OSG-37 - 1ooming Lizards

[RefSteel]

Thanks for being patient with me while I play the turns.  I'm still just halfway through my set (taking way too many pictures and reporting at too much length as I go along) and the turns ended up going in a very different direction than I expected.  I'll try to get the save and the rest of the report up tomorrow, but for now, here's what I've got so far:

Encrypted Report:  Critical Developments to 2431

I managed to tap into a feed from a Sakkra science complex and learned their research priorities.  The sheer quantity of technological research to which they were committed - a large fraction of it apparently in the distant Rayden system alone - was eye-opening, but I was not deceived by the changes made by their so-called Twelfth Speaker last year.


(Actually continuing to seed Construction here with such research as I can spare, because Zortium will be a big deal, but our first-ever eco restoration tech is critical, so I'm pushing it as high into the percentages as I can while still getting "bonus" research on every RP.)

The tiny token funding they're trickling into their weapon and force field projects - the ones with the most military-sounding names - conceals the fact that they expect a breakthrough in each field within just a few of their years with no more funding than this - as well as the fact that their "trickle" amounts to tens of billions of credits every year at this research rate.  As for their highest research priority, to advance their ecological restoration techniques, it may sound peaceful and even laudable but in practice what it means is that more of their Sakkra workforce will be freed from the necessity of cleaning waste manually, and made available for other duties - especially military duties - increasing the effective productivity of their developed worlds by more than fifty percent at a stroke!  And as of early 2431, that potential has been realized:  The image I captured of the planetology lab's report was lost when my device's image processing software crashed without warning, but fortunately the rest of the machine was not affected, and I was able to restore the software soon thereafter.  For a moment, I was terrified that I had been found out - that my computer had been compromised by Sakkra security - but I checked the system and everything was working fine ... and of course if it had been compromised, I wouldn't be alive today.  My memory didn't crash at least, so I can report that the Sakkra planetologists are focusing now on advanced techniques for enriching their already-habitable worlds' soil, to grow richer crops and therefore yet more of their disgusting, egg-hatched millions, in lieu of another small incremental increase in their terraforming abilities.


(Collassa will be terraformed up to +40 long before these transports arrive, and we're generally going to need more people all over this part of space.)

The Sakkra cruisers and transports rushing out toward our space are probably meant to be threatening, but I was able to get access to their dispatch orders, and the cowardly fleets are all either Crocodile cruisers headed for Sakkra worlds that have no armed defensive fleet or transports to add yet more lizard-spawn to their farthest colonies.  They don't have the will or the resolve to dare our invincible defenses:  These movements are threatening in potential, for a future toward which they're building up strength, but not in present reality.  There's no need to panic over them:  Just come up with a plan to crush the loathesome creatures in their eggs!


(Notice the yellow Construction bulb is lit to partly lit to "two bars" (you can see the "lit" portion is twice as tall as in last year's view of the tech screen) - one very general rule of thumb when aiming for maximum bonus research is to "seed" a tech you want until the bulb is lit to this point, then drop to just the full bonus spending (where the LED is just barely lit).  Remember though that like all rules of thumb, it's a bad idea to assign it too much (or indeed any) importance in itself.  When you're back-tracking for an early tech, for instance, you may want to get it out of the way ASAP and ignore the research bonus.  And you can see that in Planetology, since our research budget per turn can be expected to remain consistently high until we win the game, I'm putting in just a trickle of research while I seed Computer technology.  I do this to get the ball rolling on a tech, to at least start getting some bonus research when I can't afford to do proper seeding.  I'll also slow down Computer research before it hits "two bars" because I don't expect our research budget to grow fast enough to make that fast a run at both Construction and Computers so nearly simultaneously as would happen if I did.  Rules of thumb always have to take a back seat to strategic considerations.)

It's vital that we attack with devastating force - with much better fleets than we've been wasting on Kulthos all this time - before the threat of their potential can be realized.  Consider the research fields where their scientific efforts have been focused:  The Warp Dissipator their "propulsion engineers" are nearly ready to prototype is not a means of propelling ships, but an anti- propulsion weapon!  The construction project their materials engineers have been pursuing so zealously has nothing to do with factories and everything to do with strenghtening the armor on their assault troops, military bases, and attack ships!  And the computer plans they've started to fund heavily this year are not for any civillian use, but a battle computer twice as powerful as the one they received in trade from the Bulrathi last year!  The danger to our people hasn't materialized yet, but if we wait to stop it, it may soon be too late!

Encrypted Report:  Critical Developments, 2432

(The last three techs on this list are two tiers past Neutron Blasters, available because of the Fusion Beams we stole during DaveV's turns, and there are arguments for all three:  Stinger Missiles are a huge upgrade over our Hyper-Xes, doing nearly twice the damage, moving nearly twice as fast, with and additional +2 to hit (for a total of +3) - and Fusion Rifle would be a major upgrade for our ground forces, especially since we have neither of its predecessors.  But each of them has been teched already by at least one of our enemies, and I'm hoping we can get them for ourselves through espionage or trade, whereas Megabolt Cannons are absolutely unique, with their +3 native to-hit bonus on a beam, and they're easy to miniaturize on top of that.  Overall, they're one of my favorite weapons in the game.  And we might even - maybe - have a chance to deploy some of them before we win!)

The Sakkra weapon labs turned out a neutron blaster design earlier this year, but when you consider that they've already been deploying fusion beams aboard their Crocodile cruisers for more than a decade, you'll understand why I didn't think the news worthy of its own transmission.  All indications suggest that they're about to start work on a hyper-accurate beam weapon more powerful than the basic mount for either of these, under the project codename "Megabolt," but fortunately completion is a long way off for now.


(This is likely to be overkill even after Escalon is fully terraformed, so I'll have to (remember to) send some transports away to another star just before they arrive.  That's playing with fire to a certain extent, but I really want more lizards out in this corner of the galaxy, and I do trust myself to remember this, in spite of everything else going on.  Plus the overkill shouldn't be too severe!)

Meanwhile, the exodus from Kulthos continues, with half its population approved for transport passes this year, all bound for the Escalon colony.  Disgustingly, the lizards' terraforming capabilities are so extensive that they've been able to open up enormous tracts of Rana's radiated surface to colony domes as well - a surface radiated by their own industrialists in an accident of titanic proportions - and no doubt huge numbers of the lizards would be petitioning every year for the right to travel there if radiation levels weren't still so severe.  Even as it is, amid that self-made wasteland, the population is breeding like Sakkra and may yet populate the whole world on their own again!  If only the Bulrathi would teach our troops to fight on such irradiated worlds so we could invade and take the planet's riches from the scaly filth....

Encrypted Report:  Critical Developments, 2433

Why wasn't the fleet recalled?  What did they think they were doing?  What did they think they could accomplish at Kulthos now apart from getting killed?


(Okay, so if you want to see an example of how not to design a battle cruiser, check out that Warcat - bearing in mind that 4 of that +5 to hit comes from the Mrrshans' innate ability, and the other comes from the Battle Scanner ... the latter being about the only thing the AI got right with this ship!)

As I'm sure you know by now, their Crocodile stuck around to help take out one of our Warcats before the over-cautious pilot retreated in the face of a cloud of missiles it could probably have dodged without trouble.  What you may not know is what the pilot transmitted back to base, which I managed to decrypt from a military records database after it was sent here to Kronos:  "May as well.  They can't get past our bases, and really, if they insist on paying maintenance on obsolete trash like those ships, who are we to stop them?"


(Class 6 shields would have allowed us to build ships that were completely immune to scatter packs, among other things, but I felt the Class 4s I'd already acquired via trade would be enough for a while, and if everything goes to plan, we'll be invading aliens' worlds soon, and glad of the extra bonus for ground combat we can get here.)

What you might not yet have heard is that Sakkra scientists just made another breakthrough in force field technology, and the repulsor beam they just developed will give their ships a way to keep any bombers or spore ships we build away from their bases indefinitely, unless we can blast them out of space with missiles or heavy beams.  For now, we can still do that - and fortunately, they aren't pursuing shields that would make them virtually immune to our current weaponry - but the window may be closing, and worse, they've started pursuing apsorption shield technology for their murderous, slavering, cold-blooded marines.  This can only mean they're planning invasions:  Planning to take the war to us, at our own worlds, unless we can crush them before they have the opportunity!



They're distracted for now by their new colonies in the corner of the galaxy farthest from our battle lines with them, even now sending refugees from the Rana accident on from Paladia to Denubius, to take the place of the many former-Denubiusians now polluting the surface of Hyades - but that won't last.  The disgusting egg-layers breed so quickly, they'll soon have all their worlds fully populated, and hold a controlling veto over all the High Council's decisions, even as they make war against our people!  They must be stopped, and soon!

Emergency Encrypted Burst Transmission

The Sakkra have warp-5 engines!  The Sakkra have impulse drives!!


(My first spy success on any of my turns this game, against the Psilons, had all fields available except Planetology, and I knew exactly what I wanted.  There was a chance that I would have wound up with just Hydrogen Fuel (Range 4) - I'd tried in vain to trade for it back in 2430 to eliminate that possibility, but saw no deal I could accept - and Uridium fuel (Range 8) was another semi-worthless possibility, but the Psilons also had Inertial Stabilizers ... and these.  Ships with Impulse Drives will be nearly twice as fast as our current fleets, and our transports will double in speed.  All those little incremental bonuses to our computer tech level may or may not have made the difference here, but we hit the jackpot either way.  Instead of framing someone, I hit the Esc key, hoping/believing that it would cause our spies to escape cleanly without alerting the Psilons that anything happened, and without framing anybody.)

I had to take enormous risks to confirm it, but it's true!  A Ranan agent made it all the way to Whynil, the farthest Psilon world from Sssssla that's within the cold-bloods' range, found a way into a top-secret propulsion laboratory, and came away with plans for the most-advanced warp engines in the galaxy!  Once they build new ships, every world in our empire is within their one-year striking range!  We have to act fast!  We may be too late already!

Encrypted Report:  Follow-up, 2434

Our allies are coming through for us - may they be soon enough!  With 310 Falcon and Foxbat fighters, 60 Space Gull destroyers, and 5 Wareagle cruisers, with their advanced computer and weapons technology, they'll be able to threaten Obaca more than our current fleet possibly could, when they arrive in six years' time.  We'll have to coordinate with them though, and pray to Bastet that our efforts don't come too late!

Emergency Encrypted Burst Transmission

This is the end.  We should have stepped on the insects while we could.


(This was probably a mistake:  The Klackons are so far behind, running a one-planet empire, that I should probably have given them Advanced Eco instead.  Still, I'll gladly trade a repulsor beam for Doom Drives.  In case you're unfamiliar, "Doom Drives" was Maniac Marshall's nickname for any combination of engines and stabilizers that allows 4 spaces of movement per round on the combat screen:  Enough to reach the planet in two moves, and to literally outrun scatter-pack rockets.  And as of now, we have them.)

They traded their inertial stabilizer design to the RBO-37 in for a repulsor beam, and whether or not that thrice-accursed lizard device can protect them from the Sakkra fleets, it won't do anything to protect us!  I may as well send the image I stole from their scout database earlier this year:



The rich, fiery world of Moro Prime, at the neutron star at the farthest edge of the galaxy from their home, may be added to their empire soon, but that doesn't make a difference; nothing makes a difference now, because there are other stars they'll be adding to their empire:  Ours.

The rest of this set may go ... a little differently.

[haphazard1]

Looks like some very eventful turns, RefSteel. Faster drives stolen from the Psilons, the new repulsor beams becoming available, and neutron blasters should give us an amazing fleet for ship to ship battles. The shift to offense is just about here, sounds like.

I might have gone for the Stinger missiles, since they would be such a big improvement to our defenses. But megabolt cannon is a very good choice as well. Hopefully we can pick up the stingers from one of the AIs with some classic pointy stick reearch.

Very good turns so far, and an entertaining write up as usual. Nice work!

[RefSteel]

Thanks, Haphazard!  And, hopefully better late than never, here's the rest:

Encrypted Report:  Follow-up, 2435

I've seen no action worth mentioning from our people, as if my emergency report made no impression on anyone!  Still, I'm completing my report in case it's not too late, in case it's of use to anybody.  It seems that at the time of the exchange that brought stabilizers to the Sakkra, a small trade agreement - some forty billions per year - was also established between the two cold-blooded races of the galaxy.  That hardly matters to our future though.  All that really matters is this:


(Named for Ouroborus cataphractus, the "armadillo girdled lizard."  Via Byzantine nicknames from another part of the forum.)

I had to crawl through a series of disused maintenance tunnels, hack the security controls on three different access doors, and connect to a Sakkra military logistics internal network while curled up into a tight ball under a lizard deputy commander's table with the cold bloods' deadly military police marching by within a few meters of my hiding place, taking the risk of the deputy commander returning at any moment with his staff, to get this image of the Phract 5.0's blueprints, just so you can see the danger.  With stabilized impulse engines, a mark-2 computer, and the best maneuverability possible for a ship with those specs even in theory - and nothing else at all but their fusion bomb bays - they're an utterly typical weapon for these horrible, cold-blooded creatures:  Completely expendable, and devaststatingly deadly.  Spaceyards at mineral-rich Sakkra worlds can turn out dozens of these every year to burn our missile bases down in thermonuclear fire.  Please - please gather our fleets and build newer, better ones to face this new and deadly threat!  If this war goes on the way it has been, wasting our ships on ineffectual attempts against the Kulthos colony, what hope will we have against these?

Encrypted report:  Critical developments, 2436

They've build hundreds already - almost four hundred fifty Phract bombers, all over Sakkra space, all arriving at stars surrounding our colonies!  Their old, slow Monitors have all hit the scrap heap to help feed their imperial war machine, and the 5.0 version that just replaced them all is already being deployed toward Alkari worlds to identify weaknesses in their fleets!  Only their lone Vipercol 5 cruiser, just completed at industrially-irradiated Rana earlier this year, has a nominally-peaceful purpose, and even that will claim another shipyard world for the endlessly-greedy, endlessly-expanding, endlessly-breeding lizards!  Hateful though the egg-laying rat-wings may be, we must continue to work with the Alkari, preserve our alliance, and combine forces with them to defeat the true enemy!  I hear rumors all the way out here in the remote Kronos system that they've broken with us, or we with them, but this cannot be true!  It must not be!  Only by uniting against the terrible cold-bloods can we ever hope to purge them from the galaxy!

Encrypted report:  Critical developments, 2437

There is little I can tell you now except to send my congratulations on our great victory ... and my condolences for our sickening defeat.  Of course you knew of the second before I did, when the rumors I heard last year proved all too true and the Alkari treacherously violated their alliance and the fleet they had visiting our Xudax colony destroyed all its defenses at the expense of almost - but not quite - all the ships they had on station.  Their assault transports are on the way already, as I can now see from galactic maps I've stolen from the Sakkra, and I don't see how we can save the colony.  It seems we are lost whatever we do ... so there is all the more reason to celebrate when we win a battle for a change!


(Here you see me making the critical mistake that lost the battle for me.  Doom Drive ships are actually faster than scatter-pack rockets, but flying around them to bomb the planet that's firing them is a little tricky.  I thought I could sneak past that cloud of missiles (normally, when flying the way I did, you can; I'm actually not sure why it didn't work here - except that it had been a long time since I did this, and I just assumed it would work instead of trusting to the appearance of the screen, which made it look like some of the missiles were too close and might hit my ship if I flew in toward the planet.  Because we can outrun these rockets, there was no harm in just flying around for a better pass, but I cut the corner a little too close instead and paid the price.  Our Phract 5.0s are so agile I might actually have won in spite of this, except that - I think because of a bug triggered when the Crocodiles retreated, but I'm not sure what causes this to (rarely) occur - the missiles got a free turn after I'd dropped just a couple of rounds of bombs, and blew up the rest of my Phracts.  Not my finest turn to say the least, but it did shake some of the rust off, and in the position we'd reached at this point, it's not like we can actually lose the game.)

Thanks to our brilliant defensive tactics, the first wave of Phract bombers to reach Crypto were all destroyed:  A good three quarters of the number they built two years ago!  I know we lost a few of our bases, but as long as the rest hold strong, we can still take the fight to the Sakkra - and we've got to!  If we wait, or just send more fleets that can't even crack their bases, they'll just build more killer ships - and more, and still more - until they can flatten all our defenses completely!  We have to build the best attack force we can and strike for all we're worth!

One last thing before I send this:  I've seen some more activity at the missile bases here on Kronos II; I can't be sure, but I think they're installing new alternate payloads for their missile tubes.  If so, it's vital that we know what it is and how they got it, so I'm going to take a risk and try tapping into the base comm archives to find out when and how the new design reports came in.


(Weapons was the only field available this time, against the Mrrshans - and I went ahead and framed the bears to reduce the chance and impact of any last-minute alliance shenanigans.)

No - no!  Their spies infiltrated our homeworld and got away with the plans for our scatter-pack rocket defenses!  Worse yet, the report I'm looking at suggests they were able to hack our security software to show Bulrathi agents breaking into the lab in their place!  Don't blame the Bulrathi - they're on our side!  It's the cold-bloods who did the deed!  They somehow ... wait ... but if they could break our central weapons lab security algorithms, the most powerful we possess, then wouldn't the software agents on this machine, and my encryption protocols be kittens' play fo

"Personal Journal," 2437

Yes, I know you're reading this, you despicable foul-scaled egg-spawn.  Do you think you're funny, giving me an electronic journal to "keep me entertained" while I rot in this glorified prison?  Yes, I know you've probably dug all the secret messages I sent back home out of my electronic equipment by now if you didn't have them already - I didn't realize how advanced your computer counter-espionage technology had grown, but I know now.  If you think I'm going to ask how long my system's been comprised or how many of my encrypted transmissions ever reached their destinations, don't bother waiting:  I'm not going to give you the satisfaction, and I have a feeling I already know.  Of course I get to see plenty of those bloodthirsty soldiers who interrupted me just as I was recording my sudden realization that you could have done exactly what you obviously really had - as if I have any more animus for them than the rest of you disgusting scalies.  And really, thanks for the entertaining media you keep sending my way!



So your new Monitors have seen the Alkari fleets and Nyarl and Talas?  Big deal.  There aren't any Sparrowhawks in that fleet that's coming after you anyway - thank goodness, since they're five-payload nuclear missile boats designed by an actual dodo that had suffered severe trauma to whatever once existed of its brain.  Yeah, your bases are immune to their Foxbats' Hyper-Vs, and all their missile boats are built with duralloy for whatever idiotic reason, but those Space Gulls carry a two-rack of stinger missiles each, and some of those can hit you even through your ECM and still do damage through all your shields!  And most importantly, you have no scans of their Falcon fighters and Wareagle cruisers!  You're not as invulnerable as you think!  Sure, you know Nyarl's well defended and Talas - with less than a third of Nyarl's base count and less than half its factories in spite of a higher population and terran environment - must be at least as poor in minerals as your terrible Kulthos colony, but that won't matter if we and the Alkari both can hit you where it counts!  You'll see!

"Personal Journal," 2438:

Yeah, go ahead and rub it in.  I'm sure it's even genuine footage:  It's not like it makes a difference whether you have trash like that anyway.


(Weapons was the only option again with the cats.)

Anti-missile rockets aren't scaring anyone, and it's not like we were making any headway convincing the Bulrathi to attack you anyway.  Framing them was just gratuitous and unnecessary.  And sure, maybe you have some more bombers.  If you say so.  Not like you're surprising me.



Yeah, I'm sure your Phract 5.1s are a big upgrade and everything with that battle computer you got from the bears in that trade eight years back.  I'm sure all the miniaturization that made them possible is just making your ugly scales shine.  But let's be real:  You could have done the job with the 5.0s just as well.  This is overkill if we can't stop you dead, and it won't help you if we do!  And what's that?  Am I skipping something?


Did your blue-scaled fiends come up with some stupid new technology for freezing ships in space?  Who cares?  And how's that future research treating you?  No ion engines, I noticed.  No nothing except more fuel you don't need and those so-called intergalactic star gates I'll bet you're not even bothering to research even after you chose them.  How does that make you feel?

"Personal Journal," 2439:

Ooooh, are the asteroid positions inconvenient for you again down at Crypto?  Awwww too bad for you.  I sure hope your pilots aren't careless again about where they fly, because that could mean...


(Here is a picture of my bombers doing it right.  I'll describe the general idea of the flight paths if I can find the time to illustrate it properly later on, but the point is, we can outrun their missiles; as long as we make sure not to run into them, and bend back toward the planet only when there's an appropriate opportunity - while making those opportunities happen as much as we can - then we get results more like these.  The Crocodiles also did some damage to the enemy fleet, but didn't much matter to the outcome in the end since we've gotten a bunch of technology since jez9999 designed them, and they're already quite obsolete.)

...bah.  You can't scare me!  This could be ... you ... what about those three Crocodiles of yours?  Did they get destroyed, or did we force them to run off scared into hyperspace?  Either way, you can't pretend you're all strong and scary!



And what kind of propoganda piece is this?  Why waste it on me?  I don't care if you're living in metal-rich volcanoes on the far end of the galaxy.  If you want me to believe you're having mercy on our Cryptonians by refraining from bombing them, I'll just laugh in your face:  I know very well what you're up to!  You may have me imprisoned, but you'll never break the fighting spirit of the Mrrshan people!  We're not afraid of you!  We'll never stop fighting after all you've done, you filthy breeders!



......Lies!  Nothing but lies!  You edited that transmission together with your high-tech computer hacking abilities!  Shandra would never, never offer you peace!  And she'd already know you would reject it if she even wanted to, which she wouldn't, so she wouldn't offer it doubly!  These are nothing but lies!  Go away!


(This could actually be a very close fight, with a very real chance of failing to conquer the planet with this first wave, with just 127 of our troops against a hundred and odd chage of theirs.  I'd definitely recommend sending a follow-up wave, at least from Kulthos, on the inherited turn.)

Oh.  Okay.  Yeah, that you're launching an invasion force from four different worlds to outnumber our Cryptonians with your egg-spawned horrors?  That you're going to kill hundreds of millions of people just to get another world and a lot more factories?  Sure, that I believe.

"Personal Journal," 2440:

Ha!  Thanks to their Alkari pilots, each of those five Wareagle cruisers is more than a match for the tired old Crocodile you've got defending Obaca for you!


(Our Lithium 5.0 smallcraft are ion cannon fighters with a mark-II battle computer, a stabilizer, and our maximum possible maneuverability.)

Yeah, no, I know, your hundred and thirty Lithium Ion fighters and six advanced missile bases are more than enough to deal with everything the stupid birds managed to bring, especially since their Falcons were apparently so out of date, they scrapped the things en route.  Still, I just wanted to point that out!  Nana-na-na-na!  And I see you lost seventeen little fighters in the battle!  That's ... well, okay, practically nothing, especially since you blew up all their Wareagles on the way.  But we're not done fighting!  And whatever else you say about it, this battle was fought in your skies!  You're not ready to take the fight to the Alkari!


(Actually, I was hoping to get their fusion rifle to help with the invasion(s).  Stingers are a good consolation prize though - and they were the only other possibility in Weapons according to our spy reports at the time!)

...I hate you.  And I assume you have more bad news waiting for me.  What did you do, send your stupid ugly fusion bomber fleets down to our homeworld while you were waiting for your transports or something?



Yeah.  Well, then go ahead!  Wipe us out!  Make every other race in the galaxy hate you!  Do what you will; do what you can - but if you're trying to break my spirit, it's not working!

Notes for the next Speaker:

- I dispatched a few fleets that you can still veto if you want:  About half of our force at Fierias plus a bunch of other ships are going to Crypto to help cover our landing transports in case they get some new missile bases and/or fleet built at the last minute.  You can always find the most-recently-dispatched fleets by scrolling to the bottom of the "Fleet" screen.

- I have not sent any new transports this turn - not even from Kulthos - though I definitely would if I were playing on myself.  I left all that up to you.  We do have some transports already in space:  Ten due to boost Moro the turn after next, and 127 due to hit Crypto next year.

- I haven't spent any reserves yet this turn (and you have 2100 in the treasury to play with) though there might be a little left over from last turn in a few places - Moro already has enough to last it at least until the transports arrive, and probably a turn or two longer, but nothing else is quite that extreme.

- I switched our Mrrshan spies to sabotage last turn, and forgot to switch back to espionage this turn after we destroyed their last missile bases.  (We lost the spy anyway, and it probably doesn't matter either way, but I thought I'd mention it.)

- We're winning.  You may have noticed this.  One nice thing about Orion is that there's not really a lengthy clean-up phase, and I'm going to go ahead and call this now:  This is going to be your last turnset in this SG!

- The save is attached!

Roster:

- RefSteel (just played)
- DaveV (UP!)
- jez9999 (on deck ... unless we win the election)
- haphazard1 (kicking back on a really great sunny rock)

[haphazard1]

More good turns and another entertaining write up. Nice work, RefSteel!

Our computer tech is good enough we are getting some solid tech steals (and even framing the Bulrathi for them), we are on the offensive, and once we start invading and taking worlds our position should be just about unstoppable. What do the AI relations look like? If the Alkari are still at war with the Mrrshan, then our attacks on the cats may make them like us enough to get their votes in the upcoming council meeting.

Good luck, DaveV!

[DaveV]

Got it, I should be able to play later today.

Great set, Ref. I agree that this game is effectively over, I'll try not to leave the door ajar for the AIs.

[RefSteel]

What do the AI relations look like? If the Alkari are still at war with the Mrrshan, then our attacks on the cats may make them like us enough to get their votes in the upcoming council meeting.

That's a good question; I'll have to look it up when I can get to my 1oom-friendly computer (unless DaveV answers first). It may indeed be possible that we could win the 2450 election with enough luck and/or diplomacy. If we don't win the 2475 election though (which would be halfway through my next turnset if the game goes that long) it'll be because the Council doesn't meet!

[DaveV]

My set was a pretty passive one: fending off attacks on our planets, building up population and missile bases on our far-flung colonies. Only Moro (our rich Inferno in the lower right corner) and Rayden (our artifact research center in the upper left corner) are lacking missile bases. I've been pumping reserves into both of those planets, the former to build it up, the latter to crank our research. No reserves transferred this turn, but there are probably leftovers in both planets (Rayden's max production is 806, Moro's increases every turn but may well be doubled already).

Turn 2441: Construction research finishes. I choose the ground troop enhancement for our next tech because that's one of our potential paths to victory:



The first wave arrives at Crypto, and ekes out a victory:



We find a single tech in the ruins. Instant missile base immunity to Merculites, yay!



I upgraded the Dragon 5.0 design to incorporate the new shields and armor, which fit with no other changes thanks to miniaturization.

On turn 2446, computer research finished:



I went with the ECM for better protection of our missile bases. Computer tech 6->7 is a pretty minor improvement.

No upgrade to the Dragon since we'd already built one. Later, when our Dragon kept missing Alkari ships, I regretted the three extra levels of computer tech.

On turn 2448, force field research finished. I went for Cloaking Device to move up the ladder. Again, 5->6 is a pretty marginal improvement in shields.



On 2450, the council met again. The Klackons abstained, but everyone else voted for the birds. We had enough votes (16) to block.



What I see as our paths to victory:

1) Slaughter the AIs. The Mrrshan are at war with pretty much everyone, and are probably doomed to die soon. We can probably take on the other AIs, especially if we can knock them out one at a time.

2) Sit back and grow. If we can acquire Atmospheric Terraforming from the bears, and with Advanced Soil Enrichment about to finish research, our planets will be able to grow enormously. We may well pick up enough population to win without any hostilities.

3) Some combination of the above. Invading the bears would be a good way to pick up some of the many techs we want from them. Our ground troop bonus is looking pretty good, and will be even better with Armored Exoskeleton. If the bears are the ones to take Fieras, it will take them a while to build up defenses while probably still having a lot of factories, and we have most of our fleet nearby.

[haphazard1]

Looks like a good turnset, DaveV. Having a blocking vote in the council is very good news, as I do not see any real chance of the AIs defeating us through normal means.

Our fastest path to victory is probably conquering a bunch of AI planets and then winning the 2475 election. But that may take a lot of conquering. It looks like our opponent in this latest council vote was the Alkari, rather than the Bulrathi? That is an interesting change; I guess the birds took over some cat worlds? Or maybe they have better planetology than the bears and grew their population? Identifying who our opponent will be and who might vote for us might help determine who we should attack for more worlds and pop.

[DaveV]

Yes, I wrote down the votes but didn't include them in my report (oops):

Alkari 8
Bulrathi 7
Psilon 5
Mrrshan 2
Klackon 1

[RefSteel]

Very belatedly:  Nice turns, DaveV!  It sounds like you've set us up nicely to pursue victory in a couple of different ways!  Also...

"Personal Journal," 2450:

I just don't get it:  Why am I still alive?  What do you think you're getting from me, anyway?  I don't believe a word of the stories you're sending me about your disgusting race or the galaxy; do you seriously think that's ever going to change?  If you want me to believe you haven't slaughtered all the people of Fierias, then let me meet some Mrrshans who still live there!  You can't do it, can you?  Because you've already murdered them all - or because we stopped you before you could take the world, and you lied about that too and you can't get your filthy, scaly, unretractable claws on any of us apart from me!  How should I know what the truth is when everything I hear has to come through you and all you ever do is lie?  Maybe if you'd dressed things up a little, like pretending you wanted to trick other races into liking you or thinking you're their friends, since you're lying and claiming they're mainly all at war with us anyway, you could also have lied and claimed you were bombing Fierias just a little every year - enough to win the favor of every one of our enemies, but not enough to wipe us out.  That I might have believed, in part because toying with us and torturing us would be right up your alley, as would cruel tricks and lies to deceive other peoples around the galaxy - but it would still fall apart when I realized there's no way our brilliant diplomats would ever have allowed us to fall into war with half the galaxy as you claim we are if they - if our people - were still alive.  That, and I don't believe for a minute that you'd refrain from murdering all of us just to avoid losing your means of cheap diplomatic "brownie points" with other races!  Even when killing all of us would turn all your would-be diplomatic partners against you for committing genocide, I know very well you'd accept that risk for the pleasure - what you call a pleasure - of wiping out an entire intelligent, beautiful, wise, and diplomatically friendly species like mine!

So I don't get it:  What's the point?  Everything I've been taught, from my first moments suckling with my litter-mates, before I could open my eyes, on to the last moment of contact with my people before my insertion on Kronos II, tells me you would commit genocide without the slightest hesitation, that you would torture and kill me for sport even if you could find no other reason for doing so, and ultimately that it would be your disunity and cruelty that destroyed you all; you can't trick me into believing all of that is false just by keeping me locked in a clean and comfortable suite that might as well be a cell, with decent food and water and this journal-recording device and all your fancy lies to watch, dressed up as news media and so on, for just a dozen years or so.  You must realize by now that it's hopeless to try to fool me that way, and as long as you can't, what good am I to you?  All my Mrrshan secrets are more than two decades out of date; all my espionage secrets are more than twelve years old, and anyway you know them all.  If there's a chance that getting my knowledge out to the galaxy - like the fact that the Bulrathi data thieves of the '30s were actually Sakkra in disguise - would actually matter to you, that still doesn't explain anything:  Why bother to leave me alive?  You obviously have some terrible purpose in all this, some diabolical plan that somehow involves me; that much I understand.  But it makes no sense to treat me this way, this long!  What do you intend to do with me?

That said, jez9999, are you around?  Did you know your turn had come up, or were you waiting/hoping for something before you played?

Roster:

- RefSteel (slowly waking up from torpor, apparently)
- DaveV (just played)
- jez9999 (UP!) unless you need a swap or a skip this time around?
- haphazard1 (on deck)