Let's Play Master of Orion Classic Part 6: Meklars part 6
Welcome back. Last time, we colonized several new worlds, nearly doubling our empire's size. We also had our first High Council meeting, voting for Emperor Of The Galaxy only no one had enough of a majority to win so the game continued, which is not surprising. We also found the humans and invented several new technologies, as well as finding Zortrium Armor on the Artifacts world of Willow.
This time, I intend to bomb Moro to dust and/or conquer Centauri, as well as generally try to tech up and build up our worlds.
To start us off, another refresher map of the Galaxy. Getting pretty crowded here.
Then I notice this Bulrathi fleet heading for Nordia. It says something that my response is more 'finally I get to know how those ship types are armed' than 'oh no I must defend Nordia'.
But just in case, I send the Ionstorms to intercept.
And have Nordia start on a second Missile Base.
Then I end the turn.
Turn start, as usual.
And there's not really anything to do but move straight to the next turn.
Where, predictably, the Bulrathi reach Nordia.
We scan their ships, of course. Their Colony Ships haven't changed since last we saw them so far as I can tell. The Sentinels are weaker than what we have been employing for ages, and the Claw is a longer range ship, overall, with that mix of Heavy Lasers and Nuclear Missiles, but it's largely inferior to their newer Tooth class ships.
Anyways, I fire the rockets and then I'm pretty sure I catch the signs that mark the enemy starting to retreat; the animation winds up sorta stuttering for a moment, as the AI issues its retreat order. It's hard to describe. It'd be the Colony Ships, if so.
So I charge out and fire more rockets. Well, the fact that I fire more rockets without anything coming at us tells you the other ships are probably retreating, too.
I took a screenshot of each retreating ship, but when it gets right down to it, showing off all three would just be dragging it out. They all fled, unscathed.
I accidentally closed the turn start without taking a screenshot. Not a big deal.
With the Bulrathi dealt with, I switch Nordia right back to ship construction.
And then I end the turn.
More Tormentors, as usual. We're just a single year out from the next election day.
We also could see a Force Fields breakthrough any turn now.
End the turn...
And our Colony Ship reaches Whynil.
Have a screenshot of the landing gear mid-deployment, this time.
Then the GNN reporter informs me of how I 'nearly control a majority of the galaxy'. Yeah, this won't continue too much longer, one way or another.
And here's that High Council meeting. I'll summarize, rather than doing a blow by blow set of screenshots.
It's us against the Mrrshan again. The Mrrshan vote themselves, the Psilons abstain, the Bulrathi vote the Mrrshan, as do the Darloks, and the Humans abstain. We vote ourselves.
Also we picked up a sixth vote while everyone else remained the same. End result, deadlock again.
And turn start proper.
Galos hits its industry maximum, and I decide to make it a third ship source.
I check on our tech and see we are now also able to achieve a breakthrough in Construction, making our Factories cheaper.
Then it comes time to deal with Whynil, population wise. I send 12m colonists from Primodius, 10m from Vigaroe, 4m from Nordia, and 3m from Zhardan.
Anyways, time to make good on eradicating Moro. I send these Tormentors off, planning to order the Ionstorm fleet at Nordia to go next turn for a simultaneous arrival.
Then I end the turn.
And have a spy or so destroy some of our factories at Esper. I should probably put effort into internal security at some point. (spoilers: I don't for the rest of the update at least.)
And then turn start proper.
First up, sending off the Ionstorms to meet the Tormentors at Moro. Offscreen, I send the newest batch of Tormentors from Galos to Moro to bulk up fleet counts for any future turns.
End turn...
'Sup. Enjoy Moro while you still have people there.
Nah, man, no peace. I'm going to bomb your planet to dust. Well, not literally, I'll just scour it of your people and then build my own Colony there.
War in Master of Orion is generally genocidal, just by mint of the system.
Turn start now that I've told the Bulrathi 'no'.
For some ungodly reason, they decide now is the time to send their fleet to attack Zhardan, right as my own is about to hit Moro.
I end the turn...
And my fleet arrives to Moro.
They still have four Missile Bases, with Duralloy Armor. Let's see how this goes.
I charge both ships forward, and then Moro fires its missiles. Excellent. I beat them at Initiative, then.
Then I creep the Tormentors forward one space, and unfortunately, the missiles are targeted at them. Blast. This is a screenshot taken when nothing is moving, you can take movement a tile at a time if you wish, without the units turn ending prematurely or whatever.
Anyways, I'm unhappy with the Tormentors being targeted since, you know, they are the newer, stronger ships, and in particular carry bombs to help us with that missile base killing. While not being particularly tougher than the Ionstorms. I mean, yes. They have more HP. But not, like, massive missile defense or shields or whatnot.
Another tile forward, and the missile pursues. This was taken right before the Tormentor properly entered the next tile.
Forward the last space, and the missiles arrive. Fortunately, they didn't manage a kill yet.
I move the Ionstorms up, the Missile Bases fire again, and things cycle back to the Tormentors.
Charge in, lose a Tormentor to the missiles. But it's my turn to fire now.
Down 12 HP in addition to the dead guy.
Missed the screenshots of my weapons fire this first time, but as you can see the 16 Tormentors killed about one and a third missile bases.
Then I move up the Ionstorms and fire away.
They did 44 damage, significantly less than the 102 the Tormentors did, in spite of greater numbers. Most of the damage we are doing comes from the relatively small count of Bombs the Tormentors carry.
Anyways, the Missile Bases fire on the Tormentors again and it comes back to our turn.
Tormentor Ion Cannon fire...
Followed by unleashing bombs. You can see a few scattered bombs, it looks much more impressive animated due to the fact that they launch a shower of bombs for a good bit of time. By contrast, beam weapons are usually a single relatively brief shot.
38 damage from the bombs this time. We did more last turn, but the Tormentors overall attacks this turn did knock out the second Missile Base. Two down, two to go.
Also, the Missile Bases missed with all their missiles this turn. Neat.
The Ion Storms fire for 46 damage this turn, taking out the third Missile Base. I'd like to point out that they are doing similar damage as the Nuclear Bombs, while being a more advanced tech, eating more space, and being more than six times as many fired each turn, between load out differences and ship counts. Bombs are important.
Tormentors fire...
And unleash bombs.... in a remarkably poorly timed screenshot, given I can't find said bombs.
But that round of attacks finished the last Missile Base.
Anyways, bombing time.
Note the fact that the population and factories are down in number. Every 400 points of damage done to Missile Bases kills 1m citizens, and every 100 points done destroys a factory. Any fire done to the planet after all Missile Bases are destroyed is twice as fast at killing people and wrecking factories, not counting the fact that the planet no longer benefits from the shields of the Missile Bases themselves. That causes the damage itself to be higher, naturally. I believe bombardment at this step is treated as some number of turns spent attacking, but if I am right, I don't know exactly how many.
Regardless, we explode all the factories and kill another 34 million people by bombarding. One more turn will depopulate it outright.
And the turn start proper arrives.
I switch Galos to building Colony Ships, for now, since I aim to take Moro once it's depopulated.
Then I check on tech, and any turn now we could get the breakthrough that grants us Sub-Light Drives.
End the turn...
Bombs away.
And the colony at Moro is destroyed outright.
And then the peace part of the turn.
Which I immediately end.
And meet a returning Bulrathi fleet at Moro.
It was one of the Tooth class ships we drove off earlier, which immediately retreats, so. Well, nothing we could do to stop it.
Oh hey. First spy success on the Mrrshan. Sweet.
And so we add Fusion Bombs to our arsenal.
And then lose more factories on Esper.
Also the Mrrshan are none too happy about me stealing from them.
Turn start proper. Time to take Moro.
We send the new Colony Ship off immediately, of course. alongside the Tormentors that are around. In general, I kept sending more Tormentors off from Galos to Moro over the past few turns.
I check on the Planets screen out of curiosity, and see we are now turning a trade profit. A small one, but it should grow.
Anyways, next up, I set all our newer worlds to actually terraform.
This can serve as a bit of a refresher on said worlds, I suppose.
There's not much to say about them, and perhaps I should have skipped a few screenshots, but I figured it'd be nice to see how things are coming along.
Esper, in particular, I probably should have set to terraform much sooner, so there is something to say here.
Then this catches my eye. A Mrrshan huge ship. Given the degree of difference in sizes, this is likely worth a small fleet on its own.
Anyways. I end my turn, and...
The Bulrathi reach Zhardan.
None of the ships are new. I'll be honest, I had originally intended to do a blow by blow of this, but it's basically just the Bulrathi ships charging in and trying to kill me, while everything but the Colony Ships dies sooner or later, so...
There, the end of the battle. The Colony Ships retreated when they ran out of missiles and everything else died, and we were never in danger of losing a single missile base.
And then we make our Force Fields Breakthrough. With Class 4 Deflector Shields, our Missile Bases will now be immune to Ion Cannons, Heavy Lasers, and Nuclear Missiles, just for a start.
We once again get only one option, the next tier of Deflector Shields, skipping one of my favorite special systems. I'll talk about it when we actually see it, for now we have no choice so we take our only option and keep getting better ship shields.
And then the galactic news chips in. The news?
The random number gods hate us, apparently. There are three events arguably worse than this. And only arguably.
Turn start proper, and at this point I realize I didn't switch Galos away from Colony Ships. Whoops.
I do that first thing to not forget again, and then go look at the crisis.
Ah, Industrial Accident, how I hate thee. The manual talks as if it just floods the planet with waste, which it does, but it also permanently changes the planet to the Radiated Environment type. Note that the waste is reducing the 'planet size', cutting into max pop, which will cause casualties over time.
Industrial Accident spiking the planet's Waste value in specific is exactly as if you left Waste not cleaned up, although it's one of only two ways you are likely to see these toxic waste barrel icons in actual play.
Right, let's get to it. Accident status, like Plague, is listed here.
The fact that putting our entire industrial effort into eco just predicts T-Form says something. And that something is not a positive thing. Vigaroe will be pretty worthless while it sorts this out. I mean, it's nothing that can threaten our station in the galaxy, really, but still.
Also visible in this screenshot, a Bulrathi Transport fleet overlapping with a Bulrathi warship fleet. They appear to have tried to send colonists to reinforce Moro.
Speaking of, I'd like to transport the population at Vigaroe off to Centauri to avoid taking casualties over exceeding the planet size, but you can't send colonists to systems that are considered unexplored or that are uncolonized, and just having things in scanner range doesn't explore them. Well, it does with a tech we don't have, but we don't have that tech, so that's a moot point in this situation.
So I send these Tormentors off to assault Centauri. I also send the batch from Galos to arrive about the same time. The Ionstorms will stay to guard my soon to exist Moro Colony, while the newer model Tormentors will see about getting Centauri's defenses out of the way.
I open the Galaxy Map to point out that Vigaroe is now a Radiated world here, too, and that strictly we shouldn't be able to be there.
End the turn...
And the GNN comes back with news that we cleared up the waste. But of course, barring advanced tech we don't have, the damage to Vigaroe's environment is permanent. This is why I consider it arguably the single worst event type, because it unavoidably and permanently weakens your empire. Certain events can outright destroy your worlds, but there is always something you can do about it. Not so for Industrial Accident.
The Colony Ships, and only the Colony Ships beat our Tormentors in initiative.
You may also note we brought a Colony Ship with.
Since it is unarmed, it can't contribute to the fight, and I'm not planning to bomb the planet clear to colonize it. Honestly, I want to scrap the design once we take Moro, which the fact that we haven't yet is why I still have this one, but on the other hand this is gonna wind up letting me show something off.
I run the Tormentors forward, and then the rest of the Darlok fleet gets a turn. I'm not sure if we have had them before, but those seven batches of rocks about are, I believe, meant to be asteroids, and make that spot on the battlefield impassable, creating a certain amount of potential for chokepoints and the like.
The Colony Ship has no place in the battle, so I order it to retreat. Retreat as an action is by ship type, not fleet wide, incidentally.
Anyways, the Colony Ships move forward and fire, and I charge my Tormentors in. This was meant to be a screenshot of them getting hit, but it's kinda not timed right to see damage or anything. Oh well.
You can just see what it probably the tail-end of the Colony Ships Ion Cannon fire at the Tormentors. Remember, higher initiative means they get to shoot in reaction to us coming into range.
Ion Cannons and missiles all together only removed 18 HP, leaving the first Tormentor half dead. We can do better than that.
In one attack we do 400 damage and instantly kill them, which reminds me that you can't do overkill damage. If you attack with overwhelming firepower, enough to, for example, kill a fleet ten times over, you will 'merely' do exactly their health in damage. I mentioned this last update, but it's actually this fight that reminded me.
Anyways, the Venoms move up and attack, and the planet fires its missiles. I believe this was at the very start of our Colony Ships retreat animation. Regardless...
It's gone by this point. Here we start to get into the more complex aspects of the combat system. I run the Tormentors up and have them fire on the Cobra, killing it...
And then I tell them to drop bombs on the planet. Ships can fire distinct weapon types on different targets. IE you can fire your Lasers and Heavy Lasers on different targets, in principal. I think it might actually work on the basis of the ships weapon slots, and not the weapon types per se, but regardless. You do, however, order units to fire everything in one click with no option to pick specific weapons to fire. But since bombs don't work on ships, the game used the Ion Cannons only when attacking the Cobra, and we had the bombs left to hit the planet.
This can also come up as relevant if you finish off the first target with one weapon and have others left to fire, eg if you have a ship with Ion Cannons and Lasers fire at something, and kill them with the Ion Cannons without firing the Lasers, or when firing a mix of longer range and shorter range weapons, eg if you fire Heavy Lasers at a target at range 2 your range 1 Lasers or Ion Cannons won't fire, and remain available to use on other ships. Anyways.
I wipe out the Venoms...
And then the game sits here waiting for more orders. See, I could bomb the planet with my bombs before ending the Tormentors turn, thus doing pop damage and wrecking factories. It'd be dumb, given I want to take their factories, but we could do it.
Instead I end the Tormentors turn, thus ending the battle.
And then we colonize Moro.
Go us.
Next we recieve the report that we have explored Centauri. It is a smaller planet than I expected.
We could bomb it, but I like I said, I want to take the factories, so I pass. Don't want to blast away the factories and at that population it shouldn't be too hard to take.
Then we have several Tormentors finish, as the turn start arrives.
This is a somewhat unfortunately timed screenshot. Because we are trying to send more than the planet can support, the game is warning us of that fact with flashing red letters- you can tell the message is there, even though you can't see it, because of the extra space between the word 'Transports' and the slider bar. This screenshot must have been at a frame where the letters were gone. It'll factor in friendly population in its estimates of this, if for example sending to another one of our own worlds, but not enemy colonists. Both in the sense that they don't count against us, but also in the sense that it doesn't consider likely casualties.
It lets us do it anyways, though. It is a warning, nothing more.
Anyways, remember how I said the Colony Ship would let us show something off? If a ship type retreats from a battle you win, it will remain in orbit rather than setting a course to a friendly star system.
But we have no use for the Colony Ship, really, so I go to scrap it.
And that is eight BC saved per turn. Not a huge amount, but not nothing either.
We send 17 million colonists from Vigaroe, 7 million from Nordia, and 9 million from Zhardan now that we own Moro.
Then I check on our research. Weapons technology breakthrough is now possible. It'll be good to have Merculite Missiles for our Missile Bases.
Then I check and note that it's been almost twenty years since we had a spy on the Bulrathi. They have fairly good odds of having something new by now, so I'll want to resume spying on them.
The Darloks, meanwhile, have picked up Class 3 Deflector Shields and Battle Suits, both of which are techs not present in our research list. They also got Nuclear Engines at some point, which will make them a fair bit more significant fleets wise, at least once they design a ship with those engines.
Class 3 Deflector Shields are just the step between Class 2 and 4 of the same, but Battle Suits need an introduction. They aren't hugely interesting, being the first in a series of three dedicated ground combat techs in Construction, providing +10 to Ground Combat scores for the owner's troops, assuming you don't have either of the later techs in the series (which override with their larger bonus, rather than stacking) and having no other effect. Our Personal Deflector Shields are essentially exactly the same other than field and which techs they are able to stack with. We can stack the two lines together for Ground Combat boosts, just not the techs within either line with the other members of their line. Battle Suits are, however, a somewhat more advanced tech, being Tech Level 11 where Personal Deflector Shields are Tech Level 8.
Anyways, since the Mrrshan only have one tech left that I want, and it's not all that critical of one, and our trade is turning a profit, I decide to stop spending on new spies in their empire in the hopes of keeping the trade bonus around for longer. Not something I consider super critical, but still nice to have. I also, in turn, start spending on spying on the Bulrathi again to try to nab whatever they might have, or at least discover that they don't have anything.
That done, I end the turn.
And the Bulrathi attack Moro.
I decide to order the Tormentors to retreat, and send in only the older Ionstorms, but...
The Bulrathi, themselves, promptly retreat, making it irrelevant which ships I tried to send forward.
And then we get Sub-Light Drives. Excellent.
Dotomite Crystals remains a tech we already could have gone for, but Energy Pulsars and Fusion Drives are new. Energy Pulsars are special, to say the least.
They are a ship special system, and each turn you fire them they strike all hostile ships within one tile in any direction, simultaneously. Not only would they hit eg a group of Venoms and a group of Darlok Colony Ships in the same shot if both were adjacent, but they strike at the maximum HP of affected ships, and not the current. They are affected by shields, but the damage they do of 5+1 per two ships is one single hit, thus as the number of ships in the battle group increases, shields are increasingly meager protection. They also can't miss, skipping attack and defense outright.
At the kind of technology quality the galaxy sits at, they'd be able to easily kill entire fleets of small size ships in one or two shots, and rip through arbitrary numbers of medium size ships in short order. Good Pulsar equipped ships would force either use of longer range weapons like missiles or larger ships that have the max HP to take a beating.
However, since all our neighbors have been favoring a mix of medium and large ships, slanted towards large, they are not of significant immediate interest. Nor could they help us against the Guardian, as it is one very large ship indeed.
Still, it bears commentary that they are one of the techs that can flip the table on the typical preference for small ships, completely ignoring their defensive advantages and punishing them for their low per ship hit points.
Fusion Drives are, by comparison, boring but practical as a choice. The next tier after Sub-Light Drives, they'll let us make even faster ships. I go for them, because ships that are dodgier and tactically and strategically faster is always useful to have. Might even help us kill the Guardian.
Anyways, I continue to instruct our troops to not bomb Centauri.
And the Bulrathi transport fleet that I noted earlier gets murdered by our defense fleet.
Er. 2 Ionstorms? I think I know what happened, but whoops.
Yep. You can see that they are in orbit of Vigaroe. Thing is, ship construction effort is stored until the planet actually manages to build a ship to spend it. If the currently selected ship in the planet's ship selection box can be built, it expends those points of production to do so.
We left Vigaroe on building Colony Ships previously, which require significantly more production points to build. But then we scrapped that design, and it automatically cycled to one of our remaining designs, in this case the Ionstorm. And then built them, because it apparently had a couple hundred or so BC lying around, and we didn't change it to anything else.
This isn't catastrophic, given how things are going so well for us, but it is a mistake (I should, at the least, have switched it over to Tormentors). This can also come up with worlds set to something where miniaturization drags the cost down below whatever the planet has lying around, where it abruptly builds something while you invest no further effort into construction.
Anyways, I chuck another 11 million Colonists at Centauri, because the Darloks having Battlesuits has me expecting the fight to be a bit bloodier than I was when sending the previous wave. Note that the game isn't giving me the flashing warning this time, which you can tell because this time there isn't that extra space. The game doesn't factor in any other transport fleets you have heading for the target when deciding whether to warn you or not.
I end the turn...
And continue to instruct our fleet to hold fire.
Fleet production screen as usual...
And then I decide to send the Tormentors at Moro off to reinforce the fleet at Centauri, while leaving the Ionstorms to guard Moro.
Then I end the turn...
And we make a Construction tech breakthrough. Cheaper factories is always good.
We have several new options, more thanks to Zortrium than because of the tech we just researched. Improved Industrial Tech 7 is tech level 13, to Zortrium's 17.
Improved Industrial Tech 6 is the next iteration of what we just researched, naturally. It'd make our factories yet cheaper, of course.
Armored Exoskeleton is the next tech in the Battle Suit line. It gives our troops a +20 bonus, and the rest of that description is pure fluff/lore.
Reduced Industrial Waste 40% is the next tier of waste reduction techs. Nothing super exciting, but definitely useful.
Still, I go for Armored Exoskeleton. I figure it's probably the biggest deal to us, right now.
I order our troops to not bomb Centauri, for the last time...
Because the Transports are here. We have a numerical advantage and ground combat value parity; our personal shields are just as big a deal as their Battle Suits, while the extra +5 from Zortrium makes up for the defender advantage.
So naturally, we win. And here we get to why I wasn't bombing. Not only does capturing factories let you use them, but capturing factories allows you to steal tech. And the more factories you steal, the more likely you are to get tech.
So we steal Battle Suits, making us even better at ground combat... Hi Meklar Soldier again, incidentally.
And Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Unlike spying, ground conquest of factories has no set per instance limit of techs to acquire. We can potentially steal quite a lot of technology by taking a single world. In this case, we got two.
Also visible is our soldier... firing a laser rifle or fusion torch or something. I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to be, but that little purple flare effect appears and disappears intermittently as we sit on this screen, as if the Soldier is intermittently firing a weapon or some such.
And by taking Centauri we have cut ourselves off from the Darloks, as the game announces.
Turn start of the year 2436.
I check up on Nazin, and see that it is 6 parsecs out from our nearest colony. Which kinda confuses me, given they had to have taken Centauri. I think Transports might operate at extended ranges, which would explain this, but still.
As you can see, contact being broken has cut off diplomacy and spying as options as regards the Darloks.
Meanwhile, the Bulrathi have invented Mass Drivers. Now that is a tech I want ASAP. Mass Drivers are the second in a series of anti shield beam weapons, the first being one that simply happens to have not come up this game. Mass Drivers hit for 5-8 damage a shot, and ignore half the shield value of any ship they fire on. So, for example, a Mass Driver would be able to hurt our Missile Bases through their shields, because our Class Four Shields would only block two damage from them, where our Missile Bases are currently immune to Ion Cannon fire, even though the max damage for the two weapon types is the same.
This would make Mass Drivers relatively good candidates, as weapons go, for actually killing the Guardian, as they would be able to do decent damage even through its Class Seven Shields.
And Mass Drivers are a 13th level tech, putting them below the Merculite Missiles we are researching, at tech level 14, which means we aren't able to research Mass Drivers ourselves.
Still waiting on Merculite Missiles. I considered making a new ship design back when we got Sub-Light Drives, but since I was in the middle of trying to invade Centauri then, and thus stood to gain potentially several new techs, I put it off until later. Later being now. While I could get the Merculite Missiles any turn now, if I wait for them, it could easily turn into 'and now I can get a Computer Breakthrough any turn now', and Merculite Missiles are not a tech I am specifically interested in mounting on our next gen ships. Perhaps we will be designing another new ship in a few turns, as new tech is invented, but that's always a risk.
So now we go into ship design. Again, this is the exact design we left the Ship Design screen at, so in this case the Tormentor. And it has a bit of spare space from us teching. Not enough to do what I want, though.
We do now have enough space to mount at least one of any given weapon we have on a medium, I note.
Anyways. In the end, this is a relatively modest step up. We ditch the Nuclear Bomb for Sub-Light Drives and the next tier of mobility. And that's it. This tier doesn't even raise our tactical combat speed any.
Overall, I think the extra defense and strategic speed is worth it. But unlike prior generational improvements to our fleet, this doesn't basically entirely invalidate the old design. The Tormentors will still be superior for cracking planetary defenses.
Anyways, I rejigger production to the new ship, and tell all our planets building ships to relocate their new ships to Centauri. And then that's it for this update.
Next time, we'll keep fighting the Bulrathi, and very possibly win the game or, if we can advance tech enough, take down the Guardian of Orion. More likely, we will officially meet the Psilons, and regain contact with the Darloks, by taking Ursa.
This time, I intend to bomb Moro to dust and/or conquer Centauri, as well as generally try to tech up and build up our worlds.
To start us off, another refresher map of the Galaxy. Getting pretty crowded here.
Then I notice this Bulrathi fleet heading for Nordia. It says something that my response is more 'finally I get to know how those ship types are armed' than 'oh no I must defend Nordia'.
But just in case, I send the Ionstorms to intercept.
And have Nordia start on a second Missile Base.
Then I end the turn.
Turn start, as usual.
And there's not really anything to do but move straight to the next turn.
Where, predictably, the Bulrathi reach Nordia.
We scan their ships, of course. Their Colony Ships haven't changed since last we saw them so far as I can tell. The Sentinels are weaker than what we have been employing for ages, and the Claw is a longer range ship, overall, with that mix of Heavy Lasers and Nuclear Missiles, but it's largely inferior to their newer Tooth class ships.
Anyways, I fire the rockets and then I'm pretty sure I catch the signs that mark the enemy starting to retreat; the animation winds up sorta stuttering for a moment, as the AI issues its retreat order. It's hard to describe. It'd be the Colony Ships, if so.
So I charge out and fire more rockets. Well, the fact that I fire more rockets without anything coming at us tells you the other ships are probably retreating, too.
I took a screenshot of each retreating ship, but when it gets right down to it, showing off all three would just be dragging it out. They all fled, unscathed.
I accidentally closed the turn start without taking a screenshot. Not a big deal.
With the Bulrathi dealt with, I switch Nordia right back to ship construction.
And then I end the turn.
More Tormentors, as usual. We're just a single year out from the next election day.
We also could see a Force Fields breakthrough any turn now.
End the turn...
And our Colony Ship reaches Whynil.
Have a screenshot of the landing gear mid-deployment, this time.
Then the GNN reporter informs me of how I 'nearly control a majority of the galaxy'. Yeah, this won't continue too much longer, one way or another.
And here's that High Council meeting. I'll summarize, rather than doing a blow by blow set of screenshots.
It's us against the Mrrshan again. The Mrrshan vote themselves, the Psilons abstain, the Bulrathi vote the Mrrshan, as do the Darloks, and the Humans abstain. We vote ourselves.
Also we picked up a sixth vote while everyone else remained the same. End result, deadlock again.
And turn start proper.
Galos hits its industry maximum, and I decide to make it a third ship source.
I check on our tech and see we are now also able to achieve a breakthrough in Construction, making our Factories cheaper.
Then it comes time to deal with Whynil, population wise. I send 12m colonists from Primodius, 10m from Vigaroe, 4m from Nordia, and 3m from Zhardan.
Anyways, time to make good on eradicating Moro. I send these Tormentors off, planning to order the Ionstorm fleet at Nordia to go next turn for a simultaneous arrival.
Then I end the turn.
And have a spy or so destroy some of our factories at Esper. I should probably put effort into internal security at some point. (spoilers: I don't for the rest of the update at least.)
And then turn start proper.
First up, sending off the Ionstorms to meet the Tormentors at Moro. Offscreen, I send the newest batch of Tormentors from Galos to Moro to bulk up fleet counts for any future turns.
End turn...
'Sup. Enjoy Moro while you still have people there.
Nah, man, no peace. I'm going to bomb your planet to dust. Well, not literally, I'll just scour it of your people and then build my own Colony there.
War in Master of Orion is generally genocidal, just by mint of the system.
Turn start now that I've told the Bulrathi 'no'.
For some ungodly reason, they decide now is the time to send their fleet to attack Zhardan, right as my own is about to hit Moro.
I end the turn...
And my fleet arrives to Moro.
They still have four Missile Bases, with Duralloy Armor. Let's see how this goes.
I charge both ships forward, and then Moro fires its missiles. Excellent. I beat them at Initiative, then.
Then I creep the Tormentors forward one space, and unfortunately, the missiles are targeted at them. Blast. This is a screenshot taken when nothing is moving, you can take movement a tile at a time if you wish, without the units turn ending prematurely or whatever.
Anyways, I'm unhappy with the Tormentors being targeted since, you know, they are the newer, stronger ships, and in particular carry bombs to help us with that missile base killing. While not being particularly tougher than the Ionstorms. I mean, yes. They have more HP. But not, like, massive missile defense or shields or whatnot.
Another tile forward, and the missile pursues. This was taken right before the Tormentor properly entered the next tile.
Forward the last space, and the missiles arrive. Fortunately, they didn't manage a kill yet.
I move the Ionstorms up, the Missile Bases fire again, and things cycle back to the Tormentors.
Charge in, lose a Tormentor to the missiles. But it's my turn to fire now.
Down 12 HP in addition to the dead guy.
Missed the screenshots of my weapons fire this first time, but as you can see the 16 Tormentors killed about one and a third missile bases.
Then I move up the Ionstorms and fire away.
They did 44 damage, significantly less than the 102 the Tormentors did, in spite of greater numbers. Most of the damage we are doing comes from the relatively small count of Bombs the Tormentors carry.
Anyways, the Missile Bases fire on the Tormentors again and it comes back to our turn.
Tormentor Ion Cannon fire...
Followed by unleashing bombs. You can see a few scattered bombs, it looks much more impressive animated due to the fact that they launch a shower of bombs for a good bit of time. By contrast, beam weapons are usually a single relatively brief shot.
38 damage from the bombs this time. We did more last turn, but the Tormentors overall attacks this turn did knock out the second Missile Base. Two down, two to go.
Also, the Missile Bases missed with all their missiles this turn. Neat.
The Ion Storms fire for 46 damage this turn, taking out the third Missile Base. I'd like to point out that they are doing similar damage as the Nuclear Bombs, while being a more advanced tech, eating more space, and being more than six times as many fired each turn, between load out differences and ship counts. Bombs are important.
Tormentors fire...
And unleash bombs.... in a remarkably poorly timed screenshot, given I can't find said bombs.
But that round of attacks finished the last Missile Base.
Anyways, bombing time.
Note the fact that the population and factories are down in number. Every 400 points of damage done to Missile Bases kills 1m citizens, and every 100 points done destroys a factory. Any fire done to the planet after all Missile Bases are destroyed is twice as fast at killing people and wrecking factories, not counting the fact that the planet no longer benefits from the shields of the Missile Bases themselves. That causes the damage itself to be higher, naturally. I believe bombardment at this step is treated as some number of turns spent attacking, but if I am right, I don't know exactly how many.
Regardless, we explode all the factories and kill another 34 million people by bombarding. One more turn will depopulate it outright.
And the turn start proper arrives.
I switch Galos to building Colony Ships, for now, since I aim to take Moro once it's depopulated.
Then I check on tech, and any turn now we could get the breakthrough that grants us Sub-Light Drives.
End the turn...
Bombs away.
And the colony at Moro is destroyed outright.
And then the peace part of the turn.
Which I immediately end.
And meet a returning Bulrathi fleet at Moro.
It was one of the Tooth class ships we drove off earlier, which immediately retreats, so. Well, nothing we could do to stop it.
Oh hey. First spy success on the Mrrshan. Sweet.
And so we add Fusion Bombs to our arsenal.
And then lose more factories on Esper.
Also the Mrrshan are none too happy about me stealing from them.
Turn start proper. Time to take Moro.
We send the new Colony Ship off immediately, of course. alongside the Tormentors that are around. In general, I kept sending more Tormentors off from Galos to Moro over the past few turns.
I check on the Planets screen out of curiosity, and see we are now turning a trade profit. A small one, but it should grow.
Anyways, next up, I set all our newer worlds to actually terraform.
This can serve as a bit of a refresher on said worlds, I suppose.
There's not much to say about them, and perhaps I should have skipped a few screenshots, but I figured it'd be nice to see how things are coming along.
Esper, in particular, I probably should have set to terraform much sooner, so there is something to say here.
Then this catches my eye. A Mrrshan huge ship. Given the degree of difference in sizes, this is likely worth a small fleet on its own.
Anyways. I end my turn, and...
The Bulrathi reach Zhardan.
None of the ships are new. I'll be honest, I had originally intended to do a blow by blow of this, but it's basically just the Bulrathi ships charging in and trying to kill me, while everything but the Colony Ships dies sooner or later, so...
There, the end of the battle. The Colony Ships retreated when they ran out of missiles and everything else died, and we were never in danger of losing a single missile base.
And then we make our Force Fields Breakthrough. With Class 4 Deflector Shields, our Missile Bases will now be immune to Ion Cannons, Heavy Lasers, and Nuclear Missiles, just for a start.
We once again get only one option, the next tier of Deflector Shields, skipping one of my favorite special systems. I'll talk about it when we actually see it, for now we have no choice so we take our only option and keep getting better ship shields.
And then the galactic news chips in. The news?
The random number gods hate us, apparently. There are three events arguably worse than this. And only arguably.
Turn start proper, and at this point I realize I didn't switch Galos away from Colony Ships. Whoops.
I do that first thing to not forget again, and then go look at the crisis.
Ah, Industrial Accident, how I hate thee. The manual talks as if it just floods the planet with waste, which it does, but it also permanently changes the planet to the Radiated Environment type. Note that the waste is reducing the 'planet size', cutting into max pop, which will cause casualties over time.
Industrial Accident spiking the planet's Waste value in specific is exactly as if you left Waste not cleaned up, although it's one of only two ways you are likely to see these toxic waste barrel icons in actual play.
Right, let's get to it. Accident status, like Plague, is listed here.
The fact that putting our entire industrial effort into eco just predicts T-Form says something. And that something is not a positive thing. Vigaroe will be pretty worthless while it sorts this out. I mean, it's nothing that can threaten our station in the galaxy, really, but still.
Also visible in this screenshot, a Bulrathi Transport fleet overlapping with a Bulrathi warship fleet. They appear to have tried to send colonists to reinforce Moro.
Speaking of, I'd like to transport the population at Vigaroe off to Centauri to avoid taking casualties over exceeding the planet size, but you can't send colonists to systems that are considered unexplored or that are uncolonized, and just having things in scanner range doesn't explore them. Well, it does with a tech we don't have, but we don't have that tech, so that's a moot point in this situation.
So I send these Tormentors off to assault Centauri. I also send the batch from Galos to arrive about the same time. The Ionstorms will stay to guard my soon to exist Moro Colony, while the newer model Tormentors will see about getting Centauri's defenses out of the way.
I open the Galaxy Map to point out that Vigaroe is now a Radiated world here, too, and that strictly we shouldn't be able to be there.
End the turn...
And the GNN comes back with news that we cleared up the waste. But of course, barring advanced tech we don't have, the damage to Vigaroe's environment is permanent. This is why I consider it arguably the single worst event type, because it unavoidably and permanently weakens your empire. Certain events can outright destroy your worlds, but there is always something you can do about it. Not so for Industrial Accident.
The Bulrathi show up begging peace again. I skipped the screenshot of the greeting step, because we have seen it before but anyways, the Bulrathi. Sadly for them, the answer is no. I want their worlds and they have nothing to offer me and aren't enough of a threat to slow me down any longer.
Then the year starts. You can see here that Vigaroe's pop max went from 120 to a mere 80, which means before Terraforming tech it would be 60. That stings. We can afford it at our scale of empire, but that doesn't make me like it.
Anyways, the game kindly informs me it's hit its pop limit.
I go to the zoomed in view, and see we lost 33 million Colonists instantly from the planet size reduction. As a point of trivia, we kept the factories even though we can only man 320 at our current population and tech. It'll save us effort building them later, if Vigaroe's population expands or we get an Improved Robotic Controls tech. Other than that, those factories are useless.
Nothing else to do this turn, so I move to the next.
We invade Centauri, first off in the new turn.
The Colony Ships, and only the Colony Ships beat our Tormentors in initiative.
You may also note we brought a Colony Ship with.
Since it is unarmed, it can't contribute to the fight, and I'm not planning to bomb the planet clear to colonize it. Honestly, I want to scrap the design once we take Moro, which the fact that we haven't yet is why I still have this one, but on the other hand this is gonna wind up letting me show something off.
I run the Tormentors forward, and then the rest of the Darlok fleet gets a turn. I'm not sure if we have had them before, but those seven batches of rocks about are, I believe, meant to be asteroids, and make that spot on the battlefield impassable, creating a certain amount of potential for chokepoints and the like.
The Colony Ship has no place in the battle, so I order it to retreat. Retreat as an action is by ship type, not fleet wide, incidentally.
Anyways, the Colony Ships move forward and fire, and I charge my Tormentors in. This was meant to be a screenshot of them getting hit, but it's kinda not timed right to see damage or anything. Oh well.
You can just see what it probably the tail-end of the Colony Ships Ion Cannon fire at the Tormentors. Remember, higher initiative means they get to shoot in reaction to us coming into range.
Ion Cannons and missiles all together only removed 18 HP, leaving the first Tormentor half dead. We can do better than that.
In one attack we do 400 damage and instantly kill them, which reminds me that you can't do overkill damage. If you attack with overwhelming firepower, enough to, for example, kill a fleet ten times over, you will 'merely' do exactly their health in damage. I mentioned this last update, but it's actually this fight that reminded me.
Anyways, the Venoms move up and attack, and the planet fires its missiles. I believe this was at the very start of our Colony Ships retreat animation. Regardless...
It's gone by this point. Here we start to get into the more complex aspects of the combat system. I run the Tormentors up and have them fire on the Cobra, killing it...
And then I tell them to drop bombs on the planet. Ships can fire distinct weapon types on different targets. IE you can fire your Lasers and Heavy Lasers on different targets, in principal. I think it might actually work on the basis of the ships weapon slots, and not the weapon types per se, but regardless. You do, however, order units to fire everything in one click with no option to pick specific weapons to fire. But since bombs don't work on ships, the game used the Ion Cannons only when attacking the Cobra, and we had the bombs left to hit the planet.
This can also come up as relevant if you finish off the first target with one weapon and have others left to fire, eg if you have a ship with Ion Cannons and Lasers fire at something, and kill them with the Ion Cannons without firing the Lasers, or when firing a mix of longer range and shorter range weapons, eg if you fire Heavy Lasers at a target at range 2 your range 1 Lasers or Ion Cannons won't fire, and remain available to use on other ships. Anyways.
I wipe out the Venoms...
And then the game sits here waiting for more orders. See, I could bomb the planet with my bombs before ending the Tormentors turn, thus doing pop damage and wrecking factories. It'd be dumb, given I want to take their factories, but we could do it.
Instead I end the Tormentors turn, thus ending the battle.
And then we colonize Moro.
Go us.
Next we recieve the report that we have explored Centauri. It is a smaller planet than I expected.
We could bomb it, but I like I said, I want to take the factories, so I pass. Don't want to blast away the factories and at that population it shouldn't be too hard to take.
Then we have several Tormentors finish, as the turn start arrives.
This is a somewhat unfortunately timed screenshot. Because we are trying to send more than the planet can support, the game is warning us of that fact with flashing red letters- you can tell the message is there, even though you can't see it, because of the extra space between the word 'Transports' and the slider bar. This screenshot must have been at a frame where the letters were gone. It'll factor in friendly population in its estimates of this, if for example sending to another one of our own worlds, but not enemy colonists. Both in the sense that they don't count against us, but also in the sense that it doesn't consider likely casualties.
It lets us do it anyways, though. It is a warning, nothing more.
Anyways, remember how I said the Colony Ship would let us show something off? If a ship type retreats from a battle you win, it will remain in orbit rather than setting a course to a friendly star system.
But we have no use for the Colony Ship, really, so I go to scrap it.
And that is eight BC saved per turn. Not a huge amount, but not nothing either.
We send 17 million colonists from Vigaroe, 7 million from Nordia, and 9 million from Zhardan now that we own Moro.
Then I check on our research. Weapons technology breakthrough is now possible. It'll be good to have Merculite Missiles for our Missile Bases.
Then I check and note that it's been almost twenty years since we had a spy on the Bulrathi. They have fairly good odds of having something new by now, so I'll want to resume spying on them.
The Darloks, meanwhile, have picked up Class 3 Deflector Shields and Battle Suits, both of which are techs not present in our research list. They also got Nuclear Engines at some point, which will make them a fair bit more significant fleets wise, at least once they design a ship with those engines.
Class 3 Deflector Shields are just the step between Class 2 and 4 of the same, but Battle Suits need an introduction. They aren't hugely interesting, being the first in a series of three dedicated ground combat techs in Construction, providing +10 to Ground Combat scores for the owner's troops, assuming you don't have either of the later techs in the series (which override with their larger bonus, rather than stacking) and having no other effect. Our Personal Deflector Shields are essentially exactly the same other than field and which techs they are able to stack with. We can stack the two lines together for Ground Combat boosts, just not the techs within either line with the other members of their line. Battle Suits are, however, a somewhat more advanced tech, being Tech Level 11 where Personal Deflector Shields are Tech Level 8.
Anyways, since the Mrrshan only have one tech left that I want, and it's not all that critical of one, and our trade is turning a profit, I decide to stop spending on new spies in their empire in the hopes of keeping the trade bonus around for longer. Not something I consider super critical, but still nice to have. I also, in turn, start spending on spying on the Bulrathi again to try to nab whatever they might have, or at least discover that they don't have anything.
That done, I end the turn.
And the Bulrathi attack Moro.
I decide to order the Tormentors to retreat, and send in only the older Ionstorms, but...
The Bulrathi, themselves, promptly retreat, making it irrelevant which ships I tried to send forward.
And then we get Sub-Light Drives. Excellent.
Dotomite Crystals remains a tech we already could have gone for, but Energy Pulsars and Fusion Drives are new. Energy Pulsars are special, to say the least.
They are a ship special system, and each turn you fire them they strike all hostile ships within one tile in any direction, simultaneously. Not only would they hit eg a group of Venoms and a group of Darlok Colony Ships in the same shot if both were adjacent, but they strike at the maximum HP of affected ships, and not the current. They are affected by shields, but the damage they do of 5+1 per two ships is one single hit, thus as the number of ships in the battle group increases, shields are increasingly meager protection. They also can't miss, skipping attack and defense outright.
At the kind of technology quality the galaxy sits at, they'd be able to easily kill entire fleets of small size ships in one or two shots, and rip through arbitrary numbers of medium size ships in short order. Good Pulsar equipped ships would force either use of longer range weapons like missiles or larger ships that have the max HP to take a beating.
However, since all our neighbors have been favoring a mix of medium and large ships, slanted towards large, they are not of significant immediate interest. Nor could they help us against the Guardian, as it is one very large ship indeed.
Still, it bears commentary that they are one of the techs that can flip the table on the typical preference for small ships, completely ignoring their defensive advantages and punishing them for their low per ship hit points.
Fusion Drives are, by comparison, boring but practical as a choice. The next tier after Sub-Light Drives, they'll let us make even faster ships. I go for them, because ships that are dodgier and tactically and strategically faster is always useful to have. Might even help us kill the Guardian.
Anyways, I continue to instruct our troops to not bomb Centauri.
And the Bulrathi transport fleet that I noted earlier gets murdered by our defense fleet.
Er. 2 Ionstorms? I think I know what happened, but whoops.
Yep. You can see that they are in orbit of Vigaroe. Thing is, ship construction effort is stored until the planet actually manages to build a ship to spend it. If the currently selected ship in the planet's ship selection box can be built, it expends those points of production to do so.
We left Vigaroe on building Colony Ships previously, which require significantly more production points to build. But then we scrapped that design, and it automatically cycled to one of our remaining designs, in this case the Ionstorm. And then built them, because it apparently had a couple hundred or so BC lying around, and we didn't change it to anything else.
This isn't catastrophic, given how things are going so well for us, but it is a mistake (I should, at the least, have switched it over to Tormentors). This can also come up with worlds set to something where miniaturization drags the cost down below whatever the planet has lying around, where it abruptly builds something while you invest no further effort into construction.
Anyways, I chuck another 11 million Colonists at Centauri, because the Darloks having Battlesuits has me expecting the fight to be a bit bloodier than I was when sending the previous wave. Note that the game isn't giving me the flashing warning this time, which you can tell because this time there isn't that extra space. The game doesn't factor in any other transport fleets you have heading for the target when deciding whether to warn you or not.
I end the turn...
And continue to instruct our fleet to hold fire.
Fleet production screen as usual...
And then I decide to send the Tormentors at Moro off to reinforce the fleet at Centauri, while leaving the Ionstorms to guard Moro.
Then I end the turn...
And we make a Construction tech breakthrough. Cheaper factories is always good.
We have several new options, more thanks to Zortrium than because of the tech we just researched. Improved Industrial Tech 7 is tech level 13, to Zortrium's 17.
Improved Industrial Tech 6 is the next iteration of what we just researched, naturally. It'd make our factories yet cheaper, of course.
Armored Exoskeleton is the next tech in the Battle Suit line. It gives our troops a +20 bonus, and the rest of that description is pure fluff/lore.
Reduced Industrial Waste 40% is the next tier of waste reduction techs. Nothing super exciting, but definitely useful.
Still, I go for Armored Exoskeleton. I figure it's probably the biggest deal to us, right now.
I order our troops to not bomb Centauri, for the last time...
Because the Transports are here. We have a numerical advantage and ground combat value parity; our personal shields are just as big a deal as their Battle Suits, while the extra +5 from Zortrium makes up for the defender advantage.
So naturally, we win. And here we get to why I wasn't bombing. Not only does capturing factories let you use them, but capturing factories allows you to steal tech. And the more factories you steal, the more likely you are to get tech.
So we steal Battle Suits, making us even better at ground combat... Hi Meklar Soldier again, incidentally.
And Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Unlike spying, ground conquest of factories has no set per instance limit of techs to acquire. We can potentially steal quite a lot of technology by taking a single world. In this case, we got two.
Also visible is our soldier... firing a laser rifle or fusion torch or something. I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to be, but that little purple flare effect appears and disappears intermittently as we sit on this screen, as if the Soldier is intermittently firing a weapon or some such.
And by taking Centauri we have cut ourselves off from the Darloks, as the game announces.
Turn start of the year 2436.
I check up on Nazin, and see that it is 6 parsecs out from our nearest colony. Which kinda confuses me, given they had to have taken Centauri. I think Transports might operate at extended ranges, which would explain this, but still.
As you can see, contact being broken has cut off diplomacy and spying as options as regards the Darloks.
Meanwhile, the Bulrathi have invented Mass Drivers. Now that is a tech I want ASAP. Mass Drivers are the second in a series of anti shield beam weapons, the first being one that simply happens to have not come up this game. Mass Drivers hit for 5-8 damage a shot, and ignore half the shield value of any ship they fire on. So, for example, a Mass Driver would be able to hurt our Missile Bases through their shields, because our Class Four Shields would only block two damage from them, where our Missile Bases are currently immune to Ion Cannon fire, even though the max damage for the two weapon types is the same.
This would make Mass Drivers relatively good candidates, as weapons go, for actually killing the Guardian, as they would be able to do decent damage even through its Class Seven Shields.
And Mass Drivers are a 13th level tech, putting them below the Merculite Missiles we are researching, at tech level 14, which means we aren't able to research Mass Drivers ourselves.
Still waiting on Merculite Missiles. I considered making a new ship design back when we got Sub-Light Drives, but since I was in the middle of trying to invade Centauri then, and thus stood to gain potentially several new techs, I put it off until later. Later being now. While I could get the Merculite Missiles any turn now, if I wait for them, it could easily turn into 'and now I can get a Computer Breakthrough any turn now', and Merculite Missiles are not a tech I am specifically interested in mounting on our next gen ships. Perhaps we will be designing another new ship in a few turns, as new tech is invented, but that's always a risk.
So now we go into ship design. Again, this is the exact design we left the Ship Design screen at, so in this case the Tormentor. And it has a bit of spare space from us teching. Not enough to do what I want, though.
We do now have enough space to mount at least one of any given weapon we have on a medium, I note.
Anyways. In the end, this is a relatively modest step up. We ditch the Nuclear Bomb for Sub-Light Drives and the next tier of mobility. And that's it. This tier doesn't even raise our tactical combat speed any.
Overall, I think the extra defense and strategic speed is worth it. But unlike prior generational improvements to our fleet, this doesn't basically entirely invalidate the old design. The Tormentors will still be superior for cracking planetary defenses.
Anyways, I rejigger production to the new ship, and tell all our planets building ships to relocate their new ships to Centauri. And then that's it for this update.
Next time, we'll keep fighting the Bulrathi, and very possibly win the game or, if we can advance tech enough, take down the Guardian of Orion. More likely, we will officially meet the Psilons, and regain contact with the Darloks, by taking Ursa.
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