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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 79: The Psilon Gambit So what exactly was this secret I was talking about last time? Here we go:  Surprise! Thanks to the New Orions getting close enough to us, turn 251 sees us forcefully entered into the Orion Senate! This means automatic contact with all other members! Our lonely times at the edge of the Orion Sector are officially over. Also, the Orion Senate is now open to us for manipulation. We’ll see what this new toy does later. (By the way, it’s new for me too, since I normally don’t bother a lot with diplomacy. For the sake of this LP though, we’re going in deep.)  The yellow message with the weird-looking building icon and an exclamation-point is for important stuff happening in the Orion Senate. Here we are told a new law called “Star Lane Control Law” has been presented by the Senate and now we are expected to join the ongoing readings. Sadly, I can tell you right now that most of the player-available options are a lot more standard then you would expect from this one new law. This is because some laws are randomly drawn from a pool only available to the Senate itself. Basically, your representatives/the New Orions) are busy in the Senate even if the player is not, and sometimes they invent their own little laws for you to decide upon. A neat idea, which fleshes out the Orion Senate a lot more than in earlier games, where the Senate is more like a gateway to victory than an actual political entity.  A short strategic update: The New Orions are still there, but now we know they’re squatting on the Klackons and not us, since they’re strangely friendly to the Kingdom of Almandin. Interestingly, the Klackons now represent a buffer to all those other empires we’re now in contact with. The Klackons are suddenly a lot less important. Essentially, I’m officially dropping our Klackon-plans and stay in Tali for the time being, at least until things shake out on the diplomatic front and we can see if there are more potential enemies waiting behind the Klackons. I see no reason to rush through a war just to multiply our problems.  We’re now in contact with 10 other empires, and our diplomacy menu is slowly filling up. By the way, the two messages arriving for us are our allies agreeing to another trade treaty improvement, and the Psilons asking for an improvement of our research treaty. Not exactly world-shaking stuff, so I’ll spare you the screenshots. And still there are several more empires missing. I guess they must be stuck on the other side of the Orion Sector. Until we can expand into Orion itself and to the other side, we’ll have to wait and hope they get invited into the Senate.  So, now let’s see what all those new (and old) guys think about us: This will give us some idea of what to expect in the future. Here we’re seeing the New Orions first: Everything is slightly negative, but overall the relations between us and the dastardly Ex-Antarans are pure apathy. They don’t care, we don’t care. Generally speaking, NPC-empires absolutely love to declare war if their dislike dips low enough. And with this mod adding in the missing lore-specific prejudices, we’re in for a hell of a time. This makes it important to keep the New Orions away from that threshold until we’re sure we can squish them under heavy rocks.  Next on the list: The Humans of the Filovinkhal Empire. Our people are likewise apathetic to each other, but thanks to Human prejudices against rocks and computers (and our bad diplomacy), our official political relations are at a somewhat rocky -48 at the moment. For some races, this would be enough for war, but Humans like espionage far more than direct conflict. Also, thankfully our population and theirs can live with each other, so there probably won’t be a declaration of war before we can fix this.  Our relations to the Cynoids is messed up. Casus Belli shows us Silicoid and Cynoid populations actually kind of like each other and our political relations are at a rather high 60, considering we’re constantly at war. Makes me wish I could integrate other empires without war, like in Stellaris. Instead we either have to betray our allies, or take over XEOL. Otherwise, those two will be dragging us into their stupid pissing contest forever. (By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, the empire I’m talking about is always highlighted white in the screenshot. Just for your convenience.)  The Evon of the Eadinel Empire: As Humanoids, they’re initial reaction to us is exactly the same as the Human one. Only difference: The Evon are far more likely to take direct action. Luckily they are far, far away from us.  Imsaies, Annalona Empire: Still best friends forever. But the opinion down on the street is a bit uneven. If I read this right, it looks we like them a bit more than they like us. I’m taking a note of this, could be that our allies don’t like how the Kingdom of Almandin is reenacting the Phoney War here, like with us doing nothing about XEOL slowly eating their territory and all that.  OK, scratch that. I did read it wrong. From our victory screen I know the Vchiitri Empire hates us with the fury of a billion suns, so obviously the upper relation slider (at -62) must be what we think of them, not the other way around. What they think of us is at -200, the lowest point possible. Active relations are at -178, near absolute zero too. Checks out! So this means the Imsaies are actually 100% behind us, but our people are a bit weary about this unwanted war with the Cynoids. Well, that makes a bit more sense, I guess.  The Eoladi built the incredibly hard to spell Kairenieo Empire and their reactions are all open and optimistic: Initial reaction is slightly positive instead of negative like with the Humanoids, while our political relation starts of with a high +54. Sounds good! Astonishingly good, even! So this happened because both the Eoladi and the Imsaies can be good diplomats, negating our own shittyness somewhat, and I’m speculating we’re getting some additional bonus here for already being allied with another gas giant race. Then again, there is no contact between our allies and the Senate-races, so it could just be the Eoladi alone being really friendly.  Dzazatar. Another hard to spell name for the empire of the Tachidi, the second Insectoid race in the game. Casus Belli and active political relations are the worst from all the new races we were forced to encounter, and I foresee nothing good coming from this. The Tachidi are a bit like Insectoid versions of the Bulrathi. Them not liking us is like them saying “We will declare war in a couple cycles. Please prepare while we are mobilizing our forces to crush you!”  The Psilons of the Soriane Union are another good check marker in case all those colored lines are starting to confuse you: We know they secretly hate us and are only pretending to be friends because the Klackons want to literally kill and/or enslave them. The numbers as we interpret them check out: We dislike them (-52) they hate us (-200), but thanks to the Klackon War our official relations are excellent and just doubleplusgood at +193, near the maximum.  And at last, a little surprise: Our relations (both political and emotional), have grown better over the last dozen or so cycles: We only dislike the bastards now (-56) and they mellowed a bit towards us and now only see us with cold, bitter disdain, rather than furious hate (-98). Political relations are at -87, which is almost high enough for peace, if the Raas weren’t one of the more violent races, that is. Apparently the war has dragged on for long enough even the fanatical Raas are becoming tired of it. Who would have known?   Eoladi in more detail. And wow, 1 planet? Looks like they got themselves into serious trouble. Let’s see if they want to trade with us! The Eoladi are mentioned in this post.  And here we meet the Tachidi officially for the first time. They were mentioned in this lore post about the Insectoids.  To get some video material of the new guys’ animated responses, tons of messages are send out, in addition to our normal ones. Which coincidentally means a barrage of short videos for you to watch as soon as the answers walk in.  The Orion Senate! The Galactic Cycle 376 saw some dramatic changes in the history of the Kingdom of Almandin. The exhausted combat fleets holding watch over the Psilon Tali-system, devastated from the long campaign against the aggressive Vchiitri Empire, detected alien and powerful vessels entering the Dromos-system nearby. Dromos was still a heavily fortified bastion of the Vchiitri Empire, teeming with billions of Klackons living there. The fleet immediately went into red alert, while the Silicoids and Raas of the local fleet command node poured over the sensor read-outs, trying to make sense of the strange signals. A message was sent to the capital and AFC, warning them the Klackons may be back with a new and far more powerful fleet. But just a day after the hyper-message had been sent, an Imsaies-archaeologist visiting the Tali-system stumbled over the signals due to a fatal error in the local security network and immediately identified them as Antaran in nature. A comedy of errors followed as Silicoid-police units arrested the archaeologist, assuming he had broken into the security network on purpose, while the military continued to futily search for the cause of the security breach. Finally, after nearly a tenth-cycle had passed, all three parts of the puzzle came together as a routine police report to local military command revealed that the police already had the “culprit” in custody. It soon became clear that the “enemy spy”, was in fact innocent. The archaeologist was freed and asked to assist military intelligence, as he was the only locally available specialist in Antaran technology. Luckily, the Imsaies gracefully accepted the official apology and went to work. Soon a dark and malevolent picture began to emerge: The detected vessels were not only using Antaran technology, they perfectly matched sensor recordings of actual Antaran ships. Had the Klackons found and overhauled some ancient Antaran warships? If the Kingdom had to face Antaran ships brought back into service after millennia of solitude, the fleet was in for the fight of their lives. The Silicoid response overall was solemn, but determined: Fortification of the Tali-system was accelerated, diplomatic talks with the Psilons’ Soriane Union over the return of the liberated planets were suspended and the fleet began a series of elaborate exercises, training for a fight against a vastly superior enemy. Then the hammer dropped: In the middle of GC 376 a tiny courier vessel arrived from the Dromos-system. The vessel was immediately identified as Antaran. Fleet command was just in the process of recording a defiant refusal of the expected Klackon demand for surrender, as the Antaran courier hailed the fleet. When the alien faces of actual, living Antarans appeared on the flagship’s holo-viewscreen, the shock was immense. Not the Klackons, but the Antarans themselves had arrived! The following diplomatic talks left everyone in the Kingdom of Almandin in a daze. When at the end of the cycle the talks were declassified, a new wave of shock ran through the entire Kingdom, as the population was confronted by a series of incredibly unexpected developments: - The Antarans now called themselves the “New Orions” for some reason, and expected everyone to go along with it. - These “New Orions” had re-instated the Orion Senate, and put themselves into it as the supreme leaders of the entire Orion Sector. - The New Orions had watched the endless seeming conflict with the Klackons from afar, until the Klackons had gone too far and the Orion Senate had declared total war on the Vchiitri Empire. - Thanks to the Almandian efforts against the Klackon scourge, the Orion Senate had gracefully invited the Kingdom to become its newest member. The New Orions incentivized the Kingdom into accepting by promising [DATA EXPUNGED BY ORDER OF THE AFC]. Only in case of the Kingdom refusing, of course. - The Soriane Union had, through the entire time of mutual contact, known about both the Senates and the New Orions existence, and just not thought of telling their allies about those very important facts. The most confusing part of all of this was the role the Psilons had played: They had been aware of both the new Orion Senate and the New Orions for a long time, probably since before first contact between Silicoids and Psilons. They had, without ever telling us, manipulated the Senate into uniting the Senate members against the Klackons, enacting terrible revenge for their atrocities. This level of secrecy was hard to stomach from an ally, so an official answer became necessary. When confronted with questions about why they never told us, the Psilon ambassador reputedly just said: “You didn’t ask”, and shrugged. The Crown Council in the following session decided to quietly drop the question of returning the liberated Psilon planets, and instead adopted a law turning all Psilons on those planets into official citizens of the Kingdom of Almandin, with all rights and duties. -From The Official History of Almandin: Volume 78, Part 11: A New Orion  OK, we’re now a member of the Orion Senate, so what can we actually do with it? A short explanation of the Senate-interface: On the left row are listed the active laws. The right row lists laws suggested by members or the Senate itself. If you click on them, the window in the middle shoots out and you can read what the law is about, how many votes every listed member has and if a member has already voted. Additionally, this window right here shows another phase necessary just before voting can happen: A suggested law can only be voted on if you have members supporting it. In this example the Orion Senate suggested this new law just as we joined, so we have zero votes since our membership only goes active after the turn is processed. Kind of irrelevant in this case, since we can only support it in this phase anyway -voting will come later! This “Star Lane Control Law” is supposed to help combating terrorism by forcing every single ship in the Orion Sector to install special, Senate-issue transponders to help identify ship owners. The gameplay effect will be a 50% increase of the range you can detect ships at, since every ship will have their transponders bleat out their identification like annoying little techno-goats. While this is bad for more stealthy players, we aren’t one of those and with our many enemies, I decide that seeing enemy ships earlier is way worth it to becoming more visible and hit Unterstützen/Support to make sure we can actually vote on this next turn.  The middle interface is just for us, the player: Here we can suggest our own laws. The list is full of obvious stuff like boosting relations with every Senate member by suggesting an empire for praise, we can try to denounce their crimes to reduce relations, there sanctions to reduce their trade income, we can diplomatically isolate someone (which empties out their contact list and makes diplomacy impossible for the victim) and then of course we can try to make the entire Senate declare war or try to introduce a Non-Senate race. Every time you want to try one of those options, you first select the law, then the race you want to target out of the drop-down menu. And presto, a new law suggestion will show up on the left row and over the next couple turns, supports and finally voting will be done. If a law is accepted, it goes into effect a turn later. Interesting side note: Over the Orion Senate you can interact even with races you have no contact with. The Ithkul and Sakkra both show up as possible targets here, even though the Kingdom of Almandin still has no idea that they exist, beyond some easily disproved rumors. This is because the Senate interface takes into account Senate members and every race the Senate has contact with. Plus as a bonus, you can drag the races you know into this, too! (Which the Psilons didn’t, which is why the New Orions had to show up literally on our doorstep before this happened. Would be interesting to see who, exactly, suggested membership for us. Sadly, MO3 never tells. )  As an example, the Kingdom of Almandin suggests an economic embargo against the Vchiitri Empire, to hurt the enemies of freedom even further. If someone supports this, we then can vote on it. Let’s see what happens! This is more a little probe to see what the other Senate Members will do then a serious attempt. The Vchiitri Empire is already at total war with the entire Senate, so an embargo wouldn’t even do much against their probably already zeroing out trade. Sadly, the more colorful laws are Senate-only. We will only see those whenever the New Orions feel like annoying us.  Wow poo poo, that was a lot of diplomatic work for this turn, let’s try to get a bit more done before this update is over, OK? Here a new and rather amusing technology has entered the prototyping-stage: The Galactic Cybernet! It’s the internet, but for outer space! Yes folks, it took centuries longer then everyone expected, but finally, the great breakthrough in quantum-entanglement is there: Now researchers across the entire empire can share data in real-time. Every research DEA with cybernet access installed gets +6 to their efficiency, which is a truly titanic boost if you take into account that we have several hundred of those already, and “efficiency” isn’t a strictly linear upgrade, since research points are calculated by population. Antaran Genetics, our second secret X-Tech, is still plodding along, now until 2 turns from being completed.  Some necessary sidesteps for what I want to do next: Our old recons have run out, since I obsoleted them to stop the AI flooding our reserves with them. Now I need new ones again! I take the chance to do some upgrades: The ReconCruiser Garnet has a massive spinal mounted plasma cannon as main weapon. While playing around with some of our new techs, I found out adding Plasma Cannon Miniaturization 1 and Continuous Plasma Cannons results in a plasma cannon with vastly improved targeting without changing the size too much. Perfect! Additionally, the Garnet-class cruiser has every single piece of electronics stuck into its hull. Plus I’ve downsized armor and generator-size to make the ship cheaper. Sure, it’s also a lot flimsier, but there will be at most two of them in every task force, so they won’t be targeted much. Also making this ship cheaper will make the AI more likely to build them, so I only have to make some initial runs and then can have our planetary governors deal with making more of them.  Combat phase! Not much different then last time, to be honest. We still have some Raas-systems like Arcturus blockaded (and the AI still stupidly refuses to just brush our centuries-old light forces aside), some visitors meekly attempt to reclaim Theta Indi and Alahain-B for the Dila Empire and fail, like all Raas outside of our borders do. Not even the last-ditch attempt by the Klackons to reclaim Tali is a surprise. I had some screenshots, but it was just shots of enemy ships jumping out. Too bad, but it seems this update is 100% non-combat. I’ll try to do better next time, now that we have the lengthy introduction of the Orion Senate behind us.Antaran Expedition Status Expedition 1: Expedition Completed Expedition 2: Partial discoveries made (4) Expedition 3: Expedition Completed Next: Senantics
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Feb 11, 2018 16:32
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So after slandering the Klackons on the senate floor are you going for the Ithkul next? Or would it be counterproductive to try and get the senate to declare war on the boogeymen?
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Feb 11, 2018 18:37
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Am I reading this wrong, or has the Orion Senate currently declared Total War against two empires? I'm seeing the Vchiitri in there, but who's Farat?
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Feb 11, 2018 19:24
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habituallyred posted:So after slandering the Klackons on the senate floor are you going for the Ithkul next? Or would it be counterproductive to try and get the senate to declare war on the boogeymen? We still have other things to do first, and we know absolutely nothing about the Ithkul. Angering those weirdos without even seeing them is counter-productive. My main plan for the Orion Senate is to get the Imsaies into it, so we have some more votes for future plans. After we know how the other members vote, we can make some more detailed plans. Besides, the New Orions have almost as many votes as all other members together, due to them being fascist assholes. So we have to step carefully, because if we anger the overlords of the Orion Sector too much, they could just force a vote of total war against us. Even if most of the other members turn out to be unwilling to press the attack, it would make the Senate essentially useless for us. And hurt our spy defense. And with the Humans forced against us, we would expect their super-spies to use that weakness against us. I'd rather avoid all those headaches. We can be more aggressive after we have mopped up behind us. PurpleXVI posted:Am I reading this wrong, or has the Orion Senate currently declared Total War against two empires? I'm seeing the Vchiitri in there, but who's Farat? Right! I haven't mentioned them yet, since they're one of the empires from the other side we're still not in contact with, like the Ithkul. The Farat Empire is the nation of the Sakkra in this run. The Senate (translation: the New Orions) is for some reason really hostile to the Sakkra and Klackons. From my viewpoint it looks like both races were stupid enough to make the New Orions angry at them, so when their enemies suggested these "make them pay"-laws, they voted in favor. Which is why I'm using the next turns to try to get as friendly with as many of our new friends as possible, so this won't happen to us.
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Feb 11, 2018 19:38
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Congrats on making it to the Senate! I always hated being in the Senate as I tended to get flooded with spies so I tried to avoid it. You'll probably want to get ready to crank up security again. Base game drove me bonkers as I'd have dozens of spies infiltrating me for no real reason.. Good luck!
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Feb 11, 2018 19:46
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I get the feeling you're going to turbo-hate the spying system even more very soon.
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Feb 11, 2018 21:12
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SIGSEGV posted:I get the feeling you're going to turbo-hate the spying system even more very soon. Probably half his spies will be tech spies on defense from now on.
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Feb 11, 2018 21:35
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SugarAddict posted:Probably half his spies will be tech spies on defense from now on. ONLY half? Oh, wait, you need some to prevent council assassinations..
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Feb 12, 2018 03:19
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Oh lord, the humans are going to take you like a newborn lamb, aren't they?
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Feb 12, 2018 04:37
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He is going to be so deep in spies he won't be able to get out of bed without tripping over at least one spy.
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Feb 13, 2018 01:04
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On the upside, you have an excuse to crank up the Oppress-O-Meter again.. I also think one of the X Projects gives greater spy resistance so if one of the ones you're reverse engineering grants that, also desperately needed
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Feb 13, 2018 13:05
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Just a short update: I'm not giving up on this yet, the next update has been written and will go up later today.
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Mar 25, 2018 07:39
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Libluini posted:Just a short update: I can't get anywhere inside my own house without tripping over spies, and now they are eating my food, driving up my water bill, ordering movies on the cable TV, and they used ALL THE TOILET PAPER. Oh, and they clogged all the toilets. Please send toilet paper, food, and a plumber to fix my toilets.
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Mar 25, 2018 07:44
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Yay! Time to get our rocks on!
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Mar 25, 2018 08:14
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 80: Senantics  GC 378 sees the war against XEOL ending, yet again. Sigh, time to declare war again. We don’t want to annoy our one reliable ally, now won’t we?  Oh, we haven’t seen the star lane event for a long time! If we ever get to Nagar or Samenia, we will now have path to the other system! Other news items for this turn: Spy Ishmael retires and our genetics X-tech is getting prototyped. Next turn it will be ready!  Some news from the Senate: The Star Lane Control Law was supported, and now waits for our vote. Someone (not us) presented a new law: Praise Kingdom of Almandin. Looks like someone in the Senate really likes us, oh wow  Some new techs roll in this turn: The Dreadnought is another hullsize for our fleet. As always, about 50% larger than the one before it. Also as always, thanks to multiple translations back and forth, we technically already have it: Originally, there was one cruiser size less, which means the Dreadnought of vanilla MO3 was our battleship and so forth. The original German translation called this class the “Schweres Schlachtschiff” or literally “Heavy Battleship”. If I had to guess, the thought behind this translation was to make the hullsize names as German as possible, since the Non-English sounding names (Titan, Behemoth, Leviathan) were all left unchanged. In my opinion, it would have made more sense to replace “Dreadnought” and “Superdreadnought” with “Superschlachtschiff” and “Ultraschlachtschiff” respectively, as those two terms are well-known among German SF-fans. But apparently the fan translators thought otherwise and I changed those two names back to the English original anyway, so here we are. (In my defense, I thought “Dreadnought” and “Superdreadnought” sounded wonderfully exotic and I was reading a lot of David Weber at the time.) Anyway, the lore for this tech is just some gushing about how awesome these new, even bigger ships are, so I spare you this crap. Antaran X: Genetics is ready next turn and then we will finally now what it does. The Proton Pulse Drive is a straight upgrade to our Impulse Engines: It uses a proton plasma to condense the blast medium even further beyond the old hydrogen plasma our current generation of sublight-drives use. Technological advances also mean the same drives are now using better energy projectors and shielding to protect themselves/direct the impulses. This makes the new drives not only more reliable, it means they can now be used in extremely short “pulses”, allowing for far greater maneuverability then before. And not visible, but listed below the techs above: -The politicians of the Kingdom have learned about the mysterious force known as Gewaltenteilung/Division of Powers. Everyone is keen on trying this new thing out! Except for some old judges who already miss the old, but efficient ways. “What was wrong with writing and enforcing your own laws? Now you need three mineraloids to do the work of one proper judge!” and more dumb moaning like that. -Armor-Piercing Upgrade for Graviton Cannons: Exactly what is says on the tin. It enhances the armor-piercing value of Graviton Cannons by 25% when used. A bit situational, since it also makes the weapon 50% larger. For some reason it's this one our scientists and engineers are really struggling with. With 8 turns this project takes by far the longest from our current crop of new techs. There must have been a lot of comically absurd mishaps slowing down prototype construction. -Orbital Topography Scanner: Basically the combination of satellites and a powerful orbital topography scanner. Perfect for finding even the last and tiniest ore deposits! The German translation waffles a bit about if you have to build it yourself, or if it is an auto-upgrade for your mining DEAs, but a closer look revealed to me a position named “cost per DEA” and said cost was phenomenally low for something you have to actively construct, so yes, as soon as we get this tech, our mining DEAs will automatically build them. Well, build them and shoot them into orbit. You know what I mean. They grant +1 effectiveness for every mining DEA that has them.  Well, with that behind us, time for our first real action in the Orion Senate! The entire sector awaits patiently our vote concerning the Star Lane Control Law: If it goes through, all ships in the sector will be forced to install special transponders for easier identification. This means all ships will be detected 50% earlier than normal. This law is an easy choice: The New Orions still have the most votes, so they'll be easily able to push it through against our combined will and since it hits even non-members, it's like an early warning system you get for free! We vote HELL YES Sure, our ships will also be detected a couple turns earlier then before, but who cares? It's not like the AI will suddenly make smart choices just because they have two more turns to gently caress themselves over.  And the question of who wants to praise us is answered: It's the Eoladi, from the Hard-To-Spell-Empire No. 42! Our little kingdom is adorably flattered by this unexpected turn of events, so we UNTERSTÜTZ / support this motion!  While we're waiting anxiously to see how our diplomatic efforts pay off, let's take a look at our border with the senate races: The Klackons haven't yet given up, but with us in total control of the system and everyone hating them, they have sub-zero chances at pulling a comeback of.  Turn 253 arrives with an avalanche of diplomatic messages: The diplomatic corps of the Kingdom of Almandin slowly begins to realize what it means to be part of the great Orion Senate.  But let's take a step back first: Last turn, our second X-tech was being prototyped. This turn, it has gone active! And it is one hell of an “active”: Instead of just giving a single, huge boost like the science X-tech did, we get multiple ones this time: Leaders and spies get a flat bonus of +10 to their luck stats (which will make leaders more resistant against assassinations, while spies will be better at everything they do and live about 10 turns longer then before), population growth skyrockets by +25% (this is huge, especially for our Silicoids) and lastly, terraforming costs are reduced by -25%. The boost to our spies and our population growth is like getting two X-techs at once. Cutting terraforming costs is a bit odd, but still useful. (Apparently our new genetical power can also be easily applied to changing a planet's biosphere) And it synergizes perfectly with the population growth bonus. Also let's not forget that every race in our empire profits from this, and the longer the game runs, the more Non-Silicoids will be our citizens. Another thing: From now on, I will not hesitate to colonize even the shittiest hellholes, since we can make them pretty drat good with what we have researched so far. I call this the Red 2 gently caress You initiative.  And since our spies are now a lot better (well, the new ones anyway, the spies we already have don't get the +10 luck bonus, as you can see by Faust's luck still being below 30), the AIA immediately starts training a new agent for every possible category of spying they can think of! I'm fairly sure the luck-issue means the luck-bonus only applies to new leaders, too. Too bad we can't check a leader's stats to make sure.  Time for a strategic review: The New Orions and Klackons are still in a dramatic stand-off in the Dromos-system. We sure as hell don't want to stick our crystalline extensions into this meat/stone-grinder, so the Almandian Fleet stays in Tali for now.  Next up is Theta Gru, the border system heavily contested by XEOL and our allies, literally on the other side of our empire and then some. The Annalona Empire is still in control of one planet and even has some ships left. XEOL has an incredible 1347 ship concentrated here. If the Cynoids ever start moving, we'll have a problem. Still, for now it looks like the AI is stuck, since the Cynoids haven't done anything besides stockpiling ships for ages now. Hopefully it's at least a stockpile of warships, instead of useless transports.  And since there's nothing interesting happening in our Raas-sectors (I can't even call them an empire anymore without cackling maniacally), we're off to the Senate! Orion Senate News: -First off, we are being told that the “Praise Almandin!”-Law got enough support, so we can now vote on it. -Second, our first try at being a Senate-member ended with utter failure: “Economic Sanctions against Vchiitri” weren't even able to gain enough traction for at least someone to support the bill. Automatic rejection by the Senate follows. I can only imagine that with total war making it impossible to trade with someone, the AI just doesn't see any sense in making trade harder. Zero trade is hard to top, after all. And with the entire Orion Senate being at total war with the Klackons... Yeah, I could have thought this through better.   Apparently we have the third-highest vote count in the Senate, after the New Orions fake votes and some other guys (I forgot to make screenshots). Filovinkhal are the Humans, I think. Anyway, we vote “YES PLEASE” to praise ourselves. Let's see who else will vote on this. I'm pretty sure this will fail, but this way we will see who loves us! (Besides the Eoladi and their 1-planet empire.)  The result of the “Star Lane Control Law”-vote: Apparently everyone voted “Yes”. Impressive. I guess the AI interpreted this law as free early warning too.  Around this point I suddenly remembered that my reserves were filling up with tons of medium-sized ships, so I decided to do something with them. So to recap: The New Orions are blocking us in Dromos and we're far from having enough ships to do something about the giant Cynoid stack hanging around in our allies' territory. So what is left?  No points for guessing! We're stomping the Raas. 125% aggression! Tau Sagittarii and its huge stack of system defense ships stopped us last time. But now we have raised multiple armadas filled with carriers, so soon we will enact revenge on one of the last Raas-strongholds still holding out. By the way, those 213 ships are mostly our new ships, the task forces in the middle of the lane are actually our old, beaten ships coming back.  After this massive build-up, it's time to retire our Mizar-design. This long-range cruiser model was armed with tons of electronic warfare and tons of ion impulse cannons, both spinal-mounted and as fighter/missile defense batteries. As often in this game, I'm not retiring the design because it's bad, but because the over-eager AI has been flooding our reserves with them and after getting about a hundred of Mizar-cruisers (and still more sitting around in various build queues across our empire), I decided it's time to stop this flood. This way, when we want a newer design, the AI will hopefully have already stopped building the old models.  GC 381 sees the diplomatic landscape of the Orion Sector real as the Dzazatar Empire declares war on the Kingdom of Almandin. The Tachidi, it seems, are not willing to just eliminate their Klackon-rivals, those wily bugs want to fight both of us! Let's see how this turns out for them. Also,  luckily we just ordered a bunch of new agents last turn, together with our new Antaran-engineered spy boosts the only line of attack open to the Tachidi (the Klackons are still blocking them from getting at us directly) has already been closed! The Tachidi ambassador is astonishingly mild-mannered about this. He calmly speaks of “continued provocations” against the Dzazatarians, but our own diplomats are confused by this statement. How could we “provoke” the Tachidi if there was only minimal contact between us so far? In the short time since we joined the Orion Sector, we somehow managed to make the Tachidi see us as enemy No. 1. That's kind of impressive. Impressive to see how bad our diplomatic corps is, that is. In game mechanic terms, the AI probably saw how strong we are and since it wants to win too, it simply decided that it's now or never. A good Human player would probably have waited until we at least have a common border before showing his cards so openly.  Woronock is the closest Tachidi-system I could find. Still at least six jumps across Klackon-space away. At this point, spies are the only threat from this front.  Finally, our last stragglers have reached our stronghold in Alahain-B and our grand assault can begin. The returning carriers join the massed Almandin fleet and hundreds of ships begin moving ominously towards the jump point leading to Tau Sagittarii.  Turn 255 starts and is mostly about diplomacy. Our huge fleet has just started moving, but the Orion Senate never sleeps. Some messages have to be answered and the Star Lane Control Law is now in effect.  Said message is the Eoladi telling us our relations have improved. Nice! Too bad they're the weakest star nation of the Orion Sector, with literally only control over a single planet.  Ironically, our relations only improved because we and the Eoladi were the only ones willing to vote “yes” on the really important “Praise Almandin”-law.  It's adorable how the Eoladi love us. It's also annoying how the rest of the Sector disagrees with them.  The Kingdom of Almandin decides that having only one friend in the Senate is not enough, and proposes full membership for their allies, the Annalona Empire. Can we boost our votes by sneaking in our other friends?  In GC 384, the Orion Senate finally deigns to send an update on the “Praise Almandin”-initiative: The issue is defeated overwhelmingly. Welp. There is also some unrest spreading across our newer colonies. Watching how we blow up billons of their species seems to make our Raas-citizens a bit restless. Or it's spies. It's spies.  Our first boosted agent enters the AIA in turn 256: Instead of luck 30, his starting luck is 40. This means he will live at least ten turns longer than our old spies and he will have a lot more success in everything he tries to do. Mantle 7 (good) and Dagger 3 (bad) means he'll work best at either defense or as minor annoyance for the enemy, though. Agent Rocky is a schemer. Since an enemy schemer can seriously sabotage our diplomatic efforts, he'll stay on defensive duty. Better safe than sorry.  Our new friends whine until we agree to a non-aggression pact. A minor propaganda-victory for us, even though the pact is completely useless in practical terms. Now that I think about it, maybe the Eoladi manipulated us into becoming their friends because they're so isolated in the Senate? Nah, can't be  Turn 256 ends with us eradicating all Raas-spacecraft from Tau Sagittarii, then bombing the second planet into rubble. Billions of Raas die. The bombardment is so strong, it even catches half the defending army in their shelters. Originally I had planned to make a recording of the battle, but it turned out my last effort in this system had already destroyed most of the defenders. This battle was literally just a titanic cloud of fighters launching from our ships and then just deleting the defenders as if they had never existed at all. I decided that's too boring and skipped straight to the aftermath.  Turn 257: Dreadnoughts (bigger ships), Proton Pulse Drives (faster sublight speeds) and Orbital Topography Scanners (more minerals) are completed. Yay! A saboteur destroys a mine on Kled II, while more enemy spies are spreading unrest throughout the Kingdom. Boo!  It doesn't look too bad, honestly: Only some of our newest acquisitions are suffering, and it's only Raas-planets in the Tannjost-system that are affected. Some thinking tells me the enemy spy causing this is probably sitting in Tannjost. Also boo, no-one in the Senate even wanted to support our motion to include the Imsaies. Motion defeated. Our allies have to stay outside for now.  Now that our main fleet is bombing freely and without resistance, the Kingdom sends three full armies to take one of the planets in the Tau Sagittarii-system. Only one planet because the other one will be bombed lifeless in three turns. But there are some colonizers in our reserves who will gladly take this quest on.  I still want to wait for some more important technologies before re-designing our fleet, but those technologies aren't important for starbases, so let's meet our first star fortress based on a Dreadnought-class hull: The Heavy Orbital Fortress Vitreous. The fortress is armed with 8 spinal-mounted plasma cannons, 24 ion impulse fighter/missile-defense batteries and 48 of our new quantum field beams, again as fighter/missile-defense batteries. The main weapon are, however, the 150 heavy fighter-bombers armed with fighter-sized quantum field beams. This one starbase can dish out more than a task force of carriers worth of hurt. Too bad it also costs as much as an entire task force to build. I want to finish at least one of them before it is inevitably obsolete. (At least this time, we are far enough along the tech tree that every enemy still needs overwhelming strength to get past it. Especially transports and light raiders are hosed for a long, long time, obsolete tech or not.) Also just in case no-one remembers, the fighter/missile-defense battery is a mount size unique to the Ultima Orion mod: It's the medium-sized version of the common point defense mount, in everything a straight upgrade, meant to better keep up with fighter swarms.  Surprise attack in Tau Sagittarii! Enemy fighters launch from a stealth task force hiding in-system!  Now that the enemy has revealed himself, everyone sighs with relief (or the nearest Silicoid equivalent): Only 7 ships against our approx. 144? Those poor bastards.  A couple seconds later, all enemy fighters are obliterated. A couple seconds after that, the last Raas-ship detonates.  The second bombardment destroys half of the defenders and about 90% of the population, again. The next orbital bombardment should clear the last resistance. And with this happy and uplifting event this update ends. But don't worry! There will be at least one more update before Easter. Consider this my Good Friday message. Antaran Expedition Status Expedition 1: Expedition Completed Expedition 2: Partial discoveries made (4) Expedition 3: Expedition Completed Next: Silicoids at War (also the diplo-videos I forgot to upload in time for this update)
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Mar 25, 2018 10:50
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Something I forgot to mention in the update: Dreadnoughts have always been my personal marker to remember the Guardians in the game. So this means that yes, the next generation of our fleet will be the one to finally assault the Antaran Guardians we know about. Only a couple more updates now
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Mar 25, 2018 10:56
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Libluini posted:Something I forgot to mention in the update: Dreadnoughts have always been my personal marker to remember the Guardians in the game. So this means that yes, the next generation of our fleet will be the one to finally assault the Antaran Guardians we know about. Wheee!
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Mar 25, 2018 14:18
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Libluini posted:Something I forgot to mention in the update: Dreadnoughts have always been my personal marker to remember the Guardians in the game. So this means that yes, the next generation of our fleet will be the one to finally assault the Antaran Guardians we know about. There's no way this ends badly
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Mar 25, 2018 14:31
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I'm torn between actually being hype for the Guardians getting nuked... and realizing it'll probably just be a disappointment.
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Mar 25, 2018 17:31
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By the way, and I'm only posting this musing to get faster to the next page, I've started to collect some other odd old strategy games like Imperium. Together with some other odd space 4x I already own, and a couple surprises more, you don't have to fear me giving up LPing for good after we're done with Master of Orion III. I have such sights to show you
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Mar 25, 2018 19:44
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Libluini posted:By the way, and I'm only posting this musing to get faster to the next page, I've started to collect some other odd old strategy games like Imperium. Together with some other odd space 4x I already own, and a couple surprises more, you don't have to fear me giving up LPing for good after we're done with Master of Orion III. I have such sights to show you Signature genre: horror 4X.
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Mar 25, 2018 19:55
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Are we talking Kohan style dead end masterpieces? Galactic Inheritors style with one or two cool subsystems on top of a bad game? Or more total piles like Imperium?
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Mar 25, 2018 22:39
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It is kind of hilarious that your race starts with such a negative diplomatic malus that somebody engaged in a war to the death on the other side of the galaxy catches a glimpse of you on a video screen and is suddenly all gently caress THOSE STONE ASSHOLES FOREVER.
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Mar 25, 2018 22:48
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habituallyred posted:Are we talking Kohan style dead end masterpieces? Galactic Inheritors style with one or two cool subsystems on top of a bad game? Or more total piles like Imperium? Just going from what I can find about them, I don't know. One of them, Stellar Crusaders, seems to have a really complicated economic simulation and is described by a random guy on the internet as "complicated". For others I only have the manual, or lots of "?" entries on websites like Atari Mania. (One, Millenium 2.2, I couldn't even get on eBay. Nobody seems to have it. Except it has videos on YouTube, so someone should be willing to sell it. I guess in an emergency I could just go with emulation only, but I don't like it. )https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a81tRHCTSWs Glazius posted:It is kind of hilarious that your race starts with such a negative diplomatic malus that somebody engaged in a war to the death on the other side of the galaxy catches a glimpse of you on a video screen and is suddenly all gently caress THOSE STONE ASSHOLES FOREVER. It probably doesn't help that we are the galactic No. 1 right now, even Human players would be forced to gang up on the Silicoids to prevent them from winning.
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Mar 26, 2018 01:12
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Whoo! Yay and great to see you back. Also congrats on getting the first X-Tech operational. And.. Yes, that one is actually useful! Does the mod make it so that your leaders last more than 4-5 turns before they get assassinated?
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Mar 26, 2018 03:25
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wedgekree posted:Whoo! Yay and great to see you back. Also congrats on getting the first X-Tech operational. And.. Yes, that one is actually useful! One of the changes the mod made was giving assassins some low-tier success so they're not constantly stabbing at your leaders, no matter the cost. That's what the earlier "Didi Hallervorden has died!"-messages were all about. If an enemy assassin succeeds, but not by a high enough margin, an important entertainer is killed and unrest is generated instead of you losing a leader. This was meant to make this type of spy more useful for the player, but it also results in your leaders surviving longer if the AI decides to spam assassins.
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Mar 26, 2018 06:50
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Libluini posted:One of the changes the mod made was giving assassins some low-tier success so they're not constantly stabbing at your leaders, no matter the cost. That's what the earlier "Didi Hallervorden has died!"-messages were all about. If an enemy assassin succeeds, but not by a high enough margin, an important entertainer is killed and unrest is generated instead of you losing a leader. This was meant to make this type of spy more useful for the player, but it also results in your leaders surviving longer if the AI decides to spam assassins. Huh, cool! I never figured out how to keep my leaders alive. I'd max up the oppressometer, have as many political spies as I could on defense.. Never seemed to do anything. Was a small part of the game that drove me nuts (among many, many other ones). Glad it was fixed for here!
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Mar 26, 2018 06:57
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wedgekree posted:Huh, cool! I never figured out how to keep my leaders alive. I'd max up the oppressometer, have as many political spies as I could on defense.. Never seemed to do anything. Was a small part of the game that drove me nuts (among many, many other ones). Glad it was fixed for here! You can still lose all your leader in quick succession, though. It's just more statistically unlikely now.
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Mar 26, 2018 07:19
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You know, as a suggestion for weird 4x games, how about Reunion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunion_(video_game) It's kind of weird, mixing genres to some extent. But it's most definitely also a game, though probably also one that you're going to want a FAQ or guide to hand for, because there are some places where you're boned if you don't realize that a countdown's been started and you need to start doing something to respond to it ahead of time.
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Mar 26, 2018 10:11
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Reunion looks good, I'll add it to my main list.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:08
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Good to see you got another Antaran tech, and boy does that look potent. Can't wait to see what the 3rd one (assuming that expedition also succeeds) will be. What was the fluff for this tech by the way?
I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:07
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Short thread update: The next post is mostly finished, but I've run out of energy for more writing today, so expect the next update to be posted around Thursday-FridayishStephen9001 posted:Good to see you got another Antaran tech, and boy does that look potent. Can't wait to see what the 3rd one (assuming that expedition also succeeds) will be. What was the fluff for this tech by the way? The genetics X-tech is us learning to do all the weird poo poo the Antarans did to countless people. But since we're not Antarans ("New Orions"), we're actually using our new found powers to improve our people, instead of loving them over. The science X-tech is us just basically learning to do science better based on methods used by the ancient Antarans. After all, both the Antarans and the true Orions were incredibly old and advanced civilizations hailing back to Centre One itself, the first and last true galactic civilization and alliance of multiple species in the entire Milkyway galaxy. This means they probably knew a lot more about science then every other dickhead living in the Orion Sector.
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Apr 11, 2018 20:18
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The Antarans basically lived in thier pocket personal interdimensional galaxy for 10,000 years while occasionally making raiding forays out of it. They probably do know more.
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Apr 13, 2018 09:12
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 81: Silicoids at War First, the missing videos from last update: Diplomatic Viewpoints Eoladi - News From The Gas Giants- Evon - more humanoids are welcome to die Humans - From The Depths of Evil- The Tachidi Greetings  GC 387 begins rather stormy: First, both Humans and Evon finally deigned to answer our diplomatic messages. Humans positively, Evon with utter revulsion. Welp. Also this means half of my "missing" videos are actually perfectly on time with this update! Sometimes I really wonder about my bad memory.  By the way, the Evon rejected our trade treaty because they already had declared war on us. Also, the Kingdom of Almandin finally implements separation of powers throughout the nation. The media calls this major reform the advent of “Democracy 4.0” for some reason.  But wait, turn 258 is still not finished with throwing curve balls at us: The Evon not only declared war, they're trying to leverage the Orion Senate against us! They've suggested the Senate-members should unify behind them and declare total war against the dreaded Silicoids. Bastards!  Those fuckers! A certain someone wants the entire Orion Senate to declare total war to us! At least this issue is so utterly selfish, I expect no-one except the Tachidi to vote in favor. And both Evon and Tachidi combined are only like 1/3rd of the votes necessary. Still, everything hangs on how the apathetic New Orions will swing around. They could literally gently caress us over for their own, deranged amusement. As stupid as this new law sounds, the motion could still go through thanks to our corrupt overlords. Let's hope justice and the Silicoid way will prevail! Obviously we will not support the law, just in case no-one else will (which would result in automatic dismissal).  The Humans control 44 planets. Not bad, but also not very good. Luckily they're friendly, so at least we're spared attacks by their very, very, very good spies. For now.  The Eoladi still love us.  The Evons have multiple messages for us: The first is their rather flowery declaration of war, the second (omitted here) is their explanation as for why a non-aggression pact with someone they hate is a bad idea.  Those guys must be suicidal. They only have ten planets, four of them in a single system. They're close to Eoladi-levels of irrelevant. Since their tiny size also hurts their spy chances, this is one war we can just ignore. We have Human, Tachidi and Klackon space between us. We're not going to see Evon-battleships any time soon.  The next major tech I was waiting for is dropping by: In six turns, we will be able to use the next step up in FTL-technology: The Portalantrieb/Portal Drive! This thing here was originally the MetaGrav in the German translation -another Perry Rhodan tech. Back then when I was rewriting the translation, having stuff like the MetaGrav appearing unchanged annoyed me to no end, since a lot of PR FTL-technologies are a really bad fit for a star lane game. In all of my re-naming operations, I essentially did two things: First, rewriting the lore blurb to somehow explain the PR-tech in a frame of lane travel. Second, changing the name if the new lore was too different. Ironically, the MetaGrav actually works like a Star Trek warp-drive, it's just that in the Perryverse, if you use fold space too tightly around yourself, you can accidentally push yourself out of normal space into hyperspace. Let me try to explain this: In the PR universe, hyperspace is just the outer layer of the universe and if you use what Captain Kirk would call a warp-drive, you basically start leaving the universe altogether. If this is unplanned, bad news: You may exit the standard universe entirely, which means as soon as you leave hyperspace again, you will reappear in a random other universe. With a 99,9999999% chance of everyone on your ship immediately dying in an unimaginably horrific way. The MetaGrav by the way uses an artificial singularity to fold space, which can also be used for STL. The singularity can be projected in whatever direction you want to go, and your ship will “fall” into that direction, driven by the incredibly strong gravity well in front of you. Now this means the original German fans tried to shoehorn in a drive which allows you to go everywhere, anytime. And which is unbelievable fast both in STL and FTL mode. Of course the idea of being constricted by “star lanes” is nowhere to find in this. So in desperation, I tried to make this and similar techs fit better into the lore of Master of Orion. This “Portal Drive” is one of the strongest rewrites I had to do. Integrating PR-shields was easy mode. The makers of the Ultima Orion mod already did this by simply dialing up shield regen up to 11 to simulate how shields work in the Perryverse. Sure, it still doesn't quite fit since a lot of PR-shields are basically invincible as long as you don't have this one weird tech to crack them open, but I thought the devs did their best, and left their work mostly alone, apart from some minor changes here and there. Rewriting FTL was tedious, though. I'm glad I'm done with it. Though if in the far future someone makes PR-shipsets for Stellaris, I'll probably start again with this poo poo over there. The Portal Drive posted:The Portal Drive allows a direct and uncomplicated access to hyperspace. While indeed there are still some incredibly complex calculations to be done before every hyper jump, the better part of the needed maneuvers and accelerations are gone for good. Space travel is now far faster then before. But not as fast as one would expect, since for effective usage a ship still has to follow the star lanes -and opening a hyper portal too close to a planet or a large mass has catastrophic consequences for the ship.  The last thing I did this turn: Ordering one of our new super-fortresses to be build, just for the heck of it. “Only” 11 turns for one of them to finish! This one orbital fortress can send out more fighters than a planet without additional fighter bases. And even with add-ons build on the planet, it's a near thing. In a couple generations we will have outpaced even the planetary improvements added by the mod! Impressive, and for some reason really funny to me.  The new combat phase begins with our fleet doing what it does best: Blowing up Raas-garbage.  This time however, no genocide: This planet will be carefully preserved for liberation. Our ground troops are already on their way.  Turn 259 starts with ridiculous nonsense from the diplomatic front: The “Total War against Almandin”-law didn't even get to the voting stage. Apparently even the New Orions thought this was self-servicing bullshit.  Let's walk to our industry-table, of course while laughing at how stupid our enemies are. We are still building some five-packs of our old Gold-class carriers and Iron-class battleships. I will still leave the shipyards running, but in 9 turns, when the last of the old runs are finished, it will be time for another redesign. Hopefully we won't stumble into another crisis by then, because I really want to use the new ships to go hunting for   And just to make sure the AI isn't hurting our economy with uselessly building more outdated ships, I'm already obsoleting all of them. Another step in AI-control, advanced measures: This way, most of our planets will have cleared out the old ships they were building by the point we want to build our new ships. This means we can concentrate more on our heavy capitals, and let the AI build our light ships. Mostly. We still need to make sure we aren't getting 999 recon cruisers and 0 PD-escorts out of the deal. But at least light ships are easy to build, even in large packages!  More combat! The Raas are sending in some more poor bastards. They can't even slow us down.  Finally, troops of the Kingdom land on Tau Sagittarii I.  Three armies begin the long and costly process of liberating the planet. Since the Raas have basically nothing to stop our horde of tanks, I'm tempting fate again by ordering an encirclement. Will this doom our efforts?  Nope! Our tanks don't even get their paint scratched! Zero losses. I can only assume the defenders saw the neverending stream of troops leaving their transports and immediately surrendered.  Galactic cycle 390: Agent Warhammer joins the AIA! :badass:  In other news, XEOL declares war to us for a change and graviton cannons can now easier penetrate armor -if we want to pay for the upgrades, that is. I totally forgot the Cynoids! Nice to see they haven't forgotten our little tradition yet.   Some new important techs roll in this turn: One of them is the Clone Centre. It simply boosts population growth by 2,5%. Not much when compared with the genetic X-tech, but of course that huge boost now gets even stronger, thanks to this standard tech.  Our plasma cannons will soon get the engulfing mod. This either makes the weapon 50% more effective against shields, or armor. Certainly useful! I need to take out my calculator though to see if it is worth it, since it also makes the weapon 66% larger. Could be another case of “better take more guns instead”. The description contradicts itself here, I assume this is a typo by the modders and like all engulfing weapons, the plasma guns will become stronger against shields, not armor.  The Atmospheric Containment Field. It is an advance based on planetary shield tech and simply reverses the principle to trap atmosphere on a planet. This allows the concentration of an artificial atmosphere over time. In game mechanic terms, it simply unlocks another rung on the ladder to the perfect world. And again our shittiest planets will get better. I haven't counted how many improvements this makes now, but I guess we're now officially by the point where we can just ignore habitability and just colonize whatever we want. The tech also “reduces costs”, but doesn't actually give us any concrete numbers.   The Imperial University! As the name implies, it can only be build once, and only on our capital and our capital needs to have at least one government development area, of course. Ironically, the Imperial University works best if you are like me and never bother to change your capital to a better planet: Thanks to the weird mix of DEAs you need on your first and most important planet and thanks to it always being of normal size, the 30% boost to loving everything (production, science, you name it, the IP boosts it) is a really welcome one. And yes, I know a better planet as a capital would generate even more poo poo, but I just like to keep my original capital, OK? This tech allows me to do this without being sad at seeing the capital slowly fall behind other, newer colonies.  One planet fallen, one soon only rubble. This system is done, and we can move on to mop up Arcturus soon after.  “We worry about you. We declare that our civilizations are now at war.” What a weird way to declare war on someone.  With our fleet soon to be obsoleted, it's time for another major push against the Raas. With the upper third of their old empire the only part which is now left, we're gradually edging closer to the end of this campaign. Connewa is the first target of this new offensive.  Next combat phase: The Raas-colony on Tau Sagittarii II is cleansed. Only a few lonely soldiers are left to oversee the devastation.  Consequently, the planet is abandoned and the Kingdom of Almandin starts organizing a recolonization campaign.  With the Tau Sagittarii system now 100% in our hands, the entire armada shifts objectives to one of the last enemy strongholds in this sector: Arcturus.  And then I suddenly remember that I forgot to show off this new tech which entered prototyping stage in turn 261: Kampfschwärmer/Combat Swarmers. They're basically the advanced version of the tiny swarmers we use for our light carriers. The same basic principle: Super-tiny fighters made out of ocean foam, harder to hit than normal, less damage. But thanks to being super-tiny, even a frigate can carry a lot of them. Swarmers can't deal out the raw damage our fighter-bombers can, but they're a pain to deal with. Thanks to the goddamn fighter supremacy in this game, having a bunch of light carriers travel with your raiding forces is a cost-effective way to actually make raiding forces, instead of flying targets.  And a new combat phase awaits! This is the begin of our assault on Connewa, thanks to the system being just two turns from Theta Indi, our concentration area for this offensive.  Both sides launch their fighters.  But oh wait, most of the Raas ships in Connewa were actually just transports, and they jump out! Who wants to bet that this transport-fleet was just one turn away from launching itself uselessly at our border? 10$ should get you 0,01% winnings at those odds.  The rest, welp. Let's just say the defenders never had a chance.  After the following orbital bombardment, the Raas colony on Connewa III is wiped out instantly. Again, only a couple lonely soldiers survive. A tragic fate.  And so begins GC 393, or “turn 262” in more prosaic tunes. “Praise Kairenieo” is the new suggestions for the Orion Senate. I wonder if the Eoladi of the Kairenieo “empire” did this themselves? I wouldn't put it past those cheeky bastards But whatever that was about has to wait for another time, because I blasted through all of my leftover screenshots with this update! Now I have to first play again to create another buffer! Let's hope I'm not accidentally playing other games instead! Antaran Expedition Status Expedition 1: Expedition Completed Expedition 2: Partial discoveries made (4) Expedition 3: Expedition Completed Next: More Raas bashing. New ships, maybe?
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Apr 14, 2018 19:24
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Libluini posted:
Maybe they're worried that you forgot to re-start the war after it timed out. It's a generations-old tradition, after all.
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Apr 14, 2018 19:59
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Man, when did the anti-Raas war start in the first place? It feels like it fired up just a few turns into the game and has been running ever since.
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Apr 14, 2018 20:34
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PurpleXVI posted:Man, when did the anti-Raas war start in the first place? It feels like it fired up just a few turns into the game and has been running ever since. Turn 20, so pretty much, yeah.
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Apr 14, 2018 20:37
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Yeah, over the course of the game I learned we basically blocked off their only connection to the rest of the Orion Sector, which is probably why they were so uniformly hostile the entire time. Over time, we slowly became strong enough to hold them off, then started to liberate their worlds since they would just not stop attacking us. And then the war would just not goddamn end, because for every planet we took, the Raas found some other replacement in their weird fenced-in part of the Sector. It's incredible that it took so long, but mostly it's game mechanics. In a game were you can assault exactly one planet per system per turn, even fast wars tend to be slow affairs. Think of a system with let's say eight planets: Even if your fleet is strong enough to just destroy a colony with a direct assault, that's still eight turns your fleet is forced to hang around. And then you have to either leave a small force to prevent enemy colonizers from undoing all your work, or your fleet has to stay until another force can arrive. In Master of Orion 3, you also have to be a Master of Patience.
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Apr 14, 2018 20:41
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That's pretty bad design. Generally, by the time you get to the steamroll point your players just want to, well, steamroll stuff so they can start a new game or get to the enemy empire that actually poses a threat
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Apr 14, 2018 21:47
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Slaan posted:That's pretty bad design. Generally, by the time you get to the steamroll point your players just want to, well, steamroll stuff so they can start a new game or get to the enemy empire that actually poses a threat It's a kind of tricky problem, though. Even if you allow more assaults per system/turn, you run into a problem we will see sooner or later: The player will get overwhelmed by countless battles/engagements even when only fighting one fight per system. If you allow more, the player would strategically move faster, but the game play would just be condensed in less turns, without getting actually faster. You'd still have to play through all those battles. And thanks to the game engine being oddly slow when auto-solving battles, the only other option besides playing constant real time battles would be to wait around. A lot. Fundamentally, this can only be solved by re-designing the entire engine from the ground up. Replacing the soft cap of task forces per battle with a hard cap on total ships instead, allowing more assaults but resolving them faster, maybe some kind of meta-command to auto-deal with poo poo like 3 transports attacking and only telling the player when something truly important happens. That's only the improvements that popped first into my head. However, inside the restrictions imposed by the engine, preventing to force the player into too many battles than he can handle without going mad is probably near the best possible solution.
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Apr 14, 2018 22:08
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