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Glazius posted:Can you actually meaningfully bombard a planet with a single scout ship? Nothing prevents you from sending out battleship-sized scouts, so yes Not with our scouts, though Joking aside, your starting scouts have some weapons, so if you find another colony fast enough, it's possible to do some damage. (That's how I once lost one of my colonies.) Normally though you'll want sensors to see farther and ECM + cloaks to gain time to jump out if you get caught. Most reasonable scout sizes won't give you enough free space for any meaningful weapons after that. (But again, battleship-sized scouts. It would be possible with them.)
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Nov 21, 2016 11:29
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Libluini posted:Nothing prevents you from sending out battleship-sized scouts, so yes Recon By Fire Industries expresses great interest in this concept.
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Nov 21, 2016 13:11
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Habitually Red has redundant components, a very different thing from superfluous components since we'll need anything we can keep here.
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Nov 21, 2016 13:58
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Chocolate Chunk posted:Habitually Red Starships have the redundancy a long-term mission will need to survive
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Nov 21, 2016 14:39
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Habitually Red Starships Redundant Redundancy is a good choice for expeditions into the unknown.
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Nov 21, 2016 14:51
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I'm a fan of redundant systems, plus if we color them Red, they'll obviously go faster! Habitually Red Starships
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Nov 21, 2016 16:52
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Our map colour is red, so obviously silicoids being quite likely rather habitual, would vote for the Friendly Commuters.  Real reason: I like redundancy, but I somewhat more like the idea that things can actually sometimes go wrong for our plucky crystalline buddies... although admittedly the Dila war hasn't exactly been going swimmingly in the early parts, so maybe they deserve a break. Well, either way, I feel the red ones are more likely to have it, so it's really more just a counter vote to get them more even.
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Nov 24, 2016 10:24
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Our ships will be Friendly Commuters on the way to the Antarans.
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Nov 24, 2016 12:56
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I totally forgot to post more lore! (By the way, the vote is still open until Friday, Midnight.) Lore 26: The New Orions are Born The President of the Senate rose to give the final speech of the Senate's opening session. He declared that the Orion Sector was now no longer aligned with the Antaran Hegemony, and that they were establishing their independence then and there (interestingly, the huge ovation that announcement received still had no outward effect on the stoic Antaran delegation; they remained as expressionless as they had during the brutal diatribes given earlier in the session). To underscore this, he declared that they had adopted a new moniker, and would thereafter be known as the New Orions. The speech went downhill from there. Ominously, it ended with an affirmation that the New Orions would remember the words spoken by the Mrrshan, Bulrathi, Elerian and other representatives, and that a formal reply would be forthcoming separately to each of their home worlds. In case you've already forgotten what's this about, it's the continuation of the last lore item.
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Nov 24, 2016 20:44
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OK, the last one was a bit short, so you get two for one this time: Lore 27: The New Orions Take Charge The New Orions had, of course, been preparing for this step for several cycles already. Having heard nothing more from Antares since the policy regarding the destruction of all Antaran outposts, the New Orions decided that the Hegemony was no longer a functional entity, and thus ignored the command. Instead they raided whatever outposts they could find, pillaging their resources and withdrawing them to a core radius around Orion. Other equipment was left in place as is, including the "prison monitors," those ships and satellites set in orbit around the homeworlds of the lesser races to keep them duly repressed and firmly under Antaran control. The New Orions had already begun making deals with their "locals" to share the manpower burdens required to help combat piracy in the Orion Sector. They felt that it was worth the risk to keep their prison monitors in place for the time being to help counter the increasing power being yielded to the locals. But with the ominous words spoken during the first session of the Orion Senate, the New Orions realized that a revolt against their "New Order" was forthcoming, and they were worried. By 19098 GC, the Mrrshan had discovered the ease with which they could capture the prison monitors around their world, and quickly shared that information with the other sector races. Before the Cycle was over, the Alkari, Darloks, and Elerians had also seized the monitors orbiting their homeworlds. Knowing that they were not yet ready to confront the rebellious locals, the New Orions cynically "granted as a gesture of goodwill" their remaining monitors to all of the Orion races that had not yet bothered to capture them. The New Orions spent most of 19098 GC organizing their Great White and Great Crimson Fleets (being their new colors of leadership and strength) and fortifying their territory around Orion while the indigenous Orion races that were openly revolting prepared their own hasty defenses. The local Orion races did not know it, but the New Orions were afraid of them; had this knowledge gotten out, the following war might have gone much differently... Though the New Orions had rejected Antaran rule, they certainly had not changed their inner Antaran natures. Their strategy was to dominate the troublemakers by force and thus cow the rest into submitting to their "benevolent" leadership. They knew they had to strike quickly; the local Orion races were building up their fortifications and their fleets, and gaining strength with every passing day. Also, they had no idea what had happened within the Antaran Sector, and thus chose to prepare for either a retributive strike from Antares for their insubordination or an attack by a new enemy that had somehow defeated the Hegemony forces within the dimensional barrier. Therefore, they prepared for fighting on two fronts. The Great Crimson Fleet was assembled with a small number of the best ships and crews that New Orions could assemble. This fleet was held in reserve at Orion with a three-part mission. First, they were to oversee the construction of a brand-new Guardian ship. Second, they would be the first line of defense against an incursion from the Antaran Sector. And third, they were to launch raiding parties into the Antaran Sector through the TDP at Orion to steal supplies and equipment to shore up their power base, as well as to investigate the disappearance of the Antarans. This was a particularly hazardous assignment, as the TDP at Orion was suffering from severe lack of maintenance, and it was expected to break down completely from disrepair sometime soon. Historical Note: Rather than destroying the last vestiges of Antaran civilization during the time of their population implosion, the New Orions gathered the most valuable secrets and research projects they had and stored them in a hastily-built Guardian ship. This Guardian, along with the Great Crimson Fleet, was designed to protect their positions of power in the Orion Sector and to insure their rule for cycles to come. The Great Crimson Fleet played an important role in securing the required components and technologies used in its construction. The Great White Fleet, on the other hand, was put together out of "everything else" -- police cutters, old transports, museum pieces, and the dregs of the New Orion Navy. With only a handful of true Antaran warships to provide it with a solid core, the Great White Fleet was forced to accept critical weaknesses in certain ship classes. Thus, anything that could make a hyperspace jump was fitted with whatever weapons could be slapped on and brought into the fleet. The Great White Fleet was put under the command of a loyal New Orion Grand Admiral named Kelath H'vei, whose specialties were training, discipline, and fanatical attack. By the end of 19098 GC, the Admiral had transformed a motley rag-tag group of scowls, derelicts, and impressed crew members into eight small, efficient task forces of rabid attack beasts.
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Nov 24, 2016 20:47
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Friendly Commuters so I can keep reading it as Friend Computer's. And everyone knows Friend Computer has the best explorer fleets.
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Nov 28, 2016 21:02
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Voting Friendly Commuter: 7 Habituallyred: 7 Thanks, terrenblade, for causing that tie four days after what I thought was the last vote.  Since I'm too busy for updates until the weekend, emergency extension for more votes until Friday! (This time for real. I'm serious. This time I won't forget to close the vote in time.)
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Dec 1, 2016 18:37
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Voting for whichever Libluini prefers, just to get this LP moving
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Dec 1, 2016 18:38
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Yeah its been way too long since there was an update in the good MoO LP
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Dec 1, 2016 20:03
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Wow, shots fired.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:04
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It's Deceitful Penguin posting, so more like loud but ultimately harmless farts.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:06
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Since we're about halfway through the game by now (I hope), I had a funny idea today and made a teaser for the Let's Play I'm planning to do after this one. Is someone still remembering the short poll I did ages ago in my Imperium-thread? Yeah, Master of Orion 3 won that one, but only by half a vote! 2017 will be the time to reveal the 2nd place winner of that poll.  Anyway, here's the teaser: 2017 Teaser: Something Awful is Coming
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Dec 1, 2016 22:47
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Friend Commuter for the tie breaker.
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Dec 2, 2016 02:22
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my dad posted:It's Especially when it's, ugh, libertarian fiction for some reason
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Dec 2, 2016 03:37
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Libluini posted:Since we're about halfway through the game by now (I hope), I had a funny idea today and made a teaser for the Let's Play I'm planning to do after this one. Isn't that one a Point-and-Click Adventure? Pretty different from your recent strategy LPs.
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Dec 2, 2016 09:43
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Nuramor posted:Isn't that one a Point-and-Click Adventure? Pretty different from your recent strategy LPs. My recent strategy LPs are not my only LPs, my YouToube-account is basically drowning in lovely videos about other crap. (Look for my Amnios-LP if you want to see something in English-language, for example. Amnios is a rather odd game for the Amiga.) And to be honest, after two games like Imperium and MO3, I'll need something a bit less tedious as a palate cleanser. I still like Master of Orion III, but the game eats so much time even I will need to stop for a while after this LP is over. And let's not talk about Imperium. Edit: I made the Amnios-LP for one of the last "Enthusiasm beats Effort"-threads, but it never ended up in the LP-archive, so it's probably hard to find if you don't have my YouTube-channel handy. Libluini fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 11:21
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OK, here's the thing: I used my Dad's vote to vote for habituallyred, then someone else voted for Friendly Commuter again, so we have a tie again. This of course is getting ridiculous, especially since the vote is already going on for far too long, so when I'm closing the vote later today I'll change my vote to break the tie if no clear winner emerges. (Sorry habituallyred)
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Dec 2, 2016 14:51
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Vote change to Friend Commuter and also voting a thank you to Libluini for this thread!
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Dec 2, 2016 15:12
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RedMagus posted:Vote change to Friend Commuter and also voting a thank you to Libluini for this thread! Thanks! And just before someone else can vote, Voting is Closed!!! The proposal from Friendly Commuting Shipyards wins with 9 admirals voting for it against The Crystal of Admiralty has chosen, now the Kingdom will have to build the new ships! (Which means I'll have to clear some shipyard space just when I should gear up for a new war, but welp. It's not like the game is challenging us right now. )Anyway, some more lore to make the waiting for new updates less painful: Lore 28: The New Orions Strike Back The ominous "formal reply" that the President of the Senate had promised to deliver to the dissenters' homeworlds was delivered starting in the early part of 19099 GC by the Great White Fleet, and that reply was xenocide. Grand Admiral H'vei had orders to wipe out those civilizations who had spoken out against the New Orions, and he had honed the Great White Fleet to be the perfect instrument for the task. The fleet possessed a far superior technological base than what it was expected to encounter, and all its war game simulations projected no significant casualties during the upcoming campaigns (those few simulations that did project the actual casualty rate were disregarded as being statistical anomalies). H'vei began his campaign with the Gnolams, whose pathetic show of resistance (accompanied by a laughable attempt to bribe the Admiral) served as little more than a useful training exercise for the fleet. With each cycle, another engagement drew to a close, as the Great White Fleet annihilated the Bulrathi next, then the Elerians, and then the Mrrshan. Their homeworlds were utterly devastated in a display that the New Orions thought would serve as an example to the other local races. All that remained of those once proud races were a smattering of refugees and whatever lost tribes and outposts they had, rumors say, managed to keep alive and hidden during the Dark Age. After the completion of the Mrrshan Historical Note: Everyone knew that the Great White Fleet had suffered some attrition during their campaign of retribution. What was not known was the extent of those losses and the fact that they were almost irreplaceable because of the denuded population and industrial base of the New Orion Empire itself. In truth, the ability of the Great White Fleet to project massive offensive power is gone. While the idea of the Great White Fleet suffering attrition may seem surprising at first, a closer look at what was going on at the time would leave one asking not why did they suffer any attrition, but rather how did they escape with such light attrition. A popular Gnolam saying went, "The only thing more costly than a battle won is a battle lost." Even if H'vei's fleet had crushed its opponents with barely a scratch, it still expended resources to do so -- missiles, crew supplies, basic maintenance, etc. All the things that get used and abused in battle and all the things that require adequate logistics were expended without a ready supply of replacements available. Naturally, the New Orions kept that (like they kept most other) information to themselves, yet another closely-guarded secret. They purposefully projected an aura of absolute military supremacy; however, the indigenous Orion races had secretly begun to question the New Orions' combat readiness. Even as the local Orion races were building up their defenses and preparing to push out into the sector once more, the New Orions continued to let spoken and unspoken threats of xenocidal retribution hang in the air of the Senate as they struggled to reacquire sufficient military strength to effectively carry out such threats again. This questionable state of readiness of the New Orion Navy was yet another facet of the dangerous game the New Orions were playing.
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Dec 2, 2016 16:16
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I'll vote to cancel out the next vote, ensuring a continued tie. I want the pace of this thread to match the pace of MOOIII. It wouldn't be authentic otherwise.
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Dec 3, 2016 04:08
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So at this point you're probably wondering why, with the design contest now over, the LP has been staling again. Well, see this time it's not because I've been busy or lazy or something, instead I spend most of Sunday and Monday puking my guts out! Apparently you can't just boil your mediterranean food to make it good again if you're letting it stand around for a day. Fancy that. New lesson learned! Also protip: If you prepare lots of food over the weekend, more than you can actually eat, please remember, the refrigerator exists for a reason. Welp, thanks to my body expelling everything I've eaten on the Weekend through both main orifices, I apparently just barely avoided food poisoning. (At least I think I did, until my stomach finally cramped hard enough to shoot everything out, I had started to shiver like mad, without having fever. I think that was a bad sign.) Right now I feel only like poo poo instead of like dead and I can at least nibble on some fruit without vomitting again. And I'm drinking tons of water to replace what I've lost. Luckily it seems the worst is over, which means in 1-2 days I'll can think of playing videogames again. And writing about videogames, you now the drill. Sorry about the accident, next time I'll try to be less awfully stupid with my health!
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Dec 5, 2016 16:24
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Libluini posted:Welp, thanks to my body expelling everything I've eaten on the Weekend through both main orifices, I apparently just barely avoided food poisoning. (At least I think I did, until my stomach finally cramped hard enough to shoot everything out, I had started to shiver like mad, without having fever. I think that was a bad sign.) Right now I feel only like poo poo instead of like dead and I can at least nibble on some fruit without vomitting again. And I'm drinking tons of water to replace what I've lost. Luckily it seems the worst is over, which means in 1-2 days I'll can think of playing videogames again. And writing about videogames, you now the drill. You totally got food poisoned! Sorry, man. Feel better soon.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:24
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Man, I've been there. Grats on not dying, you'll probably get the smell of vomit out of your nostrils in a week or so.
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Dec 5, 2016 20:35
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If only you were made of rock, you'd never have bad eats
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Dec 5, 2016 21:57
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 NEW UPDATE Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 45 C: Design Contest Aftermath The contest is over! Friendly Commuting Shipyards won, thanks to more admirals of the CoA voting for Friend Commuter’s designs than for the other two! To refresh your memories, this is what won: Friend Commuter posted:
The explorer itself is seriously under-gunned and the escort is lacking in point defense, but the scouts kind of neutralize that flaw by having all of the PD the escorts are missing. Electronics are OK, especially since the pre-made empty hulls already have all the important stuff. This is workable. And actually kind of economically sound, since I have to combine a few explorers with tons of lighter ships! So even if the expedition eats poo poo, we can at least stomach the losses and try again a couple times. As a personal comment, outsourcing the fighting to the escorts and the point defense to the scouts is something I wouldn’t have thought off by myself. I tend to boringly assign roles according to what a strategy game tells me to do, so the “scouts” of Friend Commuter’s design would end up being escorts if I had mad it. His escorts would have been simply another core ship choice mixed in with the explorers. But since Master of Orion III has rather simplified targeting mechanics I can do the right thing here and make Friend Commuter’s designs exactly as he told me do it. From a game mechanic’s standpoint having 10 core ships and 1 escort or 1 core ship and 10 escorts means jack poo poo: If a task force is hit, the damage is portioned out randomly across the single ships of it. In fact, often pickets and escorts survive major battles, while core ships do not, simply because a standard task force has a lot more free slots for core ships than for escorts and pickets. Statistically, if you have a good mixed task force with like 10 core ships, 4 escorts and 2 pickets, your core ships will obviously draw a lot more fire than the others. You can address this by making more “core” ships with the same role, but lots of point defense replacing the main weapons. The game will still shoot the tiny weapons at missiles and fighters, like the escorts would. In general, there’s never a reason to min-max your task forces like that, though: The enemy AI is far too stupid to make you that desperate, even with the upgraded designs added by this mod. Also, as this game is rather old, there may be odd side effects happening if you label your point defense ships as something else to stick them into the core group of ships. If something dumb happens, you’re on your own.  While the Almandian military bureaucracy slowly starts implementing the results of the Kingdom-wide exploration ship design contest, business as usual continues on other fronts: Trourmi II and Amoenta I are subjected to orbital bombardment. In both cases more to force the population to flee and the Dila Empire to abandon the colonies, but still, countless Raas perish due to starvation and disruption of infrastructure.  Not everything in the Kingdom of Almandin is doom and gloom, though: New royal investments into colonization leads to the founding of three new colonies. By sheer coincidence, two of them happen to be in the recently liberated JustGniess-System. The Kingdom projects fast growth of the new colonies, especially the two inside the JustGniess-System: Apparently there are a lot of displaced Raas seeking stability and a new home and the government expects them to be integrated into the new colonies without any trouble whatsoever.  The same cycle sees more good news for the people: No enemy spy activity plagues the Kingdom and the royal ground troops are expected to get a new improvement to their portable energy shields. This should cut down on losses in future ground battles. At the very end of the cycle, the new colonies Cokanuk II and JustGniess III are already advanced enough to gain representation in the Kingdom’s parliament. Among the four representatives of JustGniess III there are two Raas: Thanks to a combination of Silicoid obliviousness and many, many surviving Raas from the battles devastating the system hiding on the planet, the Raas actually managed to elect two of their own into the planet’s allotment of colonial representatives. Both Raas are shocked into silence when they enter the gigantic Democratic Arena on the Almandian homeworld for the first time: The booming voice of the King welcomes them as True Citizens of the Kingdom. They are only the first of many, the King declares. As soon as the Raas hear the King’s words (after the first session, in a recording, after some medical assistants had time to heal their ruptured eardrums), they are overheard commenting on how touched and inspired they feel by them.  While all this touchy-feely crap is happening, I went ahead and obsoleted all the un-wanted exploration designs to reduce clutter. From now on, I’m primarily building Pyrite-class explorers, Feldspar-class escorts and Gypsum-class scouts like Friend Commuter’s design proposal demands.  To not fully neglect the military side of things, I’ll simply slip the new ships into free slots in our queues. This means we’ll have to wait a couple turns longer, but our shipyards will organically switch from military ships to explorers, instead of leaving us hanging with our pants around the ankles.  This decision of mine is mostly because many of our new ship types are just 1-2 ships away from being able to fill out a significant task force and an immediate build stop would delay me from fielding them for long enough I could just scrap them now and be done with it.  Just to re-assure our allies, the Kingdom of Almandin starts negotiating to improve our Research Treaty.  As part of some convoluted strategy to make it seem the Kingdom is still continuing diplomatic containment against the Klackons, we ask for the Engulfing Fusion Cannon technology from the Psilons, while giving them something useful in exchange. Hopefully the Vchiitri Empire will see those feeble exchanges as an attempt to give “help” without actually doing anything. No-one in the Almandin Admiralts is really sure if the Klackons will just willfully ignore the ongoing preparations in the Cokanuk-System, though. The engulfing fusion cannon would have been neat to have ages ago: Fusion Cannons with this upgrade “engulf” the entire surface of a shield, which translates to shields only operating at 50% efficiency against them. The very short range of Fusion Cannons still makes using this technology rather risky, but it’s a nice option to have and at the same time we can maybe smuggle something useful to the Psilons.  In the end, our offer asks for the Engulfing Fusion Cannon for our Improved Particle Projector Gun and Laser Drones. Like we never got the E. Fusion Cannon, the Psilons never got Improved PPGs. Kind of funny how the RNG sometimes rolls out. Laser Drones are basically tiny and super-fast laser turrets. Both technologies are old enough the diplomats had to roll some prototypes out of a museum to show them to the Psilons. This entire thing is purely done for two reasons: I want the last Fusion Cannon upgrade to get the full collection and some diplomatic brownie points for a successful diplomatic interaction with the Psilons.  We’re now also deep into the mid-game and we have ~40 planets under our control. The time when we will be literally unable to cope with controlling our planets directly is getting closer and closer. (Right now I’m just not doing it because I’m lazy.) So I went back to my AI-spreadsheet and made some new entries. It’s easy to forget over time to look at what classification your AI-governor is using and the more entries you have, the lesser the chance the AI will pick something not on the list and try to do its worst to gently caress you over. By the way, you can’t go completely bananas with this part, you only have this one page: If I ever think up three more colony plans for my planets, that’s it. Just to refresh your memories, you can select a planetary classification like DEVASTATED and then use the other two menus directly below to add a directive and the level of urgency you want the AI to have in regards to it. So if you have DEVASTATED planets, you probably want to TERRAFORM them back fast to normal, which means PRIMARY urgency. If you do this, you have to do the same thing two more times to select SECONDARY and TERTIARY urgency-levels for whatever else you want the AI to do. In case of Verwüstet/DEVASTATED, I’ve ordered the AI to concentrate on rebuilding infrastructure and government after most of the effort have gone into terraforming. This way, a devastated planet will recover faster while keeping the population calm and the best part: When the damage is repaired enough, the classification will change to something else and I don’t even have to do a thing while the AI changes to another plan.  Also I finally remembered to save my plans with that huge SPEICHERN-button. Just in case I want to go back and play Silicoids relaxed and outside of the LP.  After doing all this, let’s take a look at our new colonies! Cherish this look at our green poison ball of a planet, with the tons and tons of planets I have to deal with every turn, chances are, you’re not seeing Cokanuk II again for a long while.  Cokanuk II would be a nice world for Silicoids, if it weren’t for the far too low gravity. Silicoids aren’t “normal”, we need more! The AI prioritizes installations helping against a local penalty, so since we have mass synthesizers to make gravity higher, the AI has already put them into our planetary queue. As soon as that thing starts working, Cokanuk II will have the same crushingly high gravity as our homeworld!  Cokanuk II is otherwise mostly unremarkable. With 9 regions and being too toxic for food, I decided to concentrate on planning out industry with some government as back-up. There’s also some research, a theme park-zone for fun and a military DEA because border with angry insects. This planning of course negates my spreadsheet-plans, but remember: Those are a failsafe for the future mostly, when I will be too stressed out to even remember all my new colonies anymore. This is me still playing in relaxed-mode. The future is chaotic and full of new planets.  Our other new colony is a lot weirder. First off, it’s a gas giant, but Silicoids like the gravity here. Basically a reversal from the other planet.  Second, thanks to being in a liberated system, it’s infested with tons of icky alien life forms! Like Raas or Phaigur. The Phaigur I think, were always here, but with so many Silicoids, Raas and Silicoid bombs dropping on this planet, it got forgotten. The Raas mess things up here, because they are shittier at both mining and research then our own population, so I had to change gears and make another industry planet just because so many regions are taken by Raas already. The Phaigur are so irrelevant in everything I don’t even remember what their thing is besides being mushrooms that talk.  At least one region has only Silicoids in it, so I could justify putting down some research development areas here.  All those grumpy non-Silicoids don’t bode well for the future, though. I decide to put down a silly little division called Violet Militia to keep order until some government and recreation zones are constructed.  Now we’re getting to the interesting part: You guys wanted a two-front war and you will get one! But there’s some trouble: While some ships, like the Democracy III-class carriers of the 2nd Blue Fleet, are still rather new, most of the task forces in the Cokanuk-System are loving old. What should we do? Top Secret From: Cokanuk Command Center To: Almandin Fleet HQ Admiral Silesia, as you are aware, not all units we collected in the Cokanuk-System will or should join our planned offensive to relief the Psilons in Tali. Many ships are so outdated they will miss the timetable by entire cycles. I suggest splitting the older units off and leaving them behind as a cover against Klackon surprise attack. I’d also suggest to postpone the offensive a bit to retrofit our ships to modern standards, but when I mentioned this to the Chief Executive Engineer of our local yards he just looked at me oddly. I have a feeling there must be something wrong with our shipyards if we can’t do refits without breaking our ships. Signed, Admiral Prince Sil Almandin Oh yeah, thanks prince, we could do that.  And so our four most modern task forces, 32 ships in total, are ordered into Tali. In 4 turns they will arrive. The rest of our 79 ships (now 47) will stay behind in case of insects swarming. Top Secret From: Almandin Fleet HQ To: Cokanuk Command Center My Prince, the Crystal of Admiralty has received and acknowledged your request to split forces. You are to move to the Tali-System with all forces you deem reliable enough. This should allow you to keep both the Cokanuk-System secure and to advance according to the original timetable. Additional forces have been called up to back up the outdated forces you will leave in Cokanuk. Personally, I wish you luck. Show those dainty Klackons the hard, unyielding rock of Silicoid justice! Signed, Admiral Silesia  Almandin HQ wants it, so I’m taking our last 6 Opal-class light carriers and add some Kiesel II-escorts into the mix. This new light task force will stay behind to add some rock to the soft sediment of the aging ships stationed in Cokanuk.  With this, Cokanuk should have enough modern firepower to hold out in case we miscalculate.  But what are our enemies, in this war, doing exactly? Well, for one thing even though they are at war with us and see this conflict as a blood feud, we are not their main enemies! They still see the elusive Dzazatarians as their nemesis. We don’t know anything about those guys yet, though. Interestingly, even though their economy is at HOLY WAR settings, they only have 230 active warships to our 203. Considering their own economy is also significantly larger than ours, this is a good sign for us. It’s also a depressing show of how inefficient the AI is when forced to act alone, without a player behind the veil. The AI in control of the Klackons can even abuse slavery to boost production and still they’re barely keeping up with us! (And we’re the slowest developing race in the game.)  Our own nemesis is bitter. Well, they should be, the bastards! Annoyingly, they’re still seen as more powerful than we are, even though we keep beating them. Yeah, for some reason the game looks at our 203 ships, then at the Raas 22 ships, then decides clearly the guys with the tiny fleet must be the more powerful state. To be honest, if the Raas weren’t so madly hostile and willing to replace lost planets with wildly colonizing everything, I’d try to end the war in a heartbeat. But as long as the Raas are mindlessly raging at us, there can’t be peace. The Dila Empire would use every peace just to re-arm themselves and we would have to go through all of this again at a later date.  Combat phase! Most of this is just Raas trashing around uselessly like beheaded chickens. Also gently caress, I keep forgetting our scout hanging around in Abeen.  A single warship and some transports visited JustGniess. They don’t really want to meet our fighters, though and opt for an emergency jump back home instead.  The fight in Trourmi is even more uneven, with a single short-range warship challenging our entire fleet. And then jumping out.  Well, looks like the inferior underdogs won again against the mighty Raas. Plucky Silicoids, you can do it!  This update ends with the obligatory bombardments. Our huge, modern fleet in Trourmi finally is large enough to just wipe out the last bits of the Raas-colony on Trourmi VI. No hunting around for the last 0,01% for multiple turns anymore! The surviving enemy ground troops are now hosed. Gamemechanically, they don’t exist anymore.  Our older fleet in Amoenta however is still struggling. At this rate it will take them five more turns to wipe out the last population of Amoenta I. For some reason all this bombing made me feel really sad this turn, so I decided to change gears next update. Next: The Midnight-Offensive
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Dec 9, 2016 19:21
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It'd be nice to have some updates on the minor races we assimilate, like the Phaigur, whether they're good at anything or have any interesting fluff attached.
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Dec 9, 2016 20:32
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Is there a way to prosecute your war more quickly? Or does was in MOO 3 just take forever when your enemy can expand? I'm wondering if you can do something like build ten or fifteen separate invasion fleets and land on that many different planets simultaneously, then repeat once those wind up.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:09
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Arcturas posted:Is there a way to prosecute your war more quickly? Or does was in MOO 3 just take forever when your enemy can expand? I'm wondering if you can do something like build ten or fifteen separate invasion fleets and land on that many different planets simultaneously, then repeat once those wind up. Since there is only one battle per system, per turn, per faction* and planetary interaction spreads out from that one battle, nope. I can land on one planet per system, per turn. That's it. I can certainly win multiple planets per turn when all those battles line up, or assault multiple planets across multiple systems, but that's as far as I can stretch it. *Multiple factions in a system can lead to multiple space battles per turn, all resolved one group of hostile factions at a time, with allies being paired off when possible. In the rare case that I have enough transports inside a chaotic mess like that, I could try assaulting different planets with each battle and see if the game allows me to "cheat" multiple invasions this way. Until that happens, we'll just have to take it like men and bulldoze through, one planet at a time. Edit: If you think this is slow, wait until endgame, when our fleets will be too large for the engine too handle: The game engine can only handle 10 task forces per side in a battle, so when there are more, the game randomly assigns 10 of each sides task force stack to the real time battle. This of course means even if you win, the losing side has task forces left over. In extreme cases that stretches out a single battle over 5-6 turns. And this is if you win. Losing means the battles stretches over even more turns while your 2nd tier task forces duke it out with the reminding enemy. That said, luckily in most cases the enemy tends to gently caress itself over by stacking far too many transport task forces at important strongholds. There's nothing sillier than winning because the overwhelming enemy fleet can only attack you one task force at a time (plus 9 transport task forces shoved into the battlefleet against their will). Libluini fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Dec 10, 2016 |
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Dec 10, 2016 00:47
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The base game engine can only handle 10 task forces in one battle, and assigns them randomly. So by endgame if you're fighting in a system with huge fleets you can have dozens of task forces, if not potentially hundreds on both fleets, and only wheedle them down a few percentage poitns a time if you even get to do combat.. I did in one game ~ 50 rounds of constant combat at New Orion with max # task forces due to a very, very slow meatgrinder.
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Dec 10, 2016 06:17
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PurpleXVI posted:It'd be nice to have some updates on the minor races we assimilate, like the Phaigur, whether they're good at anything or have any interesting fluff attached. It's now in the pipeline! Since there are still two old lore-entries left unposted though, I have to go through them first! The Phaigur-post is already written. (I just have to be careful with those lore-posts, or they'll outpace the regular updates.) Minor races are a wild mix of completely new and old and recycled, so the available lore will also wildly vary. Take this as a warning. Anyway, before the next regular update (tomorrow), space horror: Lore 29: Enter the Harvesters Harvester Gamma was not the only successful outcome of the Harvester Project. Another Antaran lab had engineered a semi-sentient Harvester (code-named Harvester Zeta) which, though not as lethal and swift as Harvester Gamma, had other advantages that the Antarans found intriguing. Harvester Zeta was much larger than the tiny, easily transmitted worm bodies of Harvester Gamma; it was designed to attach itself externally to a host body and live off of their mass for months at a time. Furthermore, Harvester Zeta was both sentient and sentience-absorbing -- it could drain, process, and use the memories of its host for its own purposes. And, lacking a host, Harvester Zeta could survive for a longer period of time, even being capable of propelling itself in search of another host body and using base telepathic signals to paralyze its victims. Commander Minax Ch'therion was the chief research director of the Harvester Zeta facility, and had received confirmed orders from her superiors to manufacture an army of them for several test runs. However, the Harvester Gamma project then went amok, and Minax wisely isolated her facility until she could safely plan an escape. Eventually, once several hundred thousand units of her Harvesters were prepared, she loaded them up onto a military transport vessel and left for the Orion Sector. There she witnessed the treachery of the "New Orions" as they turned their backs on Antaran mandates and forged their own empire. Minax released the Harvesters onto a Human outpost and let them grow and multiply and learn. She knew that soon there would be a vast army of them, and that the Orion Sector would soon suffer for its insolence even as she assembled the perfect army to aid the true Antarans, wherever they might be. Of course, the Harvesters themselves were sentient, and soon evolved enough to develop their own plans and strategies for their development, plans that were not entirely in line with Antaran doctrine. They called themselves the Ithkul, and saw the rest of the Orion Sector as their feeding ground.
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Dec 11, 2016 00:11
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Can you, like, warp through enemy lines? I've been wondering if you could get ahead of the Raas colonizers and shoot them down, somehow.
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Dec 11, 2016 12:24
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Glazius posted:Can you, like, warp through enemy lines? I've been wondering if you could get ahead of the Raas colonizers and shoot them down, somehow. That might not actually be a bad idea, set up a blockade on the far side of their systems to avoid them sending out any colony ships that way.
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Dec 11, 2016 13:05
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Libluini posted:
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Dec 11, 2016 13:51
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PurpleXVI posted:That might not actually be a bad idea, set up a blockade on the far side of their systems to avoid them sending out any colony ships that way. This actually doesn't work, to blockade a system this way (starving them works fine) you need to have at least one of your own planets in-system, so the AI will prioritize them. If you don't have any planets, the AI will just sometimes ignore your fleet and send out task forces through your lines, thanks to a quirk of the game system. If you form a new task force and send them out immediately to another system, they are never counted as in the system they've started from, and will never be forced into a battle with foreign forces there. So sometimes the AI will just form up a task force in a blockaded system and send them to a system you thought safe behind the line. Hunting for colonizers isn't actually a bad idea, the problem is just that the game stacks the chances against us: 1. System colonizers build in a blockaded system or incoming colonizers from other stars can choose to hide behind a friendly colony. So our hunters need to be strong enough to batter down planetary defenses. 2. Blockaded systems can just task force their colonizers past your fleet, so blockading systems at the source doesn't do jack poo poo That's a lot of effort for no real gain. On the other side, I'm seriously planning to do this anyway, because this colony spam bullshit infuriates me. Like everything in MO3, it'll take some time, though. For a while I've been mapping Raas-space to find out where systems with empty planets and their borders are and in a while I will start building some additional light ships to blockade those systems. As I said, a lot of colonizers will probably slip through, but if we can keep the borders closed and blow up the early colonies erupting from our failures, we should be able to contain them.
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Dec 11, 2016 15:05
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 46: The Midnight-Offensive  Turn 162 rolls around with a couple new technologies. Some, like Battleships(!) are only getting visible on the tech tree, others like Miniaturized Bridges (the next great design obsoleter) become available directly.  One of the new techs is the Rapidfire-Fighter-Neutronblaser. It’s not as awesome as the similar technology for fighter-projectile weapons (those always give a flat-out second shot for theoretically double firepower), but it’s still strong: +20% accuracy (for an already precise weapon) and +20% higher rate of fire (for an already fast-firing weapon). When we get this tech in 6 turns I’m seriously thinking about building carriers with neutronblaster-fighters again. Too bad we had to wait so long for this tech, but it needed a colossal investment into mathematics to get unlocked and we only now reached the needed level. I think it sat around in our Physics-tree for nearly ten levels because of that.  Thanks to the design contest I completely forgot about this one: Zortrium, a new nanotech-material for our armor. It’s more expensive, has more hit points and higher damage absorption. (At medium-sized armor, it’s 10.) Armor damage absorption being rather low is why I tend to prefer weapons with shield-weakening or penetrating powers to armor-piercing weapons. Generally, armor-piercing only becomes useful far, far later in the game when everyone rocks super-heavy ultra mega death armor: Then some armor piercing wouldn’t hurt. Look at the neutronblasters for example: 10% penetration makes a 1000 HP shield function like a 900 HP shield one. That’s a lot of invisible extra damage. Shields also regenerate, so punching them down as hard and fast as possible is important. In many cases, making your weapons armor-piercing for no good reason means you’re making them larger, therefore your ships will carry less weapons, will do less damage and will generally be hosed.  Advances in technology allows our future ships to make a ship’s command center only half as large as they are now. Of course this is one of the techs giving our shipdesigner trouble, so all ship designs without a miniaturized bridge will be seen as invalid. Which means it will be impossible to update the older designs. Well, at least I like designing ships.   Now for something completely different: The Vela Sector is incredibly far away from our core worlds and two out of three systems aren’t connected with star lanes, which makes FTL awkward and time consuming. Our first colony expedition has finally reached Vela deep inside the Vela Dustcloud itself and the 1st LongRange Recon squadron is only one turn away from the unknown system on the outskirts of the dustcloud.  And while the Klackons are going to get their well-deserved thrashing soon, Almandin High Command doesn’t want to neglect the war against the Dila Empire. New orders reach the scout hanging around Abeen, and the tiny ship sets course to Iota Gruis.  During all this time, my reserve task forces have slowly made their way over to Trourmi. Including some transports to speed up the liberation of Trourmi a bit. It recently came up in the thread, so I thought I should mention this again: The game resolves battles on a per-system, per-faction basis. This means while multiple battles in the same system in the same turn are possible, they are rare. Multiple invasions in the same system are not possible. For every battle, you have to select a planet and for that turn, you can only land troops on that planet. Theoretically, you could circumvent this by somehow piling multiple enemies into the same system and then selecting another planet for each battle, to “trick” the game into thinking you can bombard/land troops on multiple planets. In practice this is almost impossible to pull off, because while you are fighting your space battles, the other sides do the same. And when you have enough different factions, all of them with different alliances, in the same system, chances are after a total of maybe 1-2 battles there will be no enemies left to fight. Anyway, if we ever enter a system with multiple factions and if we are at war with multiple of them and if they all somehow survive multiple battles so I can try selecting different planets and if we also have troops ready, then we will see if this golden goose of planetary invasion exists or not. (Edit: I forgot, all of our hypothetical enemies in this example must also not be allied with each other, or the game will simply add them together against us.) In all other cases: One planet, one turn, one invasion.  Of course, there is no reason to let the system beat us: Time to create some more armies to push faster! The 1st New Army includes a nice, huge chunk of green Raas mobile infantry, just to hammer home the point for the Dila Empire.  The transport ships attached to this army get a single escort to fill the squadron out.  But let’s not stop there! The 2nd New Army has less Raas, but all our veterans and guard soldiers. It’s the most elite force we have made yet.  With Amoenta having one of our planets, the AI will prioritize that planet and not send ships into DinoBores, so I add our reserve force to the mix and send all four task forces into Amoenta. With the added firepower we should get some faster orbital bombardments and the armies hopefully will take over 1-2 more planets so we can finally move on to Alphecc.  I’m still not done! A third army, the 7th Reserve Army, is formed from a bunch of assault forces and mobile infantry. It’s a lot tinier then the other two armies, since I’m using this one as a back-up force for another army already in transit.  The 7th Reserve Army is send into Trourmi. Galactic Cycle 243 saw a flurry of activity in the Kingdom of Almandin: Army forces were called up in huge amounts, new fleet task forces were formed up from the reserve and grand plans were made. One of these plans was a secret strategic plan to finally put an end to the mindless aggression of the Dila Empire. The forces called into movement were only the beginning, the final destruction of the Empire of Evil had begun. This plan was called the Midnight Offensive. -Pahs Eri, Historian 2nd Class, from his work “Decisions Done by Tired People”  Meanwhile, a nasty surprise enters our long-range scanners: Two Klackon-flotillas are approaching! It seems the Vchiitri Empire is trying to test our defenses. Two flotillas are ~16 ships. Enough for some serious shooting action. The AI also was smart enough to add in some indirect fire ships. Carriers would be better of course, but at least its trying!  This new engagement made me so excited I didn’t even bother to look at what our scout was doing in Sleipner! 56 against 16 ships seems to be uneven, but many of our ships are decades or even centuries old! Can the Klackons actually win?  Turns out intercepting their fleet wasn’t necessary, they straight up assault one of our planets. Our fleet is caught in waiting positions. Luckily our fighters and point defense weapons have no trouble stopping the enemy missiles from the IF-task force.  Their short-range flotilla is beastly: 542 damage is comparable to our own fleets. Only our most modern ships can out-damage them. In the background the IF-task force is sending out another swarm of missiles.  The IF-flotilla has still four salvoes left after shooting two times already. While this gives them good standing power in a longer battle, it also cuts their damage in half when compared to our own missile-designs. This design is already biting the Klackons in their chitin-asses, since with missile-salvoes that thin they can’t even stop our fighters from engaging their direct-fire ships. This battle shows why having more ammunition, but less DPS isn’t necessarily a good thing: Since our defenses can stop nearly every single enemy missile, having more shots to waste isn’t helping. If the task force could reliably bring some of them through, having three massive hits instead of six wimpy ones would be far better. When a longer battle turns against you, shooting three ineffectual salvoes more isn’t going to save your fleet, it’s better if your missile-ships are already empty and jumping out at that point. And another thing: Planetary bombardments look at your raw power, they don’t calculate how much shots you can fire in a prolonged battle. If you want to be really extreme, a ship with a single, massive salvo is superior in orbital bombardments against every sensible design. Anyway, this means our own designs are also better at bombarding planets. It could be worse, though: If every missile counted, the game would need to account for the infinite amount of fighters a carrier can construct mid-battle. So either every carrier would count at infinite power, or the game would crash every time you bombard a planet with carriers in your fleet.  The fighting continues a couple seconds, but then both Klackon-flotillas jump out rather than face annihilation at our hands. The battle is over. Having this happen so suddenly was a bit annoying, but since I’m harping all the time over how stupid the AI is, I can’t complain about it making a sensible choice here. That fleet was hosed from the moment the AI decided to not bring any carriers. MO3-battles work a little bit like Rock-Paper-Scissors, just with Normal, Missiles and Fighters instead: Missiles beat Normal, Fighters beat Missiles and Normal beats Fighters, if by “Fighters” you mean “Carriers without support and their own fighters are busy elsewhere”.  Since last turn we awkwardly destroyed the small colony of Trourmi VI, I decide to destroy the defenses of Trourmi VII this turn. Next turn, when our first army arrives, the planet should be cleared for approach. I still wince at that bad battle ages ago, where two of our transport task forces got sniped by a dying Raas-fleet.  Trourmi VII is doing its best: Fighters, missiles and large chunks of metal fired out of planetary rail guns are approaching us at high speeds. Also our own AI is helping the planet, too: Just look at how our larger cloud of fighters is swerving back and forth because it can’t decide if it should attack the enemy missiles or continue to its target. All while enemy fighters are already opening fire on our fighters. Luckily the enemy fighters made our own fighters re-target and after shooting down the enemy fighters, our own squadrons continued on to the planet without any more trouble.  After this short bit of excitement, the battle is nearly over already: Our long-range ships have no trouble stopping the occasional fighters and missiles trying to get past them to our carriers, while the occasional hit by the planetary batteries gets absorbed by our shields. Our own fighters are throwing themselves against the planetary shield, but for now it holds.  Half a minute later, some stray shots are finally getting through the shield.  Another thirty seconds later, our long-range ships are finally close enough to the planet to open fire: Our fighters and dozens of giant spinal mounted neutronblasters are hammering into the shield. By now the planet has hold out for long enough our carriers had time to launch a second strike. Planetary shields are really good. If this planet had a fleet backing it up, I would be in real trouble if I decided to ignore the fleet in favor of this super-shield.  And after one and a half minute of constant bombarding by a giant cloud of fighters and our two direct-fire task forces, the planetary shield collapses. The battle is over in an instant.  At the same time, Amoenta I on the other side of the Raas-territory, gets slowly ground down some more. But as you see, we seriously need some modern firepower here to speed things up. Population is down to 0,33 from 0,45. Not exactly fast progress. At least it seems another small Raas-army will face deletion in 3-4 turns.  Before you ask, obviously I didn’t bomb Trourmi VII! That planet is a target for our liberation army and our fleet in Trourmi is strong enough to wipe out most of this colony immediately! We are creeping close to that other annoying threshold, where orbital bombardment becomes much easier and goes a lot faster, but stops being a tool to help your armies. Sooner or later every sizable fleet of ours will just wipe out every helpless planet in one turn, or wipe out so much taking it over will be like founding a new colony. Ordering your fleet to fire 25% instead of everything at once helps a little bit, but not for long. Would be nice to have an option to concentrate fire on military targets instead of blindly hosing down everything, but Master of Orion III was done in the wrong generation for advanced stuff like that.  Some news from our reserves: Our first exploration-ship is completed. This small Gypsum-class scout will be the first of many.  During the last two turns, some more warships have been finished and our exploration-designs are now all in the front of the queue. Next: Planning Atrocities Libluini fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 17:18
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