Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Fledging Admirals I
| Fledging Admirals I |
Sun, 08 July 2007 16:03  |
|
 Skaffen |
 | Senior Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 90
Registered: December 2006
Location: Germany | |
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Hi everyone,
please forgive me for posting before the official announcement by the host. But if I donīt post this tonight Iīll probably never get around to doing it.
To sum up the gist of the game: the winning move was made in 2404 when the Culture offered an alliance to the Consulari (two ITs seeing each other from the beginning with overlapping habs). Both of us were hoping for a CA ally (of course...) but thought theyīd be hard to come by (boy were we wrong!) so we settled on what we both considered second best.
Our partly overlapping hab never proved much of a problem and the Culture with pen scans, IFE and CE for hordes of minesweepers proved a very efficient complement to the Consulari that had NAS, no IFE but con cheap.
The map in 2474 looks like this (Iīm pretty sure Greg or Altruist will post some more to show the progress of the game, hereīs only the final tally with HWs for reference)
Overall, like the alliance, it was a diplomatic victory. Greg and me decided pretty early on after we learned that the Hornets were a -f CA that weīd fight our war in the middle of the BB age after more or less fully built econ and when our IT gating could be used to the best effect. And even though the Culture eliminated the Mikotaj very early and even though with PPS everyone could see that #1 and #2 were allied we were left in peace with NAPs and trade agreements with most races. No big alliance was built in mid-game to go after us which could have made a difference so we were free to follow our plan to devastating effect.
The cast of the game:
#1: Trix, a TT CA (yellow)
#2: Pingguo, another CA, no TT AFAIK (green)
#3: Ousters, AR (red)
#4: Mikotaj, another AR and early victim of the Culture
#5: Hornet, -f CA
#6: Consulari, IT (light blue)
#7: Culture, IT, (dark blue) (IFE, NRSE, CE, OBRM, 0.31-3.2, -120 - +120, 42 - 86 (1/5), 19%, 1000/12/9/14G, 10/3/14, all expensive, W cheap, start at 3 not checked, 100 leftover points (factories).
A note on CE: For most of the game not a problem at all, maybe a colonizing mission delayed for a turn or so but overall very easy to live with. Only when the shooting really started did it become very annoying and some Hornet planets survived longer than they should have because the fleets didnīt move.
As for the game:
In 2405 the first Mikotaj scout was spotted and from the 17kt weight and a warp 4 jump deduced that they were AR, soon to be confirmed. Since they were boxed in the north-western corner it was clear that thereīd be war (at least it was clear to the Culture, not so the Mikotaj who didnīt prepare for an attack, forge any alliance or offer trade while colonizing everything in sight without any communication. Not a way to make friends...)
A NAP with the Hornet neighbors to the East was forged to keep that border secure with the Consulari in the south securing that side. 17 beta-DDs were built that took out the Mikotaj HW in 22. They had one turn of warning when the planet hopping fleet was spotted but the not-even upgraded starbase was an easy victim. I was hoping to get that kill before scores became public but just couldnīt manage it.
Then things settled down a lot, Consulari and Culture were happily building their econ and trading tech back and forth while the Hornets started push south and fought the Ousters who had been running a pretty good AR econ till then, hat tip from me! No further warships were built till BBs except for some 6 or so single yak FFs and single gattling FFs that I used for minesweeping later on and planet covering guards.
The peace was sorely needed as I had run the Culture like a -f for at least 15 of the first 20 years: first elec research, then a huge wave of scouts (almost 30 in the first 10 years), then the warfleet against the Mikotaj. Obviously it paid off. With the large number of scouts in the air every planet was scanned by around year 23 or so and I had enough ships for repeat visits to keep intel updated. This also made it easy to egg people on against each other and leave us in peace... 
As far as we could tell the Pingguo allies never helped much in the Hornet-Ouster war and the Ousters were almost wiped out. We offered sanctuary for Ouster colonizers in our space, gave them tech (hopefully in secret... ) and even built a mini-bomber fleet for the Ousters in the hope of slowing down the Hornet -f advance without tipping our hand, breaking our NAP or getting into the shooting war too early for us. Didnīt help much and the Ousters were almost wiped out.
We were pretty worried about the Hornets for a long time, especially in the 30s and 40s when their -f and RS would have been very useful against us while we were still building our econ. Thatīs why we successfully tried to keep the east at each otherīs throats and supporting the SE against the Hornets without actively joining the fight.
By then the Consulari had also struck a great deal with the Trix to obtain OAs for us and our econ received another boost. Then finally MTs arrived, the first one gave the Langston shell and was met by almost everyone. Then second one gave tech and that made us cancel the NAP with the Hornets a couple of turns before schedule in the mid-50s as they were set to meet it with 9800 kt. Another tech MT came pretty close afterwards which was missed by the Hornets so two fully built IT econs coupled with 2 tech MTs headstart met with 9800 kt made it a pretty uneven fight once things got ugly.
By then the Hornets had I guess around 300 of their Cookie Cutter CCs (CC, TGSS, 3 bears, 2 OTs, 1 jammer, 4 Mark IV) plus around 150 with sappers which with their RS is a damned powerful ship for the mid-game. They definitely taught me newfound respect for CCs and gave me quite a few headaches coming up with counter designs and testbeds. In the W16 age they are really good and are difficult to counter-design with their great speed and high init from range 2 beams, only when W20 came available they were outclassed by Dooms. Ironically they were below 150 kt in weight and with the 150/600 gates available the Hornets had equal if not better mobility than the ITs with their inf/300 gates!
Things were a bit tense till we had a counter fleet and there was a lot of hopping back and forth to cover things but while both sides couldnīt really attack time was on our side.
The Culture built 75 Mugger BBs (A8, 6 caps, OT, 6 organic, 8 LS, 8 PS, 12 HBs) which were only meant as a stopgap design because the Consulari already had higher weapon tech from the second MT. When tech 20 was traded 21 Killer BBs (IS10, 4 SBC, 3 jammer 20, 4 PS, 16 dooms, 6 organic, 8 LS) were built. By then the Consulari had enough defensive ships to cover their planets so the Culture went on the offensive on the Hornetīs eastern border with most of the above ships in a big planet killing fleet accompanied by Consulari bombers.
Then in a babarian horde style attack around 25-30 Psychopath BBs (IS10, 6 caps, 1 SBC, 6 organic, 8 LS, 4 SS, 16 Mega-Ds) were thrown at the front every turn while the Consulari also attacked from the south with bombers to assure planet killing in one turn along as well. The combined bombing attacks with Consulari Cherries and LBUs followed by Culture Cherries proved very effective. Overall 243 of the Psychopaths and 7 more Ragnaroks with Armageddons were built in the war and only 25 Muggers and 7 Psychopaths lost.
It took too long for the Hornets to catch up with tech, against the Psychopaths CCs just didnīt cut it and the doomsday BBs which finally hit the scene were too few and too late to make a difference. It was a pretty clean sweep and we opened up some of the conquered planets for the Ousters in case anyone is wondering about the red planets on the map.
The Cultureīs minesweepers proved very effective (FF with FM and single gattling) and hordes of them managed to sweep fields for both offensive navies though at the cost of around 450 ships lost to skirmishers and minefield hits. Only the micromanagement was a nightmare and in the end turns took >3 hours.
The game ended with the Hornets completely wiped out, fighting valiantly to the last planet. Great game and worthy opponent who caused us quite a few headaches. Maybe not played aggressively enough so that the -f advantage was lost when our factories were up.
In the end when we cancelled the Pingguo NAP they conceeded. They were ranked #2 with 53k resources against the Consulari 58 and the Cultureīs 48 but with 87 against our 115 / 104 tech levels and with only 21 capital ships against our standing navies with 203 / 313 capital ships and around 170 B52s and Nubs available next turn for the Consulari.
In hindsight a pretty clean sweep, but again mostly achieved through careful diplomacy and trading that gave us exactly the game we wanted and planned for. Greg and me also spent a lot of time on strategizing, ship designs, micromanaging econ and whatnot but Iīm sure the Hornets and Ousters were played just as well if not better on an operational level. It was the diplomacy that carried the day.
Thanks everyone, I learned a lot of things such as respect for CCs, the importance of loads of support ships and fear of the B-crunch which I never expected. See you again soon, well, at least when Babylon 5 is over which might take forever the way the Vorlon Alliance is playing...
[Updated on: Mon, 09 July 2007 14:12] Report message to a moderator
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