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Stephen9001 posted:America sure does like their boondoggles. Incidentally, how well does the Bradley perform in the real world? As I recall, the Bradley kind of sucks, for reasons the clip went over. Something that didn't really come up in the "scout vs frigate" thing that can't really be brought up with the way nweismuller is doing things are the differences between the two that lack a "fluff" component and are very "game-y" things: one is that you can set a Scout to auto-explore, but you can't do that for a frigate. This is much more useful if you have two or three of the things running around mapping systems and you don't have to manually fiddle with them. The other is that the Scout counts as a non-combat ship, while Frigates are combat ships. This matters because if a fleet made entirely of non-combat ships is engaged, it is automatically destroyed. You don't even get time to try and run. Also if anybody is inspired to get this game (it's a good one!), keep in mind that for some reason the build queue defaults to off. So make sure to turn that on. As for voting, Biospheres and Asteroid Labs, since we're getting both Biospheres and Hydroponics, and we can always replace the lab with a mine later when +2 research isn't as big a deal. I'll hold off on voting for a ship because I suspect it's all going to be obsolete before we run into another race anyway. Although it is worth noting that in MOO2, you just needed "enough guns" to be able to attack a planet from orbit. You specifically require bombs to do that now. Not that we have anybody to bomb (yet).
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Sep 29, 2016 17:35
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While I appreciate that the AI is capable of figuring out that you have a lot of nice stuff but no military to speak of, whereas they do have quite a nice military and could roll over you easily, and it might be worth it to stab you in the back over your stuff, I will point out that it's kind of funny that the Bulrathi launched this war without any real means to actually take stuff. They didn't bring bombers or troop transports, so there's no way for them to either clear out or take over our planets for their use. In short, they're just being dicks and can't gain anything from it. v v
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Oct 15, 2016 11:28
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One of the interesting things about bioweapons is that this game buffed the gently caress out of them compared to Master of Orion 2. The diplomatic penalties are there in both games, but they actually get poo poo done here. See, in Master of Orion 2, to use a bioweapon, you had to get close to the planet and attack it during space combat, like with a regular bomb. The problem is that bioweapons had a small chance (10% for Death Spores, 20% for Bio Terminators) to kill one unit of population each, and this was halved by Microbotics and quartered by Universal Antidote way further down the line. And you couldn't use them in the post battle "your ships are over their planet, what do you want to do" bits. So you had to get them to the planet in combat, drop a bunch and hope they worked despite lovely odds, and to top it all off if you killed everyone on the planet this way, the colony was destroyed and you'd have to rebuild it all from scratch anyway. And just to add insult to injury, Death Spores and Bio Terminators are both mutually exclusive with some other fantastic technologies. They still carry a horrific diplomatic penalty in this game, but the changes to make them worth using are quite simple: in the post battle "you own their orbit, what do you do" bits, you can drop conventional bombs and/or bioweapons, depending on what you're packing. Bombs have a chance of blowing up infrastructure, killing population units, or killing ground troops. Bioweapons only kill population units or ground troops. The other big change is that if you kill everybody, the colony still exists and is owned by the original empire, it just has a population of zero, so you've got to ship in some fresh people to actually make use of anything. I don't expect to see bioweapons get shown off here for the same reason I don't expect to see any planets getting bombed clean, but at least now bioweapons are actually worth considering instead of a terrible boondoggle for puppykickers.
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Oct 31, 2016 05:56
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A brief, but dry and to the point, note on the defensive structures available to us at this time: Missile batteries are cheap. As the name implies, they shoot missiles, huzzah. What you aren't told (but figure out as soon as you see them) is that they carry point defense weapons, hooray! They aren't a lot of help, but they make sure random pirates and lone frigates don't ruin your day, and it's something to provide a brief distraction to enemies so they're not shooting at your good stuff. Star bases are required for building big ships. They're better armed and armored, and while they aren't going to stop someone who wants to wreck your poo poo, it makes sure they have to actually exert a little effort. As a note, these things start about in the middle of the battlescape, with your ships on one side and the enemies on the other. Military outposts go on incoming star lanes. That thing I said about star bases? Yeah, that applies here too: won't stop someone who's trying, but it makes them have to try. You can only build these if you've colonized a planet in that system, so it's a good incentive to take some otherwise lovely planets that are sitting on chokepoints. The thing I'm curious to have not seen are listening posts. They have zero upkeep costs, you can build them anywhere, and a Space Factory can get one built in five turns. All they do is watch for incoming ships, and if an enemy wants to go right past it, nothing will stop them. The only reason to not build them is that all your factory ships are occupied, and you're unable or unwilling to make more. Speaking of fortifications, the thing about torpedoes being able to gently caress up fixed installations like nobody's business but being useless against ships? Very true. I saw a guy using a bunch of torpedo frigates to ruin fixed defenses, and then he ran into a planet where the defender was a single frigate with beam weapons. That one frigate took out fifteen torpedo frigates, because the torpedoes were way too slow to actually hit the thing.
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Nov 23, 2016 16:14
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Friend Commuter posted:Are they like the missile batteries except with cannon instead? I didn't want to jump the gun, if you'll pardon the expression, but yes. Orbital cannon batteries cost more and have more firepower. And that's it. Crazycryodude posted:I've found torpedoes to be a decent supplement to a more proper battle fleet, not something you want to focus exclusively on. Like my dad said, zippy little torpedo boats that can throw big fuckoff bombs at the enemy are good, because even if they don't score a single hit they still disrupt formations and keep the enemy on their toes. Basically, yes. Torpedoes are unique in that they're the only gun type that will get you killed if you focus on them exclusively. You can do ships with nothing but cannons, and ships with nothing but missiles, but if you do nothing but torpedoes, you're just waiting for that one guy you can't hit. There's ways around this, of course, but they aren't perfect. The point is "bring some non-torpedo weapons." As for the vote: War Economy so if the poo poo hits the fan we're ready, War Plan Red for the same reason, spies on standby to disrupt and Raven because we don't want to start this war, but we are going to finish it.
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Nov 24, 2016 11:15
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So here's a thought. The ability to say "go to war, stay on war footing" is obvious, as is "play nice, get off war footing." The justification for "play nice, stay on war footing" can also be explained: just because we don't want to go to war doesn't mean we aren't ready to kick all of their asses. How would one justify "go to war, get off war footing"?
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Dec 6, 2016 19:04
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I don't have much, but what I do have is to specialize individual ships in either Guns or Missiles. There's techs that make Guns better but do jack for Missiles and vice-versa, so pick one and go all in. Which is not to say that your fleet should consist entirely of one or the other, but a ship should specialize. I typically have ships that pack nothing but guns, ones that pack nothing but missiles, and one or two that's just bombs. Early wars of conquest are slow and expensive due to how troop ships work though, so bomb-bearers are mostly for knocking out pirates. Use point defense weapons to fill in any leftover space. Also never have a ship armed with just torpedoes, give it at least one gun or missile.
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Jan 4, 2017 07:36
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I can't remember if the game enforces peace treaties via refusing to let you do war stuff to people you've got a peace treaty with. In this situation, I'd go "sure, I'll take these techs and money to stop kicking your teeth in," and immediately resume bombing the poo poo out of them next turn. But I operate on a "I gotta kill everybody sooner or later, may as well be sooner and you can't hold a grudge if you're dead" mindset. I say espionage tech because yeah, the ground weapons are useful, but that's only once the shooting starts. If we're less crap at spying, then we can help make sure we have an easier time invading or never need to invade at all. Or hell, we could use it to swipe other people's techs right out from under their noses. For more general science, Planetary Engineering because engineering planets is rad. Bulra first because the other crapsack planets are crapsacks that are basically irrelevant. Cut off the head and all that, and once you have, you can roll up the rest of the planets (that are now even worse off since you took the homeworld) at your leisure. Even with the blockade, a developed planet is a developed planet, and they might be able to get something troublesome into orbit. Not troublesome enough that you can't deal with it, but troublesome enough that you'll have to deal with it. Yea on transports because even if you don't use them now, you can use them later, and "running out of transports" can be where the wars grind to a halt. Sure, they'll take up some command points until you use them, but I'm pretty sure you've got more than enough of those lying around. For the last one, I'm going to say counterpiracy duties but build some actual scout ships. For those who don't know, scout ships are super cheap and unarmed, which are their major pros, with another that may or may not be relevant being that you can turn on automatic exploration so they'll run around handling poo poo on their own without you having to order them around. The downside, of course, is that if they're engaged, they automatically die just like transports.
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Jan 16, 2017 12:04
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I'd say "ally with the cats to conquer the bugs then backstab the cats" but that's not how you roll. So I say C, do business with both equally. But the question is how the populace is going to handle foreign relations if anybody tries some poo poo. Are they going to remember the Bulrathi, and call for the complete destruction of any nation that hurts us? Because I can see a "sure we'll be great pals but we do not give second chances anymore" policy coming about after what happened with the Bulrathi.
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Jan 17, 2017 07:42
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My thoughts on the species we've encountered so far. Bulrathi: We're already working on destroying their empire, so I guess what I think isn't relevant. They already signed their own death warrants. Mrrshan: Yeah, they puffed up and ran off our ship, but hey: that was their turf and we were intruding. They were within their rights, and no shots were fired (I assume). No harm, no foul. We can still be friends! Klackon: Kinda weird, but they don't seem hostile. We're probably never really going to be best of friends, but I figure we can at least be on the level of "that weird neighbor you don't know well but occasionally make small talk with." Psilon: NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERDS. But being pals with nerds can bring great benefits. Let's be friends! Meklar: Robots! I don't know if they have the right drivers for frienship but I'm sure we can help them learn! We should do something to make them like us! Darlok: Bomb every single planet these shifty little fuckers infest into radioactive ash, then build giant engines on the glowing remains to shove it into the loving sun. We haven't met the Alkari yet, but let's make some birbfriends when we do. 
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Jan 18, 2017 02:45
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It's only a matter of time before he has to change his name to "Nazgiblets." 
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Jan 24, 2017 11:08
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For our technological research, I'm going to vote Engineering. Sure, building planets is probably not worth it at this point, since there should be plenty of decent ones already there to settle on, but who cares, building planets is awesome. For foreign relations, I am quite in favor of being friends! Friends are great! The only issue is that the Mrrshan and Klackons are not friends and I don't think we can get them to be friends, so if we have to pick sides, I'm going to have to come down on the side of the Mrrshan, because they're already closer to being friends. I don't know about an alliance, though, since I think that will obligate us to declare war on the Klackons. But if we're going to do that anyway, may as well go all in, right?The exception to this, of course, are the Darloks. gently caress those shifty assholes. They blew up one of our ships! No "hey turn around," not even a warning shot, they just swarmed it with five times its number and blew it up. How long before those paranoid bastards think we know something we don't and decide to make sure all of us stay quiet forever? I don't trust 'em. Hit them back first, I say! They've probably already got spies working in our turf.  As for the military, slow expansion. We have other priorities, but we do need to keep pace with everybody else. We already saw what happens when one of the other empires sees someone they think they can kick around. Loyalty and friendship go out the window in light of the fact that they can kick our rear end and take our stuff. Yeah, it sucks to be all smiles while keeping a hand on our gun, but that's galactic diplomacy for you. For the Paradise warehouse, I will vote no, since I am assuming it's not a question of "do it ever" but "do it now." I think we should get one eventually, but unless we're going to start throwing money at construction projects it's not worth it. For Sunrise, I say astro university, because our economy is strong enough that we can afford to wait on the money making structures, but more science = more better. Both New Babylon and Niflheim should get Robo Miners, because once they get their ability to build things ramped up, everything else will follow more quickly and easily. For the new ship, build one and have it scout. We have sufficient military dominance that we don't need to worry about the errant mobile scrap heap with rockets and laser pointers crudely welded on, but knowing where more planets are so we can colonize them is nice. Or heck, we may find a place we want to take over for purely strategic reasoning. If nothing else, we might meet these "Alkari" the Psilons told us about and make new friends! 
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Jan 25, 2017 11:18
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For the Mrrshan, let's wait it out. I don't think they have the means or motive to start any poo poo with us, and we're not going to go poking at their borders, so I guess that's kind of a de facto non aggression pact. When they offer one, we should take it (or at least, when we can get one without trading away as much stuff), but I am always leery of forming alliances. You never know when two of your buddies will decide to throw down and then you have to pick sides and it's just a bad time all around. For the Darlok, raze those fuckers to the ground now before they have a chance to steal all of our poo poo. Because if you leave them unchecked they will steal all of our poo poo, while doing their own poo poo, and then they have twice as much poo poo and that adds up to a whole pile of bullshit. loving Darloks. MechaCrash fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 26, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 23:55
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devildragon777 posted:Likewise, peace, but prepare for the Darloks. If they start becoming aggressive we want to be able to shift to proper war footing quickly, but I don't think we should start attacking without reason on our part. (Why does everyone hate the Darloks anyway?) This is from a page or two back, but I'm going to answer this and Kool-Aid Man through the fourth wall to do so. The AI, as you may have noticed, is pretty cutthroat in this game. They are, for lack of a better term, aware of the fact that they are the AI in a game and there's only going to be one winner. Four races getting incalculably wealthy while their servant robots give them massages as they engage in full-immersion VR for whatever sort of third-generation decadence they can begin to imagine isn't seen by the game as a win state, it's a stalemate. One race scratching out an existence on a handful of burned out cinders because the rest of the galaxy is still on fire, however, is a victory, however Pyrrhic. So you can see which one they're going to prioritize. The reason I'm being all "let's be friends with everybody but kill the Darloks" are two-fold: the first is simply that the Darloks are basically The Spy Guys, and out of the box Humans (which we are) suck at stopping spies. If we let the Darloks do what they want, they can have the run of our research, steal our star charts, sabotage our stuff, all kinds of things. Their strength is hitting us at our weakness, so if we crush them now while losing a planet to their shenanigans is an irritant and not a crippling blow, we'll be much better off. The other reason is because I think it's funny to pick one race and go "man, gently caress those guys."
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Jan 26, 2017 15:08
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Veloxyll posted:Have you beenj paying attentio0n to the thread. that is pretty much what some people have been advocating. You slander me and mischaracterize my position, good sir! At no point did concern for the fate of the Darlok people ever enter into my consideration, I was pushing for their eradication from day one purely for the safety and security of the Republic and because seriously, gently caress those guys. I await your apology. Stephen9001 posted:By the way, just how good is the Orion system if we manage to colonise it? Orion is The Best System, hands down. Biggest size, best environment, best mineral richness, and other bonuses I'll not get into. There are reasons that Orion is such a prize, and why it's guarded the way it is.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:58
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Veloxyll posted:I'm SORRY that you show a total disregaurd for non-human life. Any bombardments will probably fall upon the newly liberated Bulrathi worlds too. But welp. SORRY, Senator MechaCrash here doesn't think your lives matter. Hey now, I'm cool with the races that aren't shapeshifting backstabbers. The Meklar seem pretty rad, we should be bros with them. Robros.  And if that means we're going to create a diplomatic rift with the Darlok that will eventually result in us finding ways to accelerate the life cycle of a star so we can turn their suns into black holes and shove their planets in, thus eradicating any trace that they ever existed for a galactic-scale salting of the earth then OH WELL that's the price of getting to sit at the cool kid's table.We can even invite the nerds from the other end of the galaxy to chill with us, they're kind of aloof but they're okay dudes. The cats aren't quite on the same page we are but at least we're all reading from the same book, you know? And the ants are weird but I don't think they're malevolent (unlike the Darlok, who you can't trust). Sucks about the Bulrathi, but hey: they dug their own grave.
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Jan 28, 2017 16:34
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nweismuller posted:Inganok is a major center of the Darlok civilisation, with no fewer than three Darlok-colonised worlds. At this point, I would like to retract my earlier statements in regards to reducing their worlds to cinders and shoving them into the local sun, and also the statements about turning their sun into a black hole, because those are all pretty nice! However, I stand behind my "gently caress those guys" statements. I wonder if there are any 4X style games with a casus belli system that accept "they have really nice stuff and we want it" as a reason.
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Jan 31, 2017 03:43
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Xenocides posted:Better tech. If you go up the tech tree evenly then I usually start considering it about the time I get battleship tech but you need a pretty large fleet to take it. If you get to the top of the tech tree a single doomstar works. If you can build Doom Stars, you don't really need Orion anymore. It's the usual bonus boss issue: you need to be strong enough that you can pull it off, but if you wait too long, the reward is pointless because you already have better stuff, or at least the scale of upgrade is far less significant.
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Jan 31, 2017 17:04
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Tiger Crazy posted:You should aim to unify all mammals under one banner and they go onto purge the xeno scum. Call it the Mammalian Ascendancy. The big issue with this is that it will shut out the Meklar and Klackon, while allowing the Darloks to live. Most of the factions I'm sticking with the Liir-lite strategy of "we'll be your pals until you gently caress with us, at which point we will smash you" (actual Liir strategy is "WE RIDE TOGETHER WE DIE TOGETHER ALL OR NOTHING YOU AND ME AGAINST THE oh wait you pissed us off, eat horrible bioweapons motherfucker"). The obvious exception being the Darloks, of course, who I advocate going full nuclear armageddon on, especially now that I've seen the map and we can team up with our robros to hit the shifty bastards from both sides. I already know that calling for the Darlok to be smote with the fury of ten thousand angry suns is pointless, but I'm doing it anyway because gently caress those guys. As for what we should call ourselves, I kind of like United Solar Republic, but "solar" could be any star. So a slight modifcation: United Republic of Sol.
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Feb 2, 2017 02:16
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nweismuller posted:I think I'm going to try and have an update up on Sunday for everybody. If people liked my map editing, I can try and do edited maps more frequently from here on out, even though it's some extra effort. Pretty borders can be fun to look at, I know. Having a map was nice, but the area of space
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Feb 2, 2017 05:18
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You can shift population around in nuMOO, but it's a way bigger pain in the rear end than it was in MOO2. I think you can pick which species makes a colony ship, too, but if not there's still ways around it.
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Feb 2, 2017 20:20
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For trade financing, I say borrow the money. Others have benefitted from our generous loan program, isn't it time someone float us a little cash? For Porov migration, do it. I can't really dress this up in ways that don't sound vaguely racist, but I think you do get a penalty if you try having more than one species on a planet. I think you can offset those with the right building (or you could in MOO2), but then you're paying upkeep on a building. It's just not worth it. For the less developed world, I would say agriculture first, industry second, research third, at least up to a point. When it'll take more than eight turns to get a new population unit (a number I pulled out of my rear end), swap to industry, agriculture, research. More people means more production, more production means faster development, faster development means the world stops being one of the turdy little backwater planets sooner, which in turn means it can contribute more to money and science. For the highly developed worlds, universities. You're making plenty of money right now, but more science can lead to more money, in addition to all the other fun things it gets you. For New Babylon and Niflheim, yes on security, because loving Darloks. For Udun, gently caress it. Holding it might be more than you're willing to invest at this point, so strip that place down to nothing and just leave some soldiers to make sure that if the Darloks want it back, they have to bleed for it. Or they can just bomb the poo poo out of it. Like you said, either way, it hurts the Darloks. For Bulra shipbuilding, wait for the elevator. I figure you can hold the line until such time as you get all this crap online, and then you can stomp on the Darloks. For space fleet deployment, hold off until repairs and refits are done. This is too close to an even fight. You can fend them off while you upgrade to make it a curbstomp. For design contests, I say no new designs. Just put more/better guns and armor on what we have and call it a day. For foreign policy, I will continue as I always have: Nazin delenda est, be bros with everyone else, even the Klackons. Although the time may come when irreconcilable differences force us into a war with them. I do like reading the updates, but I haven't said much on that front because I don't have much insightful to say beyond "you make the good words  " but here it is anyway.
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Jun 23, 2017 06:45
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The vote already passed, but I'm going to say nay on it anyway. If relations are going to break down with our bug bros, it's going to be because of differences that we simply cannot surmount to exist peacefully, not because their enemies paid us to.
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Jun 26, 2017 17:41
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I think, but am not sure, that missiles sort of follow an inverse bell curve in this game, where they start out really good, and then drop off as anti-missile stuff becomes more readily available, and then picks back up with all the sweet missile augments we get later. Right now we're at the "missiles kind of suck" stage. One thing about the defensive KKVs, though: that "shoots at missiles, but not ships" thing means that they don't work on fighters, either. How much this matters depends on if Darloks make use of fighters. Anyway, for the ship, our doctrine so far is mostly "hang back and shoot at long range," right? But the Darloks are using zippy ships that got all up in our face and negated a ton of that advantage. So I'm thinking "beat them at their own game" or "double down." Since giant battleships are not known for their agility, I am thinking we double down. To that end, here is what I am proposing for a flagship, the Cato-class superheavy battleship. Hull: Superheavy battleship, giving us 4445.8 tons to use, six weapons, six specials. Computer: Don't cut corners. Optronics. A savings of 20 is not worth it. Shields: Magneto-gravitics, because it'll take less space and also it's our friggin' flagship, we want it to not die. 1493 used by this, 2952.8 left. Special Systems: Battle Pods, getting back 906.1 tons (3858.9) because again, it's our flagship, this should show the Darloks what happens when we aren't loving around. Battle Scanner, using 202.5 tons (3,656.4 left), because we want to ensure we hit the bastards. Structural Analyser, using 1171.9 tons (2,484.5 left) because we want it to hurt when we hit them. Heavy Armor, because it improves survivability without taking up space. Weapons: Nine forward-mounted heavy autofiring Penetrator mass drivers (using 200 each for a total of 1,800; leaving 684.5). Yes, all of this is in the frontal arc, but the operating idea is that we'll be throwing so much lead (or whatever) downrange that their numbers should be thinned out by the time they get within range of us. In addition to this, three autofiring mass drivers in a 360 degree turret mount (using 180 each for a total of 540, leaving 144.5). It's not much, but friggin' Darloks, man. If they do manage to get in among us, I'd rather not be pecked to death by one frigate that's fast enough to stay behind us. If "extended frontal arcs" existed in this game that did a 270 degree cone in front of you, I'd use that and rely on other ships to cover directly behind the flagship, but we don't, so here we are. The reason for the use of yet more mass drivers as our close defense weapons (relatively speaking) is because this way, shields mean absolutely nothing to us. Also we can't quite minitarize the rest well enough. With the remaining space, five point defense mass drivers (using 27.2 space each for 136 total, leaving 8.5), because it's not like we have a ton of space for anything else, and anything to help slap down incoming missiles and/or fighters is nice. Unfortunately, 8.5 tons of displacement isn't enough to do anything with, so I guess that's all I've got for this thing. I suppose you could replace some of the PD mass drivers with an anti-matter bomb bay (meaning one bomb and one point defense), but I'd rather have a few dedicated bombers. All of this clocks in at a very hefty 1,424,000,000,000 credits (1,424 trillion). But what good is being super rich if you don't flaunt it now and then? Besides, it's our flagship, and sometimes you just gotta treat yoself. 
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Jun 27, 2017 06:14
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Scout frigate: Nightingale, because I'd rather have an autofiring gun than repair drones. Fleet escort: Hoplite, since anything big enough that you'd want torpedoes would want bigger or dedicated ships. Bombardment cruiser: Thunderbolt because, well, as stated: torpedoes that don't home are basically useless. These can at least hit big slow ships. Plus rear mounted torpedoes are not worth the trouble. Battleship: Halberd because it has more guns and it can bring them all to bear at once.  Supplemental: Cato because of course I'm going to vote for my own design.
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Jun 28, 2017 20:44
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I already know this is not on the table, but do we have the fleet power to just bomb the poo poo out of the Darloks and wipe out their empire that way?
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Jul 3, 2017 23:19
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