"Humphrey, I beg you to get Central Command to listen. They've not been here, not heard the clacking of mandibles, not seen the actual new slogan carved into the walls of the corridors. That idiot Hacker has translated it 'Friendship is a Two-Way Street', which sounds harmless. Personally, I think a more idiomatic translation is 'Payback Time'."
Part of a message from Bernard Sheeplike, former Human Cultural Attache on Kholdan, to Sir Humphrey Pomegranate, Cabinet Secretary. Reported in "An unfinished history of how the Klackons crushed us like, well, bugs.", Sol University Underground Press.
"It was horrible, hearing that - for the first time since we made contact - not a single alien would talk to the new queen after her coronation. And whose fault is this? It can't be ours - we're the good guys!"
An unidentified Klackon worker to a GNN news-droid, 2430.
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T2430
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Looking at our available tech and targets, the Meklar huge gunships would make it hard to hold orbit around their worlds (that Heavy Fusion ARS design is close to something I would build, although slower), while the Sakkra have Stingers, which we need better drives and/or Stabilizer to beat. Which leaves the cats ...
Priority is holding off incoming (not hard?), and setting up to hit the cats. If we can steal / pillage Fusion Beam or Megabolt, or better drives, then I think it's game over.
I decide now is an OK time to build shields in our backlines - I hate having to scramble if something odd happens.
T2431
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Unity gets Radiated. Bah. Well, we have Atmo to fix it.
T2432
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Spies destroy factories, we get Shields VI, with VII as our only choice at the next tier.
T2433
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I design a huge Ion Gunship as a placeholder and set our largest worlds and Joy to building it.
T2434
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Cats arrive at Unity, and are suckered in by their own superior battle computers - I retreat our lone fighter immediately, but they still let me get a round of Stingers off and on target before they flee.
At Talas, I do commit our fighters against a lone Meklar Tornado with its heavy cannon. After a couple of rounds I retreat them with a handful of losses - and the ship still tries to reach the planet through a wall of Stingers. Ouch for them. The the Sakkra come in, and they are fast so I retreat immediately, still getting the chance to sting a few of their larges to death before they retreat in turn.
T2435
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Armored Exoskeleton is in. I pick IIT4 over Andrium, as we already have Zortium. Might be nice to get this lined up around the same time as Adv Soil if possible ...
Berel is going to go nova.
Humans offer peace ... I don't want to kill them just yet, so I say yes. Of course, this triggers our variant ... but they don't want our primitive inventions (more accurately, they don't have any spare tech to offer us ... only their top-tier drive tech). Peace or not, I keep trying to steal Impulse from them.
T2436
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With no espionage hits on gun tech, and OMG about to come in, I pause ship-building with 2t to go where relevant.
T2437
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OMG-V is in, Auto Blaster is our only choice. Not terrible, but Repulsors could cause us problems.
T2438
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Fight off Meklar at Talas, Sakkra at Celebration - which can now finally start building factories!
T2439
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Meklar continue to come up with genuinely awkwards designs - at least at the ship-to-ship level. The Nexus packs 49 Magabolt's, an auto-repair and a pulsar, with a speed of 2. Fighters are not going to cut it ... we need better engines and a decent heavy beam :-( . It can't scratch our planets, but if they pair this up with something with fusion bombs ...
T2440
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I finally get an espionage hit, against the Sakkra, and I get my choice of any category ... We're a long way through Advanced Soil, so I don't go with planetology. Propulsion and hope for Impulse or Stabilizer? Nope, I for weapons, hoping for one of Blasters, Megabolt or Fusion Beams ... and get Anti-Matter Torpedoes. Sigh. At least it's fairly high level for minaturisation purposes. Maybe it would actually be useful against those Meklar ships, with a hit-and-run design? I've never really used the damn things.
And another hit - against the cats! Only construction available
. IIT9 is deeply unexciting...
Generosity loses five factories to spies ...
Range 9 is in ... and Star Gates are our only option
.
Finally, Berel fixes its sun. Nice.
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Notes for next player:
Any world with a relocation to Talas set up is producing ships / has paused with 2t to go. With the miniaturisation from that last turn I was a bit worried that something might be about to pop, but I did a quick check and can't see any.
So, there is a mass of builds and reserves available - my problem was I didn't feel I could design a good gunship that can deal with Pulsars / Repulsors / ARS. So, I set tech to start feeding Auto-Blasters this turn, but there's nothing actually committed. Advanced Soil should be well on it's way, with IIT4 also fed.
I've done more tweaking on the last turn than I normally would for an SG, because of techs just coming in, but no reserve spending.
Overall, a fairly dull turnset. We should be set to explode though, either in pop / factories or with ships, or both! Oh, and I'm sorry if the little bit of in-character stuff made anyone think I had actually exterminated the humans this set! Hitting them to try to grab Impulse may well be smart, particularly with our poor available selection in Propulsion but I didn't have the heart for it once they offered peace.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
) and the benefit is not so big when compared to the total output of our empire.
