OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[haphazard1]

Looks like good turns, Ianus.

Hopefully someone will have Controlled Radiated in their tree, or else the rocks get free run of the radiated planets. We can glass them if we have to, but it would be a shame to never be able to grab those ultra-rich worlds.

We appear to be safe enough for now, diplomatically. We need more tech to be able to go on offense, especially something for space superiority. Hopefully we will get some useful options at the next tier.

[DaveV]

2403 - Automated Repair, Planetary V both complete. Zortrium and Deflector V next. I put a good chunk of production into shields everywhere; I hate not being able to rush missile bases.

2404 - The Mrrshans issue a threat:



2405 - Newsdroid:



2407 - Our laser fighters chase another Silicoid colony ship away from Crypto. The Alkaris have a fleet that appears to be headed to Darrian:



2408 - The Alkari ships can't scratch our shields, so they run away after the scout is able to retreat successfully.



Also, computer tech hits:



2410 - Almost all planets are shielded, except for Artemis, which will complete next turn.



Racial status screen shows we still have some work to do:



Tech focus is on growth:

[Ianus]

I spent several minutes weighing Ion Rifle vs Blasters. I agree that we need a gun before we can go to war, but we aren't ready for war yet anyway and the farther we get up the tree the more powerful our guns will be. The only way that this decision will bite us will be if Fusion Beams are missing from the tree. We can also climb up to Megabolt Cannon but the drawback to that is the lack of range. Makes my favorite Repulsors designs less effective. All the same we need to keep researching for the time being, and pointy stick diplomacy will be important going forward.

[haphazard1]

We are in a pretty good position, really. Our production is close to the rocks and not really that far behind the machines, considering we are on default factory controls and their racial bonus. Once we pop IRC IV and double all our worlds' factory counts, we should be in a very strong position. With planetary five shields everywhere, we should be in decent shape to hold off any trouble long enough to get that new production on line.

What has caused the kitties to threaten us? If they are worried about empire size the Meklar ought to be their worry, not us. Or is it population size?

[DaveV]

With planetary five shields everywhere, we should be in decent shape to hold off any trouble long enough to get that new production on line.

Improved scanners are also very helpful. As long as we remember to press F8 every turn, we can see threats ahead of time.

What has caused the kitties to threaten us? If they are worried about empire size the Meklar ought to be their worry, not us. Or is it population size?

I think it's just "we don't like you because you're beating us." We're a couple planets short of the threshold where the AIs start getting mad about our overexpansion.

[Sullla]

Turn 0 (2410): The rest of the galaxy is a mess of overlapping wars while we remain on good terms with everyone else. I'll use this turnset to terraform our planets after Soil Enrichment comes in, and after we finish researching Improved Robotics IV and build the associated factories, that will likely be the time to go on the offensive. There's absolutely no need for hurry, as the AI races are wasting production on fleets while we zoom ahead on tech.

Some thoughts as I run through the planets... Artemis is only at 70/75 pop, so I use the Eco slider to grow the missing 5 population. Same deal for Rha (111/120) and Uxmai (127/130) and especially Cygni (83/95). Not a fan of having two dozen factories sit around idly when we could easily grow the missing population in a turn. The base counts we have on our planets are also a lot lower than I'm comfortable with; I'll be building some more missile bases on my turn, especially on our western border. Sitting around with 2 or 3 bases right next to AI empires is asking for trouble.



I'm not a fan of how DaveV had the tech spending allocated. I equalize the tech fields, and then put a couple of ticks from each field into Computers. This allows us to emphasize Robotic Controls IV while still making progress in the other areas. There's some excellent stuff in the other fields - Zortrium Armor, Class V Shields, finishing off Soil Enrichment - and even the less desirable stuff in Propulsion and Weapons still needs to be cleared to move on to the next tech in the field. We're now getting the full bonus research in 5 out of 6 fields, everything except Planetology, as opposed to 1 out of 6 fields.



Turn 1 (2411): Soil Enrichment comes in at 24%, very nice. I'll be spending a good part of my turnset doing the terraforming and building the associated factories. Atmospheric Terraforming will let us advance the tree forward another rung, and so it's an easy choice for me to select. Maybe we'll go back for Controlled Toxic at some point, but not right now. Better yet would obviously be getting access to Controlled Radiated via theft or invasion.

There's an Alkari fleet incoming to Artemis in 6 turns (yay Improved Scanners!) but the birds are totally pathetic and this is not a threat.

Turn 2 (2412) Lots of terraforming completes. Working on factories all over the place now. For the curious, when I have planets to remax after terraforming, I will build the factories first while letting natural population growth trickle in a few more population, then use the Eco slider to remax population once factories are done. This is the most efficient way to do the process if you don't mind taking the time to micro each world individually. Research has temporarily slowed to a trickle as our best worlds work at pumping out those factories.

Turn 3 (2413): I've been workin' on the factories... We're also building up a nice Reserve thanks to our Ultra Rich planet.

Turn 4 (2413): Six planets max out on factories, now for the Eco slider to max population.



Turn 5 (2415): All our planets have now finished remaxing at the new population and factory totals. We have a new issue on our hands, however, as we have to deal with the Comet event at Uxmai, our Terran 155 planet in the southeast corner. That requires fleet building to hold off, so I throw together a design with the best weapon we currently have on hand, which is, um, the Fusion Bomb. It was that or lasers/nukers, so Fusion Bomb it is. I don't think the Comet event cares what type of weapon you have, only how much fleet strength you can manage to put over the world in question. At the same time, we might as well build a ship that we can actually use someday, so I make a bomber design that could work OK in real combat someday: BC III, warp 3 engines, Medium hull with 3 fusion bombs. We did not have enough miniaturization to fit the bombs on a Small hull, sadly.

Turn 6 (2416): The Bulrathi and Mrrshans both warn us between turns about growing too large. That will continue to happen as we get stronger, although we're still in calm waters diplomatically for now.



Turn 7 (2417): We fight off a pathetic Alkari incursion at Artemis. The birds are just sad in this galaxy.

Turn 8 (2418): Still building those bombers to save Uxmai...



Turn 9 (2419): There we go. Now I can stop building these not-terribly-useful ships and go back to researching towards Improved Robotics IV. This is what Master of Orion can be like though, throwing you curveballs with those events. If I didn't do anything, the Comet would have destroyed our 155 population planet, and we definitely didn't want that to happen. At least we didn't draw the Assassination event; that one has single-handedly caused me to lose multiple games with poorly timed wars.



Oh, and then this happened. Silly Erratic Meklars. At least now I can cut our spies loose against them and see if we get anything nice. Everyone hates the borgs so we are in no danger of a dogpile here. They are some very nice Construction and Propulsion tech that would be nice to steal on a deep spying hit. I devote 3 ticks (1.2 percent) to espionage against them, set to active steals.

I'm rerouting our bombers from Uxmai to Paladia, where they are more likely to be useful in upcoming conflicts. I'm also going to start stacking up some missile bases at Cygni, the northern most planet and the only one potentially in reach of the Meklars.

Turn 10 (2420): And a quiet last turn finishes out my set.



* We have another Silicoid colony ship en route to the Radiated Ultra Rich planet in the middle of our territory. There should be enough laser fighters there to chase it off or kill it.

* Paladia and Artemis have decent missile base counts now. I would still like more at Collossa, Darrian, Sol, and Endoria. Cygni in particular will need more defenses since it's the only planet the Meklars can reach, assuming they can reach anything.

* We now have a bunch of Medium bombers with Fusion Bombs on them. Not the most useful ships but perhaps we'll be able to use them to hit someone down the road. As I said, I'm rallying them to Paladia for future use.

* Improved Robotics IV is about to hit the percentages, along with our Propulsion and Weapons tech. We should be able to double our factory capacity over the next dozen turns, and that's what I'd look to get into the fleet building game.

* Anyone other than the Meklars should be pretty easy prey for us once we get those factories done. Good luck!

Savegame file

[haphazard1]

Looks good, Sullla. Bigger worlds, more factories, then more tech. Bombers are an intersting approach to the comet event -- I had not realized it is just fleet strength rating that is being looked at, rather than ship-to-ship fire power. The bombers certainly have a much longer expected useful life span than any fighter we could have built right now.

Ah, the erratic Meklar short-circuited and declared war on us. What a (non) surprise.

OK, I have the save. I should be able to play tomorrow mid-day, after I get home from the dentist. So there is time for comments and advice, which is always welcome. Main goals look like finishing IRC IV and then building lots more factories everywhere, while defending what we have against any incursions. Spying against the Meklar is a go as long as they are at war with us, maybe we can pick up something useful. Some more IIT or waste techs would not hurt, with all the additional factories we will be adding.

[DaveV]

I'm in these games for discussion of the best strategies and tactics. I don't claim to have the one right answer. For discussion:

As I understand it, the most efficient way to research is to pour a lot of BCs into a field at the start, then dial back to the point where the LED is just barely lit. That was my plan for IRC4, which we really wanted ASAP. I guess I should have been more explicit about my plans: pour 95% into Computers for a couple turns, and only then spread the wealth (as Sullla did immediately). Since IRC4 would mean doubling our production, I thought giving that field a big boost was worth throwing away a little compound interest in the other fields.

Unless a tech is critical (upgrading missiles for an incoming fleet, opening up a class of planets in the early game), I dial back to one click after reaching 20%. Extra BCs beyond those required to finish the tech are completely wasted. Of course, dialing back runs the risk of a long wait for RNG vagaries.

I always used to buy population to max out planets, as Sullla has done following both of my sets, but I've noticed that several good players don't do that. In this case, with most of our planets about to become Fertile, it seemed less efficient than usual. I'd love to see an analysis of the return on purchased population for Hostile/Normal/Fertile/Gaia planets.

[haphazard1]

I'd love to see an analysis of the return on purchased population for Hostile/Normal/Fertile/Gaia planets.

This would be very interesting to me, as well. My current (possibly incomplete/wrong understanding) is that buying pop growth with the eco slider is more efficient on hostile worlds, since the normal growth rate on such planets is reduced. You also get more value for your BCs when buying those last couple pop for a nearly maxed out planet, since those are very slow to grow. But this is complicated by the possibility of growing those pop on some other world that has a more favorable growth situation and then transporting them to the target planet. Such transporting has its own costs to consider (lost worker production while in transit, possible mis-calculations causing loss of pop if the target planet is over max), and is of course more micro intensive. Further complications arise from whether the population to be grown has factories available to work right away. So all together there does not seem to be one easy answer that fits all situations.

Off to the dentist, will play after I get back. Look out, galaxy -- I may be in a mean mood afterwards!

[Mardoc]

Well, I guess it's simply a question of how much production we get from the population in the time between it being maxxed by ECO spending vs. when it would normally be maxxed naturally, compared to the cost of the population itself.

20 BC/pop point with our current tech, each pop point on a maxed-out world is worth ~2 BC/turn: (0.5+0.03*planetology tech~=10)+(2 factories - 0.67 waste)

I found a formula on population growth rate that I can't quite get to work in Excel: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=1905  I'm probably not using the Floor formulae properly, but don't really have time today to figure out where I'm going wrong.  Zeraan has a post in that thread that says at 99/100 we get 0.1 pop/turn, at 98 we get 0.2/turn; I'm gambling that he's right.  Which means growing from 99 to 100 would take 10 turns, and hence eco exactly breaks even.

Growing from 98 to 100 would take 15 turns; for the first 5 turns we're down 4 BC/turn, then 2 BC/turn for the next 10, which adds up to 40 lost BC vs 40 spent, exactly breaking even again. Although admittedly it's trading production *now* for an equal-ish amount later, which is probably not ideal.

Sargon's formula looks more complicated than this, so maybe there's an important factor I'm missing.

As soon as we improve our production tech or get cloning or get more planetology, then force-growing pop will be the right answer, while now it's a question of personal taste (spend 20 BC to get 20 BC).

Cost of factories is *not* counted in the analysis; I'm basically assuming someone overbuilt factories or we lost population or shipped it offworld. The analysis gets more complicated when you have to pay for the factories simultaneously with the population; I might take a crack at that later but my gut says it won't be worthwhile building factories and population in parallel until the combined cost is less than about 20 BC/(pop+2 factories)