to mention, the screenie of the independent Morrigi world shows their climate hazard is bit less than 60 to our right. Very close indeed. Can we see the Tarka CH yet, since we have met their scout? Or do we need to find one of their worlds first?

Yes, and we can research their language too if we really want to. Tarka are at -382, toward our left. Ought to help with decreasing conflict, and maybe with bringing some planets from uninhabitable to merely very expensive.

[haphazard1]

It's number of destroyers. Cruisers cost 3 and Dreadnoughts 9 (I think).

OK, quick check of the wiki says 6 for cruisers and 12 for dreadnoughts. That makes cruisers on the expensive side in terms of capacity, given the usual "3x" rule of thumb for the larger ship classes.

It doesn't feel like a lot now, but I think the big thing that will help is once we get enough of a network up that we have no reason to go to every site every turn. For instance, Tototchik, now that it has a gate and picket, will only really need to host an occasional new gate ship and/or tanker, but will contribute 3/turn to the network. This is the biggest reason I think we should put Gates anywhere and everywhere, even if we have no other desire on a system - Backlines 1200 Hazard planet? Gate the sucker!

Absolutely. Gates anywhere we can put them without them being destroyed. And possibly even in those places, if we can defend them.

Well, yes, technically we're at war. I think 'not shooting' is a universal language, though, and as long as we don't have something they want, they'll probably not shoot either. Keep in mind we only saw their scout at T11, though, so they could be as far as 22 LY from this site. Although I don't think they are, this is directly toward the Ke' and Kao' stars.

If they are that close, we will have trouble. Of course, given the overview shot of the galaxy it seems like everyone is going to be close. But 22 LY or less is easily close enough for the Tarka to move a sizable number of destroyers with only one or two tankers, so we may see more than just singleton scouts soon.

I think every gate will need defenders, though, from random events at the least. And of course the nice thing about being Hivers is that so long as we pick up incoming baddies on sensors, we can always shove in a large garrison the turn before they arrive (well, assuming the ships are built)

I agree about defenders, at least a couple to handle VNs since we can not detect them coming until much later. And having a reserve of combat ships will be important. But unlike other races, we really only need one such reserve. At least once we have enough gate capacity.

This approach does imply that we should put fairly high priority on better sensor tech, once we get some of the more urgent basics taken care of.

I'm not sure on this one. I don't think it'll happen too often that we have a battle won but gate destroyed, and it'll happen less often if we spend those resources on extra fighting ships.

You are probably right. Combat/invasion fleets are probably higher priorities for multiple gates.

Not completely standardized yet, but some pieces. In front, put a P for picket, T for tanker, G for garrison, or name for who it's invading. Put the name of the place it 'belongs' after that - so G Ir'idan is the garrison for Ir'idan. As humans, we also put speed in the name, but I don't know that makes any sense for Hivers.

Thanks! Sounds like a reasonable system. Speed for Hivers is not as critical, but once we get Pulsed Fission done we should be careful not to mix ship types so we do not lose the speed boost.

Oh, definitely 100% agreed here. I fully expected to actually lose a gate ship and find nothing much of consequence with the others, but we've actually done pretty well.

It is very likely that this will still happen as we start reaching more systems. Hopefully not too many will be lost, though.

I have the colonizer in place, but haven't ordered him to settle (partly cause I haven't found the 'cancel' command), so assuming we agree, next player needs to hit colonize before ending turn.

I think you can just go into the special actions -> colonize screen, and then unselect the colonizing ships there. I have not actually changed my mind about colonizing a planet yet, so this is not 100% sure.

Well, you could be right. Trade Creole's only 4 turns right now, but I do suppose they get more expensive as you climb the tree. Maybe once someone finds the Morrigi-named stars and we know how close/far they are, it'll be an easier decision.

The first-level xenotechs are pretty cheap, and I believe Trade Creole gives us a bonus later for other xenotechs so grabbing it first will be a good idea. I am just not sure how much the 2nd and 3rd level xenotechs cost, and if it is worthwhile to get any of them yet.

Actually, upon reloading, I think I found at least one Morrigi, partway up the connecting bar (on our side), with the Tarkas in between us and them. Which does put us in between them and the independents, as well. I still couldn't tell you how long it'll take to research to Incorporate, though, compared to them just flying through our empire.

I am hoping ZedF can provide a little guidance on this one. I am thinking the GM -> SA choices look better for now, since we know they will help us get new worlds up and going faster.

I'm afraid I'm still a bit of a noob; doesn't pulsed fission give us extra tactical speed, too? Useful for running away with Gate ships until we can establish the gate and bring in a fleet. And strategic range is handy for maybe letting us send out Gates without tankers.

I think you are correct about the tactical speed boost, which could be useful. The strategic range boost is only from 5 LY to 7 LY, so it is not likely to let us reach too many systems without tankers. But it will extend our range with tankers by quite a bit, as the tanker's range also gets extended.

I'm not sure which weapons are random and which are guaranteed, but we have access to the following right now:

• Plasma Cannon
  
• Green Lasers
  
• Particle Beam
  
• Sniper Cannon
  
• VRF Technology
  
• Mass Drivers
  
• Nuclear Mine
  
• DF racks
  
• Shaped Nuclear Warhead
  
• Deflectors
  
• Photonic Torpedo
  

Some interesting stuff there. Deflectors and Photonic Torpedo are both fairly low odds techs for Hivers, so we will have a few more options than Hivers sometimes get. Not sure how much beyond them we might have, but with multiple techs hopefully we will get at least a couple even with low odds for each one.

No light emitters, so this will be different from SG1 (and my personal game). Let's hope we don't miss the roll for Point Defense, or we are going to have serious trouble with swarms and Morrigi drones. And missiles, of course.

I recall sniper cannon got positive words in some of the pre-SG1 discussions. They were not available in SG1 or in the personal game I have been playing to learn SotS, so I am not familiar with them. But being able to hit opponents from long range sounds pretty nice, and VRF will boost them a bit if we choose to travel up the ballistics tree.

Tech charts look like Hivers are much more likely to get ballistics and missiles/mines than energy weapons. But less chance does not mean no chance, and some techs are core/guaranteed. We will need to discuss where we want to put our military research efforts.

Yes, and we can research their language too if we really want to. Tarka are at -382, toward our left. Ought to help with decreasing conflict, and maybe with bringing some planets from uninhabitable to merely very expensive.

Almost 400 to our left...interesting. My personal game has 4 races within a total spread of only 140, so everyone wanted the same worlds. We are very close to the Morrigi, but maybe we could co-exist more easily with the Tarka? Where is Rozokor, our size 9 colony prospect? It shows as 200 to our left, so it would be pretty attractive to the Tarka as well.

[Mardoc]

Almost 400 to our left...interesting. My personal game has 4 races within a total spread of only 140, so everyone wanted the same worlds. We are very close to the Morrigi, but maybe we could co-exist more easily with the Tarka? Where is Rozokor, our size 9 colony prospect? It shows as 200 to our left, so it would be pretty attractive to the Tarka as well.

Just in case the labels are not clear - Rozokor is the highlighted one, with the dotted orange circles. We met the Tarka at the Blue circle. And the independent Morrigi are at the light tan, just behind our homeworld. It's hard for any of these pictures to show the whole story, though, since it's a 3D globe.

I think first, that gates ought to mean once we have something, we keep it, but second, even if that's not true, keeping Rozokor shouldn't be too challenging - it's further away from Tarka, we can settle it now and build it up, and terraform it away from them too.