Let's Play Master of Orion Classic Part 7: Meklars part 7
Welcome back to Let's Play Master of Orion classic, last time, we advanced in tech, suffered an Industrial Accident event at Vigaroe, bombed away the Bulrathi colony at Moro, and conquered the Darlok colony at Centauri, stealing a couple of their techs as a result. Also cutting off contact with them, as they are now out of our fuel cell range, and us outside theirs; either empire having adequate fuel cell range places them in contact.
Settle in, this is the longest yet.
I once again elect to start us off with an overview of the galaxy. We control more planets than every other species combined. Our victory is basically inevitable now.
Then I go around and check up on our various newer planets. Esper is fully terraformed, so I lower its Eco ratio...
Draconis is coming along nicely, but not yet fully terraformed, so I leave it alone.
Primodius, on the other hand, is fully terraformed, so like Esper I lower its Eco ratio in favor of more factories per turn.
Willow still needs significantly more terraforming.
Whynil does need terraforming, but I still haven't started on that because what it needs most is a pile of factories.
And Centauri definitely needs terraforming. We have another 11 million colonists coming by transport, which will put it nearly at its current pop cap.
All that done, I end the turn...
And breakthrough. Had I delayed one turn on ship design, we could, in principle, take advantage of this. I don't really care, overall, and we couldn't have known. Breakthroughs are, after all, partially random, and it's not a weapon we'd actually have used in the design. So we'd only have gotten a certain amount of miniaturization out of it, in terms of benefits.
Hyper-X Rockets are old news, but Stinger Missiles are the next step up over Merculite, and quite a step it is. More range, more speed, 50% more damage, and more accuracy, all in the same one tech. Tempting, but then so are the other options.
Hard Beams are the Mass Driver's big brother, the next step in shield penetrating beam technology. Conceptually, all such beams are some kind of physical projectile and not just energy. As the game says, they do a whopping 8-12 damage, which combined with shield halving would make them fairly solid for hopefully killing the Guardian. Hard Beams are sufficiently powerful to damage any ship, no matter how shielded, fairly consistently, and thus will, to a degree, last into endgame tech.
Fusion Beams are the next tier of standard beam types after Neutron Blasters. They aren't very good, however. Well, if we didn't have Hard Beams available, they'd be pretty solid of a choice, but the problem is we do have Hard Beams available, and they average the same damage against unshielded targets. Hard Beams do use more space, but they are much more reliable and effective weapons overall. The only selling points Fusion Beams currently possess are that they would also give us Heavy Fusion Beams, for longer range combat, and that they are a higher tech level (by 1) and thus would raise our tech level overall more. (They do, strictly speaking, use less space, less power, and cost less than Hard Beams, but it's not really worth it for the loss of effectiveness against shields, which will increasingly be everywhere and significant to combat effectiveness as you progress)
But I go for Hard Beams, since really at this point killing the Guardian is my goal more than beating our neighbors, and Hard Beams will work better for that. We could pretty easily win without any further tech advancement, given our sheer number of planets.
I took this screenshot because I accidentally clicked through the fleet production screen to here. Oh well. Nothing of real import missed.
Anyways, with the invention of Merculite Missiles, we do have more room to work with for ships. We could add goodies like shields or Nuclear Bombs... but in the end, I don't see any improvement we can make that I consider worth a new slot being used up. Like I said, all we got from the new tech of relevance to our current ship design plans is a degree of miniaturization, and it's not enough for me to care much, personally.
So I get back to managing things, starting by sending these straggler Tormentors off to Centauri.
And then I end the turn.
I had Nazin selected when I ended the turn, hence the unexplored system. Anyways.
The Bulrathi have a new, and presumably more effective ship. It sorta bugs me how we have the Bulrathi, who appear to be bear people, naming ships Warbears, while the Mrrshan, who are definitely cat people, name ships Warcats. This'd be kinda like humans naming ships War-apes.
Anyways. I check up on our tech, and see that a Computer breakthrough is possible.
And that's that for this turn. I end it, accordingly.
New turn, more ships.
Speaking of ships, we have 11 Intruders to guard Centauri now, and more on the way...
So let's send our 75 Tormentors off to conquer Ursa. Well, open the way to ground invasion and thus conquest, anyways.
Then I realize I should start Moro on terraforming, given how close to its pop limit it is.
Draconis, meanwhile, is now fully terraformed and so goes back to focusing on factories.
And I start Whynil on its own terraforming, at last.
Then I decide to see if we can trade the Mrrshan for their Neutron Blasters...
Greetings. How about a trade?
You can see that their ears have gone all flat, like an angry cat. Every species has their own angry expressions for things like when they are rejecting our offers. They say they are beyond my technology, which is to say they refuse to trade tech, but we have tons of technology they don't. Not sure why they are being so obstinate. I don't really understand the diplomacy mechanics that well.
They'll say the same thing if we have all the tech they have, so that they having nothing to offer us, incidentally, in addition to if we have nothing to offer them or they just don't want to part with what they have, for whatever reasons. It's a catch-all message, or more accurately one of a set of such, if I recall right.
Anyways, I send more straggler Tormentors from Galos to Centauri...
And check on our planets. We control half of the entire galaxy, now. Which is actually more than half the available planets, given Orion being blocked by the Guardian still.
As you can see, 'notes' also lists Artifacts and Hostile Environment, the latter of which halves pop growth at that world. All world types that you need more advanced tech than a standard Colony Base Module to colonize are considered hostile.
10.3% of our income on ship maintenance is a little high...
So I check and I'm fairly confident Moro is outside our enemies' ranges, so I go to scrap the old Ionstorms.
Saving us 75 BC each year, going forward.
Anyways, I note that Galos is still forty from its pop limit, and decide to force out population production. See, I aim to conquer Ursa, not destroy it, so I'm going to need a pile of troops to do that, especially with it being the Bulrathi.
Then I end the turn.
And the year 2440 begins. Ten more to election year.
On a somewhat urgent note, this Huge ship started coming to invade Rhilus while I wasn't looking.
So first off, I switch Rhilus from research to defense work. But two or three missile bases might be inadequate, depending on how it is armed and equipped.
So I go to look at Centauri, planning to order some Intruders down to Rhilus, only to see this Bulrathi fleet coming. Not hugely concerning, but still.
I order the 17 Intruders down to reinforce Rhilus...
And then I decide to transfer a decent amount of Planetary Reserve resources to Rhilus, to ratchet up the Missile Base count before the ship arrives.
Then I end the turn.
And our fleet arrives at Ursa.
Using the planet button, we can see Ursa's population and factory count. Were we equipped with Battle Scanners, or if this was one of our worlds, it would also show the missile base parameters, as I have previously taken advantage of to show off our own missile bases.
11 missile bases with 75 HP apiece is no joke, but we have the distinct tech edge, so I'm not hugely concerned.
We charge up, and see that apparently they have enough missiles to get three missile icons a volley.
I tried to get a screenshot of the missiles impacting, but apparently mistimed it.
Our Tormentors are down 30 HP from that volley, but no ships lost as yet, only damage to the top ship. That's quite reassuring. Speaking of ships...
Say goodbye to the Colony Ships. Then it goes back to the enemy turn.
The Tooth class ships moved up and fired Heavy Ion Cannons, killing one ship, and the missile bases of course fired again.
Then I charge in, and between Ion Cannon fire from the Tooth duo, and the missiles impacting, we are down another two ships.
Speaking of two ships, there goes two enemies. This is not remotely equal, given they are larges and we are mediums.
And then we drop bombs all over Ursa.
Killing more than two and a half missile bases. Not that fractional kills actually reduces damage any, but it'll mean more kills down the line when we fire again next turn.
Then Ursa fires, and it's down to two missile icons. I'd guess the cut off for three to be thirty~ missiles, given that. Might be 31, might be 30, might be 29, hard to say. Has to be at least 28, though, since each missile base fires three.
Anyways, I fire Ion Cannons, killing another base...
And bombs, wiping out another three. Note that, once again, our ships are equipped with three times as many Ion Cannons and those are larger, more advanced technology, yet it's bombs that carry the day in missile base destruction. Bombs are massively more effective than beams at killing missile bases, and this actually becomes overall more true as technology advances.
The Bulrathi missiles kill another Tormentor, and they fire even more...
And then we fire more Ion Cannons in return, killing yet another missile base.
And follow up with the bombs, and man is this a badly timed screenshot given we can't actually see any bombs...
Killing two more. We lost another Tormentor to the missile fire, bit hard to see with how poorly I placed the mouse here.
Fire the Ion Cannons, killing the remaining missile bases...
And then in another screenshot that misses out on what I was trying to get a picture of, drop more bombs because of that one click targeting I covered earlier. I didn't actually want to drop more bombs when it died to the Ion Cannons, but oh well. Bombarding a planet that has no missile bases does more damage to factories and population than if the missile bases were still there, specifically twice the harm per point of damage dealt. This actually means even more damage than it sounds like, as missile base shields will reduce the damage suffered in the first place.
And then we receive the report of finding Ursa, due to actually having ships in orbit of it.
The game offer to allow us to bomb it, but we've already done some damage, and I want their tech so I want their factories. So I pass.
And then our turn starts.
Rhilus' pop gets maxed out, because I forgot to factor in that it'd need a lower percentage on Eco to remove waste with the reserve boost kicking in.
We tell it to go to actually being all in on defense, getting three bases next year.
Anyways, I want Ursa, and we are at a quality disadvantage in ground combat with the Bulrathi. So I send 40 million colonists from Galos, 21 million from Vigaroe, 9 million from Moro, 16 million from Zhardan, 10 million from Nordia, 11 million from Esper, 20 million from Draconis, and 20 million from Primodius.
That's 40+20+20+11+9+21+10+16=147 colonists. It might not even be enough, but it's a start, at least.
Given it might not be enough, I switch Galos to focus much more heavily on bulking its numbers up, in case I need a second wave.
Then I spot a second Sabretooth running around down here.
Anyways, on the topic of ground invading the Bulrathi. In general, it's almost always going to be an uphill battle, but we have a significant tech edge, and that matters.
Total up those bonuses, and you see that we have +35% to ground combat.
In addition to their natural +25, the Bulrathi have +5 from Duralloy Armor, and +10 from Personal Deflector Shields. In spite of having three different techs over them, that puts them at +40 to our +35. Not only that, but as the defender they'll have another +5, putting them to +45.
The manual says a +10 advantage should yield 2 to 3 kill ratios. So this is gonna hurt. But while it might not strictly be worth it, we have enough of an advantage I can afford to be stupid here. And hey, getting their tech just might be worth the blood bath, if we pull it off.
Anyways, end turn...
And a battle at Ursa.
Sorta. While we haven't faced a Warbear in combat yet, the Bulrathi aren't keen to stick around against our seventy ships. So they retreat with no shots exchanged.
Then we have a dust up at Centauri to attend to.
Only, I don't like these numbers. We are technologically superior, but we don't even have 2-1 numbers, against ships with over four times the HP and plenty of space for guns. So we retreat.
Both of our ships, naturally. First time I think we've seen a player owned ship retreating, they go in the opposite direction, unsurprisingly, just like how they face the opposite direction of your enemies.
And there go our Tormentors.
Now it's time for that Mrrshan huge ship we saw.
Packing Class 2 Shields, and a whopping 11 Heavy Blast Cannons and 27 Neutron Blasters, as well as a single Fusion Bomb, an Attack Level of 6, and 600 HP, this thing is nothing to scoff at. As an aside, you can see bombs also have limited ammo. It's not usually a major factor in combat, though. Ten turns of bombs is a lot of damage, and usually either the planet will be wiped clean of missile bases or the attacking fleet will be wiped out before bombs run out.
Anyways, though, mighty as it is, our technology is vastly better, and we have...
Six missile bases to greet it. Due to Merculite Missiles inbuilt targeting computers bumping up accuracy by 2, we are guaranteed to hit them with every shot. We also have the Intruders here as back up.
Anyways, I spend a few turns firing missiles while I keep the Intruders safely in the back, before the first batch hits. I didn't bother to calculate accuracy and stuff while fighting it, but we are guaranteed to do just under 25% of it's HP per volley, while having plenty of turns to shoot it up.
So I retreat the Intruders and we kill it easily, without it ever firing a shot. Well equipped missile bases are deadly, especially in large numbers.
Anyways, I don't want to bomb Ursa still. So we say 'cancel'...
And then get this.
The Bulrathi don't reciprocate my feelings, as regards Centauri. More damage than I'd like, but nothing catastrophic.
I once again accidentally skipped the fleet production screen, and immediately tell the ships that retreated from Centauri to stick around.
And tell the batch of Intruders at Rhilus to go running right back. Might have been a mistake to send them, given how easily we beat the Sabretooth.
I tell Centauri to start building a missile base, to get it better defended.
And then we end the turn.
We face the Bulrathi at Ursa again...
And this time it's a couple of Tooth class ships. They flee, of course.
So back to Centauri.
With a few more ships and the pain of their orbital bombardment on my mind, I decide to stick it out this time. Even if we can't win, we might at least cut into the damage they do each turn by killing some of their ships.
A couple turns of charging later, and we get shot at with reactive Heavy Ion Cannon fire.
And then the Ion Cannons, for good measure.
But nothing landed. This has me feeling more optimistic. Here's the thing; the enemy is in the unenviable position of having, at best, an attack level of 2 to our defense of six. This kind of thing is exactly why I favor smaller ships, with advanced engines and Inertial Stabilizers, as an early-to-mid game tactic. Even if they have a Battle Computer and Battle Scanner, we'll dodge 90~% of what they throw at us. If they don't have both, we'll dodge almost 95% of it.
Our ships, meanwhile, have a 70~% chance to hit. This makes us vastly more lethal per weapon, and that's before the Heavy Ion Cannons relative space inefficiency is factored. For that matter, you receive a range penalty at range 2, so even with the limits of their technology, the Heavy Ion Cannons would have had as low a chance to hit as possible.
Anyways, we fire back.
And roll the Tormentors forward, too. We did 129 damage in a single turn, where they have thus far done nothing. And now it's time for our Tormentors to follow up on that.
Which they do. Ideally, the screenshot would have been slightly later, because we finished off the first Tooth.
But then it is the Warbears' turn. They roll up, and fire Mass Drivers, which I failed to catch the beam graphic for. The result, however, is 41 damage, wiping out the first of our Tormentors.
It's only in uploading the screenshots that I notice I had the mouse poorly placed a lot here. I think this is the Tooth taking its turn, and retreating to the back to fire Heavy Ion Cannons at the Tormentors.
Anyways, between the Warbears' weaponry proving vastly more lethal, and the Tooth falling back, making charging in to attack it a way to take Ion Cannon hits the Tooth otherwise elected to not use, I decide to focus on the newer, more lethal model of ship.
Our Intruders do over a hundred damage to them as well. Poor Bulrathi.
Anyways, the Tormentors fire, but alas do not finish off the first Warbear...
The Warbears, meanwhile, proceed to kill another Tormentor.
And again, the Tooth fires Heavy Ion Cannons. They really should close in and provide their regular Ion Cannon fire, too, they'd not actually be in more danger, but they would be more effective. We could always charge up to them and kill them, at will, thanks to our speed and all.
The first Warbear survived by 10 HP. But not for long.
We fire for another over 100 damage volley, killing a Warbear.
And then have our surviving Tormentors take a crack as well.
The Warbears survive, naturally, and take out yet another of our older model ships.
And here we have yet more range 2 Heavy Ion Cannon Fire.
In a poorly timed screenshot, our Intruders kill another Warbear.
Then our last Tormentor contributes a small amount of damage.
I finally catch the tail end of the Mass Driver beam effect. It's a bunch of discrete grey shots, which makes sense since the Mass Driver is basically a railgun, or in other words a fancy space gun, and not technically a beam at all. (still classes as a beam weapon, though, in terms of mechanics)
Oh, and this is when we lose the last Tormentor. I actually overlooked this on the first pass or two of writing the update, but you'll see next screenshot that we're out of 'em.
And then the Tooth fires on our Intruders. Like I said, just the Intruders and the enemy ships now.
We fire on the Warbears...
The Warbears fire on us, doing 17 damage. You can see here that we killed another one.
And even more heavy Ion Cannon fire.
We pound away, killing yet another Warbear.
And take more damage in turn.
More essentially completely ineffective Heavy Ion Cannon fire.
And we do 147 damage, killing the fifth of six Warbears.
The Warbears retaliate, killing an Intruder at last...
And then I skip the heavy ion cannon fire screenshot, skipping to us killing the last Warbear.
The Tooth tries to retreat. We rush in, hoping to kill it.
Taking Ion Cannon fire in the process.
We do over a hundred damage...
But, alas, it retreats. We still won at what amounts to a numerical disadvantage, and actually lost less ships than we killed. In spite of those being much more individually powerful ships, in principle. Tech advantage and quality of builds matter.
Then our first wave of troops arrives at Ursa. You might notice something odd with this picture. Like the fact that last we checked, they had almost 100 units of pop here. So it turns out that with a fleet in orbit of Centauri, they immediately emptied out almost half the planet trying to take it.
We lose, of course. it's the Bulrathi with a numerical advantage. But this will make it significantly easier to take it with future waves.
And then start of the turn.
Anyways, like I said, they immediately threw 49 Colony Transports at Centauri, which was half of Ursa's population. They must have done pop boosting at the same time, given the 53 defenders.
Incidentally, you might notice that we can't blockade transport ships leaving systems, only entering. If it was otherwise, this lot would be dead to our Tormentors, or at least maimed.
This whole thing means me leaving Centauri undefended was kind of unwittingly brilliant, given the massive weakening of Ursa's ground defenses that resulted.
Anyways, I check on Nazin and see what I believe is a huge ship design of their own. It might just be a large, though. I'm not a hundred percent sure.
The Psilons, meanwhile, have invented a medium ship to supplement their defense fleet.
The Humans, on the other hand, haven't really got anything new.
Anyways, I switch Rhilus from defense back to research, perhaps a tad late in all honesty.
Then I end the turn.
We could bomb them, to make things easier on our ground forces, but our numerical advantage is significant, and I want their Mass Drivers, so I pass on it again.
And our batch of 9 transports arrives from Moro. They'll probably all die.
And indeed they do, but at least they take out the same number of troops on the Bulrathi side. A good showing, better than expected for the tech and species matchup.
And then the turn starts.
And then I end it.
We attack Ursa, again. Which really means the Bulrathi reinforced it.
It's a single Warbear. We now know how these fight, and it is no match for 70 Tormentors. The Bulrathi realize that and flee.
Those Bulrathi transports from Ursa die unceremoniously, making their efforts to take it entirely wasted. So in the end the population they sent out has merely made it easier for us to take Ursa.
Another ten troops arrive from Nordia. Outmatched, but soon enough we will overwhelm the Bulrathi.
As expected, our troops all died. Honestly, it's generally better to send your transports from planets in staggered waves, farther out first, so they all arrive at once. While troops don't fight any better in larger numbers, arriving staggered like this allows the defenders to bulk up their pop from natural and artificial growth, making it tend to take more casualties to take them down.
In this particular case, we were probably correct to do it staggered, by chance, due to them throwing out a bunch of transports at us. Artificial pop growth caps at 25% of the colony's current pop, and that's on top of population providing labor and working factories. What I'm getting at is that the Bulrathi would have been able to bulk up their numbers much more quickly after sending so many off had they not been immediately hit by our 40m from Galos, cutting them down further in the process. It's fairly slow to recover from significantly less than half pop like that.
That's why I was saying it was unwittingly brilliant that we left Centauri briefly undefended. I didn't anticipate the Bulrathi attacking Centauri and then halfway emptying Ursa of defenders while we had fleets on the way, but they did so, which has made things much easier on us than it 'should' have been. The ground invasion should have been a slog, maybe even futile, but that's not how it turned out.
And then the year 2445 begins. Note that Centauri now has a Missile Base.
So we immediately switch it back to industrial effort as the focus.
Galos is getting pretty close to its population limit, so I switch it mostly back to ship building. It doesn't look like we'll need a second wave to take Ursa after all, given the Bulrathi throwing away so many troops.
Then I go and check on our other worlds. Primodius is at the point of having enough factories for its current pop, albeit not its maximum, so I lower industry and focus most of its efforts on research. It'll still need more factories, but not urgently.
In fact, it needs over a hundred more factories to be at its limit, but still has about enough for its current pop.
Likewise, I adjust Esper down somewhat on factories in favor of some research here, too.
Then I end the turn.
More attacking of Ursa.
More of the AI retreating. I hit the 'auto' button, causing our ships to move on their own under the AIs control, because I didn't feel like managing the turn or so of the AI running. You can tell we are in auto mode because it's green instead of the red it has been in every other screenshot. We can turn it off, if we like, though it can take a little bit of further movement for the game to register that we want control back.
It's a convenience feature, but not one I would generally recommend using in actual play, barring situations like this where you know the AI can't fuck it up. The AI is sufficiently bad at combat that you'll tend to wind up suffering more casualties than if you manage combat yourself, and since ships persist, you need to be in a fairly secure position for this to not meaningfully disadvantage you. And it really doesn't even save that much time, especially in the cases where you have overwhelming enough force to make it relatively safe.
Anyways, the transports from Vigaroe and Zhardan arrive. Given that this time we had a good numerical advantage...
Us winning isn't exactly surprising. I believe we did get lucky on casualty counts, though.
This time, I timed the screenshot to show the full range that purple beam thing extends to. Still not sure what it is supposed to be. And now we have Mass Drivers.
Having taken Ursa, we officially meet the Psilons at long last.
The Bulrathi show up and beg us for peace. I accept, this time. I'd rather go make war on someone else for the moment, or maybe take those Tundra worlds soon (spoilers: I don't take them for the rest of the update). But the Bulrathi are out of tech we want and down to one world, and the AI reacts negatively to you wiping out a species outright. Any species, I mean, no matter who. So we'd strain our relations with everyone else to wipe them out.
And if we want to do that, Nazin is probably a better planet, being a home world, and the Darloks worse neighbors, due to their spying proficiency. And they still have tech to steal.
Year 2446 rolls around. Only four years till the next High Council meeting.
Anyways, with Ursa under our control, I set it to terraform and build factories. I also spot another Bulrathi ship coming in.
Then I design a new Mass Driver ship. Unfortunately, Mass Drivers use a lot of space right now- I have one each of Ion Cannons, Lasers, and Mass Drivers because with all the good systems I want, we can't have even two Mass Drivers in the design.
Overall, this is a bit of a side grade, but should, in particular, be overall better at attacking planets than our Intruders.
Penetrator is another Meklar name default, as was Intruder before it, I should note.
Anyways, since we are back in contact with the Darloks, I note that they apparently invented Neutron Pellet Guns before contact broke. Neutron Pellet Guns are the Mass Driver's little brother, doing 2-5 damage and ignoring half of the targets shields. They're not tremendously impressive but take notably more shielding than lasers to fully block while being low tech. They actually also take more shields to block outright than the more powerful and advanced Ion Cannons.
I show this off for two reasons. The first is that the game started 146 turns ago, give or take. The second is that the Psilons are Honorable Technologists.
The latter we have seen before, they focus on tech advancement. The former means that they won't attack anyone they are on 'good terms' with, but conversely have twice as negative of an opinion of 'unprovoked attacks and sabotage'.
Anyways, back to spying on the Darloks and also we start on spying on the Psilons. I also set our spies to Sabotage the Bulrathi, because I'm feeling like showing that off and also screwing over the Bulrathi, and they are out of tech to steal for now. And I decide to go back to spying on the Mrrshan. At this point, we can't really stay on good terms with them due to the High Council, and I'd appreciate a chance to snag their tech.
Also note that the Psilons are uncomfortable with us even though we just met them. I'm not sure precisely why, probably our large empire, because as I said previously, the Psilons default to neutral with almost everyone, including the Meklars.
Anyways, then I end the turn.
So, sabotage. I've already covered factory and missile base sabotage, but I left inciting revolution for later. Well, later is now.
In one of the rare cases of the manual being weirdly vague, and not providing hard numbers, each spy can make 'up to 10%' of the population rebellious. If 50% or more of the planet is rebellious, the planet goes into rebellion. Rebelling planets cease producing for your empire, and don't count for votes in the High Council. The only solution to rebellion is to send ground troops to bring them into compliance with your rule, which is necessarily rather bloody, as rebels have the same tech as you by definition, and of course even for the Bulrathi keep their ground combat bonus. So it will always, always be you needing to win at a 5 point (from the defender bonus) disadvantage, no matter what tech you have and what species you are.
So in truth part of why I'm doing this is to hopefully see what happens if I make his last planet rebel. Does that officially kill them? Does it not rebel? Does it leave the Bulrathi in a weird limbo state of existing powerlessly? Who knows, but maybe we will find out.
Our spies incited 6 rebels, bringing unrest to 13%.
And then our turn starts.
So something the manual doesn't mention- sabotage actions, or at least inciting rebellion, are good for exploring previously unexplored worlds, in addition to their primary effects. Given that allows us to see things like environments, populations, and missile bases, this is fairly useful.
This does not, however, apply to Espionage, even though if you pay attention it does list a planet.
With going back to spying on them, I see that the Mrrshan have invented Irridium Fuel Cells, which are the next step up over Deuterium Fuel Cells we already have, but conversely the step below the Dotomite Crystals we could try to research.
Having checked that, I then end the turn.
More of our new Penetrators finish.
Vigaroe hits its pop max, and we were apparently spending Ecologically.
I leave it on the tech spending it defaults to, since I've been using it as a lab world anyways.
... And then I end the turn. Since we aren't actively waging war, there really isn't too much to do each turn.
We pick up Battle Computer Mark 4, at last.
Neither of these is new, neither of them is interesting, and neither of them is very useful. I go for ECM Jammer Mark 3, because it's more basic, and will thus take less time. I hope to leapfrog to more advanced technologies through it.
And then the turn starts.
Our spies on the Psilons reveal to me that they mostly have tech we already have. However, the exception is, well, exceptional. Scatter Pack Rockets are not an unfamiliar concept, as the Guardian was equipped with the most advanced form of the series, but they are a powerful one.
The thing is, each Scatter Pack Rocket tech is the same as a less advanced standard rocket... only it fires multiple shots. Scatter Pack V Rockets in specific almost feel like a pun, as they are a five shot per attack version of the Hyper-V Rockets. They use more space, but not realistically five times as much. It's somewhat hard to measure precisely due to miniaturization. Anyways, it's functionally identical to running five copies of a Hyper-V Rocket Launcher, in accuracy, damage, missile speeds, range, and so on, and five such rockets would do overall more damage than our more advanced Merculite Missiles, except against heavily shielded targets.
More importantly than the potential ship uses, though, is that Missile Bases automatically pack both your best Scatter Pack rockets and your best non-Scatter Pack missile types. They don't get to fire both at once, unlike if you made a ship mounting both, rather you use the missile button to swap between them. (for ships, the missile button is used to toggle off and on firing missiles at all, which can be useful if you have a ship with both beams and missiles and want to split fire, for example, or conserve missiles for later in the fight for whatever reason.)
And as I said, against more lightly defended targets Scatter Pack V Rockets would hit harder, so this is something that would be quite the nice upgrade to our Missile Bases, if nothing else.
(Scatter Pack X Rockets are a ten pack of the Stinger Missiles I could have researched earlier this update, incidentally.)
On the other hand, the Darloks don't have any new tech, or at least not that I notice. Certainly nothing both new over their prior set and simultaneously new to us.
So then I end the turn.
Election year! I had half expected this to end the game, but no.
The Mrrshan vote for themselves, the Psilons abstain, the Bulrathi (who have been reduced to one vote) vote for the Mrrshan, the Darloks (also down to one vote) vote for the Mrrshan, the humans and their two votes abstain, and we vote ourselves, with 11 votes.
As you can see, though, that's not enough for a majority. So the game continues.
With more warships being built.
And Esper reaching its factory limit. I leave it on research, as it is out in the corner, off on its own. Good spot for a research world, slower turn around on getting any ships it builds to the front.
I decide to switch Galos, and some of our other worlds away from ship construction, to power forward with research. I'm hoping to get the kinds of breakthroughs needed to destroy the Guardian.
And an Improved Terraforming breakthrough becomes possible with the increased rate of research.
Then I realize that without a fleet under construction, the fleet production screen won't pop up so I switch Nordia back to ships, to keep getting that.
Less total research, but breakthrough still possible.
Turn start. It's one I instantly end, though.
Then we get a chance to steal tech from the Mrrshan.
As an aside, note that it says 'research center at Fierias'. As far as I'm aware, this means nothing, since as I noted earlier it doesn't, like, reveal the planet. And it's not of use to learn a system name, since you have to be in contact with a species to spy on them, and if you are in contact with them you automatically know the names of all systems they control no matter how far away.
Anyway, we get an increased fuel cell range. This will put us in contact with the humans.
And by happenstance the Psilons decide to posture at us, on the same turn.
Then we make first contact with the Humans. Very Star Trek uniform there.
And then the turn starts.
Draconis hits its factory limit.
I decide to check on the species comparison screen, now that we've met everyone. Naturally, we outclass everyone... mostly. The Mrrshan beat us in the game's estimation of fleet strength. Of course, we could pump out far more ships than them per turn, so that doesn't really matter with such a close value.
The Human report is 152 years old, meaning it's been that many turns since the start, at this point. We won't know what tech they have 'til we get a spy on them, of course. Honorable is familiar from when we met the Psilons, while Militarist means they focus on Weapons tech and try to maintain a large fleet.
Anyways. I set up spying on the Humans, as well, and then I end the turn.
And our spies manage to steal from the Darloks, in a lucky break. Like I've commented before, the Darloks just plain have naturally high internal security. Force Fields is the Class 3 Deflector Shields, and Weapons the Neutron Pellet Guns, while Computers is the extremely valuable Improved Robotic Controls 3 technology, so...
We steal that. Like I said before, Improved Robotic Controls makes factories more expensive (50% more expensive in the case of Improved Robotic Controls 3), but the Meklars in specific do not experience that cost increase. It's part of their species advantage.
Anyways, the game asks us if we want more factories, in a word, and of course we do, so we take the automatic industry output adjustment here. We have a ton of planets, so it would be a bit of a pain to do manually.
Turn start. Which I immediately end.
In this case, I didn't skip the screenshot of the start of turn...
I didn't get a ship. So I adjust the ratio in favor of ships at Nordia.
Then I end the turn.
And we get another chance to incite revolution at Tau Cygni.
So we do so. Their population must have increased or the rebels... de-rebelled or something. I dunno. Last time the percentage of unrest was 13%, so this is actually lower than before, even though we incited a new rebel.
And then the turn starts. Which we immediately end. And also immediately end the next turn.
This turn actually proves to have something of vague interest to screenshot.
Centauri reaches its industry maximum anew. And I switch it to building ships, so Nordia can focus on Factories.
And Willow also reaches its industry limit. Note the planet's production value.
Factories always produce 1 production if they are manned, and we have five hundred factories and 100 people here. Ergo, our citizens are producing more or less exactly .83 production a head.
We're able to make both a computer and planetology breakthrough right now, but also we have 11 as our planetology level. So apparently with 11 Planetology each pop unit is worth ~.83 production.
Anyways, I then get Nordia focusing on factories like I said I would.
And then I realize, whoops, Vigaroe was already at its new industry limit and then some. The auto-adjustment with factories only occurs when they reach the limit- that 'RESERV' marks that it is spending effort into creating Planetary Reserve.
We correct it back over to research.
Then we end our turn.
The Mrrshan are all pissed off about... amassing starships on their border? But our entire fleet is up in the Centauri and Ursa systems. Well, whatever.
Start of turn.
And the Mrrshan have a Sabretooth and 8 Cheetahs going for Esper. I've been watching for this ever since they invented that new fuel cell. Well, ever since I noticed they had it- it's possible they had it for a few turns before I noticed. I considered building a Missile Base or so there immediately, but then I decided that, given their engine quality and the ranges involved, it'd be cheaper to just build them when they'd be needed, skipping the maintenance we would spend had we built 'em sooner.
So we get started on that. Four turns will be plenty of time to prepare.
And then I check on our tech, and a Propulsion breakthrough is now possible, in addition to the existing possible breakthroughs.
Then I end the turn.
Turn start. You can see Esper will get two more Missile Bases this turn.
Nordia hits its industry limit. I go with it being a research center, for now.
We could now also see the breakthrough that gives us Class V Deflector Shields.
That said, I end the turn.
Improved Terraforming +30. Excellent. I skipped the screenshot, but we did take the +25% eco effort to all colonies thing.
We also simultaneously pick up Fusion Drives.
We've got three new techs in Planetology. Bio Toxin Antidote is an unusual and specific tech. For context, I must cover Biological Weapons.
Down at tech level 10 for Planetology you have Death Spores, the first biological weapon. Biological weapons are devastatingly effective anti planet weapons; Death Spores kill 1m colonists per shot, while carrying five ammo (which is half a conventional bombs 10 ammo), and lower the planet's habitability by the same, forcing you to terraform it back. They completely ignore shields and do no damage to factories and missile bases. But you can't own a planet without colonists, and so total depopulation will (after the battle) wipe out the colony, including all factories and missile bases as a result. If you don't completely kill the population, you'll instead be looking at the defenders being reduced in numbers, without reducing the factory count, thus helping steal more tech.
Bio Toxin Antidote is a tech level 17 tech that reduces the casualties of all biological weapons by 1m per shot, but does not reduce or eliminate the damage to the planet's environment. Still, given that Death Spores can rapidly depopulate worlds, I'd want this if we had neighbors packing such weapons- it does, in fact, render your population units completely immune to Death Spores.
There are two higher tiers of biological weapons and one higher tier of antidote, incidentally. Also, the AI considers it a war crime or something like that, and gets pissed off if you use them on any species, not just if you use it on them. Although the AI is fairly eager to use the things themselves, hypocritically...
Anyways, as to the other techs...
Controlled Radiated Environment is the end-game colony module tech, for all that it's only tech level 18. With it, we could colonize any world type, including the single Radiated World we actually know of. Of course, I've been ignoring two better Tundra worlds, so. *shrug*.
Lastly, we have Improved Terraforming +40. Which, if your pattern recognition has failed you, is just Improved Terraforming +30, but the ceiling for increasing pop max with it is 40 instead of 30. So I go with it. More pop is always good.
Propulsion is a couple of old techs we don't really need and Impulse Drives, which are the next gen tech after Fusion Drives, as starship engines go. Warp 5 and max maneuverability of five, and all that. So we go for Impulse Drives.
And then yet another turn start.
I check on our tech, and we now might get Hard Beams any turn. That's good.
Then I check on the spies. The Mrrshan now have Fusion Beams, which I've covered before. They're the next step up over Neutron Blasters.
I check on the Humans for the first time since we actually got live spies through their security- if your spies are caught and killed, you don't get an intelligence report, even if you created multiple spy networks that turn. The Humans don't have anything advanced, particularly, but they have a couple more basic techs we didn't research or, in the case of Battle Computer Mark 2, couldn't. Given the effect of Computer tech on spying, I actually do want those Battle Computers.
The Psilons also picked up Improved Industrial Tech 8 at some point.
That done, I end the turn.
And we get ECM Jammer Mark 3.
Sadly, ECM Jammer Mark 4 is now the sole option. So I take it, for lack of any newer options.
Then we see a galactic news report. It's ranking us by tech. Which we kinda already knew, from being in contact with everyone. Oh well.
Also the Bulrathi declare war on us. I don't expect anything to come of it.
And the turn starts.
The Mrrshan are building relatively a lot of Sabretooth class ships. There's also one at Fierias right now, in addition to the one heading for Esper and the two here.
Not anything else to look at, really. So I end the turn.
And the aforementioned Mrrshan fleet arrives.
Cheetahs are not a design we have previously witnessed. They also aren't a terribly noteworthy design. Mark 1 battle computer and class 2 shields, and a single neutron blaster aren't exactly what I'd call impressive, not for medium size ships anyways. If they were small, there'd probably be a lot more of them, and I'd be more concerned in all likelihood. But at these kinds of counts, meh.
And we have six missile bases. Given how the last fight with a Sabretooth went, I skip the blow-by-blow.
There, the end, where we kill all the Cheetahs in one attack, having ground down the Sabretooth easily.
By chance, our spies steal tech. Only one category to steal from, so...
Neutron Blaster get. Note that the research center is at Klystron this time. Again, as far as I know that's meaningless, just the game picking a planet from that empire out of a hat to name.
Anyways, the Mrsshan are whining about how big we are. Being 'too large' of an empire makes everyone hate you. I'm not sure exactly what sets it off, being bigger than them by some margin I would guess. Though even there, I don't have any strong guesses as to whether that's pop based or planet based or what.
Anyways, then the turn starts.
Ursa hits its pop max, and we get it to do all the factory building it needs.
Draconis, likewise, hits its pop limit, and we split its work between industry and tech.
As does Galos. Same deal as with Draconis, here. Industry and tech.
Anyways, invasion thwarted, Esper goes back to research over defense.
And then I end the turn.
New turn start.
Ursa reaches its industry maximum.
Then we switch it to build missile bases for a bit, so that we aren't relying on just the fleet.
Then, to save some screenshots, I'll summarize the rest of the announcements. Vigaroe hits its pop max, and we leave it on research. (because it still has all those factories).
Nordia hits its pop max, and we put it to a roughly even split between factories and research.
Primodius is the same story as Nordia. Hits pop limit, and then we leave it split between factories and research.
And Zhardan also has that happen.
As, lastly, does Rhilus.
And then there is nothing to do but end the turn.
And have another spy success against the Bulrathi.
We incite two new rebels, bringing Tau Cygni up to 16% unrest.
Turn start...
Galos reaches its factory limit. We leave it on research.
Then it's time for me to summarize more, as this isn't exactly thrilling. Moro hits its pop limit, and we put it to mostly factory work with a little bit of research.
Centauri reaches its pop limit too, and we have it mixed between ship building and getting the rest of the factories it needs.
And Whynil hits its own maximum of 145 colonists. We put it to mostly building factories with a tiny amount of research.
Then I end the turn.
We get another chance to steal tech from the Mrrshan.
And do so, picking up the more powerful Fusion Beams.
And our spies succeed on the Bulrathi again. Viva la revolution.
One more rebel. One of these turns, it might add up to something that matters. For now, it's 18% unrest.
On the flipside, enemy spies destroy some factories at Whynil.
And then we get the breakthrough for Hard Beams. If it seems like I'm being perfunctory, that's because it was my ambition to end this update with either taking Orion or winning the game, and focusing overly much on Orion has gotten things dragging, a lot. We're seeing a whole lot of nothing. I really should have just gone and starting blowing away the Mrrshan or something, and saved the Guardian for a bonus update.
Anyways. Ion Stream Projectors are a ship special system. In a general sense, they are cousins to Pulsars, striking at max health instead of current. I've never really used them that I can recall, but the manual says they do a maximum of 50% health reduction. I suspect that's not per turn, but rather period, no matter how many ships and how many turns.
Compared to Energy Pulsars, they're better suited to making larger ships more frail, and less able to simply shred smaller ones. Like, not able to do that at all.
Torpedoes are the final broad weapon type in the game, though there's plenty of individually interesting techs remaining.
Anti-Matter Torpedoes are the first example, and also the most boring. Torpedoes, broadly, function as a variant on missiles. They are subject to all the same defenses that apply against missiles, including Missile Defense stat. They are also affected by planetary atmospheres, doing half damage like beams. And they can only be fired every other turn, going on a cooldown every time they fire.
The upshot to all that is you would compare Anti-Matter Torpedoes to a missile six tech levels above them. Same targeting computer level of 4. Same range of 8. Same speed of 4. Half again the damage. Less than half the space used on size (albeit more than seven times the energy requirements, making it matter more what your propulsion tech is like), before miniaturization. And if course, since miniaturization is based on how advanced the tech is, they'll always be at least as miniaturized and likely more so than more advanced techs.
And unlike Missiles, Torpedoes have no ammo limits. It's all about that cooldown. This can make them excellent long range weapons for longer slugging matches. For better or for worse, they are not used by planetary missile bases. They are also generally poor against planets, since, like I said, they are subject to atmosphere penalties and Missile Bases get to fire every single turn at long range themselves, so the reach advantage over beams and the endurance advantage over missiles both don't apply against missile bases. Leaving you with the drawback of only firing every other turn with little to show for it.
Lastly, we have Megabolt Cannons. Megabolt Cannons are a unique beam weapon, albeit one not that great. They function as having +3 attack levels. And that's it. That's the unique thing they do. They hit softer than the very next basic weapon type, when you discount the accuracy, while using up comparable space.
The AI is super obsessive about using them, for whatever reason, in my experience. They aren't particularly good unless facing fairly overwhelming beam defenses, though. And even then going to missiles or the like may be smarter.
But instead of getting a newer tech, I decide to go back for Hyper-X Rockets. They'll take very little time, and give us a slight increase to our weapons tech. We might also find use for them on ships, if we want missile ships.
And then the turn starts.
Draconis hits its industry maximum. As do Nordia, Whynil, and Willow. Naturally, we leave them all on research.
Then I decide to look into what our small ships could mount. Which includes Mass Drivers. Here I need to point out that Mass Drivers are typically not very good when first invented. They are a size slanted weapon; most of their space use is from size, and not power forcing us to use more engines. Since Weapons miniaturize faster than other systems including engines, later in the game they'll tend to be quite space efficient. For the moment, the slightly more energy intense Neutron Blasters would take noticeably less space, but down the line Mass Drivers would become quite small.
I had hoped to make a small Mass Driver Mounted ship to face the Guardian, but we don't yet have the miniaturization to include even Sub-Light drives. So I pass, for now.
Then I end the turn.
We steal tech from the Mrrshan, because I forgot to stop our espionage efforts on them, and they happened to invent something new.
Specifically, Controlled Dead Environment. Well, a Planetology boost is always nice.
And then turn start. Note that Willow is generating over 800 RPs off only 559 production after maintenance costs and before Eco spending. Artifacts worlds are nice for research.
Primodius hits its industry cap. As do Zhardan and Rhilus. We leave them all on research.
At this point, I remember to check on the Mrrshan's technology.
Then, since they have nothing new to us, I decide to switch to sabotaging them.
Then I check on our research again, and see we can get the breakthrough we need for Armored Exoskeletons any turn now.
And yet another turn starts.
And I immediately end it.
The Psilons show up to complain about how many systems we own as well.
And another turn starts.
Moro reaches its factory cap...
And so does Centauri.
It is at this point that I notice I have fifteen missile bases at Ursa, which is excessive but oh well. Not noticing building more missile bases than you intended is a fairly easy mistake to make, since they aren't announced on the fleet productions screen or anything and the game doesn't have hard limits on count unlike, say, factories. Anyways, I switch to research for Ursa.
With Ursa so well defended, I decide the older Tormentors are mostly deadweight.
I scrap them, and the Intruders as well to save a good chunk on maintenance.
Anyways, we are newly able to get a Computer breakthrough, on top of the existing possibilities.
Then we get a GNN report. Comet is one of two events that can outright destroy a planet. As the report says, we've got ten years. Any of our ships in the system will do damage to it, and if we don't do enough to destroy it before time is up, the planet will be instantly and totally destroyed. Permanently gone, impossible to fix. No more planet in that system. There's no tech based solution to a missing planet, not in this game. So you say bye-bye to ever having a colony in that system again.
Obviously, we don't want that.
Yadda yadda turn start.
First thing I do is send all the Penetrators off to Whynil.
Then I go to make a ship design for the express purpose of breaking the comet. This is rather better than we traditionally could have made for a small, but is fairly sub-optimal at this point for actual combat.
But we mostly care about firepower in dealing with comets, hence why I was willing to accept lower quality engines and so on.
Then we assign Whynil to build them.
But that had a rather lower quality engine to fit the two ion cannons, and I want to be sure we save Whynil. With a lower quality engine, ships built in other systems would wind up taking extra time to reach Whynil to pitch in against the comet.
So I make a more practical design, mostly for that faster engine, for other planets to build.
I assign all the nearest worlds to produce it and relocate the new ships to Whynil, even Willow, which is a bit wasteful given it is an Artifacts world. But losing planets sucks long haul, so I consider it worth it on that basis.
We also set Primodius to work on them.
And Draconis.
And Vigaroe.
As well as Nordia.
And lastly Zhardan.
With all these ships being built, I decide to have Centauri focus on research.
Our research, naturally, slows significantly with so many planets now building ships, particularly our artifacts world. Anyways, I end the turn...
And we invent Class 5 Deflector Shields.
Only option is the next class up. Which means we got unlucky and missed both the next ground combat tech and the next planetary shield.
Then we get a news report, that we've already destroyed 14% of the comet. So we are pretty secure in terms of destroying it on time. We'd take it out with just the ships at hand, even before more arrive or are built.
Then the Mrrshan get pissed and declar war on us. Meh.
And we build dozens of ships. Half that is us controlling a larger, more productive empire, and half that is, well, small ships costing drastically less than mediums, let alone the yet larger sizes.
Only thing I find to be of note this turn is this batch of Darlok transports heading for Tau Cygni, and that the Darloks and Bulrathi seem to not have fleets right now. The Darloks might kill the Bulrathi if they get lucky.
Anyways, I end the turn.
We pick up Armored Exoskeletons...
And Hyper-X Rockets.
Our new options are Andrium Armor, the next tier after our Zortrium…
And Improved Industrial Tech 4. I go with that. 4 BC factories is quite cheap, leading to explosively fast development of worlds.
Meanwhile, we have no new weapons options, so I decide to go for Anti-Matter Torpedoes. They're fairly uniquely useful.
And then the turn starts. And that's where I leave this update. It's gotten quite long, much longer than any prior update.
Tune in next time for us destroying the comet and going on to win the game, by sword or high council.
After that, I'll do a bonus update of taking down the guardian, and then we'll move on to the next species, in a larger galaxy.
Settle in, this is the longest yet.
I once again elect to start us off with an overview of the galaxy. We control more planets than every other species combined. Our victory is basically inevitable now.
Then I go around and check up on our various newer planets. Esper is fully terraformed, so I lower its Eco ratio...
Draconis is coming along nicely, but not yet fully terraformed, so I leave it alone.
Primodius, on the other hand, is fully terraformed, so like Esper I lower its Eco ratio in favor of more factories per turn.
Willow still needs significantly more terraforming.
Whynil does need terraforming, but I still haven't started on that because what it needs most is a pile of factories.
And Centauri definitely needs terraforming. We have another 11 million colonists coming by transport, which will put it nearly at its current pop cap.
All that done, I end the turn...
And breakthrough. Had I delayed one turn on ship design, we could, in principle, take advantage of this. I don't really care, overall, and we couldn't have known. Breakthroughs are, after all, partially random, and it's not a weapon we'd actually have used in the design. So we'd only have gotten a certain amount of miniaturization out of it, in terms of benefits.
Hyper-X Rockets are old news, but Stinger Missiles are the next step up over Merculite, and quite a step it is. More range, more speed, 50% more damage, and more accuracy, all in the same one tech. Tempting, but then so are the other options.
Hard Beams are the Mass Driver's big brother, the next step in shield penetrating beam technology. Conceptually, all such beams are some kind of physical projectile and not just energy. As the game says, they do a whopping 8-12 damage, which combined with shield halving would make them fairly solid for hopefully killing the Guardian. Hard Beams are sufficiently powerful to damage any ship, no matter how shielded, fairly consistently, and thus will, to a degree, last into endgame tech.
Fusion Beams are the next tier of standard beam types after Neutron Blasters. They aren't very good, however. Well, if we didn't have Hard Beams available, they'd be pretty solid of a choice, but the problem is we do have Hard Beams available, and they average the same damage against unshielded targets. Hard Beams do use more space, but they are much more reliable and effective weapons overall. The only selling points Fusion Beams currently possess are that they would also give us Heavy Fusion Beams, for longer range combat, and that they are a higher tech level (by 1) and thus would raise our tech level overall more. (They do, strictly speaking, use less space, less power, and cost less than Hard Beams, but it's not really worth it for the loss of effectiveness against shields, which will increasingly be everywhere and significant to combat effectiveness as you progress)
But I go for Hard Beams, since really at this point killing the Guardian is my goal more than beating our neighbors, and Hard Beams will work better for that. We could pretty easily win without any further tech advancement, given our sheer number of planets.
I took this screenshot because I accidentally clicked through the fleet production screen to here. Oh well. Nothing of real import missed.
Anyways, with the invention of Merculite Missiles, we do have more room to work with for ships. We could add goodies like shields or Nuclear Bombs... but in the end, I don't see any improvement we can make that I consider worth a new slot being used up. Like I said, all we got from the new tech of relevance to our current ship design plans is a degree of miniaturization, and it's not enough for me to care much, personally.
So I get back to managing things, starting by sending these straggler Tormentors off to Centauri.
And then I end the turn.
I had Nazin selected when I ended the turn, hence the unexplored system. Anyways.
The Bulrathi have a new, and presumably more effective ship. It sorta bugs me how we have the Bulrathi, who appear to be bear people, naming ships Warbears, while the Mrrshan, who are definitely cat people, name ships Warcats. This'd be kinda like humans naming ships War-apes.
Anyways. I check up on our tech, and see that a Computer breakthrough is possible.
And that's that for this turn. I end it, accordingly.
New turn, more ships.
Speaking of ships, we have 11 Intruders to guard Centauri now, and more on the way...
So let's send our 75 Tormentors off to conquer Ursa. Well, open the way to ground invasion and thus conquest, anyways.
Then I realize I should start Moro on terraforming, given how close to its pop limit it is.
Draconis, meanwhile, is now fully terraformed and so goes back to focusing on factories.
And I start Whynil on its own terraforming, at last.
Then I decide to see if we can trade the Mrrshan for their Neutron Blasters...
Greetings. How about a trade?
You can see that their ears have gone all flat, like an angry cat. Every species has their own angry expressions for things like when they are rejecting our offers. They say they are beyond my technology, which is to say they refuse to trade tech, but we have tons of technology they don't. Not sure why they are being so obstinate. I don't really understand the diplomacy mechanics that well.
They'll say the same thing if we have all the tech they have, so that they having nothing to offer us, incidentally, in addition to if we have nothing to offer them or they just don't want to part with what they have, for whatever reasons. It's a catch-all message, or more accurately one of a set of such, if I recall right.
Anyways, I send more straggler Tormentors from Galos to Centauri...
And check on our planets. We control half of the entire galaxy, now. Which is actually more than half the available planets, given Orion being blocked by the Guardian still.
As you can see, 'notes' also lists Artifacts and Hostile Environment, the latter of which halves pop growth at that world. All world types that you need more advanced tech than a standard Colony Base Module to colonize are considered hostile.
10.3% of our income on ship maintenance is a little high...
So I check and I'm fairly confident Moro is outside our enemies' ranges, so I go to scrap the old Ionstorms.
Saving us 75 BC each year, going forward.
Anyways, I note that Galos is still forty from its pop limit, and decide to force out population production. See, I aim to conquer Ursa, not destroy it, so I'm going to need a pile of troops to do that, especially with it being the Bulrathi.
Then I end the turn.
And the year 2440 begins. Ten more to election year.
On a somewhat urgent note, this Huge ship started coming to invade Rhilus while I wasn't looking.
So first off, I switch Rhilus from research to defense work. But two or three missile bases might be inadequate, depending on how it is armed and equipped.
So I go to look at Centauri, planning to order some Intruders down to Rhilus, only to see this Bulrathi fleet coming. Not hugely concerning, but still.
I order the 17 Intruders down to reinforce Rhilus...
And then I decide to transfer a decent amount of Planetary Reserve resources to Rhilus, to ratchet up the Missile Base count before the ship arrives.
Then I end the turn.
And our fleet arrives at Ursa.
Using the planet button, we can see Ursa's population and factory count. Were we equipped with Battle Scanners, or if this was one of our worlds, it would also show the missile base parameters, as I have previously taken advantage of to show off our own missile bases.
11 missile bases with 75 HP apiece is no joke, but we have the distinct tech edge, so I'm not hugely concerned.
We charge up, and see that apparently they have enough missiles to get three missile icons a volley.
I tried to get a screenshot of the missiles impacting, but apparently mistimed it.
Our Tormentors are down 30 HP from that volley, but no ships lost as yet, only damage to the top ship. That's quite reassuring. Speaking of ships...
Say goodbye to the Colony Ships. Then it goes back to the enemy turn.
The Tooth class ships moved up and fired Heavy Ion Cannons, killing one ship, and the missile bases of course fired again.
Then I charge in, and between Ion Cannon fire from the Tooth duo, and the missiles impacting, we are down another two ships.
Speaking of two ships, there goes two enemies. This is not remotely equal, given they are larges and we are mediums.
And then we drop bombs all over Ursa.
Killing more than two and a half missile bases. Not that fractional kills actually reduces damage any, but it'll mean more kills down the line when we fire again next turn.
Then Ursa fires, and it's down to two missile icons. I'd guess the cut off for three to be thirty~ missiles, given that. Might be 31, might be 30, might be 29, hard to say. Has to be at least 28, though, since each missile base fires three.
Anyways, I fire Ion Cannons, killing another base...
And bombs, wiping out another three. Note that, once again, our ships are equipped with three times as many Ion Cannons and those are larger, more advanced technology, yet it's bombs that carry the day in missile base destruction. Bombs are massively more effective than beams at killing missile bases, and this actually becomes overall more true as technology advances.
The Bulrathi missiles kill another Tormentor, and they fire even more...
And then we fire more Ion Cannons in return, killing yet another missile base.
And follow up with the bombs, and man is this a badly timed screenshot given we can't actually see any bombs...
Killing two more. We lost another Tormentor to the missile fire, bit hard to see with how poorly I placed the mouse here.
Fire the Ion Cannons, killing the remaining missile bases...
And then in another screenshot that misses out on what I was trying to get a picture of, drop more bombs because of that one click targeting I covered earlier. I didn't actually want to drop more bombs when it died to the Ion Cannons, but oh well. Bombarding a planet that has no missile bases does more damage to factories and population than if the missile bases were still there, specifically twice the harm per point of damage dealt. This actually means even more damage than it sounds like, as missile base shields will reduce the damage suffered in the first place.
And then we receive the report of finding Ursa, due to actually having ships in orbit of it.
The game offer to allow us to bomb it, but we've already done some damage, and I want their tech so I want their factories. So I pass.
And then our turn starts.
Rhilus' pop gets maxed out, because I forgot to factor in that it'd need a lower percentage on Eco to remove waste with the reserve boost kicking in.
We tell it to go to actually being all in on defense, getting three bases next year.
Anyways, I want Ursa, and we are at a quality disadvantage in ground combat with the Bulrathi. So I send 40 million colonists from Galos, 21 million from Vigaroe, 9 million from Moro, 16 million from Zhardan, 10 million from Nordia, 11 million from Esper, 20 million from Draconis, and 20 million from Primodius.
That's 40+20+20+11+9+21+10+16=147 colonists. It might not even be enough, but it's a start, at least.
Given it might not be enough, I switch Galos to focus much more heavily on bulking its numbers up, in case I need a second wave.
Then I spot a second Sabretooth running around down here.
Anyways, on the topic of ground invading the Bulrathi. In general, it's almost always going to be an uphill battle, but we have a significant tech edge, and that matters.
Total up those bonuses, and you see that we have +35% to ground combat.
In addition to their natural +25, the Bulrathi have +5 from Duralloy Armor, and +10 from Personal Deflector Shields. In spite of having three different techs over them, that puts them at +40 to our +35. Not only that, but as the defender they'll have another +5, putting them to +45.
The manual says a +10 advantage should yield 2 to 3 kill ratios. So this is gonna hurt. But while it might not strictly be worth it, we have enough of an advantage I can afford to be stupid here. And hey, getting their tech just might be worth the blood bath, if we pull it off.
Anyways, end turn...
And a battle at Ursa.
Sorta. While we haven't faced a Warbear in combat yet, the Bulrathi aren't keen to stick around against our seventy ships. So they retreat with no shots exchanged.
Then we have a dust up at Centauri to attend to.
Only, I don't like these numbers. We are technologically superior, but we don't even have 2-1 numbers, against ships with over four times the HP and plenty of space for guns. So we retreat.
Both of our ships, naturally. First time I think we've seen a player owned ship retreating, they go in the opposite direction, unsurprisingly, just like how they face the opposite direction of your enemies.
And there go our Tormentors.
Now it's time for that Mrrshan huge ship we saw.
Packing Class 2 Shields, and a whopping 11 Heavy Blast Cannons and 27 Neutron Blasters, as well as a single Fusion Bomb, an Attack Level of 6, and 600 HP, this thing is nothing to scoff at. As an aside, you can see bombs also have limited ammo. It's not usually a major factor in combat, though. Ten turns of bombs is a lot of damage, and usually either the planet will be wiped clean of missile bases or the attacking fleet will be wiped out before bombs run out.
Anyways, though, mighty as it is, our technology is vastly better, and we have...
Six missile bases to greet it. Due to Merculite Missiles inbuilt targeting computers bumping up accuracy by 2, we are guaranteed to hit them with every shot. We also have the Intruders here as back up.
Anyways, I spend a few turns firing missiles while I keep the Intruders safely in the back, before the first batch hits. I didn't bother to calculate accuracy and stuff while fighting it, but we are guaranteed to do just under 25% of it's HP per volley, while having plenty of turns to shoot it up.
So I retreat the Intruders and we kill it easily, without it ever firing a shot. Well equipped missile bases are deadly, especially in large numbers.
Anyways, I don't want to bomb Ursa still. So we say 'cancel'...
And then get this.
The Bulrathi don't reciprocate my feelings, as regards Centauri. More damage than I'd like, but nothing catastrophic.
I once again accidentally skipped the fleet production screen, and immediately tell the ships that retreated from Centauri to stick around.
And tell the batch of Intruders at Rhilus to go running right back. Might have been a mistake to send them, given how easily we beat the Sabretooth.
I tell Centauri to start building a missile base, to get it better defended.
And then we end the turn.
We face the Bulrathi at Ursa again...
And this time it's a couple of Tooth class ships. They flee, of course.
So back to Centauri.
With a few more ships and the pain of their orbital bombardment on my mind, I decide to stick it out this time. Even if we can't win, we might at least cut into the damage they do each turn by killing some of their ships.
A couple turns of charging later, and we get shot at with reactive Heavy Ion Cannon fire.
And then the Ion Cannons, for good measure.
But nothing landed. This has me feeling more optimistic. Here's the thing; the enemy is in the unenviable position of having, at best, an attack level of 2 to our defense of six. This kind of thing is exactly why I favor smaller ships, with advanced engines and Inertial Stabilizers, as an early-to-mid game tactic. Even if they have a Battle Computer and Battle Scanner, we'll dodge 90~% of what they throw at us. If they don't have both, we'll dodge almost 95% of it.
Our ships, meanwhile, have a 70~% chance to hit. This makes us vastly more lethal per weapon, and that's before the Heavy Ion Cannons relative space inefficiency is factored. For that matter, you receive a range penalty at range 2, so even with the limits of their technology, the Heavy Ion Cannons would have had as low a chance to hit as possible.
Anyways, we fire back.
And roll the Tormentors forward, too. We did 129 damage in a single turn, where they have thus far done nothing. And now it's time for our Tormentors to follow up on that.
Which they do. Ideally, the screenshot would have been slightly later, because we finished off the first Tooth.
But then it is the Warbears' turn. They roll up, and fire Mass Drivers, which I failed to catch the beam graphic for. The result, however, is 41 damage, wiping out the first of our Tormentors.
It's only in uploading the screenshots that I notice I had the mouse poorly placed a lot here. I think this is the Tooth taking its turn, and retreating to the back to fire Heavy Ion Cannons at the Tormentors.
Anyways, between the Warbears' weaponry proving vastly more lethal, and the Tooth falling back, making charging in to attack it a way to take Ion Cannon hits the Tooth otherwise elected to not use, I decide to focus on the newer, more lethal model of ship.
Our Intruders do over a hundred damage to them as well. Poor Bulrathi.
Anyways, the Tormentors fire, but alas do not finish off the first Warbear...
The Warbears, meanwhile, proceed to kill another Tormentor.
And again, the Tooth fires Heavy Ion Cannons. They really should close in and provide their regular Ion Cannon fire, too, they'd not actually be in more danger, but they would be more effective. We could always charge up to them and kill them, at will, thanks to our speed and all.
The first Warbear survived by 10 HP. But not for long.
We fire for another over 100 damage volley, killing a Warbear.
And then have our surviving Tormentors take a crack as well.
The Warbears survive, naturally, and take out yet another of our older model ships.
And here we have yet more range 2 Heavy Ion Cannon Fire.
In a poorly timed screenshot, our Intruders kill another Warbear.
Then our last Tormentor contributes a small amount of damage.
I finally catch the tail end of the Mass Driver beam effect. It's a bunch of discrete grey shots, which makes sense since the Mass Driver is basically a railgun, or in other words a fancy space gun, and not technically a beam at all. (still classes as a beam weapon, though, in terms of mechanics)
Oh, and this is when we lose the last Tormentor. I actually overlooked this on the first pass or two of writing the update, but you'll see next screenshot that we're out of 'em.
And then the Tooth fires on our Intruders. Like I said, just the Intruders and the enemy ships now.
We fire on the Warbears...
The Warbears fire on us, doing 17 damage. You can see here that we killed another one.
And even more heavy Ion Cannon fire.
We pound away, killing yet another Warbear.
And take more damage in turn.
More essentially completely ineffective Heavy Ion Cannon fire.
And we do 147 damage, killing the fifth of six Warbears.
The Warbears retaliate, killing an Intruder at last...
And then I skip the heavy ion cannon fire screenshot, skipping to us killing the last Warbear.
The Tooth tries to retreat. We rush in, hoping to kill it.
Taking Ion Cannon fire in the process.
We do over a hundred damage...
But, alas, it retreats. We still won at what amounts to a numerical disadvantage, and actually lost less ships than we killed. In spite of those being much more individually powerful ships, in principle. Tech advantage and quality of builds matter.
Then our first wave of troops arrives at Ursa. You might notice something odd with this picture. Like the fact that last we checked, they had almost 100 units of pop here. So it turns out that with a fleet in orbit of Centauri, they immediately emptied out almost half the planet trying to take it.
We lose, of course. it's the Bulrathi with a numerical advantage. But this will make it significantly easier to take it with future waves.
And then start of the turn.
Anyways, like I said, they immediately threw 49 Colony Transports at Centauri, which was half of Ursa's population. They must have done pop boosting at the same time, given the 53 defenders.
Incidentally, you might notice that we can't blockade transport ships leaving systems, only entering. If it was otherwise, this lot would be dead to our Tormentors, or at least maimed.
This whole thing means me leaving Centauri undefended was kind of unwittingly brilliant, given the massive weakening of Ursa's ground defenses that resulted.
Anyways, I check on Nazin and see what I believe is a huge ship design of their own. It might just be a large, though. I'm not a hundred percent sure.
The Psilons, meanwhile, have invented a medium ship to supplement their defense fleet.
The Humans, on the other hand, haven't really got anything new.
Anyways, I switch Rhilus from defense back to research, perhaps a tad late in all honesty.
Then I end the turn.
We could bomb them, to make things easier on our ground forces, but our numerical advantage is significant, and I want their Mass Drivers, so I pass on it again.
And our batch of 9 transports arrives from Moro. They'll probably all die.
And indeed they do, but at least they take out the same number of troops on the Bulrathi side. A good showing, better than expected for the tech and species matchup.
And then the turn starts.
And then I end it.
We attack Ursa, again. Which really means the Bulrathi reinforced it.
It's a single Warbear. We now know how these fight, and it is no match for 70 Tormentors. The Bulrathi realize that and flee.
Those Bulrathi transports from Ursa die unceremoniously, making their efforts to take it entirely wasted. So in the end the population they sent out has merely made it easier for us to take Ursa.
Another ten troops arrive from Nordia. Outmatched, but soon enough we will overwhelm the Bulrathi.
As expected, our troops all died. Honestly, it's generally better to send your transports from planets in staggered waves, farther out first, so they all arrive at once. While troops don't fight any better in larger numbers, arriving staggered like this allows the defenders to bulk up their pop from natural and artificial growth, making it tend to take more casualties to take them down.
In this particular case, we were probably correct to do it staggered, by chance, due to them throwing out a bunch of transports at us. Artificial pop growth caps at 25% of the colony's current pop, and that's on top of population providing labor and working factories. What I'm getting at is that the Bulrathi would have been able to bulk up their numbers much more quickly after sending so many off had they not been immediately hit by our 40m from Galos, cutting them down further in the process. It's fairly slow to recover from significantly less than half pop like that.
That's why I was saying it was unwittingly brilliant that we left Centauri briefly undefended. I didn't anticipate the Bulrathi attacking Centauri and then halfway emptying Ursa of defenders while we had fleets on the way, but they did so, which has made things much easier on us than it 'should' have been. The ground invasion should have been a slog, maybe even futile, but that's not how it turned out.
And then the year 2445 begins. Note that Centauri now has a Missile Base.
So we immediately switch it back to industrial effort as the focus.
Galos is getting pretty close to its population limit, so I switch it mostly back to ship building. It doesn't look like we'll need a second wave to take Ursa after all, given the Bulrathi throwing away so many troops.
Then I go and check on our other worlds. Primodius is at the point of having enough factories for its current pop, albeit not its maximum, so I lower industry and focus most of its efforts on research. It'll still need more factories, but not urgently.
In fact, it needs over a hundred more factories to be at its limit, but still has about enough for its current pop.
Likewise, I adjust Esper down somewhat on factories in favor of some research here, too.
Then I end the turn.
More attacking of Ursa.
More of the AI retreating. I hit the 'auto' button, causing our ships to move on their own under the AIs control, because I didn't feel like managing the turn or so of the AI running. You can tell we are in auto mode because it's green instead of the red it has been in every other screenshot. We can turn it off, if we like, though it can take a little bit of further movement for the game to register that we want control back.
It's a convenience feature, but not one I would generally recommend using in actual play, barring situations like this where you know the AI can't fuck it up. The AI is sufficiently bad at combat that you'll tend to wind up suffering more casualties than if you manage combat yourself, and since ships persist, you need to be in a fairly secure position for this to not meaningfully disadvantage you. And it really doesn't even save that much time, especially in the cases where you have overwhelming enough force to make it relatively safe.
Anyways, the transports from Vigaroe and Zhardan arrive. Given that this time we had a good numerical advantage...
Us winning isn't exactly surprising. I believe we did get lucky on casualty counts, though.
This time, I timed the screenshot to show the full range that purple beam thing extends to. Still not sure what it is supposed to be. And now we have Mass Drivers.
Having taken Ursa, we officially meet the Psilons at long last.
The Bulrathi show up and beg us for peace. I accept, this time. I'd rather go make war on someone else for the moment, or maybe take those Tundra worlds soon (spoilers: I don't take them for the rest of the update). But the Bulrathi are out of tech we want and down to one world, and the AI reacts negatively to you wiping out a species outright. Any species, I mean, no matter who. So we'd strain our relations with everyone else to wipe them out.
And if we want to do that, Nazin is probably a better planet, being a home world, and the Darloks worse neighbors, due to their spying proficiency. And they still have tech to steal.
Year 2446 rolls around. Only four years till the next High Council meeting.
Anyways, with Ursa under our control, I set it to terraform and build factories. I also spot another Bulrathi ship coming in.
Then I design a new Mass Driver ship. Unfortunately, Mass Drivers use a lot of space right now- I have one each of Ion Cannons, Lasers, and Mass Drivers because with all the good systems I want, we can't have even two Mass Drivers in the design.
Overall, this is a bit of a side grade, but should, in particular, be overall better at attacking planets than our Intruders.
Penetrator is another Meklar name default, as was Intruder before it, I should note.
Anyways, since we are back in contact with the Darloks, I note that they apparently invented Neutron Pellet Guns before contact broke. Neutron Pellet Guns are the Mass Driver's little brother, doing 2-5 damage and ignoring half of the targets shields. They're not tremendously impressive but take notably more shielding than lasers to fully block while being low tech. They actually also take more shields to block outright than the more powerful and advanced Ion Cannons.
I show this off for two reasons. The first is that the game started 146 turns ago, give or take. The second is that the Psilons are Honorable Technologists.
The latter we have seen before, they focus on tech advancement. The former means that they won't attack anyone they are on 'good terms' with, but conversely have twice as negative of an opinion of 'unprovoked attacks and sabotage'.
Anyways, back to spying on the Darloks and also we start on spying on the Psilons. I also set our spies to Sabotage the Bulrathi, because I'm feeling like showing that off and also screwing over the Bulrathi, and they are out of tech to steal for now. And I decide to go back to spying on the Mrrshan. At this point, we can't really stay on good terms with them due to the High Council, and I'd appreciate a chance to snag their tech.
Also note that the Psilons are uncomfortable with us even though we just met them. I'm not sure precisely why, probably our large empire, because as I said previously, the Psilons default to neutral with almost everyone, including the Meklars.
Anyways, then I end the turn.
So, sabotage. I've already covered factory and missile base sabotage, but I left inciting revolution for later. Well, later is now.
In one of the rare cases of the manual being weirdly vague, and not providing hard numbers, each spy can make 'up to 10%' of the population rebellious. If 50% or more of the planet is rebellious, the planet goes into rebellion. Rebelling planets cease producing for your empire, and don't count for votes in the High Council. The only solution to rebellion is to send ground troops to bring them into compliance with your rule, which is necessarily rather bloody, as rebels have the same tech as you by definition, and of course even for the Bulrathi keep their ground combat bonus. So it will always, always be you needing to win at a 5 point (from the defender bonus) disadvantage, no matter what tech you have and what species you are.
So in truth part of why I'm doing this is to hopefully see what happens if I make his last planet rebel. Does that officially kill them? Does it not rebel? Does it leave the Bulrathi in a weird limbo state of existing powerlessly? Who knows, but maybe we will find out.
Our spies incited 6 rebels, bringing unrest to 13%.
And then our turn starts.
So something the manual doesn't mention- sabotage actions, or at least inciting rebellion, are good for exploring previously unexplored worlds, in addition to their primary effects. Given that allows us to see things like environments, populations, and missile bases, this is fairly useful.
This does not, however, apply to Espionage, even though if you pay attention it does list a planet.
With going back to spying on them, I see that the Mrrshan have invented Irridium Fuel Cells, which are the next step up over Deuterium Fuel Cells we already have, but conversely the step below the Dotomite Crystals we could try to research.
Having checked that, I then end the turn.
More of our new Penetrators finish.
Vigaroe hits its pop max, and we were apparently spending Ecologically.
I leave it on the tech spending it defaults to, since I've been using it as a lab world anyways.
... And then I end the turn. Since we aren't actively waging war, there really isn't too much to do each turn.
We pick up Battle Computer Mark 4, at last.
Neither of these is new, neither of them is interesting, and neither of them is very useful. I go for ECM Jammer Mark 3, because it's more basic, and will thus take less time. I hope to leapfrog to more advanced technologies through it.
And then the turn starts.
Our spies on the Psilons reveal to me that they mostly have tech we already have. However, the exception is, well, exceptional. Scatter Pack Rockets are not an unfamiliar concept, as the Guardian was equipped with the most advanced form of the series, but they are a powerful one.
The thing is, each Scatter Pack Rocket tech is the same as a less advanced standard rocket... only it fires multiple shots. Scatter Pack V Rockets in specific almost feel like a pun, as they are a five shot per attack version of the Hyper-V Rockets. They use more space, but not realistically five times as much. It's somewhat hard to measure precisely due to miniaturization. Anyways, it's functionally identical to running five copies of a Hyper-V Rocket Launcher, in accuracy, damage, missile speeds, range, and so on, and five such rockets would do overall more damage than our more advanced Merculite Missiles, except against heavily shielded targets.
More importantly than the potential ship uses, though, is that Missile Bases automatically pack both your best Scatter Pack rockets and your best non-Scatter Pack missile types. They don't get to fire both at once, unlike if you made a ship mounting both, rather you use the missile button to swap between them. (for ships, the missile button is used to toggle off and on firing missiles at all, which can be useful if you have a ship with both beams and missiles and want to split fire, for example, or conserve missiles for later in the fight for whatever reason.)
And as I said, against more lightly defended targets Scatter Pack V Rockets would hit harder, so this is something that would be quite the nice upgrade to our Missile Bases, if nothing else.
(Scatter Pack X Rockets are a ten pack of the Stinger Missiles I could have researched earlier this update, incidentally.)
On the other hand, the Darloks don't have any new tech, or at least not that I notice. Certainly nothing both new over their prior set and simultaneously new to us.
So then I end the turn.
Election year! I had half expected this to end the game, but no.
The Mrrshan vote for themselves, the Psilons abstain, the Bulrathi (who have been reduced to one vote) vote for the Mrrshan, the Darloks (also down to one vote) vote for the Mrrshan, the humans and their two votes abstain, and we vote ourselves, with 11 votes.
As you can see, though, that's not enough for a majority. So the game continues.
With more warships being built.
And Esper reaching its factory limit. I leave it on research, as it is out in the corner, off on its own. Good spot for a research world, slower turn around on getting any ships it builds to the front.
I decide to switch Galos, and some of our other worlds away from ship construction, to power forward with research. I'm hoping to get the kinds of breakthroughs needed to destroy the Guardian.
And an Improved Terraforming breakthrough becomes possible with the increased rate of research.
Then I realize that without a fleet under construction, the fleet production screen won't pop up so I switch Nordia back to ships, to keep getting that.
Less total research, but breakthrough still possible.
Turn start. It's one I instantly end, though.
Then we get a chance to steal tech from the Mrrshan.
As an aside, note that it says 'research center at Fierias'. As far as I'm aware, this means nothing, since as I noted earlier it doesn't, like, reveal the planet. And it's not of use to learn a system name, since you have to be in contact with a species to spy on them, and if you are in contact with them you automatically know the names of all systems they control no matter how far away.
Anyway, we get an increased fuel cell range. This will put us in contact with the humans.
And by happenstance the Psilons decide to posture at us, on the same turn.
Then we make first contact with the Humans. Very Star Trek uniform there.
And then the turn starts.
Draconis hits its factory limit.
I decide to check on the species comparison screen, now that we've met everyone. Naturally, we outclass everyone... mostly. The Mrrshan beat us in the game's estimation of fleet strength. Of course, we could pump out far more ships than them per turn, so that doesn't really matter with such a close value.
The Human report is 152 years old, meaning it's been that many turns since the start, at this point. We won't know what tech they have 'til we get a spy on them, of course. Honorable is familiar from when we met the Psilons, while Militarist means they focus on Weapons tech and try to maintain a large fleet.
Anyways. I set up spying on the Humans, as well, and then I end the turn.
And our spies manage to steal from the Darloks, in a lucky break. Like I've commented before, the Darloks just plain have naturally high internal security. Force Fields is the Class 3 Deflector Shields, and Weapons the Neutron Pellet Guns, while Computers is the extremely valuable Improved Robotic Controls 3 technology, so...
We steal that. Like I said before, Improved Robotic Controls makes factories more expensive (50% more expensive in the case of Improved Robotic Controls 3), but the Meklars in specific do not experience that cost increase. It's part of their species advantage.
Anyways, the game asks us if we want more factories, in a word, and of course we do, so we take the automatic industry output adjustment here. We have a ton of planets, so it would be a bit of a pain to do manually.
Turn start. Which I immediately end.
In this case, I didn't skip the screenshot of the start of turn...
I didn't get a ship. So I adjust the ratio in favor of ships at Nordia.
Then I end the turn.
And we get another chance to incite revolution at Tau Cygni.
So we do so. Their population must have increased or the rebels... de-rebelled or something. I dunno. Last time the percentage of unrest was 13%, so this is actually lower than before, even though we incited a new rebel.
And then the turn starts. Which we immediately end. And also immediately end the next turn.
This turn actually proves to have something of vague interest to screenshot.
Centauri reaches its industry maximum anew. And I switch it to building ships, so Nordia can focus on Factories.
And Willow also reaches its industry limit. Note the planet's production value.
Factories always produce 1 production if they are manned, and we have five hundred factories and 100 people here. Ergo, our citizens are producing more or less exactly .83 production a head.
We're able to make both a computer and planetology breakthrough right now, but also we have 11 as our planetology level. So apparently with 11 Planetology each pop unit is worth ~.83 production.
Anyways, I then get Nordia focusing on factories like I said I would.
And then I realize, whoops, Vigaroe was already at its new industry limit and then some. The auto-adjustment with factories only occurs when they reach the limit- that 'RESERV' marks that it is spending effort into creating Planetary Reserve.
We correct it back over to research.
Then we end our turn.
The Mrrshan are all pissed off about... amassing starships on their border? But our entire fleet is up in the Centauri and Ursa systems. Well, whatever.
Start of turn.
And the Mrrshan have a Sabretooth and 8 Cheetahs going for Esper. I've been watching for this ever since they invented that new fuel cell. Well, ever since I noticed they had it- it's possible they had it for a few turns before I noticed. I considered building a Missile Base or so there immediately, but then I decided that, given their engine quality and the ranges involved, it'd be cheaper to just build them when they'd be needed, skipping the maintenance we would spend had we built 'em sooner.
So we get started on that. Four turns will be plenty of time to prepare.
And then I check on our tech, and a Propulsion breakthrough is now possible, in addition to the existing possible breakthroughs.
Then I end the turn.
Turn start. You can see Esper will get two more Missile Bases this turn.
Nordia hits its industry limit. I go with it being a research center, for now.
We could now also see the breakthrough that gives us Class V Deflector Shields.
That said, I end the turn.
Improved Terraforming +30. Excellent. I skipped the screenshot, but we did take the +25% eco effort to all colonies thing.
We also simultaneously pick up Fusion Drives.
We've got three new techs in Planetology. Bio Toxin Antidote is an unusual and specific tech. For context, I must cover Biological Weapons.
Down at tech level 10 for Planetology you have Death Spores, the first biological weapon. Biological weapons are devastatingly effective anti planet weapons; Death Spores kill 1m colonists per shot, while carrying five ammo (which is half a conventional bombs 10 ammo), and lower the planet's habitability by the same, forcing you to terraform it back. They completely ignore shields and do no damage to factories and missile bases. But you can't own a planet without colonists, and so total depopulation will (after the battle) wipe out the colony, including all factories and missile bases as a result. If you don't completely kill the population, you'll instead be looking at the defenders being reduced in numbers, without reducing the factory count, thus helping steal more tech.
Bio Toxin Antidote is a tech level 17 tech that reduces the casualties of all biological weapons by 1m per shot, but does not reduce or eliminate the damage to the planet's environment. Still, given that Death Spores can rapidly depopulate worlds, I'd want this if we had neighbors packing such weapons- it does, in fact, render your population units completely immune to Death Spores.
There are two higher tiers of biological weapons and one higher tier of antidote, incidentally. Also, the AI considers it a war crime or something like that, and gets pissed off if you use them on any species, not just if you use it on them. Although the AI is fairly eager to use the things themselves, hypocritically...
Anyways, as to the other techs...
Controlled Radiated Environment is the end-game colony module tech, for all that it's only tech level 18. With it, we could colonize any world type, including the single Radiated World we actually know of. Of course, I've been ignoring two better Tundra worlds, so. *shrug*.
Lastly, we have Improved Terraforming +40. Which, if your pattern recognition has failed you, is just Improved Terraforming +30, but the ceiling for increasing pop max with it is 40 instead of 30. So I go with it. More pop is always good.
Propulsion is a couple of old techs we don't really need and Impulse Drives, which are the next gen tech after Fusion Drives, as starship engines go. Warp 5 and max maneuverability of five, and all that. So we go for Impulse Drives.
And then yet another turn start.
I check on our tech, and we now might get Hard Beams any turn. That's good.
Then I check on the spies. The Mrrshan now have Fusion Beams, which I've covered before. They're the next step up over Neutron Blasters.
I check on the Humans for the first time since we actually got live spies through their security- if your spies are caught and killed, you don't get an intelligence report, even if you created multiple spy networks that turn. The Humans don't have anything advanced, particularly, but they have a couple more basic techs we didn't research or, in the case of Battle Computer Mark 2, couldn't. Given the effect of Computer tech on spying, I actually do want those Battle Computers.
The Psilons also picked up Improved Industrial Tech 8 at some point.
That done, I end the turn.
And we get ECM Jammer Mark 3.
Sadly, ECM Jammer Mark 4 is now the sole option. So I take it, for lack of any newer options.
Then we see a galactic news report. It's ranking us by tech. Which we kinda already knew, from being in contact with everyone. Oh well.
Also the Bulrathi declare war on us. I don't expect anything to come of it.
And the turn starts.
The Mrrshan are building relatively a lot of Sabretooth class ships. There's also one at Fierias right now, in addition to the one heading for Esper and the two here.
Not anything else to look at, really. So I end the turn.
And the aforementioned Mrrshan fleet arrives.
Cheetahs are not a design we have previously witnessed. They also aren't a terribly noteworthy design. Mark 1 battle computer and class 2 shields, and a single neutron blaster aren't exactly what I'd call impressive, not for medium size ships anyways. If they were small, there'd probably be a lot more of them, and I'd be more concerned in all likelihood. But at these kinds of counts, meh.
And we have six missile bases. Given how the last fight with a Sabretooth went, I skip the blow-by-blow.
There, the end, where we kill all the Cheetahs in one attack, having ground down the Sabretooth easily.
By chance, our spies steal tech. Only one category to steal from, so...
Neutron Blaster get. Note that the research center is at Klystron this time. Again, as far as I know that's meaningless, just the game picking a planet from that empire out of a hat to name.
Anyways, the Mrsshan are whining about how big we are. Being 'too large' of an empire makes everyone hate you. I'm not sure exactly what sets it off, being bigger than them by some margin I would guess. Though even there, I don't have any strong guesses as to whether that's pop based or planet based or what.
Anyways, then the turn starts.
Ursa hits its pop max, and we get it to do all the factory building it needs.
Draconis, likewise, hits its pop limit, and we split its work between industry and tech.
As does Galos. Same deal as with Draconis, here. Industry and tech.
Anyways, invasion thwarted, Esper goes back to research over defense.
And then I end the turn.
New turn start.
Ursa reaches its industry maximum.
Then we switch it to build missile bases for a bit, so that we aren't relying on just the fleet.
Then, to save some screenshots, I'll summarize the rest of the announcements. Vigaroe hits its pop max, and we leave it on research. (because it still has all those factories).
Nordia hits its pop max, and we put it to a roughly even split between factories and research.
Primodius is the same story as Nordia. Hits pop limit, and then we leave it split between factories and research.
And Zhardan also has that happen.
As, lastly, does Rhilus.
And then there is nothing to do but end the turn.
And have another spy success against the Bulrathi.
We incite two new rebels, bringing Tau Cygni up to 16% unrest.
Turn start...
Galos reaches its factory limit. We leave it on research.
Then it's time for me to summarize more, as this isn't exactly thrilling. Moro hits its pop limit, and we put it to mostly factory work with a little bit of research.
Centauri reaches its pop limit too, and we have it mixed between ship building and getting the rest of the factories it needs.
And Whynil hits its own maximum of 145 colonists. We put it to mostly building factories with a tiny amount of research.
Then I end the turn.
We get another chance to steal tech from the Mrrshan.
And do so, picking up the more powerful Fusion Beams.
And our spies succeed on the Bulrathi again. Viva la revolution.
One more rebel. One of these turns, it might add up to something that matters. For now, it's 18% unrest.
On the flipside, enemy spies destroy some factories at Whynil.
And then we get the breakthrough for Hard Beams. If it seems like I'm being perfunctory, that's because it was my ambition to end this update with either taking Orion or winning the game, and focusing overly much on Orion has gotten things dragging, a lot. We're seeing a whole lot of nothing. I really should have just gone and starting blowing away the Mrrshan or something, and saved the Guardian for a bonus update.
Anyways. Ion Stream Projectors are a ship special system. In a general sense, they are cousins to Pulsars, striking at max health instead of current. I've never really used them that I can recall, but the manual says they do a maximum of 50% health reduction. I suspect that's not per turn, but rather period, no matter how many ships and how many turns.
Compared to Energy Pulsars, they're better suited to making larger ships more frail, and less able to simply shred smaller ones. Like, not able to do that at all.
Torpedoes are the final broad weapon type in the game, though there's plenty of individually interesting techs remaining.
Anti-Matter Torpedoes are the first example, and also the most boring. Torpedoes, broadly, function as a variant on missiles. They are subject to all the same defenses that apply against missiles, including Missile Defense stat. They are also affected by planetary atmospheres, doing half damage like beams. And they can only be fired every other turn, going on a cooldown every time they fire.
The upshot to all that is you would compare Anti-Matter Torpedoes to a missile six tech levels above them. Same targeting computer level of 4. Same range of 8. Same speed of 4. Half again the damage. Less than half the space used on size (albeit more than seven times the energy requirements, making it matter more what your propulsion tech is like), before miniaturization. And if course, since miniaturization is based on how advanced the tech is, they'll always be at least as miniaturized and likely more so than more advanced techs.
And unlike Missiles, Torpedoes have no ammo limits. It's all about that cooldown. This can make them excellent long range weapons for longer slugging matches. For better or for worse, they are not used by planetary missile bases. They are also generally poor against planets, since, like I said, they are subject to atmosphere penalties and Missile Bases get to fire every single turn at long range themselves, so the reach advantage over beams and the endurance advantage over missiles both don't apply against missile bases. Leaving you with the drawback of only firing every other turn with little to show for it.
Lastly, we have Megabolt Cannons. Megabolt Cannons are a unique beam weapon, albeit one not that great. They function as having +3 attack levels. And that's it. That's the unique thing they do. They hit softer than the very next basic weapon type, when you discount the accuracy, while using up comparable space.
The AI is super obsessive about using them, for whatever reason, in my experience. They aren't particularly good unless facing fairly overwhelming beam defenses, though. And even then going to missiles or the like may be smarter.
But instead of getting a newer tech, I decide to go back for Hyper-X Rockets. They'll take very little time, and give us a slight increase to our weapons tech. We might also find use for them on ships, if we want missile ships.
And then the turn starts.
Draconis hits its industry maximum. As do Nordia, Whynil, and Willow. Naturally, we leave them all on research.
Then I decide to look into what our small ships could mount. Which includes Mass Drivers. Here I need to point out that Mass Drivers are typically not very good when first invented. They are a size slanted weapon; most of their space use is from size, and not power forcing us to use more engines. Since Weapons miniaturize faster than other systems including engines, later in the game they'll tend to be quite space efficient. For the moment, the slightly more energy intense Neutron Blasters would take noticeably less space, but down the line Mass Drivers would become quite small.
I had hoped to make a small Mass Driver Mounted ship to face the Guardian, but we don't yet have the miniaturization to include even Sub-Light drives. So I pass, for now.
Then I end the turn.
We steal tech from the Mrrshan, because I forgot to stop our espionage efforts on them, and they happened to invent something new.
Specifically, Controlled Dead Environment. Well, a Planetology boost is always nice.
And then turn start. Note that Willow is generating over 800 RPs off only 559 production after maintenance costs and before Eco spending. Artifacts worlds are nice for research.
Primodius hits its industry cap. As do Zhardan and Rhilus. We leave them all on research.
At this point, I remember to check on the Mrrshan's technology.
Then, since they have nothing new to us, I decide to switch to sabotaging them.
Then I check on our research again, and see we can get the breakthrough we need for Armored Exoskeletons any turn now.
And yet another turn starts.
And I immediately end it.
The Psilons show up to complain about how many systems we own as well.
And another turn starts.
Moro reaches its factory cap...
And so does Centauri.
It is at this point that I notice I have fifteen missile bases at Ursa, which is excessive but oh well. Not noticing building more missile bases than you intended is a fairly easy mistake to make, since they aren't announced on the fleet productions screen or anything and the game doesn't have hard limits on count unlike, say, factories. Anyways, I switch to research for Ursa.
With Ursa so well defended, I decide the older Tormentors are mostly deadweight.
I scrap them, and the Intruders as well to save a good chunk on maintenance.
Anyways, we are newly able to get a Computer breakthrough, on top of the existing possibilities.
Then we get a GNN report. Comet is one of two events that can outright destroy a planet. As the report says, we've got ten years. Any of our ships in the system will do damage to it, and if we don't do enough to destroy it before time is up, the planet will be instantly and totally destroyed. Permanently gone, impossible to fix. No more planet in that system. There's no tech based solution to a missing planet, not in this game. So you say bye-bye to ever having a colony in that system again.
Obviously, we don't want that.
Yadda yadda turn start.
First thing I do is send all the Penetrators off to Whynil.
Then I go to make a ship design for the express purpose of breaking the comet. This is rather better than we traditionally could have made for a small, but is fairly sub-optimal at this point for actual combat.
But we mostly care about firepower in dealing with comets, hence why I was willing to accept lower quality engines and so on.
Then we assign Whynil to build them.
But that had a rather lower quality engine to fit the two ion cannons, and I want to be sure we save Whynil. With a lower quality engine, ships built in other systems would wind up taking extra time to reach Whynil to pitch in against the comet.
So I make a more practical design, mostly for that faster engine, for other planets to build.
I assign all the nearest worlds to produce it and relocate the new ships to Whynil, even Willow, which is a bit wasteful given it is an Artifacts world. But losing planets sucks long haul, so I consider it worth it on that basis.
We also set Primodius to work on them.
And Draconis.
And Vigaroe.
As well as Nordia.
And lastly Zhardan.
With all these ships being built, I decide to have Centauri focus on research.
Our research, naturally, slows significantly with so many planets now building ships, particularly our artifacts world. Anyways, I end the turn...
And we invent Class 5 Deflector Shields.
Only option is the next class up. Which means we got unlucky and missed both the next ground combat tech and the next planetary shield.
Then we get a news report, that we've already destroyed 14% of the comet. So we are pretty secure in terms of destroying it on time. We'd take it out with just the ships at hand, even before more arrive or are built.
Then the Mrrshan get pissed and declar war on us. Meh.
And we build dozens of ships. Half that is us controlling a larger, more productive empire, and half that is, well, small ships costing drastically less than mediums, let alone the yet larger sizes.
Only thing I find to be of note this turn is this batch of Darlok transports heading for Tau Cygni, and that the Darloks and Bulrathi seem to not have fleets right now. The Darloks might kill the Bulrathi if they get lucky.
Anyways, I end the turn.
We pick up Armored Exoskeletons...
And Hyper-X Rockets.
Our new options are Andrium Armor, the next tier after our Zortrium…
And Improved Industrial Tech 4. I go with that. 4 BC factories is quite cheap, leading to explosively fast development of worlds.
Meanwhile, we have no new weapons options, so I decide to go for Anti-Matter Torpedoes. They're fairly uniquely useful.
And then the turn starts. And that's where I leave this update. It's gotten quite long, much longer than any prior update.
Tune in next time for us destroying the comet and going on to win the game, by sword or high council.
After that, I'll do a bonus update of taking down the guardian, and then we'll move on to the next species, in a larger galaxy.
Comments
Post a Comment