Warming (and/or Burning) Up Again

[WingsofMemory]

lol nice, good to see that we are advisors to the emperor himself! Seems like Haphazard is a sensible one trying to give advice of long-term use, and I'm a gung-ho military advisor trying to convince you to press the big red button or something lol.

On the topic of spying, have you been making sure to check your spying reports? It's by pressing the "C" key on the keyboard while in the normal galactic map if I recall correctly. I wonder how many spies we are losing each turn?

I mean, a mobile fleet for defense allows you to concentrate power effectively, and it also allows you switch everything you've got onto the enemy a the drop of a hat, it's just that a single missile base can make a big difference the earlier in the game you are. That, or if everyones weapons tech trees end up wonky with mostly ground tech. Thing is if you can build enough ships fast enough that you can take the fight to the enemy, then by all means missile bases will just slow you down.

The Sakkra will be a tough nut to crack since there forces are concentrated right? The Klackons are probably too beefy overall, but the Silicoids are stretched thin I imagine. I'm just hoping that we are able to start invading some planets soon. Keep the frontline away from our useful developed worlds.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the update, RefSteel. It is always interesting to get insight into how others play the game and view tech choices. As I have mentioned, I tend to be a builder at heart so I usually favor things like terraforming and more factories (IRC and IIT techs). But sometimes you can't take the slower, safer approach.

[WingsofMemory]

Thanks for the update, RefSteel. It is always interesting to get insight into how others play the game and view tech choices. As I have mentioned, I tend to be a builder at heart so I usually favor things like terraforming and more factories (IRC and IIT techs). But sometimes you can't take the slower, safer approach.

I prefer playing it safe, chilling out, and building up as well. But I don't usually play on impossible. The only way I've won on impossible is through aggression against rising empires. Gotta topple them before the become untopple-able if you know what I mean. At least that's been my experience. Also when an AI declares war on you, it's a good idea to take at least one planet from them at any cost. A bloody nose will make them start to accept that peace is in their interest.

My actual favourite playstyle in turn-based strategies is to make a BFF. Pick another "player" (meaning AI player) and butter them up to the point of being your best-friend, even if you've gotta cripple yourself to do so. Generally the best candidate is someone who doesn't make friends easily so you won't have competition for their allegiance (in MoO terms, "xenophobic" leader personality.) Having a trade, military, tech, and whatever else the game will allow, partner will severely increase your punching power and put you in a more flexible strategic state. It's a shame that the OG Master of Magic has bugged diplomacy so it's incredibly hard to make a friend-fo-life. Granted, my copy of MoM also crashed whenever the death summon"wraiths" attack animation played lol. Master of Orion's diplomacy always seemed to work great for me though.

[RefSteel]

Okay, here's one more strategic interlude before - hopefully - getting some more actual turns in:

Looking back now, I have to admit that the rest of the strategic discussion was ... a little embarassing for me. When I claimed before the council that in a best-case scenario weapons technology would make a first-to-last dive in priorities, a young, observant bird of prey, cocking her head to one side as if with interest and curiosity, suggested, "I have a slight suspicion you might be exaggerating. Last is a very long way back, and I don't think weapons will ever fall below fifth when it comes to technology."

I cleared my throat at that and shuffled a bit on my perch before admitting, "Well, yes, I meant last among the kinds of research that - if I have my way - we'll ever bother to research for ourselves even a little bit."

With a skeptical glare, an older bird rasped, "I hope you're not mated for life with that policy. You said yourself that personal deflectors could save tens of millions of lives if we bring off an invasion. If we delay research in our weakest field or skip it entirely for strategic reasons, okay - but don't let me catch you ignoring it just for personal vanity."

While I was trying to stammer out my assurances that I enjoy dramatic exaggeration and that shield technology can really be very important even for Alkari, depending on what kind, what time, and the strategic use for which it's intended, others added their voices to the discussion, and the empire's chief economic advisor, aware as ever of the power of a strong production basis to react nimbly to any hazard, spoke again, allowing, "Weapons and shields may be needed in wartime, yes - but I appreciate the reason for rating them so low once we can use neutron pellet technology: Without more population and factories, no world can meet its potential - which also means if it does come under attack, it can't respond as quickly as it could if built up to capacity."

I had to agree; if not for the wealth of valuable toxic and inferno planets surrounding us - and, for that matter, seeming almost to fill the entire galaxy - I would be desperately eager to finally set our planetologists to work on some kind of terraforming ... should such a thing turn out to be possible in the first place. And of course once our scanning range is increased, I have every intention, if possible, of pursuing advanced robotic factory control technology; actually funding it will just has to wait until we handle immediate exigencies. Before I managed to express this though - at least, before I managed to express it intelligibly - the same advisor who had earlier raised the question of missile bases patiently returned to the subject, explaining their value as combined-arms support for an active starfleet in some detail. I was all ready to recover from my earlier embarrassment by putting on a humorous face and jokingly dismissing these landbound monstrosities again, but somehow the mood of the council didn't seem to be with me, and I found myself speechless again. Fortunately, Defense Minister Trillia Flamewing came to my ... er ... defense, with a somewhat more complete explanation. "Defensive bases are indeed of great value when their time comes," she agreed, "and combined arms allows excellent tactical possibilities, since few enemy fleets can handle - for instance - a well-designed starforce and well-shielded planetary defenses simultaneously. To be effective however, missile bases need some combination of offense, defense, and miniaturization to be cost effective even in combination with a fleet - and unfortunately, any bases we built would presently have none of the three. At this early date - remember, it's been only sixty years since our people first took to interstellar space, and our empire has never had a strong research base - especially thanks to our ... idiosyncratic ... shunning of forcefield research, our bases are still vulnerable to basic laser fire. The missiles our bases are firing are as old as their armor and shielding, and their battle computers aren't much better, with the result that - especially once we have a winning fleet, which we Alkari can assemble very quickly thanks to the prowess of our pilots, who sadly can't help our planet-bound bases avoid enemy fire - additional fighters will not only be mobile, but will actually hit harder and thereby reduce attrition more than would missile bases with an equivalent cost to the fleet. This will only be emphasized of course when our ships can eschew lasers for more-advanced weaponry. As we develop weapons, construction, and computer technology - and hopefully pick up some kind of forcefield designs, perhaps after an invasion by reverse-engineering enemy factories - bases will get cheaper and cheaper to build, hit harder with new missile and battle computer technology, and suffer less from attack with new armor and shielding, and thereby become increasingly worthwhile. But right now, with no upgrade except a stolen battle computer in more than half a century, they aren't yet worth the price of construction."

I nodded importantly and emphasized my own main points with darting motions of my beak. "Plus I don't like them! They live on the ground! They don't even fly!"

Either overcome by my unassailable logic or politely refraining from calling me an absolute loon, the same memorable advisor lifted his wings slightly and passed over the question for the moment, saying instead, "In any case, war ships can at least be repurposed for offensive missions quickly if needed; I hate to sound like a bloodthirsty warmonger in a room full of advocates of the peace." he looked around, nodding to our chief economic advisor and apparently ignoring the doubtful looks being exchanged by the rest of the councils, to say nothing of the chamber walls plastered with starforce recruitment posters, a banner reading, "Stop the Rocky Menace! Bring the War to Them!" and assorted advertisements for children's toys like heroic Alkari pilot action figure and starfighter play sets with green pointer lasers, and like Silicoid action figures with four different rock-grating diabolical laugh sound effects and laser-activated lava-exploding action. In all innocence, he went on, "I too prefer building up our empire over unnecessary war ... but in circumstances like these, I can't see any way to win without taking the fight to the enemy, and no way to make them seriously consider peace without bloodyi... okay, without magma-ing their ... uh ... chemical snesitivity crystal arrays or whatever they have instead of beaks. We could try going after the Sakkra, but their forces will probably all be at their nearest world to us already..."

"...which is their homeworld," Defense Minister Flamewing interposed. "Also, we're not technically at war with the crazy lizard king yet, and we aren't setting out to make new enemies."

"Besides," added volunteer director Whist of our Nuclear Propulsion Laboratory, "even that nearest Sakkra world is still out of range of our mainline combat fleets until we develop better fuel." Then, completely gratuitously and unnecessarily, the director added, "That won't be anytime soon: When you provide No Funding to your researchers' greatest area of expertise, the place you find yourself along the way is sure to be No Fun."

With a small nod of ackonwledgment, our most memorable advisor went on, "As for the Klackons, they seem too strong technologically for a frontal assault on them to make any sense right now."

Testing her talons against the council room floor, Defense Minister Flamewing added, "Plus the only star we can reach that belongs to them so far is actually their home system too - and way out on the far side of the galactic core nebula."

The memorable, wide-winged advisor nodded again and returned to the central point: "The rocks on the other hand, with their far-flung empire, slow engines, and slower population growth, are the obvious remaining target: The very people who started the war against us in the firt place! I strongly approve of our work to make a strong friend in the galaxy, even if I would question choosing the Psilons and their long-term potential to overshadow us completely, but I fear right now it's necessary to do battle with our greatest enemy while we choose a steady friend."

I really hadn't planned for the meeting to go down the way it did, and could only say, "Yes, well, now that we can invade one of their worlds at least - and the nearest, and an absolute gem - we're going to try with the limited production base we have. Just ... you know ... we're not there yet. That's what I've been on about all this time, with the whole not-having-enough-population-to-invade-them thing. And needing weapons to build a supporting fleet. We're close now - getting closer anyway - but there's a lot of work ahead."

Oh, and I always forget about the C button to see whose spies have been caught each turn. To track my own, I've been using a much more primitive method:
1) Spend enough to get a spy on whichever of the Silis and Bugs is showing 0 spies on the Races screen (plus a little extra to make sure).
2) If we have a spy with either of them, it didn't get caught last turn. Turn off espionage funding on that one for now, and let our existing spy try to do something alone.
3) If we have no spy with one of them, check the report on their tech (do this anyway, obviously). If it's Current, our spy got caught. Otherwise, it turned out we didn't spend quite enough after all. (The latter hasn't happened yet since I started spy spending this game.) Either way, return to step 1.

Average loss this way so far has been a little less than one total spy per turn, I think, but the sample size is small - more than paid for by the one tech steal even if we get nothing else but tech reports for a couple dozen turns to come. (To track enemy spy losses, I use an even-more-primitive method: Not worrying about it too much! This is one of the few cases where I do this one successfully!)

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the entertaining interlude, RefSteel. Spy spending is one thing that I really like the way it was done in RotP. Being able to set up a spy ring and the max number of spies you want, so that if one is caught you automatically spend to replace it without needing to tweak the sliders every time, is very helpful and reduces the micro-management required.

[WingsofMemory]

lol that was a nice read. Minister Flamewing brings up good points regarding the need for planetary shielding before building missile bases, I concede. I should have been playing more attention to the timescale you were providing during updates, your progress was so well that seemed much longer than 60 years, so kudos!

Haphazard looks like you might be the Chief Economic Advisor. I had to look back at previous posts to see your point about the neutron pellet guns, and you are absolutely right. I usually read the updates in this when I wake up and get ready for work, and I usually only get 2-4 hours of sleep on work days so sometimes it's hard to keep track of what everyone is saying lol. I'm curious if I am being to gung-ho in my assumptions, how often do you play on impossible difficulty Haphazard? You probably are much more familiar with it than I. Not to mention that it's been years and years since I've last played Master of Orion. Heck, it's been 2 years or so since playing computer/video games in general for me.

The spy-ring mechanic in Remnants of the Precursors sounds interesting. Small change, but big impact I imagine. Not sure if it'd be better or worse? I mean, both simulate real-life abstractly very well. The new RotP way simulates funding the training and support of a imperial intelligence agency, and then deploying them in other empires. The original MoO1 way simulates the funding of spent towards the intelligence agents that are already deployed, and the time it takes for them to set themselves up. In MoO2 it's kinda like the RotP way, except it's more game-ified. The one thing I like about spying being changed in MoO2 is that in order to be eligible to be blamed of espionage you need to have made a spy at one point. If you have never-ever made a spy it makes your diplomatic position incredibly strong (although everyone will steal tech and sabotage you like crazy since you will lack for defensive spies lol.)

Well, thanks for posts and the conversation gentlemen!

[haphazard1]

I tend to play more Remnants than original MOO these days, as I like the interface and the automation tools to help manage planets (and spies). It takes a lot of the micro-management tedium out of the game, although there is still a fair bit of course.

My record on Impossible in MOO is rather mixed. I tend to do fairly well with the stronger races, rather poorly with the weak races, and roughly a coin flip for the middling races. I am certainly not as good a player as some of the better people here at Realms Beyond. A lot of them don't post much any more; can't recall the last time I saw something MOO-related from Thrawn or Sirian. But I learned a lot from their postings in the past.

Remnants changed some things with spying, such as needing a spy ring in place with an AI race to get demographic info on them or to trade techs with them. But the basic mechanics of placing spies are still the same. You just have some tools to help avoid the need to keep adjusting the sliders every turn. Once you set your desired number of spies for a race, the game will automatically spend to replace spies that get caught while cutting spending if you have the desired amount.

[RefSteel]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of many of the quality of life improvements in the Remnants inerface.  I'd definitely like to play some more of that at some point, in spite of the little things that keep bringing me back to MoO!

I'm really glad the interludes were fun to read - and now I can finally get back to actual gameplay.  I'll be covering just a couple turns again:  The galaxy is changing incredibly quickly for such an early date.  To give you some idea of how early it is for our First Galactic War to be in full swing, for instance:  In spite of having Silicoids in the galaxy, we still haven't had our first High Council vote!


- 2361 -

I anticipated another battle this year at Blazing Sky right up until the moment the report came in that the Klackon fleet had arrived.  Then I realized our far-superior pilots aboard our far-superior ships, outnumbered the enemy almost four to one without even counting our flagship, and was completely unsurprised to see the nine Horseman fighters retreat.  Next year will be a different story, obviously ... but apparently, so will this one, at an unexpected star!



(This fleet is a very good argument for researching class-2 deflectors and building a missile base!)

A gigantic insect fleet, with something like three times the strength of all the rest of the starfleets we've seen from them combined, dropped out of hyperspace without warning in the Vega system, led by one of their lightly-armed colony cruisers on an approach vector to the oceanic moon of Vega 2-iii, at the far edge of Silicoid space.  Our lone scout pilot in the system bravely flew to intercept them, knowing there was no hope of defeating their fleet, just to gather what information could be had on their Lancer destroyers, the one class of ship in the system that we have yet to scan.  Their hundreds of laser fighters closed in along with their laser colony ship, but our pilot - more brave than wise, perhaps - tried to approach the Lancers specifically instead of following basic missile defense protocols, and consequently never learned just how deep the Lancer missile racks are, nor whether they were armed with anything else ... and didn't survive.  The first volley of missiles tore through our little scout's hull with the second close behind, and in spite of the fact that maneuvering by the book instead of trying to improvise on the spot might have saved pilot and ship alike and would surely have yielded more information at least, we can't be sure, and must honor the sacrifice our pilot made for the good of the Alkari.  We know very well that had the situation been reversed, any Klackon scout would have bugged out of there!

Of course, in the bigger picture, the situation isn't likely to be reversed unless they send a bunch more tiny reinforcement fleets like the one that fled Blazing Sky this year.  As menacing as those clouds of Klackon starships look, they still have a whole lot more.



(This actually doesn't look bad to me at all; graphs like these are normal for this time period on Impossible difficulty.  The part that doesn't show up on the graphs, where we're in a hot war with the two most-powerful factions in the galaxy, is the scary part, but at least we have allies to hopefully distract them if nothing else....)

I wasn't expecting our tiny combat fleet to really impress anybody - especially since everyone else tends to underestimate our pilots - but neither was I expecting the ratio between our estimated fleet strength and the Klackons' to look quite this insignificantly tiny.  If most of that is tied up in Lancer missile boats, we should be okay, but it looks like so far we've been fighting whatever scraps they happened to have lying around, and haven't even seen their main fleet.  The good news shows up on our population and planets graphs, with our agents estimating that we and those self-same Klackons lead the galaxy by a narrow margin, and we need no estimate to see our six stars outnumber those of everyone but the Silicoids - who would already be overrunning the entire galaxy if they would keep expanding consistently.  They should have claimed Vega years ago, and though they can easily leapfrog to Zhardan, with its unimaginable riches inaccessible to anyone else due to severe radiation, and thence to the rest of the hostile worlds we've found, they haven't so far, perhaps due to their slow engines, far-flung empire, poor colony ship distribution and planning, and of course the distraction of a three-front war ... which they also thus far have apparently been too confused to actually prosecute:  Another disadvantage of following the whims of a crazy dictator who has no idea what it's doing.  I still expect them to grow enormously in power, but the window of opportunity we're trying - too slowly! - to reach hasn't actually closed on us ... yet!  The fact that their production is outpacing even the Klackons right now is a very bad sign for the future though, especially if the insane ruler in question decides more or less at random to throw all of it our way in the form of an attack fleet.  We're going to have to do something about it - and hope we're not too late!

(Notice as well that the militaristic Psilons, with their brilliant research teams assited by regular trade with us, though third or fourth in every other category, are second to the Klackons in fleet strength and actually ahead in technology!  We're trying to catch up in all the little ways we can at least, now with better than one chance in four that we can get better scanners installed by the end of the year!)


- 2362 -

The much-anticipated Klackon fleet arrives - at least, it was much-anticipated up until last year when we saw what a real Klackon fleet looked like.  Since they outnumber our ships here by more than two to one though, we're going to need our pilots to prove themselves the best in the galaxy!

First, we lean into our basic combat tactics, trying to separate the enemy and defeat their battle wings in detail.  Our largest fighter stack stands off, positioning itself so that only one of their smaller attack groups can get into firing range, and battering them as they come in with reaction fire, supported by the other ships in our fleet whenever they can do so without taking fire from the main enemy wing.  It mostly works until disaster strikes:  Flying in too impatiently, we give their main flight group an opportunity to take a shot at us as well - a mistake that should cost us one or two ships on average, and one that was probably unavoidable eventually - and as our fighters prepare to receive the attack, a group of our pilots, unworthy of the Alkari name, panic like chicks in front of a stooping hawk and freeze in place.  Our flag officer trills orders and quickly sorts out the mess, but not before the damage is done:  At this first and most-critical opportunity, the bug gunners have somehow blasted eight of our fighters into atoms!  Bad luck - or bad pilots - that extreme might actually be enough to turn the battle against us, though we went in expecting to win handily ... but the flag officer orders the survivors to keep up the fight, sticking to our battle plan, and finally wiping out the last of the secondary attack groups, having already lost more ships than we expected to throughout the entire fight!  After that, the battle plan changes completely, as everything swoops in against the main enemy wing simultaneously, hitting it with everything we've got to cut down on its firepower.  It responds, first focusing in on our smaller fighter wing and eventually destroying them completely - thankfully it takes a long time, and its numbers are dwindling:  Apparently our most panic-prone pilots have been blown to bits already.  Then it turns its fire on the Hawk itself, and a freak accident caused by some maintenance bird mistaking a maneuvering thruster fuel line for a fire suppresant hose results in a massive series of explosions, with nearer to three times than to merely twice their volley's expected damage to our flagship!  Thankfully, the ship survives, but has to limp away, circling around the remainder of the enemy fleet...



(The lone Scout was a mistake; I hoped to find some use for it, but actually it contributed nothing to the battle except to occasionally get in my other ships' way.  Note I never used the "Wait" button during this battle (nor this game) - if I had, and used it wisely, I could have saved a lot more ships ... even with luck as bad as this.)

To my great relief, we do succeed, burning down all but the very last of the enemy combat ships.  As that one finally retreats, we can finally take time out to tally our losses:  Twenty-five fighters ... against eighty-eight of the enemy's!  I would applaud this more if I were not so well aware that - if not for the incompetence of a group of our pilots at the most-critical juncture in the fight - we should have lost only half as many fighters as this ... and that is the kind of ratio we'll have to maintain if we're going to take on the real Klackon fleets!  We've won the first real battles in this war, and done so decisively, but it's far from over, and winning a battle or three isn't going to be nearly enough.  If we had a missile base with proper shielding ... but we don't, and if we'd tried to get it when the war started, the shields wouldn't be ready yet, and the total cost would have been enough to build twice as many laser fighters as we did.

Which doesn't mean I'm not scrambling for ways to come up with a less-attrition-heavy defense.  If the Klackons really come after us, they have a lot of ships available.  I'm just going to have to hope our friends - and our researchers, our planning, and maybe even Kholdan's Ixitixl herself - can help!

[WingsofMemory]

Hmm, let's hope we hit a little harder when stronger klackon ships show up.

I've never played Remnants of the Precursors myself. But I remember watching it's development back when it started and was called "MoO for Java" but then they got dmca'd or something so they had to change name.

[haphazard1]

Some tough breaks in the battle, but the bugs are driven back for now. Thanks for including the status graphs for a look at the state of the galaxy. It is a bit odd that there has not been a council meeting yet; what are the rocks doing? Or not doing, as the case may be.

Thanks for the update.