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What an intriguing strategy. Building colonies on worlds so lovely they'd be a net drain on any empire that conquered them.
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Sep 21, 2016 09:01
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wedgekree posted:Yay for the offensive going forwards and slowly grinding the dionsaurs beneath rocky stomped heels. Do you think you've broken the back of thier fleet despite the fact they still have a lot of planets they have and so lon gas attrition is maintained you can whittle away at them or think they could still whip up a substantial reserve? A player could. A player even could still turn this war around, since travel (and therefore war) takes so much time. The AI however is hampered by its urge to throw everything it has against us at every opportunity. So what will happen is the AI will throw the few ships they have against us as soon as we assault new planets and lose them. Rinse, repeat. The only way to make the Raas strong again would be me stopping the war for a couple dozen turns so they can rebuild their fleet. Which of course I won't do, so they're hosed.
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Sep 21, 2016 09:45
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I have no idea how you can stand playing this game. Everything in it seems excruciatingly slow and obtuse. How much play time do you roughly need per update?
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Sep 21, 2016 21:08
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So at this point the setup is maintaining a defensive posture against the Klackons while slowly grinding down the Raas and bombarding or taking thier remaining planets then until you've annihilated them? Or ar eyou planning further expansions against the Klackons as well at this point? Or is it possible in MoO3 to have the surrender mechanic go off like it did in MoO2? You could always have the Psilons surrender to you, get a couple of planets and thier fleet at your disposal to help get a better defensive line.
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Sep 22, 2016 05:42
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sheep-dodger posted:I have no idea how you can stand playing this game. Everything in it seems excruciatingly slow and obtuse. How much play time do you roughly need per update? It's kind of relaxing as long as you don't try to rush yourself. And it's roughly 2-3 hours before my folder for raw pictures reaches about 100 screenshots, which is enough for three updates. So uh, about 1 hour per update I guess? wedgekree posted:So at this point the setup is maintaining a defensive posture against the Klackons while slowly grinding down the Raas and bombarding or taking thier remaining planets then until you've annihilated them? Or ar eyou planning further expansions against the Klackons as well at this point? Or is it possible in MoO3 to have the surrender mechanic go off like it did in MoO2? You could always have the Psilons surrender to you, get a couple of planets and thier fleet at your disposal to help get a better defensive line. Barring surprises like our allies turning against us (which can happen remember we're also really bad at diplomacy), yes that's the plan. And I've honestly never heard about a surrender-mechanic in Master or Orion games. In MO3 I had enemies loving themselves over so badly they broke down in multiple independent empires, but a surrender never happened. Theoretically there's an option for demanding surrender in the diplo screen, but as far as I know that's only for ending a war in a most humiliating fashion. I'll try it out though as soon as the Raas are willing to cooperate. (Right now they're at Holy War and Super-Hate, so it probably wouldn't work.  )About the Psilons, no chance there either: They don't like us and their most hated enemy is the Klackons, so if they give up, they'll surrender to them. If surrendering is possible, that is. I'm skeptical because I had some games running over 400+ turns and this never happened.
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Sep 22, 2016 11:14
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Surrender is a mechanic in Moo2 that lets an AI give all it's research, ships, and planets to another AI. As a player you can also use this and it ends your game. I've never had an AI player surrender to the player so if anyone has more experience, feel free to correct me.
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Sep 22, 2016 19:41
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terrenblade posted:Surrender is a mechanic in Moo2 that lets an AI give all it's research, ships, and planets to another AI. As a player you can also use this and it ends your game. I've never had an AI player surrender to the player so if anyone has more experience, feel free to correct me. I've never had an AI surrender to my empire, either, not in all the excessive hours I've sunk into Moo2. No matter how good my relations were with them, the AI always surrendered to someone else -- either a faction almost as useless as they were, or whomever I was at war with/they were being conquered by. Whether or not we shared borders or were in an alliance didn't seem to affect anything. I don't know if there is a bug in Moo2 that causes this, or if it's working as intended.
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Sep 22, 2016 19:49
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This reminds me, Space Empires V allows you to force AI-players into submission like that. You can also abuse smaller AI-nations (SEV differentiates between "full" AI-players and small 1-star independents who will never leave their home systems), effectively turning them into a conduit funneling techs away from ornery AI-players to you. Because of this you need to either block the smaller nations from spawning or block tech trading, otherwise you're bascially cheating. A later patch added the option to fuse all AI-players into one single federation perpetually at war with every real player. The patch mentioned this option was to make AIs more threatening in multiplayer and I of course had to try this for myself in singleplayer. The effect was interesting: What the setting did was basically make all AI-players operate as if they were just one player, complete with total sharing of intelligence and techs. When I made contact with one AI, all AI-nations across the map started moving towards me, since one of the AIs had the quirk of starting with knowledge of all warp points. And they of course had shared this with everyone, so everyone knew where I was. The AI had also spend the entire time expanding and building up fleets like mad, since they were "at war" with me since the start of the game. Everything combined into me fighting fleets of nearly invincible super-ships creeping in on me from all edges of the map. In short, this option in singleplayer switched the entire SEV-experience around: From being a relaxing, easy but a bit boring experience the game changed into a terrifying survival horror in space against an unbeatable hivemind. I never used this option again. 
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Sep 22, 2016 20:34
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Cool, nice to hear and learn on things mechanics-wise.
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Sep 23, 2016 05:22
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 36: Where We're Going, We Won't Need Star Lanes  Turn 133 starts as usual, with spies stealing us an old tech we no longer use.  But there are also some news from our trusted allies: Imsaies ambassador: “We see you honored us with another offer, but you weren’t convincing enough in your efforts and we would really like to go now!” Bah, maybe next time. Looks like Space TTIP wasn’t ratified in the Annalona Empire.  Assassins and other scum is on the move in the Kingdom. The unrest on Deanton I and Nilus I is unrelated though and already gone by now. Only a couple of cycles more and our new Raas population will be fully integrated.  OK, our fleet moving to Kaff has had enough time, I’m sending in the ground troops. This should give me a couple turns to obliterate every danger to our transports.  On our border to insectoid town the Vchiitri still have their giant fleet hanging around, but the New Orions have send a small peace keeping force. 6 NO-ships can still destroy most fleets we have and since we know the AI bolsters their numbers with tons of weak transport ships, this little fleet could theoretically wreak unimaginable havoc among the Klackon forces. I’m regularly coming here to take a look. The longer this border stays calm, the better. But I’m expecting trouble every turn now.  Our scout ran into some trouble when I send it through that star lane in the north of Juza and I really don’t want to wait until the scout very slowly moves to one of the other still unexplored star lanes, so I’m doing something exotic now: There’s an unknown system just close enough we can risk sending a ship without using a star lane. 11 turns without star lane? That’s rather mild. Let’s do it!  And that was already everything interesting for the last turn. Galactic cycle 201 starts off with spies stealing yet another tech, this time one which could be useful to someone else. (We are using a better one already.) The miniaturized double-gun is an upgrade to fighters using railguns: They can now fire two railguns per fighter. Our neutron-fighters are still better, but that’s a lot of potential firepower an enemy could wring from this tech.  Didi Hallervorden dies again. And we lost one of our old agents. Due to “old age”. More important: One of our scouts has surveyed Bungula-B and our new Raas-colony received an influx of new citizens. And because I'm one dumb motherfucker I just now noticed that I accidentally screenshotted the wrong colony, our boosted Raas-colony Nilus I is just outside the frame here.  Obviously our own spy hackers aren’t up to the task anymore. One just retired himself, time to retire the other leftover: Good bye, agent Beigesang. Time for your “retirement”. Next turn we get a fresh agent and in 11 turns we should have 3 spy hackers. Hopefully that’s enough to stop those stupid dinosaurs from walking away with our blueprints.   Bungula-B and its lane-less neighbor look kind of lonely up here at the edge of the Orion Sector. At least they’re far enough away from everything no-one has had time to colonize them yet.  Bungula-B is kind of eh. The first planet is a joke and while the second doesn’t look good either (Red 2 and toxic would be really bad for everyone else), our Silicoids like high gravity and this planet is large enough to become a nice research/industry center. I’m marking it for future colonization.  Again, the other star in this nebula doesn’t seem to have a star lane connection, but is close enough the travel time isn’t actually painful. 8 turns are pretty drat good for non-lane travel! Our scout immediately springs into action. Explore away, little scout!  Back to the war front. For some reason the AI really wanted to colonize a small, bad rock in the Amoenta system. Of course I immediately disband the colonization task force and switch that colonization marker in Amoenta off. Marking this no-name rock in an enemy system was a bad idea, why did I even do this in the first place? The next auto-colonization task force will now automatically target Bungula-B II, like we want.  With our growing industrial production, we’re starting to face the problem of outdated ships cluttering our reserves. Even though I don’t like to waste all this production effort, I also don’t want to lose battles because I accidentally added ships several generations out of date, so it has to be done. The three oldest designs are scrapped. Two old point-defense designs and one old recon-design are trashed: 7 ships in total will go to the scrapyard inbetween turns.  The inbetween-turns limbo is also the realm of fighting, but nothing interesting happens this time: Two scouts survey some potentially hostile systems, but the defenders don’t bother moving against them.  Turn 135! We get some techs: The Nano Assembly Lines for another upgrade to our industry and Tritan Weave to make our units even more heavily armored. Spy hacker Heimta just got his degree from the Royal Academy of Espionage and joins the ranks of the AIA (Almandin Intelligence Agency).  Bad news for our enemies: Heimta is actually good! Mantle 10 for defense, dagger 7 for offense, luck 40. This should be high enough to stop us from leaking any more techs!  Of course there are also the other agents besides the enemy spy hackers, like the assassin who just killed a bunch of our Captains of Industry. Our production will suffer until next turn. Nodus I gets some more people and my prediction comes true: The next colony ship leaving our shipyards gets automatically send to where we want it to go. AI-manipulation: Success!  I almost forgot about this: Fighter-bombers (Jagdbomber) are completed! They’re essentially super-heavy fighters doing a lot more damage and with enough natural armor they get a small extra damage reduction of 2. After running the numbers it turns out our normal space fighters are still more cost-effective. After a certain point our small space fighters will become too vulnerable though and we will have to change over to the heavier models. We haven't reached that point yet, but we're getting closer.  Galactic cycle 204. Interesting fact: Since galactic cycles are roughly 1,5 Earth-years, the Kingdom of Almandin is now slowly getting to the same age as the USA. Democracy! Also we finally get the fighter double-gun. What? Yeah, it turns out the enemy can also steal technologies stuck in the prototyping phase, before we actually have them!  Otherwise, there’s still bombs going up and unrest spreading to deal with. Also a giant lump of 381 units of colonists lands on Nilus I. I think by now the planet should be saved…  Before looking up Nilus I, let's instead make short step sideways into freshly explored Gryphon: This was some weird edge system the Raas never bothered with. Gryphon I isn’t that bad, so I’m marking it for colonization. Yellow II, 8 regions and very high mineral abundance. Planets like this one are getting exceedingly rare by now.  With this survey done, there’s still yet another star lane to explore in this sub-sector. The scout moves on.  Now it's time to look up what's up with our newest addition: And yes, Nilus I has reached the magical 1000 pop units threshold and we aren’t in danger of losing control anymore. This planet is rather nice for the Raas living on it, so extra-immigration isn’t needed anymore either, the migration-beacon gets switched off. There’ll still be a continuing stream of new Raas coming to this planet, sometimes even from the still existing Dila Empire. One of the reasons why I like playing as big softies in Master of Orion 3: Other big softies won't be able to drain your population by being better than you and fashistoid dystopias will constantly feed your own planets across the border. It's like getting an extra population boost for free!  Nodus I was a hell-hole I once decided to push immigration to a while back. Looking up Nilus I reminded me to finally switch the migration beacon off here too. By now the population is high enough to sustain a fast colony build-up. At this point I had confused Nodus I and Nilus I like three times in one session and decided to look the planet up.  It took a while, thanks to the exponentially raising costs for new tech levels, but we reached the real meat of the fleet: Battlecruisers. In the translation and in vanilla, this class was called “battleship” instead. The battleship is now the next step up and replaces the vanilla Dreadnought (or the awkwardly named “Schweres Schlachtschiff”-class in the German translation). Anyway, we get a larger hull class! Lore: Battlecruisers are the spine of every fleet which wants to be taken seriously. Battlecruisers are 50% larger than heavy cruisers and thanks to state-of-the-art security systems even a half-dead wreck can still deal out severe beatings. Tin pot dictators like to show off by acquiring battlecruisers –even if the money is sometimes only sufficient for the flagship of the fleet.  Some other goodies in the pipeline: Vollständiger Planetenkrustenbergbau (Complete Planetary Crust Mining), a tech to make our mines more effective and the Systemuniversität (System University), which like the Astro University gives huge bonuses to everything in a system. Unlike the Astro University you can only have one System University per system and they can only be built on the planet with the system seat of government. Still, having a System University always helps. If you squeeze one into a system with lots of planets, the bonus can have some truly ungodly effects on your output.  Wait, the star lane from Nodus leads to a guardian-system! Now I remember why I boosted the system so much! This system needs a mobilization center ASAP! We’re still some way off from being able to fight the Antaran Guardian we found, but we’re getting closer. Fun fact: I had to rewrite all parts in this update referring to Nodus I and Nilus I multiple times, since I kept confusing those two planets. Next: Raas-Captain: “Sir, shouldn’t we retreat? Those fighters are giving us hell!” Raas-Admiral: “You coward! Those ships are ancient! We will not retreat from those flying museums! Back to your post!” ~The huge bridge monitor shows a Raas-transport exploding~ Raas-Captain: ”Ugh. Yes sir.” ~Another Raas-ship explodes on the monitor~ Libluini fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 18:44
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So, about those New Orion "peacekeepers." Is that literally what they are? Or do they just wander around pointlessly and that's what you described them as? Because I don't remember them ever doing any "peacekeeping" when I played, and you'd figure that by now if they did any of that seriously, they'd have interfered in you beating up the dinosaurs. Can you request their interference? Or is that too advanced for MoO3?
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Sep 26, 2016 19:24
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PurpleXVI posted:So, about those New Orion "peacekeepers." Is that literally what they are? Or do they just wander around pointlessly and that's what you described them as? Because I don't remember them ever doing any "peacekeeping" when I played, and you'd figure that by now if they did any of that seriously, they'd have interfered in you beating up the dinosaurs. Can you request their interference? Or is that too advanced for MoO3? All those questions will be answered in a couple lore-updates. Trust me, I would have liked giving clear answers a lot earlier, but of course we got sealed off from the core region of the Orion Sector by the Klackons and then mired in a lengthy war with some dipshits on the outer edges. Seriously, if you look at the star maps you'll notice how the Raas are even further out along the edge of the sector, we're basically between them and the core regions. I think after seeing how aggressively the Raas are still colonizing, I may have miscalculated in the beginning: The Raas didn't get angry with us because we were blocking their colonization-efforts (at least it wasn't the whole reason), we blocked them off from contact with the core! You know, the place where Orion itself is. This by the way is the reason why I'm pushing the war against the Raas a lot faster now than I normally would, you'll see the how and why in the next update. Let's just say I'm not keen on wasting 10-20 turns per planetary invasion. I'm also not keen on having a two-front war, so the Klackons and the core have to wait until the Raas are dealt with. Anyway, right now let's just say yes they can be quite aggressive peacekeepers and no, you can't request their interference. Which is good, because the New Orions start the game at tech level 40 (we're at 31 now), have a fully colonized system with lots of high-value planets and a large fleet. Over time they turn less dangerous since they aren't colonizing more planets, but in the early game a visit by them is the worst thing which can possibly happen to you. More and the why has to wait until we actually get close enough to them for some diplomacy!
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Sep 26, 2016 22:16
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The New Orions can (and will) kick your teeth in for most of the game just due to the fact they have about every single tech in the game to start with. Good luck iwth the Raas and otherwise finishing them off to turn your attention to the core and otherwise giving the Klackons a thrashing. Do you have any real idea how thier ships are when it comes to techload and effetiveness in generations compared to your's?
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Sep 27, 2016 05:47
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wedgekree posted:The New Orions can (and will) kick your teeth in for most of the game just due to the fact they have about every single tech in the game to start with. Good luck iwth the Raas and otherwise finishing them off to turn your attention to the core and otherwise giving the Klackons a thrashing. Do you have any real idea how thier ships are when it comes to techload and effetiveness in generations compared to your's? Good news about the Klackons: They have the bad luck of being in diplomatic contact with us, so I can just look up their tech tree every time I want. Generally speaking, they're a generation of tech behind us. Their fleet outnumbers ours by something silly like 4:1, but since the AI fills their fleet with up to 80% transport ships, that means they are roughly on par with us in numbers. For some reason they aren't sending spies to steal our tech, so this gap will stay. I have no idea why I never see Klackon-spies, it's probably either because of hardcoded personality issues or because even though we're at war, we haven't actually fought seriously yet. Maybe the AI needs to feel threatened to open up the faucet of espionage? 
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Sep 27, 2016 11:31
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Are they at war with someone else? You could easily snag up a bunch of techs in moo2 if you focused your spies on AIs that are at war with someone else, since their spies are busy dealing with the enemy.
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Sep 27, 2016 11:51
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Maybe the Klackons just have even more garbage spies than the Silicoids?
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Sep 27, 2016 11:55
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my dad posted:Are they at war with someone else? You could easily snag up a bunch of techs in moo2 if you focused your spies on AIs that are at war with someone else, since their spies are busy dealing with the enemy. Yes, it came up in some earlier updates. They are at war with the Psilons (who are crushed by the Klackons in slow-motion) and with some races we haven't met yet. And now the reasons why we won't send spies to them: 1. Their tech is below ours and they don't have much (actually, last time I checked they had nothing of value whatsoever) we could steal 2. We're also at war with someone. Someone who has better spies, so we have to use our spies to bolster defence 3. Our spies are really, really bad Edit: This playthrough has been an extraordinally lucky one. Until now we got no bad roll (like missing one of our shield-techs, that always hurts) on our tech tree, so there's literally nothing of value we could steal. We're all good! Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 12:07
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If you can get to the core, does that mean the core can get to you?
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Sep 29, 2016 03:03
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Glazius posted:If you can get to the core, does that mean the core can get to you? If by "the core" you mean the people living there, the answer is yes. I'm writing the next update right now and I made some disturbing observations when looking through my screenshots, especially regarding the Klackons, our core-wards neighbours. I don't want to spoil things, but it looks like the core won't come to us for a while yet. 
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Sep 29, 2016 08:50
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Are there any technologies or traits that extend the life of your spies or lets you train them faster?
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Sep 29, 2016 09:30
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There's tech that boosts the stats and loyalty of your spies. At least in the base game. And I think at least one that shortens the time to train them. Then again I never really figured out the tech system in the base game in general so I'm not the one to ask.
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Sep 29, 2016 09:41
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SugarAddict posted:Are there any technologies or traits that extend the life of your spies or lets you train them faster? We already got one which extends life in a way: One of our spy-techs gave us a luck-bonus and since the life expectancy of our spies is just our luck counting backwards to zero, that basically gave every spy a couple extra turns before they expire. I think there's another tech we got which made training slightly cheaper, but I don't remember one which lets us train faster. I'll try to remember looking up spy techs in my next session!
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Sep 29, 2016 10:46
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 37: Dinosaurs On Fire At the Edge of Tomorrow This update was planned for friday, but welp I had to play MO3 today and now I'm like five updates worth of screenshots behind, so I have to step up my game. Another good thing besides your future updates already being made in advance is: I haven't had time to forget about looking up our spy techs. The screenshots are now in the pipeline and will be posted two updates from now! Now back to your regular program.  Turn 137 sees another star lane spontaneously springing into existence, sadly again between two systems we have no contact with. In other news, our outdated fusion cannons can do more damage next turn. Too bad our inferno guns are still outclassing them by a wide margin.  Another one of our agents “retires”, while assassins kill some of our researchers. This event seems to slow down our research a bit, but not enough to lose a turn on our running projects. Our ongoing scouting efforts now encompass the Raas-system of Kindiilar. The never-ending flood of negative spy events have numbed me a bit, I have to confess. As long as it is just one event per turn I can’t even bring myself to take this seriously anymore. “Oh, just a couple of our scientists murdered? Yawn.”  Kindiilar is the gateway to another third of the Dila Empire. It’s highly developed and on the other side of the shortcut connecting the third we’re attacking with this sub-sector. Kindiilar is one of our primary targets in the future: It’s of strategic importance and has multiple highly developed industrial centers. After Kaff is secured, we will swing around towards the lane bridge connecting to Kindiilar, to cut this part of the Dila Empire off from the rest like we did with the systems below Nilus.  Before all of this can happen I need some more data though, this means our scout will continue to explore this part of the Dila Empire.  The obligatory war update: Our fleets are just one turn away from assaulting Kaff and Amoenta. Armies and troop transports follow several turns behind.  It’s combat time again! In my combat planer I select Kaff VII because it has the worse defenses of both planets. In my first battle here I want to crush the mobile defenses first before trying to reduce the planet with the heavier fortifications. As a bonus, with every successful assault we’ll be able to see the strength of the defending ground forces, which means I can freely select the weaker world for my ground assault. Shooting ships in Kaff  The fighting in Amoenta is too boring to justify a video. The only interesting bit is Amoenta V here having planetary batteries and the rapid-fire upgrade. It won’t help the planet.  With our carriers outranging the planetary batteries, the fighting is over so fast I could only screenshot the victory formation of our fighter squadrons in orbit before the battle ended.  A single bombardment later and half the population is dead. All upgrades on the surface are destroyed. The military units are only getting a little bit scratched, though. Ground troops are for some reason really hard to destroy by planetary bombardment. It’s like everyone in the Orion Sector uses civilians as shield. It’s weird. Generally ground troops are only destroyed by bombardment if you leave them there for long enough imperial control is lost. Control-loss and recolonization by the enemy eradicates even the largest armies without a trace. Now that I think about it, that’s even weirder!  Planetary bombardments always look rather flashy, independent from your fleet’s actual capabilities. This one ends similar like the bombardment of Kaff VII: All development and a huge chunk of population are destroyed and some soldiers stub their toes on the rubble. War is not only hell, but also rather unfair.  Galactic cycle 207 begins with a string of victory-messages: Our population celebrates in the streets! It seems the Raas-menace is truly broken.  And again, as always when the Raas lose on the battlefield, they turn to the vile field of espionage to vent their frustrations on us: A bomb blows up many captains of industry (production slowdown) and a spy hacker sabotages our research computers (research slowdown). Highly dramatic events happen, but like real terrorist attacks they’re mostly incapable of doing real lasting harm. And Silicoids aren’t human: Terrorist attacks fail to make them scared, so the Raas are just wasting everyone’s time here. Fun fact: This is even mirrored in game mechanics, because every time a spy event creates unrest, our stoic Silicoids just ignore it for a turn or two and then the upsurge of unrest is already gone. Zero effect. I just love our dumb little rocks!   But enough about terrorism, we also get another important tech in the pipeline: The LARGE shield generators! Shield regen and strength is 50% higher when compared to the standard size. Large shield generators take the double the space and cost twice as much as the standard versions. Perfect for large ships, but not really necessary in smaller ones. This means I only need to update our larger designs. Less work for me! In vanilla, the large shield generator would have been a starter tech. Together with the changes to regen strength in Ultima Orion, the shield generators changed the most from vanilla MO3. But I gushed enough about how much I love the Ultima-version of shields in earlier posts, so just let’s get on with it!  The situation in Tali changed again: Most of the Klackon-fleet is gone, but the Psilons lost another planet. Not good. I’m trying to understand what has happened here, since the system only has five planets: Apparently either the New Orions or the Klackons bombed one of the three Psilon-worlds so badly control was lost and then both sides threw colony ships at the planet. Now the planet shows up as “colonized, but not under control” for both empires. At least that’s what I could come up with as an explanation. Finding out the truth has to wait for now, though. First the other war has to be concluded.  Still, I don’t trust this situation. Time to bring out the smaller ships I designed and build for this reason: First new task force is this little flotilla of light long-range cruisers with some Rock > Flesh fast point defense frigates as escorts.  Of course our long-range direct fire ships will get some carriers as backbone: The carrier-task force has to be set up a bit differently, though. The Opal-class of light, frigate-sized carriers has undergone several revisions already and I still had 8 older ships left next to the modern Opal III class. Since the Klackon-border isn’t seriously threatened besides my outbursts of paranoia, I can’t really justify wasting our most modern ships, so the 2nd Fast Border Squadron gets only the older Opal I and Opal II versions. As a bit of recompensation, I throw in a sixth carrier and reduce the escorts to two Kiesel-class corvettes. More firepower but less defense.  Our defense fleet in Cokanuk now numbers 56 ships. 56 pure combat ships. This should be more than enough to hold the system against everything the Klackons could throw at us.  After securing our Klackon-border some more, it’s time to send out some additional ships to keep up the pressure against the Raas: With my plans to colonize the Gryphon-system, we suddenly need some ships to protect the system. Five modern Opal III light carriers and three Kiesel-class defense corvettes form up to become the 1st Assault Group. In case you’re wondering about the name, it’s because after Gryphon is secured and safe, the 1st and 2nd Assault Groups will be the first to go into the next Raas-system to raid until our main fleets arrive.  As you saw in the last battle, sometimes you want more than just carriers, so the 2nd Assault Group takes some direct-fire ships into the fray: Five of our newest Rammstein-class heavy cruisers (so those things finally can see some action) and two fast point-defense frigates plus one scout. As short range ships, the Rammstein-cruisers will take long enough to reach the enemy, I really don’t want to lose even more time by enemy ECM loving up the engagement. As you saw in the video, I really should put more electronics in our ships. I keep forgetting all this poo poo actually works in this mod. The additional ships will also mean I can secure the flank of the Nilus-system and move the defending ships into Amoenta for some additional firepower.  To avoid getting trolled by a sudden dinosaur attack this means the Assault Groups have to stop in Nilus first, so they can protect the system while the older ships move into Amoenta. Let’s not kid ourselves, you all know I’ll be too impatient and start moving the ships in Nilus too early. For some turns the Raas will actually have an opening for a counter-offensive! Will they take the chance?  The screenshots don’t really explain this very well, but after ten minutes of thinking things over, I suddenly decided to use the old ships in Nilus to protect the Gryphon-system and instead use the newer ships of the two Assault Groups to reinforce our fleets in Amoenta. I bet you didn’t expect me to gently caress this up so fast. Now the Raas have 6 turns to hit Nilus. If there are already fleets moving towards Gryphon, we’ll be in trouble!!!  With all those little support-fleets using up most of our older or smaller ships, it’s time for another clean-up. The oldest Liberty PD-destroyers all have to go, the one lonely Opal II carrier goes away, two leftover light cruisers are demolished and for good measure I throw an outdated transport into the pile. 9 ships will be recycled. After all is done, only three obsolete ships are left in our reserves. The Topaz-class only got some minor upgrades, so these two ships aren’t significantly weaker than the newer models. The one recon ship I leave because it’s not actually obsolete, I just switched the design to “obsolete” to prevent the AI –controlled colonies from building it.  As an aside, did you know that if you start manually controlling battles on the combat planner from the bottom up, the game interprets this as the player abandoning all other battles above the selected one? Because I forgot this and was surprised when the battles in Kaff and Deanton suddenly auto-resolved themselves.  Me loving up means this turn I can only bombard one of my two targets. 23% of the population and 10% of the ground forces die on Amoenta V.  GODDAMNIT Another assassination event, this time a critical success: One of our leaders bought it. Turn 139 starts out not very promising.  The rest of the news is better: A new colony in the Innar-system enters our control and the AI obliges our plans by sending a colony ship to Gryphon I. Just as planned! Oh, and some espionage hijinks on Almandin I leads to the complete destruction of one of our most important research computers. Our research gets a little bit of a slowdown as a result.  gently caress it, time for more spies! The AIA starts training on new spies to replace our aging spy corps. By the time we get the last one from this program (in 34 turns!), we will be forced to start over though.  Uh, that guy over there is dead. Spy guy and science guy are still there, though. I elect to see this as us getting more money thanks to tax drainer 3 falling down dead. This assassination actually helped us! Not really, but I’m trying to be positive here.  Welp, nothing more can be done there, so let’s move on to our newest colony: Small, toxic and like Earth billions of years ago. For those of you who don’t know, that’s not really a recommendation for your next holiday. On top of all of this, the gravity is too light for our Silicoids’ tastes. At least we now have a tech to neutralize that particular problem. Oh and in an emergency we can change this planet into another mining world, thanks to very high mineral abundance. We’re producing almost three times the amount of minerals we’re actually using right now though. So no need to do this now.  Just for fun I put all our most elite forces into another army and send them to Kaff, too. Just in case our first army runs into trouble.  See, to speed this war up I’ve decided to restrict myself to two armies max per system. If the Raas still resist after that, I just kill them all and… Wait what is this? How cute, it looks like the Raas-ships we let the AI handle last turn were a silly little short-range squadron. Well, I guess those other task forces incoming are the ground troops meant to conquer the Deanton-system after those four little ships mopped up the defenders. Well, tried to at least.  Surprise! Your combat squadron didn’t win! Now get lost, please.  Meanwhile in Kaff our fleets assault Kaff II. This time it’s easy. While our carriers are dealing with the fighters launching from that lonely orbital and the planet, our long-range ships sneak closer.  Then our fighters destroy the planetary defenses while our long-range ship sneak a little bit closer again.  Then some time passes while both sides construct new fighters. Just as both sides are ready to launch them, my long-range ships finally swing around the planet and back into range. The orbital is one-shotted.  Kaff II gets spared from bombardment because I want the world mostly intact. Our forces are overwhelmingly strong, but we still only gain a small foothold. Not exactly the best possible outcome.   Some stats from the victory-menu: The Dila Empire is still counted as better than us even though they continue to lose planets, armies and fleets. Yeah, this measuring system is fairly wonky. Also don’t believe the fleet mirror in the screenshot above. The Raas certainly have those 106 ships, but most of them are troop transports. The AI just loves troop transports. We’re still outnumbering our foes by at least 5:1 in real forces.  The Raas are still finding planets to colonize, so they’re basically growing at the same rate we’re growing. Amusingly, most of the other empires are flat-lining on expansion. If that doesn’t change we may even overtake the giant Klackon empire! It seems the belligerence of the Klackons has come back to bite them in the rear end. Obviously they’ve run out of space to colonize and whoever they’re fighting besides us and the Psilons has stopped their expansion dead. Our allies aren’t really expanding since there’s not much free space that isn’t us or their other ally (the Cynoids we still haven’t made diplomatic contact with) and the Psilons continue their long, slow decent into extinction.  Combat! Nothing new or interesting though, which means no videos this time. 24 Raas-transports “assault” Deanton, Amoenta and Kaff are just my bombardment-targets for this turn and our scout has reached Tannjost, a system in that lower third of the Dila Empire.  Do you know what the most satisfying thing is in Master of Orion 3? It’s when you’ve finally crushed an enemy empire so badly those goddamn transports have nowhere to run to. It’s just so sweet to finally capture them and finish them off for good. Honestly, even though running away is a good and necessary function for the AI, it’s still annoying enough you start wishing that just once, they would stay and fight.  Oh wait, they didn’t run! Time to kill then! Looks like my wish came true! This happens if the AI thinks your ships are too old: Suddenly the AI thinks their immobile, undergunned transports can take your combat ships.  Die you loving fuckers! Of course, even though the Raas-transports are still pretty drat harmless compared to our ships, they’re modern enough to withstand most of what our old defense fleet can throw at them. Cue a grueling, time-consuming fight with no clear victor. Also as you can see in the screenshot, during that battle my fighters sometimes decided to avoid the slowly crumbling task force like the plague and instead assaulted one of the others. The way your fighters sometimes just straight up ignore your orders is the one thing in this game I find absolutely infuriating.  Ha ha ha ha ha pissfuckers take this and next turn you’ll get more!!! Welp, just as time runs out my carriers are launching a more obedient bunch of fighters and after some concentrated shooting, we make one of the transports explode. Seriously, that ship exploded literally a half-second before a giant STALEMATE message rammed into my monitor and the battle stopped.  Anyway, the rest of the battle goes over less emotional. Since my troops are safely on the surface of Kaff II, my fleet turns around to bomb Kaff VII some more. The population is already below the control-threshold after this second bombardment. Looks like this part of the war goes over a lot faster then I assumed!  Our liberation of Kaff II swings into action: Our army overruns two regions with a nice flanking-maneuver by pivoting around the Raas’ main defense line. The old defending forces are all wiped out and even the fresh troops raised since last turn take heavy losses.  In the Amoenta-system, our other army lands on the fourth planet without much trouble. Both liberations are now well underway.  That stupid battle against transport ships in Deanton has made me paranoid again though: I’ve decided to move my time-table a little bit forward and create the 11th Royal Fleet out of five carriers and some escorts. Together with the planned long-range fleet in the pipeline this fleet will join our main push soon. But in the meantime, why not putting them to good use? Nothing would be more embarrassing than losing a space battle against transports, after all. Probably a wasted effort. With 8 brand new ships joining the defenders, there’s no way in hell the AI will be stupid enough to let their transport-fleets continue the assault. Next: I was so wrong. Libluini fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Sep 29, 2016 |
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Sep 29, 2016 20:53
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Have you started recruiting Raas ground troops yet? Or do we need more loyal Raas under our control before that's an option?
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Sep 29, 2016 22:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Have you started recruiting Raas ground troops yet? Or do we need more loyal Raas under our control before that's an option? That's a funny story. See, I have been recruiting Raas ground troops since forever now, but I keep forgetting to screenshot them. In the last two updates alone I formed up multiple armies with Raas-assault troops in them but somehow every time I had them on screen, I forgot to make the shot.
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Sep 29, 2016 23:12
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All those burning dinosaurs made me think you could need something to cheer you up, so I've prepared the next lore-entry for you: Lore 20: Post-War Analysis of Darkness To the Antarans, the only remarkable aspect of the war was its protracted length; it took all of twenty-five Galactic Cycles to completely subjugate the sector. The barbarians fought with unexpected strength and fury, and did their share of damage to the Antaran forces, a fact that did not sit well with the Hegemony leadership. However, the Antarans could not have planned their attacks any better, and most studies agree that they achieved maximum efficiency through the proper combination of intelligence, tactics, and technology, thus minimizing the overall duration and cost of the war for the Hegemony. The first phase of the war was the intelligence-gathering process. Using mercenary spies, the Antarans learned almost everything they needed from data stolen from the Orion Senate proceedings. That, combined with other information taken from various governmental and military installations, gave the Antarans the understanding of the Orion races' weaknesses, and they took maximum advantage of that information. Using an off-the-shelf virus they had developed during their war with the Meissans, the Antarans poisoned the Elerians with what became known as the "Mind Worm" plague. Not actually a plague, it was more of a viral parasite that attacked the telepathic centers of the Elerian females and ate away at that part of their brains. When the Elerian Queen herself was infected by the plague (considered by the Elerians as a fate worse than death), other royal families saw an opportunity, and a struggle for the crown erupted. This, in conjunction with a few gender riots that the Antarans orchestrated among the "common" male population, led to a global civil war, and the Elerians therefore never brought their entire strength to bear against the Antarans. Historical Note: The Mind Worm parasite was a precursor to several experiments by Antaran geneticists to develop a more universal parasite they could use against all of their enemies. This project, code-named "Harvester," would one day succeed beyond the Antarans' wildest dreams. Or nightmares. The Mrrshan pride in their combat skills became their undoing. Therion challenged the Mrrshan fleet in several engagements, feigning defeat at key systems and beating a path of retreat away from the Mrrshan homeworld of Fieras. The Mrrshan pursued his ships, eager to capture an Antaran fleet commander, and when they were far enough from their own power base, a reserve Black Fleet task force cut into the poorly-protected Mrrshan systems and annihilated dozens of their colonies while sweeping forward to meet Therion. Cut off and pinned, the Mrrshan fleet went down in a blaze of glory at the battle of Tholan VI. The Bulrathi pulled out of the Orion alliance late in the war, as their soldiers, feared even by the Antarans, were being left behind on worlds decimated by Antaran forces. The Bulrathi shock troops were often the last line of defense against besieging Antarans, and as the Orion Senate withdrew its troops and equipment back more and more frequently, the Bulrathi marines were abandoned, with no hope of rescue. The Antarans fueled the Bulrathi's anger by showing them images of their troops being tortured to death by Antaran soldiers. When the Bulrathi quit and ordered all their soldiers to withdraw back to Ursa, several worlds that were barely holding out against the Antarans collapsed, resulting in a final shift of the war's momentum in favor of the Antarans. Several other key actions -- the deliberate collapsing of the Gnolam financial system, a forcing of hostilities between the Sakkra and the Trilarians, and the use of a liquid firebomb that flowed through and incinerated the Klackon hives -- further served to weaken the Orion power base and simplify the Antarans' endeavor. In addition, not all of the Orion races participated in the battles; the Meklars were still freeing themselves from "the prisons of the flesh", and the Cynoid had left the sector. The Ethereans, still recovering from their failed war against the other Orions, sat out and refused to help their neighbors (although, in the end, they were treated no better than anyone else by the Antarans). The Evon surprised the Antarans, fighting from the outer limits of the Orion Sector, but even their substantial forces were not enough to defeat the entire Black Fleet. Historical Note: The Third Orion-Antaran War saw some of the most brutal and vicious ground fighting the sector had ever known. Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons were employed more and more frequently in efforts to achieve even minor local tactical advantages. The cavalier use of these "dirty" weapons rendered several worlds uninhabitable for centuries afterward. The horrific memories of these vile forms of warfare would be etched into the cultural psyche of the Orion civilizations for millennia. As the war progressed and the Orion fleets suffered ever-increasing losses, many worlds simply built up their planetary defenses in an effort to withstand a siege long enough for a miracle to happen. However, even these "fortress" worlds were not strong enough to hold off the Antaran warships. Therion ordered the first dozen or so destroyed without mercy or warning. After that, the Antaran fleets began offering terms before laying siege to the Orion worlds. A recording of Therion's cold, gravelly voice would dominate the planet's airwaves: "You will surrender unconditionally. We will collect hostages and we will draft workers and soldiers from your world to serve us. They will not be returned. Their behavior will determine the fate of those they leave behind. Monitoring stations will be placed over your world to insure compliance. Accept this or we will begin to destroy your world in one millicycle." Approximately twelve hours later, the matter was closed and the planet's fate settled -- one way or another. In the earlier stages of the war, many worlds rejected the Antarans' terms outright, choosing to fight to the death rather than surrender. However, a failure to gain any kind of forward momentum against the Antaran invaders soon ground into the spirits of the Orion people, and one by one the Orion worlds began to give in. By the early 18060's, the Antarans were conquering entire systems in the Orion Sector without firing a shot. Even the proud warrior races like the Mrrshan, the Elerians, and the Sakkra saw their own colonies bow their heads in submission. Ultimately, only the Sol system remained as a bastion against the overwhelming tide of Antaran power. In 18066 GC, the Black Fleet met the Human armada (supplemented by every renegade warship from the other Orion races) in the skies above Earth, and although the Orions fought with all the fury of a cornered animal, the outcome was never truly in doubt. Four millicycles later, Therion's voice sounded across Sol, and the Humans surrendered.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:08
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Man that is a truly infuriating thing to read.
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Sep 30, 2016 19:27
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Is it just me or does it seem like the writers for MoO3 had a serious hard on for the Antarans?
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Sep 30, 2016 19:51
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IthilionTheBrave posted:Is it just me or does it seem like the writers for MoO3 had a serious hard on for the Antarans? Funnily enough, that was a common sentiment at the time, too... Well, among folks who got the game to work. This sort of cry of "WAIT... We LOST? But, but, but...  "(E: Wasn't gonna say anything, my dad. I think it just as unfair as you do. )
JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 01:00
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JamieTheD posted:Funnily enough, that was a common sentiment at the time, too... Well, among folks who got the game to work. This sort of cry of "WAIT... We LOST? But, but, but... My gimmick fleet of phase-cloaked doom stars with half a dozen stasis weapons and the planet exploder thingie each does not lose battles. Ever.  (e: yeah, yeah, I know) my dad fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 01:07
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my dad posted:My gimmick fleet of phase-cloaked doom stars with half a dozen stasis weapons and the planet exploder thingie each does not lose battles. Ever. You forgot time dilation with x-capacitors.
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Oct 1, 2016 02:43
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SugarAddict posted:You forgot time dilation with x-capacitors. Nah. That one loses to my fleet. Phase-cloak has a time limit, 20 turns before you become vulnerable, I think, and time-dilation halves the time it lasts since you're taking turns twice as fast. Once your invulnerability is over, it's just a matter of tagging all your ships with stasis fields, and then melting them one by one.
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Oct 1, 2016 02:50
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I always liked making boarding-heavy fleets, even if it was hot garbage in most cases, and anyone you could reliably board and take over usually had ships you didn't want anyway. It was funny owning half the enemy DEATH FLEET after your first turn. Stupid Antarans and their reliable self-destruct switches, though.
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Oct 1, 2016 07:21
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If you think that last lore-entry is bad, just wait. I've been preparing the next 10 lore updates in advance so I can sprinkle them in between regular updates. Do you now how many of them are about what the Antarans are doing to the Orion races? 9 out of 10. But first, I have to close a gap in my lore-entries: Wedged inbetween tales of Antaran horror, there was a little bit I forgot to post about the time before the Pax Humanica: Lore 10A The new Masters of Orion and the Orion Civil War Circa 8200 GC, during an exceptionally long period of hyperspace stability, several young races in the Orion Sector discovered the basic concepts of FTL technology. Interestingly, most of these races were by-products of genetic manipulations, with the exception of the Meklars and the Silicoids. As they branched out, they came into contact with one another, and much as had happened before, differences became suspicions, suspicions became hostilities, and hostilities became warfare. Despite the establishment of a centralized political body which they called The Orion Senate (named after the mysterious Orion star system at the center of the sector, which no ship had ever explored due to the presence of a powerful but unidentifiable battleship that protected the system), the young local Orion races soon found themselves enmeshed in a brutal and bloody war for territory within a small region of space around Orion itself (their view of the Orion "sector" was significantly smaller than what the sector's area had been at the height of the Orion League's power). The three-hundred-cycle long conflict was eventually ended by the Humans, who had, through shady diplomacy and brute force, managed to subdue their galactic neighbors one by one until they all stood grudgingly behind them and elected them to the Presidency of the Senate. What followed is described in Lore 11: Pax Humanica This entry basically just confirms what was discussed in the thread, but now newcomers can click on a link in the OP and instantly know, too!
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Oct 1, 2016 12:02
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Ah, gently caress it. Let's give you the next piece of lore already, I'm sure you want to know more about how the Antarans were responsible for the shift from free movement in MO2 to the star lane system in MO3. Lore 21: The Orion Dark Age As was the Antarans' practice, indigenous races in conquered sectors were generally "squeezed" into extinction. They systematically stripped the Orion races of all technology and research capabilities, relocated their populations to their home systems, besieged them with orbital monitors, ghettoized them, and turned their worlds into work camps. The Antarans established their sector seat at Orion itself, and brutally managed the entire sector from there. They considered the creation of this new order in the Orion Sector to be their "Great Work", circumventing the Orions' experiments and bending them to the Antaran will, thus proving their superiority to their ancient enemy. Historical Note: The Antarans have always been secretive. Theirs was known as a "black hole" civilization where, the saying went, all knowledge was sucked in but no enlightenment ever shone out. This policy of total secrecy and paranoia is one of the cornerstones of their society that has helped set them above everyone else they have encountered. Although common Antaran practice would have seen the races worked to death, certain factors spared the Orion races from extinction. The Antarans' old experiments, the Ichthytosians and the Ethereans, had progressed since their creation, and had certainly proven to be worth another look under the microscope. The other Orion races were also of similar interest, many of which were the creations of the ancient Orions and thus worth studying for clues as to what happened to the Orions themselves. Also, the more prudent Antarans felt that, should any Orions actually return, they may be more cordial to the Antarans if they found their experiments still in good hands. Finally, there were the Evon. The Antarans could not trace their evolutionary path to the Orion Sector or the neighboring sectors, nor could they detect any recognizable genetic tampering. However, they had the same technology as the other Orion races, and thus proved to be a threat from another source. Though the Antarans did not connect them to the Mizara, they suspected that the Evon were the products of another civilization that might one day come looking for them. During their reign of terror over the Orion Sector, the Antarans developed the Orion system and set up a TDP ("Trans-Dimensional Portal" in case you forgot) to facilitate transportation between the Antaran and the Orion Sectors. Jump lanes were also identified throughout the Orion Sector. Antaran colonies, military bases and research outposts were set up in various systems to establish a solid infrastructure and to maintain a close watch on their Orion conquests. As Antaran geneticists studied the Orion races searching for clues to the ancient Orion mystery, they received permission to conduct experiments when necessary to assist their research. Soon these "experiments" consisted of wholesale genetic manipulation of entire populations, and no race was spared this final humiliating scourge. The Antarans altered the structures of every race in the sector in their quest for knowledge and their desire to manufacture better "living weapons". These experiments were scientific nightmares; the research and breakthroughs they provided came at the cost of millions of Orion lives and the transformation of every organic race in the sector. Even after only a thousand cycles, the Orion races are no longer what they once were. The evil that was inflicted upon them was so terrible that no one would ever speak of it again. Historical Note: During the Dark Age, many of the local Orion races developed myths and legends based on ancient tales of an heir to the Orion throne. Most of these stories depicted a messianic figure rising up to smite the Antaran overlords and restore the sector to its former glory. These stories gave the Orions hope for the future; however, with so many legends and tales surround the mythical heir, disagreement between the Orion races regarding the identity of the "true" heir would be yet another source of conflict within the sector...
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Oct 1, 2016 12:23
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But that wouldn't make the previously used FTL systems stop working now would it?
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Oct 1, 2016 12:31
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SIGSEGV posted:But that wouldn't make the previously used FTL systems stop working now would it? Luckily not. In my last updates I already started ignoring the star lanes to go sideways if necessary. The devs just didn't want you to do this so they made non-lane travel horribly slow. Anyway, isn't it nice how the Antarans mapped out all those jump lanes for easier travel?
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Oct 1, 2016 13:06
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They could have made the game less punishingly slow in addition to changing the movement mechanics.
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Oct 1, 2016 13:16
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SIGSEGV posted:They could have made the game less punishingly slow in addition to changing the movement mechanics. Sorry, the devs spend all the time allocated for that with writing fanfaction about how cool the Antarans were
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Oct 1, 2016 13:24
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I hope they appear as a lategame threat, a bit like a grand menace from SotS. So they can get their poo poo kicked in.
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Oct 1, 2016 13:28
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