OSG-37 - 1ooming Lizards

[RefSteel]

Race: Sakkra
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Medium
Opponents: Five
Color: Green
Map Generation: Random - I just took the first map rolled
Events: On
Game Version: 1oom(!) 1.0(?!) with "UIextras" enabled and the "fixbugs" PBX file.  (...)
Variant: None, apart from avoiding the known exploits, though the first one (infinitely recharging specials) should hopefully be fixed in 1oom.

(Also, of course, never "play ahead" (nor replay already-played turns) of the canonical turns while the game is ongoing - that is, don't do anything with the save (like using the Audience button or hitting "Next Turn") that will give you more information or a chance at good or bad RNG unless it's your turn to play - and then play your turns out with the consequences of whatever you do without reloading.  Likewise, obviously never use the [ALT]-WHATEVER cheat codes, even if you haven't already created a special PBX rule just to disable them.  This stuff does go without saying around here, but it's sometimes worth reitterating.)


(This is what the "new game" setup screen looks like in 1oom 1.0 with the "UI extras" option turned on.  The one in later forks, like those made by ignatius and RFS-81, have several additional options.  Note I have set the AI to "Classic+," chosen our race and flag, named our leader, and - subtly - changed our home star's name, but left the other leaders random.)

Roster, In Alphabetical (i.e. not necessarily play-schedule) Order:
- DaveV
- haphazard1
- jez9999
- RefSteel (Playing to 2320)
- You, if you want to join us!  If you need help getting 1oom working, just ask (and/or check out the tech support I tried to provide in what became the OSG discussion thread, starting here.

Turn sets: The early game tends to go quickly, so the first player plays 20 turns, the next two play 15 turns each, taking us to 2350, and everyone takes 10 turns per set thereafter.

Succession Game Etiquette: Within 24 hours after the player before you posts the save, please either post a "Got it" message (indicating you've downloaded the save and intend to play your set within the next day or two) or ask to be skipped for a round or to swap places with another player. Within 48 hours after posting a "Got it" please finish your turns and post a save (or request a skip or swap or extension if something comes up unexpectedly).

[RefSteel]

Intro:

HssssssssSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssa hssSSSSsssahssssssssisssssss hSSSSSSSSsssssissssssa!!!

The famous words of the First Speaker, spoken upon first learning that the interstellar fleet he had commissioned was finally - finally - ready to fly, are highly idiomatic, and mean much more in the Sakkra language than can be adequately translated into the Ancient tongue.  The central adjective in particular (or rather the central adjective-phrase; Sakkra language does not separate ideas into discrete words in quite the same way that ours does) is a term so idiomatic and metaphorical that it defies any attempt at translation; taken literally, it would suggest a physically impossible merging or recombination of several natural biological functions, some of them unique to the Sakkra people.  At the same time, it could not be left out without completely shearing the quote of its meaning and urgency, since the entire quote means in effect, "It's about [untranslatable] time!!!"

By Sakkra tradition, members of the 37-member Organization for Sakkra Governance - the so-called "OSG-37" - who are elevated to the title of Speaker in so doing give up their names, a symbol for the subsumption of their identities into their role as leaders of Sssssla's 37 united provinces, and executors of the active will of the OSG-37 itself.  In practice, the exigencies of interstellar expansion and interspecies relations over many decades following their discovery of the interstellar drive demanded such decisive action that the Speaker's power at any moment was virtually absolute, with the other 36 members of the OSG holding merely advisory roles, but even under these circumstances, the Sakkra held to their traditions, calling elevated members of the OSG only "Speaker," and introducing each Speaker to outsiders not by any personal identity but as the embodiment of the organization for which they would speak:  As the OSG-37 itself.  Further measures were put in place to ensure that no single Speaker could overstep the organization's united authority as well, including term limits restricting each individual to a temporary term of office - twenty Sakkra years in the case of the First Speaker, reduced to fifteen by the time of the Second and Third, finally settling at ten thereafter while the emergencies lasted and continued to require a Speaker in a leading role:  Emergencies including interstellar races for knowledge and territory with powerful rival species, together with intense diplomacy - including its last resort:  Interstellar war.

Initial Report:

2300:  When the Sakkra interstellar era began, their people still knew little of the galaxy.  Their astronomers had compiled such information as they could about distant stars, and all of this information was made available to the Speaker of the OSG-37, but it was limited to say the least:  The distance from Sssssla itself, measured in parsecs, which would later be updated to the distance from whichever might be the nearest Sakkra colony, and mere guesses about the likely habitability of any planets that mighr orbit them.  The colony ship, finally launched from the Sakkra homeworld after endless arguments finally led to the Speaker system at the turn of the 24th Sakkra century, with fuel stores enough to jump no more than three parsecs from the Sssssla hyperspace beacon, had three possible destinations, and very little to go on.



Following the edge of the Ssssslan nebula was unlikely to be of use:  Any habitable planets that might once have orbited the white dwarf in that direction were not expected by Sakkra xenoecologists of the time to have survived its long-ago red giant phase - and the blue star in the opposite direction, a class-B main sequence furnace, though it might harbor worlds still rich in surface minerals, hardly offered hope of a planet on whose surface many Sakkra could thrive - if indeed there was yet any solid planetary surface in the system at all.  Had the scientists been sure of their findings, there would have been no question about the colony ship's destination:  The red dwarf toward the galactic center might not promise such mineral riches - nor anything close - but astronomers believed it was the most likely to offer what the Sakkra people most longed for:  Planets on which their colonists could live - and breed.  If only they could be sure that these estimates and inferences were universal and definite, there would have been no real choice to make, but since Sakkra scientists were quick to emphasize that there was always a chance - and often a significant one - for a star to go against type, the Speaker knew that more information was needed.



This they had, of course - at least a little - as demonstrated by their then-contemporary map of the galaxy.  Their astronomers had long since mapped out the shape of the galaxy as a whole, with all its stars and both of its major nebulae, and had combined this with information gleaned from powerful radio telescopes and from our own GNN transmissions.  They had heard through us of five other sentient races entering an interstellar era in the galaxy, each from a separate homeworld at a different yellow star like their own:  The hulking Bulrathi, famed for their brilliant generals and personal resilience, as much at a loss as most other species in the vastness of space, but nigh-invincible when fighting on the ground; the Klackon hive-mind, a collective of tireless workers, by far the most productive in the galaxy; the Psilon luminocracy, already legendary for its research capabilities; and the warlike Mrrshan and Alkari peoples, the greatest gunners and combat pilots in the galaxy, whose instinctive hatred for reptillians like the Sakkra was only exceeded by their hatred for the likes of one another.  The Sakkra had only three advantages over the other races of the galaxy:  Though they might fall well short in every other field, their facility with planetological research was almost on par with the Psilons', no other race could match Sakkra breeders' fecundity ... and no one else in the galaxy could match the strategic and tactical planning of a truly great Speaker of the RBO-37.



The First Speaker's first official decision is shown here, from a typical Sakkra strategic display of the era.  The number to the upper right of each ship type in the fleet represents the number presently being given orders, while the number to its lower right represents the total number available for the purpose.  Here, the Speaker is sending the Colony Ship to the red dwarf as expected, escorted by a single Scout:  Though the source of our messages remained unknown to them at that point in their history, the Sakkra were aware that our home was at the star Orion, at once protected and imprisoned by our dread Guardian, which would destroy any starship that dared approach.  They had inferred from certain of our transmissions that at least one of the stars nearest their home must be orbited by a habitable world not our own, but with three stars at three parsecs, they couldn't know which one, and in case the red star turned out to be Orion itself, they hoped their Scout could fly interference, give their colony ship just barely time enough to safely retreat.  Immediately thereafter, they would dispatch their second scout to the blue star nearest their home, to learn whether that one at least was a promising destination in case the red dwarf, though not Orion itself, should hold no planets on which they could live.  The white star was regarded as a last resort:  Sakkra astronomers' estimates at the time suggested that a fuel base there might bring one more star into scouting range where the others were likely to bring two, and only the red star was close enough to any other stars to enable further colony ships or defensive fleets to reach them.  Moreover, it was of the highest strategic importance, pointing directly from Sssssla toward the galactic core:  The stars to which a fuel base there would allow fleets to be sent were those most likely to be contested by others.  The locations of the galaxy's yellow stars only emphasized this, with a vast gap of empty space beyond Sssssla's white-dwarf neighbor cutting it off, like the other stars around the Ssssslan nebula, from any stars that other peoples could easily reach, while a smaller but significant gap separated the Class-B blue star from the nearest possible extra-Ssssslan homeworld, but the red dwarf was part of a cluster that other races might rapidly approach from any of three directions.  The First Speaker hoped and believed it would be the Sakkra people's gateway to the galaxy.

So that's where we're starting from; I haven't actually finished the first turn yet, but I figured I'd at least post the start!  Thoughts, suggestions, questions, and all manner of player (or lurker) comments are welcome.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for getting us started, RefSteel! Nice write up of our glorious governmental structure.

Hmmm, interesting looking galaxy. Let's hope that red star has a habitable world, or we are going to need more range tech almost immediately. Our rivals are a tough group: brains, bugs, our two natural enemies, and the bears. At least there are no Silicoids to steal all the hostile planets early.

Good luck with the opening turns -- lead our lizards to glory!

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the comments, guys!  Now for the turns...

Report:

(In spite of the length, I'm not going to spoiler this one:  The spoilers both above and below feature no actual "spoilers" but are just there to make it easier to scroll past them.  In this case though, I'm just spoilering information for players new to either 1oom in particular or Orion in general, so those who are interested can find out more about the interface but old hands can skip over them and just read the report.  I've tried to include fairly detailed explanations of my strategy and planning here in spite of my idiosyncratic insistence on making it an "in-character" story for fun, but if anyone has further questions about my reasoning or lack thereof, please post them!)

The Sakkra continued to labor in ignorance of the true galaxy around them, and had to make their decisions accordingly:  In addition to their tiny starfleet, the Speaker of the OSG had to direct all the efforts of the people of Sssssla toward their interstellar ambitions, and there seemed to be many strong options to choose.  Many members of the OSG-37, including no lesser luminaries than Sssssirian of old, might have kept the whole focus of the homeworld on starship factories, at least for a year or three.  The unequaled strategist whose title translates roughly to "Grand Admiral of the Fleet" and whose coloration matched the greatest of the scientist-caste Sakkra, advised that research be considered into planetology, as terraforming and ecological restoration would rapidly repay an investment in research since the Sakkra excelled in that field.  The First Speaker indeed considered it:  Even at the very start of the interstellar era, a galactic civilization faces important strategic choices to which there is no one right answer - or at least none that can be known immediately - and the most important criteria for decision making are how they support a coherent strategy.

(In case anyone new to the game hasn't learned all the controls:  Planetary spending is adjusted on the right-hand side of the command screen here.  I've locked the "Eco" slider (Ecological spending, here set to "CLEAN" up all the waste our factories produce but not to grow any additional population - we Sakkra do more than enough of that naturally!) by clicking on its name, turning it red and allowing me to adjust the other sliders without changing the spending in this field; afterward, I can unlock it by clicking on the name again.  From there, I moved spending into "Ship"-building by clicked on the right arrow next to it until the display to its right read "1y," meaning we would complete the ship(s) displayed below the sliders - 1 Scout - in a single year.  This takes the production from other projects, taking from the lowest available option on the screen by preference, and since I wasn't yet spending on "Tech" and had locked "Eco" this meant I was taking from "Ind" - industrial spending - and thus building fewer new factories.  Since I also wanted to start some research, I then clicked the left arrow next to "Ind" to reduce factory spending further in favor of "3 RP" - research points, which can be distributed by hitting the "Tech" button along the bottom of the screen, as we'll see shortly.  All this works just like in the original/vanilla Master of Orion game.)

The First Speaker in particular was a fiend for information, and wanted better scouting reports as soon as they could be achieved.  Additional long-range Scout ships would allow the Sakkra people to explore surrounding stars more quickly and potentially arrive there before other species' fleets, staking an early claim to nearby worlds, potentially delaying rivals' scouting reports, and creating opportunities to find - and claim for themselves - artifacts of our own past glory, from the time when we were known not as the Ancients of Orion, our reclusion enforced by the indomitable Guardian, but as the progenitors of every other sentient species:  The rulers of the galaxy.  After a long look at the map, the First Speaker decided that the Sakkra could make do with just one additional scout initially:  Astronomers had identified two stars most likely to be contested soonest by a hypothetical alien race at the yellow star nearest Sssssla, and the new ship could cover the nearest, while if all went well, the scout escorting the colony ship could probably go on from the new colony to reach the other potentially-contested star as soon as a new-built Scout could have arrived.  These were all of course just estimates based on stellar geometry, but the Speaker regarded them as close enough to be going on with - and building just one new Scout meant most of the available Sakkra workforce could devote its energies to factory construction while still leaving a few scientists to start a pilot project in their favorite field:  Planetology.


(I think kyrub's smaller LEDs look better, and the arrangement in one of the other forks - where there's no separate LED but the tech level number lights up red instead - isn't as obvious at first glance but is the most elegant of the three.)

(For those who don't know what I'm talking about:  Those black squares at the far right of each tech field are "LEDs" that light up red when your labs devoted to your current research in that field are "fully staffed" and you're "building new labs" with any excess - in other words, when you're receiving the maximum continued-spending bonus in the field for the investment you've already made, so further spending in that field would be "seeding" a future investment bonus but have a smaller effect on your current research output.  Clicking on the LED itself in 1oom adjusts your slider to the minimum amount needed to get the full bonus - or, as in this case, when you haven't spent anything yet in the field, it just dumps all your tech spending into the relevant field, which is what I wanted here.  You can lock and unlock tech field sliders just like the ones for planetary spending, and equalize spending across all six fields by hitting the = key on your keyboard.  Note that it's not a good idea to split research too much in the early game when a couple of research points lost to rounding could represent a significant fraction of your total budget; as the game goes on and your empire grows, this quickly becomes unimportant however, and it's common to work on all six fields simultaneously.)

As we know, the Sakkra propensity for planetology research is one of their greatest assets, and the economic benefits of terraforming worlds - increasing the space on each in which Sakkra could live - and of improving their ecological restoration techniques so they could more easily clean up their factory waste, freeing up more resources for other vital projects, would be enormous.  Colony ships would also be easier to build as their planetological knowledge improved, allowing better-miniaturized colony base components, and on top of everything else, since such studies meant learning more about their planets and their own biology, they would likewise help to make every living Sakkra stronger, healthier, and more productive ... and, being Sakkra, breeding like Sakkra, there were going to be a lot of them!  Arguments could be made (and were made by some of the 37 members of the OSG) for other initial priorities, including a tighter focus on one project at a time - factories, research, or shipbuilding - to minimize possible loss to the bureaucratic waste and corruption that so often takes advantage of rounding errors and the like to skim benefits off the top of imperial budgets, but the Speaker's choices were sound in themselves ... even though virtually every one of those initial choices, in hindsight, due to circumstances beyond Sakkra control and of which they could not have known in advance, would turn out to be a mistake.


(Talk about a barren start to our Planetology tree...)

(Each research field - Computers, Construction, Force Fields, Planetology, Propulsion, and Weapons - is a "tech ladder" divided into ten successively more powerful and expensive "tiers."  At the beginning ofthe game, each race can only research techs from the first tier.  Then any tech you gain in any field opens up the next tier in that field - and any earlier tiers in the field if you managed to "skip" them through espionage, trade, conquest, or discovering an Artifacts world.  You can always go back for a tech in a tier you've already researched or surpassed, but doing so doesn't "advance the tree" to open up a new tier.  Within each tier, each player gets a random selection of up to three of the available techs:  The only first-tier Force Field tech, for instance, is Class II Deflector Shield, so everyone gets that as their only tier-1 choice in that field, whereas there are five second-tier Weapons techs:  Anti-Missile Rockets, Neutron Pellet Gun, Hyper-X Rockets, [VERY LATE EDIT: Fusion Bomb], and Ion Cannon; sometimes you'll only have the option to research one of these, but often you'll have a choice of three, chosen at random when the map is rolled; you can never research all five yourself, though you can acquire the ones you're missing from AIs that have researched them ... by various means.  As for this case, the first tier of Planetology research includes exactly three techs:  Improved Terraforming +10, Controlled Barren Environment, and Improved Eco Restoration.  In this game, we got the worst possible result, at one-in-seven odds:  Barren, and nothing else.  The best-case scenario would have been access to all three, with the same odds as this.)

The First Speakers' pilot project was a dismal failure, turning up no means of developing either of the kinds of technology most coveted by the Sakkra people.  After dispatching his pet new Scout ship to the second blue star as planned, deprived of the opportunity to build terraforming or eco labs, the Speaker therefore focused instead on a simpler building project:  Lots and lots of industry.


(Well, not quite like this: I did spend a little bit on keeping the research project alive after restoring the ecology.)

(Here's another new 1oom feature:  Notice I've pulled literally all of Sssssla's production into industry, leaving the planet producing massive industrial "WASTE" - I did this with one click, just like in the base game, by clicking all the way at the right-hand edge of the "Ind" slider with the other sliders unlocked, so the game increased that slider to where I'd clicked (in this case, 100%) at the expense of all the other available sliders.  I don't actually want to make Sssssla a giant Silicoid wasteland though, and I also don't want to "waste" production building more population that's going to grow by itself anyway (and rapidly - we're Sakkra!) - in fact, the reason I'm going through this process right now is that I suspect our population growth last turn, when I built just one factory, would result in "wastage" of just this kind if I don't readjust the sliders.  The loss would be small, so right now this is just a silly micromanagement trick, but it can be really helpful - and cut down on micromanagement - later in the game, when e.g. a new trade agreement and/or spy spending puts all your planets into "WASTE":  Either click in the lower-left-hand corner of the screen - on the screen border below and to the left of the "Game" button - or hit the "E" key on your keyboard, and you call up this menu of extras with various time-saving options, including the one I'm using here:  "Readjust Eco" increases the Eco spending of any and all planets in your empire producing "WASTE" until they're instead just barely "CLEAN."  This is a trick you could do in base Orion by quitting to the main menu (thus creating an auto-save) and then immediately continuing from the just-created auto-save (typing G-Q-C) at which point the game.  1oom's version is much more elegant - or it would be if this menu weren't hidden the way it is.)

This focus would last for exactly one year.  With the next, the first wave of Sakkra ships would be starting their approach vectors to their destinations, collecting new information and potentially setting up a whole new fuel base.  Committed to scouting as ever, the First Speaker wanted to be ready.  Enough new ships were commissioned at Sssssla to double the Sakkra scout force, and everyone made ready for word from their interstellar pioneers to come over the hyperspace relays in 2303.


(Obviously a composite image - the first in my report so far - created out-of-game with an image editing program.  If I have time, you may see lots of these!  Well, of course I don't have time.  But if I use my time unwisely, you may see lots of these anyway!)

The report from Celtsi, the class-B blue star, came in moments before the one from Kulthos, the red dwarf - and the difference was staggering.  True to form, Kulthos was orbited by old worlds, mature but long past their prime, their radioactive elements already almost entirely decayed away.  The only planet in its habitable zone - just barely, near the outer edge - had a surface divided between cold, rocky equatorial steppelands and wide frozen icecaps extending far beyond the poles.  Extracting useful minerals from its cheerless surface would be an enormous chore, and though it could support perhaps sixty percent of the population that could live on the Sakkra homeworld, it couldn't support anyone comfortably.  It would certainly still be of value to the Sakkra imperium, and the First Speaker would no doubt have issued orders to construct the colony there ... had he not already been told about Celtsi VI.  Slightly - very slightly - smaller than Kulthos III, and with steppes and icecaps every bit as cold, Celtsi's jewel world was also billions of years younger, with intense but manageable still-ongoing tectonic activity, perfectly habitable for Sakkra used to interstellar travel, and bearing lanthanide and actanide metals and alloys enough to meet any space-age miner's fantasies.  Were that not enough, the planet's soil was so rich in nitrates and sulfates that Ssssslan crops and other plants could run riot there in spite of the cold conditions - as could an ecosystem based on those plants, including the one the Sakkra meant to establish, with their colonists at the top of the food chain.  Traveling from Kulthos to Celtsi would mean years of delay in establishing that first colony.  It would mean the loss - temporarily, the Speaker hoped - of that critical forward base.  But with the chance that another species at the nearest yellow star, across a suddenly-too-narrow band of empty space, might learn to cross that gap before the Sakkra could claim the world, and with the sheer value of Celtsi VI itself as a world in comparison to Kulthos III, the First Speaker felt the delays and the risks were warranted.  The new Scouts were dispatched, as was the one that had escorted the colony ship, and no "build up Celtsi" tax was established on Sssssla only because it didn't occur to the First Speaker to do so until it was too late.  There would be no Kulthos colony - no extra-Ssssslan colony at all - for years to come.


(If I did have more time, this would be a better composite!  Also, the worst part of forgetting to set the reserve slider when I realized I'd want to build up Cygni ASAP is that it would have given me an excuse to show the Planets screen and a rare actually-potentially-worthwhile use of that mechanic.)

Three years later, with the colony ship still en route to its new destination, its one-time escort reached Obaca, a white-hot star whose most-nearly-habitable world, as rich in minerals as Celtsi VI and almost two thirds of its size, would shed a whole new light on the value of the Sakkra research project then still underway:  Research that would enable them to build a working colony on its barren surface.  Yet the most important outcome of its arrival may have occurred before it ever scouted the planet:  In orbit, it encountered another incoming scout ship, this one not under the command of the OSG-37, but of the Mrrshan Imperial Queen!  Unarmed, the Mrrshan scout fled rather than engaging, and its departure vector - seen here by the direction in which it's facing on a Sakkra command screen - indicated the yellow star from which it must have come, far off beyond Obaca and even further from that star than was Sssssla.  The rest of the news had been far less exciting to Sakkra ambitions:  The blue star of Primodius, with only a single solid planet, bathed in deadly radiation and incredibly small, discovered just the year before, and the white dwarf Misha - the First Speaker's "last resort" - bearing nothing better than a geothermally dead and airless world of moderate size, seemed to justify the principles on which the Sakkra astronomers' predictions were based, and the Scouts that made those discoveries were ready to move on:  At Primodius, the Scout awaited the Kulthos fuel base to be, while the Misha Scout went on as planned around the Ssssslan nebula, scouting out the empire's back lines.  Then, two years later, the wait was over at last.


(I call this 2308 because it happens after I end my 2307 turn.  The game calls it 2307 because it happens before I get to start the main part of my 2308 turn.  Since the game says the Council votes happen in years like 2374 and 2399, just before nice round numbers, I'm sticking to my version!)

For the first time, the Sakkra Interstellar Imperium lived up to its name.  The ships in orbit and Celtsi and Primodius set out for new destinations immediately, taking advantage of the new hyperspace fuel depot at the Celtsi colony.


(A much subtler composite image this time, obviously!)

Even more immediately, colony transports were launched from Sssssla:  Fully half of the Sakkra homeworld's enormous and quick-growing population hurried off to help build up the empire's fertile, rich new colony - and others would set out behind them, the following year.  Those who went counted themselves lucky for winning the colonial lotteries - unlike the pilot of the Primodius Scout:  The ship the First Speaker had commissioned at the same time the first Sakkra starfleet set out from their homeworld had started by discovering the least-hospitable planet in the entire galaxy, and after waiting there for three years and spending more in hyperspace...

(Notice 1oom's "Auto" and "Retreat" options on the "X attacks Y" screen.  These are equivalent to starting the battle and then just hitting the relevant button for every fleet you have in the system.  "Auto" should be used only when a battle is such a foregone conclusion that even the AI can't mess it up.  Do not unerestimate how badly the tactical AI can play.  Actually playing out the equivalent of "Retreat" doesn't take much longer than hitting the button, and can actually provide some useful information, so I don't recommend using it either.  It's a neat idea, but I think these buttons make the screen look less attractive without adding anything important to the gameplay.  Not a big deal though.  Here, we see what happens when a single scout ship retreats in the face of the Guardian:  The Guardian moves fast enough to destroy it anyway - and the stats therefore show one Guardian and zero Scouts left at the end, with the blindingly obvious comment that the "Guardian won.")

...it found us.  Before it could escapet, the Guardian did to it what it does to all starships that dare enter Orion's orbit; some of the subatomic particles into which the Scout and its pilot were instantly rendered may be raining upon us from erratic pathways through the outer system still.

That same year, another Mrrshan Scout retreated from its Sakkra counterpart posted to watch the Kulthos system, and another arrived the following year at Reticuli - the blue star beyond Kulthos, in the direction of the central nebula, boasting only a single large, barren world among its asteroids and gas giants - likewise patrolled by one of the Scouts the Sakkra had completed just as their colony ship elected after all not to build a Kulthos colony.



This latest Mrrshan expedition gave more away than it discovered however:  Its retreat vector was directed away from both the central nebula and the presumed location of the Mrrshan homeworld, indicating that its people had built a colony of their own on the green star out beyond blazing-white Obaca and its rich though barren world.  The Sakkra scout by then had been on station for four years, and like most of their surviving scouts, was still waiting and watching for signs of other species.  Even the lucky Scout that had first discovered Celtsi was just arriving Xengara, the nearest yellow star to Sssssla, where it found not another homeworld but only an uninhabited system whose most-promising world was a small-to-middling desert with so little surface water that what did exist virtually never precipitated from the atmosphere.  That Scout would therefore hold station too, with nowhere else to go, though at least it had a habitable world to watch over.  The lone exception to all this waiting and seeing though, out by the galactic rim, skirting the Ssssslan nebula, was on the verge of making a far more important discovery.


(Go ahead and place your bets, everybody!  What kind of game is this one going to be?  If we pull something like II8 from this Artifacts world, we've basically already won.  If we pull RC3 ... well, let's just say it's going to get challenging!)

I needn't rehash the history of the nanotechnological revolt that nearly wiped the galaxy clean of our civilization beyond this world - once our homeworld, then our throne world, and now our planet-sized prison.  Suffice that the cleansing was not quite complete:  We had long believed that some remnants have been left at other stars beyond our own, and out at the galactic rim, beyond the Ssssslan nebula, at the green star of Rayden, our beliefs were proven out by the lonely Sakkra scout exploring its people's back lines.  At the arid planet Rayden II, as habitable and as large as Celtsi VI, though much closer to its star, the ruins of some of our ancient cities still survive, and descending among them, the Sakkra found, in addition to the potential wealth of knowledge still to come...


(I [EDIT: figuratively cracked up literally laughing; pedantic self-correction is fun sometimes...] when I saw this.  The first race to reach an Artifacts world gets a free tech, not necessarily from their tree, and up to 10 tech levels ahead of their best current technology.  As hinted above, this could have been utterly game changing.  Instead ... it retroactively "wasted" the research I'd put into Barren technology, and gave us the benefits of that technology a little early.)

(With our first-tier planetology research completed for us, we get to pick a new tech in the field, now including the second tier.  Possible options would include Controlled Tundra Environment, Improved Terraforming +20, Controlled Dead Environment, and Death Spores.  We got the middle pair as options, and since Controlled Dead would only let us colonize one extra smallish world in an unimportant strategic position ("last resort" Misha) whereas +20 to the population cap on all our excellent present and future worlds is tremendous for our swift-breeding Sakkra, taking the quicker tech was an easy call.)

...a fully-intact prototype for a colony base our ancestors designed specifically for life on barren worlds, accomplishing with a few days' reverse-engineering what Sakkra scientists had been laboring to duplicate for years, supposing that further years of still-greater effort lay ahead.  In response, the entire Sakkra research corps threw a party.  Far from being disappointed that their work had been superceded, they were looking forward to spending the huge new research budget they'd just been assigned to get started on new advanced terraforming labs...

(Here I'm moving several clicks of spending from Planetology to Propulsion.  Notice that the LED is lit for Planetology:  That's because we haven't yet invested anything in our new project (IT+20, shown in white on the left side of the screen, with completed techs, including the free one we get at game start, above it in blue) so anything we spend is "lab building" to seed future research rather than bonus-generating payments to "staff and expand the existing labs."  The LED for Propulsion isn't lit because this is the first time all game I'm putting anything into that field.)

...and another pilot project, this time in Propulsion.  Rayden and its artifacts were five parsecs from Sssssla, and equally far from the other nearest star - the red giant Kronos, also along the nebula rim, whose star system included a small arid planet of its own - so claiming them with a standard colony ship would depend on developing advanced fuel cells, and the First Speaker was eager to know if such a thing would be possible.

(There are two [EDIT:first-tier] Propulsion techs:  Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4) and Deuterium Fuel Cells (Range 5).  They extend the operational range of your starships away from your planets to the number of parsecs listed (plus three for ships with reserve fuel tanks like our Scouts).  Non-Psilon races like us have equal chances of having Range 4, Range 5, or both available in any given game; the Psilons, in addition to their other research advantages, are more likely to have more options in their tree:  Here, they would have a 60% chance of having their choice of both techs, and thus a 20% chance of each of the two alone.)

Rayden was a back-lines star, so with critical forward bases like Obaca to claim (almost certainly by way of Kulthos) developing the necessary range to reach Rayden didn't have immediate urgency, but it would be important to the success of the Sakkra people to develop it in good time and get the planet's ancient secrets working for them.  So when their propulsion engineers presented plans for the deuterium fuel cells that could one day carry their colonists there, it led to still further rejoicing.  Sssssla's people resumed the factory projects they had put on hold for a year to get their new projects' early labs built, but continued to contribute scientists and laboratory engineers to keep the work going.  The Cygni colonists, of course, with the rich minerals of their world, hadn't even paused their factory work for a moment.


(I had intended to take a picture of the galactic map as soon as I'd scouted everything in range, but with the excitement of finding Rayden, I forgot until 2316.  Note I've labeled Orion here - don't send any more scouts there! - as well as presumed Mrrshan space.)

The remaining years under the First Speaker of the OSG-37 were quiet:  Factories going up on both worlds, together with steadily-growing research work at Sssssla - and of course, these being Sakkra, enormous amounts of breeding.  There were no further encounters with other races' fleets, and no other emergencies.  Whether the Cygni gambit would pay off remained to be seen, but when the First Speaker's term expired in 2320, all seemed quiet, and even promising.  Cygni VI was just a couple years away from completing its factory infrastructure, and would then be able to quickly turn out a colony ship for Kulthos and barren-equipped versions for Obaca and Reticuli, both of which would be within fuel range of a Kulthos colony-to-be.  Delaying the push to the center of the galaxy in favor of the Cygni colony was a risk - just as, in a different way, establishing a forward base on mineral-poor Kulthos III while delaying Cygni would have been - but if the Mrrshans and the other peoples of the galaxy would give the Sakkra a little more time, the gamble looked like it was going to start paying off in a big way.

[RefSteel]

Notes for the Second Speaker - AKA the next emperor:

- First and foremost:  PLEASE do NOT feel obligated to write such an in-depth, story-style and/or ... uh ... lengthy report as I did!  I mean, you can if you want to (and have time) for some reason, but I do these because I love writing (and I'm crazy) - not to set a precedent.  (I usually don't take the first turnset in an SG, partly for this very reason.)

- Most of our Scout ships are available right away, but we have one still en route back to Kronos; it will arrive next turn.

- There are a number of ways you could optimize population growth here that I haven't bothered to do (mainly taking advantage of Celtsi's fertility by keeping it just below its max population so it can grow people every turn).  We're lizards, so we're going to have plenty of population either way.

- Note the white star that our Scouts can reach that hasn't yet been scouted.  That's because it's Orion; any Scout we do send there will be destroyed, just as one has been already.

- We'll probably want more scouts ready to fan out to more-distant stars once we have a fuel base at Kulthos (and later Obaca and Riticuli) to give them range.

- I'd recommend increasing research steadily - and perhaps immediately - from Sssssla:  We should be sending popluation to our new worlds from there soon, so new factories are likely to be idle.  On the other hand ... we are Sakkra.  Idle factories won't stay idle long.  Still, our current research projects will be very valuable for us when they come in.

- Any other questions, comments, or criticisms around my strategy or the game situation are welcome!

- The save, in 1oom DOS format, is zipped attached to this post!  If you're using 1oom 1.0 for Windows (or, I think, a Linux build; I haven't compiled one yet myself) you can just rename the file from 1OOMSAV6.BIN to 1oom_save6.bin and you should still be able to load it normally.  If there are any difficulties getting it to work, please say so - hopefully I or someone else can figure out what's wrong!

Roster:
- RefSteel (just played)
- DaveV (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
- haphazard1 (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
- jez9999 (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!")
- You if you're another player who wants in (UP if you're first to post a "Got it!"  The rotation isn't set just yet!)

[DaveV]

Not a "got it", because I want to clear up any version questions first. I still think I'm running the vanilla version of 1oom for windows. Here's the initial screen, which says 1oom v1.0. I'm sure other people are just as bad at updating version numbers as I am, but this leads me to think I have the base version.

Yet the new game screen has a lot more options than what Ref showed in his DOS version. While this may just be a Windows vs. DOS difference, I would like to be sure before I create an incompatible save or cause some odd AI behavior.

Note: I was able to load Ref's save after renaming it.

Edit: nevermind, I have the light-up numbers Ref referenced, rather than the little light-up squares. So I guess I don't have the original version. The notes on GitLab reference a bug with soil enrichment (+5 max population increase, instead of +5 minimum), so it is probably worth using a version with a fix for that.

[haphazard1]

Quite an eventful (and entertaining) opening. Nice turns and report, RefSteel!

Fertile and rich compared to poor? I agree that spending the time to re-route the colony ship was the right move. The strategic position closer to the center of the galaxy will be important, but having our second world be that much stronger is a tremendous boost. Hopefully the cats will give us enough time to colonize towards the center of the map.

The RNG is just messing with our heads. Nothing but Controlled Barren in tier 1, and then we get it from an artifacts world? This game could have gone in some VERY different directions with the free tech pulled from Rayden. The net result was pretty small. IT+20 and range 5 are both going to be very useful, so our relative lack of choices has not hurt us too much so far. We are going to need better clean up tech of some sort; I really hope that does not turn into a long term problem.

How quickly do the AIs start sending out armed scouts? It has been a while since I have played MOO, and usually I just sort of feel when to start expecting it based on turns played. Since we are rotating turn sets, that is not going to apply; anyone have an idea in game years?

(Looks at galaxy map) Seven additional already habitable worlds scouted at the end of the opening turn set? Two of them rich and one artifacts? If we can somehow grab and hold just those, our fast-breeding lizards should be most of the way to a winning position. That assumes the Psilons do not have free run on half the galaxy, of course, but given the yellow star layout we can hope they get squeezed early.

[RefSteel]

Here's the initial screen, which says 1oom v1.0. I'm sure other people are just as bad at updating version numbers as I am, but this leads me to think I have the base version.

Yet the new game screen has a lot more options than what Ref showed in his DOS version. While this may just be a Windows vs. DOS difference, I would like to be sure before I create an incompatible save or cause some odd AI behavior.

Amusingly, I have about ten different versions of 1oom lying around, and as far as I can tell, though many of them show "1oom v.10" on the title screen, (the latest ignatius version I have does look different, with some extra identifying letters and numbers) ... none of them have quite the same new game setup screen you showed! Fortunately...

Note: I was able to load Ref's save after renaming it.

...they all seem really good at reverse-compatibility! I just checked, and the 1oom 1.0 build on my xp machine was able to load a save generated by the latest ignatius build I have too! So in the absence of any achievable standard, I'd say go ahead and play with whatever version of the game you can get working; just make sure bugfixes are enabled, and we'll try to avoid or deal with the various 1oom versions' introduced bugs as they happen, since it seems like some exist in every version and none are still being maintained.

I'm definitely holding out for kyrub + SDragon's next time there's a game though, for exactly these reasons. If, instead of saying, "I find myself falling back on kyrub's patch" three weeks(!) ago, I'd said "Definitely use kyrub's patch. That's what we've been using for all our Imperia and Succession Games for years" ... we'd probably have played and finished this game by now (and started on a new one if we wanted) instead of discussing which version to use for weeks on end!

How quickly do the AIs start sending out armed scouts? It has been a while since I have played MOO, and usually I just sort of feel when to start expecting it based on turns played. Since we are rotating turn sets, that is not going to apply; anyone have an idea in game years?

I find it depends on which race I'm facing, how far away they are, and what lies in between. In this case, I haven't sweated it because I think the Mrrshans need both range tech and Controlled Environment tech before they'll take an interest in Obaca, and I don't expect cats to get there quickly. I've seen kyrub's AI start escorting colony ships as early as the 23teens though, so if I thought we had contested habitable worlds and we were playing 1.4M, I'd probably advise building fighters of our own. That said, the cost of fighting Mrrshans early is so high that I'd only contest a star they wanted only if I felt it was vital to the survival of our empire.

[DaveV]

To keep the game moving, I'll call "got it." I'll also spoiler my posts until we verify that someone else will be able to load my save file.

[haphazard1]

we'd probably have played and finished this game by now (and started on a new one if we wanted) instead of discussing which version to use for weeks on end!

This was always going to be an issue the first time anyone attempted to use 100m for an SG. You are probably right about the time, though.

Good luck, new Speaker DaveV! Lead lizard-kind to glory!