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Decoy Badger posted:What purpose are the Nuc Recons still serving? Just picketing Borg worlds too small or distant to justify cruisers? The number of Recons hasn't dropped even years after the entire galaxy was reconnoitered. I guess they're cheap as hell to maintain but it's still a ship slot being used up for a museum piece. Good question that I've been thinking more and more about, but you basically hit on the answer. I'd scrap 80% or more of them if I could, but it's all or nothing with that. I don't think we're that far from having enough fleet superiority to get rid of them, but there isn't quite enough on the Meklar front to do that yet. If I eliminated them now, there'd almost certainly be more AI ships headed to some of our more remote, developing systems. They still do serve a discouragement role there. Near the end of it though. We're paying 12 BC a year to maintain them - 0.1% of production. Not nothing, but pretty darned close to it, though I would definitely like the ship slot available. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 21:09
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Match the Master: 2413, Part II   Matrix 133 finally is done with terraforming, as we continue to inch our way out of that long process.        As expected, another system moving past the terraforming phase.           A brief delay in progression here is necessary to steal back what the Meklar stole first.       Starting to make some real progress here now.      A very strange planetary spending profile, but nothing about this system has been typical.  I thought about sending ships in here, but the Psilons have nothing close at all, and we're out of Meklar range I think. Sending drones is probably not worth it at this stage of things - but I did put in a now-rare reserve transfer to boost the early buildup.    2413 Lots of stuff tried to happen; some of it even did. The Psilons and Humans fled from combat; we did the same at Matrix 167, where the Meklar cruiser trio managed to take out one whole factory in orbital bombardment. We struck back, retaking Matrix 147 - but capturing no technology, pretty unfair since they got two when they stormed the planet a couple years ago or whatever. Also lost a couple more million drones than expected, but we got the job done. Also Death Spores, which will require much blathering on about their implementation in the next update. Atmospheric Terraforming is of course on the agenda now. Overall research investment was down just a hair this year.
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Jan 7, 2019 21:12
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Yay, researching atmo terraforming. The magic "stop sucking" technology for planets. Those hostile planets will suddenly be so much more useful for drone production once you get that.
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Jan 8, 2019 08:15
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Yep … except that by the time we get it, I don't think it will be all that important. The need for drones will very likely be largely a thing of the past by then.
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Jan 9, 2019 00:58
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Match the Master: 2414, Part I No spying expense at all this year! Hotspots  Not at all a surprise that they are coming back here. I don't think we'll have enough ships to hold them off by the time they show up - but we'll see. Seems to me that continuing to transfer in drones and credits to build up this system against whatever they plan to do is a worthwhile plan.      The Mrrshans have found a new target. They've shown no ability to penetrate our defenses yet, and don't appear to be using any new designs. I think we're safe here.  Three years before the Psilons arrive. Analysis Once again Matrix 147 is at the center of the Meklar conflict, and once again I'm not sure what the result will be. I'm confident we'll succeed eventually once enough ships are in place - but how long it is till that happens, whether they can destroy it or take it back in the interim; that's much less certain. The other two aren't threats at all.  Another case of the machines deciding to scrap their ships as it isn't worth their effort to attack. A win for us.  The Guavinator will allow the Borg to conquer planets without as much risk or wait time for our drones. Our latest reports show that while the Mrrshan already have this weapon, nobody has the antidote. This is one of those moments that is tricky to be handled properly in order to conquer the galaxy efficiently. Its arrival is the reason I didn't send out any more transports this year. ** Producing this ship takes up a slot, and production that will have to be diverted from other combat ships. Like the Ranger, it will be of no use in the Orion campaign. Therefore it's important to not overbuild it. ** Usually with bioweapons it's a case of just using them as an alternative to glassing the planet. Instead of wiping out the population completely however, I intend to just kill most of them - allowing drone transports to take care of the rest and forego the need for Colonizers. This approach mandated the smallest practical ship size - so I can control approximately how many of the enemy are 'neutralized' with each attack - which is why I built a destroyer. I can fit a Death Spore Launcher on a fighter, but I can't put the battle computer on with it and my past experience suggests it is possible for them to 'miss' their target. The goal is to wipe out all resistance with the other ships, then move these in to kill most of the population, devastating the environment for sure but leaving the factories intact and the blueprints within them as well. ** Timing out how many drones to send in with how many Guavinators will be tricky. ** I don't expect to need a lot of these. I anticipate an accuracy rate of 70%, which would mean 6-8 ships would be required to eliminate the population of a large planet in a single year. In order to balance building what we need and then moving on to other concerns, I think I want about that many each on the Human and Psilon fronts and that's it. That'll keep the costs very small - well under a year's production efforts - and we can work on at least a couple planets at a time, methodically and fairly quickly moving through the galaxy and crippling the AI systems; transports following as closely behind as is practical. They'll have a fairly short, but crucial, operational period and be scrapped when the task is done. The environmental cleanup afterwards is a not-small concern, but we can aid that with transfer payments and how productive the systems are after the fact isn't as important as just taking them with a minimum of expense. The drone savings compared to invasion should be quite considerable.    The first source planet for our new toy.        This should take care of our needs over here.   Bases are done here now.  I thought about having a 'just-in-case spare' toxic colonizer built here, but I think our further needs for them will be rarely-if-ever. If we do, I'll just get one up at whatever the closest decent system is at that time. After being the dominant activity for the first century of play, the Colonizer is now barely worth keeping a ship slot reserved for it.  I've decided that I'm comfortable having a couple thousand BCs in the reserve. This is due in no small part to our highly occasional need for them now, and the fact that I can get more quickly from any number of systems now. Time for Matrix 117 to switch over to doing what it does best - pumping out fleet-killing machines.    And this completes the needed Guavinators on the human front. I can always build more if needed, but I doubt that will happen at this point.    Rerouting to protect the system under threat. I don't intend to built any biodestroyers out here; rather I'll just send those built elsewhere out to the Meklar front when they are done with their duties closer to our core systems.    Here's our latest terraforming success story, well on its way to becoming an productive shipworld.  Here as well. 
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Jan 9, 2019 03:42
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DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND FACE TO GUAVINATION
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Jan 9, 2019 05:34
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As I recall, the Guava Protocol (tm) involved massive simultaneous strikes on every enemy planet in a large area, to strand enemy fleets far enough from their planets that they're considered outside of valid supply lines and are automatically scrapped. Obviously that's not a big deal in this case as the fleets you're facing are pretty piddly; I do have to wonder how important it was in the original formulation though. Surely building up that large of a fleet force before making your attack means the attack must be substantially more expensive to launch, compared to taking planets one or two at a time?
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Jan 10, 2019 00:05
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:As I recall, the Guava Protocol (tm) involved massive simultaneous strikes on every enemy planet in a large area, to strand enemy fleets far enough from their planets that they're considered outside of valid supply lines and are automatically scrapped. Obviously that's not a big deal in this case as the fleets you're facing are pretty piddly; I do have to wonder how important it was in the original formulation though. Surely building up that large of a fleet force before making your attack means the attack must be substantially more expensive to launch, compared to taking planets one or two at a time? Are you asking me? It's usually a lot cheaper to build a fleet to kill every living being than it is to try to whittle down a doomstack, or bomb away a mass of missile bases. Taking planets one or two at a time invites counterattacks. The species you're guavinating could potentially even be an ally until the last minute where you kill them all.
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Jan 10, 2019 01:37
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Match the Master: 2414, Part II    There are still others, such as Matrix 134, that have a ways to go yet.    Terraforming finished here also.             Factories are starting to get built faster than the population grows here now.               Latest research contributor.    2414 GNN pops in to say hello, and the Mrrshan quickly flee from Rigel - I should have baited them into staying around long enough to be shot, but I can't really get too upset about it. With each passing year it becomes all the more hilarious that they are still packing lasers. Another peace offer from the Psilons is rejected out of hand, and we colonize the last system to be scouted in this galaxy.
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Jan 10, 2019 07:36
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GuavaMoment posted:DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND FACE TO GUAVINATION Also DEPSILONIZE, DEMEKLARIZE, etc. I should mention for anyone who hasn't picked up on it, despite the use of the 'Guavinator' name I'm not doing the Guava Plan(tm) in any significant sense here. Just used that because it's the last time round with bioweapons. All we're doing here is killing most of the enemy with death spores because it's a lot easier and faster than doing it with drones. Really doing it 'the Guava Way' means wiping out entire enemy empires on a single turn.
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Jan 10, 2019 07:39
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Match the Master: 2415, Part I More of the same here really. The other races remain fairly equal overall.  Don't know if I've ever had no spies caught two years in a row like this. Seems that we're at the point where it's really hard for them to detect the activities of our hiding agents - and that'll get even more so soon. Meklar have added Hyper-X Rockets so we'll probably see those in action soon, while the Bulrathi have Scatter Pack Vs now. That makes their bases far more dangerous to our Rangers than anything else out there, and might require me to keep them in service longer than I wanted to and/or build more. Each base can do 30% damage to one of the bomber-cruisers per turn at that rate - with two-thirds of the payload still absorbed by our shields - and it takes a few turns to reach the planet, so -- yeah, I don't see a way around taking significant casualties against them now. Jerks. Psilons now have Enhanced Eco which is way better waste cleanup than we have, but their lack of any remotely credible anti-ship weapon (still lasers along with Mrrshan and Humans) means that really isn't going to help them much.  The Bulrathi are mildly concerning, and I think we'll need 20-25 Rangers to handle Ursa. That's if their tech doesn't improve. I figure raw numbers should take down their fleet even if they have the Ion Cannons deployed by the time we fight them, but they are now the most capable military force besides us from any point of view; beam weapons, missiles, or ground combat. And by concerning I just mean 'we'll have to sacrifice more Borg than usual to kill them'. I may not need another Colonizer before we hit Orion, and the Lancer buildup continues. Vis a vis the Guardian, our destroyers can absorb 30.7% of the initial scatter-pack alpha strike, which is more than twice as much as five years ago - we're mobilizing quickly but still have a very long ways to go.  ** Psilons(8, +1) ** Humans(4, -1) ** Bulrathi(3) ** Meklar(3) ** Mrrshan(2) The fighting on three fronts ultimately ended up our enemies controlling exactly the same amount of territory as before. I expect that they won't be able to say that a decade from now.  It's a bit of bad luck to have all three of these advances not come in yet; they should be arriving soon. Also, breaking 5k research for the first time this turn.  A noticeable bump in ship maintenance costs every year now; I expect that to continue through the end of the game. Collective Data, GY 2415 ** Matrices - 72 of 94(+3) ** Operational Drones - 3.642 billion (+769 M) ** Production - 14,312 BC (+2733) ** Projected Completion Year - 2451 ** Projected Completion Date IRL - April 10 A regression to the mean in terms of growth; 24% economic, 27% population. Still, over 150 million drones being added to the empire annually is a pretty darned impressive thing. In terms of our ultimate success, we should have a much better handle on that 10-15 game years from now, or roughly a month so into early February. At that point we'll see how well the new bioweapon-aided conquests are going, and start firming up plans on exactly how many ships we'll need to take down Orion. Hostile Action Report This cycle we lost 81 million vs. 80 million in ground combat against the humans, and 44 million to only 31 million killed against the Meklar. Additionally, the cybernetics took down two factories and a missile base of ours. Total to date: ** Meklar: 40M killed, 51M Borg Drones KIA. 7 Meklar cruisers destroyed, with 3 Borg Missile Bases lost and 2 factories. ** Psilons: 60M killed, 92M Borg Drones KIA. 9 Psilon destroyers and 1 missile base destroyed, no Borg space casualties. ** Mrrshan: 5 cruisers and 17 fighters destroyed, no Borg space casualties. ** Humans: 80M killed, 81M Borg Drones KIA. ** Guardian: Still alive; 3 Borg Recons destroyed ** 9M drones lost to exposure. ** Total: 189M troops killed, 224M losses sustained. 12 cruisers, 9 destroyers, 17 fighters, and 1 missile base destroyed; Borg losses are limited to 3 fighters, 3 missile bases, and 2 factories so far. Still a negative balance in terms of ground combat, pointing up the need for Operation Guava. Hotspots  This continues to be our epicenter in terms of fighting off the Meklar. We've got three years now, and I'm hoping to aid the fleet with a couple of missile bases. Depending on how things look, I may even sacrifice whatever ships we have in place at the time in order to give the missiles enough cover to take them out. It all depends on what the Meklar have.   These were recently relocated to here to start building up an anti-Meklar force as you may recall. They'll join the ten destroyers already in place ... with 75 and 4 colony ships bearing down on us, and a cruiser also the year after just for fun.  It just occurred to me that it's possible the Psilons have fusion bombs on one of those ships arriving in two years. Even if they do though, I should be able to target them before they get in range - but I'm going to want a few more bases here for safety so I don't see a good reason not to yank funding out of research and just do it now. Analysis That's it in terms of defending our territory. Transport convoys are two years away from Pollus, and six years from Zhardan. The former will land as planned, while the latter will get some Guavinator assistance in limiting the resistance. That's all we can do for now, as those ships are still en route to their staging destinations yet.  Before I decide how much more to invest in Rangers, I want to take a look at how fortified Ursa is. I also might consider just using the destroyers against their bases since their shielding sucks ... but they would be particularly vulnerable to scatter packs so I really don't think I want to throw them away in that manner.  Coming out of possibly the last cloning dive here.          Cloning ends and shipbuilding resumes.   Also out of the cloning expenses.  Already hit a couple planets that grew more than expected last year, so extra industrial spending is needed to compensate. 
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Jan 11, 2019 12:09
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Looks like there's enough drone population to overwhelm the rest of the galaxy through an all-in invasion gambit, if you stop caring about research/production - is slow transport speed the only thing making this infeasible? Except for a Bulrathi early aggression run, this game seems to favour very macro-intensive strategies rather than all-ins or other high-risk strategies. I guess that's an artifact of having RNG rolls for everything.
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Jan 11, 2019 17:16
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Slow transport speed is a factor, but I'm not at all sure I could do that at least without virtually emptying large sections of the empire. Bulrathi troops would tend to have a 5:1 kill ratio on ours for example, and to 'naturally' take down Zhardan would have taken 250 million troops, for a homeworld planet like Mentar, it would been close to 350 million on the Psilon front. That would put the needed amount for Ursa above the amount you can even land in a single turn … several hundred million. The other thing is, I don't think it's useful to stop caring about production when I need a much bigger fleet than I currently have to deal with Orion. It's not so much that I can't do that kind of invasion as that it would do more harm than good.
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Jan 12, 2019 00:29
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Match the Master: 2415, Part II All Lancers, all the time until we figure out what's up at Ursa.     Takes a ton of effort to keep these ultra-poor systems caught up on factories still.          Feels like we've been terraforming here forever - and the job's about halfway done.           
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Jan 12, 2019 00:30
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I do find it interesting though that you're so invested in taking planets "intact". I get that not destroying factories lets you ramp those planets up to productivity that much faster, but given how few planets the other factions have, the marginal gain in empire-wide fleet velocity seems minimal. And sure you might win some techs, but is there anything critical you're worried about missing out on? So my inclination would be to bomb the hell out of 'em, then send a token invasion force.
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Jan 12, 2019 00:33
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A couple of them have Robotics III, which would make a big difference. A big part of it is also the whole 'spirit of the challenge' thing - the Borg assimilate any technology they don't already have. Another aspect is that it's really touchy to bombard a system but not destroy it - and then if it's destroyed you need more Colonizers. How much damage you do from orbital bombardment is not something I've ever gotten comfortable accurately predicting, there seems to be a pretty high degree of fudging in it.
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Jan 12, 2019 22:02
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Match the Master: 2415, Part III        Still grinding our way up even on the better systems out here.         Time is just about up now for anyone else to come calling. Most likely we'd have enough ships nearby to get here in time to help repel any small task force.   Another small contributor to research is found.  Starting to stretch our legs now; another significant asset coming online.    We'll definitely have some wild annual swings in spending here until the population is large enough to stabilize.    2415 Battle Computer V is in. I'd like to put that to use, but to get the most out of our next design it's best to wait on the other upcoming techs. Advanced Space Scanner is up next, but whether we get that in time for it to matter is a very open question. Meanwhile, a comet is coming for one of our planets. That'll give the fleet something to work on for sure. We're about to find out how many mass drivers it takes to blow this one up. I don't think comets scale in terms of how hard they are to take down, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
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Jan 12, 2019 22:03
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PSA: Updates are going to switch from 'daily' to 'as I am able' starting soon. I'm going to be working more hours at that boring irrelevancy known as 'my real-life job', required for doing boring things like 'fulfilling adult responsibilities' such as 'paying other humans the money I owe them'. Long-term this is a definite positive for me personally, but it also means I may have to slow things down here. If I can keep up with everything then I will by all means be doing so. Longer-term stuff like MOO2 and Ground Control is still definitely going to happen; only thing that might change is the when I get there part.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:40
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Match the Master: 2416, Part I The gravy train is over; we lost a couple of spies this time around. Hotspots  We'll see what the Psilons have in mind a year from now.  It's looking more and more like we're going to be fighting a good portion of the Meklar fleet here in two years time. We've got a couple dozen destroyers in place right now and should get that number to about 30 by the time they show up. Throw in a base or two and it might well be worth taking a stab at fighting them.   All available destroyers in the area will be re-routed to deal with the comet at Matrix 132. Fortunately it's close to our biggest staging hub, so we have a significant amount within reasonable travel distance. The clock is at nine years.     Meanwhile on the Human front, it's time to go after Trax. The first batch of Guavinators are in place. They have one missile base there, so I'll take a Ranger along. It's time to start conducting SCIENCE - the first thing I'm interested in learning about is whether I was right about the hit rate of the death spores.  The fleet will have a couple of extra years to figure this out before these drones arrive, hopefully to take possession of a much-weakened system. This 'field test' of our WMDs will inform how we proceed elsewhere widening the attack in future turns. Analysis I'm looking forward to expanding offensive operations more, and long-term that's happening no matter what just due to the inertia of our dominant position. In the short-term though, Matrix 147 still looms large.       More core systems than usual didn't even need adjusting this year, a noticeable reduction in planet-slider-spam. I could get used to that.          A couple years will be needed to replace the Trax Expeditionary Force (or whatever).       Shifting from research into shipbuilding, and heading to comet-threatened Matrix 132 is kind of - but not really - on the way to Matrix 128. At the moment, reaching 80M population is my quick-n-dirty cutoff for changing from tech to ship production for primary investment at a system. I'm going to revisit that line soon, once the next couple of advances are finalized.  Terraforming completed - another one off the list.   Terraforming finished here as well. In terms of annual planet economics, there might as well not be a comet; the drones go about their daily activities without regard for it.
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Jan 14, 2019 06:41
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Match the Master: 2416, Part II                    Still early in their growth, but we're getting consistent and improving ship production out of this ultra-rich pair now.       Terraforming wrapped up here, and Matrix 166 should be a key source of drone troops when we start going after the Meklar more aggressively. Their systems are just off the bottom of this screen.     Four million drones - and they are about to complete the first missile base. That's just bizarre.  First bits of waste coming. Still being left alone; that Psilon transport colony is headed for Bootis. They could well end up being among the last to be murdered/assimilated.  2416 We've got a couple eventful 'End-Turn' compilations coming up. Both of the tech prototypes were at better than even odds of coming in, so I was hopeful there. One thing I didn't properly consider with the Guavinator which will require me to make more of them; I can't just take out the missile base first in combat such as at Trax, because then the combat round ends. I don't know if I can do the bombard mechanic with just biologicals; I'll need to investigate that later. We eliminated 35 million with the spores, and a hair more along with a few factories from the overkill standard bombing. The Death Spores success rate was considerably less than expected as well; 35 million out of 76 drops, or just under 50-50. Habitability dropped much faster though, down from 110M to 45M. This leads me to conclude that the battle computer is probably a waste of money and it's a coin-flip proposition whether it hits or not. Another note for the mental MOO file. In any case, it was our first destroyer lost in action against the enemy, and there'll certainly be more. At Pollus, we stole the designs for Controlled Barren - who cares - and also got the better of the humans in the ground combat there. They have three systems left, and those not for long. Meanwhile the Psilon attack at Matrix 150 ended very much in our favor. I did learn that their Star Wings, with Heavy Lasers and Fusion Bombs, most notably the latter, are worth considering a threat. Fortunately the bases were just able to destroy them in time before they could launch, and they never so much as shot anything at us. Both new techs also came in; Fusion Beams and Industrial Tech 5. The Fusion vs. Mass Driver thing is interesting in this particular circumstance, so I'll get into the specifics of that comparison next year. Factories get a bit cheaper, we'll have a little more room on the ships, so that's good - and I also need to re-evaluate the imperial production vs. research balance now. So definitely some choices to make. Industrial Tech 4 and Merculite Missiles are next. The second was chosen because it's the only one that has a chance of being even marginally useful from the weapon choices, as it will immediate upgrade our missile base capabilities.
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Jan 15, 2019 06:26
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Thotimx posted:One thing I didn't properly consider with the Guavinator which will require me to make more of them; I can't just take out the missile base first in combat such as at Trax, because then the combat round ends. I don't know if I can do the bombard mechanic with just biologicals; I'll need to investigate that later. Yeah I'm glad you figured that out. You have much finer control of a planet's population from the main battle screen. The bombard screen has a tendency to massively overkill colonies when bio weapons are involved. I honestly don't know much about the fine details of bio attacks, so please keep experimenting!
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Jan 15, 2019 06:46
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I enjoy that even in its end stages, this LP is still experimenting and learning mechanics.
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Jan 15, 2019 07:44
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PurpleXVI posted:I enjoy that even in its end stages, this LP is still experimenting and learning mechanics. That's the design of a good game. A good game doesn't have to be complex to give you multiple approaches to reach your goal, and learn about various quirks along the way.
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Jan 15, 2019 10:06
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PurpleXVI posted:I enjoy that even in its end stages, this LP is still experimenting and learning mechanics. Thanks - I'm trying to find ways to do more than 'yep, changed sliders on several dozen more planets again and hit Next Turn' where I can. GuavaMoment posted:You have much finer control of a planet's population from the main battle screen. The bombard screen has a tendency to massively overkill colonies when bio weapons are involved. I honestly don't know much about the fine details of bio attacks, so please keep experimenting! Interestingly, the next experiment - details coming up at the end of the next game year - found the opposite to be true. I.e., bombarding was less effective than the battle screen - but as I mention in the writeup which will be seen in a couple days, it's just one event. Sample size and all that. Repeated !SCIENCE! is required to form a firmer conclusion.
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Jan 18, 2019 10:33
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Match the Master: 2417, Part I Three-part year again as there's lots of stuff to cover. Hotspots  I miscalculated here, not realizing that there were already some ships en route to Pollus. The first handful of destroyers will get there a year before we can. They will probably bombard some, but I doubt they have enough to do all that much damage. Meanwhile we will be busy terraforming the system to Borg standards.   For now we'll split the fleet between Trax and Pollus, until the humans have learned they are off-limits.  I'm also moving most of what's left away ... temporarily. Only a few destroyers will arrive at Trax next year, and I don't want to do too much damage when we bombard the planet.  The rest of our Guavinators are also ready to move into position here.  It looks like we'll have three bases to repel the aged Meklar ships.   Almost three dozen destroyers will also be available.  The shifting of newly-arrived ships to Matrix 132, in order to combat the comet threat, continues. Our transports are just four years away from Zhardan, and the Guavinators are not yet in position here. Fusion Beam vs. Mass Driver The new fusion beam gives us a choice of what weapon system to use for our next design, which I expect to be the workhouse of the Guardian attack. I don't think we have time to do another round of research and then pump out a lot of whatever results from it.  At first glance, the only real difference appears to be that the Fusion Beam does more damage and the Mass Driver halves shields. Space required is nearly identical, and the fusion beam costs more but neither costs very much. As tech advances further the fusion beam will be more space-efficient due to miniaturization effects, but that doesn't matter for now. And it actually turns out that you could more or less flip a coin here, because: ** All that really matters is the center of the damage range, since we'll now have even attack to the Guardian's defense; Mark V Battle Computer going up against a Beam Defense of 5. ** The Mass Driver does 6.5 average damage, minus the halved shield value of 3.5, for 3 per shot. ** The Fusion Beam does 10 average damage, with higher max and lower minimums that aren't particularly important as mentioned, minus 7 damage from the shields ... also 3 per shot. So really, the slightly cheaper cost from the Mass Driver is IMO the most important difference at current tech levels. We'll stick with that. We also have a full slate of ships, and I think it's finally time to get rid of ....  The Recons finally go away for good. This may result in additional AI activity/attacks on our frontier systems, but we should have enough destroyers in place to handle most of that and it's definitely worth the risk at this point to get a better combat ship out there. Also, notice the reduced prices; Lancers, which end at 241 built, are down to 97 BC for example - a reduction of about 12% across the board here.  The Horseman class? Whatever. Unfortunately we were just a hair shy of being able to mount a third weapon with my preferred configuration. The best choices at that point seemed to be either limit the defensive gear - which eliminates the ability to absorb that third scatter-pack warhead, add a Battle Scanner for increased accuracy, or add the Inertial Stabilizer. This result is a hybrid of those ideas. Taking off the shield will make these more fragile, but the +2 defense does compensate somewhat. It will still take 2.5 warheads to destroy one of these - not as good as the 3 with the Lancer and it only takes two hits to blow one of these up, but 20% of them should miss. Effectively that means we lose a sixth of the defensive capabilities, while increasing the offensive punch by half with a third Mass Driver. And note the space - not a cubic inch goes to waste here. We're also faster in combat than previous iterations which should allow us to start attacking a turn or so sooner. At any rate, this is the destroyer that needs to do the heavy lifting against the Guardian.  We'll see a lot of shifting over to this now.   Since we'll be needing more of these at each front than initially anticipated, I'll have a couple of systems increase the supply a bit.    Here's our first example of a policy shift this year. I've been switching over most systems - i.e. those that aren't rich/poor/artifact/etc. - to shipbuilding once they hit 80M drones, and leaving the smaller ones on research. I'm going to drop that to 70M and see how that shakes out - I might drop it even further. Once we attain military control of all but a pocket or two of resistance elsewhere, I want to be able to send the great majority of the fleet to smash the Guardian. I don't want to have to wait at that point, and research is going to be considerably less valuable for us going forward. This year is basically the start of the endgame as far as I'm concerned, and mass-production of enough ships to get the job done is now more important than any other single consideration.  Our bioweapon production facility for the other front.     Another new shipbuilding matrix.  And another.  
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Jan 18, 2019 11:07
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Thotimx posted:Fusion Beam vs. Mass Driver Your math is slightly off. You can average your expected raw damage to have a non-integer value (6.5), but you can't subtract the fractional part of a halved shield because MoO doesn't work that way. Each individual shot can only do damage in integer chunks. I don't know if MoO rounds up or rounds down with halved shields, but your average net damage is going to be either 2.5 or 3.5 per shot. As for the fusion beam, by finding the center value and doing the math based off of that, it assumes you can do the same for every value. However, that gives you results that if you roll a damange of 4, and subtract the guardian's shields of 7, you heal it for three. We can do a slight correction by accounting for all possible negative damage calculations that you gave (-3, -2, -1) summing them, dividing by the number of possible damage rolls and adding that to your average. That means that your average net damage is going to be 3 6/13, or 3.46. So, the reason to pick one over the other is going to depend on whether or not .5 shields round down or up. The reason why this is an issue is because you did your order of operations the wrong way. You need to subtract shields first, then average. Shields work on individual attacks, not on averages.
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Jan 18, 2019 18:56
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GeneralRevil posted:you can't subtract the fractional part of a halved shield because MoO doesn't work that way. Each individual shot can only do damage in integer chunks. I don't know if MoO rounds up or rounds down with halved shields, but your average net damage is going to be either 2.5 or 3.5 per shot. Are you certain of this? I've always assumed it does do fractional damage/shields etc. because the game does work like that in other aspects. For example, factories are built in fractional amounts, production works fractionally and the display for both is a rounded integer, etc. If damage doesn't work in that manner than I'd expect shield strength to be rounded up and 2.5 to be the correct number, in which case fusion beams would actually be the best choice. GeneralRevil posted:if you roll a damange of 4, and subtract the guardian's shields of 7, you heal it for three. This I am certain is not the case. You never 'heal' a ship in this manner; if the damage calculation yields a negative number, you simply don't do any damage. I.e. in this example, doing 4 damage is no different than doing 7, neither would have any impact on the target. Or put another way, shields can't absorb non-existent damage. They only absorb as much as they need to, up to their rated protection value.
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Jan 18, 2019 22:58
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Thotimx posted:Are you certain of this? I've always assumed it does do fractional damage/shields etc. because the game does work like that in other aspects. For example, factories are built in fractional amounts, production works fractionally and the display for both is a rounded integer, etc. If damage doesn't work in that manner than I'd expect shield strength to be rounded up and 2.5 to be the correct number, in which case fusion beams would actually be the best choice. To be fair, I'm not certain. I assumed the fractional factory production was a probability of an extra one being created, but I'm not positive. Thotimx posted:This I am certain is not the case. You never 'heal' a ship in this manner; if the damage calculation yields a negative number, you simply don't do any damage. I.e. in this example, doing 4 damage is no different than doing 7, neither would have any impact on the target. Or put another way, shields can't absorb non-existent damage. They only absorb as much as they need to, up to their rated protection value. I was stating the contrary point. This would have to be the case for your numbers on the fusion beam to be correct, but since it's obviously not correct, your numbers on the fusion beam are also not correct. Hope that makes sense.
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Jan 19, 2019 01:38
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Gotcha - I think I understand what you were saying now. Given that, it does look like I picked a slightly worse weapon and the fusion beam would have been better. Ah well.
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Jan 19, 2019 03:12
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Thotimx posted:Are you certain of this? I've always assumed it does do fractional damage/shields etc. because the game does work like that in other aspects. Last I heard nobody had cracked the damage code for absolute certainty (for one thing, the to-hit roll is percentile but attack/defense values are integer, so there's already some damage modification going into decimal points), but I can verify 2 things: 1) The game stores ship HP value as remaining HP until death (rather than tracking damage), and this is truncated. So whatever fractional damage might be applied, is rounded once it's dealt (so 2 1.9 damage hits, if rounded up, take 4 HP away from a ship, not 3.8 or 3). 2) Shields round down to nearest whole against shield-piercing weapons, which is why NPGs can still do 1 damage against mark 9 shields, and none against 10. This is applied before any damage is rolled, so the game calculates that example's 2-5 range minus 4 the exact same way a fusion beam would be 4-16 minus 9. I can't find the thread now, but that was from a MOO forum discussion that started with a guy wondering why his Mrrshan ion cannon fighters would never do 3 damage, even against unshielded colony ships, and it turns out his combat bonus being >+5 over its defense was applying enough of a bonus to raise the minimum damage (which made people assume there was some rounding up being done). I don't think they ever solved that mystery, but did figure out a few others.  For what it's worth I think going for the cheaper design when the expected damage difference is so small is the right move: you'll be making a ton of those bad boys, and a few BCs saved really adds up (I was blown away by that in the Bulrathi game, just how many more bombers I could get by skimping on things). Speaking of, as far as bombing goes, the OSG says that Bombardment is 10 turns of firing all guns at the planet, and factories and population have a set HP value. The problem the Meklar are having is that beam damage reduction and planetary shields still apply, and while there is minimum "pity damage," it's not as effective as actually using bombs. The "10 turns" thing is why missile boats don't seem to bombard very well either, since they run out of ammo so early.
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Jan 19, 2019 09:19
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Match the Master: 2417, Part II  A good example here of a mid-sized planet that is still on research, but could switch over if needed.    The poor systems in particular benefit from the improved industrial tech, cutting down on the required expenditures for keeping factories on par with population growth.     Terraforming done at the site of the famed(infamous?) Industrial Accident.    I think it's time for a couple more Rangers on the Meklar Front.       Terraforming finished here as well.      Time to ramp up our shipbuilding on the Meklar side of things it seems. I could build Guavinators out here, but I think I'd rather finish off the Humans and then re-route those ships. At least right now, I don't think we're in THAT much of a hurry.  These systems will be significantly impacted by the impending battle at Matrix 147 - worst-case scenario they might have to get some bases up if the Meklar were to win there and then try to press further.  
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Jan 19, 2019 18:48
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Wayne posted:I can't find the thread now, but that was from a MOO forum discussion that started with a guy wondering why his Mrrshan ion cannon fighters would never do 3 damage, even against unshielded colony ships, and it turns out his combat bonus being >+5 over its defense was applying enough of a bonus to raise the minimum damage (which made people assume there was some rounding up being done). I don't think they ever solved that mystery, but did figure out a few others. Stupid question alert: Did nobody in this thread you mention think it was a good idea to read the combat mechanics section of the manual? Now, maybe I'm missing something, and maybe it's wrong, but it seems to me that exact kind of scenario was brought up, and it's got nothing to do with rounding: MOO Manual posted:Note that attacks with negative hit probabilities always hit, and the roll is used solely to determine damage. For example, an attacker with a fusion beam (10–25 points of damage) has a base to hit of –50 and rolls a 50. The fusion beam scores 20 points of damage. Never mind the part where a Fusion Beam doesn't actually do 10-25 damage, or that you'd never have an Attack - Defense of 10(required for this kind of hit probability) at Fusion Beam-level tech. Or in virtually any other scenario that isn't completely OP. The damage calculation here doesn't make sense if the low end of the scale isn't 'clipped' - you'd expect it to be halfway up the damage scale on a 50-roll, or 17-18 damage instead of 20. What's being described here implicitly is that it's 10 damage at a roll of -50, 25 at +100; in other words the effective damage range becomes 15-25 due to the excessively-high accuracy. The bottom five points don't exist for practical purposes. Again the manual could be wrong, but … this would definitely be my default answer in lieu of other evidence in such situations. In terms of the ships being cheaper, they are -- but only 3 BC per weapon, or 9 BC per ship. I'm only going to have 8% more ships (118 BC vs. 127 if I put on Fusion Beams) … I'm not horribly broken up by it but I still think I would have made the wrong choice. The shields rounding down thing though makes things much better for my Mass Drivers and I can still be happy. I did the right thing, even if my math & logic were on the fuzzy side  . Re: bombardment; the '10 rounds' thing makes sense, with the exception of biologicals which, at least initially, don't appear to be subject to that rule but a different one. Or else something weird happened with my first attack - that'll be up tomorrow. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jan 19, 2019 |
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Jan 19, 2019 18:56
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Match the Master: 2417, Part III    Things return to normal here as the Psilon colony ship, the only one that survived the recent battle, limps away to Escalon.  Another terraforming success. Matrix 151 now works on becoming a research world, as research is now being gradually sidelined to a secondary concern. But still, every planet has its purpose. Paying taxes to reduce the burden elsewhere, if nothing else - and this is a reasonably-sized world at least for that.   Tote-board's heavy with planets finished terraforming.  Another converted shipbuilding system - and in this case it means an additional destroyer for 147.     Bit of an anecdote here; these last two systems were growing side-by-side, but a few years ago Matrix 158 pulled slightly ahead. The RNG giveth ... when it feels like it.            I'm interested to see how many of these kinds of systems get more attention with the Recon pickets gone.    I was surprised by how much research we still have going even after increasing the number of shipbuilding worlds. I decided to pull a bit of funding out of all non-Computing fields and put it in Planetology. That'll get Atmos Terra in earlier, but it's not just for that reason. Increasing the production from population will help everywhere also. I think this is about how I want to approach the rest of the struggle, though I may wish to siphon even more resources off to build the fleet. For now, a third of the empire is devoted to that - 25 of 73 matrices, to be precise. 2417 A lot of action here: ** The Meklar Tormenters have 2-rack nuclear missiles, with Heavy Lasers on their colony ships. Given the relative weakness of those - only the missiles would have been able to damage our bases, at a single point of damage each - I simply retreated our ships and while they also left with minimal casualties, it's still a success. Lost a few factories to human bombing at Pollus, but it could have been worse. And then there's Trax. Clearly the humans are letting waste pile up there, but leaving that alone for now we killed 30M and destroyed 24 factories. That's with 20 mass drivers and 24 death spore launchers in orbit. To properly divide up the casualties there, let's dive back into the MOO documentation. Master of Orion Manual posted:Colonists and industry are also susceptible to bombardment from space. Attacks against missile bases kill one million colonists for each 400 points of damage scored against missile bases, and one factory is destroyed for each 100 points. Once all missile bases have been destroyed, and fire can be concentrated on the population centers, the kill rate is doubled for both colonists and factories. Planetary defense shields protect the colonies whether or not missile bases are still present. So based on this, factories should get killed by conventional weapons (i.e. mass drivers) at 4x the rate population is. Extrapolating then, I assume that the mass drivers eliminated all the factories - since death spores shouldn't damage those at all - and 6M population. That would mean that the death spore launchers killed 24M population ... a flat 1M per launcher. IF that ends up being a predictable amount, I'll be able to control this quite well. Doing all five drops from the space combat screen with each of them should result in 2-3 times that many, so it seems based on this one try at it that you don't get as much impact from the orbital bombardment phase. But we'll have to see how consistently that holds up.
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Jan 20, 2019 22:16
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Match the Master: 2418, Part I Expenses here are going back up again. Hotspots  Our ships will arrive here to start chasing off the humans by year's end. They are running out of places to go, and it's time to start boosting the infrastrucure on Pollus.  Another cruiser is incoming, but we should easily swat that. I'm confident we can hold this and starting going on the attack against the Meklar.  This is more bad news for the cybernetics, but it's great news for us. All those incoming Psilon fleets are actually headed to Zoctan. I'd steal it back right now - except that, annoyingly, it is a single parsec out of our range. We'll wait ... but not too long.  The fleet's work is done here; time to reposition.  I also want to see what kind of defenses the Meklar have.  This is to make sure we chase off that incoming cruiser the Humans have.  Meanwhile, Maalor is our next target. They have no ships either there on en route, so we won't need escorts.   Send in the 'sanitation teams'.  That's a stupid amount of ships moving about for such a relatively simple situation.  So let's do more of it over here! The only thing en route to Zhardan is a Psilon Colony Ship, three years out.  The Guavinators are only going to be two years ahead of the transports ... but they have less work to do now that the eggheads sent 27M transports from here off on a long trip to Gienah. That'll ensure they have plenty of time to get the job done.  And there's still that comet situation at Matrix 132 hanging in the air. No updates yet, even though the advance elements have had a year to deal with it. I'm always a little nervous in these situations until things are fully resolved. There's just a crazy amount of traffic in the area surrounding Matrix 128 fleet-wise, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. For the first time in probably 15 years though, we have no credible threats incoming. The Borg Empire is on the front foot now.  I can't imagine needing any more ships on the Human Front, while the Bulrathi look a bigger and bigger threat with each passing year. So, I divert our homeworld's production there now. Also seems as good a place as any to boost our supply of Rangers.  Switching over to shipbuilding now.    Changing to the primary front here as well.  More Rangers here as well, and there'll be others. In pondering how many to build, I've decided I want to concentrate and take out the Bulrathi sooner rather than later. Reason being - our bomber-cruisers are not going to get any better. Their ship/missile tech might. I'd like to 'cleanse' the galaxy of the Bears now as it's not going to get easier and might in fact get harder.   I can adjust as we get closer, but I think three ships building these should be enough by the time we are ready otherwhise.   I'll still leave a few producers up on the human side of things. That's partly just-in-case, but mostly because it just takes quite a long time to get anywhere else.     Extra 'drone production centers' or whatever are wrapping up.    The RELOC directions in this area are shifting again, back to Matrix 137.    The run of unlikely-to-ever-fire missile bases here is now finished.   
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Jan 23, 2019 00:18
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Match the Master: 2418, Part II        Latest matrix to complete terraforming.  Here as well. Matrix 140 will be a quality ship facility within the next decade.                 This is a long diversion down to our main staging system at Matrix 128 - a 7-year journey. It's at least a straight-shot though and I figure it's better than having the ships sit around useless over here for a few more years, then make that trip.          Painfully slow is the progress here.   Rigel joins the ranks of fleet-producers.  Yarrow still has a ways to go, but terraforming is underway. 2418 Lots of stuff happened this year. In summary: ** The attack at Matrix 147 is swatted easily. ** We still don't know what that Human Dreadnought (cruiser size) can do because it and all their other ships keep running away. ** Bad fortune in the attack on Trax, but our troops still carry the day through force of numbers. There is now no more tech to steal from the homosapiens with Industrial Tech 9 and the Fusion Bomb plans taken there. ** 54M out of 61M on Zhardan perish in our latest Guavinator bombardment. Our inbound transports will crush the rest, and many will die of exposure. Interestingly, this is 1.5M per Death Spore launcher in orbit - 9 Guavinators x 4 ea. - so it's not a flat 1M per. To clearly define the range of possible outcomes, additional testing is needed. Regardless, clearly their work is done here. ** Each Ranger can handle 2 human missile bases per combat turn, as shown at Maalor. ** The comet at Matrix 132 is kaput. As expected, our fleet handled it easily ... 2-3 years of work.
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Jan 23, 2019 21:49
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Been reading along during my lunch breaks. You pulled off some really impressive wins. What's the best way to get the game now? Steam has it for about the same $5 as GoG, are they different versions? I've also heard rumors of some sort of nuMoo which is Moo2 with visual upgrades?
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Jan 24, 2019 01:12
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Easiest way is to try it out on archive.org https://archive.org/details/msdos_Master_of_Orion_1993 I don't know if the GoG and Steam releases are the same, but nuMoO is a remake of MoO2 pretending to be a remake of MoO1. You read nweis's abandoned LP of it here. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3792079
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Jan 24, 2019 03:09
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Didn't know it was on Steam. I'd say you can't go wrong with the GOG version, it's what I use. Or use General Revil's link, whatever suits your fancy. GOG version comes with the DOSBox stuff set up for it work - though I recommend increasing cycles to the 15-20k range in the config file, or else it's going to be real slow.
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Jan 24, 2019 06:23
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Match the Master: 2419, Part I The Psilons have recently discovered/acquired the Mass Driver, and possibly may have it already on their latest ship design, a destroyer. So that somewhat upgrades them on the threat-o-meter. Human Front  The bulk of the human fleet is headed here; four colony ships, three cruisers, 13 destroyers. We're not ready to build any planetary defenses, so it'll be up to the fleet to continue chasing them away.  We have over three dozen destroyers in position already, but it certainly looks like the proper deployment for whatever additional ships continue to trickle in here.  The rest will mostly remain here, as a large transpot convoy, 50M strong, is en route from Sol.  The flip side of these counterattacks is that the remaining pair of human-owned systems are literally defenseless aside from the bases on Sol. Since their missile tech can't crack our bombers' shields, I can move in there piecemeal and eliminate those at my leisure.   30M seems to me to be an appropriate-sized amount for most of these operations right now. Enough to make sure we can capture a planet with a decimated population, probably around 10M or so left I would imagine, while not so many that we lose a lot of them to the elements. I could have sent them from closer by, but I'd rather empty the population from the big ultra-poor systems and use the better economic worlds for continued fleet assets. Psilon Front  The long-awaited Zhardan invasion will happen in two years, but there's a lot more about to go down here. It's time to widen and itensify the conflict, accelerating through this cluster of enemy territory regardless of who they belong to.  For now we have enough destroyers to handle things I think, but will stick to one system at a time due to needing more bombers. I should be able to split that up some in the years to come as we get more of them, but I'm not certain how soon that will be. Shipyard priorities will need to be re-evaluated on an annual basis here. For now, we'll hit the Psilon capital, then move from there.  To handle the colony ship incoming to Zhardan, and any foolishness which may happen afterwards. Meklar Front  A bit of ship repositioning but other than that it's pretty quiet here and likely to remain so for a while. At the moment I think it's better to keep building destroyers than to produce more Guavinators out here. Time and logistics may change that opinion, however ...    Time to stop building Guavinators again; I think I've got enough of them now and a handle on how I want to proceed. Of course, I thought that before ...   Also switching away from the design that has no purpose other than to commit so-called 'war crimes'.          A good growth year, so more factory funding.  Fire up those DMUs - Drone Multiplication Units.     With the Comet Crisis over, it's back to the big staging area at Matrix 128 for these ships.     
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Jan 24, 2019 20:56
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| # ? May 12, 2024 15:56 |
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It's only a war crime if anyone's left alive to take you to war court.
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Jan 24, 2019 21:41
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