RBSotS1 SG2

[Zed-F]

Ho-kay, a whole load of questions!

but more than likely we have to fight our way up the whole thing at sublight speed.

Well, true up until the AM era at least, but someone wanted some AM era fighting anyway.

(yeah, our range was 5.0 - thanks Zed!)

Sure, blame me for the vagaries of the random map generator... *grumble*

Is that a reasonable design, Zed, or should we go for Gauss or missiles on our early pickets?

Depends on what we expect to be fighting. Overall for fighting most enemy scouts gauss is probably better than red lasers, but for fighting most randoms red lasers are better. And missiles will usually perform better in auto-resolve than in manual; for instance, a dozen or so red laser/missile destroyers can kill a swarm nest no problem even with no military techs researched, using autoresolve.

That said, really neither red lasers nor gauss cannons are great against VNs. We should have at least green lasers. Fortunately green lasers are cheap, we don't have to worry about VNs before turn 25, and they won't show up all that often when they do; they are more nuisance than anything else. Unfortunately, we probably won't have a better weapon researched before turn 25.

Since we are getting pulsed fission, it may be worth noting that pulsed fission + armour + hammerhead destroyers can probably successfully lure VN probes into chasing them until the timer runs out. VN probes are not super-fast and they like to eat ships before mining stuff from planets. Of course, deployed gates don't move...

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 .

Remember that auto-peace will fail after a couple turns if the enemy scout is low on fuel, and this will break first contact protocols. If we can deploy our gate and get a couple armours there to protect it, we should be good to auto-peace then though.

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.

As has been noted, researching up to Incorporate would be pretty expensive at this stage. The first language tech (needed for cease fire) is about half the cost of Waldos, but the second is quadruple the cost of Waldos, and following that, Incorporate Morrigi costs 6 times as much as Waldos, IIRC.

We will probably be able to afford a fleet to ambush that Morrigi indy via our gate as long as we keep auto-peaceing it, before we can afford that research. 60M imperials isn't all that many, so we wouldn't have to deal with very many planet missiles. It's worth noting that there will be heavy missiles and MWM missiles mixed in, though, and that all those missiles will have fusion warheads.

If we could get multiple Morrigi independent colonies out of researching Morrigi xenotech, then it might be worth going for that sooner rather than later, but one indy alone doesn't justify the cost -- especially not a small one.

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?

Size is more an indicator of long-term profitability than short term desirability to colonize -- hazard rating is the main factor and this one is within a reasonable distance of our ideal hazard rating. I would say go for it.

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.

I don't think we want to afford this quite yet. We still have some time before we have to worry too much about VNs and they don't happen so often that we can't afford to replace an occasional gate until we have the money for a pair of destroyers guarding every world. Hopefully we'll have better VN-killing weapons by then too.

Zed? How much of that did I get wrong?

Who's next?

Not much; good job overall Mardoc! Haphazard would be up next and can take until turn 30 to round us out.

Should I assume the other races are at full settings? Are we at normal or hard difficulty?

The reduced economy and research settings apply to everyone, and the AIs are on normal difficulty. However, not every faction in the game started with the same number of planets.

I thought that we are already at war by default, since no one has xeno techs to do anything else yet?

That's correct, though for the moment we are still on first contact protocols with everyone, until someone starts the shooting. It'll be pretty much impossible to avoid being on a war footing with everyone in our half of the barbell but depending on how quickly we get some xenotech we may be able to avoid this for races in the other half.

I am more worried about how close the Tarka may be

There are 90 stars on the map (not counting VN homeworld) and 8 players, so just over 10 stars per player; this is moderately close quarters. Depending on how quickly we can expand relative to the AIs, we may have trouble breaking into double digit colonies before fighting starts in earnest.

We probably can not afford it just yet, but should we plan to have some backup gates in key locations?

This is a good thought. The best place to keep spare gates tends to be with our defense fleets (once we have battle computers); we will be moving our fleets to trouble spots where gates may go down in combat, and we will certainly want to avoid stranding our defense fleets if a gate does go down by ensuring we have replacements handy.

One decent prospect out of the first two worlds found is not bad at all.

That's quite good luck for Hivers actually! They tend to be vulnerable to getting screwed by map luck if there are no good worlds nearby.

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

Yes we will! Good early possibilities are green lasers and mass drivers. Sniper cannon can be good too but are a tad more expensive; we will probably want a cheaper upgrade first. It's worth noting that with sniper cannon we need to keep the range open, but our ships are not exactly the most maneuverable in the game; we will be slower than anyone here other than Liir.

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.

This only works for a short while, but if we spend too many turns occupying the same star as a rival, someone is going to get itchy trigger fingers if we auto-peace it. If you want to keep first contact protocols active you have to manual the fight, or move away -- and of course moving away is out of the question when we have gates to establish and worlds to colonize.

I think every gate will need defenders, though, from random events at the least.

Good to do in the not-too-distant future but we need more economy first.

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.

We probably won't have spare tankers just sitting around this game; with gates we have no need for a tanker network. Probably just pickets and garrison. Putting speed in the name is still helpful to ensure we don't pair a pulsed fission gate with a fission tanker, for instance. I just multiply the sublight speed by 10 for hivers.

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.

Absolutely, Hivers love sensor tech, especially Deep Scan and Jammers!

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.

Yup, I would stick with less expensive techs for now. If I were going to get something a little more expensive I would probably go for Cyber Interfaces first.

and VRF will boost them a bit if we choose to travel up the ballistics tree.

Hivers do love their ballistics! It's the most common weapon tree the Hivers tend to climb as that's where they are most likely to find good toys. After that is warheads; Hivers don't much care for energy weapons overall, though of course they still do need HCLs for battle bridges and torpedoes for assault.

I think first, that gates ought to mean once we have something, we keep it,

Hivers certainly like to operate by this philosophy!




Just in case it got buried in the middle and missed, Haphazard is up and should take us to turn 30 to round us out. After that, it will be Tyrmith to turn 40.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the answers, ZedF! And for setting up and organizing all of this.

OK, I have the save and should be able to play tomorrow, maybe 22 hours from now. So there is plenty of time for the team to make their opinions known. Or if someone can play before then, they can take the save.

Goals for the upcoming turnset:

1) Keep getting more gate fleets on their way to new systems, and get more gates deployed.

How aggressively should we be pushing this? I know ZedF's initial message indicated this was more important than just about anything at the start, but for how long is this true? We do need to start developing at least one new colony world, and hopefully we will find a couple more good ones to plant additional colonies. How should we balance these priorities?

2) Colonize Rozokor and start it growing.

This will cut into our available income for research and ship building, but we have to do it so we will have more income in future. But how many colonizers do we drop? We have no GM or SA yet, no Atmosphere Adaptation tech, etc., so growth is not going to be all that great at first. But colonizers cost money and gate capacity that could be going into other things. Plus, Hiver colonizers are pretty decent, with 100 pop and 2 infra each.

2a) Get a couple armors (probably gauss designs) to Rozokor to guard the new colony from possible AI scouts. More defenders can be sent later when we have to start worrying about VNs, etc.

3) Research - what to do after Pulsed Fission? I think Gene Modification and then Suspended Animation should be our next targets, to improve our ability to develop new colonies faster. But cases can be made for Cybernetic Interfaces or Green Lasers, and probably other techs as well. What does the team think?

[Zed-F]

Thanks for the answers, ZedF! And for setting up and organizing all of this.

No problemo.

1) Keep getting more gate fleets on their way to new systems, and get more gates deployed.

How aggressively should we be pushing this? I know ZedF's initial message indicated this was more important than just about anything at the start, but for how long is this true? We do need to start developing at least one new colony world, and hopefully we will find a couple more good ones to plant additional colonies. How should we balance these priorities?

Establishing more gates gets us more gate capacity, so we pretty much always want to be doing that whenever we can. It also helps contain rival empires and cut them off from expanding, so we pretty much always want to be doing that whenever we can. And the process of gating more worlds opens the door to colonization of any nice worlds we find, plus sets us up for later colonization of not-so-nice worlds once we develop the bio-tech, so we pretty much always want to be doing that whenever we can.

Clear enough?

2) Colonize Rozokor and start it growing.

This will cut into our available income for research and ship building, but we have to do it so we will have more income in future. But how many colonizers do we drop? We have no GM or SA yet, no Atmosphere Adaptation tech, etc., so growth is not going to be all that great at first. But colonizers cost money and gate capacity that could be going into other things. Plus, Hiver colonizers are pretty decent, with 100 pop and 2 infra each.

In general, the higher the hazard rating, the more colonizers we should use. In our case, this goes doubly because we can easily get colonizers anywhere they need to go; there are much fewer logistics concerns about getting colonizers to the front lines when gates are in play. That said, there's not much point in over-investing where we don't need to, since as far as pop growth goes, extra DD colonizers suffer from diminishing returns. For Rozokor in particular, I would send however many we can build in one turn at our homeworld.

2a) Get a couple armors (probably gauss designs) to Rozokor to guard the new colony from possible AI scouts. More defenders can be sent later when we have to start worrying about VNs, etc.

3) Research - what to do after Pulsed Fission? I think Gene Modification and then Suspended Animation should be our next targets, to improve our ability to develop new colonies faster. But cases can be made for Cybernetic Interfaces or Green Lasers, and probably other techs as well. What does the team think?

Any of those would be good choices. My default reflex would certainly be to go after Gene Mod and Suspended Anim as well. Bear in mind though that we are likely to run into combat sooner rather than later. We either need to be able to build a lot of ships with junk weapons, or to have fewer ships with decent enough weapons not to get totally creamed by, for instance, enemies using emitters.

[Mardoc]

2a) Get a couple armors (probably gauss designs) to Rozokor to guard the new colony from possible AI scouts. More defenders can be sent later when we have to start worrying about VNs, etc.

We have about 8 or 9 Red laser designs; if we aren't going to try to defend everywhere, that's probably enough for the moment, I think.

3) Research - what to do after Pulsed Fission? I think Gene Modification and then Suspended Animation should be our next targets, to improve our ability to develop new colonies faster. But cases can be made for Cybernetic Interfaces or Green Lasers, and probably other techs as well. What does the team think?

I would go for Gene Modification first, we'll need that for Rozokor no matter what. The next choice would depend on what you discover as Gate fleets start arriving places. If there's a bunch of nice green planets, then yeah, go for Suspended. If there's nothing much worth grabbing yet, though, maybe it would be a good time to go for weaponry instead. I like the idea of projectiles and sniper Cannons, but maybe it would be safer to start with Mass Drivers and VRF tech and get to sniper cannons later on.

This assumes we have the chance for more than one choice; given that there's still time left on Pulsed Fission, and we're committing to Rozokor colonization and further expansion of the Gate network, we might only make it to one tech in your turnset.

[Mardoc]

Sure, blame me for the vagaries of the random map generator... *grumble*

But of course!

Remember that auto-peace will fail after a couple turns if the enemy scout is low on fuel, and this will break first contact protocols. If we can deploy our gate and get a couple armours there to protect it, we should be good to auto-peace then though.

Huh, I never knew that! (you may have told me, but last game we were the gun-toting barbarians of the map)

As has been noted, researching up to Incorporate would be pretty expensive at this stage. The first language tech (needed for cease fire) is about half the cost of Waldos, but the second is quadruple the cost of Waldos, and following that, Incorporate Morrigi costs 6 times as much as Waldos, IIRC.

We will probably be able to afford a fleet to ambush that Morrigi indy via our gate as long as we keep auto-peaceing it, before we can afford that research. 60M imperials isn't all that many, so we wouldn't have to deal with very many planet missiles. It's worth noting that there will be heavy missiles and MWM missiles mixed in, though, and that all those missiles will have fusion warheads.

If we could get multiple Morrigi independent colonies out of researching Morrigi xenotech, then it might be worth going for that sooner rather than later, but one indy alone doesn't justify the cost -- especially not a small one.

Well, ok then. Violence, the universal language. I would think this would be a fairly high priority as well, 60 Hazard is awesome, and the planet has good resources as well.

Size is more an indicator of long-term profitability than short term desirability to colonize -- hazard rating is the main factor and this one is within a reasonable distance of our ideal hazard rating. I would say go for it.

Well, I knew size didn't affect affordability, what I'm not sure about is the hazard rating we can afford. My gut tells me 250 or less is worth grabbing immediately, but I don't really trust my gut yet. Size 8 was just calling 'take me Mardoc, take me now' .

The reduced economy and research settings apply to everyone, and the AIs are on normal difficulty. However, not every faction in the game started with the same number of planets.

Ah, so this is a straight-up 'slow the game' setting. I didn't realize that even existed. Very cool.

Yes we will! Good early possibilities are green lasers and mass drivers. Sniper cannon can be good too but are a tad more expensive; we will probably want a cheaper upgrade first. It's worth noting that with sniper cannon we need to keep the range open, but our ships are not exactly the most maneuverable in the game; we will be slower than anyone here other than Liir.

Hmm, that's a good point, however, just because I like the idea of Sniper Cannons doesn't mean the idea likes me. Maybe Green lasers make the most sense after all.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Good to know my legacy of P/G/T prefixes lives on! Though the speed of the ship in the name is Zed-F's idea. Enjoy the game, I'll be watching from the sidelines.

[haphazard1]

A question about transferring saves: I see that people have been using dropbox for this. I am not familiar with dropbox, and am a bit disturbed that it wants to install software to use.

If anyone could offer some more information on dropbox, or other options for handling the save files, it would be appreciated.

[Mardoc]

A question about transferring saves: I see that people have been using dropbox for this. I am not familiar with dropbox, and am a bit disturbed that it wants to install software to use.

If anyone could offer some more information on dropbox, or other options for handling the save files, it would be appreciated.

Well, I believe if you zip the file, you can attach it to the post. That's what Zed usually does. Won't help with screenshots, but if you have another solution in mind for that, then it doesn't matter.

I use dropbox myself, but I only ever put stuff in it that I'm happy to have public. It's a calculated risk - I trust it far enough to only take files that I tell it to. I've seen that it's been broken in that your dropbox stuff that's supposed to be private can be found publicly by someone who knows what they're doing. Or at least it could be at one point.

[haphazard1]

Thanks, Mardoc!

I have a couple other solutions for screenshots (although I need to make sure I can actually create some from SotS first ). So probably I will just zip the save and attach it directly to the post. Maybe later I can find another solution for that if necessary.

Should play in a couple hours, so there is still time to get your thoughts and comments posted.

[haphazard1]

OK, turnset played. Only managed 10 turns so we are still on an odd number, but this was all I had time for.

T15 (inherited turn)

- I note upon loading the save that the computer ranks us dead last, 8th of 8. Presumably this is due to the "adjustments" made by ZedF to make things more challenging, but we definitely need to get this value moving in the proper direction.
- I go ahead and set the colonizer to land at Rozokor. I also order 3 more colonizers at Isketot (1 full turn of IO, roughly).
- Send another ER on its way to a new system, shuffle gates and tankers to follow up, etc.
- IBT we standoff with a Tarka "Bravestar" ship at Ir'idan. First contact protocol still in place so far....

T16

- Rozokor is colonized, the first of many to come.
- Another ER sent out, gates and tankers moved, etc. I also move 3 of our RLaz armor DDs to Ir'idan to discourage that Tarka scout from doing anything stupid.
- Build 2 ERs, 2 gates. Will reuse some tankers.
- IBT zzzzzz.

T17

- The additional colonizers land on Rozokor to give us a running start there.
- Builds 2 more ERs, 3 RLaz armor DDs for some ready forces. Multiple gates will be arriving in new systems and we will probably need some forces at one or more of them.
- IBT I auto-peaced at Ir'idan, and apparently things got violent with the Tarka ship. It died, we lost no one. I guess I should have handled the battle myself, maybe gotten a peaceful result?



T18

- I send the damaged RLaz from Ir'idan to the homeworld for repairs.
- Our sensors pick up an incoming ship from Tuathal of the Jade Wing, 2 turns from Ir'idan. Popular place, apparently. It looks like it is coming from Ozoris, wonder what our ER will find there?
- More ERs sent out, gates and tankers moved, etc. Assume this is going on every turn unless otherwise noted -- I tried to get at least one ER followed by gate/tanker set going to a new system every turn, and pretty much kept that up throughout the turnset. Some of the them will probably be lost, as we are sending them to systems that naming suggests are Tarka or Liir or Morrigi. But what else can we do but attempt it?
- Pulsed Fission is at 78%, 4 more turns at current rates. I left the research slider pretty much alone.

T19

- We arrive at Ozoris, which is not very impressive for us.



It would be a 200 CH world for the Tarka, though, so we should keep it out of their control.
- Sensors spot a Tarka ship 1 turn from Etos'che, where we have an ER also due next turn.
- I slip a couple RLaz armor DDs into the build queue in case we need some force.
- IBT at Etos'che we find a three-sided battle; 4 Liir "Despair" ships are present along with the expected Tarka ship. I run for deep space, and the Tarka and Liir mix it up a bit.



From the damage totals, I think the Liir ships are colonizers.
- Etos'che itself is a rather nice world, well worth some strife:



Wish the resources were more plentiful, but only 83 CH is very nice indeed. This world needs to be added to our empire as quickly as possible.
- Also IBT we have a Morrigi "Ulukh Mahmedh Mk 2" arrive at Ir'idan. I handle the combat and the Morrigi goes directly for our gate, firing all weapons. Our 6 RLaz armors blow it apart, but the gate takes a bit of damage.



I guess there is no way to repair this damage before Repair and Salvage cruisers, since the planet is not going to be colonized?

T20

- An ER arrives at Xha'chak this turn, pretty meh little planet:



It does have an asteroid belt, so the resources will be pretty decent later after Asteroid Mining is researched. But not really a good prospect for short-term colonization.
- Having met the (hostile) Morrigi, we now know all racial CH:



We have two groups: Hivers and Morrigi close together, and Liir and Tarka close together, but the groups quite far apart. This will definitely affect the desirability of certain worlds.
- IBT the Tarka ship has left Etos'che. The Liir dove, and I do as well. Once our gate is deployed and some fighting ships arrive, though....

T21

- Deploy gates at Etos'che, Ozoris.
- Sensors note a Tarka ship approaching Ir'idan, 2 turns out.
- Pulsed Fission has gone over budget at 105%.

T22

- The Tarka Concordiate suggests a ceasefire, which means they have researched our first level xeno-tech. Interesting choice by the AI. I decline, which hopefully is not a disastrously bad move. I do not really want the Tarka sharing space in unclaimed systems with our gates.
- Deploy a gate at Xha'chak.
- The new gates shift possible routes a bit; I call back an ER which just left for Sunonu and reroute it by gate to save 6 turns.
- Pulsed Fission completes! So we only went about 10-12% over budget. I start Gene Modification next to improve our colonization efforts, after considering green lasers. We are going to need better weapons soon, but for now we can use our gates to outnumber AI forces at key locations. VNs and other randoms could be a problem, though.
- New designs are created with the pulsed fission engine section for ER, gate, and tanker types. Armors and colonizers are not changed, as they move by gate.
- IBT our forces at Etos'che hunt down 2 of the 3 Liir ships and destroy them. They scattered so the third will have to be finished next turn to clear the system for colonization.



- Also during IBT, the Tarka ship arrives at Ir'idan. It is a "Five Fists" type, and the Tarka dove immediately. I agree, hoping to avoid further damage to relations.

T23

- Usual sending out ERs, gates and tankers, etc.
- IBT we finish the last Liir ship at Etos'che.



We get some angry gibberish from Silent Scream, and I think it is safe to say he (she? it?) is not happy with us. But this world will be ours.

T24

- Colonizer ordered to set down on Etos'che. Took a risk of a colony trap here, but I was not sure how a gate would be impacted by such an event so it seemed better to keep combat ships in system and just go for it.
- Note that some of the new PFis Gate/Tanker pairs will be faster than the old-style ERs ahead of them. We will need to delay some of the gate/tanker pairs to make sure ERs arrive first.

T25

- Etos'che has been colonized. Set mostly to infra, as the pop will grow very fast with this low hazard rating.
- Rozokor is also set to mostly infra, as it has more pop than needed for its infra already. Darn low resource worlds.
- Gene Modification is at 31%, gaining about 10% a turn. We should get it over 50% and then if needed can slow research a bit to improve our cash situation.
- ERs have been sent out to Ke'Pronum, Ke'Lolum, Shononu, and Uxhmal with no gates/tankers yet following them. All other worlds have ERs with gate/tanker following, except for one W-something world which has no ER. (This is leftover from Mardoc's earlier turns, still hasn't arrived.)
- We have 5 Liir ships 2 turns from Sunoma; we are 8 (ER) and 9 (gate/tanker) turns out so they will be in control when we arrive.
- We have 3 old-style tankers at Isketot, not sure what to do with them. We could save a little cash by building some old-style gate ships and sending them out, although we would lose time of course.
- We have 7 deployed gates now for 21 network capacity. Quite a few more gates will arrive at new systems over the next turnset, so hopefully this will continue to climb. So far none lost to menaces or AIs -- seems very unlikely that will continue, but I am not complaining.
- No builds have been scheduled yet, so the next player is not constrained.
- The computer now ranks us as 6th of 8, so we are improving!

Save attached. How much noob-ish-ness infected this turnset? Critique me harshly if needed, it's the only way to improve. (But hopefully I did not screw up TOO badly. )