Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Antiballistics game ended
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| Tactical overview (long + images = 135 kb) |
Sat, 06 January 2007 12:44   |
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Since most didn't scout very much, some might be interested what happened in the galaxy. Here an overview about the stages
of the game from an Altruist view. Attached a tactical map as png-image.
Here some highlights:
m1: Vikings (JOAT), played by Per/perrindom
m2: Altruists (IT), played by Altruist
m3: Traders Reich (HE), played by ccmaster
m4: Xeelee (HE?), played by Matt/mlaub
m5: Phoenyx (IS), played by Shadow Whist
m6: Fluffy Monsters (WM), played by Evaron
m7: Thomids (WM), played by Eric
m8: Kudzu (HE), played by Charles
m9: Arb (JOAT), played by wchart
Let's start with
THE END: 2445
The map consists of the combined intel of Vikings/Altruists, showing the galaxy of 2445 and each white circle stands for a
CC+bomber fleet, arrows indicating the route of attack.
In the biggest battle of the game, involving 231 warships, the Viking fleet defeated the Phoenix fleet at Applegate.
Duck II FLeet: 30 CC + 43 bomber etc.
Garga Fleet: 70 CC + 35 sap-FF + 107 bombers etc. aiming for Phoenix HW
Chaos Fleet: 23 CC + 41 bomber etc. terrorizing Xeelee backyard
Final Fleet: 32 CC + 24 sap-FF etc. getting heavily reinforced for final battle vs Xeelee
Altruist Side Fleets with each 10-16 CCs and 40-50 bombers + auxils.
Gating to reinforce Final Fleet: 50 CC + 20 sap-FF
Yearly production of 50+ CCs to reinforce Final Fleet which is meant to attack the Xeelee core territory.
In 2445 the estimation is/was to attack (successfully) the Xeelee and Phoenix homeworlds in 2450.
TROUBLE FROM THE BEGINNING / ALLIANCE
Already in the first 10 years the Altruists clashed with the Arbons and made an alliance offer to the Xeelee. The clash with the Arbons ruled out an alliance with them (at least I assumed this), while the Xeelee were probably a bit surprised about my very early alliance offer. Since they didn't know anything about the Altruists, they needed more time.
Clashes with the Arbons intensified in the 10th. Next neighbour I met were the Vikings. The Vikings had also clashed rather early with their neighbour Fluffy. Pregame Per/Vikings and me had ruled out to ally but then we found ourselves as neighbours, in similar circumstances with early clashes and surrounded by neighbours we had started hostilities against or neighbours not willing/unsure about allying up. Thus, after some debate, we rethought our pregame agreement. But since we had initiated the game, we were a bit reluctant to ally up and feared it would look like a low undercover pregame-alliance. Unsure how to handle this and not with much game experience, we then decided to ask Micha about his opinion as the host and an experienced player. After he told us that he wouldn't see a problem Vikings and Altruists allying up, we did exactly that, sometime mid 10th, I think.
Looking back now it seems a bit weird but both of us had played only in beginner/intermediate games before, so we (well, me for sure) were a bit awed about what players we might meet in a "intermediate and above"-game. Especially after I looked up ccmaster and mlaub, I classified them both as veterans and each probably able to cream us even on their own without allies.
WAR WITH ARBONS
After having allied it was obvious that we had to clear our backyard but without being really able to support each other except with tech trade. Per will hopefully write something about the Vikings, thus I'll concentrate upon the Altruists here.
Via pop-invasion I took some planets from the Arbons but then I had to stop because Arbons were nevertheless developing strongly and jumping their tech to frigates and bazookas, better tech than I had at the time. Knowing that I couldn't afford a bloody long war against the Arbons, I jumped to bazookas in mid 20ies and started to build the OSLO FLEET: 49 baz DD and 46 minibombers. I tried my best to keep the production away from those damned penetrating JOAT-scouts but feared the worst because Arbons had begun to produce baz-DDs and baz-FFs themselves on all his planets. To make things worse, we had the suspicion that Arbon and Fluffies had allied up but were only starting to work together. In 2427 the Arbons had actually more DDs and FFs than the Altruists but scattered on all planets. In 2427 my 49 DDs gated to planet Love, united to OSLO FLEET and made a warp-10-attack vs the Arbon homeworld Sagittarius.
The attack was a full success and the Arbon HW conquered in 2428. Already in 2429 I conquered the 2nd strongest Arbon planet Nebulae. After this shock and loss the Arbons gave up and went inactive.
CONTACT WITH TRADERS/PHOENIX-XELEE
About 90% of the galaxy was scouted by that time (2429) and the most northern Altruist outpost at Allegro was colonized in 2427... and found itself in trouble right away. The neighbouring and very close Carver/Where/Pi cluster was already colonized by the Traders and Phoenix, Carver having already a population of almost 300k Traders. Well, I guess everybody saw the masses of Trader ships cruising thru space and fearing the worst if their expansion couldn't be stopped.
But first the Traders almost stopped the Altruists. In 2428 Allegro had proudly produced a small dock which, in the very same year, got a visit from 2 Trader baz-cruisers. Not only that those cruisers shot down the Altruist escort yaki-FFs and the dock, the bigger shock was facing cruisers at all. Altruists had con 7. Lucky me I had brought a bit more than 100k pop to colonize Allegro and even luckier, the Traders' CCs weren't accompied by hordes of Trader pop to storm Allegro. Desperately Allegro set up a fort with yakis the following year in 2429, hopefully enough to shoot down the 2 Trader cruisers and fencing off the expected hordes of Trader pop. But the Trader had left the orbit of Allegro. Either the Traders hadn't enough of their mini-freighters at Carver or they made a big mistake underestimating the importance of Allegro because they didn't know that Altruists were IT.
The other northern Altruist outpost at Sheridan was established in the 20ies and wiped out twice by the Xeelees with mass packets.
TACTICAL SITUATION
Altruists had been rank 1 most of the time (not all too difficult for an IT in the start), dropped to rank 2 in 2424 and back to 1 in 2427. My bet were the Traders having passed to rank 1. Since they were obviously factoryless and the Altruists not, this were grim news indeed and meant that the Traders were able to put a lot more into production and research than the Altruists who were still busy building factories.
After doing some heavy tactical thinking, several things became obvious:
* Kudzu and Trader were both factoryless hyper-pop-growing HEs with an enormous expanding capability, both as strong or stronger than the Altruists and ahead in tech.
* Phoenix were an unknown factor but most likely allied with Traders and not HEs which meant in possession of gates.
* Xeelee were old-fashioned HP-HE, a threat for the future but harmless now (except for their tendency to throw around mineral packets which supported the slow HP-HE assumption)
* Arbons were out of the game
* Vikings and Fluffies were busy fighting with each other but the Vikings gaining the upper hand.
* Thomids were a mystery because they were WM but looked and behaved like a slow-developing HP with a low pop-growth
Traders and Phoenix possibly allied with each other was bad. On the bright side it looked like Thomids were isolated and clashing with the Traders. And after seeing that the Xeelees weren't making exceptions against whom they sent their mass packets: Altruists, Phoneix, Kudzu... it looked like thay would had problems finding an ally.
In the NW no less than 4 races were meeting each other: Kudzu, Xeelee, Phoenix, Traders. We expected that they would keep each other busy there.
In the mid-east the Trader expansion was slowed down because they had to fight thru the Thomids.
This left the center with the dreadful Carver/Where/Pi cluster as the biggest threat in terms of an ongoing southward expansion of the Traders/Phoenix. Controlling this center cluster wouldn't decide the game but without controlling it no victory of the Viking/Altruist alliance seemed possible, either.
PREPARATIONS
After the Arbons were defeated, OSLO FLEET continued to mop up all the other Arbon planets; partly out of fear the Arbons might rejoin the game and still being a threat, partly to conquere minerals. But no additional ressources had to be used up against the Arbons. Thus the Altruists concentrated on bringing their planets on warfootage, researching con 9 for cruisers and setting up a gate at Allegro. It shouldn't had been a surprise but it was one nevertheless, the restricting factor for the coming fleet production weren't ressources but boranium, thus actually more mines than factories were built in this interim-time. Due to the Traders rapid expansion, it also seemed important not to use too much time for further development and thus the research aims before massproducing fleets were put rather low: con 9 for cruisers and staying at weap 8 (bazookas and m70-bombs) and en3 Cow-Hide shields.
WAR AGAINST TRADERS
The interim time lasted until 2431/32, then the necessary tech was reached, enough boranium gathered at the production centers and DUCK FLEET went into production. Shooting down some Phoenix freighters had delayed the setup of a gate on Phoenix planet Pi but a gate was expected now anytime.
The attack-plan consisted of 2 steps:
1) In the first wave DUCK FLEET was supposed to secure the center cluster
2434: Phoenix planet Pi
2435: Trader planet Carver
2436: Trader planet Where
To do this asap DUCK FLEET consisted of what could be built in a hurry: 18 CCs, 41 mini-bombers, supported by pop-drops.
While the Phoenix were able to build a gate on Pi in 2433 AND detected the ingating DUCK FLEET at Allegro (correction: Traders detected the fleet), they were not prepared and probably had no mobile reserve to gate to Pi... thus all 3 attacks succeeded, although the additional pop-invasion-support was indeed needed.
2) Step 2 consisted of heavily reinforcing DUCK FLEET on the way (it was important to be as fast as possible to give the Trader the minimum time for preparations) to enable it for a long-range attack into the Traders flank by attacking Phoenix planet Bonus and/or Trader planet Green House. This flank attack was supposed to serve two purposes: Bonus and Green House were both reasonable good green planets for the Altruists and thus good strongpoints. And with establishing those strongpoints, the Trader territory was cut in 2 parts... which we expected to be devasting for a HE.
DUCK FLEET was reinforced to 31 CCs, lots of auxiliary ships and 220k pop with enough minerals to build a decent gate-dock within a year on any green planet. Everything went according to plan and in 2437 DUCK FLEET was in a fork position to attack either Bonus or Trader planet Twelfth Man.
And then the busy Viking scouts made a game-deciding discovery. Years ago a scout had already discovered that the Trader had a fleet in the NE attacking and bombing the northern Thomid outpost at Fox Trot. We had lost track of that fleet and this was the main reason that even with DUCK FLEET consisting of 31 CCs I wasn't sure wether we would not face superiour resistance. In 2437, while DUCK FLEET was in fork position to attack the Trader flank, we found the Trader fleet: orbiting and bombing the Thomid HW Rogers... 209 ships and 97 more en route, 32 of those ships CCs BUT too far away to engage DUCK FLEET when attacking Bonus in 2438 nor when attacking Green House in 2439. The Traders had made a huge tactical mistake!
Actually two mistakes:
a) during the whole game they hadn't properly scouted the south and thus they weren't really able make a proper threat assessment
b) underestimating the importance of the center cluster and not reacting when DUCK FLEET showed up... as a matter of fact they could had known about DUCK FLEET since 2433 but were still not prepared to meet it when DUCK FLEET hit their flank in 2438.
The hammer fell successfully, the wedge was driven into the Traders flank splitting their empire apart and with gates setup there at once, the line of logistics and reinforcements was clear for the Altruists.
Traders loosing their internet connection and going more or less inactive then, made it easy to mop up the whole area from Neon to Green House (which included the last planets of the Thomids). While another fleet gated to Bonus and attacked the northern part of the Traders territory including their HW (attacked 2442, conquered in 2443). The very last planet (Cotton Candy) of the Thomids was conquered this year in 2445.
MEANWHILE... THE NORTHWEST
After the 2nd loss of Sheridan in 2432 which was the Altruist NW-outpost, it did not look good at all in the NW for a while. Luckily a colonizer fleet had passed before the annihilation of Sheridan and settled Arnold shortly afterwards. With the major part of the Altruist fleets going vs the Traders, only a rather small fleet of 11 CCs and bombers could be attached into that region. Since we suspected that Xeelee and Kudzu might have settled their earlier disputes to ally up (at least we expected that the smartest thing for them to do), the main purpose of this fleet was to drive a wedge between Kudzu/ Xeelee and to get some more bases up there as an insurance in case gates got wiped out by more mass packets. At the same time the Kudzu went inactive, thus the wedge idea had gone obsolete and reinforced with some more CCs the fleet turned to attack the Xeelee planets Clark and Potassium.
Finally the Xeelee started to build a fleet, which, at the moment, is in a defensive position orbiting their HW and consisting of 90 baz-CC with each a shielding of 560. Quite a force but too late and due to the relative small territory of the Xeelee they haven't got enough production power to keep up with the southern ship-production.
ABOUT THE GAME IN GENERAL
As mentioned and felt by everybody, Kudzu and Traders going inactive was a heavy blow. Nevertheless, for myself it was a very thrilling game until around the conquest of Green Hose in 2439. As usual it was a great pleasure having the Vikings as an ally and it doubled the fun I had playing this game.
It's a bit sad that everybody stayed damned quite but that probably comes with Stars being a hardcore strat game and no "roleplaying fancy stuff", partly also due to the very restrictive, perhaps too restrictive, alliance rules.
Contrary to what Per and me had in mind when designing a game without capital missiles and con/weap not cheap... it made the game even faster than usual and fleet/ship design didn't show more variety but less. The latter also due to the WMs in the game not using their advantages. We would had thought WMs gaining the biggest advantage due to the game settings while ITs being the most disadvantaged.
Thanks a lot to Micha for hosting, everything went as smooth as one can wish for.
Especially in the light of all our dropouts, praise to the Thomids who, although beaten, were almost always the first uploading their orders. When the Fluffies left the game, they did the right thing, putting ships and defenses into the production line. If the Arbons would had done the same, all except the Altruists would had been probably happier. Same with the Kudzus.
Hopefully seeing you all on the battlefield again and quite curios to read at least some lines about how all the other players fared,
Altruist
PS: And sorry for getting this "few" lines completly out of proportion but I guess I felt a bit like explaining that it wasn't ONLY luck but also some hard thinking which made Vikings/Altruists win the game.
[Updated on: Wed, 17 January 2007 17:44] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Antiballistics game ended |
Sat, 06 January 2007 12:46 |
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Mmh, is there no way to show an image? Only the link?
Great, images are enabled now...
[Updated on: Mon, 08 January 2007 11:58] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Antiballistics game ended |
Tue, 09 January 2007 20:36 |
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 Shadow Whist |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 2 |
Messages: 167
Registered: August 2003
Location: Vancouver, WA | |
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I was the Pheonix in this game.
It was my first IS race played in a game.
The race was designed with HG in mind. However, after seeing that two of my neighbors were HE and after talking to my ally Traders Reich, I realized that I may have made a misjudgement on how fast the game would progress.
Because I had never played IS, around 2425 or so I decided to build a flying orgy. I believe that instead I should have maximized my resource growth and spread to all the greens as fast as I could. I also should have devoted more resources to building a gate network for the Traders. He would have had a much easier time of defending his territory had he had a gate.
Additionally, I did not scout nearly as much as I normally would in a game. That would prove a significant mistake.
The Altruist or Vikings attacked pearl when I was unprepared. I had no idea that they were even thinking of invading. (clearly due to a lack of scouting). After that attack, they proceeded to gut out the traders territory.
In the end, I think that my inexperience with the small universe setting was my undoing. I designed a race that would probably lend itself more to a medium universe then a small.
Anyway, I really like the game setup and thank everyone for the great game!
whist
[Updated on: Tue, 09 January 2007 20:37] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Antiballistics game ended |
Mon, 15 January 2007 15:02 |
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| Shadow Whist wrote on Wed, 10 January 2007 02:36 |
The Altruist or Vikings attacked pearl when I was unprepared. I had no idea that they were even thinking of invading.
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pearl... I guess you mean Pi in the center since Pearl was your HW.
I wondered why you had no idea about the attack but you are right: it was a Trader scout and none of yours visiting Allegro right in the same year when DUCK FLEET gated in. Traders seem to have not informed you about the fleet.
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I also should have devoted more resources to building a gate network for the Traders. He would have had a much easier time of defending his territory had he had a gate.
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Such a scenario was surely feared and thus even your smallest planets were always on top of the list to get rid of. Those IS-croby-FFs are just too nasty...
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In the end, I think that my inexperience with the small universe setting was my undoing. I designed a race that would probably lend itself more to a medium universe then a small.
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I haven't got really experience with bigger galaxies but from what I read, the difference in speed seems considerably. I've played 3 games small/packed with 8-9 players in the last year and all games were decided after 55 turns or before.
PS: What about the other players? I am quite curious to read your game summary and also what you think about the used game settings.
[Updated on: Mon, 15 January 2007 15:04] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Antiballistics game ended |
Mon, 15 January 2007 18:18 |
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| perrindom |
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Messages: 129
Registered: August 2005
Location: Denmark | |
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Here's how I saw the game from the Vikings' point of view (as addition to Altruist's elaborate description): By 2408 7 of 8 other races spotted. Vikings had a far right narrow radiation hab band, and by 2410 it seemed like far right radiation was chosen by most races, and apparantly very much so by all of the Viking's nearest neighbours, thus it seemed the best to ally with someone a little further away, and predate on those near by quite early, which was part of the Viking race design tailored to a tight and crowded universe.
For the first 40 years of this game Vikings had a severe shortage of boranium which later made it an easy decision to skip a weap 8 class major warfleet and go directly to weap 10 technology.
My Viking race was based on factories, but to keep/gain/not give away the initiative I ended up playing it more like a -F race: being slow to start build factories, and building the last of them in 2434. This decision was based not on what I did see/scout around the galaxy, but on what my scouts didn't see (such as what kind of ships being build, in what numbers, and what were done with them).
Two key battles vs. the Fluffy was the loss of No Respect, which could fork 3 major Viking planets, (half way from center to the SE) in 2416 and retaking it in 2422. Everything available was thrown into this battle to deny the WM a gate in the Vikings' core space. By 2428 a small strike fleet attacked their first Fluffy planet by surprise using an Altruist gate at Skidmark from which Vikings could fork 2 Fluffy planets. Only half the pop was killed. This first attack was made by 28 DD of mixed designs and only 25 bombers. In 2430 the fleet regrouped at Skidmark and was reinforced by 62 FFs (still not enough bora for more bombers), and in 2431 another Fluffy planet was attacked, again only half the pop was killed, leaving them to only their HW as a useful planet, which led to the Fluffy surrender. In 2432 to 2434 Fluffy HW was bombed, the small Viking bomber fleet had only little effect, so it moved on to the other less defended Fluffy Planets.
By the time the Fluffy HW was the only useful planet not yet conquered, things started to heat up in the center with Traders and Phoenix coming in from the North. Sadly, reluctantly, hesitating and with tears in their eyes, the anti-fluffy task force left Fluffy space to counter the Trader-Phoenix in the center before it had finished the job in the SE. The great prize of the Fluffy HW is thus remained independent for the rest of the game.
I think the single most determining battle in this game was in 2434 where Phoenix lost Pi in the upper East part of the center of the galaxy. A gate there would have been impossible to ignore for the Vikings, and could/would also have slowed/halted Altruist's advance into the NE corner.
Actions by the Vikings' enemies that would have made a difference: colonizing in force and better scouting on the Fluffies behalf, which would have made it much more difficult to first contain their expansion and later sneak up on them. As for the Trader-Phoenix, my fear was to suddenly have to fight on two fronts vs. the Fluffy in the SE and the Trader-Phoenix in the center. To somewhat safeguard my HW, already in 2414 an outpost was set up at Midgard just North of my HW. Every year for the next 20 years or so I watched the Northern horizon with dire expectations. Not until tactical colonizing in 2438 did the Vikings colonize any green planets N of their HW.
Per/Vikings
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| Re: Antiballistics - animated gif of the universe (image) |
Fri, 19 January 2007 18:38 |
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Hi Micha,
thanks for the visualization and for the work.
I am a bit surprised to see that Xeelee and Phoneix had already 2 planets in 2401.
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| Re: Antiballistics - animated gif of the universe (image) |
Sat, 20 January 2007 12:38 |
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| mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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| Micha wrote on Fri, 19 January 2007 17:56 |
Xeelee was 3i HE so any planet it would colonize would be 100%.
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The reason to colonize a planet right off as a 4% 3i is to get rid of the minicolonizer hull so that the PRT is not obvious, muck with the score to see if there are other very slow growth races, and possibly grab a key planet.
I never used a mini-colonizer after the initial 3. There really isn't a need, since the 4% is very pop limited, and quite frankly should not expand further than the FM can take it till the 50's. To give you a number, I built a total of 9 colonizers, which is roughly 225 resources more than the mini colonizer (minerals are irrelevant). That is an acceptable amount to me if I fool someone into thinking I am something other than what I am.
The deception was complicated in this game because of the normal cost weaps, and small universe. I could not get to the necessary techs for scout killing all races before scouts were over running my HW. Once someone sees the pop on my HW and colonies don't add up to much, it is very simple to deduce my PRT and GR.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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Antiballistics game ended
He shot away both his starting colonizers, he certainly had the pop to spare! And he was lucky since both planets were 89% for his 2i HE ... (though IIRC with not so good mineral concentrations) (other planets in first turn range were IIRC all red)