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Hooray for science! Glad to hear you're on the mend. We're all rooting for you.
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Sep 24, 2019 05:07
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Glad you're making a recovery! Next time research Universal Antidote earlier!
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Sep 24, 2019 05:50
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Teeth came out about 24 hours ago. There was a lot of wrenching and twisting, and for a while the left side of my head didn't like too much (afterwards, when the anesthetic wore off). But all is well and healing now. So I figured I'd get back to business. Here's hoping it's not another half-a-month in between updates. Any Ball of Rock In the Storm ** Note: I gave up tracking the various wars partly through this. They just keep spamming on and off and so really I'm just looking for significant gains at this point, actual states of war/peace are just repetitive and pointless  Now the Bethmoora system is full. A quick peace is also signed between Gnolams and Darloks.  Flattery will not avail you, dark Morfane.  On the opposite side of the galaxy, available through a wormhole from Galos. We are throwing colony ships out as quickly and as far as possible. I'm frankly quite surprised by how many planets the others have chosen to leave available.  As a result, these screens may become spammish for a while. The Overmind seeks a decisive long-term size advantage, and is gambling that shorter-term delays in pursuing the Meklar campaign, researching, etc. will be sustainable. Also, peace between Bulrathi and Trilarians.  Nazin looks like it was labeled by the designer of Skittles. Bizarre to see that on a homeworld system.  It'll be a while until these can be deployed on an imperial scale, but they should definitely help the treasury invest in startup colonies that need the boost. Naturally Astro University is next, and war between Trilarians and Silicoids is announced. Our conflict with the Meklar is going exactly nowhere - a single frigate maintains a blockade on Meklon. SD 3517.4 - Meklar/Alkari peace, and the Silicoids kick us out of Meklon.  It appears that I severely, drastically underestimated how much work there is to be done in expansion. I don't think we're even close. Zin and Pegasus here, in the lower-right corner of the galaxy, are almost as far from us as it is possible to get. I think they are space monster-guarded systems. I have a nagging sense I may be getting overly greedy, but the land grab continues. SD 3517.5 - We sign a NAP with the Darloks, only because one of their fleets is holding up one of our colony ships. It didn't work though - we are still prevented from colonizing in the system because of something that I'm sure is really simple but I don't quite understand.  I don't get how we can colonize here, but not in the other Darlok system with an identical situation; NAP and colony ship present. I'm even more confused. But I'll take it - Katab is our stepping-stone to reach those unclaimed systems in Gnolam territory.  A barely-there ball of rock.  Jerks. Not totally suprising, but still ... jerks. Also, the Trilarians sent a Battleship/Colony Ship combo to Zin, one of the assumed monster systems ... and it survived. Looks like I've run out of time. I might just have to settle for leftovers. SD 3518.1 - The rocks destroy another one of our just-made colonies. We still aren't at war.  Peace is worth this price. Also, Zin is left empty, no systems taken. Were they defeated by the monster and just waited an extra turn to attack it? I'm confused.  Galactic Unification would be fantastic, but also expenses. Time to go back to Computers and boost research.  One of many tiny balls of rock.  Also, the Antarans are back. A destroyer and two frigates, and I guess they really like Bethmoora because they're headed back there. We'll rush a Battlestation to do what we can to hold them off, everything else is already in position. If they take any of the three small colonies in the system I'll just be thankful. Also, it'd be nice if they'd go pick on someone else.  We've been waiting for Ursa to clear out so we could take this ... and there are two other planets we might eventually get as well. None are particularly exciting.  Ensuring nobody else can peacefully get a foothold here.  Ok, this is bizarre. I have to think somebody else killed whatever monster is here ... and then just left?!? Regardless, I was already working on building up a group to attack here, and we have one colony ship en route. Others will be sent post-haste, and at least having a frigate on station lowers the chance a bit that someone else seizes it. But still ... weird. We've been seeing a lot of colony ships from rivals out elsewhere, and generally beating them to the targets. And nobody wants this?  Silicoids are leaving us alone, but the Meklar getting in on the act here. It's not frequent enough for me to be concerned though. BethmooraDefense (Again) (3:14) Once again we just barely survive. The Battlestation is lost, but that can be rebuilt. SD 3518.9 - The Meklar destroy another colony in Ursa. So much for that particular expansion endeavor.  Yeah, that's not happening. And more war we have now. This is also really makes it difficult to find more ways to usefully expand. The one outstanding 'monster system' in Pegasus can't be reached without an outpost ... and outpost in Gnolam territory. I doubt that's going to go well. I think it's time to turn our attentions to the Meklar.  This is the ship that will do the job ... I hope. Mass drivers instead of fusion beams, because we can.
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Sep 28, 2019 13:32
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The Only Good Meklar Is An Enslaved Meklar Ok so somebody explain this to me. I can colonize planets in Ursa, which has a Bulrathi combat fleet and they still have their homeworld there. I have a NAP with them. But I can't colonize in Oba (Darlok fleet and planet, NAP) or Zin (Trilarian fleet and planet, NAP). At this point, barring something really weird I'm calling this a bug. Also, you can see the situation almost 200 turns into the game as I transition out of the land-grab mode finally; basically, it's generalized chaos.  We might have half the galaxy's population, and we're still growing.  Looks like it was authored by Picasso, but basically we're middle of the pack. If you don't like the answer here, wait a few turns; it'll probably change.  Keeping up surprisingly well here. It's ye olde hockey stick graph, except for the miserable Silicoids. We're still behind, but competitive. That'll do for now.  Gnolams would seem to be our most dangerous foe by far, and I expect to lose some expendable territory to them. I won't be sending any colonist transports out that way. Otherwhise, I'm happy with the state of our agreements. Until it changes on the next day ending in 'Y', Meklar-Bulrathi, Alkari-Darlok, and Gnolam-Silicoid are the current conflicts. Trilarians at present are at peace with everyone. There are no alliances, which basically forces this state of EHE (Everyone Hates Everyone).  You can see what our friendship with the fish-folk is worth ... Meklar (2) vote for Morfane as well. The Darloks have 6, second to our 15. Veto bloc! We have just enough for that, and just few enough that we can vote Morfane as well. Probably for the last time.  Randomly I'm suddenly allowed to colonize in the Zin system. Trilarians are still here. No clue why. A third Natives planet will make supplying the empire with food even more trivial - I literally only had one citizen farming above the optimal, but now that's back down to zero. Meanwhile, the Meklar destroyed the outpost in the Achir system that we weren't using anymore - allowed us to get to Arkab back in the day - and had no need of.  I gave a shot at tech trades just for fun and got this - I hope we will be needing it soon.  Morfane was willing to part with this, which will limit pollution to make our more productive industrial worlds better.  This was not a suprise. Zin could follow, though at least there's a chance the Trilarians stationed there might intervene. Meanwhile the Bulrathi assclowns thank us 'for prompt payment' of their tribute.  Guess not. Now we're forced to grow extra food on our own.  Gnolams aren't screwing around. So far though they're only knocking out frontier systems; they haven't attacked anything fortified. Yet.  *Yawn*  After hanging out here for 20-30 turns, we're allowed to colonize with nothing having changed. Why?? I'm sure the Gnolams will come smash these as well, but whatevs.  Not a huge deal, but still grrrr ... SD 3520.0 - Riwand II is the latest and largest to get smashed by the Gnolams, and you know other races are going to pick up some of these pieces. But we'll worry about that later. It's time for something else ... MeklonBattle (6:38) That was ... strange. The Meklar have shielding and better ship protection, but our weaponry was superior. Their repeated raid attempts came up a little short, and eventually the lone surviving ship was forced to retreat. I think it's time to invade.  Not exactly a surprise either.  The next turn, this comes in along with a similar battle at the Meklar homeworld. They still have a battleship, but both planets are vulnerable to troop assault.  I think we're going to want faster movement for multiple purposes soon.  That's new. Meanwhile, it seems worth it to me to spend the time pausing our military buildup to put Autolabs pretty much everywhere. We are also making some progress on other planets - a few working on Terraforming - but who knows how many of them we actually hang onto.  It'll take a lot more troops to conquer their homeworld, and we suffered 50% casualties here. Nonetheless, the first Meklar planet has fallen to our troops. It'll take a bit to get enough transports ready to grab their homeworld. After that, the meddlesome and continually rampaging Gnolams must face our wrath. We've already begun that process as well, with one battleship placed in the center of the galaxy for protective purposes if need be, and more will eventually follow. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Oct 3, 2019 |
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Oct 3, 2019 14:50
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Maybe the colonization bug has to do with what the colonizable status was when the colony fleet entered the system? Leaving then re-entering might fix things.
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Oct 4, 2019 15:22
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Did they? Did they really? Or were they framed? Only one way to be sure. I have nothing useful to add so I'm just gonna beat the war drums about Darloks for comedy value v  v but seriously Nazin delenda est
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Oct 4, 2019 19:25
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MechaCrash posted:Did they? Did they really? Or were they framed? One of the silly things that results from "everyone knows what everybody researched" is that you can just check for that by referencing the race screen (?), and be able to see if they did have the stolen tech. Also, if they are spying on you at all. How you can still frame people like that? Somehow, I guess.
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Oct 4, 2019 20:07
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Pretty sure that you can't colonize a planet when another race has a colony ship in the same system. Think about it, how would they decide who actually gets the planet? The correct answer is the initiative stat derived from beam offense. But I don't think they ever put that in.
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Oct 4, 2019 20:39
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Checking their tech menu to see if they have the tech they allegedly stole can maybe exonerate them, but it might not. If they didn't have it the turn before and then suddenly they do, well something stinks, clearly. But unless you're keeping constant tabs on what everyone else has, it's hard to know for sure if they came by the technology because they researched it, traded for it, or if it fell off the back of one of your trucks.
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Oct 5, 2019 00:33
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DecoyBadger posted:what the colonizable status was when the colony fleet entered the system? Leaving then re-entering might fix things. Tried that already. habituallyred posted:Pretty sure that you can't colonize a planet when another race has a colony ship in the same system. Think about it, how would they decide who actually gets the planet? In this case, they didn't all have colony ships in the enemy fleet. However I did notice the 167670002 (or whatever) colony ships display bug is back, so maybe that has something to do with it. Though it didn't affect things before last game I ran into it. Gun Jam posted:How you can still frame people like that? Somehow, I guess. Heh, good point. MechaCrash posted:Did they? Did they really? Or were they framed? I find it amusing that the RNG keeps putting me in situations where I want eliminate them, just not yet though because other things are more pressing. Keeps them around so you can make fun of them longer.
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Oct 6, 2019 09:27
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Autolabs  Enjoy your inevitable tech supremacy. Go all in on shields and pimp your mass drivers.
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Oct 11, 2019 01:36
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The rest sounds good, but going all-in on shields is rather easier said than done: There is not one single solitary ship-mounted deflector shield tech in the entirety of my tree for this run.
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Oct 11, 2019 06:26
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Silence No major changes occurred between the start of the last update and this one in the balance of power. With one of the Meklar planets captured, I was no longer working on breeding Klackons. We have enough of those - I'll want a number of Meklar incubators set up as soon as we start getting some of them assimilated. The main timing issue here was simply that we didn't have any developed systems close enough - other than Arkab of course - to get transports to Meklon in a timely fashion. I couldn't really get it any help, so I just had to wait, one per turn.  We're get kicked out of pretty much everywhere by the Gnolams still, but they've left our outpost alone for whatever reason and we managed to reach Pegasus here. That's a space dragon defending the system, but there is a good planet here. Yet more natives. So we'll want to grab that eventually, but our combat fleet is of course otherwhise occupied at the moment.  We lost one of our Scorpions in the process, but after the Meklar built another Starbase we knocked it down and managed to seize the final enemy battleship.  Yeah, we'll take that. Ship survivability is now doubled from our current Tritanium. Also, our captured Meklar on the other planet are no longer blockaded, and our ground troops should fare better.  Traversing the galaxy is no longer quite as painful.  Continuing to knock out cheap projects.  The Meklar keep building Starbases every year, and Auto leads to me losing ships when I shouldn't so I get to fight them manually. In any case, this should make Guava happy. SD 3520.6 The Gnolams struck at Arkab ... Arkab Battle (1:45) They didn't attack our fortified planet, but after noting they had no shields and very limited defenses, I decided to see what damage we could do to their fleet. I then thought better of it, noting their beam defense was making it very difficult to hit them. We lose another planet, and one that was starting to get built up. After some pondering, I make a deal with the Alkari; Autolab for their Battle Scanners. That'll give us another +50 to our beam attack, which we need to go toe-to-toe with these jerks. To make that work, I had to take a couple of each size mass drivers off our current designs, but I still think it's a good trade-off. Can we get the new ones out before the Gnolams rampage further? A couple of points are clear here. One, I made a greedyish miscalculation in trying to eliminate the Meklar first. The other is, we're going to trade for a better battle computer as soon as one becomes available or we're going to be in a world of hurt. All attempts at making peace with the Gnolams have been rebuffed, which makes sense; right now they are kicking our arse.  Logical, as it was without defenses. And now one of our sources of labor is also history. That's a lot more valuable than the territory.  I stay in construction for the time being, but right now research efforts are being suspended in order to throw whatever we have to into the military to combat the Gnolam threat.  They finally split up the fleet, having seemingly run out of places to attack. I saw a potential opportunity to hit them back at Malec, and seized it. Malec Battle (2:12) They took the bait ... for a bit. One destroyer was more than I was hoping for there. And now, thanks to GNN's latest pronouncement, we're stuck here. This is one of the events that I think is just plain dumb.  At some point I'm going to want to plow my way up to the Plasma Cannon, but right now I'm still doing a broad-based increase.  The galactic map announces in a blinking ... whatever ... in the upper-right that we have a hyperspace flux. With both sides having a fleet stuck in Malec, I decide to attack again. The other planet is more fortified, enough to handle our attackers I'm sure, but we can keep building more ships while the flux is on and hopefully eliminate some of theirs. Malec Battle 2 (4:22) That was useful. Two facts are clear; we now have the upper hand against the Gnolams in ship-to-ship exchanges. Also, our weaponry against their interceptors/missiles is hideously lacking. These two facts seem to argue in favor of slapping as many standard-mount mass drivers as possible on our designs. Another fun fact; all of our retreating ships were destroyed, presumably by the hyperspace flux.  Our latest upgrade, the Scorpion M3. It focuses entirely on standard auto-firing mounts to hopefully give us increased anti-small crap lethality. A few bombs just in case we do well enough to eventually attack planetary fortifications, and the Reinforced Hull was swapped out for the somewhat smaller ECM Jammer. Won't help against strike craft obviously, but since enemy beam weapons aren't hitting us much that seemed a more effective use of the space. Unfortunately two of our four ships are in Ecu, which has only one tiny planet. So they are stuck, but Arkab gets back to work refitting the other pair and will then pump out more, so we are ready when the galactic hissy-fit ends. Elsewhere, the few planets - even rich ones - that don't have something else that needs building switch to research efforts.  Jump Gate is up next after this. I'm wondering just now if that allows travel with the flux in place? I'm guessing no.  This'll be good in the future. For now, our movement ability has increased from 'none' to 'still none'. SD 3521.6 - I notice that almost all Gnolam warships have disappeared; they have a couple battleships on the opposite side of the galaxy that we can see and that's it. So I invest in getting more transports up, to finish off the Meklar as soon as the galaxy stops doing it's Gandalf imitation. The unaffected Trilarians and Alkari can go suck an egg, by the way.  In this state of mutual paralysis, the council convenes once more. We get the Trilarians (7 votes), Dolgran gets the Meklar (2 votes) and their own seven. We have 18, still a veto bloc even after all the systems we lost. Spose I should be getting some colony ships ready as well. Anyway, we vote Dolgran and try for peace. Didn't even move the needle.  We're only two techs away from the Point-And-Eradicate Device. Might as well. SD 3522.2 - Gnolam spy steals Ground Batteries. Perhaps. Either way, that kind of sucks. I decide to throw a few more spies up just for fun. Oh, and a dozen turns of this crap. The Meklar built a ship and destroyed Meklon III again. NOthing we could do about. Alkari attacked them, good thing they only brought a single battleship b/c we couldn't do anything about that either. This is so stupid.  Go fly a kite. Then Multi-Phased Shields came in, allowing us to increase the strength of all the shields we don't have by 50%. Quick now, what's 150% of absolutely nothing on ships that can't go anywhere anyway? Also ... "Darlok spy steals Assault Shuttles".  Looks quality.  See ya Sparky. You sat there on your arse well during your time here, but you've been surpassed.  Now to redesign our ships again. Of course, an entire generation of Klackons has now been born and raised in an age where hyperspace is offlimits. Some are even saying investing in ships at all is a worthless boondoggle, and questioning whether FTL travel itself is just an elaborate myth. The entire galaxy is asking one question: when do we get to start moving around and slaughtering each other again. So far, there is no answer in sight. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 11:19
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Man, I don't recall that event lasting that painfully long, in my memory it's just a couple of turns when it pops. Maybe my memory is flawed or maybe there's just a random range that has a very large upper bound.
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Oct 14, 2019 11:32
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 While the Gnolams will not be terribly useful to capture, because they make way shittier workers than Klackons and Meklons, you can't steal their tech if you bomb their planets clean. They get +1 science, and if you have any Low-G planets, maybe you can stick Gnolams there? They don't get any industry bonuses, but not being hit with the Low-G production penalty maybe makes up for that, and once the planet is decently set up, you can put them to work in the labs. I wouldn't want to start cranking them out to populate planets but if you already have one, you may as well use it to research ways to crush the Darloks. c'mon man you knew it was coming
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Oct 14, 2019 14:25
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You have broken formatting in the "Malec Battle" link.
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Oct 14, 2019 18:55
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turol posted:You have broken formatting in the "Malec Battle" link. Fixed, thanks. PurpleXVI posted:I don't recall that event lasting that painfully long, in my memory it's just a couple of turns when it pops. Maybe my memory is flawed or maybe there's just a random range that has a very large upper bound. I remember it lasting 4-6 turns before, I've only seen it a couple times before this. From an LP perspective I'm glad it showed up, and did so at an important moment in a conflict for illustrative purposes. But now I'm just at the stage of 'we get the point now go away please'. MechaCrash posted:Gnolams will not be terribly useful to capture, because they make way shittier workers than Klackons and Meklons, you can't steal their tech if you bomb their planets clean. I must ponder this concept before deciding what path to take. There's a part of me that wants to go out of my way to win without ever fighting the Darloks, just to annoy certain people.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:53
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I'm usually a very turtly (turtle-y?) player and I like the hyperspace flux event, because it keeps the drat aggressive jackasses stuck on their worlds while I'm doing my nerd projects and building up worlds.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:58
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It is pretty ridiculous that the flux even kills your retreating ships.
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Oct 15, 2019 14:58
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PSA: This project is temporarily suspended. I wanted to get one more update out this week, partly because I think it would have a chance to be decisive, but I got the priviledge of working some extra hours over the weekend which eliminated any hope of that. With the impending (actually it just dropped a day early!) arrival of AI War 2 1.0 I'm going to be focusing on that for an as-yet undetermined period of time. I will return to wrap this up, I'm just not sure when exactly that'll be.
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Oct 22, 2019 00:25
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Any chance of some AI war videos? commentary is not required, nor skill. Though I do enjoy watching people do well at games I cannot.
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Oct 22, 2019 00:43
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That will happen, and quite soon. I don't want to derail this thread with discussion of a different game, but I'll just say keep an eye on the New LP Thread.
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Oct 22, 2019 00:57
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I can now say that I'm targeting two weeks from now, sooner if possible, to get this show on the road again.
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Nov 4, 2019 13:06
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Freedom and Mixed Success SD 3523.0 - The Trilarians, probably our best friends in this galaxy, and the Meklar formed an alliance. This could not be allowed to stand, and the fishfolk were agreeable to our demands.  Neither the name or design specs of the new Deathbringer are subtle. Bombs should no longer be necessary.  FINALLY.  3523.3, the same turn. The time for this kind of thing has passed. With our new plasma cannons we can and should dominate the galaxy. We have no need of your services. Only half of our battleships had been refitted though, but that should be enough to smash the Meklar resistance to our rule. Though their targets were several turns away, the colony ships set off immediately. There remain a few unclaimed systems after the long galactic silence, a time that only the oldest Klackons can even remember the beginnings of. Our destiny beckons us.  Two battleships and a starbase were easily dispatched in orbit by our ships. Three full transports of ground troops became casualties in the invasion, but overwhelming numbers did the job. The Meklar are no more, except as our servants.  It's not much, but it's the first shield we've managed to acquire.  They used this on us in the previous battle, but it wasn't enough to really help them.  Realistically, it's probably too late now for our new labor force to help all that much. Still, we'll continue with the plan. A full dozen here plus however many more Meklar citizens we can breed/manufacture ... a little of each in their case? Bulrathi task forces are en route, but with our agreements in place with them that is hopefully a moot point. Our Deathbringers will look to defend here, then gradually push out across the lower part of the galaxy into Gnolam territory.  If Unification is OP, what is this - Mega-OP?? Either way, our economy just went from dominant to ridiculous.  Continuing in that general direction. Getting some cheap things to boost our infrastructure even further so we can pump out ships wherever and whenever they are needed seems sensible. By far our biggest challenge right now in travel time - ships still take several turns in most cases to get where they need to go, so patience and planning are required.  We're in danger of having a Gnolam stalemate here. Maintaining the status quo is easy. Supporting enough battleships to defend Arkab and Meklon while also hitting their fortified systems, not so much. I decide to just throw a few of our ships into the fray and see if we can do any damage. Even if it's a battle of attrition, that's probably a worthwhile effort. Balancing out what planets produce trade goods, transports, colony ships, or more battleships to maximize the fleet is a fun bit of every-turn micro right now. Boosting our command points with more battlestations would be nice, but we've got a lot of planets in the pipeline with only one currently in construction. Malec (2:04) Ok then. Not doing so hot at absorbing the punishment these days. We can still eventually overwhelm them with numbers, but right now their fighters and missiles are killing us. I attempt to work on tech trades, but only the Bulrathi have anything interesting, and they want the Plasma Cannon. Nope, not happening. We clearly can outmatch their ships, so I think hit-and-run tactics now to whittle them down and see if that gets us anywhere. Right now there are 5 Battleships and 2 Cruisers with the reinforcements at Malec. I foresee an extended standoff. Meanwhile, we're starting to get Meklar incubator planets up and running.  No clue how many this is now. ** Trilarians (7) - Abstain ** Gnolams (7) - Abstain; they must really not like Morfane either. Who would though? ** Bulrathi(6) - Abstain ** Alkari (3) - Abstain ** Darlok (8) We have 23. We continue to spit on the galaxy, but have less than half overall. Klackons are the greatest ... but cannot yet enforce our will of destiny. Naturally we play the game and vote Darlok. I feel dirty now.  We continue to rack up small things. I want more plasma miniaturization, but I think reducing pollution with Nano Dissasemblers is worth the price first. We're among the galactic leaders in research advances at this point, so really it's just time to max our production and fleet efficacy.  The Antarans could have chosen any of the three Bulrathi planets in the system. Jerks.  We're looking for those with a more diverse skillset at this point. Rejected. Also, Gnolam, or at least 'Gnolam', espionage is becoming a problem.  Neutronium Armor would be nice, but is only a 50% boost over our current Zortrium. I still think packing more weapons on our ships would be better. Malec Again (3:20) The Gnolams moved their fleet inexplicably to the opposite side of the galaxy, so we moved in with full force. Of course, this victory was tempered with the following knowledge: "Darlok spy steals Plasma Cannon". Asstwerps. At this point though, the goal of expansion is simply to gain more territory and population. I don't want to destroy the worlds, just get enough votes so that nobody can oppose us in the Council. That seems clearly to be the shortest line between where we are and the galaxy accepting the inevitable. We swap with the Bulrathi, getting Microlite Construction. Might as well. They're going to get the plasma cannon eventually now anyway, let's get something for it.  The next turn. The Gnolams had split their remaining fleet, leaving us attacking another defended system with 4 battleships against three defending ones. We lost two, but pounded through. This is going to be a start-and-stop campaign with these kinds of losses. However, Arkab and Meklon should now be beyond their reach, and we are pushing them back.  That'll boost our clearly pathetic espionage defense. As 'Darlok spy steals Jump Gate'. Oh well. The planet itself is a mid-sized poor tundra, not much to celebrate. The shipbuilding efforts spread to four planets, and hopefully more soon will be ready. Any fully-developed rich/ultra world will now be dedicated to the task of pumping out Gnolam-blasting Deathbringers.  Cryslon at the bottom, and Ecu at the top will be the rally points. The wanna-be whiz kids look about to seize an open planet in the Gote system, between Ursa and Orion right in the middle. That would give them the range to outflank us if we don't prepare a response in that area.  The Darlok fleet is significantly larger than us, and their technology a hair better. When it comes to sheer citizens though we continue to roll, and the folly of the Gnolams moving their fleet away clearly hastened their undoing. There's more of a sense of urgency now that some of the others have our plasma technology; our superiority must be firmly established by the time they can deploy that weapon. And it wouldn't hurt to pay the Guardian a visit if we ever get to a point where there isn't a more pressing target ...
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Nov 12, 2019 05:23
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I was hoping you'd go for the capture on that immobile ship in the first video. But given how things turned out, I guess it didn't really matter. Did those guys have Emissions Guidance for their missiles? Because that would explain why your ships all popped right away, what all the damage going directly to your engines with nothing to even slow it down.
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Nov 12, 2019 06:25
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I didn't check, but the Office of Irrelevant Histories reports that Dolgran of the Gnolams does indeed possess said technology. Unfortunately so far our plasma cannons are not faring quite well enough in the anti-missile role, though they do well at making strike craft pilots wish they had never been born. I briefly considered the idea of trying to capture that one ship, but then decided against it since I was getting my arse handed to me anyway. .
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Nov 12, 2019 12:01
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man, Ecu is a split system, I think it's my first time seeing a three-way split. I wonder what the max number of planets in a system is, and thus how many ways it can potentially be split.
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Nov 12, 2019 12:43
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Five planets, iirc?
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Nov 12, 2019 13:46
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Yep, it's five - though I've never seen it split more than three ways. It'd be quite a weird situation to get that many empires involved in one system and have no gas giants, etc.
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Nov 12, 2019 21:41
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Gnolam Grind Priorities, in order, were continuing infrastructure development, getting more Deathbringer battleships out as quickly as possible, and research. We have a stupid amount of food, a healthy treasury, and a secure military situation so long as the Bulrathi behave. A waiting game for the fleet to be replenished so we could go smash things, and the sooner the better.  Maybe sometime we'll even keep this planet. Also, we're cramming Meklar anywhere there's room, esp. on the Gnolam-occupied worlds since I don't want them breeding anymore than is necessary.  The good Commodore is quite the multi-talented fella.  SD 3525.7 - Some more attrition happened but eventually we collected 10 Battleships at once, having maxed out what the economy can support. The scale has tipped to overwhelming force, including a new version that was able to make room, with miniaturization advancements, for an extra weapon mount (11 Plasma Cannons instead of 10). Tech is still even here in the ground combat, but the Gnolams themselves stink so we took only two battalions of losses. At this point there's no reason not to expect that we'll be able to flatten them with minimal losses. They were only able to muster a single battleship and cruiser each in opposition along with their typical static defenses. There are only transports, no warships, of the Gnolam resistance on scanners.  After another step up in Physics, we'll be able to be even more efficient in our Deathbringer designs. Now I want to boost our research, then production more. It's time for economic overkill, as much of it as is necessary to bring the galaxy to its knees.  Interestingly we are capturing far more Silicoid than Gnolams so far as we push along the bottom of the galaxy. That'll change as we get to their core systems, but for now we are merely enslaving those that they enslaved first. Meanwhile a couple of our richer worlds start supplying more troop transports, to ensure we don't run out too quickly. I'm sure this is a crime against sanity itself, but we're even keeping these Darloks around. SD 3526.3 - The Antarans 'visit' Gnol and smash the secondary planet there. This deprives us of the opportunity to invade it. SD 3526.5 - For the first time in several auto-encounters, the Gnolam had the effrontery to blow up one of our warships at Xiphias Prime. This is the last system remaining before their homeworld falls. Insulting, but of little consequence ... we have a dozen more and can replace it easily. These days I'm spending the most time shifting around Meklar citizens, and even that is of marginal utility. But it makes me feel like I'm doing more than moving ships around, and who knows how many more wars we'll need to wage before the curtain falls.  As we push our way into the Gnolam home system, this arrives. We don't have the ability to upgrade our ship-producing facilities for Titan/Doom Star levels of absurdity, so there's little more we can do that's useful in Construction. Smashing Gnol (1:11) Another loss is taken as we conquer the Gnolam homeworld, and we're about out of ground troops. But we forgot about one planet in Xiphias, so we'll need to head back there anyway to finish this war. It's almost over.  The chamber is emptier of late. That's because we just finished off the Gnolams. GNN hasn't even gotten out a flash update yet. ** Trilarians (8) -- Abstain ** Bulrathi (6) -- Overmind! ** Alkari (4) -- Overmind! Wow. We get two of the three 'lesser races' to vote for us. Morfane gets 11 votes, which combined with the 8 from the Trilarians is 19 ... and that's not enough!! With 33 of the 62 total, just over half the galaxy, we vote ourselves.   But ... but ... but Nazin delenda est!! (said it so you don't have to)  Our first and best friends, who almost never voted for us in the Council.  They've received the last of our tribute payments, with which we bought their peace. Now the bears, who were for much of the game our biggest potential threat, bow to us.  You were consistently hostile to us, our interests, and our near-allies. Sit down and shut up.  Eliminated the Gnolams on literally the last turn of the game. I was going to head for Pegasus (the Space Dragon) and Orion next. All of that is academic now though. I figured it would take at least one more war to see me through to victory ... the others voting to put us just over the top - one more vote than needed - was a surprise. And frankly I didn't think the Klackon bonii were quite as strong as they were. On Impossible Uncreative, I fully expected to get my brains beat in. I've learned much about Master of Orion 2 from this LP. I hope you've enjoyed it. I'll have another post with a final comparison between this and the original for you all to argue with if you like, and a bit about the next retro game on the agenda.
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Nov 19, 2019 01:59
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It feels like the flipover in this last game from "barely hanging on" to "kicking rear end" was extremely rapid. That might just be me, though. Congrats, in any case!
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Nov 19, 2019 02:16
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Congrats on the victory
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Nov 19, 2019 06:21
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PurpleXVI posted:It feels like the flipover in this last game from "barely hanging on" to "kicking rear end" was extremely rapid. That might just be me, though. It seemed that way to me too. I think it's because Thot kept losing colonies over and over while reaching a relatively high tech level. Once some of the colonies survived the tech and population growth advantages snowballed very rapidly. From another perspective, the galaxy battled bravely to contain the infestation to a handful of endemic planets, but once the effort got distracted by internal conflicts, the swarm overran everyone. Congratulations on the win after a rocky start!
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Nov 19, 2019 19:30
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There's still Darloks, but now they're your Darloks, so it's technically a win I guess. Congrats on it, looking forward to the next one where I'll pick an arbitrary faction that needs to be wiped off the map immediately no matter the circumstances! 
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Nov 20, 2019 16:58
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Congrats on turning the game around.
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Nov 21, 2019 19:36
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Thanks everyone. MechaCrash posted:looking forward to the next one where I'll pick an arbitrary faction that needs to be wiped off the map immediately no matter the circumstances! Unfortunately you'll get no such opportunity; this was the last run for this LP.
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Nov 23, 2019 07:17
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Thot's Thoughts: MOO Post-Mortem As I said before, MOO2 overall somewhat improved my opinion of it through the course of this LP. My overall judgement is still the same though; it can't hold a candle to the original. ** User Interface This is where the sequel shines best. The Ledger (Colonies screen) is a veritable work of art for it's time. Planets makes it a simple matter to identify what to colonize next. The sorting functions on both screens are particularly excellent. It is not without it's drawbacks - RELOC is a more work and it's difficult to find the right system a lot of the time on the Fleets screen, managing colonies is a lot more work and not always justified by the additional complexity (I'll get back to this), and so on. But overall, there are enough improvements in enough areas to say that MOO2 was a big improvement over MOO1. When it comes to the UI, a big thumbs up as a step forward. ** Strategic Depth I'm choosing this wording for a reason. If you ask about complexity, MOO2 would clearly be the winner. More ship design options, more diplomatic options, I think more overall techs, etc. I do not actually think it makes for a deeper, but rather somewhat shallower game. Having additional missile rack sizes, for example, is pretty much useless because there's no good reason to use them. The weapon mods for beam weapons are a good example in other direction. Freighters are another. On the other hand, diplomacy doesn't work as well and frankly just plain doesn't matter often enough that a big piece of the core puzzle is yanked out. Rather than choosing sides you're thrust into a galactic free-for-all that eliminates a lot of potential choices. Same with the research system which has predictable and often unbalanced decisions for all not-Uncreative races. MOO2 does things of more marginal importance better in some cases, but MOO1 got the core systems right a lot more and had it's share of nuanced plusses (like planetology scaling population production). Planetary buildings added a lot more busy-work than strategy, and so on. Stockpiling. Rush-buying. The list continues. It's for reasons like this, bloated complexity that unbalances the game, that MOO2 isn't considered nearly as challenging as the original. Ask a MOO1 expert to play with one of the weaker stock races and they'll probably win, but won't guarantee it. Ask a MOO2 expert the same question, and they'll ask you for house rules to make it more difficult. There are just too many ways to abuse it. ** Customization Clearly the points all go to Master of Orion 2 here. The question is whether that's a good thing or not. mydad posted:I greatly prefer replayability through customization to replayability through randomness, so it's more of a different philosophy on what we want from the game than anything else. This is a great, concise assessment of the situation. I'll come back to it. As Sulla has eloquently written, the theme of the original MOO's design was the willingness to say no the player for the betterment of the game, to strip out unnecessary elements to strengthen the core. I think his comments are particularly instructive because he compares the game to CIV IV, which he worked on and demonstrates the rigid tech tree, replayability via customization concept, and talks about why he thinks MOO is superior. I don't always think randomness is better than customization; I enjoy AI War: Fleet Command for example which is all about the customization. I just don't think it works for symmetrical gameplay. In a traditional 4X such as the MOO titles, it's a key feature that you have a number of races starting from the same basic position and using the same basic means to advance. That only works if you have a reasonable level of control over the variances in their abilities. It does no good to create a balanced playing field, and then grossly unbalance it with customization options that are trying to do two contradictory things at once; cram the MOO1 races into a balanced system, and provide the ability for players to have wildly different abilities. The MOO1 races weren't exactly balanced and weren't supposed to be - functioning as an additional difficulty lever - but there were no races that has grossly OP stuff like Creative or Lithovore. Why? Because that would, and does, totally break the game. If you want that level of customization in a strategy game, you need a fundamentally asymmetrical system to begin with. Otherwhise you're like the Architect in the Matrix trilogy, forever trying to balance an inherently unbalanced equation. My conclusion is that the level of customization in MOO2 makes the game worse; it's just too much for the rest of it to absorb. ** AI I'm calling it pretty even on this score. MOO2's AI is more aggressive, but I'm not sure it's all that much more intelligent. The additional ship design elements that it uses just as badly as the first game did balance out somewhat better attacking on the galactic scale. I think the game might have been tilted more towards attack having the upper hand to benefit the AI, but it also came at the cost of making things more unbalanced. In research, the design of the system itself makes the AI appear worse for making bad choices. ** Bugs/Stability Neither game is crash-prone, and both have their share of bugs. Having said that, the systems of each game don't work as consistently in MOO2. In the original, some of the diplomatic personalities don't work properly, the ship overflow bug was a very big one, but it was generally more sound. There are a lot more things (such as no double damage range penalty) that simply do not work the way the game says they are supposed to in MOO2. My Final Word I still hold Master of Orion 1 to be among the top handful of strategy games ever made. Master of Orion 2 is above-average, but not great; anything above 'fairly good' is a stretch. Well worth playing and learning, far better than either of the sequels which came later, but it doesn't deserve it's loftier reputation.
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Nov 23, 2019 07:59
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So … what's next? Well, I'm going to submit this thread to the archives after I've put Olesh's excellent effort-posts in the table of contents; lots of excellent information in there and the lot of you definitely shortened my learning curve. At least one of the victories would have been a loss without your input. Then, it's on to the game that actually won the original retro-game poll in the first MOO thread - MOO2 came in second there. Ground Control, the groundbreaking 2000 RTS by Massive Entertainment. It's going to be a bit though. Definitely won't happen before next year, and I can't be more specific than to say 'when I can get to it'. But it is the choice of SA for my next retro project, and it will happen. A different format though than the MOO games, video-focused due to the nature of the game. Otherwhise, thanks for supporting my MOO projects. I still plan on returning to MOO1, possibly streaming it, at some point in the likely-distant future. But it's been a lot of fun either way.
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Nov 23, 2019 08:10
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Hell yeah, I'd be down for a Ground Control 1(also 2? Or just 1?) LP. I also think your assessment of MOO2 is pretty spot-on. A lot of what it adds is conceptually good, but the balance is just... hoo, yeah. It feels like they didn't even try, at points. Or never tested it on anyone who was actually trying to win.
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Nov 23, 2019 09:26
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I've learned a tremendous amount from these LPs of yours, Thotimx. Thanks so much for doing them. Ground Control has been on my "I really need to have a look at this game" list for ages. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you have to say about it, once you get around to it.
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Nov 23, 2019 09:34
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