Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 4:37 am Post subject: mauve's MoO2 mooings (bandwidth warning)
Music for proper atmosphere:
Everyone knows MoO2, but I'm going to treat this thread like nobody has a clue anyway. I have the CD/Windows version of the game, but will be running the DOS version because dosbox is more convenient overall. Also you can just install the 1.31 patch over the Windows version and you get a fully functional DOS install anyway.
I got the urge to play this again recently and have been rolling around in Impossible difficulty with some successes and some failures. I give no guarantee that this particular run will succeed and it might never even get finished, so feel free to discuss moo2 stuff here.
The back of my CD case has this gem written on it:
Quote:
In using this CD-ROM, you may choose to use the Internet. You acknowledge that Hasbro Interactive is not responsible for the Internet or whether it should continue to exist in its present form or whether or not a government or governmental agency, either foreign or domestic, will control, regulate or disband the Internet.
You can tell Hasbro has a keen grasp of what the Internet is.
Right-on. Let's get started.
These are the settings I'm running for this game, on Impossible difficulty. 5 players is a good set for a medium galaxy, leads to relatively early conflict but it's not too cramped.
Random events are disabled because, well, they're kinda annoying. Basically, they're not really 'random' in a traditional sense, it just causes negative effects to punish whoever happens to be in the lead score-wise at the time. Which will, 100%, be me. No thank you I don't want another game screwed by having my homeworld stuck in stasis for 30-50 turns.
Antarans are also disabled. They're a mysterious alien race that FOR SOME REASON will always attack the score leader with max-tech level ships that have no shields. They're actually a minimal threat by the time they start invading around turn 150ish, and I will definitely be capable of handling them, which makes them an annoyance at best, and game-breaking at worst.
See, if you capture an enemy ship, and try to scrap it, you get some random technology that was on the ship that you don't have. If this happens to be the armor, at that stage of the game, it's over. You win. So I'll be taking a pass on this as well under the guise of it not really being interesting.
Will be doing custom race for this. On Impossible difficulty, the AI gets extra perks of its own. These are more or less randomly chosen, so I could face weaklings or gods, I don't really know, and for the sake of this I'm not going to pick any of the default races. I take the Psilon portrait so that Psilons don't show up in the game; they are more or less unstoppable in the hands of the AI if they spawn at the opposite end of the galaxy. Also not worth having a game thrown in the bin over.
Other good picks for race portraits are Sakkra, Meklar, and Trilarians. All three are a hazard in the hands of the enemy. Elerians, Gnolams, and Silicoids suck. Klackons can be a problem if they get rolling but are usually shut down by good spying.
So custom race. You have ten perk points by default, you can get up to ten more by choosing negative perks.
As you can see, I'm going to be running a research rush focused race. Here's what I got:
Democracy. Pros: +50% research is huge, +50% tax is really nice. Cons: -10 defensive spying means you get all your research jacked easily. 7 points ouch.
Artifacts World. Pro: Homeworld becomes the best research planet in the galaxy. Con: 3 points, homeworld isn't really going to be doing much else so I need a production planet.
Lithovore. Pro: Consume no food, ever. This means 100% of your population can be building or researching, and no need to use freighters to haul food around. Con: 10 points ouch.
Repulsive. Pro: Impossible difficulty AI will never give you any sort of fair shake in diplomacy and attacks at the slightest provocation, so who cares. Con: Leaders won't show up very often.
-10 Ground Combat, -20 Ship Defense: Negative perks to get me to the cap. Ship defense isn't a big deal, I'll get clobbered by lasers later but I don't think that'll be a huge problem. Ground combat means I won't be doing much capturing. More likely I'm just going to bomb planets into oblivion.
I'll go over the other perks when they show up on other races.
Time to begin. Sorting through the rest of the screenshots from this session... _________________ twit
Last edited by mauve on Thu Sep 05, 2013 4:49 am; edited 2 times in total
answering post from the Games You Played thread here:
Broco wrote:
As I recall I had the most success in a game where I made a custom race with large production bonuses. I built automated farm and research structures with that production capacity and then built vast battlefleets with it. I'm not sure if the standard ant race would be similarly effective.
By the way, do you think conquest with ground troops is viable? I've always felt it's a lot of bother and I usually just nuke everybody (that "drop all bombs" button is so satisfying) and recolonize from scratch, but I wonder if that's really the most efficient approach given the ramp-up time of the new colonies.
Klackons kinda suck. Uncreative is an unbelievably huge penalty. Go for Sakkra instead if you want to pick a default race; population ~= production anyway.
There's three main strategies in the game:
Production rush. This means population, lots of it, and an assumption that you're not really going to be ahead in technology so you're going to have to make for it with force early and quick. These are almost always dictatorships.
Research rush. What I'm doing. Tends to focus on fewer, stronger planets and overwhelms with ships that you can't beat.
Creative. This is actually the most aggressive strategy. The picks are so expensive that you can't really get great production and you actually get less raw research than a dedicated setup, so you will fall behind eventually. (The AI cheats so it'll be godlike if it gets a chance to build up, though.) Your ships and planets will be way more diversified, and there are a few tech tiers that give amazing amounts of stuff.
Troop strategies can go a few ways. If you heavily invest on technology for assaults, you can capture enemy ships like crazy. This is very very viable, especially if Antarans are available. (Their ships explode on capture 50% of the time, but you only need one.)
As far as capturing planets goes... Depends. The buildings aren't really that valuable, the planet itself isn't going to be really usable for a good long while either way, can't even use it as a base of operations because of rebels. If you have stellar converters, it is almost always more worthwhile to blow their planet into smithereens and remake it with Planet Construction, but the game's usually over then anyway. What you want to look at is more the enemy race perks. If they have a bonus you don't have that you want, take them for that. A race with production bonuses for a race that doesn't have any is golden, and might be worth the risk to take them. _________________ twit
This is our starting star system, Mentar. Every star has a set number of planetary objects in orbit around it. This system has four, they can have anywhere from none to five.
I freely admit rerolling my game three times until I got a moderately non-shitty starting star. One time, I got an ultra-poor tiny toxic as the only other star in my system. This is the most useless habitable planet in the game and would be better off blown into asteroids.
In addition to the Terran homeworld that I start with, this one has a Gas Giant, an Abundant Toxic, and a Poor Low-G. Gas giants are not habitable. Toxic planets can never be terraformed, but abundant is alright. Poor is how mineral-rich the planet is, so that gives a production penalty to anything done on it. That it's low gravity gives a further penalty to all action on the planet.
Not the best star ever, but it'll do.
If you're new to MOO2, you probably notice there's a lot of junk on the screen. On the upper right corner is a number which is the current 'stardate', which is 3500.0. This is basically a turn counter, 3501.5 would be turn 15. Below that are the following five elements on the right side of the screen, from top to bottom:
The top BC counter is your current money, and how much you will gain at the end of this turn.
Below that is your command points. This affects how many spaceships you can sustain. Larger ships consume more points. If you go over, it costs a LOT of BC per turn.
Middle is food. We're Lithovores, so we don't eat food, so this'll be zero forever.
Freighters. We don't have any right now, but they're used for hauling population and food between star systems. We'll want some of these.
Research! Get into this soon.
At the default tech level, the game starts you with two scouts and a colony ship. You can start at pre-warp and get none of these, forcing yourself to build the (very expensive) colony ship, but right now I don't care. I sent the two scouts out to nearby stars.
When you look at a planet, this is the display you get. Displays pretty much everything you need to know, from money output to how long until your current build finishes. You can pick up and drop population units between farming/production/science at will.
I set an expensive warship to build; I'm not actually planning on making it though. The way MoO2 production works is that all production goes towards the currently selected product, and you can switch to another one and retain all production. This way, whenever research gets us Automated Factories, they'll be partially built to begin with.
Research is split into eight categories. Researching a technology will advance you to the next tier of that category. Normal races are forced to choose only one of each, Creative races get everything listed, and Uncreative races only get one choice. So there's some tough choices to be made.
Right off the bat we want Automated Factories; Research isn't a problem but we can't build anything at the moment. To do this, we have to get through Construction, and I go for Reinforced Hull, which triples the interior armor points on my ships. Fighter Bays are also a decent choice, but not for me.
The given RP count does not guarantee that you get the technology once filled. After the RP max has been reached, there is an increasing % chance each turn of the technology being understood. Adding more RP increases the roll size, but doesn't actually change the roll itself. You can gain a mere 1 RP when it's at 90% and you will still have a 90% chance of getting it.
Scout results!
Nothing good. Sabik has nothing habitable at all, even. I'd consider Porridge if I were running a race that needed food, though. Can't go wrong with farming/research colonies.
Hut is only accessible from a wormhole from Sabik. Wormholes are basically spacelanes you can follow from one system to another in one turn, no matter how far they are. This is not preferable for a secondary system because travel is made more complicated, and it splits your empire up.
Klackon ship spotted! We know that they're going to be out in this direction, so if we expand there we'll bump into them.
Various star systems have special events happen, this is one of them. More often than not you find a space monster and it eats your scout. This one is nice.
Jackpot. There's also a Rich Barren planet in the star system with 4 pop max, so Elvarad will be our colony! Time to send the ship out.
Automated factories finished being researched this turn, so I immediately swap out the junk ship with it. You can spend money to hurry production immediately on a planet, which will guaranteed build the object. It isn't possible to partial-build, only full-build. If I had not started production with the junk ship, this would have cost 240BC to build, rather than the paltry 109BC it's going for right now.
A planet can only produce one thing per turn, no matter how much production it has. But it'll queue up any leftover production onto the next element in the list, so it's not a total loss. Always leave something big in the queue to absorb it.
zzzzzzzz
Zirr has nothing. At all. Except for a Gnolam scout. This is down left of Elvarad so we will definitely run into them now.
When research succeeds, this screen shows up with a researcher of your race telling you about this awesome new stuff you got. And Research Labs on top of all the other research bonuses I have now turn me into a technology machine. Build one on the homeworld immediately.
Hey dude.
Every race greets you like this. On Impossible they all hate you so get used to the trash talk.
Got lucky on this one. AI traded Dictatorship for Democracy and... that's it. So they're still awful.
Tax +1BC: Gets more money from tax. Stacks with Democracy's +50%, so they are raking in the dough.
Low Gravity: This one sucks. You get a penalty on any planet that isn't also a low gravity world until grav generators are researched. Also your troops suck.
Expert Traders: +25% bonus to trade treaties(useless), +100% money gained from building Trade Goods. Decent but not worth writing home about.
Lucky: With random elements off, this does nothing. It makes 'random' stuff more likely to affect other players, and when it does affect them it's more likely to be beneficial. That's still pretty useless.
The game gives a surprising amount of information on every race if you poke around, you get a free listing of all technology that they have and even makes one you do not have glow. As you can see, he's a Ruthless Diplomat. Ruthless means he's going to be super militaristic and aggressive, but, well, that's a given right.
why do you have a transport ship on turn 14
Transport ships are for hauling marines to invade and take over enemy planets. It's also right next to Elvarad. This won't do, so the Gnolams are going to have to die and quickly, because they aren't going to wait.
I am enjoying this because I only played MOO, never MOOTWO, and I missed out on all the fun stuff my MOOTWO friends were doing. _________________ -pat m.
twitter
More scouting results. This is actually a reasonably good system all around; the oceanic planet nearby is Poor which would make it a research colony, but a decently sized Abundant is worthwhile. If we get a radiation shield and invest way too much in Terraforming it might even be a good planet! (I am not getting a radiation shield unless my spies get it.)
Now that we have a new colony, it's time to kickstart it by shipping some of our citizens over. This takes 5 freighter slots and a set number of turns, based on your best engine at the time.
Our first leader! He is completely useless to us!
Because we're Repulsive, we're not going to have much luck with leaders and probably won't get anything better than bottom tier for most of the game. Still, even a crappy one can be decent.
With tactical mode on, you can load out ships however you want, and the #1 way to take things on early game is to make a lot of fragile missileboats. Beam weapons are generally inaccurate and do very little damage, while missiles have travel time but home in on their target to do Big Damage.
I haven't researched enough to get access to MIRV nukes yet, so they're a little underpowered compared to where they could be.
Built a colony base at Elvarad to expand outwards, and since our current colony is maxed out we ship some colonists out to it immediately. You never want your colonies to be maxed out, because then they stop gaining population.
It begins. They must die.
Because of the Democracy security penalty, this is going to be a theme until I get some spy technology going.
You can refit ships to have stuff from other ships of the same general size. In this case I'm refitting the two scouts I started with to be missileboats.
Our goal is 7-ish missilers and a single bombing ship to flatten the planet once its defenses are down. 7 is enough to maul even a starbase provided they don't have ecm jammers, which they don't.
Planetary Supercomputer and Robo-Miners are two very important structures. Supercomputer gives +2 to all researchers, Miners give +2 to production. We don't need production immediately, so dumping straight into research.
The first Gnolam planet up doesn't have a starbase, so we can safely assault it early.
MoO2 combat is on a 2D grid; I've moved all of my frigates as far as they can go this turn to get everything on the same screen. Missiles take about 3 turns to reach their target at max distance, 2 from here.
For some reason, the AI likes to hire combat leaders and put them on whatever crappy ship they can find. Seems like a waste to me, but whatever.
Also note that one nuclear missile hit will blow it to bits.
The AI isn't completely stupid and opts to run for it while a flood of missiles chases it out.
Once you've got a planet's defenses down, this screen comes up. If I had marines around, I could invade and take over the planet, but I don't so we just bomb it. This colony isn't of much use to us so we're just going to flatten it.
what about my factory tech, jerk
A few turns later, nothing left but rubble.
Now, I never researched fuel cells, so I can't actually reach their final system. Instead of building expensive colony ships, I'm going to build outposts instead.
Outpost ships are relatively inexpensive and, once deployed, give you a permanent fueling station at any planetoid they are placed at. You can even put them on uninhabitable places like gas giants, so they're a good way of extending your range. Plus they can't be captured, which is really important as we want to create a huge buffer zone between us and the enemy.
Ant farm time. I forgot to look at their stats immediately, will get to that later...
The bad news is they found me first, which means either they expanded into range or they just gained fuel cells larger than mine. Turns out it was the latter.
They are also one of the races that benefits most from spying, which means I need to get defense for that up very quickly.
GO AWAY
Also: At this point, Robo-Miners and Planetary Supercomputer are both researched, which is why my research just took a huge jump. I took Neural Scanners on the way to get there.
Neural Scanners give +10 to all spy rolls, so this just pretty much negated that entirely and probably every AI will have it in short order. This is easily one of the most problematic tech thefts that will happen for this entire game.
Since I've gone over the 6 ship command point limit, I've started having to pay out huge amounts of money per turn to sustain my fleet. As soon as I'm finished with this invasion I'm going to be scrapping unnecessary ships, so it's a temporary cost...
Time to assault Gnol! Starbases are nasty mostly because of seemingly endless missiles, which will each one-shot our frigates. They have a few defending ships too, so I take two passes; one to destroy the defense, then everyone retreats for a turn to come back and take out the starbase.
We fire all of our volleys of missiles without attacking or moving. Since you can tell which ship a missile is targeting, I just have them retreat before the enemy's missile impacts, sparing me their death. Starbase goes down without hitting any of my ships. If they had researched better armor instead of fuel cells I would have needed to pack some better firepower though; most likely MIRV missiles.
Scouts again. This is actually a decent planet aside from that we can never terraform it.
If you look closely, the Gnolams just colonized Monkar way up in the corner. I don't have the fuel cells to reach there so there's nothing I can do about it.
As I'm running low on funds I scrap some of the frigates as they won't be needed anymore.
If it were over one of my own colonies I would get some BC back for it. (These would give me 10, not worth worrying about) If this were a captured enemy ship, I would have a chance of gaining some of the technology aboard it for my own use.
Hey, a leader I actually want to use. Can't afford him right this second though.
And Gnol is conquered, after bombing their infantry out of existence.
When you capture an enemy race, they are in a 'conquered' state and need to assimilate into your culture. This takes time, usually at a rate of 1 per X turns, depending on your type of government. There's a chance of rebels taking the colony back, so you can't really rely on it until you've gotten it in whole, either.
You get their racial bonuses for your own use, as long as they aren't related to government, ships, or non-population related things. Also, if they build a colony base, it's of your race, even if you've managed to decimate your entire race and replaced it with other ones. You might think I would get the +tax or +tradegoods bonuses, but they don't carry over. The Gnolams are literally more useless than my own population is, because they need food. However, I don't really care; I just want to make some colony bases and get another starbase up ASAP. Research/production are covered elsewhere. They can starve to death for all I care.
You can mix races on a planet, but there's a morale penalty of -20%. Morale is a flat -/+% to all farming/production/research on a given planet, which would be bad if we really cared about it.
Took awhile but I remembered to check out the klackon stats. I frowned hard.
Unification - Pros: +15 to defensive spies, +50% bonus to all food and production. Cons: Morale has no effect, ever. Can't assimilate other planets in a timely fashion.
Uncreative - Only bad sides to this; it means that you can't even choose the technologies you get, meaning you will be relying on spies for a lot of it.
Food/Industrial +1: Yep, stacks with Unification. Costly, but good.
Ship offense/defense +x: Affects chance to hit and evade for beam weapons.
Large Home World: Big planet means big population. Guarantees a strong homeworld and is only one pick.
They've basically the same as stock Klackons, with extra ship defense/offense perks. This is a problem because with my ship defense penalty they will likely be hitting my ships every single time now. Fortunately, I have a plan...
If I capture them, I'll get a race with +1 production. That could be super beneficial, even if I have to make food for them.
In hindsight I shouldn't have sent the outpost ship to a new place blind, because there could have been a space monster or something there. But it worked out; I'll need to make a colony here sometime for the free money.
hahaha are you serious how did they build a starbase THERE
Impossible difficulty, folks.
That's it for this part, Gnolams effectively caged in for the time being. I'll have to take them out at some later time but not right now. _________________ twit
Keep em coming. I'm learning some good tricks from your tactics. I tended to underuse population move in the past (mostly due to forgetting the feature exists) and I usually turtled longer with the assumption that basic frigates with nuclear missiles wouldn't be effective. I also never realized those advantages of outposts over colonies.
I'm not convinced Democracy was worth the 7 points though? Sure your research is faster but the AIs are also stealing the crap out of it. Why not have taken +2 research instead?
I'm not convinced Democracy was worth the 7 points though? Sure your research is faster but the AIs are also stealing the crap out of it. Why not have taken +2 research instead?
Early research I really, really don't care about; The Scanners are literally the worst thing they could have gotten. The point is that now I am leaps and bounds ahead of them technologically and I'm going to start researching actually combat-relevant technologies soon, instead of just infrastructure. You'll see how this strategy unfolds when I get around to the next part. (tonight/tomorrow?)
90% of my research is coming from a single planet. When this ramps up, and it will soon, it will be very very difficult for the AI to catch up. _________________ twit
A guy I like playing MOO2 on "Super Impossible." i.e. on Impossible difficulty with -10 worth of negative traits, no positive traits at all. Takes Low G homeworld, Poor homeworld, and Uncreative, which forces him to use spying and diplomacy to get on the tech game. Since his own techs are random he has to make up the best military ships he can while choosing targets that are vulnerable to the type of techs he has available. It's pretty awesome.
He doesn't stop to explain much, assumes you are relatively familiar with MOO2. If you like the guy you can start with some of his earlier LPs, where he takes more time to explain what's going on. _________________ Let's Play, starring me.
A guy I like playing MOO2 on "Super Impossible." i.e. on Impossible difficulty with -10 worth of negative traits, no positive traits at all. Takes Low G homeworld, Poor homeworld, and Uncreative, which forces him to use spying and diplomacy to get on the tech game. Since his own techs are random he has to make up the best military ships he can while choosing targets that are vulnerable to the type of techs he has available. It's pretty awesome.
He doesn't stop to explain much, assumes you are relatively familiar with MOO2. If you like the guy you can start with some of his earlier LPs, where he takes more time to explain what's going on.
That sounds pretty cool, honestly. The AI kinda brainfarts after awhile if you hit the right buttons.
Spying is top tier in this game though, so if you can just get that started it helps a lot. _________________ twit
More scouting, this time the star system connected to Bier's wormhole. This is sort of important.
The fleet chart is basically a cheat that lets you know how much of an army you have to face. It doesn't really gauge strength so much as quantity, though, so bear that in mind.
Klackons are, predictably, building a huge army. With their ship attack/defense being what it is, this is worth being concerned about. I am in no state to launch an offensive campaign on them right now.
Well. Directly.
I have every non-research planet building spies. Lots of spies.
Because they just got awesome.
She'll reduce the amount of pollution emitted by industry production. I don't really need this and I plan on getting the pollution processor, so I give her a pass.
Wait, aren't I forgetting something...
d'oh I forgot to pick him up once I had money again, so here he is still waiting around. On his last turn before he goes elsewhere, to boot!
Uhhuh. Their colony expansion found my outposts.
Same as normal Sakkra, except Repulsive+Uncreative+Tolerant.
Feudal Government - Pros: Ship costs reduced by 1/3. Cons: Research halved. -20% morale unless barracks are built.
Tolerant - Treat all planet maximum populations as if they were Terran. Zero Pollution ever. 10 perk points.
Subterranean - Maximum population doubled. 6 perk points.
High Gravity - Treats High-G worlds as normal-G. Extra troop strength. 6 perk points.
Practically drooling. As a production race, these guys are considerably better than the Klackons and also less of a pain in the ass to fight, so I'm going to be dealing with them first.
I want them for my own. Yes.
A quick skim of the fleets menu shows that they're hella armed, but not as much as the Klackons. To be expected really.
This is the current layout of the galaxy. Gnolams are contained, Sakkra below, Klackons to the right. Conflict is more or less inevitable at this point, they are both going to expand in my direction 'peacefully'.
They take Yhe's planet, if you look up above it had a population cap of 6. It's 23 now. And that is why Subterranean Tolerant is crazy good. Nearly every planet is going to have a massive population cap.
Time to make some new ships. At this point, we've leveled up our Physics tech enough that we've gotten a few extra weapon choices we can make.
Whenever you get past a technology level in a given category, you don't just get new technology. Earlier/older technology becomes smaller and cheaper, and gains upgrades beyond the original. MIRV missiles require two levels of Chemistry upgrades beyond the original missile's level, for example.
The enemy is not using shields, so this is one of the more cost efficient ways we can arm ourselves. Heavy Continuous Enveloping Fusion beams do 50% more damage, have less range falloff, have +25% to hit, and hit all four sides at once for a total of 4x damage.
Because shields have a raw damage reduction that is always in effect, even when the shields are down, their effectiveness would be drastically reduced. But they don't have any, so we're going to get away with this for the time being.
The benefit of having a money-rich race is that you can just buy anything you want, as long as you stockpile when you don't need it immediately. I'm preparing to go into full on assault mode so I'm not splurging on infrastructure upgrades, instead saving up for military.
Colony ship, heading to Yhe. That more or less guarantees that they're going to come up to Bier, and I'm going to let them.
If they come up there and use their colony ship, I can instantly obliterate it and then go down and take on Yhe.
I have my vast army of spies set to espionage, and they're already showing results.
Kinda wish they found something better though. Mass Drivers are nice but I don't have any aiming computers worth a damn, and without the Continuous upgrade there isn't much point to it for me.
Now trouble's afoot here, Klackons expanding west. This means they'll be near Mentar soon enough, and I can't have that.
To slow them down, I set all of my spies to sabotage mode.
And this is why spies are awesome.
I have not had any technology stolen since I started cranking them out, either, so I'm over the theft hump and just need to hold everybody off for awhile.
Sakkra goes as according to plan, I take out Bier and immediately rush down Yhe.
I forgot to take a screenshot of them being angry at me, sorry. Just make up some trash talk in your head.
Reviewing their technology, both Sakkra and Klackons have Planetary Missile Bases. This is bad, because there is no way my ships can withstand sustained missile fire right now, and I don't have anti-missile rockets. (point defense beams are practically useless in my experience)
So I abandon my research on Pollution Processors and go for...
Merculites. Like building, you can switch research with no cost. However, all accumulated RP is reset to zero when research is finished, so doing it in a way where you lose a few thousand RP just isn't a very good idea.
The rationale here is that while I can't deal with sustained damage, as long as I get rid of the base quick enough I'm fine, and the fastest way to nail something at range is with missiles. However, as researching this just upgraded chemistry, nuclear missiles just acquired the MIRV upgrade, which makes them hit four times. Since the enemy does not have shields, this means MIRV nukes will do more damage than Merculites for less cost, so we just make those.
Wishing I hired that environmentalist now...
Yeah, that's the stuff.
+50% money is good. All of our stored cash going into effect now.
Both Sakkra and Klackons are a hazard right now, so I tell my spies to sabotage the hell out of them both.
At this point, on three consecutive turns, spies take down three separate Sakkra Starbases. Excellent. Note that I'm giving the same number of spies to each but Sakkra's getting the brunt of it. That extra defense Unification has is serious.
This is really essential for Democracies. Every starbase now gives 2 more command points and I can order ships to come back whenever I want. So my funding problems for sustaining fleets is basically over for awhile.
(six squares? shouldn't that be parsecs?)
Surprise! Giant ants are attacking!
My ships are not built for sustained encounters with starbases and batteries, but they can win most any ship-to-ship battle right now, and conveniently I have a defending Cruiser there so I'm not really worried.
Still no shields, so these ships won't last long. Another random leader there. The scary one is the torpedoes. They're basically missiles that have unlimited ammo and can fire every other turn. Fortunately this isn't much of a match for actual missiles killing it first, though.
Either way, easy victory.
Deeper into Sakkra territory we run into this. Surprisingly no starbase here, so we just start bombing away.
We need to be careful about going much further as their other systems are inside a nebula, and shields do not (currently) work in them. As my primary strategy revolves around them, that's a problem. So I'll be content just containing the Sakkra for the time being.
Awww yeah. Time for a battleship, the largest ship class we can build at this time. No battlepods because I would like this ship to be built sometime this century, ends up costing about 40% more than a cruiser for significantly stronger armor/shields. The Mass Drivers just exist to consume the remaining available space, I don't actually expect them to do anything.
As you can see, I have a lot of spies going on right now. Sabotage is a great equalizer, continuously destroying structures and starbases, even when they're built at absurdly unreal speeds.
I don't have all of the Gnolam's tech yet, so I have one trying to get stuff from them for kicks.
I haven't been investing in drives so there is basically nothing I can do to get there in time. Gnol's gonna get bombed. With no transport ships, it's not going to be a real problem, and I highly doubt it's going to try to take on one of my starbases.
Tired of needing outpost ships everywhere, plus I really really need to get those Merculites upgraded soon if I'm going to do any serious assaults, so we ride up the Chemistry tree.
Also all the enemies have it now anyway so I might as well too.
Yep, destroyer attacked the colony base. Honestly, could not care less, it's not important in the grand scheme of things and it keeps their ships occupied. As long as there's no transport ships coming they can just go and destroy it.
This chart shows quantity, not quality, and never has there been a more obvious example. Klackons took a whooping.
Hey, the environmentalist wants another go-round AND she leveled up. Sold.
I've already finished this game, but I'm going to mostly gloss over the rest of this as I am in a victory state:
Defense strong enough to prevent enemy assault and growth, though not necessarily attack yet. Offensive measures being researched right now.
Unless the AI gets hard countermeasure for shields, no offense they do will ever work. It's not smart enough to realize it should give up on beams and go very heavily on the missileboat strategy.
Not one but two uncreative production races with no ability to get effective countermeasures beyond jacking them off the remaining race which is hanging in the lower right. Y'know, the one they'll be pummeling because they have no ability to grow in my direction.
Because defense is unbeatable atm, I can build one or two more ships and then focus my production entirely on infrastructure again. This means another wave of expansion, at which point there is no way the AI can catch up with me blockading it. My research is already leaps and bounds beyond theirs.
Although I won't be doing it as I don't like ending the game that way, I am very close to being able to take on Orion's Guardian and get Xentronium Armor/Death Rays/etc. Which would end the game more or less. Orion's location is a simple matter of elimination, as there's almost no star systems left. (spoilers: it's the orange star dead center; if the AI doesn't expand somewhere it's for a reason.)
Honestly kind of a lame roll for races and I sorta want a more interesting run instead haha.
Nothing until tonight anyway. _________________ twit
So as I said in the last post, this is already won, we're just going through the motions now, so I'm just going to give the important points here and explain stuff as I go along. The only real question mark is the fifth race in the lower right corner, and we'll be seeing what the deal is with them soon enough.
Sakkra just send their ships out to bomb every non-starbase planet they can find, but since their ships are generally not that good they don't do a lot of damage. I mean, the setbacks hurt, but there's a reason I spent money to put a starbase on every important planet. Also, if you look closely, you can see that I just obliterated their Fovea colony this turn. This, in combination with their fuel cell range limit, means that they can't stay anymore and have no choice but to return home from their current location as of this turn, so this is all the bombing they're going to be doing.
This is one of the benefits of not running a population/expansion strategy, your power is consolidated into fewer locations that are consequently easier to defend. Isolation and having a strong buffer zone goes a long way towards safety.
A number of things happened in this screenshot: Klackons sent a colony ship to Porrima, Klackons attacked Mentar again, Klackons ran the hell away from my roving death ships, back to Porrima, which one of my ships is headed towards destroying right now.
Generally speaking, unless you can't stop them once they're there, you should let them land a colony ship so that they waste the 500 production (or whatever it costs them) and you can capture/bomb it into oblivion.
Now that I've found an actually good race that's worth getting, I am slowly working the Gnolams to death so that their planet will be easier to transition over. Without food, they'll rather quickly die off. Have to be careful because the game is 'smart' and will set new population on other planets to farming if it senses a shortfall. We don't want that.
This is one of the downsides of capturing a useless race. They are, well, useless, and it's often worth spending the 20-30 turns it would take to off them and replace with a more useful race. If I had simply colonized the planet whole instead this would have not been an issue. Also, Death Spores are handy in this situation, as you can just take the planet whole without any of the population. Diplomatic penalty? Who cares. Main problem is it's up against Cloning Centers, which are one of the best ways to kickstart a new race, and Soil Enrichment, which frees up a huge amount of the population if you're not a Lithovore.
If you don't take Cloning Center, you're going to want to make Housing colonies to pump up your population. These are small colonies that do nothing but build Housing forever, and have their population shifted off elsewhere as soon as they're 'built'. You usually do this on otherwise useless planets; and are also a pretty good argument against taxation for races that employ those.
I finally get around to getting better armor. Since I opted for shields, I didn't see much point in going for heavy armor early on, but there are research strategies that beeline straight for Zortrium as it's one of the most accessible strong armors available. RP requirements scale up really fast from here on out.
More importantly, this is two tiers above Merculite Missiles, giving them the MIRV capability. Missile boats revived!
This is a very important tech tier for Creatives, containing Zortrium, Microlite Construction(instant +1 prod all population), and Nano Disassemblers(doubles the minimum level before Pollution occurs on a planet). It's not uncommon for Creative builds to rush this tier down because it gives an immense boost in productivity and in military power.
And our 'scout' reaches the Sssla homeworld. We can't attack because it's in a nebula, but it's good to know what they have. Also my spies blew the starbase here up. Have I mentioned that spies are awesome?
Either way we don't stick around and head back home for when we're ready.
It's around this point that I start expanding back inwards, taking all the star systems that I have access to that are relatively safe and blockaded off by stronger stars. This also means it's time to go pay a visit to an old friend.
#RIP 3500.0 - 3515.9
Sakkra went and colonized Kulthos in yet another desperate attempt to claw their way into my space. I actually let them do this since this is good for me, because now I can get some Sakkra of my own. I immediately kick away their defense and capture the planet.
They immediately get very angry about this and send every last ship they have at it.
This is where the AI's shortcomings show; it is written with the intent of it having the upper hand, it doesn't know what to do when you deal it a severe blow.
In addition to picking up Sakkra, I research Cloning Centers really quick to make me have more of them, faster. I immediately spend money to build these, it's about 400 BC from nothing but it's totally worth it. Also I'm rich.
This is one of the best missile defenses you can get, except it only destroys a single group of missiles and only fires once per turn. Still, this is powerful enough to thwart most incoming attacks.
The problem is it shares the same tech category as Warp Interdictor. What that does is, when built on a planet, slows all enemy ships within 2 parsecs to 1 parsec/turn no matter how good their engines are. That basically gives you time to set up defenses and prevents surprise attacks entirely. If you're fighting Trilarians or something it might be worth getting them instead. I hear these are often banned in multiplayer games but I couldn't tell you myself.
Though Creatives just get them both.
Nice to see you too, buddy.
Only slightly different from stock Mrrshan, having added Food/Science+1 and Defense+25. They're still Feudal, which means their research stinks. So there is me, the one race that is research heavy, vs 3 races with research penalties. No wonder this went smoothly...
Warlord - Ship crew experience level is raised. Command points raised. Planetary troops(NOT transport ships) built faster.
This is a good perk for early game rushing, because it's effectively the same as getting Ship Offense and Ship Defense upgrades as a racial perk, with a command point bonus. But we're into the mid-late game, which makes it fairly useless.
But maybe they had a good run, how're they doing?
Oh.
So the 'elect a galactic ruler' screen came up for the first time in this game. This only happens when more than 2 races exist, and when all races know about each other's existences. The game will end if someone can muster up a 2/3rds majority. Should the AI be unified against me, I would lose right now. But they're stupid and don't care so most of them abstain because they can't vote for themselves. This is effectively a meaningless win condition on Impossible unless you get super lucky with Charismatic.
Terraforming takes a long time to produce. This is very useful for most races, but actually not really worth bothering with immediately for us because we're Lithovores and don't need food. For other races, they could turn otherwise weak colonies into farming production, but the only sensible option we have is to upgrade our good planets into Terrans for increased population. If the planet happens to be barren, that's 250+500+750 = 1500 total production. Ouch. Might not be worth the effort.
More importantly for us, because it's the only tech left in its category, I will skip completely over that category come research time and get two levels worth of benefits at once. Pretty nice.
We finally have more than one Sakkra population unit, so I ship it straight to Gnol, which conveniently already has almost all infrastructure in place and is currently building a Cloning Center with its remaining dying Gnolams. I agree that death by overwork is a real problem, so we're going to have to do something about that.
So of course I ship the remaining Gnolams off to their brand new home!
A few posts ago I said that capping population on a planet is always bad. I was actually incorrect about this. When we move population to a planet that is already full, they will die when they get there if there is no room available. As Democracies can't kill alien population when capturing, they have to resort to this.
Also: Note the maximum population is now listed as 23, with +99k population/turn and a freshly bought Cloning Center waiting to be used. Subterranean/Tolerant power. Eventually I replace all the other colonies in Gnol with them as well, as they have a whopping 14 population maximum on the other planets before terraforming. And I place Cloning centers on each one to speed up the process of building lots of population. You can probably see how the game is going to end at this rate.
So around this point in the game I start sending out scouts to the remaining systems, so I know what's up.
And here we have Orion, the Huge Ultra-Rich Gaia planet, protected by the Guardian. The Guardian is a space monster that acts like a beefy Titan with top class shields and armor. If you defeat it, you get four techs and The Last Orion's ship is added to your army. Most normal people come here after the game is done and blow it to bits with Stellar Converters, but it's actually quite feasable to beat it before turn 150.
The real issue is its defense is sky high, practically immune to missiles and a high beam dodge rage. Special weapons, like Gravity Destabilizers, ignore all defense and just do damage directly. Of particular note is Plasma Webs, which are relatively cheap to make and enough of them will kill the Guardian in one or two turns, allowing you to win just by sacrificing some ships. As the rest of the game is over, we're going to start building our Guardian killer soon.
Speaking of shields, this is the one we want to assault the Sakkra with, as it'll let us use our ships properly in nebulae. I could just make a bunch of shieldless ships but I don't really have the firepower to deal with their seemingly infinite missile bases right now.
Space Crystal protecting ... ANOTHER Ultra-Rich Huge Gaia? With Gold Deposits? This is THE definitive production planet.
Dude, if I started next to this planet the game was already over. All space monsters except for the Hydra can be taken out with 8 MIRV Missile Frigates. The Hydra needs 12. I'm not even joking. It's a small price to pay for a planet like this, and I want it.
Now's a good time to talk about taxes. If you click on the money status icon, this gets opened up. Whatever you set your tax rate to, it treats that percentage of your production across your entire empire as tax. So 10% means you get a flat 10% reduction of production in exchange for more BC/turn. Generally speaking, this isn't a good idea to use if you are actually building things, and you're better off sending a planet or two into making Trade Goods. Most notably because it reduces the effectiveness of Housing Colonies, which depend on production to build babies.
However, in situations where you have relatively few planets or ones where you're more worried about rapid expansion, gaining a lot of money in a short time period can be a really good idea. Since I'm doing rapid expansion on new planets and making my Sakkra awesome, I set it to 20% tax for a little while so I can continuously purchase Cloning Centers and Automated Factories across the galaxy. I'll ramp it back down once I'm done.
No wonder this system never got populated, it's awful.
My two hard shields battleships are ready to assault Sakkra, and my new cruisers are setup for assaulting the Klackons.
As you can see, I've already pummeled the Klackons' Bue and Hut, with one of the two battleships parked on Sssla.
I just had to link this for the name. It's hilarious.
This is also a very good way to increase the cost of every ship in your fleet, but extends the life of Battleships and Cruisers further, and are a good choice if you would rather pass on making Titans.
My second battleship gets on its way to Sssla, and rather than assault me... The AI runs for it. With their entire fleet. Damn. They want Kulthos back.
This is another side benefit of keeping alien races around, the AI really wants to recapture its own race as there will be no capture period, just instant liberation, and my planets are awesome.
However, I can order my ships around, and the convenient wormhole nearby lets me bring my ships in from Ilya, so...
Gratuitous space battle time. I wipe out the battleship and the rest of them run for it.
Hello, Klackon homeworld.
Goodbye, Klackon homeworld.
My second battleship finally arrives, and it's a short fight with the remains of the Sssla fleet inside the nebula, and I systematically dismantle their home system.
As you might have noticed a couple screenshots ago, my research has now shot up to completely absurd levels. This is because, now that I both have an army and strong infrastructure, I have shifted my population away from production towards research all across the galaxy. Most of my production money is going towards funding more stuff for my Sakkra planets, which are doing very, very well for me.
And I methodically destroy their home system one planet at a time, effectively ending the Sakkra menace right now. There is no coming back from this.
Around this point, I decided to tackle the Mrrshan.
I feel like I've heard this one before.
Democracy > +Research, specifically because it's galaxy-wide (My newfound Sakkra are getting it too), and this.
I go ahead and take the Gaia planet. First thing I do is use all of my available freighters to ship the dozens of Sakkra I have directly to it, to turn it into a production machine ASAP.
Orion Guardian Destroyer GET da ze
OH COME ON
is anyone even reading these haha. Next part is last btw. _________________ twit
Yeah, I played this game a lot when I was a kid but couldn't figure out how the combat (or much of anything, apart from research) worked, so this has been a really interesting & helpful read. If you're inclined to try out & chronicle different strategies/difficulties now... please do that (but only if you want to) (but please)
Of note is that while I complained about rebellion being an issue in previous updates (and it ended up never being an issue), if you completely conquer a race then there is no chance of it occuring, because the player has been eliminated.
Aww yeah holodeck. Yeah the game's pretty much completely broken at this point.
I actually took this screenshot because it's an interesting tech category to choose between. This is the top of the Computer tech tree, but it's actually one of the hardest decisions you'll make if you're not Creative or at an overwhelming advantage at the time. The other two technologies are Moleculartronic Computer, which is the best targeting computer in the game and never misses anything bigger than a Battleship, and Achilles Targeting Unit, which makes all beam weapons attack hull directly, bypassing armor, and increases the chance of destroying internal systems, frequently blowing the ships to bits. This includes bypassing Heavy Armor, which Ion Pulse Cannons won't do. For Creatives this is a game winner, for everyone else, if you haven't won yet, it's a tough choice.
I send one of my battleships to go take out the remaining Mrrshan fleet. Can't be that bad, can it?
Whoops, sloppy. Still, taking down the starbase and half their ships is enough, as they're heavily blockaded at the moment as it is.
Remember Hiraki? Well, it's populated now. Look at that production. Crazy.
Always, always specialize your colonies. Note how I'm getting food from other, less awesome planets in order to make this one better.
No wonder the Mrrshan never got anywhere. These are some awful stars.
Destroyed. This just leaves me and the Klackons, who are reduced to a single blockaded planet.
Although this ship is crazy, it counts as a Space Monster and you are unable to capture it.
And that's why you use Plasma Webs, you only need to survive long enough to let them do their thing. Even if the firing ship dies, they remain and continue to do damage.
Speaking of which... This is actually a retake I took after finishing the game. The first time, it was a double-KO with both sides having nothing left at the end. This still counts as Getting Orion so no change to the rest of the game. But I forgot to take screens...
You can do this relatively early in the game if you tech straight to it, which would be a pretty big deal because...
Here's the Orion techs, of varying levels of usefulness. You can't research these, they can only be found off of Orion or Antarans.
Death Rays are beams that do 50-100 damage and toast marines if they get through the shields. They're ridiculously expensive, beaten damage-wise by miniaturized Mauler Devices, and replace all of your starbase weapons. Nice if you don't have any high tier beams, but costly.
Quantum Detonator. Causes explosions by your ship to do triple damage and has a 50% chance of self destructing when captured. Useless.
Xentronium Armor. Best armor in the game. What else is there to say?
Reflection Field. Sends beam weapons back at their attackers, reflection chance is based on the damage the beam does. Most mid-tier weapons are going to get reflected constantly, but high end ones will get through most of the time..
Yeah, um, this would also be game over, you win, in nearly any situation. This is why I don't bother with Orion usually.
You also get the Orion planet, but this is one of those extremely rare circumstances where there is actually a planet better than Orion in the galaxy. Hiraki's planet blows my mind.
And here's Loknar with his Titan class ship, the Avenger. There's a part of me that just wants to scrap the thing and plunder some of the technology on board, particularly trying to get the aiming computer, but it doesn't really matter enough at the moment so he gets dragged along for the time being.
Final stats on two colonies, just for the hell of it.
Note how Kulthos has ridiculous population. Cloning Centers + Sakkra growth bonus + Subterranean add up to a lot!
Holy crap you're still alive.
Sure hired why not!
As we're going the full nine yards here, there is only one way to end the game.
Stellar Converters can be built as a ground structure, to defend against enemies, or placed on a ship at the cost of 500 space, precluding anything but the largest ships from using it. If you've got the option to attack an enemy planet, you can blow it to bits, turning it into an asteroid belt.
If this is a crappy planet, you can actually use Artificial Planet to rebuild it back up better than it was before! Hence why I'd really like to be able to blow up neutrals and planets I own. But oh well.
And that's that.
This was a pretty lame run I think, I feel gypped on the enemy races. But there's a successful Impossible run using a research focused race and a lot of suboptimal strategies.
Any questions or telling me I'm an idiot for doing this when I have other things I should really be doing? _________________ twit
I finally won a game! I had to bump it down to average, won with research rush. I thought small galaxy would make it easier, but thinking about it now 6 players on a small galaxy is probably harder than a big galaxy. Next time I will restart until I get a good system to start with also.
Is the only way to get more command points more planets plus battlestations?
I'm going to try a production based race next and build stupid custom ships. Unification and cybernetic sound decent? _________________
I think you give invasions too short a shrift. All you have to do is build a bunch of transports, which on your production planets will cache tons of production for other useful things. Build an Alien Control Center and a Barracks and boom, pre-populated colony without bothering with colony ships. I guess you do have to tech your ground troops a bit, but I dunno. I've always preferred conquering, it just seems more efficient. All those gray stars on your map at the end there would be purple instead! Also you have that chance to steal tech, which is real useful as a non-Creative. _________________ Let's Play, starring me.
My production has been pretty crap for most of the game. The main reason I just bomb them off into space is I wanted a huge buffer zone between me and them; I could have conquered them but then i would have had to spend effort defending not just my major worlds but my newfound outposts as well. Wasn't worth it; if I had a production race I would have gone hog wild with transports. But the way it was set up was that Sakkra only had access to two of my systems and Klackons had access to one, and both of them were relatively easily contained. As my research still grossly outpaced theirs all I needed to do was wait it out and continuously refit my cruisers until ready to attack.
Also -10 ground combat penalty hurts for invading; if I really really cared I would have picked up Death Spores and done it that way. _________________ twit
Joined: 18 Dec 2006 Location: Brandy Brendo's bungalow
Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 12:47 am
shrugtheironteacup wrote:
This is my favorite thread about a game I'll never play currently on this forum.
Also, it strikes me as both comprehensible and short-sighted on the devs' part that Impossible difficulty makes all other races have a short-to-nonexistent fuse for diplomacy.
Just did a production based run - picked cybernetic, unified, creative and a bunch of negs, built about 20 each of cruisers loaded with battlepods, 1 mass driver, 1 nuke, and the rest of the space 2x missiles, and cruisers just packed with mass drivers. Destroyed the universe pretty quickly, with a bulrathi surrender early on doubling my production. I'll bump the difficulty up next game! I started pre-warp, does this affect the difficulty?
E: also, how did you take screenshots for this? I tried to print screen and paste em in paint but the colours were all messed up. _________________
Prewarp is more of a handicap on higher settings than lower ones, as enemies will expand sooner than you expect. (I had an "oh come on" moment at a particularly early Battleship once...)
I'm pretty sure you can do diplomatic stuff on Impossible if you appease the AI enough, but it's honestly not worth it. And, as noted with the Sakkra, AI races can actively pick Repulsive which makes diplomacy impossible anyway. I was the aggressor for all but the Klackons this run.
And for screenshots, as I ran in dosbox, ctrl+F5 takes a screencap. Windows version I don't know, I don't use it. (Edit: As I said in th einitial post, though, you can just install 1.31 on top of the Windows version and you get a full dosboxable setup, no problem.) _________________ twit
Yeah, unreasonable AI is pretty common in strategy games on high difficulty. But actually MOO2's is all right, they're dealable. Mostly to do with appeasing them and keeping them from crushing you while you focus on the repulsives. If you watch that "super-impossible" LP I linked, the player ultimately gets all the beneficial permanent treaties with all non-repulsive races, and only at the cost of a couple donated techs in the early game. (Well, one wanted 5% tribute too.) Having all those treaties basically guarantees that they will not attack you. _________________ Let's Play, starring me.
Yeah, that's true. Generally I think diplomatic wins are kinda lame so I avoid them though! Repulsive suits me just fine.
Is there a mod that makes more interesting enemy races? Like, I don't care about much else, but that's important. Maybe I could find some way of setting default race picks to nothing at all and just watch the randomizer pick stuff or take Uncreative out... where's my debugger...
edit: Oh, it's not actually random, it's chosen from a pool. Well then. _________________ twit
I got it on GoG and played several games this weekend. I'm having the best luck with a Unification/Subterreanean/Warlord race. Uni+Sub for the obvious power boosts (Sub seems as good as Tolerant to me?), and Warlord because I always feel desperately short of command points and the +2 per colony make a big difference.
I can win on Hard without much difficulty anymore but I still consistently get crushed on Impossible. I really need to have a better mastery of military techs to counter the vast enemy production/research advantage. Your recommendation of MIRV nuclear frigates really gives me an edge in the early game, but what do you recommend after shields make that obsolete? Because the early targeting computers share tech category with Research Lab and Supercomputer, I always find myself without targeting computer until much later and that narrows my options. Pulson missile battleships work kind of OK but I then started having trouble with enemy evasion.
Against shields I usually just go for higher grade missiles. If the enemy isn't going heavy on jammers, Torpedoes are a really good idea. They can't be shot down by anything, have an upgrade which removes range falloff entirely, can be enveloping like a beam. Downside is they fire rather slowly.
Beams suffer from a whole boatload of problems with accuracy, the biggest one is range falloff. The Physics and Force Field trees have a lot of overlap on this one as well, forcing difficult choices. There's other ways to make up for it though:
Battle Scanner gives a flat +50 to Beam Attack.
Experience levels of the crew affect Beam Attack, with the levels going 0/15/30/50. Warlord gets a +1 level bonus, and their Ultra Elite is +75. (space academy is big for them)
Continuous is +25%. Heavy Mount halves range penalties.
Mass Drivers and Gauss Cannons have no range penalties, but you have to give up on either a shield or a missile jammer to get it. When the enemy has Heavy Armor, the Armor Piercing upgrade doesn't work. Choose at own risk.
You have to be desperate to pick Rangemaster Unit over either of the other two in the same computers category.
Skipping Positronic Computer for the aiming computer if you're in a position to go on the offensive immeidately isn't completely bad.
High energy focus is good.
If the enemy has less than Class 3 shields, go for Ion Pulse Cannons.
Tolerant is way way way better than Subterranean, because no more pollution penalties anywhere means smaller Rich planets become much more useful with less effort, and you can colonize basically everywhere without too much trouble. Tolerants also increase the max population count on non-Terrans. Throw on Cybernetic or some other food/industry production bonus and go nuts.
You're at the mercy of the initial planet layout, so your job should be mitigating them as an issue. _________________ twit
If you capture the Antaran homeworld, they give you a You Win Game Over.
It's a tech race win condition, there are certain fleet constructions that can eat them up good that I don't remember offhand.
(Might consider doing a production focused run soon even though they're not my favorite. Not a Creative fan personally though they have their merits.) _________________ twit
So I started an Impossible game to test out theories for a production race. I ran UniTolCyb.
Short summary of game so far: Started next to Sakkra taking Olor, conquered and integrated them into my empire immediately, Olor rebelled, spent about 20 turns faffling about trying to gt it back, took out the Elerians next door at Draconis/Xiphias/Wag as they were a threat. Angered the Gnolams in the process. Killed the Space Amoeba at Gemat to get a really nice UltraRich planet.
Gnolams took out Draconis, which wasn't really a winning planet for me anyway, and I took out their undefended Chorazin in response. They're now spacelocked again and have to deal with the Psilons.
Of course, I'm going to have to deal with the Psilons eventually.
Production-wise I am way ahead of them, and I'm very nearly beating them out in raw research points. But their tech is way more diverse and of course loaded down with shields. If they attacked now there's not much chance I'd win, so keeping a buffer zone between me and them is the best of ideas. (Have you noticed that I like these yet?)
And here's my plan in a nutshell. This makes missiles that get past shields attack the hull directly, bypassing armor. Even Heavy Armor doesn't stop this from working, like it does for Ion Pulse Cannons, which is good because Psilons have it and I don't.
The 4x cost is not multiplicative with other upgrades, so the reality is I'll only be doubling once I max out Merculites.
And yes I'm playing the ants. Wanted to get Uncreative out of the running for this game.
As soon as I get Zortrium armor, it's off to the ship tailor. MIRV(hits 4 times), ECCM(Psilons have ECM jammers), ARM(heavily armored, harder to shoot down), Fast(reaches target in 2 turns instead of 3), EMG(skips armor, attacks hull directly.).
Fully upgraded EMG missiles are only slightly more than double the cost of a normally upgraded missile. Since it bypasses armor and goes straight to hull, and since the Psilons have both Heavy Armor and Reinforced Hull, this is not much different from packing two missiles. Yet attacking the hull also means attacking internal subsystems, so it means ships get crippled faster than normal. And there's always a chance we can cause a drive explosion with a particularly lucky hit.
So here's some things about my missile layout strategy:
I split missiles up into small groups whenever possible. This lets me target multiple enemies easily.
It also changes the way point defense works. PD and Anti-missile rockets always target in the order of the first missile groups out. So I put weaker missiles in front such that the juicy strong ones have a better chance of making it through.
The enemy has shields, and there's no sense wasting the first few expensive missiles on taking them down, so I don't EMG those.
Always 2x. Although 5x gives you more bang for your buck, all you really want is for the enemy to die ASAP, and this is the fastest way to do it. If you want more ammo, put on some beams or torpedoes instead.
Comparing this Battleship to a Cruiser, you get roughly the same amount of missiles per cost, but the ship is more durable and costs fewer CP. So win/win all around.
The increased durability of Battleships has another hidden bonus. Because my race is Cybernetic, 10%ish of total armor gets regenerated every turn, as does 5% of internal systems. 80 damage can be done to the ship per turn and it will be fully repaired immediately. If I had Heavy Armor, stacked on shields and an Automated Repair Unit, my ships would be really, stupidly hard to take down by anything short of a Planetary Missile Base or Transporters.
Speaking of which, because I don't have Heavy Armor, Ion Pulse Cannons will be the death of me if they show up before I get Class 3 Shields. Transporters would be a problem if the enemy could close in enough to use them. Needless to say, they are on the research list.
Yes, this planet is ridiculous. Note the piles of integrated Sakkra.
I'm actually throwing this screenshot on to show one of the subtle advantages of a Unification government. Because morale has no effect whatsoever, there is absolutely no penalty for mixing races on a planet. If you find a race that would up your maximum population(Aquatic, Subterranean, Tolerant), you can very much just throw them on every single planet you have with no cost worth worrying about. Although Cloning Centers don't seem to work right with mixed populations, I'm giving them a pass this time around.
This benefit is compensated for by that it takes a frustratingly long time to convert aliens to your race. But that's okay, because I have a very simple strategy for taking planets quickly coming down the pipeline.
Goddammit.
The funny part is I have like a dozen spies on defense AND Sakkra get a penalty to spying AND the Unification agent bonus going on, so it must have been a spectacularly bad roll.
Even the Psilons got pretty angry about that one.
Looks like they're finally going after Sssla. Since I'm already engaged with a planet, though, they're polite and turn around. Because the AI is not very bright.
I'm only showing this because I had never seen what ant spies look like until now.
DEATH SPORES
These things destroy population stupidly fast. Also, since they take very little ship room, you can stack up a ton of them. Odds are pretty good no planet is going to last more than one turn against this kind of onslaught. (It says 10% chance per spore but it feels more like 100%.)
My intent is to bombard long enough to bring the population down to 1 and infantry down to 0, invade, and then quick-build an Alien Control Center and ship some of my Sakkra over.
This is actually a lot better than it looks for me. Psilon's ranking is inflated heavily by their broad technology, whereas mine's a lot more focused.
Thanks to the warp lanes everywhere, attacking the Mrrshan at Honte is trivial.
Also, the Sakkra are gone. I'm not sure why I captured their final planet, I really should have just bombed it out of existence to keep the buffer zone going.
No worries, I'll just take this opportunity to use my Battleship to harass the Gnol a few times and -
I wanted to hit and run, but, uh. Whoops.
Next time pay attention to tech/scan the starbase okay.
That ship is toast. Not having any weapons beyond missiles means that once they're depleted, the ship's got nothing else to do. Technically I could rush forward and try to capture the starbase with marines, but more likely my ship is the one that'll end up being captured, so it's better to just let it get blown up.
I start attacking the Darloks by capturing their homeworld in a single turn. Death spores are awesome by the way.
ARMY ANTS! That gun cracks me up.
And that's all three portraits for acquiring technology.
Sometimes when you capture an enemy planet you'll get some of their technology that you don't have. It's actually entirely feasable to capture a planet, give the system to someone else, and then immediately re-capture.
Also getting Torpedoes is really nice, because it fits well with our missile strategy and they make for good shield busters. Plus we kinda want to avoid the problem we had with dissipators up above.
Okay, I was wrong. Having Lucky as a trait, even with random events off, will still get you beneficial events once in awhile. Not frequently enough to be worthwhile, but.
HELL YES
The funny part about this is, I was so preoccupied dealing with Gnolams harassing me with Battleships again, that I forgot I even hired him.
I feel like, from his portrait, that he's a reference to something but I can't place what.
Wait what I didn't do it this time
Yep, Psilons went and bombed the Gnolams out of existence. didn't even bother capturing them this time.
Not shown: Gnolams destroyed Sssla with harassment, I didn't care. Darloks surrendering to the Psilons.
So if there's a time to attack the Psilons, it's right now. I have the upper hand with focused technology and my army is sizable enough to both take down their extensive planetary defenses and withstand a decent fight. Plus they are cut off from my homeworlds for the time being without taking Sssla or Gnol, and if I wait too long they'll get fuel cells and be able to reach which would make the ship harassment REALLY ANNOYING to deal with. Instead the warp lanes let me send stuff to the far end of the galaxy and chokepoint access to my systems. _________________ twit
Yeah you called this one. First system was completely undefended, so I can just keep pushing in.
Psilon bases are loaded. Neutron Blasters means I won't be doing any raiding/capturing as I won't have any marines by the time I get there. Shield strength, ECM Jammer, and Point Defense Mass Drivers means a fair number of my missiles are going to get wasted.
I solve this by sheer quantity. Even if it knocks down half of my missiles, the several dozen remaining ones will still take the base out. Plus, as stated last time, the EMG missiles are placed later and less likely to be the first ones shot down.
I was real proud of this ship.
By the time it sees service the fight's already over though.
Because it has Class 3 Shields, if Ion Pulse Cannons show up I'm generally okay. (Unless the AI cheats and creates the Heavy Mount variety, which players cannot create. then I'm screwed. Yes, this has happened to me. It ended the run instantly.)
Fleet moves on, takes out Galapago. For some reason the Psilon army is avoiding me, choosing to focus on the Mrrshan. I'm not sure what's going on there. AI's being dumb.
I can get to Elcorno, but can't reach Mentar without an outpost, so I somewhat belatedly send an outpost ship down that way.
Also note that I am way over my command point limit and going to get even further over soon. It doesn't matter. This is all-in and I saved up a fair amount of money specifically for this purpose.
Finally make it to Mentar, attack one of the undefended colonies and meet up with their battleship.
...Honestly I'm a little underwhelmed. Tough ship but no Reinforced Hull and no ECM Jammer means my EMG missiles are going to eat it. AI in action again.
Many of the colonies are relatively undefended, which surprises me. Either AI spies have been doing a number on them or the lack of a serious production bonus is catching up to the Psilons now.
Homeworld assault. Radiation Shield means all of my missiles have drastically reduced effectiveness in taking down colonists and infantry. Fun fact: Damage against planetary structures is halved from normal. Radiation Shield blocks 4 damage per hit. A Nuclear Missile does 8 damage normally, and will do exactly 0 against a planet with one of these shields, no matter how upgraded it is. Seriously, seriously move to Merculites if you are concerned about shields. I mean it.
But I'm not worried about planetary defenses, as I have DEATH SPORES.
And I think that's a game victory.
I ran out of things I actually wanted to research around here. This raises the Unification bonus from +50% to +100%, which is pretty ridiculous. But if you get this far all of the major government technologies are crazy.
Except Feudal, because Feudal will never see its upgraded form because Feudal sucks at research.
With the homeworld out of the way, my army just wanders around obliterating one system after the next.
Did you know there's a maximum number of spies you can place against a race?
Despite everything I was unable to get Heavy Armor despite trying really hard. I suspect that spies prioritize technology closer to your level and ignore stuff you passed on ages ago. I'm not completely sure. Anyone know more about this than I do?
Really, with the Psilons gone, it's over. Army goes and conquers everyone from this point onwards, and I don't think I need to go over that directly.
For the hell of it it, here's the savegame at when I was ready to attack the Psilons. (edit: it helps to actually link it...) _________________ twit
Hmm, 249 turns is a pretty fast victory. It does seem that with production bonus races you have to go crazy expanding as much as you can. My last few Impossible games I got stuck with only a few good planets nearby and expanded at a gradual pace rather than exponentially; I took out a few of the other players but the ones I left alone made faster progress than I did, and eventually they showed up at my homeworld with an unbeatable fleet.
You seem to have a decent amount of command-points for your number of planets, am I right that you took Battlestation instead of Robo-miners and then built them everywhere you could?
Hmm, 249 turns is a pretty fast victory. It does seem that with production bonus races you have to go crazy expanding as much as you can. My last few Impossible games I got stuck with only a few good planets nearby and expanded at a gradual pace rather than exponentially; I took out a few of the other players but the ones I left alone made faster progress than I did, and eventually they showed up at my homeworld with an unbeatable fleet.
You seem to have a decent amount of command-points for your number of planets, am I right that you took Battlestation instead of Robo-miners and then built them everywhere you could?
Nope. Subspace communications, which increases the number of command points you get by 2 per starbase and only competes with Jump Gate which I'm not a huge fan of.(Tachyon Communications is a few levels earlier and gives +1 to all bases, a good choice if you don't need/want Battle Scanner. Which you do if you run beam weapons. I don't!)
Robominers is, frankly, not optional. The bonus is too huge, especially as I am Tolerant and get no pollution penalty whatsoever. And, frankly, for the bonus production you get out of it, you can afford to jam a starbase on nearly every planet you get. (+2 prod/worker. +3 for uni races 'cause of gov bonus. starbases are only 400!)
Honestly, you don't need a lot of good planets to do well, and the monster-protected planets are guaranteed to be at least decent so seeking them out is a pretty good idea. Rich/Ultrarich planets should be your direct goal, even if the food penalty is there, with other planets looked at for population, farming, and research. Population growth and research work everywhere, but you need a garden or two to get food. (If you look at my game, one planet was providing about 60 food for the entire empire) Ultrapoors are generally not good for anything but food, as building research buildings is a royal pain if you're not able to spend money on them.
My first game would've been faster still if I didn't spend a few dozen turns mucking around with Orion and picking up a Stellar Converter Doom Star. _________________ twit
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
