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Biospheres need to be built and maintained, yes. There's another thing you can get later that's a permanent, galaxy-wide increase to population size on all of your planets, but it's the next to last tech level in its field.
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Mar 22, 2019 21:06
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Empire wide passive techs are super, super rare but there are a few of them.
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Mar 23, 2019 07:58
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Something Something Plan Enemy Contact With Ever Survives The No  It's fitting that this ship has been auto-named the Cheetah, because everyone knows they never prosper. ... Yep, I went there. Anyway, we've had a beam weapon now for a bit, the ubiquitious Laser Cannon. So we need to talk about modifications and firing arcs. It can get rather complicated combining the two. Let's use a standard mount - neither of the two mods are selected - and a Forward firing arc as our baseline. Note the damage, cost, and space required. These will be a-changing. Forward and Back firing arcs work the same on each end of the ship, coving the one-quarter of the ship in those facings. Anything outside of that, you can't hit.  The Heavy Mount increases maximum damage by 50%, while doubling cost and space. In MOO1 these were listed as separate weapon systems - doing it this way cleans up this screen a fair bit. That's important with all the new stuff. Doesn't seem like heavy would be worth it most of the time - before it was an increased range thing. But I'll need to see how combat goes. The full 360-degree Arc adds another 50% to the cost and space requirements.  Personally I'm a fan of these 'extended' firing arcs. They allow covering all but the area directly behind - or in front - of the ship, for only slightly more cost/space - 20% more at least in this setup, dunno how much rounding there is there. The PD modification appears to halve max. damage and space, and about a third of cost. Again I'll need to play with more weapons to get a more clearly defined ratio there. Clearly it's designed to cram more on for anti-missile, anti-fighter, and such duties. Main thing here is that with beam weapons there's a lot of freedom to customize a ship's role with combinations of firing arcs and modifications. Also, additional mods are available - they are unlocked by advancing a tier or two beyond the weapon's tech level. In this way, a fresh-off-the-line weapon system has basic functionality, but won't reach it's maximum effectiveness for a while. That part of it at least I think is fantastic; simple and elegant design. But none of that is what I want.  The book on early-game combat is basically this. At least, that's what I've read - somebody else here said lasers are the best early-game weapon so whatevs, they can tell me why this is wrong or whatever. Anyway, for space monsters, lots of small missile boats. Monsters tend to have one big beam weapon, so the idea is to take them down with massed ballistic firepower. Having said that, there are I think five types of space monsters, some are tougher than others, and I don't even know if I can build enough of these to take down the Space Crystal. I do know that it's my best chance, and I don't think I can afford to wait. So live and learn. 2-shot racks because either way, these battles aren't going to last long enough for a larger one. I'm going to max out the fleet with these, and then go for Rav if nobody else has done so yet. The computer adds only 3 to the cost, so it seems worth it to me to keep it on there.  I notice that the old 'relations descriptors' are still there. On accident, I moused over the gauge. How I played through several games of this before without noticing - well, the less said about that the better. Anyway, their report screens indicate they have not yet deployed any spies against me. So I'll stick with the two here. For several turns closing the first decade of play then, Sol I builds Cheetahs, Callisto IV is on to a Marine Barracks, and everything else just sort of waits.  SD 3509.6. So, budding theorycrafters, what exactly does a Space Academy do with all those silos? Obsessive zero-G training?  Lacking a better approach, I'm going with two points in research strategy: ** Generally go for what's cheaper. ** Focus on Construction and Chemistry, since that's where the research/production upgrades hit. In this case, that means Fusion Physics because it's fast. I don't think weapons for the ground troops is as important as weapons for the ships, so Fusion Beam it is. My fighters need something worth shooting with.  Oh look. He's calling himself a 'Commodore' now. Leaders level up over time, based on beatsmewhattheheck. We don't have the money. More importantly, the fleet is ready. I also send another citizen to Callisto, which has the barracks up and is working on a lab.  The fleet .. ahem, the clinking, clanking, clattering collection of colligenous junk ... is en route. And the rocks have claimed a fifth system in Opus. Crystal Battle Ok, that went horribly. And as you can see, I've got some work to do with the interface, but some things are familiar. The Space Crystal is 'unarmored', but by super-early-game tech it is a tank with 500 SP. Missiles on small ships is the proper approach I think, I just need more of them than I can field at the moment. Like 15-20 of them, or better missiles or something. Three Cheetah frigates are lost to the void of space, but two of them did escape. Near as I can tell, we did only fairly superficial damage to the creature. I don't know if you need any special gear to 'Scan' - it doesn't appear so.  Using advice from the thread, I decide to switch to grabbing the planets in the systems I already have as incubators - a Colony Base is next in Sol and soon we'll start one in Callisto as well. First though, let's plop an Outpost on that rich ocean world in Praxis to try to dissaude the Silicoids there. Right now I don't fancy my odds of winning this struggle much.  Note the 'continuous' and 'enveloping' options that we'll get to. Eventually.  I'm highly tempted to go with Soil Enrichment, which increases food per farmer by 1. Barren, Radiated, and Toxic worlds are excepted. But I go with Battle Pods instead, which increase the space on a ship by 50%. ** Troop Pods allow double the marines on a ship, for boarding actions or defense against them. That's something else I want to try out eventually, the boarding mechanics. ** Survival Pods are for keeping legendary officers - aka leaders - alive if you lose a battle. outpost Well that was anticlimactic. If you click on the planet afterwards, you get a popup informing that 'praxis prime is an Outpost planet'. Yeah I knew that. I thought there'd be a cinematic, but it makes sense to reserve those for colonies. Ok then. Also, outposts apparently count against the command point reserve even after being deployed. Didn't know that either. Or not. I get the point back the following turn. Grr. If I were good at this game, I'd have sent my Recon along to be in position for further scouting. I'm not, so I didn't. But I do get it moving now.  SD 3511.3. I just noticed that outpost systems are not capitalized. As the Meklar take Sulcus. Still, that's a cool way to distinguish.  Passing by Rosemund, the recon spots this. Three destroyers, a frigate, and three transports. So they could take praxis anytime they felt like it. I hope they don't feel like it. marriage? Ignore everything after the first 12 seconds of that video. I don't know why I ran it that long. Also ... Lolwut? And they are headed for Praxis anyway.  Yep. We're all gonna die. This is the whole schtick where the AI tells you how you've screwed up - in this case, a larger military fleet would have prevented the attack. Sol II Colonized But at least there's that.  Nothing too interesting. At the moment, I just want to not be the first empire eliminated.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:20
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We've now seen all the major features of Master of Orion 2, save the one which I left off. I'm going to cover a few remaining interface things in the next update, but that's all, before resuming progress forward. That'll give all of you time to tell me how to get myself out of this mess I've made for myself, if you have any ideas. I figure it's now been established that I know how to play this game - just uh, not all that well. So now the part comes where I hope to get better enough at this to be a credible threat to the higher-level opposition over the balance of the LP.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:25
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Regarding missiles, they only really become good after you can MIRV (quadruple damage for only a bit more space) them, and that requires 2 chemistry techs above the level at which you get the missile itself. You had the right idea, just not the right tech.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:37
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Heavy actually is ALSO an increased range thing in MoO2. It increases maximum engagement envelope, and reduces range penalties relative to standard. Using heavy autofire armor-piercing mass drivers can actually carry you all the way to gauss cannons, particularly if you beg, borrow, or steal access to shield tech. The *drawback* to heavy (which I like to use for my primary offensive load) is inability to engage missiles, so you need either standard or point defense loadout to wipe out missiles.
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Mar 27, 2019 09:38
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Yeah, MIRV missiles are the way to go against monsters. From the top of my head they split into 8 warheads that do -50% damage per warhead - so quadruple damage, but very ineffective against anything with shields. Since there are no shielded space monsters they absolutely rip them to shreds. You got a bit unlucky in that the Space Crystal is IMHO the worst monster of the lot because of the extreme range of its beam weapon that easily can kill an early Destroyer in a single hit. As for firing arcs, anything besides Forward is basically never worth it in my experience - in the first two turns of the battle at least, all enemies will probably be within the forward arc, so more weapons that can only fire forward is better than fewer weapons that can fire in other directions too. After that, the battle is probably already decided. The exception here is Point Defense weapons because missiles and especially fighters sometimes hit you from the rear, but IIRC they get a 360 degrees firing arc automatically. Heavy weapons indeed have a longer range than normal weapons, wich for example allows you to hit Star Bases and even Planets in turn 1 of a battle, and are definitely worth it if the enemy has shields. For example, a normal laser vs. class 3 shield does 0-1 damage; Heavy Lasers do 0-3 damage. Downside is that they cannot hit missiles, as stated above. Therefore I usually have a mix with slightly more heavy mount weapons than normal ones. You could try stopping the Silicoids with missile bases on all colonies that they can reach and a few small ships as deterrence. Getting the Meklar involved might also help. In most games, the Silicoid grow quickly early on but are very weak technology-wise, sticking with Titanium armor and crappy shields until well into the mid-game. This makes for fun battles where you rip apart huge fleets of terribly weak ships if you get into a fight with them later in the game. However, a war with a runaway Silicoid empire this early is bad news and very hard to win. As an aside, I really love this game. The music and graphical style are amazing to me. I still play this game a couple of times a year, always with the same (kind-of-overpowered) custom race on impossible. Not really because of the challenge but because of the great and mysterious athmosphere. I can certainly understand your criticism though, I just don't mind or even notice those flaws at all.
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Mar 27, 2019 10:44
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Battle pods is one of those no-brainer choices people was complaining about. Boarding actions are a niche strat that has other ways of being enabled, and ship leaders isn't important enough to spend the resources on lifeboats for an entire ship design when they only use one ship.
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Mar 27, 2019 11:08
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The trick with 2-shot missile boats is that you spend the first combat turn shooting a missile, and *turning around 180 degrees so you face away from the enemy*. In the second combat turn you shoot a missile, and fly away, and click the retreat button. This both keeps your distance and ensures your missiles have 'time' to travel. If you've retreated your missiles replenish, while enemy ship damage does not, and you can come back the next turn and do the same thing again. This is very good at cheesing the AI.
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Mar 27, 2019 12:30
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Martian posted:As for firing arcs, anything besides Forward is basically never worth it in my experience - in the first two turns of the battle at least, all enemies will probably be within the forward arc, so more weapons that can only fire forward is better than fewer weapons that can fire in other directions too. I always thought it was worth it to move to "Forward Ext" - the 25% cost isn't that much and saves so much aggravation in turns 3+.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:03
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PD should always be extended arc, it goes a long way towards letting your ships cover one another. You really want to use your whole fleet's PD against missiles collectively whenever possible, rather than leaving individual ships to deal with their own problems piecemeal. It can make the difference between parts of your fleet being one-shot and your fleet surviving the battle with no losses.Fangz posted:The trick with 2-shot missile boats is that you spend the first combat turn shooting a missile, and *turning around 180 degrees so you face away from the enemy*. In the second combat turn you shoot a missile, and fly away, and click the retreat button. This both keeps your distance and ensures your missiles have 'time' to travel. If you've retreated your missiles replenish, while enemy ship damage does not, and you can come back the next turn and do the same thing again. This is very good at cheesing the AI. Exception: The Meklar. Autorepair ulmont posted:I always thought it was worth it to move to "Forward Ext" - the 25% cost isn't that much and saves so much aggravation in turns 3+. And it's not like there's anything stopping you from having a mix. That or PD are a decend use for leftover space.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:33
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I always tended to avoid earlygame combat in MoO2 as much as possible and just built fortress worlds, but when I got pushed into it, I always went missiles since beam and projectile weapons tended to be much worse about missing. Later-game, my favourite strategy was always to go heavy on the boarding and steal entire enemy fleets if I could get away with it.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:41
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The boarding mechanics allow you to do some cheesy stuff later in the game.
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Mar 27, 2019 17:39
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idhrendur posted:The boarding mechanics allow you to do some cheesy stuff later in the game. Neutron beams ftw!
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Mar 27, 2019 17:51
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Monster battles usually aren't worth it in the early game because they drain resources from building up your current colonies and also might result in large losses to your fleet, which will give a signal to the AI to jump you. The AI will avoid planets with monsters for a fairly long time and Crystals are one of the stronger monsters in the game, so don't worry about not being able to take that system. You can use these monster planets as buffers between your empire and AI empires until you're ready to invade the AI, or quickly take out the monsters with minimal losses and set up a new front line. You got a bit of a rude opener starting next to the Silicoid. They aren't the most aggressive race in the game, but since you can't diplomance them into being your best friends/cudgel, there is a large chance of them deciding to jump you on a whim because of a random dice roll.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:08
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my dad posted:Exception: The Meklar. Autorepair Well, yes, but it's still really strong for a very long time, and will let you take out fleets that are bigger and more numerous than you.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:29
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Fangz posted:Well, yes, but it's still really strong for a very long time, and will let you take out fleets that are bigger and more numerous than you. I wasn't saying you were wrong. 
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Mar 27, 2019 19:44
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Fangz posted:Well, yes, but it's still really strong for a very long time, and will let you take out fleets that are bigger and more numerous than you. I agree, I'm in the camp where instead of tons of little ships, you build one large cruiser and go destroy everything with it in the early game. Repairing your large ship is free, attrition whittles down small and tiny ships. Add in auto-repair and you're nearly invincible.
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Mar 28, 2019 00:16
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Krumbsthumbs posted:Monster battles usually aren't worth it in the early game because they drain resources from building up your current colonies and also might result in large losses to your fleet, which will give a signal to the AI to jump you. The AI will avoid planets with monsters for a fairly long time and Crystals are one of the stronger monsters in the game, so don't worry about not being able to take that system. Hmm. All I can say to this is it doesn't fit with my limited experience. I don't know the various monsters well enough, but I've seen AIs take down monster systems early - definitely by about the point we are at now or not much further in - and I've been able to take down the weaker ones with a trio of missile frigates before. I definitely didn't know what I was getting into with the Space Crystal - that's a lack of monster knowledge issue - but I've started maybe 10 and probably less serious MOO2 games and in at least half of them it was necessary to take down a monster to get a decent start. So one of the very few Things I Know(tm) about this game is how important that is - and now you're telling me I'm wrong about that too. Which is fine, but I really shows how much I have to learn here! Fangz posted:If you've retreated your missiles replenish, while enemy ship damage does not, and you can come back the next turn and do the same thing again. This is very good at cheesing the AI. Enemy ships don't auto-repair between combats? Martian posted:You could try stopping the Silicoids with missile bases on all colonies that they can reach and a few small ships as deterrence. Getting the Meklar involved might also help I could … if I had planetary missile bases. Picked automated factory per usual, so unless I trade for it - Meklar only for that right now - I'm SOL.
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Mar 28, 2019 08:06
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Thotimx posted:Enemy ships don't auto-repair between combats? Ships only repair between combats if they are at one of their own colonies, if they have self repair (i.e., are Meklar or have an automated repair unit installed), or if they have the Advanced Damage Control technology.
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Mar 28, 2019 08:23
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early game defenses help a lot. If you can get a starbase and missile base along with a couple of frigates or destroyers, you're generally good unless the enemy massively outtechs you. Generally if your defenses are better they'll settle to blockade your world. As teh others have said, early game missile boats with whatever space is left for PD is almost always a good choice to have.
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Mar 28, 2019 08:56
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But missile bases are still not an option, so the point is moot. There's variety in space monsters, and the space crystal is the toughest. The mistake was definitely to fight it in the first place, but it's too late for regrets now. You should check which worlds are in range of the Silicoids, that way you know what you need to defend. I don't think they can reach Callisto. I don't quite remember, I think you only need one star base per system. If you build a few ships to help augment Sol's defenses, the only loss should be the outpost at Praxis, Trying the hit and run tactic proposed by others in the thread might help your whittle down their forces enough that they agree to peace to stop the attrition.
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Mar 28, 2019 09:08
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Thotimx posted:I could … if I had planetary missile bases. Picked automated factory per usual, so unless I trade for it - Meklar only for that right now - I'm SOL. Anyway, star bases (of which you need one for every planet btw) probably aren't an option this early on most worlds because of their high cost. So small missile boats and hit-and-run tactics it is I guess. Teching up two levels in the Chemistry tree ASAP so you can use the MIRV modification on Nuclear Missiles might be worth it. For what it's worth, I agree with you on taking out monsters as early as possible because getting great worlds earlier is always better -especially if it's a Gaia world or it has natives or a splinter colony, since these give you a massive early boost. It's just that it's too early to take out a Crystal. I generally use four destroyers armed with six 2-shot MIRV nuclear missiles to do that, losing one or two in the process.
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Mar 28, 2019 10:02
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It's worth noting that once ships are on there way to one of your systems, diplomacy seems to work but is entirely irrelevant. I've gotten the AI to agree to a non-aggression pact while waiting for its ships to arrive, and they just went "SNEAK ATTACK". And I don't think AI empires get diplomatic penalties with each other over breaking pacts.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:43
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MaskedHuzzah posted:It's worth noting that once ships are on there way to one of your systems, diplomacy seems to work but is entirely irrelevant. I've gotten the AI to agree to a non-aggression pact while waiting for its ships to arrive, and they just went "SNEAK ATTACK". And I don't think AI empires get diplomatic penalties with each other over breaking pacts. This is true, they can even attack and invade your world while an alliance is in effect. Yes, this did happen to my brother, he was playing on impossible mode and winning, his AI ally attacked and tried to invade one of his worlds (failed anyways) and was somehow still allied to him afterwords.
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Mar 29, 2019 09:57
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UI Wrap-Up The last bottom-row button in the GCI is Fleet Ops. From here we can scrap/relocate - I think it's the only place in the game to do that from. We can also see details on the ships in the lower-left, and control where they move to in the upper-left. For some reason, when this Recon reached its current system (Phakt) it auto-decided to go back to Sol, 6 turns away. I've tried changing that but I can't - that's not related to this screen but I'm confused and annoyed by it. Anyway, the arrows cycle between the fleets, we can filter by support/combat ships and connect to the leaders screen if we want to move personnel around, etc. Different layout, similar functionality to the MOO fleet screen. It's worth noting that this Recon has a Veteran crew, presumably due to all the places it's been and how long it's been flying around out there.  Our combat group, such as it is. The Cheetahs have much less skilled crews.  The general stuff under the GAME button at the top of the GCI. This here is basic and self-explanatory.  The Settings give more control over game flow. Most are fairly self-explanatory. ** End of Turn Wait being on ensures you are brought back into the game each turn. If it's off, the game will keep processing until something important happens, so you can get skip through sparse periods, esp. in the early-game, this way. I'm always afraid I'll miss something if I do that. ** Auto Select Colony skips the 'system' window and takes you directly to your colony in a system when you click on it. So that's a nice QoL option.  And now let's circle back to race customization since we've gotten through the major game features and systems on at least an introductory level. The left column is all racial economics stuff. Population growth is self-evident, the others are per-citizen production modifiers. Combat and spying is in the middle, and then there are the governments which bear further explanation. You have a basic starting type and then can later research an advanced one - each advanced government is an improved version of what you started with. ** Feudal sucks. 20% morale malus unless you have a Barracks, 8 turns to assimilate any conquered population, populations will on the other hand instantly assimilate if conquered, anarchy which results in a 50% morale penalty will occur if you lose your capital, and ships cost a third less but research points are halved which is a massive penalty ** Dictatorship gains a 10% boost to defensive spies, has the same no-Barracks morale penalty and assimilation time - except that their populations don't auto-assimilate. The anarchy penalty is only 35% as well. ** Democracy has a 10% defensive spy penalty, but gains 50% to research and cash production. Democracies are forbidden the option of exterminating conquered populations, and only take 4 turns to assimilate them. The anarchy penalty for losing a capital is just 20%. ** Unification gives a 15% bonus to defensive spies. They also ignore morale and have 50% bonus to food and industry. Capitals are irrelevant to them so anarchy is not a thing, but they have a long assimilation time - 20 turns after conquering a hostile population. Specials The final column has a whole bunch of stuff, a few of which have come up already. ** Low-G World - -10 ground combat, gravity penalties on even 'normal' worlds. ** High-G World - No gravity penalties, +1 HP for all ground combat units. ** Aquatic - Boosts to food and max. population of 'water worlds'. Effectively this means Tundra/Swamp are treated as Terran, Terran/Ocean are treated as Gaia for those purposes. ** Subterranean - +10 ground combat when on the defensive, significantly increased maximum populations. ** Large/Rich/Poor/Artifacts homeworlds do what it says on the tin. ** Cybernetic - Along with the mentioned autorepair ship ability, they need only half the normal food, sustaining themselves with industry for the other half. ** Lithovore - Consume only industry, requiring no food whatsoever. ** Repulsive - Can't form diplomatic agreements, 50% increased hiring costs for leaders, doubled assimilation time for hostile populations. ** Charismatic - Diplomatic geniuses, doubling the effect of positive actions, halving the impact of negatives, 50% increased chance of any proposal being accepted. Assimilation rates are also doubled, leader hiring is half the normal price - they get a lot of stuff. ** Uncreative/Creative - Already discussed. ** Tolerant - All planets are considered Terran in terms of max. population, and they ignore pollution completely. ** Fantastic Traders - +25% trade income, doubled income from sales of surplus food and trade goods. ** Telepathic - +25% diplomacy, +10% to all spies ... oh, and they can mind control planets. Ethereals have nothing on these guys. ** Lucky - Increased chance of good events, never suffer from negative ones, and the Antarans tend to ignore them even. ** Omniscient - The entire galaxy is instantly explored at game start, and no fleet can avoid their gaze regardless of stealth tech etc. ** Trans Dimensional - These things 'fold the fabric of space with their minds'. Oh, is that all. +2 warp speed, +4 combat speed for their ships results. ** Warlord - More experienced ship crews, doubled amounts of ground troops, and +2 command points from every colony. Yeah, we're not going to see all of these. But this is the menu to choose from. Analysis I was going to go into a final MOO2 rant at this point, but I'll save that for another time. Clearly the race customization option gives a lot of different choices. Unfortunately it's sort of trying to do mutually exclusive things at once. The races were clearly built on their MOO counterparts and then the point values balanced based on that - each stock race has the same default Picks value of 0, 100% Score. The problem with that is it creates an inherently unbalanced system, since the original races are not equal and were never intended to be. I have no issue with unbalanced races in general, but when you make a points system and attach scoring to it then it's kind of important to balance it - and this is not. At all. Lithovore, Subterranean, Creative and Tolerant just to name a few are absurdly OP. I wish MOO2 had picked one side of this or the other - if you want these kind of abilities, you really can't try to balance them. That just isn't going to happen. They've got to come with some inherent, major downside in and of themselves.  If I'm good enough, I'll eventually end up in the Hall of Fame. According to random breathless youtube videos, the Impossible record is 21-22k. The manual says your score is calculated thusly: Manual posted:• The quicker you win, the higher your score; each turn the game takes subtracts from your total score. Also, you get a boost for doing the Antaran ending, which we'll get to later.
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Mar 30, 2019 00:13
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Future Runs Poll Since we will only be sampling a few of the many race customizations possible, I'm going to open things up now to voting on what we should look at. Some people are clearly fans of certain customized possibilities, while others have mentioned they think stock races are the way to go. Here's what I've got in mind: ** Huge Galaxy/Average Tech Start/Hard difficulty/Antaran Ending This is going to be the next game I do. Hard because I want to show off the Antaran stuff and ... well, the odds of me doing that on Impossible successfully are not great. Eventually I will try at least one of these on max difficulty. I also am going Creative on this one, not because I like that, but because I want to do some of the obscenely OP late-game options which means I want to be able to choose from all of them. So the choices here are basically stock Psilons or some custom combo involving Creative and other choices, be they positive or negative. ** Small Galaxy/Advanced Tech The rest is up to you, a MOO2 knifefight here. This will be either the third game or the last one. ** Medium Galaxy/?? Just to do a different size, but aside from that I have no dog in this fight. ** Why Three More Games? Because MOO2 was actually a close second in the poll and I want to get to the game that actually won it before I die of old age. Playing one game on each galaxy size seemed enough to me to give a bit of range of possible game experiences without turning this into the second volume of the Encylopedia Oriona. Ok, so from anyone who wants to vote I need up to three game setting/race custom options here. We can switch up the galaxy age etc., stock races XYZ, use your imagination. This poll closes when the first game ends, so you've got some time. Just let me know what you want, and I'll blunder my way through from there.
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Mar 30, 2019 00:24
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One should be with a research race, one with a production race, and one a funny gimmick run. If you're going creative on the first run, then you might as well take democracy and whatever else you want to spend 5 points on and go maximum science. Small advanced start is a good setup for a gimmick run, whatever it might be. Elerian/Bulrathi hybrid focused on boarding? Then take impossible difficulty with a production race. Unification, tolerant, cybernetic for a Borg run MK2?
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Mar 30, 2019 00:42
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I feel like two "stock" race runs and one custom would be the way to go. Perhaps grab Psilon in a smaller galaxy for an "easy" run and to show off as much as possible, then a less-powerful species like the Darloks or Sakkra to a challenge run, and for the custom run do a species that's as opposite of the previous two as possible.
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Mar 30, 2019 01:35
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Obviously we should show off our new lovecraftian friends.
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Mar 30, 2019 06:55
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Now that the specifics of the races have been covered, here are some ADVANCED PRO STRATS that can be used (I do not expect to see them used, they're here for curiosity's sake). One of them requires you to know that there's two kinds of advantage/disadvantage, which I have seen called "genetic" or "empire" A genetic modifier is inherent to the colonist, an empire one is inherent to the empire. To use Psilons as a vanilla example, they're Low G, Creative, and get a bonus to science. Low G and the science bonus are genetic, so if you capture some psilons, they're still feeble and need low gravity, but pump out tons of science. Being creative is a social one, so capturing psilons does not allow you to start grabbing every single technology in a tree. So what you do is take some nice Empire advantages (Creative or Warlord, poo poo like that) and offset it with some early survivable Genetic disadvantages (reduced growth, Low-G homeworld, et cetera). Then as soon as you conquer another race, you start replacing all of your citizens with theirs. Did you just capture a planet of Klackons? Well, good work, because you get to keep being Subterranean and Creative and they get to keep their food and industry bonuses! And then you just replace all of your own citizens with the Klackons, usually via shipping your excess weak citizens to lovely (or even already full) planets and trucking in new citizens from your ant farm. It's the same kind of idea as "ugh I get all kinds of bonuses, what am I going to do with these vanilla-rear end humans" and just bombing the poo poo out of them, but in reverse. I do not expect to see this one in a narrative LP because holy poo poo. Another involves decoding some of the jargon that was flying around earlier. "Unitol" is short for "Universal, Tolerant." The idea is that you take the Universal government type for the production bonuses, and the Tolerant trait, and then use your enhanced production to crank out colony ships. Which, thanks to being Tolerant, can land drat near anywhere. This allows for very rapid expansion. It's usually offset by penalties to ground combat (because you can always bomb a planet until the local defenses are lowered enough to capture it) or ship attack (offense grows faster than defense anyway to the point that -20 doesn't matter) or Repulsive (the computer's a bunch of ball-busting backstabbing motherfuckers anyway, especially on higher difficulties, may as well give up the pretense of being able to negotiate). Another bit of jargon that was coming around was Unitele. Similar deal, but because you're Telepathic instead of Tolerant, you don't barf colony ships on every rock around a plasma ball, you find rocks other people have taken and make them work for you. You just need a big enough ship and for the planet to not be occupied by telepaths, which you can mostly ensure by using the Elerian portrait, ensuring that the only race that can be telepathic is under your control. If there's a telepathic governor at the planet, you can't take it over, but if you find a planet like that...well, you did bring cleansing atomic fire to rain from the heavens, right? But they can expand very quickly once they encounter another empire, because they don't need to build troop transports that slowly get used up as you roll over an empire. You just click "mind control" and presto, you now own one fully loyal planet. Most of the other PRO STRATS revolve around "pick a schtick and run with it," and as long as the schtick isn't kind of dumb it should work out. For example, nweismuller's second LP of MOO2 with a custom race called the Narestan took hits to all aspects of combat and an espionage hit too, but with a Democratic government and a bonus to science and money, was capable of researching the dickens out of things and then using their massive cash reserves to buy stuff out in a hurry when needed. As for Creative, while I do think it's a powerful pick, I don't think it gets super good until later in the game. The earlier levels of the tech tree do force you to make choices, that's true, but several of them have an obvious right answer, such as Battle Pods (boarding with shipboard marines is a gimmick you build around that requires several supporting techs; survival pods are just automatically on all ships but only matter if you win the fight in which the Leader-equipped ship was sunk). It's not until much later that you start having to make painful choices, such as "do I want a thing I can install in my ships for +50% beam damage, or do I want the thing that boosts all ship space by 25%, or do I want the weird gimmick system?" As noted, you can just trade for or steal things you didn't choose to research, but also as noted, that assumes that anybody else actually did. If everybody chooses Augmented Engines or Fusion Drives, then the secrets of the Fusion Bomb will be forever unknown (as they will also be if the only people that have them get wiped out before they can be bargained for or stolen). And since I'm thinking of it, an idea for a custom race: Creative Democratic with +1 research (18 picks), paid for by a hit to Ground Combat and being Repulsive (8 points of disadvantage). You should be able to science it up pretty well and get good money flow. Nobody will invite you to sit at their table, but that won't matter once you use your crazy superships to conquer their stupid puny tables. Just make sure you survive until you get to that point...
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Mar 30, 2019 10:56
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^^^ 2 points: Subterranean is tied to the species, so you can jam extra Sakkra into "full" planets. Survival pods only require one of your ships survive the fight, a frigate running on the first turn can save all your leaders. For the small galaxy go maximum space combat: Feudal Repulsive Warlord Trans-dimensional +max defence +max offence If the AI gives you research labs and ecm to start with you could even win.
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Mar 30, 2019 11:21
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I'd love to see you have to make do with an Uncreative run to see what you make of it. Maybe also stack Feudal on that just so you have to beg, borrow, and steal everything.
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Mar 30, 2019 11:37
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inflatablefish posted:I'd love to see you have to make do with an Uncreative run to see what you make of it. Maybe also stack Feudal on that just so you have to beg, borrow, and steal everything. I too would love to see an Uncreative run. MOO2 is kind of badly balanced when it comes to Technology choices, and you often end up picking the exact same tech every time because it is the best by default, so it'd be fun to see a game where you have to bargain, steal, and conquer your way up the tech tree instead.
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Mar 30, 2019 13:42
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MechaCrash posted:Another bit of jargon that was coming around was Unitele. Similar deal, but because you're Telepathic instead of Tolerant Just so it's clear, the biggest drawback of Unification is the 20 turn assimilation time per captured colonist. Telepathic just instantly converts them all to your side, which is what makes it OP. You naturally get a bunch of spying bonuses with those two choices, so taking a penalty to spying makes the combo less expensive too.
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Mar 30, 2019 14:54
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GuavaMoment posted:Just so it's clear, the biggest drawback of Unification is the 20 turn assimilation time per captured colonist. Telepathic just instantly converts them all to your side, which is what makes it OP. You naturally get a bunch of spying bonuses with those two choices, so taking a penalty to spying makes the combo less expensive too. You can take low-g and ground combat penalties also.
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Mar 30, 2019 17:37
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MechaCrash posted:Most of the other PRO STRATS revolve around "pick a schtick and run with it," and as long as the schtick isn't kind of dumb it should work out. For example, nweismuller's second LP of MOO2 with a custom race called the Narestan took hits to all aspects of combat and an espionage hit too, but with a Democratic government and a bonus to science and money, was capable of researching the dickens out of things and then using their massive cash reserves to buy stuff out in a hurry when needed. For what it's worth, the Narestans are, in some ways, inspired by what the default races did with the Klackons. Both are races designed to leverage government bonuses, since the multiplier for the government applies to the inherent bonuses. And, thus, conceptually, opposite ends of a 'collectivism'-'individualism' axis for nature of the races involved.
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Mar 30, 2019 17:52
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lol
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Mar 30, 2019 19:21
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All Cramped Up and Nowhere to Go Takeaways from the thread contributions on this game: ** Aggressive early Silicoids suck. That's familiar. ** I should built a bunch of Plantetary Missile Bases that I don't have access to and have no means to acquire. ** I should follow the mutually exclusive paths of building one big ship and a bunch of small missile ones to try and fend off/deter any further attacks. ** Too early for Space Crystal. With this I definitely concur.  SD 3511.7. Here's what we've got going on as we resume. I want to get a couple more Colony Bases done in Callisto to expand our foothold there. I do think that is out of range for the space rocks, but I still want a Starbase at Callisto IV eventually to expand our maximum fleet capacity. Sol II is our population incubator at the moment, and Sol I is going to finish the Space Academy, then get more Cheetah-class frigates to put up whatever kind of front we can against the Silicoids. I've been dumping all our effort into industry for a while now, but I'm splitting things up more now. I don't want to get too far behind in research, which frankly may have already happened. We don't have anything to trade with the Meklar, but ...  They do agree to join with us against Geode. This could backfire if they lose territory to them, but I'm hoping it just distracts and buys us time. The spy situation is fine - no active spies for either of our rivals at the moment. The next turn I see the fleet that smashed the outpost at Praxis heading back to Cryslon. At least they don't plan on storming us immediately.  I was initially inclined to turn this down. I plan on developing multiple planets in Callisto though - the aggregate benefit across them should be considerable. Director Felina the Naturalist is therefore hired and appointed to that task. 5-turn travel time before this takes effect. Environmentalist reduces pollution by 30%, Farming Leader gives that boost to food output.  It'll need food in the short-term, but this gives us four active colonies. ** SD 3512.4 - Space Academy finished in Sol. Capsule Construction (Battle Pods) research was finished the next turn. *screwed up and forgot to screenshot the next tech screen* I agonized over this one. There are multiple possibilities. We're going to be in trouble if we can't defend ourselves in the short term, and in the long-term the economy is more important. Armor, ship range, soil enrichment, I considered all of these. Trying to blend short and long-term together, I take the Fighter Garrison for planetary defense. Spaceports boosts planetary income by 50% and are a key economic tech; the Armor Barracks basically gives us tanks in addition to infantry for ground combat. I've already started with the fighter theme though, and this will get us closer to our next industry-boosting advance. We've got enough going on now that I'm regularly micro-managing citizen labor allocation to make the most of everything, ensure we have just enough food, etc.  This strikes me as a good deal for both sides. Battle Pods are more expensive research, but we definitely need the protection. It doesn't seem to me to be immediately useful due to the space required, but when we build larger ships I'll want them most likely. SD 3513.3. The Silicoids have taken Praxis, giving them a half-dozen systems. Meklar have three, we have two. We've seen no further aggression and have rebuilt the lost frigates. Callisto's last colony base will be done soon. I need to try to expand further to have any hope of keeping pace, but that's easier said than done.  Here's the current situation, featuring that second zoom level that nweismuller pointed out was a thing. Options for expansion: ** Callisto I (Large, Radiated, 5 max. pop, Abundant) ** Callisto V is the small barren poor useless one. ** Galileo has a Medium Barren Poor and a Small Toxic Abundant. ** Iras - Small Desert Abundant ** Hera - Two Gas Giants and a Tiny Toxic Poor Low-G. ** Rav - Eventually, when we can handle the space crystal. As mentioned, Hera is a good candidate for an outpost - except Silicoids. If I send our ships there to try to bait the rocks into a fight, I'm leaving Sol vulnerable. And I think that only gets us that one red star in terms of range. Callisto I could be a cheap population incubator, except that Sol II and to soon-to-be-colonized Callisto II (Ultra Rich, Radiated) are already in that role. I'll have my two productive planets feeding three others at that point, and be stretching the limits of food - unless I want to just not produce anything and purely expand, but that means research won't go anywhere. A Colony Ship for Iras is a big expense to not get all that much out of it, but extends our range while staying away from conflict, at least hopefully. I really don't see any great options here - we're boxed in and I'm sort of just looking for the least bad way forward.  The last 40 or so turns have not been good to humanity. Most of it is in Fleet, but we're getting beat in the other two categories as well by lesser margins. I'm not at all thrilled with it, but I decide to build an outpost at Hera first and send a couple of frigates with it. Iras will come later. I'm curious what others in the thread would do in this scenario.  We now have five planets. The 'extra' population, when we get it, will now go to building up Callisto III (Large Arid).   Robo-Miners are the next level in production advance, but I don't think I want to go there quite yet due to the expense. Due to our issues with wanting more space, I could go Deuterium Fuel Cells. Soil Enrichment is still out there, the improved drive systems are also a possibility. If I'm going to get the range I need to do it now, so Deuterium it is. Also at SD 3514.1, our new outpost ship is finished and departs with its escorts. Lacking anything better to do, I start putting funds into a colony ship for Iras. And then realize Hera is one parsec too far for the outpost ship to reach. And scrap a frigate to avoid the maintenance penalty. Grrr. All of that is an annoying and costly miscalculation.  Could have done without that. I try a tech trade with the Meklar but it's more difficult than I remember. I'm not sure of the why, but I used to be able to trade for just about anything. The only thing they are willing to part with is Heavy Armor. Good that I'm not able to abuse it, but I've still got to figure out how this works in the sequel.  These days Sol, which has switched over to a Fighter Garrison now, isn't building much. Still, this is good news.  Now we can deploy - and possibly get blown up - that outpost.  I could go Merculite Missiles for that whole MIRV thing, to start getting ready to hit Rav. We are increasingly using labor and freighters to ship food to Callisto III though, and the need for food is straining the galactic economy. I think we need Soil Enrichment next, so Advanced Biology it is. I could use Hydroponic Farms as a stopgap - I did invest the research in them - but I'd rather just have my farmers produce more. Jarred is now a Rear Admiral. This is three times at least now I've turned him down. Dude just won't get the message.  I get a NAP out of the cybernetics, but they stop short of entering a formal Alliance. It's better to have a weak friend than none at all - and they're still stronger than we are.  An asteroid belt. Yuck.  Oh, go away. You bug me.  Great googily moogily. Eight systems. The Silicoids have seven. Looks like those two are the main competitors, as we have to fit four other races into the rest of the map. Silicoids have three destroyers coming to eliminate our outpost on Hera. Which has now proven pointless. Getting anything useful beyond our two systems is probably down to Rav at this point.  Yessireee. K'kalak appears to have this galaxy by the tail, while it ain't looking good for the home team.  I've been saving up to recruit this guy for a while. The Megawealth trait will give us +10BC per year at no cost, which frankly makes it worth it by itself IMO. The land grab is basically over, and we're holding the short straw. Manipulating the diplomatic game and trying to find a way to gradually improve ourselves so we can get a word in edgewise seems to me to be the only play. If the rocks had better range we'd probably already be toast. I get the feeling we're living on borrowed time.
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Mar 31, 2019 10:31
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Thotimx posted:** I should follow the mutually exclusive paths of building one big ship and a bunch of small missile ones to try and fend off/deter any further attacks. It's more that you sort of need to commit to one, and both have advantages and drawbacks. Half-assing this doesn't help since it's mostly just the drawbacks. The gajillion tiny ships is explicitly better against space monsters unless you have tech far past the point where you're likely to actually be fighting space monsters.
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Mar 31, 2019 10:46
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