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General Revil posted:Soon the Silicoids shall be melted down and serve as the computers of the New Republic. Well played, sir. Kanthulhu posted:I would have just restarted a long time ago by this point. I would if just playing by myself, but I owe the LP more than that. The agony of defeat shall be displayed as much as would be the thrill of victory.
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Sep 10, 2017 01:37
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I'm impressed that you're still forcing yourself through this. I always quit rather than face the final war. It's such a grind
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Sep 10, 2017 02:28
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Episode IV: 2500-2524 There was little point in showing the status or any other such stuff here. Similarly, attacks on a couple new systems would show nothing new, we simply got wiped out as usual. But there was this:  Umm, yay? Hilariously, we now can research Hercular Missiles. It's only a few decades late ... what the heck, might as well divert most of the research there. Yarrow is no more, and Tau Cygni takes considerable damage from the single cruiser that effortlessly took out over 20 bases. Then came the transports. The Bulrathi, with their obscenely overpowered Neutronium Powered Armor, Personal Barrier Shields, and Fusion Rifles, obliterated our troops on Mobas the next year. And stole some tech they won't need. The Alkari gave us some comic relief by retreating from one fight, despite having thousands of destroyers. And then ...  'Emporers'?  Ahh, the not-so-dreaded(at least at advanced tech) extragalactic interloper. It might slightly annoy the New Republic. Or not.  Took out our bases with their colony ship. That's embarassing. 2508, and 11 planets left. Zoctan follows a couple years later.  I think you meant to say 'barely being noticed by a small section of the galaxy'. Furthermore, the only way the Alkari fleet can be considered 'glorious' is by comparison to our non-existent one. But I digress. We aren't getting any more attacks for a few years now, but Toranor rebels to liven things up, then Volantis the year afterwards. Well now. That'll suck a nice healthy portion of our population to take care of this problem. A few years later, and I've now officially seen everything. The Sakkra came to Vega, where the Alkari have retreated from multiple times. All the missile bases had been destroyed by saboteurs. They had 40 cap ships, a couple hundred cruisers, thousands of destroyers. I had a nuclear-powered scout. The lizards retreated. What the ... I am totally befuddled to explain this nonsense. Then, the Alkari take the planet with a lone colony ship. Makes sense.  Our first stolen tech in like half a century. It's a fantastic one too.  Just as another session comes to end, here's a new toy. Never thought I'd even last long enough to pull it in. If only by a hair, that does makes things a little more interesting.
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Sep 11, 2017 04:35
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At least the nice thing about being pushed back this much, the updates are shorter.
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Sep 11, 2017 07:26
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Desilicoid yourself and face the shaleshed. So now that it's reached the point where colony ships are wiping out your colonies, how many planets do you have left and how much longer until you face complete annihilation at this rate, assuming you fight tooth and nail to delay the inevitable?
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Sep 11, 2017 13:31
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Thotimx posted:I'll definitely need to pay more attention to that transition next time Wayne. It's a moot point at the moment ... Well yeah.  Like Coolguye said, the tech advantage (the AIs' higher computer levels means they have high chances of succeeding on sabotage) and numbers are just too much. I've won a couple Final Wars, but for half (3 out of 6 or 7 I want to say) I triggered it myself just to try it, and I already had a good chunk of the galaxy. It really feels like you need to have enough population for a veto bloc anyway to have a chance of winning in the first place. Going up against the Psilons definitely doesn't help, either! In MOO2 unless I'm playing another strong race (which I usually don't), I restart the map if I check and see them, since they make the game such a fast-paced tech race. They're not as bad in MOO1, except, y'know, when they have the whole galaxy helping them out.  I also think in addition to not expanding too much (you still want to expand a lot, heh), it's also a good idea to turn on tech a little sooner so you have stuff to give away and trade. MOO1's "core relations" modifier is bugged so tech gifting isn't as powerful as it is in MOM, but again, you just need an AI to like you more than your rival, not to be your best buds. Espionage can also help with that, the 1-2 punch of them liking you more and liking an ally less (when you frame them) will usually do the trick, and is the reason I think Darloks are actually mid-tier in MOO1, and Silicoids can do it too since Computers is their only good field. Plus, y'know, it helps when the tech tree screws you on missiles!
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Sep 11, 2017 17:47
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Wayne posted:), it's also a good idea to turn on tech a little sooner so you have stuff to give away and trade On this, I've never found a way to do this to any significant amount without slowing down the colony ships, and in experimenting with it in the past I always ended up much worse off if took enough time off of that to get a couple extra techs in. A lot depends on what you get for that first colony of course(back to the map-dependency). If Vega hadn't been poor(sort of like the whole thing about if your aunt was a man she'd be your uncle, but anyway) then I could have done it sooner, etc. Randalor posted:, how many planets do you have left and how much longer until you face complete annihilation at this rate, assuming you fight tooth and nail to delay the inevitable? This is what I start off the next update with so I'll mostly let it speak for itself. I figured another 50 years roughly, so two updates, depending on how aggressive the New Republic was, but the Hercular missiles may be able to extend that time.
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Sep 11, 2017 23:21
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Episode IV: 2525-2549 Having an actual missile that's worth a darn at least gives us something to do. I haven't poured any money into useless bases for a while now. Maintaining a good amount of them is now actually important. We might be able to stop an attack or two. In theory. Probably they just crush us with sheer numbers anyway. But something is better than nothing. We get our first shot right away, at poor nebula system Whynil ...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv3UKTw5EMA Beat the Alkaris, and the cowardly Sakkra retreated!! Fools. But we actually resisted, for literally the first time all game long IIRC. It's ridiculous how good that feels, despite the situation. You won't take us without a small pretense of a fight! Oh, you'll still take us, because we have hideous shields, vastly inferior resources, and no planetary barriers at all. But you'll have to actually try. A little. It's lame, but it's what we got.  Only 2528 -- things are progressing quickly here. So what do we need next? With the Tech Nullifier our Computer TL is up to 50. Could always use more to help with the espionage but that's by far our highest. We've got our missiles finally, robotics are pretty good. Comes down to terraforming and planetary shields really I think, and the shields are what we need the most. We still haven't gotten a sniff on our own efforts. And we get Class Vs here!! Well, they suck, but they will effectively double our resistance to enemy attacks. They'll find it a lot harder to just beam-weapon us to death at least, and that which makes our bases last longer gives us more Hercular salvos to fire. All efforts will be made to get those built ASAP, as the Psilons incinerate 10 bases on Kakata. Naturally. Still, that's some pretty good luck. Our overall technology is now considered to be just over half of the New Republic's(it was once not much above a third). Another crack at the Sakkra a couple years later grants us Class III Deflectors, worse than what we already have. Can't win em all. And then,  Rare to have both 'invaders' come this close together. Meanwhile, after just a few years, we have planetary shields up on all but two systems. A few planets are at their allotment of missile bases(most around 30), which means it's time to do something I thought I'd never get to do in this game.  Introducing the first-ever Silicoid combat-capable starship. Monitor is a crappy name for it, but I didn't feel like changing it. Some of the specs are laughable(sub-light engines?), but it has one purpose and one purpose alone: delivering our new missiles in a desperate attack on the Guardian. Let's see how many of these we can afford -- each can fire 10 of them, 5x each. Our best chance at prolonging resistance is still this shot in the dark: reaping the toys that come with Orion. Some of our systems would take a horribly long time to build this, so I also have a cruiser-size version, the Whale. That has slightly weaker shields, and only a pair of launchers.  Oh joy. Not only is this incoming to one of our two remaining good colonies, but here's a major bug demonstrated also. In larger games, this often occurs for reasons I've forgotten, but an overflow bug results in 32k stacks like this. There are tactics to counter it, none of which I've got the tools for in this situation. The year after, we steal Stasis Field plans from the Klackons. Something else that would have potentially been useful a century ago. As it is ... 2533. The Sakkra doomstack reaches Tao ... and retreats. ROFL.  Very nice. Best missile shield in the game. Not worth adding to our current ships, but it'll make some things cheaper/smaller, and if we do take Orion ...  We got Class VI Deflectors, and I basically couldn't care less. But tripling our Planetarys to XV? Yeah, that I'd care about, although only one planet is researching right now, the others all shipbuilding. In other news, the Space Crystal is gone, apparently from Bulrathi space. We never saw it either. Almost all our research efforts will be diverted to Force Fields, though it will still take half of forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIAP5RbhsQ4 That was amusing. Whynil, our lone research planet. No shields function in the nebula, and they had a Mauler Device. Destroyed from orbit. 8 left.  They've been much less frisky lately, but here come the bears. They only had eight cruisers, but it was enough with their tech edge. 7 remain. A few years later, another similar Bulrathi attack ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTj_7VrbWbE Just enough to survive at Argus. We are resisting. Not well enough mind you, even against their half-hearted efforts, but we are resisting. I'll remove the veil enough here to note that, for those of you wondering when I'm going to just lose this game already ... well, the next update is the last one. The torturous road doesn't have far left to go.
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Sep 14, 2017 00:43
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Well, when they get those 32k doomstacks, shouldn't there be prohibitive upkeep costs associated with them? Or does the bug also negate that, or does the AI handwave fleet upkeep away somehow?
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Sep 14, 2017 01:15
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What causes the bug is the interaction between the actual fleets you can see, and the simplified way the game runs the AIs' empires. Basically, AIs build way more ships than humans do (due to both scripting and as a consequence of their production bonuses), but don't get commensurate discounts on maintenance (this is why a "one planet empire" can get crippled by the maintenance costs on its magically respawning colony ships), so sometimes they have to scrap ships. The game simply deletes a certain amount of ships of the specified type, but doesn't properly check its fleets. So a fleet can be reduced to a negative number of ships of a certain type*, which underflows to 64k and change (similar to the "unsigned byte" glitches in SNES RPGs and stuff). The game will only display up to 32k in a stack, so that's the most you have to deal with (or not ). The AI doesn't have to pay maintenance for those "ghost ships," no. Usually the problem goes away when the AI scraps a design entirely to update it, and I'm pretty sure if it unites with another stack that would bring the number above zero, it self-corrects (that happened in the Klackon example I mentioned a little while back, once their fleets regrouped on their closest world most of the stack disappeared, and they hadn't changed any designs). But since usually the first planet the bugged stack gets to is yours, well.... * Everything else I gathered from some guys who hex edit the game on Realms Beyond, but that part is me guessing since no one's sure exactly. I assume it either removes ships evenly from all its fleets (and since some in the lategame have thousands more ships than others), or picks one and deletes all of them there (which is probably more likely since you usually don't see more than 1 bugged stack at a time). Thotimx posted:On this, I've never found a way to do this to any significant amount without slowing down the colony ships, and in experimenting with it in the past I always ended up much worse off if took enough time off of that to get a couple extra techs in. Fair, and sometimes you get a pretty lousy run of initial tech choices anyway. Keep in mind though that temporary modifiers are very important in MOO1 and early on tech trades / gifts are the only way to do it really, and that some techs that don't sound that impressive can still have a strong cumulative effect. 6 planets with terraforming +10 and either of the waste-reduction techs are probably better than 8 or 9 planets and none of that stuff. But especially coming back from MOO2, colony ships are so cheap in MOO1 I just want to expand everywhere too. 
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Sep 14, 2017 01:59
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PurpleXVI posted:does the AI handwave fleet upkeep away somehow?
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Sep 14, 2017 04:15
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So what are some of the methods to deal with bugged stacks? The only ones I can think of are the Ion or Neutron Stream Projectors. For those who don't know, those weapons do a a percentage amount of damage (20% and 40%) to every ship in a stack, rounded up. Since it's a percentage of current hit points, it can take a while, but it will blow up 32k ships eventually.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:16
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GuavaMoment posted:So what are some of the methods to deal with bugged stacks? The only ones I can think of are the Ion or Neutron Stream Projectors. For those who don't know, those weapons do a a percentage amount of damage (20% and 40%) to every ship in a stack, rounded up. Since it's a percentage of current hit points, it can take a while, but it will blow up 32k ships eventually. Black hole generators just wipe out X%. Also another "eventually" weapon tech nullifiers; they become toothless. warp dissipator, reduce movement to zero, plink at range with high energy focus/missile bases. Late game bugged stacks are damned tricky, since they usually have high movement and resistance to the counters.
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Sep 14, 2017 06:34
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In addition to those, there's the ignore them and blow up enemy worlds faster route. If the AI doesn't have unlimited range, you can sometimes take out their fleet by cutting it off from all friendly systems in range(cutting the supply line, so to speak).
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Sep 14, 2017 14:18
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GuavaMoment posted:So what are some of the methods to deal with bugged stacks? The only ones I can think of are the Ion or Neutron Stream Projectors. For those who don't know, those weapons do a a percentage amount of damage (20% and 40%) to every ship in a stack, rounded up. Since it's a percentage of current hit points, it can take a while, but it will blow up 32k ships eventually. Projectors + Pulsars will kill an entire stack instantly, although you need a lot of ships if the bug hits a large / huge hull. There's an exploit with Specials like that too that I'm going to put in spoiler tags since some people prefer not to know about that stuff. It's based on the knowledge that if you have at least 1 missile hardpoint on a ship, you can disable it, and your ship stays active after you've fired your other weapons (so you can use it to "skirmish" by retreating with extra movement or deciding what order you want to do stuff and so on). Unfortunately.... The coding for Waiting is pretty primitive, and the game assumes that once you attack your turn is over. If you Wait after using specials because you had some missiles left that were switched off, when your ship gets selected again, you can use its specials again. Rinse and repeat to infinitely fire off those Projectors and stuff. It's also of limited use against bugged cruisers or battleships, but for smaller ships, you can use the multi-firing weapons to kill ships at horrifically disproportionate rates. The very first time I ran into that bug when I was in college (and didn't know it was a bug at the time, I just assumed on Impossible the AIs just made cap-breaking stacks of ships!), I ended up making a ton of cruisers with Autoblasters and HEF, and it's really cool watching thousands of ships just melt in seconds. You can also use stasis fields to freeze the bugged stack and deal with it last, which definitely helps (you can try kiting it while other ships fire scatter pack missiles or Hellfires or whatnot). You can also use a save game editor, the one I saw referenced a couple times was called the "MOO Oreo mod" or something like that.
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Sep 14, 2017 18:16
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According to the Master of Orion Official Strategy Guide, the 32000 ship thing is purely a display bug and the actual stack limit is 65k.
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Sep 15, 2017 22:16
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lol specifically 65,535 i have no doubt (that is an unsigned 16 bit integer)
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Sep 15, 2017 23:17
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Episode IV: Conclusion I thought this was interesting: we are now at the point where, having once had the largest empire in the galaxy, size is now our weakest aspect.  Maintenance/spying now sucks 42% of our resources. When that reaches 50%, we'll head to Orion. I don't think we'll have enough to succeed, but there is no other option that presents more hope.  With almost 50 bases, Tao is one of our most-defended planets. Only a few bases were lost, as we took out their colony ship before it's plasma torpedoes could do much damage. That last sentence is quite hilarious to me. The bio-terminators on their cruisers took out several million citizens, but it was an easy defense overall. They hit Obaca the year after, where the fleet is mustering. That was a mistake: we were able to add a lot more firepower, and 10 more Bulrathi cruisers bit the dust. Can't tell you how good it is to actually be fighting them off some, even in a hopeless cause. I would have recorded the fight if I knew what they'd do -- their 'Tooth' shipos retreated to the corner and tried to outlast the missiles from our ships. It took around half, which isn't good news for our odds of having enough firepower to take down the Guardian.  Sigh. The 'black arts' attrition just never freaking ends.  It's been a while, but we get another chance at espionage here. This isn't what we want, and most enemy designs by this point will make it of limited use. We recapture Tao, and in 2557 it's time to make our attack. I don't expect much. 8 cap ships, 42 cruisers. Maybe if they had torpedoes instead of limited-supply missiles. Whatever -- we'll give it a shot anyway. Not like there's anything to lose .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLFB6cDHKbg Yep. Not even close. With the shielding, it just is too well-protected. We'd need probably three times the ships we can put together to have a chance. Ok, so now what? If we could somehow invade a system or two, maybe we can fight back a bit, steal some tech from the Republic ... there are some small ones nearby with no bases.  We'll try here first. Meanwhile any excess production is getting thrown back into research, which we haven't done since we lost Whynil decades ago. Starting from scratch, but if we did manage to get that planetary shield somehow it would be a big boost ...  Oh that's good ... they didn't have enough of an edge already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCfn3Sh0SaA LOL. Our first wave. We literally don't have enough tech to even damage them. I was expecting to have to throw a lot of rocks into the grinder, but figured we eventually steal some crappy tech, maybe equalize things a hair ... nope. The Alkari showed up with a fleet to decimate ours before we could get any further. Ok. We can't take Orion. No matter the resources or undefended target we can't invade, so we're right back to 'no point in having a fleet'. Aside from the continual rebuilding of factories and missile bases, it would seem the best course is to put an obscene amount of resources into the espionage efforts.  How that's for obscene? I've never gone to this extreme before, even as Darloks, but why the heck not. We won't be able to build much of anything, but it's going to be a lot more fruitful than trying to do the research ourselves.  After retreating a couple more times with their bugged doom-stacks, the Sakkra take Obaca with 37 Banshee-class destroyers. Umm, ok. We took down a whole seven of them. Klackon spies blew up 52 factories right before the incineration, presumably out of spite. Six left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36xUt5JWTqg 2565. That's how our most-fortified planet fared when the Sakkra decided to actually attack. Might be the shortest vid of this LP. Soon the Psilons intoned that 'the Silicoid Empire is weak and will soon be eliminated.' Quite right they are. The end is nigh. At this point the situation is so absurd that I would hit the 'surrender' button. If there was one. A couple years later they hit three systems simultaneously with sabotage, which in this case is now a majority of the 'empire'.  Our last world of more than 75M. Four crappy planets left. The massive espionage push has yielded not a drat thing. This is followed-up by 60 factories going away on Drakka and Kakata. Enough already. Just kill me now. Please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AztHQPfX8yo Herculis is eliminated by Psilon strike craft. We can't even touch their fighters now. Superb. I'm upset when the Alkari retreat from Kakata the following year. At least time passes quickly now. It doesn't take long to check three systems to be sure their ultimately pointless production is going to the right places, then click 'Next Turn'.  Oh those poor Vulcans. Hope Spock is ok ... erm, wrong scifi. Doh. Then Kakata rebels, and I'm literally not sure we have enough people to retake it.  Finally, another tech chance ... and we get the stupid planetary shield! MOO is trolling me, I know it. What the heck is the point now??  Takes several years to get there, and we barely manage it. The next year, two different races blow up factories on Drakka. That's something new. At this point, without much left, they're pretty much constantly targeting all of our systems. And yet they refuse to land the final blows.  The birds sent 1 colony ship, and 1 fighter(which we destroyed) for this operation. The insults continue. It is now 2590. Soon afterwards, Kakata finishes a Class XV Planetary Shield. That should go down as our last noteworthy accomplishment as a species. Or it would, if all memory of us was not soon to be eradicated.  Two left, and we are now at the point of absurdity where we can't build factories as fast as they are blown up. It's gone from suck to blow, we've hit rock bottom(Silicoids ... rock ... hehe ... nm) and kept on digging, pick your stupid catchphrase. And then, in the year 2599, just before our third century as a galactic empire ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ERIGU8xDTs One wonders what took them so long. I don't even get the 'honor' of being glassed from orbit. A fitting end to what is without question the most thoroughly humiliating arse-kicking I've ever played out to the end. It takes a big man to admit that this is really an appropriate finish to this epic parade of fail. I am not a big man. Here's hoping for better things next time around. I've yet to lose(or win) consecutive endeavors, and it could hardly get worse .... could it?
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Sep 16, 2017 00:56
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Better luck next time!
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Sep 16, 2017 02:33
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And with that, the last several million silicoids survive. The price was delivering your head to the new republic.
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Sep 16, 2017 05:37
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Good play! Thanks for going all the way through.
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Sep 16, 2017 06:15
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nothing you could have done about that one, good for you for hanging in there.
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Sep 16, 2017 06:27
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I've played this game off and on since the 90s and I have never seen that happen  Even in abject failure you're still showing me bits of the game I have never seen. Can you do that to other empires?
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Sep 16, 2017 07:02
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ManxomeBromide posted:I've played this game off and on since the 90s and I have never seen that happen Yeah, had no idea that ending was even a thing. Wow. I've done it to other empires a bunch. Basically, if over half the total population is in revolt, there's a revolution. Effectively, it's a personality reroll for that empire.
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Sep 16, 2017 07:19
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i remember one time i played a game where i reduced the mrrshans to one planet and incited a revolt every time i got a chance for like 100 years the only mrrshan reserve in the galaxy was just a constant revolving door of clueless chucklefucks who would be overthrown and probably brutally murdered by relentless manipulations by the galactic leader, who mostly did it for his own amusement.
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Sep 16, 2017 07:31
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ManxomeBromide posted:I've played this game off and on since the 90s and I have never seen that happen Snicker ... thanks. I've never tried, but going off what Coolguye said I would say the answer appears to be yes and no. I have seen other empires have revolutions -- it can happen even without spies triggering it, though it's rare. It's game-over for the player, but the AI empires just get a new leader with a new personality and go on about their business. GeneralRevil posted:And with that, the last several million silicoids survive. The price was delivering your head to the new republic. So Carnax served a purpose after all! Coolguye posted:the only mrrshan reserve in the galaxy was just a constant revolving door of clueless chucklefucks who would be overthrown and probably brutally murdered by relentless manipulations by the galactic leader, who mostly did it for his own amusement. Sounds like the galactic leader was a real horse's arse ... In any case I'm glad going through to the end served a useful purpose. My congratulations to those of you have made it this far. If I keep alternating defeats and victories, it'll take a mere 15 more playthroughs to finish this. 19 in total. I truly am a masochist, but I am getting better in some ways, so there's hope to reduce that number. From here on out I intend to alternate medium and large galaxies. We've seen all sizes once each, and I have no interest in seeing small and huge again. The 32k-ship bug is most prevalent on huge ones, and the middle two sizes are the best for pacing. Although medium is considered 'standard' by most, large allows for further progress up the tech tree, so I want to throw that in still as well. Also, I have played through the opening on the next game, and reached a point where I think it'd be useful to get feedback on what to do next. So look forward to that coming soon.
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Sep 16, 2017 23:36
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Thotimx posted:Also, I have played through the opening on the next game, and reached a point where I think it'd be useful to get feedback on what to do next. So look forward to that coming soon. My vote, free of any context and preconceived notions, is to invest in biological weaponry.
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Sep 17, 2017 00:33
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Thotimx posted:In any case I'm glad going through to the end served a useful purpose. My congratulations to those of you have made it this far. Seriously, mad props for going all the way to the bitter end.  If I see a game is heading for the cliff, I almost always just quit and try again. Universes are cheap in 4Xs. Huge in MOO1 is, what, 96 stars? I think each size is a multiple of 24 or something like that. (I know it's a little different in MOO2, small is I want to say 18 and Huge is 72, which with multiple planets per star is still a lot!) It's a real slog, especially once you start taking a lead and the hapless AIs can't keep up, but also don't want to vote for you. It also exacerbates the issue of bad map rolls: an AI having a corner of the galaxy to themselves is a lot more dangerous with 30 stars than with 12! And yeah, I've seen revolutions before too, but pretty rarely to me (my very first game ended that way, though  ). I'm not sure exactly what triggers it, but if, yeah, some threshold of the population has ever revolted, or is actively revolting when a revolt strikes the capitol, it kills the emperor and rolls a new one. The first clause is guessing, but I've seen that happen to races with no planets actively revolting.
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Sep 17, 2017 01:39
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GuavaMoment posted:My vote, free of any context and preconceived notions, is to invest in biological weaponry. I'm shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you!! In all seriousness though, I've never done your approach before and I intend to try it. Having thought about it, I think the Silicoids, bent as they are at turning the entire galaxy into a toxic waste dump, are probably the best race to do it with as well. So no guarantees, but I'm going to try to go for it if I can get the Bio-Terminators in this next run. Wayne posted:Huge in MOO1 is, what, 96 stars? I think each size is a multiple of 24 or something like that. Very close, but it's actually bigger. Small is 24, Medium 48, so far so good on the 24 multiples. Large is 70(why not 72, I don't know), but Huge is 108 so another 'half-multiple' there because reasons.
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Sep 17, 2017 16:20
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Episode V Revenge of the Rocks(hopefully)  Now, that's just not nice. Truly it isn't. Psilons and Klackons again. And Humans for good measure. Still haven't seen any Meklar. Chances of one race not showing up five games running: 1.73%. Looks like we get the lower-right, with likely a strong neighbor in the upper-right, and another in the lower-left. The final crowded quadrant in the upper-left will have at least two, quite possibly three fighting it out there. Hopefully the Psilons and Klackons are both there and will crowd each other badly. But probably not -- I'm not that lucky. As for us, three systems in range to start. Blue and red stars are 2 parsecs away, the green one is three. That would extend our reach towards our likely closest neighbor(that yellow star to the left), and is probably the best planet. Colony ships go there, scouts to the other two. Please not a poor planet. Pretty-please not a poor planet.   Could definitely do worse. We'll want to snag both of those. For now the scouts move on.  You've got to be kidding me. Got to be. Well, we're not landing here. The colony ship will re-route to Drakka, and we'll lose three years and a good-sized chunk of the old growth curve in the process. Played the odds ... and came up snake-eyes. Argh. Worth thinking about the other choices. Would have been just as much a risk to go straight for either of the other systems, and if we just waited for the scouts to reach them before deciding, it would have saved only one year. Sometimes you just get unlucky. Meanwhile I can't afford to wait any longer: Cryslon will spend about a year and a half's production to get some Recons out there. Every system matters ...  This could be an early battlefield. It won't take long for other races to get Barren landings.  Better late than never?? Let's hope so.  Yay, fertile! Oh wait, that'll do us no good. Others not having it would do us a lot of good though. Despite the delay, we are still just short of half population on our homeworld, so we'll send just 1M at a time for now to Drakka. The colony brought just one more star into our range, which I at least managed to calculate correctly this time. Now Emperor Granid awaits the results of the Recon Rush. There will be no hurry to extend range with propulsion tech as we have plenty of systems that can be colonized without it.  The meh is strong around here.  To the left, it's an utter crap-fest.  Biggest one we've yet seen. Question is, how soon is it going to be worth 'leap-frogging' our way out there? If that yellow star is indeed occupied(I'd be thrilled if it's not, but very unlikely), our chances at snagging Tao here are remote.  Lovely. Only yellow star in our vicinity, and it sucks.  In our backyard. Eventually we'll pick this up. It's now 2311, and we begin investing in the next Colonizer, having reached maximum factories for our current population on Cryslon -- which is still shipping citizens out, a single million at a time, to Drakka. Last time I put some funding into ecology to grow the population and factories at the same rate. This time I decide not to do that, in favor of getting an earlier start on colonizing. It'll also take the homeworld longer to get up to full capacity so it's a trade-off, but I do objectively think this is better.  Another year, and we've reached the limits of our scouting range, right in the galactic centre. And look, a welcoming committee!! Just a scout, and we learn that this is Kakata(Inferno, 35M max). Here's where we stand then. A solid quarter of the galaxy is known to us. In the far lower-right is one so far behind us that we can't reach it yet(8 parsecs). No uninhabitables, but nothing bigger than 70 max and only two at 50 or more. No poor planets or artifacts, and only the one smallish rich one. In most cases there isn't much to recommend one below-average location to the next. Extending range, restricting the other races, seems an even more valuable priority than it usually is in light of this. I'm thinking the barren planet above Drakka should be next, then that rich one right by us. After that we'll need to hop over to the left unless we get better range. In 2317, the next Colonizer is done and headed toward Drakka, using the RELOC trick to get it out to Crypto beyond that ASAP. For the past couple of years now, population transfers to Drakka have been complete. Last game I didn't even start on the colony ship till '21 with all the ecology spending. We've got a several-year head start, which should be more than worth the delay in growing Cryslon's population. Another wave of Recons follows the Colonizer, as I expect at least a couple and possibly several more systems to come within range now.  Drakka is only at about 40% population, but it'll start doing the 1M-per-year shift now to our latest acquisition. Three systems ended up coming within range: several others are a single parsec too far. After another year, I'm calling the end of the opening at 2322. That's partly because I've got a tough choice to make, sort of right up the alley of what Wayne was talking about last game. I'll lay it out in the next post, and put it up for a vote.
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Sep 17, 2017 16:29
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 Ok, here's the situation 22 years in. The three planets of the Silicoid Empire, from bottom to top: ** Cryslon(62M pop, 125 factories, 156 production) ** Drakka(25, 13, 26) ** Crypto(2, 0, 1) Our next Colonizer will be out next year, and will go to Stalaz(25M, Rich), the close blue star to the right and slightly above our homeworld. That's as far as I've decided what to do. This will not bring anything else within range to be colonized on the right side. To reach those we'd need to dive into tech. On the left side, the two green ones, in order, are Tyr(10M) and Xendalla(20M), balls of rock and not more. The red one is Tao(70M), the largest system yet discovered in this decidedly unimpressive galaxy. Also worth noting is that the Darloks were met in the middle of the galaxy briefly, and they appear to be at one of the yellow-star cluster in the upper left. We have seen no other ships, which makes it increasingly likely that the lower-left is empty. Hard to imagine we wouldn't have seen them at Tao by now if it wasn't  Here's our homeworld spending. The Ship and Ind bars will stay at least as high as they are. That's enough factory spending to ensure we stay at maximum production, keeping pace with population growth, and the minimum necessary to finish our colony ship to Stalaz. It's time to make a choice, and I see two options. ** Farmer's Gambit. Keep pumping out Colonizers and go to the left for Tyr and Xendalla, with the goal of hopping to Tao afterwards. The kicker here is that Tao will be right on the borderline range-wise. It could be just out of range, or just inside it, once we push out that way. I've looked at it multiple times and I think we can just barely reach it ... but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it not quite be in range. The game can be strange with how far things are away at times. ** Start Researching. Under this route we'd put enough into tech this year to get our initial pull, and after that get our range improved. Cryslon would have to do almost all the research lifting, as Drakka is not far enough along yet to provide much of a boost. So I leave the question to the lot of you: what course of action should be taken? If there's a strong consensus I'll go with it. This question will be open for 48 hours, unless there is an obvious favored choice before then.
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Sep 17, 2017 16:54
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I thought Silicoids could take advantage of fertile/Gaia, but they just can't research them? Definitely could be wrong there.
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Sep 17, 2017 16:55
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Farmer's Gambit. Leverage the silicoid settling powers!
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Sep 17, 2017 17:07
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Settle more. Rocks are good at spreading, not researching.
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Sep 17, 2017 17:58
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settle more. We must spread silicon life to the Galaxy.
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Sep 17, 2017 18:17
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GuavaMoment posted:My vote, free of any context and preconceived notions, is to invest in biological weaponry. Yeah let's role play as xenocidal space dolphins and commit war crimes against the galaxy.
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Sep 17, 2017 20:26
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Farmer's Gambit takes my vote.
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Sep 17, 2017 20:36
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Settle more, prioritizing hospitable systems (toxics can wait) and setting up a border. We can snatch up those 10-20 pop systems later.
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Sep 17, 2017 20:47
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Thotimx posted:Episode V Please do the needful.
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Sep 17, 2017 20:54
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| # ? May 24, 2024 22:48 |
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you don't have to be lonely at farmer's only dot com
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Sep 17, 2017 21:26
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