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Wayne posted:Do you mean getting a better rate of return on your BCs or something? Because I just booted up the game to check, and the RP costs are exactly double going from Simple to Impossible. There's a formula that's basically tech level squared * racial mod * That's accurate: I stand corrected. Weird because it's not what I remember from the last time(a long time ago) that I looked at this. Don't know what I was looking at. In any case, that means the difference between difficulty levels is even more pronounced than I thought. @ PurpleXVI: I think the next update should take care of what you are looking for there.
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Jun 21, 2017 05:16
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Episode III: 2375-2399 We've surpassed the Psilons now in production, at least for the moment, and also by a hair apparently in population. But we're not doing so hot anywhere else. Half their tech at best, and I don't think the gap is closing. By 2379, we'd mostly finished the new factories and research was progressing again ... but they'd leapt back a head of us in production anyway. Apparently they just decided it was time to finally build more factories. So we're still screwed.  Kholdan, Ajax, and Escalon are either outfitted with a decent number of missile bases now or almost there. Those are the ones the Psilons can easily reach. Their weapons tech is ridiculous, they have Zortrium Armor and Inertial Stabilizers now, etc. -- so bases are our only chance to survive if they decide to attack again. Building a fleet would be utterly pointless right now.  Controlled Dead comes in, which means we can expand a bit again. Hopefully. We do have one Inferno planet within range but I think another 20M is worth going for the Terraforming option. There's three planets we can reach now, and a fourth when we get better propulsion. Still a chance we might find more once we scout further. Time for a couple new designs.  A faster scout will be built in enough numbers to replace all of these existing ones, and a new colony ship for dead planets, both with nuclear engines for faster travel. Most of these planets completely suck, making the terraforming option all that much more important. But still better than nothing. The Psilons remain happy for the moment, so we sign a Non-Aggression Pact. Mrrshans could still tip them against us at any moment, but we lose nothing by trying this.  This is basically a non-event, particularly given how quickly the lizards breed. Not much damage, and they'll recover quickly. Meanwhile the Psilons beat us to Laan, the one half-decent planet that was still out of our range. Crap.  The new range comes in, but it's too late on multiple levels. We'll go with the stabilizer here, for speed of moving up another tier as much as any other reason.  For all of our construction expertise, we continue to have no choices. At least another reduction in waste lets us put more into research, where we continue to fall further and further behind despite maximum effort. Rayden and Maalor, two min-sized 10M max colonies are settled in 2384. Um, yay?  One last colony, and it's enough to establish contact with the Silicoids. They seem not particularly pleasant. It also puts us back in contact with the Mrrshan. At least we can get some more info on galactic-goings on, and more precisely define how hopeless our situation is ... the Silicoids are Aggressive Technologists.  Sheesh. Current balance of planets: Silicoids 18(at least they've mostly stopped), Psilons 13, Mrrshan 3. We have 13. Conclusion: the rocks basically have the right side of the map, with the exception of the lower part. We get a front-row seat to watching them and the Psilons vie for supremacy  . The Sakkra must be in the lower-right, Bulrathi the upper-left. There are two available planets yet that are too distant for us, 6 parsecs away. Given the stakes here, I decide to send out two more capital-sized colony ships. Even with 15 I don't think we can challenge the Psilons or Silicoids, but it might keep us in the game a bit longer. The cost is now fairly trivial for our economy, so why not.  At least we aren't the Mrrshan isn't a great rallying cry. I'd try taking a planet or two from them if they weren't still annoyingly allied with the Psilons. We'll probably have to fight them for our new colony Neptunus. Of course what really matters here is the ever-growing Psilon tech lead. It won't be too long before the reach the stage of being able to point at things and make them die.  This is the best we can do in terms of a combat ship: we'll build a fairly minimal amount of these and send them on. The Ranger will use the standard hit-and-run tactics. I did add a battle scanner to it after taking this image. This could do some damage to even Psilon ships ... but only in far greater numbers than we can afford to produce. I'm going to keep our ship maintenance in the single-digits here: keeping the research funding flowing is vital.  As you can see here we signed a max trade agreement with the Silicoids. It's a huge deal, and we'll be paying for this for a while, but they have no Mrrshan dealings at least at the moment and aren't thrilled at meeting us. We absolutely cannot afford to have them as an enemy. Getting them as a long-term friend may be our only remote chance here.  Turns out I can build the colony ships with reserve tanks at Cruiser size. I feel really stupid for not having checked this: I assumed it wasn't even close yet. At least it'll be cheap, but I could already have had them going.  Class III Shields are in, and now a bit of a break as we can get Planetary Shields. That'll help us hold out better against any potential invasion.  This is great news for us, and we gleefully accept in 2390. Max trade deals are immediately signed: 325 BC with the Mrrshans, 900 BC with the Psilons.  Our trade deficit is rather massive, working out to 16% of our current income at the moment. No more Rangers will be built: we'll bank on being given enough time to build up Neptunus and get bases going there eventually.  Other than a small radiated rich planet, there's nothing more out this way but Psilons. We've visited a couple unexplored ones that the Bulrathi own.  A couple years later, the first of our next set of tech reapings. Should have gotten a couple of other ones first but not complaining: this will give us another empire-wide boost. With as many planets as we have, this is worth another 300 million people eventually. We'll nab Controlled Radiated next, allowing us to land anywhere. From what I can see that means just two more planets would be available -- but both of them are rich. The Psilons by the way only have barren landings available -- we're not beating them in much of anything, but that is keeping them from being even more ridiculous than they already are. Also ...  Very nice. And ...  When it rains it pours. We will of course acknowledge no such thing. It appears the Bulrathi have forgotten that they suck. Quayal, by the way, saw a 15M size increase. The Bulrathi are Aggressive Ecologists, and sign a 225BC trade deal. They rank dead last, as expected.  Near the cursor here are a couple of systems they've only acquired due to being allies with the Psilons. Might be worth trying to break that alliance and then taking these at some point. For now, we sign a 225BC trade deal though; I don't anticipate us wanting to go to war anytime soon. The web of alliances is such right now that attacking anyone would potentially put us at war with everyone. We're the only race without an alliance. Super. Improved Space Scanner and Industrial Tech 6 come the next year, and both will be quite useful. Robotic Controls IV is the choice over a better Battle Computer in order to keep the economy growing.  An actual choice in our top research field!! Wonders never cease. Reduced Waste 40% is the clear choice here, cheaper and we just got a big reduction in factory costs so the next one wouldn't help us much. According to our reports, nobody actually has Robotic Controls IV yet(Mrrshan and Psilons have III). Planetology tech sucks for most of them as well(ironically the Silicoids are doing the best). So these could be a couple of big advances for us.  After finishing the Mass Driver that we really couldn't care less about right now, we'll grab Stinger Missiles for another missile-base upgrade. The Psilons already have better missiles than this: we'd still be a long way from any credible threat to them.  Time to vote again. The Sakkra remain indifferent, and to the surprise of nobody we're not nominated this time.  The Bulrathi abstain as well, which should leave this another inconclusive vote. The Silicoids more than doubled their population and voting power in a quarter-century. That's not bad. They are still well short of the 17 required for power though.  Since they can't vote against us this time, the cats can't be bothered ...  Psilons check in with 11 tallies. We're not far behind the Psilons here, and we've pulled ahead of the Sakkra. Definitely in third. We can vote for either candidate and make them happy while ticking off the other, or abstain and irritate them both to a lesser degree. There's no 'safe' vote here. Our relations with the Psilons are much better than with the Silicoids, so I take a calculated risk and cast our lot with Geode. The Psilons respond, and I quote 'We are not amused'.
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Jun 23, 2017 14:32
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Are the Silicoids a more dangerous enemy than the Psilons at this point? I'd have thought that befriending the Psilons, or at least keeping them mollified, would rank higher.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:20
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Thotimx posted:The Psilons respond, and I quote 'We are not amused'. Nice.  Of all the bugs left unfixed or actually added in the last MOO patch (1.3), the jumble up of AI personalities has to be one of the worst. Psilons are usually Honorable instead of Pacifistic, which means you have to walk on eggshells around a race already likely to dominate, and my faves the Darloks are usually Xenophobic instead of Aggressive, making people hate them even more. I'm thinking about hitting ALT-P next time I start a game just because the dominant traits are so unfortunate, heh.I did some digging into what the mod community found about MOO 1 (mostly in the context of seeing if the abandoned fan-patch was worth it, and in my opinion it's not), and it turns out the AI does indeed just get free colony ships if their reserve is high enough. That actually contributes to races with bad starts not being able to recover, because they still have to pay maintenance on up to 4 cruisers they can't actually use. PurpleXVI posted:Are the Silicoids a more dangerous enemy than the Psilons at this point? I'd have thought that befriending the Psilons, or at least keeping them mollified, would rank higher. Thot didn't bring up a race screen last time, but I assume he was already doing OK with the Psilons (a long-maturing trade deal helps quite a bit in MOO 1) and needed the affinity with the Silicoids more. If a dominant AI shows up and doesn't like you, you have to do something like that or offer tribute to get out of the "randomly declare war" zone. That, and while the Psilons are always tough; the Sillies can invade all your planets (if you have hostile planets another race doesn't have the tech to settle, they can't land on you), and are the one AI who will always use bioweapons. If you have to fight them, you want to be strong enough to be on offense.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:04
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Wayne's right on my logic, though in retrospect I do think it was a mistake. Basically I figured the Psilon relationship was safe. Voting for the Silicoids would keep them off my back. I would probably abstain if I had it to do again -- it hurt my relations with the Psilons more than I expected.
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Jun 25, 2017 01:42
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Episode III: 2400 - 2424 Our economy is ok, but still a bit behind. That leaves us with a technology situation where we aren't even quite keeping pace with the Silicoids, much less the Psilons. If we mobilize now, that will get even worse. There's no indication this will turn around unless we make it turn around and there aren't many ways to do that. Once we get to the last three open systems near us, we'll have to think about striking out against one of the smaller empires.   Meanwhile tensions are rising. The yellow flag just to the left of the cursor here is Seidon. It's a Bulrathi world but both Psilon and Silicoid transports are en route. War may be coming very soon. The three great empires are split with Silicoids on one side, us on the other, and Psilons in the middle. Even if we both attacked, I don't know that we could take them though.  The two we are close to getting are Inertial Stabilizer which is basically just a stepping-stone, and the Planetary Shield which will help us in a defensive sense. Both advances came in a couple years later, and we moved on to Sublight Drives(only choice) and Class V Shields(IV was the only other option there).  Another two years, and we get three of these notices. Just like reaching the factory or population max, it's informational to give you a chance to change things up if you don't want more bases built somewhere afterwards. As I think I mentioned, any DEF spending automatically goes to shields first, then bases if you've built all the shields that you can. By default, like other similar situations, it will dump all of your defense spending into research unless you change it. The Silicoids take Rana, an inferno planet I had my eye on. We're down to two options here, and this is a miscalculation on my part. I assumed by now they'd have a lot of escorts ... but it was only a colony ship with heavy lasers! Of course no way to predict that but perhaps I should have sent a small amount of ships to protect it. Oh well.  2411, and the next wave of techs begins. Our ecology budgets aren't bad, but this will further reduce them by a third. It's also something nobody else has; the Silicoids don't need it but it reduces their advantage over us, and the Psilons are still at 80%. Next up the only option is Andrium armor(150% bonus, next after Duralloy, which we have, and Zortrium, which we couldn't get).  We aren't the ones doing the most taking over of the galaxy. Check your reports, catface.  You've got too much space as it is. Not good news.  2413, and more weapons. Moving the tech forward is top priority right now, and besides I find the torpedoes to be the best choice in this group; versatile. Most importantly, we have Stinger missiles. The Psilons are already at least two generations ahead of that according to our reports, but it does make things slightly less inadequate.  This is huge, because we're the first to get it. Could put us over the top in production(temporarily, of course). Sublight Drives also came in. The Advanced Space Scanner was one selection.  This was the second. We probably won't use it, but it's an excellent anti-small ship device. Once again the decider is moving up the ladder. Refitting and building new factories didn't stop another one from coming in the next year ...  A pause here on a couple of planets to get colony ships out to a pair of small rich worlds. The only next-tier option was Cloning(cutting our cost for accelerating pop growth in half). Not too exciting but it is what it is.  This was also noticed. We have 33 missile bases on Ryoun, so we might be ok here. All depends on how advanced these ships are. Naturally I will set to work building more as soon as the new factories are ready. Most planets were done with the expansion in 2-3 years.  Crap. Wasn't our best planet but a pretty good one.  Good luck. We're going to need more territory soon: theirs will do. However, we've actually fallen further behind in production which makes no sense, and the Psilons have a fleet coming to Ajax. Looks like they've decided our planets are the place to expand. They are very wrong. It took only a year to clean up Romulas, and it appears the planet has shrunk from 70M to 65M in size. That's not much of a hit. One weird thing about these incoming Psilon ships: they are moving at warp 1, or at best warp 2. It's as if they decided not to scrap their old ships, and instead send them to us for the blowing up. Our Stingers will be pleased to oblige :P. Also, almost all the alliances are gone. Sakkra-Silicoids is the only one that remains: the Mrrshan are at war with the Psilons also. They choose their enemies ... poorly. We sign a Non-Aggression Pact with the Silicoids, but they don't want an Alliance. We're all going to need to gang up on the Psilons soon, and even that may not be enough. We also bump up our trade with them to 1.8k.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meIZExboe4o That was rather anti-climactic. For that many missiles we didn't do a huge amount of damage to their cruisers though.  Andrium Armor is in; Tritanium armor is only a little cheaper than cutting our waste spending in half. We aren't paying very much as it is, but half of not very much is still savings.  Here it's time to give some overdue love to our ground troops. We have Class V shields so class VI would just be more expensive and not bring all that much to the table. And then ...  Same nominees, same Sakkra indifference.  The Bulrathi do pick a side, but their opinion really doesn't matter much.  The rocks' growth has definitely slowed down.  Having recently gotten involved with a war against the Psilons(they're at war with almost everyone now), the Mrrshan cast their lot as well.  Taking the population lead is good for the Psilons and bad for everyone else. We're not far behind with 13, but can't afford to piss anyone off so we abstain. Wouldn't have been enough to put either side over the top anyway: the galaxy is too divided.
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Jun 26, 2017 18:02
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One quirk of the AI is that if you have a ship and the missile bases, the AI will keep ships in the fight it would retreat to try and kill the ship, even if they're getting pasted by bases. You could have probably taken out most of that fleet if you moved the nuc recons away but didn't retreat them.
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Jun 26, 2017 19:04
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OAquinas posted:One quirk of the AI is that if you have a ship and the missile bases, the AI will keep ships in the fight it would retreat to try and kill the ship, even if they're getting pasted by bases. You could have probably taken out most of that fleet if you moved the nuc recons away but didn't retreat them. I'm going to have to keep that in mind because I've been suffering from a bad case of anti-climactic fleet vs missile base battles.
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Jun 26, 2017 20:16
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RedMagus posted:It's fascinating watching how complex this early game is, considering the programming and computational limitations. There's so much going on, and so many options! I'm really appreciating the write-ups as well. Even the diplomatic victory that people disliked in the first playthrough is a great example. It's very much not as cheesy as it sometimes seems; if a CPU votes for the player over their rival, that means that the CPU in question has an 85% chance of being willing to go to war with the rival. A 2/3rds majority there is simply an acknowledgement that if the player showed even a stitch of diplomatic skill, they'd be able to marshal a war against their rival and crush them, which would almost certainly leave them the superpower of the galaxy, and turn into a win. MoO 1 is a treasure, and one of the things I'd do if I had a time machine is just go back and fly-on-the-wall as much of the development of the game as I could. There's sheer genius going on here that is rarely on display.
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Jun 26, 2017 22:07
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OAquinas posted:One quirk of the AI is that if you have a ship and the missile bases, the AI will keep ships in the fight it would retreat to try and kill the ship, even if they're getting pasted by bases. You could have probably taken out most of that fleet if you moved the nuc recons away but didn't retreat them. I've notice this but am generally loathe to abuse things like this or the ultra-rich reserve mechanic, etc. Coolguye posted:Catching up in the thread Thanks for joining!
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Jun 29, 2017 04:26
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Episode III: 2425-2443 When I said the Mrrshan are at war with everyone, i wasn't being literal. I should have been. Absolutely everyone is at war with them. They have nothing but enemies. So we can either profit from this -- or be bystanders. A year ago I designed a new ship, the Stng Cruise.  Cruiser-size ship with the 5 2-launch racks of Stinger missiles. The Mrrshans have decent weapons tech including Scatter Pack V missiles, but no propulsion or shielding tech to speak of. Looks like another good situation for hit-and-run tactics to wear them down. They don't have advanced combat armors so our ground troops will be equipped better; they've got hand lasers but that will mean nothing compared to our Andrium armor. We should have the edge in ground battles. If we can get enough ships built, this is potentially a chance to swing the balance of power. Current # of systems: Silicoids 19, Psilons 16, Klackons 17. Psilons have the better population though at a council vote measure of 16-15 with us at 13. Silicoids, like us, have a good amount of crappy hostile planets. Also the Psilons just got reduced waste 20% which boosted their economy to being clearly the best. Taking what we can from Mrrshan territory is better than letting others seize it. Research will be slowed while we build up enough ships to be useful, but that can't be helped. If the other races take this opportunity first, we'll be in even worse shape.  The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. For the last couple decades I think we've made up some tech ground on the Silicoids, and maybe almost kept even with the Psilons at best. They've continued losing some of their more antiquated designs as well. The news isn't all bad -- but it mostly is and things can't go well if we can't get that production comparison to go a little better for us.   All the established border worlds have between 25 and 45 missile bases; I add some more in between each wave of tech advances. Still our maintenance on them isn't bad, and trade funds are starting to roll in. Didn't re-up with the Psilons here for a while because relations were souring(down to Unease at one point), but they seem to be heading back in the right direction now. We try to do so here and they say 'You have not honored your past agreements, we see no reason to trust you now'. Although that statement appears to be untrue, I think it's basically a standard 'we don't like something you did' thing that might be referring to us voting against them in the Council a while back.  We're definitely at the beginning of a new cycle here, and will only build the new Stng Cruise models for what is needed in the Mrrshan war. Torpedoes will be the next thing to finish most likely, and will probably gives us more bang for the buck. Having thus decided, the Emperor ramps up ship production on all good-sized fully-developed planets except Mobas, which is forever devoted to research as our back-line artifacts planet. Time is off the essence if we are to attack the Mrrshan before others get their act in gear. Most of them can turn out a new cruiser each year; some a little more often, some less. The next year another, small group of Psilon ships gets decimated at Escalon. Only a half-dozen cruisers and a dozen destroyers, but anything they lose for nothing is good for us.  This kind of thing is a common sight when gearing up for war in a large-ish empire. All of those lines are RELOC commands from other worlds. Guradas is our most recently colonized world, and is the closest to the Mrrshans which is why it was chosen as the rally point. Just a few years later, in 2429, more Psilons came to Escalon. They had a single cruiser, a Star Blade, which did some damage to our bases with a much more advanced missile. It only got to fire once before being destroyed though, and once again they were defeated.  Our fleet strength after 4 years of full production and one year of just a few planets before that has our fleet up to almost halfway-respectable, as can be seen. We've got 11 cruisers at Guradas which is enough to begin probing attacks.  Shown in blue here is the Mrrshan Empire, in it's entirety. They took Antares about 20 years ago from the Bulrathi to make it this good. We can only reach Fierias and Simius right now. The former is their homeworld so we'll head for the easier target of Simius first. At Warp 3, it's a 3-year journey. Each year afterwards, any cruisers that have arrived at Guradas are sent after them to follow and reinforce. Since you can't relocate to a system you don't control, this gets everything to a central location and allows for minimal micromanagement. In 2432, the first group of cruisers reaches Simius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kf0YEvFc70 Definitely a success. Given how slow their ships are, taking out the missile bases was job #1. We've got 64 of these ships by now, which require almost 9% of our income to maintain. We could build more, but it seems unnecessary at this point. I pull the plug and switch back to research. We'll also clearly have space superiority soon, and once that's done(I'd do it now but the game won't allow it on unscouted systems) we can send in ground troops. We're still among the weaker fleets, but about three-quarters of the strongest, the Psilons. That did not take long at all. The Mrrshans delayed matters by throwing strike craft, called Ferrets, into the fray by the truckload. They had almost 1700 at one point, several hundred more elsewhere, and with only 10 total Stingers per cruiser, it takes a lot of missiles to blow up that many ships. We weren't their only problem either: a Bulrathi fleet was seen headed to Fierias. It would only be a matter of time ... Meanwhile the whole 'enemy of my enemy' thing boosts everyone's opinion of us considerably. We are able to boost our Psilon trade deal to almost 2k ...  Also, this happened ...  That's not why we attacked the Mrrshan, but we'll take it. I figure we are more likely to end up at war with the Psilon in the long-term, and they are more powerful as well. We might just have a chance if we can keep the rocks on our side ...  After a few years, we clear out the remaining defenders at Simius. At the same time, we acquire Cloning and the Energy Pulsar. Here, advanced soil enrichment really helps out our standard planets. +50M terraforming would add 20M everywhere but overall this is better ... and we can always get a higher terraforming number later most likely.  Here's an interesting choice. Range 9 would be nice; we have 5 which is hilariously bad for this point in the game. I think the speed is more valuable, but there's always the move-up-the-ladder argument. The cost difference is negligible though, so Impulse Drives it is; Warp 5. Simius has 93M population, 289 factories. Well-developed and I have every intention of keeping it that way. Time for invasion. I'm aiming for an even 100M here since we should have the tech edge. That'll leave some left over, in theory. The Bulrathi attack on Fierias failed, and the Mrrshan have responded by sending 1,773 Ferrets to Ursa, the nearby homeworld of the Bears. It's as though the sea is parting here now to let us invade unimpeded. Not arguing. It'll take six years for all of them to arrive. Our recently developed Cloning ability goes into work and will let us replace the population loss almost instantly. 2440 brings the Advanced Space Scanner, with ECM Jammer VI the only option for the next tier. Time for automated spam-scouting:  This is the first of a whopping 26 systems, over a third of the galaxy, that is scouted at the same time by our new toy! This includes Orion, which is in the lower-right. We may end up visiting it on purpose this game, by the way. As of now, it's still uninhabited. Meanwhile we get a useless GNN Report, and the first 23M land on Simius. They take out 35M defenders, confirming my calculations that 100M should be sufficient. That leaves 60, with 77 incoming for us. They'll grow some more, but not enough to stop us. The Mrrshan are hilariously attacking now, sending 1k Ferrets ... and a pair of colony ships?!? ... to Escalon. Our missile bases will tear them apart, if they stick around long enough to let us. Among the useful information revealed by the scanners is that the two Mrrshan worlds further up are smallish Deserts, sizes 35 and 50M. We'll leave them with the smaller one, and if possible take the other three.  The research keeps on rolling in. The only choice for the next tier is Powered Armor. Described as high-mobility, low-grav flight capability combined with heavy armor plating. Not sure how that works out in practice but it's a whopping +30 to ground combat rolls. Naturally the Psilons already have it.  'eternal friendship and loyalty'. No, I don't believe that either. Yes, I'll take the offer. The three great powers are now allies, a bond forged in the blood of felines. It cannot last forever -- but I'll take it for now.  Here's our homeworld, for a look at how reduced waste impacts things. We still have some spending ... but almost none. There's still quite a bit to happen in the last several years of this cycle, so that will wait till later. The struggle of the insect horde continues apace, and the Mrrshan War has proven a most valuable conflict in more ways than one ...
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Jun 29, 2017 04:54
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An alliance forged in the blood of cats is not meant to last. Nonsensical philosophy aside, one gripe I have is that reduced industrial waste renders ecological restoration moot. It's better to invest planetology research into other goals, as that research is just a hole that you throw research points into.
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Jun 29, 2017 06:14
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General Revil posted:An alliance forged in the blood of cats is not meant to last. They're two sides of the same coin. Improved and sometimes advanced Eco restoration are usually available earlier to cut down on that eco bar--definite benefits to sidetracking into that early on. You are right that they are redundant, but that's by design--you're never guaranteed to get Reduced Waste or Eco Restoration; having two ways to deal with waste gives all but the most unlucky a good way to free up resources.
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Jun 29, 2017 06:24
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Let's go skin us some furballs!
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Jun 29, 2017 09:27
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wedgekree posted:Let's go skin us some furballs! Lets! Episode III: 2443-2449  2444 was a momentous year. First up, we get Anti-Matter Torpedoes! Only fire every other turn, but they don't have limited ammunition and hit twice as hard as a Stinger missile. Win. Can't be used in bases though. The last three items seen here are the latest tier. Missile base defense continues to be top priority, and the Pulson Missile is a significant upgrade over the Stinger(faster, more accurate, a third more damage). It's still not as good as what the Psilons have but it will definitely help. Then, the final battle on Simius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUT3JXnpwD0 Victory! Out of all that captured tech, the only thing that we didn't have is the extension to Range 6. However all of it does boost our overall tech levels a bit. The Mrrshans have a small group of troop transports incoming and a couple small bands of ferrets. They are of little concern. We'll leave a small group of cruisers here and move on to Fierias. There are a few dozen bases to be dealt with there, but that should be no trouble. After clearing out the bases on the homeworld in a single strike -- each cruiser seems to be more than equal to a Mrrshan base -- we proceed with sending in more invasion troops.  Personal Absorption Shield(+20 to ground combat) is in now. We'll absolutely crush the Mrrshan in the next round of fighting with that. Going with Cloaking Device here as it's somewhat cheaper than the Class VII shield. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZWgRO-Hpi0 Well that was rather well done. Kill ratio about 2.5:1 on the invading. The Bulrathi warning is rather hilarious, since I consider them my next target at the soonest opportunity. But first things first: one more Mrrshan world to take at Antares. That'll wait though to see how much they want to fight: there are quite a few ships incoming to Fierias. Our 19 planets now equal the Silicoids in number.  The Council meets again, and the lizards get off the fence. Apparently they aren't getting on well with the Psilons. Also, we have just edged the Silicoids out of the running here.  Figures.  Unexpected. With the support of the rocks and the Sakkras, could we actually win this??  We have killed two-thirds of them off in the past twenty years. A little bitterness is understandable, even if they were the instigators.  Nope, not winning this one. They are big enough to be a veto block unto themselves, having gotten enough better terraforming tech to make their planets even more productive. We throw our 15 votes to Tachaon as well just for the heck of it. Not enough to put them over the top. A short update here, but we've dealt a crushing blow to the furballs.
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Jul 4, 2017 01:25
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Things are starting to look up now.
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Jul 4, 2017 06:17
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I did it. I finally got the Bovine Beginnings joke.
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Jul 4, 2017 06:27
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Starting to feel like the Klackons are actual contenders now.
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Jul 4, 2017 07:10
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Nice to see like our tactical plans are going off purr-fectly.
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Jul 4, 2017 07:35
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MillenialVulcan posted:I did it. I finally got the Bovine Beginnings joke. Oh, so you're the one who got that? GeneralRevil posted:Things are starting to look up now. PurpleXVI posted:Starting to feel like the Klackons are actual contenders now. Definitely better than they were, but I wouldn't get carried away. I would still rate the Psilons as the only contender. But if we can keep growing, the bugs definitely have a chance. Which would be good. I don't want a third insect playthrough.
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Jul 5, 2017 21:50
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Thotimx posted:Definitely better than they were, but I wouldn't get carried away. I would still rate the Psilons as the only contender. But if we can keep growing, the bugs definitely have a chance. Which would be good. I don't want a third insect playthrough. Given how much of a challenge the Klackons have been, how many tries do you think it'll take to win with the Bulrathi?
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Jul 5, 2017 22:13
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It ... could take a while. Really comes down to getting a reasonably fortunate start. Weird stuff can happen sometimes. But there are some races that I(and others) could potentially get REALLY sick of before this is finished. .
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Jul 6, 2017 22:30
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Thotimx posted:Oh, so you're the one who got that? Glad somebody did, it's still over my head apparently.  inflatablefish posted:Given how much of a challenge the Klackons have been, how many tries do you think it'll take to win with the Bulrathi? Bulrathi are pretty bad, but they're probably the worst on what most of the "pros" consider default settings (Medium / Impossible / 5). Bulrathi either want to crush someone right off the bat before shielded missile bases become a thing (especially if you get a bad start, since another race's homeworld will always be good), or make it to the very end where they have a bonus that's impossible to match. So you want a bigger map or fewer foes (or an easier difficulty  ). And Bulrathi are actually pretty good at ending Final Wars quickly if you can keep production parity (which gets easier as you take their stuff of course). You do want at least some friends you can trade with, because Computers are probably the worst field to be Poor in.I've actually found Mrrshan to be OK, as long as you can attack somebody during important tech breakpoints. Like the previous update's anti-matter torpedoes are so-so for most races, but for Mrrshan they get +8 to hit for free and can just barely be squeezed on a destroyer... that's insane devastation to ships, and 15 damage to a planet is no joke if they don't have shields. Coolguye posted:A 2/3rds majority there is simply an acknowledgement that if the player showed even a stitch of diplomatic skill, they'd be able to marshal a war against their rival and crush them, which would almost certainly leave them the superpower of the galaxy, and turn into a win. MOO1 is really good, but I'm pointing this out in particular to disagree (not that you're wrong, you're not; but to criticize the game). The diplomacy system is basic, and whether due to a bug or poor design, almost everything runs through the other party's current "mood" modifier, not the "core relations" thing that sets almost everything in MOM. So you get to a weird spot where people who like you are more willing to back down to threats than people you want to bully around (since it doesn't check fleet power), and a round of bribes on year 24 can practically guarantee a win on 25. It's not even hard to win as the Humans doing that and never building a single warship. Then there's the bugs; my dad got hit by the 32000 ship underflow bug and never played the game since.
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Jul 7, 2017 00:21
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Wayne posted:Glad somebody did, it's still over my head apparently. Well, this game is the first 'MoO', but the series kept on mooing after this...
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Jul 7, 2017 01:54
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Now can we solve the mystery of why this is a "Le'ts play" instead of a "Let's play"?
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Jul 7, 2017 06:24
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GuavaMoment posted:Now can we solve the mystery of why this is a "Le'ts play" instead of a "Let's play"? It's in Klingon.
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Jul 7, 2017 06:38
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GuavaMoment posted:Now can we solve the mystery of why this is a "Le'ts play" instead of a "Let's play"? I'll take le tits now for 500
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Jul 7, 2017 13:35
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GuavaMoment posted:Now can we solve the mystery of why this is a "Le'ts play" instead of a "Let's play"? Good guesses all, but the answer is really simple: I typed it wrong. Yep, boring old human error. That's the way life is sometimes.
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Jul 8, 2017 03:36
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Episode III: 2450-2474 We've surpassed the Silicoids in production, and population/tech are about even. Only their fleet is temporarily keeping them ahead overall. That's the good news. Bad news is the Psilons are still running away ...  It doesn't get any better than that in terms of the Harmony with the Silicoids and Psilons. It's just one big love-in.  This though is the stuff that nightmares are made of. Doing ok in Force Fields and Construction actually, though they've gotten 20% Waste now as well. We'll have that Powered Armor soon. They are way ahead of us in terms of the speed race in Propulsion; once we get Pulson Missiles we'll just be a little behind in Weapons tech. Advanced Soil Enrichment is a big one in Planetology but we're on the way to that. That'll leave them with still a +30M per planet in terraforming(60 vs. 30) which is pretty sizable. Computers is the worst though. On top of their big population edge which we can cut into, they now have Robotic Controls V AND VI!! That means a production explosion on their part is coming, and it could possibly be a decisive one. I hope we pop one of those advances soon, so we can at least try to keep in contact.  Plugging along here, about halfway to a number of new things including the vital Advanced Soil Enrichment. We can research a lot faster when not building more missile bases; another round of that is underway but should finish soon. Absolutely can't afford to leave our border worlds underprotected.  As you can see we've got multiple places with over 50 bases, the list of planets is longer than this and there are others that have some. All the border worlds have about 25-30 minimum or are working towards that. The cost is reasonable still. With the speed of the Psilon ships though, their effectiveness is fading. What's saving us right now is they don't have any advanced bombs. Yet. That and the goodwill built up, of course.  By 2453, Fierias and Simius both had planetary shields up and were well into base-building, and the Mrrshan ships were retreating or destroyed. On to Antares now. There were no bases there, so it was a quick job. The longest part would be waiting a few years for the ground troops to arrive.  Powered Armor arrives in 2457. Adamantium armor material is up next as we are starting to get into some pretty high-end stuff now.  This is an interesting bit of diplomacy AI. They won't sign peace with you if there are allies also at war: the allies will just ask you to declare war on them again, so it's a waste of time. We refuse here of course. A year later Antares falls. To genocide, or not to genocide? I was going to leave them with a single world. Our relations are good with the other major powers so we could survive the hit, but I don't want to flip anyone to the Psilons side in the High Council. We'll leave Selia to the Mrrshan.  So what next then? The Bulrathi would be the obvious next target. They are allied with the Sakkras(who cares) and the Psilons. Their three planets are, in order from upper left, Pollus, Ursa, and Regulus. Regulus sucks, but the other two are nice big ones. They'd make fine additions.  Also got the new ECM in here. Unfortunately all that was available was more ECM -- no robotics. That sucks. There were a couple of nice Propulsion options but I clicked on the wrong one by mistake: inferior Fusion Drives(Warp 4) when we just got Warp 5. Grrr. But it won't take long to get them. We inquire of the Psilon about them breaking their alliance with the bears.  Thanks 'buds'! Now to go bear-hunting. This will piss off the Sakkras and them, but as long as the Silicoids stay with us in the Council, or are at least neutral, we'll be fine. Tried to work out a tech trade for some better robotics, but they wouldn't have it as expected. Everything they were willing to offer, we have better of. Quite annoying, though good design, that they won't hand over what we need! Advanced Soil Enrichment popped up next, and the only option to proceed further was +60M terraforming, which will add 30M more to all our planets. Perfect.  Here's how the homeworld looks: it takes a significant amount of the output of even a large planet, but honestly it's quite cheap considering will get this done in a year. Eco slider says 'Gaia' until you have enough to complete the task -- then it will say 'Clean' like usual. Since this only helps standard planets and hostile ones can't use it, over a third of our systems will not benefit.  Pulson missiles are in, and the bottom three are our new choices. All beam weapons of one kind or another. The Gauss Autocannon is in the same vein as the Gatling Laser; a multi-fire weapon with four attacks per turn, except it also halves shields. The Particle Beam is more powerful shield-halver except it only fires once, and the Plasma Cannon does 6-30 damage without the shield benefit as a more 'biggest gun we can find' option. The Gauss Autocannon is our choice here, and would give us a beam weapon worth putting on a ship. After taking out the missile bases on Pollus, the Bulrathi naturally declare war; and the Mrrshan are pleased, saying that our attacks 'prove the honor in your words of peace'. We've had no words of peace for you, but ok. The Gaia transformations complete on a dozen worlds, expanding the sizes by as much as 60M -- Vega now holds a max. of 215M. The growth rate increase means we'll be seeing a boom here, and I'm interested to see how much of the gap with the Psilons we can close when it comes to population. The system is remote enough that it will take at least four years to get enough troops there. 71M Bulrathi to defeat, and while our tech should more than neutralize their natural strength advantage we will take a lot more losses than we were against the Mrrshan.  With the Cloaking Device finished, we set our sights on the Zyro Shield. It's like Anti-Missile Rockets only better, with a base chance of incinerating incoming missiles at almost twice as high(75% compared to 40%). No matter how advanced the missile, some of them won't get through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M19mPeyWFPE Well we have a new planet, but that research bug will hurt. Probably about 10-12 years to make up that much work. And the cats finally meet their demise. Interestingly the Silicoids didn't take over the planet ... but bombed it from orbit. We ought to be able to get there first with a colony ship, and take it out from under our 'allies'.  Here's a basic destroyer-size design with our fastest engines. Once miniaturization advances to the point, and we're well past it, that you can build colony ships on a destroyer hull, it's even more trivial to settle new colonies. Our outdated cruisers move on to Ursa, the Bulrathi homeworld. In 2469 we capture, along with four completely obsolete technologies. That brings up the question, now what?  The current system count has us in the lead now clearly with 23 planets, Silicoids still 19, Psilons still 17. That's much better. The question at the moment is whether we want to build a modern fleet to attack the Silicoids and expand further, or whether we are big enough to catch the Psilons in tech. I don't think we are, not yet. They've recently gotten some new toys, including Industrial Waste Elimination(utopia state where no eco spending is needed at all), +80M terraforming, and the devastating Neutronium Bomb. Their battle computers and shields are twice as good as ours ... yeah, it's not good. On the other hand, here are rocks:  Beam weapons are really the only noteworthy advantage they have, and they are notably horrible in missile tech so their bases will be of little consequence. Not sure how it's possible, but it looks like they are still using Warp 1 engines!! In other words, they are ripe for the picking -- but we don't want to attack until we can be confident that we can survive them voting Psilon in the High Council. Not there yet.  We should never be able to get away with this at this point in the game, but so be it. Introducing the Ranger, a torpedo-bearing cruiser. Extremely similar to the Stinger Cruisers that we've used against the Mrrshan and Bulrathi, except that it packs a bigger punch. A reasonable amount of speed in combat is vital, and with the Silicoids having neither speed or quality missiles for their bases we should be able to run circles around them: literally in this case. Once again this is a ship that could potentially do damage to Psilons as well -- but not much, and they are fast enough to intercept and punish us. Our goal is not to fight them. So then we'll proceed further with the goal of building up our newly acquired territories and fortifying them, while also getting a fleet of Rangers going. As with the previous conflict we won't need a lot, which will allow a significant amount of research to happen at the same time.  Got our unnecessary new engines, and now a new choice. The Intergalactic Star Gates make relocating ships across long distances very easy -- once they have been built. Quite worthwhile, and not a hard choice. In 2473 Adamantium armor comes in(250% hp increase), and the even better Neutronium armor(300%) is our only next option.  Sakkras are back on the sidelines; I thought they'd vote Psilon here so I'll take it.  The Silicoids stay with us after the Bulrathi give the Psilons a vote.  Continuing to explode their numbers ... we have 24 votes so we've basically kept even with them this round, +9 while they added +8. We can't avoid vote for Tachaon without handing them the win so it's abstain this time around. If the Psilons got Silicoid support it would give them 48 votes, which still wouldn't be enough -- they'd need Sakkras to put them over the top. I expect breaking our alliance with the Silicoids will result in enough bad will to throw everyone the Psilons' way. We're close to a veto bloc right now though; 28 votes are needed at the moment for that, just four more than we have. I think the time is right. If we take enough planets before the next vote, we can do this.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:21
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Getting down to crunch time. I think you've got this, but it's close.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:40
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Do the Klackons have issues getting Robotic Controls? I've only played three games with them, but every time, the Robotic Controls techs weren't available for me. In my medium game, I stole a Robotic Controls III, and in my simple game, I didn't get any until Robotic Controls VI.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:52
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Two things to throw into the calculus: 1) Sakkra are far east. May be worth the genocide hit to kill the bears and use it as a stepping stone to attack them 2) If you do go silicoid, prioritize the non-hostile worlds. They only have Terraforming +30, so with gaia xform you'll be adding that many more votes to your total.
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Jul 8, 2017 04:53
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I have returned from the exile of OS updates and internet outages. A joyful fun time was had. GeneralRevil posted:Do the Klackons have issues getting Robotic Controls? I can't say for certain, haven't played them enough to recall specifically. OAquinas posted:Two things to throw into the calculus: Thanks for your thoughts, although I keep things played somewhat ahead so I was already past this decision. My thought process was just that going Silicoid would let me gobble up a lot of territory. As you'll see, I didn't follow your tactical advice there either, but I don't think it made all that much difference.
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Jul 15, 2017 04:30
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Episode III: 2475-2499 We've unquestionably surged past the Silicoids overall. The fear here is that we might upset the Psilons enough by combination of bad-boy rep and continuing to get bigger to spark a premature war with them. Not continuing to expand though is at least as dangerous; they'll just keep consolidating. We're also about to say goodbye to almost half our trade income. Must be done though.  All of the old missile cruisers are gone, and in a few years we've got a decent group of Rangers here. I'll keep building a bit more until I'm certain we have enough firepower.  A number of systems now have 100 bases, which I've decided to cap things at as a nice round number: don't normally go nearly that high but we need the insurance with how advanced the Psilons are. I did decide to keep going and see what kind of max there is on Vega; 136 and rising.  Nothing imminent but as soon as we switch back from ships to research we should get the Gauss Autocannon and better terraforming fairly quickly. We break our Alliance, and the Silicoids respond:  37 Rangers and 35M troops are sent to Rana, just a year's journey away. It's time to begin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUcb6l3XYfg This is Selia, where the Silicoids still have ships; it was the last Mrrshan colony that they destroyed. It's also the only planet we don't have bases up on yet, so I started sending Rangers there. That didn't work out so well -- we'll need to stay further away from their beam weapons or do hit-and-run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXyYQ0PVafg I was surprised to see their bases do some significant damage here. We did still capture the planet, capturing Stargate tech, Advanced Eco Restoration, and Battle Computer V(our best is IV at the moment). Very nice stuff. Part of the problem is I didn't complete the design. I try again here, an updated ship called the Knight:  I'd used the same template as for the Stinger ship; this time I upgraded the armor to Andrium, adding a bit of shielding and ECM as well. These will be much less fragile.  This happened a year later. Unfortunate miscalculations here, but we should be able to press the attack still with sufficient numbers. It's just going to take more time -- and more diversion from research efforts -- than I'd hoped.  Next up, we're headed for Nyarl, then Toranor after that. The plan is to keep our ships concentrated and roll up the rocks' territory from the 'bottom up' here. The rectangular bluish thing around the fleet icon at Nyarl is a stargate: I don't remember if we capture those when taking a planet, but we'll soon find out here. That's one thing they beat us to. We aren't going to bother building our own just yet, as it isn't really worth the effort compared to getting ships built.  As we move forward, I notice that there are some planets just waiting to be settled. It looks like they used to be Sakkra and were destroyed, probably by the Silicoids. That would explain a few things. No point in letting them go to waste: we might as well seize them. We meet the Sakkra, who give us the 'we'll do fine as long as you acknowledge our superiority' line. Yeah, we've got two dozen planets. You've got six. Be grateful if we deign to acknowledge your existence, lizardface. When we capture Nyarl, the stargate is no more. Figures.  Take a look at this. More info on what happened to Aquilae ... the Silicoids were definitely here at some point, or there wouldn't be all of this waste. Maybe they were bombed from orbit ... and the colony destroyed but not all of the toxic sludge?!? Never seen this before. Not only is it weird, but we'll have to clean it up.  Upon capturing the next system, Toranor, we are told heralds of our success.  Speaking of Toranor, it will serve as the new rally point for the fleet. We are producing more ships than we lose, but at 25-30 bases per planet, the Silicoids are extracting some cost. Less than a decade into the war, it is 2483and we've captured three planets, colonized a third, while having them destroy one. The fleet has to be divided a bit to make sure we have coverage for the new/young planets: don't want to lose what we've gained. So there's a lot of care to be taken. In this section, Obaca is a small ultra-rich planet that will be quite nice eventually, but as it is located in a nebula the initial fight against the missile bases will be painful. There's a couple more mid-sized planets in Arietis and then Argus just off-screen to the right, after which the homeworld of Cryslon which presently has 44 bases will come. Arietis will be taken first. Progress is also slowing simply due to distance here: troop sources are getting further and further away, requiring longer travel times.  Take a look at the base count on Vega here. 263. Apparently 255 is not the limit. I'll probably keep a save at some point to just hit End Turn and try to figure out what the limit is, if there is one -- but for now I don't want basically infinite funds going into upkeep, and scrap this down to 100. Based on what I've seen so far though, 200 total cruisers should be plenty. I'm going to cut off shipbuilding unless we drop below that level. We're at a reasonably comfortable level, just over 15% going into ships and over 9% on bases. From here on it should be a steady, gradual takeover of the Silicoids so long as the Psilons remain peaceful.  We were almost to a number of advances; two of them came the very next year. Terraforming +60M, double what we already have, and the Gauss Autocannon. In the next group of choices here, we'll ignore the Bio Terminator and grab more terraforming, trying to keep up with the Joneses ... err Psilons ... as best we can in terms of population. Meanwhile, Hellfire Torpedoes, which do a little less damage than our current ones but hit four times each, are the only next-tier weapons option. A year later we got the Zyro Shield, which would really increase our chances at attacking Psilon worlds. We also accidentally destroyed the Silicoid colony on Arietis by overkilling a base that was built there, so we have to send a colony ship now. Sigh. Next up we'll push forward with better deflector shields.  Finally overcame the virus and knocked out ECM Jammer VII. We did miss one level of robotics, so a chance to get tier VI is huge: a 40% production increase. We'll switch some funding out of most of the other fields to speed this along.  After finishing up Neutronium Armor, we are greeted with this. No new options. This means we've reached the top of the ladder, and can find no new options. There are procedural techs that carry things further, but first we must go back and knock out anything we skipped. Only two here. In 2497, we finally got around to attacking Cryslon. A few missile bases had already been taken out, but now the fleet was here in force and it was time to finish the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Osj9ubOrY Lost a few more Rangers, but most of their fleet had already fled. They are no match for us, and it gets worse with each system that falls.  Back on the sidelines.  They have a long memory, as they should.  We've taken them down some, but not quite as much as I hoped.  Thankfully they didn't gain much this cycle. We're just ahead of them with 35 votes, more than a veto bloc. Finally have our insurance. We abstain, and the struggle continues.
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Jul 16, 2017 05:34
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When you accidentally bomb a colony into non-existence, does that come with any sort of diplomatic genocide malus? Or is that just seen as conventional collateral damage?
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Jul 16, 2017 05:54
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the genocide malus only kicks in if you kill an entire race. the destruction of one colony is just war as usual.
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Jul 16, 2017 08:39
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Given that you're killing their entire population anyway, to be replaced with your own surviving troops, isn't the only difference that you have to send a colony ship and don't get to steal techs?
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Jul 16, 2017 09:59
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That plus you don't have to rebuild the factories. You do have to refit the existing ones but that doesn't take nearly as long as building from scratch.
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Jul 16, 2017 14:41
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It's a hostile take over then.
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Jul 17, 2017 00:51
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Clarste posted:Given that you're killing their entire population anyway, to be replaced with your own surviving troops, isn't the only difference that you have to send a colony ship and don't get to steal techs? The other big negative to bombing out a colony, especially on accident, is that other races see it as an available planet and will shoot a fleet over to the planet to grab it. This can be very dangerous when you have a super power AI sitting on the sidelines that might swoop in and steal your prize if given half a chance.
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Jul 17, 2017 04:48
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